COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE
Steve Giles Maike Oergel Editors
PETER LANG
COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE
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COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE FROM STURM UND DRANG TO BAADER-MEINHOF
STEVE GILES & MAIKE OERGEL (EDS)
PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.ddb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA
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ISBN 3-03910-007-6 US-ISBN 0-8204-6276-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements
9
STEVE GILES
Introduction: Culture as Counter-Culture
11
GUSTAV FRANK
Sturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passion and the Logic of German Counter-Cultures
25
NICHOLAS SAUL AND SUSAN TEBBUTT
Gypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures in Modern German Cultural History
43
MAIKE OERGEL
Revolutionaries, Traditionalists, Terrorists? The Burschenschaften and the German Counter-Cultural Tradition
61
CARL WEBER
Performing Counter-Culture in the Vorstadt: Nestroy’s Theatre in Times of Reaction and Revolt
87
MALCOLM HUMBLE
Das Reich der Erfüllung: A Theme in Wilhelmine Counter-Culture
105
DAVID MIDGLEY
‘Los von Berlin!’ Anti-Urbanism as Counter-Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Germany
121
MARGARETE KOHLENBACH
Walter Benjamin, Gustav Wyneken and the Jugendkulturbewegung
137
6
Contents
COLIN RIORDAN
The Green Alternative in Germany 1900–1930
155
SABINE EGGER
The Roots of the East German ‘Green’ Movement in the 1950s
171
STEFAN BUSCH
Bluthochzeit mit Mutter Erde: Repression und Regression in der Blut-und-Boden-Literatur
193
STEVE GILES
Limits of the Visible: Kracauer’s Photographic Dystopia
213
JEROME CARROLL
The Art of the Imperceptible: A Discussion of the Aesthetics of Wolfgang Welsch
241
CARMEL FINNAN
The Challenges of Zürich’s Autonomous Youth Movement
259
MATTHIAS UECKER
Aufrufe, Bekenntnisse, Analysen: Zur Politisierung der westdeutschen Literatur in den sechziger Jahren
273
INGO CORNILS
Writing the Revolution: the Literary Representation of the German Student Movement as Counter-Culture
295
JAMIE TRNKA
The West German Red Army Faction and its Appropriation of Latin American Urban Guerilla Struggles
315
GERRIT-JAN BERENDSE
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction: Melville’s Moby Dick, Brecht’s The Measures Taken and the Red Army Faction
333
Contents
7
UWE SCHÜTTE
‘Heilige, die im Dunkel leuchten’: Der Mythos der RAF im Spiegel der Literatur nachgeborener Autoren
353
MORAY MCGOWAN
Ulrike Meinhof im Deutschen Drama der Neunziger Jahre: Drei Beispiele
373
Notes on Contributors
395
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Acknowledgements
We wish to express our gratitude to the British Academy for magnanimously supporting the International Symposium on CounterCultures at the University of Nottingham 14–16 September 2001, where the papers compiled in this volume were initially presented. We would also like to thank the University of Nottingham for its generous financial support towards the production of this volume.
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STEVE GILES
Introduction: Culture as Counter-Culture
On 15 March 1920, two days after the Kapp Putsch, a painting by Rubens was damaged by a stray bullet during fighting in Dresden between opponents and supporters of the attempted right-wing coup. Oskar Kokoschka, the renowned Expressionist artist and Professor at Dresden’s Akademie der Künste, immediately issued an appeal to the combatants to relocate their conflict away from the art gallery, so as to protect works of art which – in Kokoschka’s view – were the people’s most hallowed possession. The Marxist Dadaists John Heartfield and George Grosz responded to Kokoschka’s heartfelt plea by way of a diatribe which is iconoclastic even by Dadaist standards. Decrying Kokoschka as ‘Der Kunstlump’ – the art scoundrel – they welcomed the fact that bullets were hitting artistic masterpieces instead of exploding in the dwellings of impoverished workers.1 Their article launched a scathing attack on Kokoschka, whom they took to embody the dominant views on Art typical of bourgeois culture. Art is said to provide a spiritual haven, a transcendent vantage point from which the bourgeoisie can contemplate the everyday world with delight, secure in the knowledge that aesthetic culture invests life with meaning and significance. Grosz and Heartfield, on the other hand, dismiss artistic masterpieces as mere scraps of canvas and bourgeois culture as no more than the beguiling façade of ruthless capitalist exploitation. Similarly, the RomanticIdealist concept of artistic genius is unmasked as a piece of elitist ideology which covers up the fact that the artist’s head simply recycles the world-view of his audience, much as a sausage machine
1
The key texts in the ‘Kunstlump’ debate are those by Heartfield/Grosz and Alexander; their theoretical and historical contexts are admirably documented in Fähnders/Rector, 43–103.
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processes meat. What is needed, they conclude, is the development of an authentic working-class culture which rejects the bourgeois heritage in all its oppressive manifestations. Needless to say, Grosz and Heartfield’s invective was perceived to be outrageous even in the early, revolutionary phase of the Weimar Republic. Crucially, Gertrud Alexander, the editor of the cultural section of Die Rote Fahne, the German Communist Party’s daily newspaper, was utterly appalled by their vandalistic attack on the cultural heritage, and she steadfastly defends the universal and humanist dimensions of the bourgeois artistic tradition. The ensuing debate prefigures conflicts and controversies over the bourgeois cultural heritage that were to dominate Marxist aesthetics for the next fifty years or more, and receives a provisional counter-cultural coda in the guise of Heiner Müller’s assertion in 1977 that ‘der Humanismus kommt nur noch als Terrorismus vor, der MolotowCocktail ist das letzte bürgerliche Bildungserlebnis.’ (Müller, 40) When compared to the systematic vituperation of Grosz and Heartfield, the critiques of bourgeois culture articulated by the students’ movement in the 1960s seem almost tame, but the ‘Kunstlump’ debate is significant not simply because it pre-empts the possibly parochial posturings of disaffected ‘68ers’ (see Dirke, 42–49). It also compels us to reconsider the very notion of counter-culture, which all too often has tended to be associated with American and European radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s.2 The ‘Kunstlump’ debate also maps out a terrain and delineates a series of theoretical parameters on and within which other radical critiques of bourgeois culture and politics – for example feminist, Black Power, post-colonial – were articulated, as well as inviting us to consider the extent to which the polemics of Marxist Dadaists were truly counter-cultural, as opposed to marginally sub-cultural at best. This latter dilemma is particularly important for Sabine von Dirke in her classic study of West German counter-culture, ‘All Power to the Imagination!’ As she rightly points out in her introductory comments 2
On the international dimension of these movements, see Caute. The West German context is discussed in Dirke, passim; the American situation is critically reviewed in Bell, 120–45.
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on culture and hegemony, the investigation of counter-culture immediately raises fundamental theoretical questions. These concern the nature of culture; the relationship between culture and politics; the distinction between sub-cultures and counter-cultures; the class basis of culture and counter-culture; and the broader sociological frameworks within which culture, politics, class and dominant institutions may be configured. At the same time, because Dirke focuses on counter-cultural movements in West Germany from the late 1960s through to the mid 1980s, she does not engage with a variety of issues which are relevant from a more expansive historical and theoretical perspective. Taking the historical dimension first, there is a case for arguing that all the ground-breaking cultural developments in Germany and central Europe from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism may be construed as counter-cultures – not in the perhaps trivial sense that any ‘new’ cultural development is critical of its predecessors, but in the more drastic and fundamental sense that modern German culture has been characterised by a series of paradigm shifts, or even caesuras, whereby the conceptual and institutional presuppositions of the prior cultural formation have been decisively rejected. Moreover, deploying the category of counter-culture as a tool of historical analysis also enables us to rethink contemporary controversies concerning, for example, the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, or the relative priority of the avant-garde – as opposed to counter-cultural manifestations – in initiating and defining radical artistic movements from the late nineteenth century onwards.3 At the same time, rethinking counter-culture as a historical category also has theoretical implications. Instead of approaching the historical development of culture in linear or evolutionary terms, as one formation is succeeded by another in a process of inheritance or Aufhebung, the counter-cultural perspective outlined above suggests that our primary object of analysis might be not artistic evolution, but cultural revolution. Similarly, attending to radical shifts and ruptures at the overarching historical or chronological level also raises questions concerning the internal cohesiveness of any particular cultural formation if such fundamental changes are to be possible. In 3
For further discussion, see the essays compiled in Giles, Theorizing Modernism.
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other words, the underlying dynamic of endogenous cultural development might itself be counter-cultural, in the sense that the domain of – say – artistic phenomena is constantly reshaped, as the centre becomes the periphery, ‘low’ culture is transmuted into ‘high culture’, and vice-versa. Defining and deploying the category of counter-culture in these various ways would suggest that counter-culture can be conceived of in critical, historical, and even methodological terms. In the remainder of this Introduction, I shall first flesh out the notion of counter-culture with reference to Dirke’s very helpful theoretical discussion. In order to consider in more detail the sociological and aesthetic issues highlighted in her argument, I shall then examine a series of perspectives – Marxism, Russian Formalism, Czech Structuralism, and Rezeptionsästhetik – which are particularly apposite when conceptualising counterculture, by drawing on the work of Jameson, Tynjanov, Mukarovsky, and Jauß. This discussion will be informed by the general assumption that cultural analysis must avoid the pitfalls noted by Adorno in his critique of traditional approaches to the sociology of music: Je gesicherter soziologische Befunde über Musik, desto ferner und äußerlicher sind sie ihr selbst. Je tiefer aber sie in spezifisch musikalische Zusammenhänge sich versenken, desto ärmer und abstrakter drohen sie als soziologische zu werden. (Adorno, ‘Vermittlung’, 209)
Finally, I shall give a brief overview of the essays compiled in this volume – all of which were first presented at an International Symposium on Counter-Cultures at the University of Nottingham in September 2001 – indicating in particular the generic concerns which they address. Sabine von Dirke’s approach to counter-culture draws heavily on the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s, especially its pioneering appropriation of Antonio Gramsci’s account of hegemony. She begins, though, by considering in more general terms the relationships between subcultures and counter-cultures, and culture and society. While the term culture is often used, particularly in literary circles, to refer to the more elevated and edifying manifestations of human creative endeavour, it
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may also be employed in a more comprehensive manner to designate the variety of ways in which we make sense of social relations. Moreover, she continues, the precise character of the inter-connections between culture and society is complicated by the fact that society may well not be a homogeneous or harmonious entity, but a site of struggle where different social groups seek to achieve cultural dominance or – to use Gramsci’s term – hegemony. The term hegemony refers to the ways in which dominant groups in a society establish the legitimacy of their position by means of consent rather than coercion, as the rest of society is encouraged to share in their views and values. The emergence of counter-cultural groupings or beliefs implies at least a partial breakdown in hegemony, whilst the appearance of subcultures may question dominant values only marginally. Dirke’s argumentation is quite emphatic in this area, in that she advocates what one might call a maximalist conception of counter-culture, in order to distinguish it more sharply from merely sub-cultural phenomena and thus underscore the radicality of West German counter-culture in the 1960s and 1970s. In her view, Countercultures position themselves explicitly and fundamentally against their dominant counterpart and try to develop an alternative way of life. They challenge the hegemonic culture with a holistic approach, negating all of its values and traditions and struggling for radical and comprehensive change. (Dirke, 4)
She therefore implies not only that counter-cultures are either intrinsically rejectionist or revolutionary, but also that they do not operate simply at the artistic or intellectual level: they call into question the entirety of social and political relations. Such a conception of counter-culture may well apply to alternative social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and evidently characterises proletarian cultural manifestations in the 1920s, particularly in the early years of the Soviet Union.4 But this
4
See in particular the excellent compilation of primary materials in Gorsen/Knödler-Bunte.
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conception is perhaps too stark to be able to take proper account of less fundamentalist counter-cultural developments which certainly have more than a tangential sub-cultural impact, yet may operate primarily in the artistic sphere, or stop short at rejecting the entirety of hegemonic views and values that permeate a particular social formation. Dirke’s maximalist approach to counter-culture also adumbrates the notion of cultural revolution, not just as historical event but also as a structural principle of cultural development in the manner outlined by Fredric Jameson. Towards the end of ‘On Interpretation’,5 the theoretical monograph which forms the opening section to The Political Unconscious, Jameson invites us to entertain the proposition that the overarching category in literary history should be cultural revolution. He had previously argued that a Marxist critique of cultural texts should operate at three distinct levels, construed as concentric frameworks, first, of political history, in the narrow sense of punctual event and a chroniclelike sequence of happenings in time; then of society, in the now already less diachronic and timebound sense of a constitutive tension and struggle between social classes; and, ultimately, of history now conceived in its vastest sense of the sequence of modes of production and the succession and destiny of the various social formations. (Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 75)
Cultural revolution is located in this third framework, and Jameson implicitly assents to the view that historically significant events are ‘those which initiate or constitute ruptures, mutations or more generally transformations in social forms’ (Bhaskar, 47).6 Such transformations are generated by contradictions within social formations that are overlaid by antagonistic modes of production. Jameson now proposes that the emergence of all previous modes of production has been associated with cultural revolution, but goes on to 5 6
Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 17–102; my discussion is based primarily on pp. 95–100. Bhaskar also gives a particularly sophisticated account of Marx’s transformational model of social activities in the course of his general discussion of societal structures and relations in classical sociological theory (see Bhaskar, 34–56).
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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 text’s ostensible content. Although Jameson’s argument appears at various points to be indebted to Adorno’s 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 Tynjanov’s 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 planmäßige 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, Tynjanov’s 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
7
See Adorno, ‘Vermittlung’; Jameson’s account of mediation is discussed in Giles, ‘Against Interpretation’. Jameson briefly considers Tynjanov’s work in The Prison-House of Language, 91–95, but does not refer to the ‘Literary Fact’ essay, possibly as it has never been translated into English.
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virtually automatic. He observes that any dynamic system necessarily generates its opposite within itself thanks to a dialectical process governed by chance developments, errors in and violations of that system (409), rather than referring to a properly Marxian dialectic grounded in the conflict between forces and relations of production. In fact, the motor of literary change almost seems to resemble a cultural tumbler dryer, given Tynjanov’s emphasis on the constant interchange between the centre and the peripheries of a system which is clearly in a condition of endemic flux (399). Tynjanov’s model of the literary system can be seen as countercultural in both synchronic and diachronic terms, so much so that the very categorisation of literature becomes an essentially contested domain. In that respect, his theoretical position is comparable to that of the Czech Structuralist Jan Mukarovsky, who takes on board many of Tynjanov’s central precepts but also – in the mid 1930s at least – provides them with a more substantial sociological foundation, as well as applying them to the cultural sphere in general.8 Mukarovsky contends that the history of art involves a series of rebellions against ruling norms, in that there is a constant tension between old and new, between tradition and innovation. Indeed, the development of modern art in particular seems to presuppose that the aesthetic value of a work entails a rejection of existing aesthetic norms, the consequence being that aesthetic value – and the nature of art – is inherently mutable. The dynamics of normative change are dialectical in the manner outlined by Tynjanov, as Mukarovsky indicates that the aesthetic realm of culture is governed by a series of opposing factors whose conflictual and contradictory interaction generates cultural development. At the same time, though, Mukarovsky also presents a more concrete and specific account of the societal dimension of aesthetic norms. Mukarovsky shows that in any social formation there simultaneously exists a variety of systems of aesthetic norms, which are in conflict and competition with one another. These normative systems are dynamic, ever-changing and permeable, so that norms may, for instance, shift from the aesthetic realm to the domain of 8
For a more detailed analysis of Mukarovsky’s work in this area see Giles, ‘Sociological Aesthetics’. My discussion here is based on Mukarovsky, 33–66.
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ethics, and vice-versa. Crucially, aesthetic norms share a key property of all norms, as they are organised on the basis of societal stratification and differentiation. Just as we are able to express ourselves linguistically in various social dialects, so too, Mukarovsky maintains, we may well be conversant with a variety of aesthetic norms. Moreover, he continues, social stratification must be defined both vertically – in traditional social class terms – and horizontally, with reference to categories such as age, gender and occupational group (categories which might, of course, be supplemented with others, such as religion and ethnicity). It therefore follows that not only different social strata, but also different sectors within the same social stratum, may adhere to different and conflicting sets of aesthetic norms, so much so that they may even construct alternative artistic canons. The interplay between social stratification, aesthetic norms and cultural canons also has an institutional dimension. Society has developed a range of agencies which, for example, regulate the evaluation of art-works and thus enable society to influence aesthetic value. These institutional forms include literary criticism, public libraries, museums, academies, prizes, and even censorship. Although the primary role of these and other agencies may well not be to influence aesthetic value, in that they in fact carry out a range of societal functions and mediate a variety of societal tendencies, their regulation of aesthetic value is closely connected with general social developments. Mukarovsky thus provides us with a more sophisticated and differentiated way of characterising the shifts and gradations between sub-cultures and counter-cultures through his account of the relationship between social stratification, aesthetic norms and cultural canons. He also emphasises that the societal mediation of those norms and canons involves institutional structures which play a crucial role in the reproduction of the cultural sphere. How, though, are we to establish whether a specific cultural development or seeming innovation is merely reproductive of dominant modes of discourse, rather than being transformative or even revolutionary? This question was addressed in a particularly instructive fashion by Hans Robert Jauß in his classic essay ‘Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft’, where
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he attempted to transcend and supersede the supposed limitations of Marxism and Formalism, and thereby heal the rift between the sociological and the aesthetic in modern literary studies and, by extension, in cultural inquiry in general. At the same time, Jauß does nonetheless endorse certain key premises of Russian Formalism, starting with the notion that the course of literary history does not proceed in a smooth, linear or teleological manner, but is permeated instead by discontinuities, conflict and revolution. In view of the fact that Jauß maintains that epochal shifts in literary history and the artistic value of specific works both depend on their rejection of prevailing aesthetic norms, his theoretical approach could be characterised as being intrinsically counter-cultural, as the category of counter-culture implicitly informs his historiographical and his evaluative presuppositions. From Jauß’s own standpoint, however, his key theoretical notion and his most innovative contribution to cultural inquiry is the horizon of expectations, or Erwartungshorizont. Jauß contends that readers and audiences always perceive literary texts against the background of a series of assumptions which establish the nature of literature. But, in order to escape the accusation that such assumptions are merely arbitrary or subjective, he proposes that they are in fact embedded in an objectifiable referential system of coordinates or expectations, namely an Erwartungshorizont. The Erwartungshorizont of a particular grouping of readers – or even writers and critics – incorporates elements such as a prior understanding of genre conventions, formal and thematic aspects of texts already known to the reader, and the opposition between practical and poetic language. Epochal change – or, we might say, a counter-cultural shift – involves a fundamental transformation in the Erwartungshorizont, inaugurated by texts which radically reject or deconstruct prevailing artistic conventions. Basic structural changes in the Erwartungshorizont can, Jauß proposes, be identified by establishing the existence of ruptures and discontinuities between those dominant referential schemas which happen to be in force at different points in time. Rather like a cultural gardener digging with an analytical spade, the literary historian would make a vertical slice through a particular cultural formation in order to reveal a cross-section of aesthetic space which incorporates the variety
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of oppositional and hierarchical normative structures in evidence at a particular social moment. This initial slice or cross-section would then be followed up by further slices from earlier and later periods, so as to enable comparisons to be made between these various moments in order to establish the extent of normative change. At the same time, the foundation would be laid for a new type of literary or cultural history which focuses on diachronic ruptures rather than underlying continuities. Although Jauß’s new mode of literary history appears to lend itself particularly well to counter-cultural analysis, it does have certain shortcomings. First, Jauß takes certain contentious Russian Formalist precepts – such as the opposition between poetic and practical language – to be self-evident, and he incorporates them into his general schema of readerly expectations even though they are historically specific and intimately associated with late modernism.9 Second, whereas he insists that such expectations are not subjective or psychologistic, his evidence for their objectivity is not derived from systematic investigations into the underlying structures of readers’ responses but refers instead to the occurrence of certain stylistic features in parodistic texts. And, thirdly, the core components of the Erwartungshorizont are restricted to aesthetic norms and conventions. Nevertheless, his revamped methodology for literary history still provides a productive starting-point for counter-cultural analysis, and I would propose modifying Jauß’s theoretical model in three principal ways. First, Jauß’s emphasis on expectations should be replaced by a focus on discursive presuppositions, so that instead of establishing the constitutive features of the reader’s horizon of expectations, we would seek to reconstruct the relevant horizons of discourse which underpin readers’ perceptions of texts.10 Second, the key conceptual components in a particular horizon of discourse should be identified on a
9 10
On Russian Formalism and late modernism, see my essay on Kracauer in this volume. I use the term discourse not in the Foucauldian sense, but to designate the set of implicit and explicit beliefs and presuppositions which inform and constitute a domain in their textual embodiment, eg in terms of figurative language, rhetoric and syntax.
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strictly historical basis, so that inappropriate or anachronistic normative and analytic categories are not built into the horizon of discourse on an a priori basis. And, thirdly, the horizon of discourse should not be construed essentially or primarily in aesthetic terms. Jauß is right to argue that reading – and writing – is located within an objectifiable referential framework of norms and conventions, so that no act of reading is theory-neutral. But the discursive presuppositions which inform particular readings may also be ethical, political, sociological, or even metaphysical, whether we are investigating key moments in literary history or cultural transformations. To give but one example, it would be illuminating to compare the contemporary reception of, say Schlink’s Der Vorleser and Grass’s Im Schneckengang, with the contemporary reception of Grass’s Die Blechtrommel and Weiss’s Die Ermittlung, in order to develop a critique of the discursive presuppositions of the various sectors of the German reading public and their shifting horizons. It might then be possible to fulfil the stringent criteria set out by Adorno in his specification of reception research: Das kunstsoziologische Ideal wäre, objektive Analysen – das heißt, solche der Werke – , Analysen der strukturellen und spezifischen Wirkungsmechanismen und solche der registrierbaren subjektiven Befunde aufeinander abzustimmen. Sie müßten sich wechselseitig erhellen. (Adorno, ‘Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie’, 206)
In the closing session of the Nottingham Counter-Cultures Symposium, which involved a wide-ranging discussion of general implications arising from the papers which had been presented, various questions were posed to which I was invited to respond in this Introduction. Is counter-culture positional or relative, in other words is one person’s culture another person’s counter-culture? Is counterculture intrinsically marginal or temporary? Is counter-culture only valid as a polemical term, rather than as an analytic category? Does counter-culture have to be explicitly political or politicised? If we focus on the aesthetic dimensions of a counter-culture, must we inevitably underplay its theoretical and political dimensions? While I would hope that this Introduction has provided at least some useful theoretical reflections on these issues, the papers that follow address
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them rather more concretely. Chronologically, they cover aspects of German and central European culture from the 1770s to the 1990s, whilst in genre terms they deal with narrative, theatre, poetry, photography, and a variety of counter-cultural institutional and theoretical initiatives. Thematically, they engage with a similarly broad range of concerns: the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century roots of counter-culture and terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s; anti-modern, anti-urban, and green movements since the turn of the twentieth century; new conceptions of art and the relationship between aesthetics and politics on the left and the right which emerged in the wake of modernism; and alternative political movements since the 1960s, notably the Red Army Faction and its literary affiliations. Finally, the editors wish to note that the Counter-Cultures Symposium was overshadowed by the horrific and traumatic events of 11 September 2001 which had taken place three days earlier. Several US delegates were unable to attend, and discussions of terrorist violence and the Red Army Faction proved to be particularly difficult. Participants took the view, nonetheless, that it was important to grapple with such issues in the hope of throwing some light at least on their causes and contexts.
Works Cited Adorno, T.W. ‘Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie’, in Bürger, P. (Hg) Seminar: Literaturund Kunstsoziologie (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1978), 204–11. —— ‘Vermittlung’, in Adorno, T.W. Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1968), 208–33. Alexander, G.G.L. ‘Herrn John Heartfield und George Grosz’, Die Rote Fahne, 9 June 1920. Reprinted in Fähnders/Rector, 50–53. —— ‘Kunst, Vandalismus und Proletariat. Erwiderung’, Die Rote Fahne, 23/24 June 1920. Reprinted in Fähnders/Rector, 56–60. 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).
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Dirke, S. von. ‘All Power to the Imagination!’ The West German Counterculture from the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997). Fähnders, W./Rector, M. (Hg) Literatur im Klassenkampf. Zur proletarischenrevolutionären Literaturtheorie 1919–1923 (München, Hanser, 1971). Giles, S. ‘Against Interpretation? Recent Trends in Marxist Criticism’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 28, 1 (Winter, 1988), 68–77. —— ‘Sociological Aesthetics as a Challenge to Literary Theory: Reappraising Mukarovsky’, New Comparison, 19 (Spring 1995), 89–106. —— (ed) Theorizing Modernism. Essays in Critical Theory (London, Routledge, 1993). Gorsen, P./Knödler-Bunte, E. (Hg) Proletkult. 1. System einer proletarischen Kultur. 2. Zur Praxis und Theorie einer proletarischen Kulturrevolution in Sowjetrußland 1917–1925 (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog, 1974). Heartfield, J./Grosz, G. ‘Der Kunstlump’, Der Gegner, 1, 10–12 (1920), 48–56. Reprinted in Fähnders/Rector, 43–50. 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). Jauß, H. R. ‘Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft’, in Jauß, H. R. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1970), 144–207. Mukarovsky, J. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1970), first published in Czech in 1936. Müller, H. ‘Verabschiedung des Lehrstücks’, in Hörnigk, F. (Hg) Heiner Müller Material. Texte und Kommentare (Leipzig, Reclam, 1989), 40. Striedter, J. (Hg) Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allgemeinen Literaturtheorie und zur Theorie der Prosa (München, Fink, 1971). Tynjanov, J. ‘Das literarische Faktum’, in Striedter (Hg), 393–431. —— ‘Über die literarische Evolution’, in Striedter (Hg), 434–61.
GUSTAV FRANK
Sturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passion and the Logic of German Counter-Cultures1
…die idealistische Periode fing damals an, Kaufmann war ein Anhänger davon, Lenz widersprach heftig. (Büchner, Lenz)
Georg Büchner’s 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, Büchner 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 Büchner’s approach utterly different from, for example, Heine’s Romantische Schule. In his novella Lenz, Büchner 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 Büchner’s 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.
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between counter-movement and prior culture which arises from the historical situation. In particular, the semiotics of ‘segregation’ and ‘self-segregation’ may provide a sufficiently abstract level of generality to construct a history of German counter-cultures between Sturm und Drang and the Baader-Meinhof group.
Enlightenment vs Sturm und Drang The German scholarly perspective on the Enlightenment retains right through to the 1990s a certain prejudice: that there was a revolt against the rationalistic approach of the Enlightenment – a revolt by the younger generation of the Sturm und Drang, who were emotionally disappointed by the cold rationality of Enlightenment (see Boeschenstein; Mog). Regarded in this way, Enlightenment and Sturm und Drang are seen as no more than stimulus and response (see Franke). A long suppressed ‘heilig glühend Herz’ – to use the idiom of the Sturm und Drang – rises up against a public sphere, which, now no longer controlled by a corrupt and immoral ancien régime but constructed in and through the workings of rational discourse, merely reproduces the old ways of living, of belief, of social order. This argument, which envisages the same cold rationality, irrespective of the ends, at work, is established in such canonical works as Cassirer’s Philosophy of Enlightenment (Die Philosophie der Aufklärung 1932) or Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1944/1947). Such a misunderstanding of the Sturm und Drang was itself a product of the specific development which the Enlightenment took in Germany from the 1780s onwards in the work of philosophers like Kant and then in the German Idealism of Fichte, Hegel and others (see Kondylis). The misunderstanding starts with Kant’s question ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ In his treatise, Kant does not argue in favour of Enlightenment, as has been generally claimed, a claim which turned this text into the canonical incorporation of the supposed spirit of
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Enlightenment. Quite to the contrary, Kant’s purpose is to set limits on the frightening dynamics of Enlightenment as an ongoing and seemingly endless process which questions all values and norms and in so doing endangers the social order, or at least the order of the academic world, that is to say the very order of thought and of thinking. The Sturm und Drang, seen as the latest and most radical step in this process, provoked at last Kant’s reaction. Its protagonists aggravated the conflict between nature and norms and, in intellectual terms, the conflict between studium and ingenium, i.e. a philosophy dominating the intellectual discourse and a literature claiming autonomy from domination, both of which so exercised Kant. This conflict had periodically found expression since its popular version had been propounded in Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759). The authors of the Sturm und Drang found a mythic paradigm for originality in Prometheus, as well as a historical model in Shakespeare, so as to embody their concept of the Originalor Kraftgenie allowed to question all authority. Thus passion dominates reason and the expression of passion in literature dominates philosophy. Horkheimer/Adorno, like Cassirer before them, take Kant’s philosophical criticism to be the necessary fulfilment and paradigm of Enlightenment and therefore construe it as the core representation of its potential.2 The implicit danger they see in the paradigm which Kant posits, the mere functional working of reason for any purpose, is finally put on display in their view in de Sade’s oeuvre. In Horkheimer/Adorno’s chapter about Kant and de Sade (‘Juliette oder Aufklärung und Moral’), de Sade’s works merely realise what is implied in Kant’s critiques. In their view de Sade anticipates the turn which modern capitalist society took towards Fascism, thereby realising the implications of his contemporaries’ and especially Kant’s philosophy. La Mettrie and de Sade show at an early stage where rationality leads if it is set free in mechanisation, materialism, and 2
Their evaluation of Kant’s philosophy is naturally quite different from Cassirer’s. My point is that even the more sophisticated negative reduction of Kant’s philosophy to be the underlying building plan of de Sade’s nihilism misses the crucial critical and counter-cultural potential of Sturm und Drang and materialism/nihilism.
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nihilism. Twentieth-century research annihilates the counter-cultural quality of nihilism and Sturm und Drang as its forerunner by taking Kant, who is the main opponent of monism, to be the representative of Enlightenment. In the teleological implication of its historical argument research tends to identify both opposing fractions and to blur their origin in Enlightenment.
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: Frühe Aufklärung with, for example, Gottsched and his circle, Mittlere Aufklärung characterised by Empfindsamkeit, and Späte Aufklärung. 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 Aufklärung 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
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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 régime 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 Enlightenment’s success.
Sympathy, Sentiment, Passion The fundamental postulate of Enlightenment defines human reason as the arbiter of truth. But the Western Enlightenment3 uses reason as the adequate human tool to realise its programme of the rehabilitation of sensuality, of matter, and of nature (see Kondylis). Its rationalism is no longer part of a dualistic approach like Descartes’. In this context, a radicalised concept of emotion becomes the heart of the developing Enlightenment.4 Under the rule of universal reason, shifting concepts of emotion evolve from Sympathie (sympathy) in the early part of the 3 4
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 Emotionalität’; Schlaeger and Stedman; Schlaeger; Wegmann), ‘emotion’ is taken to be a historical practice of speaking and behaviour with significant spatio-temporal differences.
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period, through Empfindung (sentiment) in the middle, to Leidenschaft (passion) in the later stage. The logic of this change creates one of the prerequisites for counter-culture. When confronted all too vividly with the consequences of passion in Sturm-und-Drang literature, the German reception of Western Enlightenment came to an end and the limits of reason’s freedom were newly defined in the scholastic language of Kant’s philosophy which still held sway and which, marked by the insignia of power, quite lacked the esprit and elegance of the essayistic style of his earlier works (see Böhme and Böhme). Seen from the perspective of this dominant Enlightenment philosophical culture, what was a logical step in the process of Enlightenment became a dangerous counter-move. While the early representatives of Enlightenment demonstrated the immanent rationality of the world and of their philosophical creed by a life of virtue and by accommodation with the existing social structure, the constrictions of a narrow society which did not allow for social mobility were increasingly felt to be a barrier to the promise of happiness here on earth. The postulates of happiness and of the theodicy, the vindication of divine justice despite the existence of evil in the world, which had held sway since Leibniz’s Théodicée (1710), were, however, satisfied for a time through the construction of a private sphere where all promises were to be realised. Thus the private realm was set against the frustrating public and political sphere of the ancien régime. As a consequence family, friendship and love became dominant values, and literature depicted worlds with a familial structure. The social conception of human relations was replaced by an emotional definition. Family became the key sphere of human interactions which fuelled group identity. The early Enlightenment had already offered families as its model of the world. The literature of Empfindsamkeit then uses the topos of generational conflict to convey the transformation of a system of thought. While the rational and norm-bearing figure of the pater familias is the representative of the older phase of Enlightenment, the new point of view is incorporated in the younger generation. The tentative disintegration of the symbolic role of the father (Gottvater, Landesvater, Familienvater) within this family foreshadows intellectual and political change, but this is change in the form of natural evolution and not as yet of violent revolution. It is not by chance, then,
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that in Rousseau’s thought pedagogic and gender roles played out within the arena of the family were combined with political theory. The key shift is the Enlightenment invention of ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ (see Ariès; Badinter), and a growing tolerance of conflicts arising from the process of growing up to maturity (Mündigwerden) which symbolises the process of Enlightenment in general, as we know from Kant’s essay ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ Emotion in the sense of Empfindung or sensibility becomes the criterion which distinguishes an elite group claiming to be the progressive force in Enlightenment. The value and strength of Empfindung is proved by readiness to break social rules, especially restrictions on love. But this transgressive potential was domesticated through highly formalised rhetorical expression and ritualised behaviour, so that emotions were conventionalised and turned into expected norms of behaviour rather than retaining any socially disruptive force. As the representatives of the early stage of Enlightenment, the progressive group had to justify their innovations by proving that they would create not chaos but a new and stable order, which would outdo that of the deficient status quo. Given that the intimate family realm stands opposed to the public and political sphere of courtly life where direct and immediate confrontations with power take place, the new norms had to be mediated by new forms of communication, namely by the writing and circulation of texts and the practice of reading (see Koschorke). The fact that weeping plays an important part in sentimental ritual signals the ambivalent impact of Empfindsamkeit. As an expression of happiness and of sorrow, tears undermine the assumed autonomy of the sentimental individual. For tears are the symbol not of a subject but of a victim of a world beyond the subject’s control. Recent research has therefore focused on the feelings of fear and angst and their implications for subjective mentality in the eighteenth century (see Begemann). The invention of Empfindung is thus a first step towards a risky life because it includes decisions, for example the choice of the one true lover, no longer with reference to rational social criteria. Such decisions can then produce tragic failure. Because Empfindung represents a whole spectrum of feelings that tend to be out of rational and social control and the ambivalence of grief
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undermines moral autonomy, an implicit selection of emotions forbidden to the positive characters in the texts takes place in order to maintain the norms: negative and ambivalent emotions and sexual desire have to be excluded.5 The role of rogue in this sentimental world is normally played by an aristocrat who stands outside of the bonds of family and friendship. He is often the most interesting, because the most individualised, character. Where he appears in the typical role of seducer he represents a double transgression. He is shown acting in response to radically egoistic emotion in the form of sexual desire, so making the whole sentimental group a victim of the social world he dominates by seducing the middle-class virgin. Moreover, he also dominates through reason, which enables him to mislead the men and to produce self-delusion in the loving woman. It is the existence and the ideological construction of the sentimental group that makes possible this correlation of power and a ‘cold’, calculating and manipulative reason. This plot structure tends to feminise the sentimental man, which adds a further moment of ambivalence to the rhetoric of gender roles (see Kleinschmidt), and to punish the victim instead of the guilty seducer, as in Lessing’s Emilia Galotti (see Nolting Vol. 1). In Sturm-und-Drang drama, however, this structure undergoes fundamental changes. On the one hand, the successful seducer will be pursued, as in Schiller’s Fiesko. But on the other hand, basic characteristics of this negative character reappear at 5
That this is really a deliberate selection is mirrored by the book market which was selling under the counter the Marquis d’Argens’ Thérèse 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 Hume’s scepticism, which Kant refers to in the introduction of his Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können 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 who’s who of obscure orthodox and radical thought: ‘Materialism, Fatalism, Atheism, dem freigeisterischen Unglauben, der Schwärmerei und Aberglauben, […] Idealism und Sceptizism’ (Werkausgabe III, 35).
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the moment when the seducer is pursued within the midst of the family itself, destroying this family as a model of theodicy, as in Schiller’s Die Räuber. 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 Klopstock’s first works around 1750 to his heirs around 1770 in the Göttinger 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 régime. 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.
Towards Sturm und Drang During the twenty years when the culture of Empfindsamkeit prevailed (1750–1770), however, the new philosophy of history introduced time and change into the idea of the theodicy (see Kondylis), thereby accelerating the production of desirable improvements and strengthening the experience of dissonance between a slowly developing reality and what could be expected of the society to come. Thus the success of this new philosophy of history forced the next step of development. The compensatory self-perception as an elite was no longer convincing and had to be replaced. Astonishingly enough, the next generation invented a substitute for the deficiencies of social reality by concentrating on sign systems and poetry. They laid claim to individuality by self-exclusion from all existing groups in society
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through genius and through the originality of their works. The basis of a Stürmer und Dränger 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 Wünsch, Lyrik; Wünsch, ‘frühe 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 bürgerliches 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. Wagner’s Kindermörderin, Klinger’s Leidendes Weib, Lenz’s Hofmeister and Soldaten, and Schiller’s 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.
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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. Gottsched’s 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 Ästhetik 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 Gärtner, sondern ein fühlendes 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.
6
The case of Sulzer’s oeuvre proves the anthropological dimension of the invention of aesthetics (see Riedel), an invention which is not just a chapter in the history of the arts, but is a turning point in intellectual history marking a fundamental change in the conception of human beings and their emotional capacities.
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Constraints in Sturm und Drang Worlds A closer look at its literary texts, however, reveals boundaries specific to Sturm und Drang. The texts all depict a world with unchanging social structures, where moral values and norms are handed down through the generations. The conflict of the new passionate subject with this invariable world (see Duncan) subverts the key articles of Enlightenment faith in theodicy and historical progress. But all the revolts of these exceptional subjects remain illusory. Sturm und Drang plays either depict spatio-temporally distinct worlds located somewhere else or in some other time, as in the case of Götz, Egmont, Fiesko, Sturm und Drang and all the adaptations of Faust, or they are located in a ‘wild enclave’ on the periphery of the society as is Schiller’s later (1782) Die Räuber (see Titzmann, ‘Empfindung’). Thus the evolutionary concept of Empfindsamkeit did not turn into a revolutionary programme as it did in some rare cases of later Enlightenment materialism and nihilism. But it turned into the remote revolt of an elitist individual who claims the privileges of deviance. All these rebels fight for their own privileged place in the given society which they find already occupied by legitimate instances and heirs. Mostly it is a revolt against the symbolic father of the family, of the state, of religion, often veiled by a conflict with his substitute, the elder brother, as in Klinger’s Die Zwillinge, Leisewitz’s Julius von Tarent, and Schiller’s Die Räuber. Though the conflict is unfolded and its epistemological consequences demonstrated, the texts reveal the necessary failure of the revolt. And in so doing, they imply the necessary failure and end of Sturm und Drang, too. The reason ‘warum der Strom des Genies so selten ausbricht, so selten in hohen Fluten hereinbraust’ are not only the ‘gelassene[n] Herren [...], die daher in Zeiten mit Dämmen und Ableiten der künftig drohenden Gefahr abzuwehren wissen’7 (Goethe, 7
Werther/Werther is thus implicitly criticising the widespread use of metaphors of restraint as in the anonymous tract of 1786, ‘Ueber die Ehescheidungen’, which refers to the marriage laws as an embankment ‘die den reißenden Strom der Naturtriebe so einschänken müßen, daß er weder ganz durchbricht, noch zu seiner Quelle zurückschäumt. Vielmehr leiten sie ihn in die gehörigen Canäle,
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Werther, 16) as Werther assumes, but is also to be found in the submissiveness of the young Stürmer und Dränger themselves, as Werther’s and many other suicides prove, or was instanced by those protagonists who end up dead or murdered. Sturm und Drang, therefore, is the first example of an intellectual experiment with revolt and the concurrent rejection of that revolt’s social, moral, and theoretical implications, as Schiller, the late theoretician of the Sturm und Drang explains in his poems Freigeisterei der Leidenschaft and Resignation of 1786 (Schiller, 111–115). Schiller’s Die Räuber ends with a revocation of the anarchic outcome of extreme individualism and total freedom, and a re-entry into the social order. Moreover, Schiller uses a trick to devalue that progressive tendency in the late Enlightenment which questioned the social and moral order in toto on the grounds that this order could no longer be justified by reasonable argument and was sustained by mere sentiment. While the elder son in the play represents the typical career of the passionate Sturm-und-Drang hero, here the younger son plays the role of the rogue, deploying the weapons of reason not only to destroy the emotional veil covering norms and values but also to seduce and to deceive. By allocating particular qualities to the Moor brothers in this way, Schiller indicates that the new conception of Sturm und Drang is the older and legitimate one, while the radical rehabilitation of sensuality by means of reason is turned into the illegitimate younger and hence immature position.
Counter-Cultural Posing and Success With Sturm und Drang, the phenomenon of the self-exclusion of literary men, semioticians or sign specialists appear for the first time in German intellectual history. The writers and their passionate characters construct a realm of natural otherness, of originality, of intense life and of transgressive love. The literary and semiotic die das Erdreich, das er durchfließt, befruchten, ohne seine Ufer zu verwüsten’ (Koschorke, 21).
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construction of otherness, the unmistakable individual and the unique poetical product, were predicated on the emergence of a new public sphere for sign systems circulating in printed media. This public sphere initially comprised the sentimental family and circles of friends. But the media were becoming autonomous to a degree that allowed the authors of Sturm und Drang to build a counter-culture without themselves constituting a group of friends or even a coherent group of any kind. To a certain extent, then, the media produced the ‘movement’. Sign systems and publicity became an unavoidable companion of all further attempts at constituting a counter-culture. For the elite individual subject was only able successfully to take on a paradoxical exemplary status thanks to the role played by the expanding media, whether printed media or the public institution of the theatre, and the concomitant growth of a wider audience. By publishing or staging individual passion, the authors of Sturm und Drang begin to differ from the characters they put on stage. Rhetoric and theatricality are part of the public sphere of commonly understandable matters. Publishing or dramatisation then puts on display what by definition allows no witness, the radical and solipsistic emotionality of a singular passion without intersubjective elements. Through this contradiction, the authors at once create and betray this singular subjectivity. But why then this gesture of revolt against the traditional values and norms, this pose of threat against society, this seemingly paradoxical game? The staging of passion threatens the old authorities with what is brought on stage, but in the very moment of theatricality lie the seeds of betrayal, for the gesture of revolt springs, as the mainstream proponents of Enlightenment claimed, from the hidden and unpredictable nature of passion (see Luserke). Friedrich A. Kittler has argued that the induction of boys into literacy in their mother-tongue installs the oedipal triangle and leads these sons to never-ending speaking and ink-squirting writing (see ‘Autorschaft’; Aufschreibesysteme). Kittler overshoots the mark, however, because the middleclass society which became the object of the psychoanalytic gaze at the end of the nineteenth century was only a developing social formation around 1770 which was not yet stable. In those days, sons were not compelled to talk and write, but in fact wanted to in order to compel the powers that be to make a deal with them. The danger and
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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 Stürmer und Dränger 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 Büchner’s 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 Lenz’s 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
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the active counter-culture of the late Enlightenment, of the French Revolution, and of the first republican experiments on German territory at Mainz. At the same time, the older customs of pre-literate social groups, which changed only slowly, were also beginning to take on the quality of a resistant counter-culture in response to accelerating rationalisation. But the rapidly changing mainstream culture of the industrialising first half of the nineteenth century would leave behind the alternative counter-cultures which had been inspired by earlier traditions of local riots that sprang up spontaneously in response to unjustifiably high prices for basic necessities up to the late eighteenth century. Sturm und Drang seems, therefore, to be the first main festation of very different counter-cultures. Sixty years later, Büchner would understand those who, like Lenz, could not play the half-hearted and ambiguous game of Sturm und Drang, but would criticise those who lost themselves in a rhetoric of cold rationalism like Robespierre or a raging sensuality like Danton, and those tormentors who forgot the victims of modernisation such as Woyzeck. Finally, what makes Sturm und Drang interesting as a way of reflecting on later countercultures, is its combination of passionate transgression with strategic rationality, of semiotic competence with chaos, of destructiveness of the elite with psychopathic destruction of the self.
Works Cited Ariès, 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 Prozeß der Aufklärung. Zu Literatur und Bewußtseinsgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt aM, Athenäum, 1987). Benthien, C. / A. Fleig / I. Kasten (Hg) Emotionalität. Zur Geschichte der Gefühle (Köln, Böhlau, 2000). Bobsin, J. Von der Werther-Krise zur Lucinde-Liebe. Studien zur Liebessemantik in der deutschen Erzählliteratur 1770–1800 (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1994).
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Böhme, H. / G. Böhme. Das Andere der Vernunft. Zur Entwicklung von Rationalitätsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1985). Boeschenstein, H. Deutsche Gefühlskultur. Studien zu ihrer dichterischen Erscheinung. Bd. 1: Die Grundlagen. 1770–1830 (Bern, Haupt, 1954). Campe, R. Affekt und Ausdruck. Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1990). Cassirer, E. Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Tübingen, Mohr, 1932). Darnton, R. The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France (London, Harper Collins, 1996). Duncan, B. Lovers, Parricides, and Highwaymen: Aspects of Sturm und Drang Drama (Rochester, Camden House, 1999). Frank, G. ‘Georg Büchner’, in Sautermeister, G. / Schmid, U. (Hg) Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur. Bd. 5: Zwischen Restauration und Revolution (München, Hanser, 1998), 579–604. Franke, U. ‘Ein Komplement der Vernunft. Zur Bestimmung des Gefühls im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Craemer-Ruegenberg, I. (Hg) Pathos, Affekt, Gefühl. Philosophische Beiträge (Freiburg, München, Alber, 1981), 131–148. Foucault, M. The Archaeology of Knowledge. (London, Tavistock Publications, 1972). Goethe, J. W. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe, Hg. E. Trunz. (München, DTV, 1996). Hansen, K. P. (Hg.) Empfindsamkeiten (Passau, Rothe, 1990). —— ‘Die Geschichte der Emotionalität. Eine Skizze’, in Psychologie und Geschichte, 1/2 (1989), 37–48. Horkheimer, M. / T. W. Adorno. Dialektik der Aufklärung: philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt aM, Fischer, 1986). Kant, I. Werkausgabe, Hg. W. Weischedel (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1982). Kleinschmidt, E. ‘Sprache und Gefühle. Geschlechterdifferenz und Affekt in der Sprachpoetik des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Arcadia, 29/1 (1994), 1–19. Kittler, F. A. ‘Autorschaft und Liebe’, in Kittler (Hg) Austreibung des Geistes aus den Geisteswissenschaften (Paderborn, Schöningh, 1980), 142–173. —— Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (München, Fink, 1985). Kondylis, P. Die Aufklärung im Rahmen des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus (München, DVT, 1986). Koschorke, A. Körperströme und Schriftverkehr. Mediologie des 18. Jahrhunderts (München, Fink, 1999). Leibniz, G. W. Essai de théodicée sur la bonté de dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (Amsterdam, Troyel, 1710). Lenz, J. M. R. Werke. Dramen, Prosa, Gedichte (München, DTV, 1992). Luserke, M. Die Bändigung der wilden Seele. Literatur und Leidenschaft in der Aufklärung (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1995). Mason, H. T. (ed.) The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1998). Mog, P. Ratio und Gefühlskultur. Studien zu Psychogenese und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1976). Nolting, W. Studien zu einer Geschichte der literarischen Empfindung, Hg. H. Arntzen, Vol. 1: Die Dialektik der Empfindung. Lessings Trauerspiele ‘Miß
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Sara Sampson’ und ‘Emilia Galotti’. Mit einer Einleitung: Gemischte Gefühle. Zur Problematik eines explikativen Verstehens der Empfindung (Stuttgart, Steiner, 1986). —— Studien zu einer Geschichte der literarischen Empfindung, Hg. H. Arntzen, Vol. 2: Die Objektivität der Empfindung. Hölderlin. Mit einer Einleitung zu Kant und Hegel (Stuttgart, Steiner, 1989). Pikulik, L. Leistungsethik contra Gefühlskult. Über das Verhältnis von Bürgerlichkeit und Empfindsamkeit in Deutschland (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984). Riedel, W. ‘Erkennen und Empfinden. Anthropologische Achsendrehung und Wende zur Ästhetik bei Johann Georg Sulzer’, in Schings, H. J. (Hg) Der ganze Mensch. Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1994), 410–39. Saße, G. Liebe und Ehe. Oder: Wie sich die Spontaneität des Herzens zu den Normen der Gesellschaft verhält: Lessings ‘Minna von Barnhelm’ (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1993). Schiller, F. Gedichte/Erzählungen/Übersetzungen. Nach den Ausgaben letzter Hand unter Hinzuziehung der Erstdrucke und Handschriften, Hg. H Koopmann (München, Winkler, 1993). Schlaeger, J. / G. Stedman (eds.) Representations of Emotions (Tübingen, Narr, 1999). Schlaeger, J. (ed.) Representations of Emotional Excess (Tübingen, Narr, 2000). Titzmann, M. ‘“Empfindung” und “Leidenschaft”: Strukturen, Kontexte, Transformationen der Affektivität / Emotionalität in der deutschen Literatur in der 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Hansen (Hg) Empfindsamkeiten (Passau, Rothe, 1990), 137–165. —— ‘F.M. Klingers Romane und die Philosophie der Spätaufklärung’, in Zimmermann, H. (Hg) Der deutsche Roman der Spätaufklärung: Fiktion und Wirklichkeit (Heidelberg, Winter, 1990), 242–84. —— ‘Vom “Sturm und Drang” zur “Klassik”. “Grenzen der Menschheit” und “Das Göttliche” – Lyrik als Schnittpunkt der Diskurse’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 42 (1998), 42–63. Wegmann, N. Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefühls in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1988). Wünsch, M. Der Strukturwandel in der Lyrik Goethes: die systemimmanente Relation der Kategorien ‘Literatur’ und ‘Realität’: Probleme und Lösungen (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1975). —— ‘Die frühe Lyrik Goethes in ihrem literatur- und denkgeschichtlichen Kontext’, Christiana Albertina, 32 (April 1991), 5–14.
NICHOLAS SAUL AND SUSAN TEBBUTT
Gypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures in Modern German Cultural History
What exactly is a counter-culture? Heuristically speaking, it could be a literary or aesthetic movement which opposes the implicit cultural doctrine of another, dominant school (such as Romanticism); a concrete social movement which defies existing social norms (such as the Wandervögel); the literary representation of an alternative culture by writers of the dominant culture (such as Gastarbeiterliteratur); or, finally, a social minority group which presents its own culture in the host culture (such as the Turkish community in Germany). This paper focuses on the part played by the ethnic group still called Gypsies and Zigeuner – the Romany nation – in the tradition of German counterculture, and finds several of the above modalities exemplified in the history of their literary representation. The first part of the paper examines the cultural anthropology and literary image of the Romanies in the epoch around 1800 as emblematic of the role of art and of the Gypsies in early modern German culture.1 The second looks at the great changes which have occurred in the representation of Romanies in the German literature and culture of the twentieth century, especially since the Second World War and the Romany Holocaust. The thesis is that the representation of the Romanies around 1800 consistently followed the agenda of an aesthetic counter1
We define modernity with Silvio Vietta as a cultural macroepoch lasting from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, and characterised by the inner continuity of a small number of basic features across several, superficially distinct stylistic microepochs. The basic features are exhibited in elemental form in Early Romantic culture: the historically new claims to untrammeled autonomy of reason and subject which entail the end of traditional metaphysics and the domination of nature, but also provoke the counter-discourse of experimental-utopian cultural criticism which is modern art. See Vietta, 7–37.
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culture, namely, to serve as utopian foil to the norm, usually, therefore, with critical and emancipatory intent – the goal in this case being the establishment of a true German identity. Around 1800, however, this in itself laudable project involved a one-sided idealisation of Romany culture derived finally from ambiguous Orientalist energies in Edward Said’s sense (see Said, esp. pp. 3–4). Only in the twentieth century was this ultimately colonialist stance overcome. Romanies in modern (and postmodern) German literature are still the locus of counter-cultural utopian emancipatory energies. However, the twentieth-century utopia rests for the first time on a hybrid or dialogical notion of authentically intercultural communication: the post-Orientialist representation of the German Gypsy voice.2
The Romanticised Gypsy around 1800 and the Nineteenth Century Let us begin with a definition of terms. As already indicated, we see the key term counter-culture as implying the notion of utopia. The definition of utopia we prefer is that of Hans-Joachim Mähl, taken from a key essay in Wilhelm Voßkamp’s benchmark collection Utopieforschung (1982). A utopia, says Mähl, is the ‘Entwurf einer hypothetisch möglichen, d. h. unter Setzung bestimmter Axiome denkbaren/vorstellbaren Welt (Gesellschaftsverfassung, Lebensform), entworfen in zeitlicher oder räumlicher Projektion als Gegenbild (Negation) zu den implizit oder explizit kritisierten gesellschaftlichen Mißständen der jeweiligen Zeit’ (Mähl, 274). There is a vast amount of internal variation in the literary utopian genre per se. But all utopias exhibit the characteristic oppositional distance maintained by Mähl’s definition: More’s well-known Utopia (1516) sets its perfect state at a spatial distance from European reality, Louis-Sébastien Mercier sets his L’an 2440 (1786) at a temporal distance. The 2
The terminology derives of course from Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
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Romantics however modify this representative strategy in two typically modernist ways. First, if one considers a typical text like Hardenberg’s Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799), the Romantics attempt in one sense to overcome utopian distance. They historicise, localise and temporalise the utopian image by embedding it (by contrast, say, to Schnabel’s Insel Felsenburg, 1731) in a narrative of contemporary historical development. Thus Hardenberg presents the theocratic Middle Ages in the context of post-Revolutionary chaos as a lost and future ideal of political constitution. Second, however, these utopian designs are ironically reflected and relativised in the texts themselves, revealed modernistically as merely provisional, experimental and provocative in function (something non-specialists perennially overlook when they try to define Romantic politics) (see Malsch and Kurzke). Thus despite the attempt to overcome distance, and to embed the utopia in everyday reality, the Romantics in fact also preserve one fundamental characteristic of the utopian tradition in literature, namely the insight that the realisability of a utopia is not in itself an indicator of its value, which lies elsewhere (only Karl Mannheim would disagree).3 That said, let us begin the argument proper by asserting that Romanticism, in the senses indicated and whether early or late, is fundamentally utopian in orientation. Once plausibly defined by Lothar Pikulik as a generalised ‘Ungenügen an der Normalität’,4 Romanticism is quintessentially modern, both in its consciousness of normal contemporary culture as characterised by the loss of meaning and the fragmentation of human nature, and in its determination to criticise and heal this state of affairs, always by means of experimental-utopian aesthetic constructions such as those just mentioned. It is this utopian orientation, this need to make the fragmentary whole once more, which eventually leads Romanticism to concern itself with the specific problem of cultural selfhood and 3 4
See Mähl, and Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (178). Mannheim argues that only an historically realised utopia qualifies as authentic, the rest qualifying merely as ideologies. Compare Götz Müller’s Gegenwelten. Pikulik, 13–34. Norm, says Pikulik (13–14), means two negative things for the Romantics: the everyday and that which is determined by convention; each examplifies a kind of compulsion.
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otherness. To take Hardenberg again, there are explicit signs of this only towards the end of his career. In Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802) we find the first proper Romantic encounter with utopian Oriental alterity, when the figure of the imperialist Crusader is contrasted with his Muslim prisoner, the Saracen poetess Zulima – with decidedly negative consequences for Germano-Christian selfesteem. But only in later Romanticism is the tendency to seek utopian energies in Oriental alterity fully developed, and we want in this context briefly to examine a novella by Clemens Brentano, Die mehreren Wehmüller und ungarischen Nationalgesichter (1817). This unfolds a full-blown Romantic intercultural utopia involving not just an Oriental figure, but actual Gypsies (whose real provenance, should you not know it, is today’s north-western India). Die mehreren Wehmüller, we shall argue, is emblematic of the German Romantic (and indeed Classical and Enlightenment) fascination with Gypsies, its strengths and limitations. For the Gypsies figure here as the ultimate ideal of human perfection, as ultimate cultural mediators, in short, as the ultimate Bohemian counter-culture of early nineteenth-century philistine Biedermeier. The tale initially foregrounds a philistine artist, Wehmüller, who makes a living painting portraits of officers in the Austrian Imperial army in the epoch of cultural crisis following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. Wehmüller is a bad artist because, despite the nature of his business (the rendition of individual character), he has gone over to Biedermeier mass-production methods, and simply turns up at camp with large numbers of ready-mades based on typified national physiognomies, which he then hastily individualises (hence one part of the title). At one level the tale concerns how this inauthentic artist meets his aesthetic Nemesis. In a variation of the standard comic scheme, Wehmüller en route to his next market becomes separated from his wife, whom he has sent on ahead to tout for business with the troops in Hungary. Unfortunately, there occurs an infestation of plague, and the route to his wife and his source of income is cut off by the cordon sanitaire, so that Wehmüller is trapped on the then border of Austria and Hungary. Worse, he learns inexplicably that a Doppelgänger of himself (hence the other part of the title) has already crossed the border, and will soon be enjoying both his business and
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his wife’s favours. Wehmüller’s perversion of the individualist ethic of Romanticism is thus aptly punished by the loss of his own sense of individuality. The treatment of the border theme is where the interculturality comes in. With other unfortunates, Wehmüller lodges in a run-down border tavern. In a travesty of Boccaccio’s narrative situation in the Decameron, they pass the time until they can cross into the plague-ridden terrain by telling stories within the story, all of which in their turn also thematise the consequences of transgressing borders between nation states. It is important to note that the company in the tavern is a representative selection of pretty much all the member nations of the Habsburg empire and its neighbours: Austrians, Tiroleans, Savoyards, Italians, Croats, Germans, plus a representative of the former enemy, the Frenchman Devillier (not to mention Turks and others in the inset tales). All three inset stories (by a Croatian, a Frenchman and an Italian) reflect thematically and stylistically the nationality and individuality of their storyteller, and so contrast powerfully with Wehmüller’s uniformitarian art. But the greatest contrast is with two others, in fact the chief characters of the tale. For now two symbols of authentic Romantic poetry, both Gypsies, the handsome violinist Michaly and his beautiful sister Mitidika, perform the task of sorting out the mess occasioned by Wehmüller’s inauthentic art and symbolised by his entrapment behind a boundary. They achieve this by a variety of means, usually aesthetic in nature and involving the creation of order or the discrimination of truth from falsehood. For example Michaly, whom the narrator likens to a second Orpheus (Brentano, 160), quells an outbreak of multicultural chaos in the tavern by playing his violin at a strategic moment and imposing Orphic order. Mitidika, for her part, reveals the true identity of Wehmüller’s Doppelgänger and rival in the Biedermeier culture industry, and it is she too, an Amazon on horseback in men’s clothes, who breaks the plague cordon from the other side. Thus she closes the comic circle of the plot, rescues Wehmüller from Amphitryonic cuckolding, and reunites him with Tonerl. She also makes peace between the aesthetic entrepreneurs, and even rediscovers her own lost beloved, the sceptical Frenchman Devillier.
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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 Schiller’s aesthetic state. With forensic acuity Mitidika and Michaly discover hidden truth – the authentic identity of the Doppelgänger 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. Mitidika’s 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 Wehmüller, 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 Brentano’s main source, Grellmann’s study in Enlightenment cultural anthropology Die Zigeuner. Ein historischer Versuch (1783), then we rapidly discover that Gypsies in Brentano’s age were to a far greater 5
See Brentano’s letter to Achim von Arnim, Vienna, early December 1813.
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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. Grellmann’s 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 Grellmann’s book (including Mitidika’s and Michaly’s 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 Brentano’s more sinister patriotic and nationalistic fervour elsewhere. The same applies to their 6
See Brentano’s letter to Wilhelm Grimm, 3 September 1810.
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lithe physicality as a Naturvolk (which Brentano gleefully translates into his particular brand of aestheticised eroticism) and their historical trajectory (the myth of the return to Egypt, which Brentano translates into Romantic Heilsgeschichte). But the key point is this: whilst there does of course exist a traceable relation between the Gypsies of Brentano’s text and the real Gypsies of early nineteenth-century Germany, and whilst Brentano in a sense should not be condemned for portraying an abject ethnic group in a positive light, it should also be clear that Brentano’s Gypsies are in truth not Gypsies at all, not anthropologically adequate representations of an ethnic group for its own sake. Rather, they are rather tamed, fantasy Gypsies, real people whose occasionalistic appropriation into aesthetic discourse follows the precepts of Said’s Orientalism as ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ (Said, 3), rather than those of (for example) Georg Forster’s reflexive sensivity or Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick description’.7 Romantic self-irony is not absent even in this late Romantic utopia. Brentano’s Gypsy counterculture is in truth only fleetingly glimpsed, rather than realised – Mitidika as a Gypsy can never marry a non-Gypsy and have legitimate children – and the comic happy end therefore barely conceals latent tragedy. Nonetheless, to borrow Suzanne Zantop’s term, so far as the Gypsies are concerned, they remain a colonial fantasy which effectively silences the Gypsy voice even as it preaches transcendence, emancipation of mind and body, to the normalised German burghers around 1800. But this criticism is hardly the point. For none of this prevented the Gypsies around 1800 from serving as the perfect symbol of everything a Romantic utopian looked for. So powerful was this symbol of counter-culturality that the Romantic paradigm of the Gypsy as the exotic and glamorous outsider who incorporates both the deficiencies of normative German bourgeois culture and the potential for healing that sickness, dominates not only Brentano’s œuvre, but also that of his Romantic peers, his Classical and Enlightenment colleagues, and in the end, the image of the Gypsy in the literature of the nineteenth century schlechthin. As Nicholas Saul has shown, 7
On Forster, see Agnew.
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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 Wehmüller. Elsewhere, Romanticised Gypsies feature large in the work of Brentano’s sympoetic collaborator Arnim (Isabella von Ägypten of course), in Hoffmann (Kater Murr), Kleist (Michael Kohlhaas) and Eichendorff (Die Entführung). They also feature, often at crucial junctures, in the non-Romantic texts of Goethe (Götz and the Lehrjahre), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orleans) and Wolzogen (Die Zigeuner), as well as in the popular literature of the Enlightenment (Vulpius’s Rinaldo Rinaldini and Kotzebue’s 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.
Counter-Cultures and the Twentieth Century In the eighteenth and nineteenth century the presentation of the Romany universe in normal German culture tended to be restricted to the Orientalist mode. It was an oppositional life-style, a bohemian liberated and liberating space, an escapist aesthetic utopia, which was available to cultivated Germans either in literature or in life. In the 8
For example: Storm’s Immensee or Raabe’s Die Kinder von Finkenrode; not to mention other literatures, from Brontë’s Heathcliffe, to Scott’s Meg Merrilies, Hugo’s Esmeralda, Mérimée’s Carmen and Collins’s Ezra Jennings.
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first part of the twentieth century, however, the emphasis moved to a more politicised awareness of the authentic Romany ethnicity which echoed the accelerated marginalisation, registration and persecution of the ethnic group. After 1945 Adorno signalled the perils of attempting to produce poetry after Auschwitz, and it is equally hard to see how after the extermination of half a million European Romanies the cultural history of the German-speaking world could continue unabashed to present the world of the Gypsies as a utopia. It was not until the 1980s that Romany voices were raised and the dystopian spaces around the Gypsy experience acknowledged. 1997 marked the production of Elfriede Jelinek’s hard-hitting play Stecken, Stab und Stangl, a post-modern representation of the cultural reverberations of xenophobia directed against Romanies. The Romanies then ‘strike back’, write back, paint back, portray dystopia, but go beyond that to reclaim for themselves the relatively utopian world they once inhabited.
Ethnicity and the Search for Utopia in the Early Twentieth Century Among the Expressionist writers and artists at the start of the twentieth century there was an enthusiasm for other cultures, for other peoples, whether they lived in Europe or beyond. Yet this enthusiasm for utopian wholeness, which drew on movements such as the Freikörperkultur or nudist movement, also encompassed an awareness of the foreigner within, the alternative life-style closer to home. Otto Mueller (1874–1930) – who reputedly had Gypsy blood and spent several extended periods with Eastern European Gypsies – created images of their proud independent culture. Yet these paintings and other images of Gypsies produced by the artists of Die Brücke are similar to these artists’ images of naked bathers in Mecklenburg and on the Baltic coast. In other words, the sensual delight in the human
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body appears more important than the Gypsy origins of the artists’ models. Otto Pankok (1893–1966) 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 Düsseldorf, 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 Pankok’s works of resistance, defiant in their eschewing of the Nazi norms of beauty and form, were again on public display. Today they 9
10
The exhibition of some of Pankok’s charcoal drawings, graphic work and sculpture was shown in the Bundeskanzleramt from 22 May to 27 July 1990, and then in the Landesmuseum in Mainz from 14 August to 30 September 1990. In his speech on 18.7.1937 Hitler spoke in Munich of the need for a cultural renaissance. Welch, 29, sees the results as ‘overwhelming cultural mediocrity’.
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form part of the mainstream twentieth-century German cultural heritage.
Post-1945 Acknowledgement of Dystopia After 1945 the Romanies were no longer officially persecuted. But does this mean that they ceased to be part of a counter-cultural group? The fact that some forty years after the end of the war many Gypsies had still not received compensation from the German and Austrian governments was proof enough of the continuity of anti-Gypsyism. In cultural terms Romanies still do not form part of the dominant discourse and are marginalised. At a time when the heyday of socially critical literature in Germany was over, the Austrian writer Erich Hackl began to emerge as the champion of the underdog, the exposer of the iniquities suffered by various minority groups, be they in Europe or South America.11 One of the very first literary works to mark the dystopia of the Gypsies is his Erzählung entitled Abschied von Sidonie (1989) (later made into a successful film by director Karin Brandauer) which has been hailed as iconic and the ‘Anne Frank of the Romany world’. Interwoven with the story of the life of the young Gypsy girl Sidonie Adlersburg, who is adopted by an Austrian family, and later deported to a concentration camp, is the reflective discourse around later governmental and public responses to these events. The key issue is Gadzo (non-Romany) complicity in the crimes. Following in a similar vein, Elfriede Jelinek’s play Stecken, Stab und Stangl (1997) deals in post-modernist style not only with dystopian images of the persecution of the Romanies in the late 1990s but with the discourse generated by the media. The letter-bomb which killed four Romanies in Oberwart in Burgenland (an area in which there have traditionally been large numbers of Gypsies) is the central 11
See Tebbutt ‘Travel and The Trojan Horse’, for an account of Hackl’s cosmopolitan concerns.
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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 Hackl’s and Jelinek’s 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?
The Romany Voice is Heard In autobiographical works of the late 1980s and 1990s writers such as Philomena Franz, Alfred Lessing, Anna Mettbach, Lolo Reinhardt, Otto Rosenberg, Walter Stanowski Winter, and Austrian Romanies Ceija, Karl and Mongo Stojka recorded the dystopian landscape of their people’s immediate past. Written down some fifty years after the end of the war, these autobiographies highlight the counter-culture, the culture of the Romanies, which was targeted for extermination 12
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.
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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 women’s 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 José 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 Übertragung ins Hochdeutsche wäre zu viel von der Ausdruckskraft des Textes verlorengegangen. Zudem drückt diese Sprache die eigentümliche Mischung von Fremdsein und Dazugehören aus, die das Leben dieser schwäbischen 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.
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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 Jelinek’s 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
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own right. This recognition of dystopia and the reaching to reclaim utopia should not be dismissed summarily as a counter-culture, but should be appreciated as an integral part of the multicultural world of Germany and Austria today. Brentano’s one-sided abstract utopia of the Gypsy as a counter-cultural ideal of the German Biedermeier bourgeoisie has been superseded, and not before time, by the concrete utopia of an authentic multi- or interculture in which the Gypsy voice is heard and echoed.
Works Cited Agnew, V. ‘Ethnographic transgressions and confessions in Georg Forster’s Voyage Round the World’, in N. Saul, D. Steuer, F. Möbus (Hg) Schwellen. Germanistische Erkundungen einer Metapher (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1999), 304–315. 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, Böhlau, 1998). Brentano, C. Die mehreren Wehmüller und ungarischen Nationalgesichter, in G. Schaub (Hg), Clemens Brentano. Sämtliche Erzählungen (Munich, Goldmann 1991) 142–188. ——Briefe Bd. 2, Hg F. Seebaβ (Nuremberg, Hans Carl, 1951). Franz, P. Zwischen Liebe und Haß: Ein Zigeunerleben (Freiburg, Basle, Herder, 1992). ——‘Man hat mir die Flügel gestutzt’, in H. Roth (Hg), Verachtet, verstoßen, vernichtet: Kinder- und Jugendjahre unterm Hakenkreuz (Würzburg, Arena, 1995), 70–75. Geertz, C. ‘Thick Description. Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture’, in The Interpetation of Cultures. Selected Essays (London, Fontana 1993) 3–30. Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, (Hg), Sinti und Roma im ehemaligen KZ BergenBelsen am 27. Oktober 1979 (Göttingen, Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, 1980). Grellmann, H. M. G. Historischer Versuch über die Zigeuner betreffend die Lebensart und Verfassung Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volks seit seiner Erscheinung in Europa, und dessen Ursprung. (Göttingen, Diederich, 21787) (Leipzig 11783). Hackl, E. Abschied von Sidonie (Zurich, Diogenes, 1989).
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Hardenberg, Friedrich von (Novalis) Heinrich von Ofterdingen, in Novalis. Schriften, (Hg) P. Kluckhohn, R. Samuel, H. J. Mähl, G. Schulz, 6 vols (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1960–), I, pp. 193–334. Jelinek, E. Stecken, Stab und Stangl, in Spectaculum 63 (Frankfurt aM Suhrkamp, 1997). Kurzke, H. Romantik und Konservatismus. Das ‘politische’ Werk Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Novalis) im Horizont seiner Wirkungsgeschichte (Munich, Fink, 1983). Lessing, A. Mein Leben im Versteck: Wie ein deutscher Sinti den Holocaust überlebte (Düsseldorf, Zebulon, 1993). Möhl, H. J. ‘Der poetische Staat. Utopie und Utopiereflexion bei den Frühromantikern’ in W. Voßkamp (Hg), Utopieforschung, 3 vols (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1982), III, 273–303. Malsch, W. ‘Europa’. Poetische Rede des Novalis. Deutung der Französischen Revolution und Reflexion auf die Poesie in der Geschichte (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1965). Mannheim, K. Ideologie und Utopie. (Frankfurt aM, G. Schulte-Bumke, 1952) (First edition, 1929). Mettbach, A. and Behringer, J. ‘Wer wird die nächste sein?’ Die Leidensgeschichte einer Sintezza, die Auschwitz überlebte (Frankfurt aM, Brandes & Aspel, 1999). Milton, S. The Story of Karl Stojka: A Childhood in Birkenau (Washington DC, Catalogue of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1992). Müller, G. Gegenwelten. Die Utopie in der deutschen Literatur (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann 1989). Pikulik, L. Romantik als Ungenügen an der Normalität. Am Beispiel Tiecks, Hoffmanns, Eichendorffs (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1979). Reinhardt, L. Überwintern: Jugenderinnerungen eines schwäbischen Zigeuners (Gerlingen, Bleicher, 1999). Roland, B. (Hg), Otto Pankok: Kunst im Widerstand (Bonn, Bundeskanzleramt, 1990). Rosenberg, O. Das Brennglas (Frankfurt aM, Eichborn, 1998). Said, E. W. Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1978). Saul, N. ‘Leiche und Humor. Clemens Brentanos Schauspielfragment Zigeunerin und der Patriotismus um 1813’, in Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1998) 111–166. Stojka, Ceija, Wir leben im Verborgenen: Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin (Vienna, Picus, 1988). ——Reisende auf dieser Welt: Aus dem Leben einer Rom-Zigeunerin (Vienna, Picus, 1992). ——Bilder und Texte 1989–1995 (Vienna, 1995). Stojka, Karl, Auf der ganzen Welt zu Hause: Das Leben und Wandern des Zigeuners Karl Stojka (Vienna, Picus, 1994). ——Ein Kind in Birkenau (Vienna, Eigendruck, 1995).
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Stojka, Karl, Gas (Vienna, Eigendruck, 1998), 2nd Edn. Stojka, Mongo, Papierene Kinder: Glück, Zerstörung und Neubeginn einer RomaFamilie in Österreich (Vienna, Molden, 2000). Tebbutt, S. (ed) Sinti and Roma: Gypsies in German-speaking Society and Literature (New York, Oxford, Berghahn, 1998). Vietta, S. Die literarische Moderne. Eine problemgeschichtliche Darstellung der deutschsprachigen Literatur von Hölderlin bis Thomas Bernhard (Stuttgart, Metzler 1992). Welch, D. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda (London, Routledge, 1993). Winter, W. S. WinterZeit: Erinnerungen eines deutschen Sinto, der Auschwitz überlebt hat (Hamburg, Ergebnisse, 1999). Zantop, S. Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, London, Duke University Press 1997).
MAIKE OERGEL
Revolutionaries, Traditionalists, Terrorists? The Burschenschaften and the German Counter-Cultural Tradition
Throughout their history the Burschenschaften have been associated with strong nationalist tendencies. Their public image has always gone hand in glove with the political intentions and positioning of German nationalism, which from the later nineteenth century onwards locates them in the right-wing regions of the political spectrum. From 1870 at the latest, modern German nationalism, reduced from its original complexity to the simple priority of establishing national unity, was a conservative force that aimed at consolidating an externally powerful and internally obedient nation which could challenge its neighbours for international supremacy. The left-wing end of the political spectrum had meanwhile been claimed by the new movements of communism and socialism. However, prior to the appearance of these ideas to restructure a fully industrialised society, modern nationalism was the most left-wing element on the political scene because of its links with ideas promoted by the French Revolution, such as constitutional representative government. The levelling tendencies of nationalism, creating equal citizens of one nation, set it in direct opposition to absolutist dynastic systems. It is in this politically progressive and socially revolutionary context of nationalism that the Burschenschaften originate. This essay investigates the very early stages of Burschenschaft development, from the first ideas about organising a student opposition around 1811 to the extensive clamp-down on and criminalisation of their activities in the wake of Carl Ludwig Sand’s assassination of the writer August von Kotzebue in 1819, in order to assess to what extent and in what respect the Burschenschaften were, if only initially, a progressive counter-cultural force. On the one hand,
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this investigation is a contribution to establishing the origins of modern German nationalism as politically progressive, as a radical opposition aiming at far-reaching social, political, and national reform.1 On the other hand, it asks the question whether such extrainstitutional opposition, elements of which do not shrink from illegality and violence, also represents a modern German political tradition that begins with the Kotzebue assassination, which is after all on record as the first act of modern German terrorism. In other words, the essay asks whether there is a German tradition of opposition that is intrinsically flawed. This approach redefines the perennial debate about the political nature of the early Burschenschaften and, in a more general sense, of German nationalism, which still revolves around the assumption that the German political tradition is profoundly antidemocratic and set against the values of Western rationalism and liberalism,2 by asking how and why solidly democratising tendencies promoting civil rights and social justice occur in close proximity to non-democratic activities which tend towards totalitarian dogmatism. Although as a unique individual act it can only have signal function, the assassination of August von Kotzebue by Burschenschaftler Carl Sand represents these very different tendencies and persuasions: on the one hand, it can be regarded as an act based on the revolutionary desire for political liberation, i.e. the overthrow of the feudal absolutist system and the initiation of national democracy. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that the readiness to execute such a deed results from a totalitarian dogmatism which decrees that it is legitimate and necessary to eliminate those who hold opposing 1
2
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 Régime. 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, 498–501). Researching German Jacobinism, Grab of course is keen to point out democratic tendencies in other German contexts.
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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-
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political approach was in turn forced to face political (and military) facts in 1806, when Napoleon’s highly effective imperial war-machine inflicted its crushing defeat on Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt, which heralded the near-annihilation of Prussia, the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and the founding of the Rheinbund, a confederation of most West German territories, allied to Napoleonic France. Although Napoleon brought no small degree of constitutionalism to the states of the Rheinbund, he came to be seen by nationalists as a foreign oppressor whose sole aim was territorial conquest. A new political-ideological German nationalism mobilised resistance.3 German survival was at stake, and in the heat of the moment no-one seemed to care much whether this was the survival of a feudal or democratic Germany. So for once the princes and the intellectuals stood on the same side to mobilise the people. This is a unique constellation in the revolutionary phase 1789–1820. And it is responsible for the peculiar mix of revolution- and tradition-based approaches to reform, which has been taken as evidence of the immature backwardness of German political thought. It was clear that, if Napoleon could be defeated, the situation would be conducive to lasting political, social and national reform. Feudal absolutism had been weakened by the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, and a nationally inspired resistance would pave the way towards national unity on a constitutional basis, in conjunction with the constitutional converts among the princes. The Prussian government in particular saw no reason to dampen the zeal of the nationalists and worked hand in hand with progressive nationalist intellectuals, hoping the situation would lead to a united Germany under Prussian hegemony. When in 1813 a realistic opportunity to defeat Napoleon occurred, large numbers of young volunteers swelled the ranks of those willing to fight against Napoleon for ‘Befreiung’ and ‘Freiheit’. Many of these young volunteers became the next generation of politically active students (see Steiger, 42–3). 3
Fichte’s 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.
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The history of the Burschenschaften between 1810 and 1820 divides into three distinct phases: a formative phase up to 1815, a phase of growing radicalisation from 1817 onwards, and from 1819 a phase of abolition and prosecution. The formative phase runs parallel to the weakening of Napoleon’s grip on Europe and the resulting unstable and hence open political situation. In 1811 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Karl Friedrich Friesen put together an Ordnung und Einrichtung des deutschen Burschenwesens, a proposal to organise and mobilise students nationally into a political (and military) opposition in line with their own political and ideological aims of bourgeois emancipation and national unity. The Ordnung propagated an active life in the service of Vaterland and the people, based on middle-class efficiency and the Protestant work ethic. They intended to politicise the students in order to facilitate their becoming socially responsible and politically active citizens. (Schröder, ‘Gründung’, 74) Both Jahn and Friesen belonged to the secret Deutscher Bund (the irony of this name in view of its younger anti-nationalist namesake should not go unnoticed), founded to agitate against French occupation and prepare for national liberation (Elm, 18). The origin of this ideological movement in a situation of military occupation and partisan warfare kept the idea of the armed struggle always within its sights, and throws a different light on the ambitions of Jahn’s Turnerbewegung, which always had a paramilitary dimension. The more radical thinkers of the Burschenschaften, such as Karl Follen, intended the Turner to be ‘militärische Kerntruppen der revolutionären Erhebung’ (see Büssem, 62, note 2). Jena, situated in the territory of liberal Grand Duke Carl August of Sachsen-Weimar, became one of the hotbeds of liberation, i.e. liberating the nation from Napoleon and liberating the people from unconstitutional oppression. It was no surprise that the Urburschenschaft was founded here. Jena’s student intake was mainly recruited from middle-class and lower middle-class backgrounds (Kranepuhl, 79, Steiger, 49), i.e. those social classes that were struggling for political participation, which were, or should be, the socially most dynamic and revolutionary section of society. But it was also a class exceedingly dependent on the good will of the (aristocratic) rulers and their bureaucracies, because in the end they would seek jobs not in the independent areas of trade and commerce, but in those feudal
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administrations to secure their material existence. The great majority of Jena students were preparing for some sort of office in the gift of the state. Since the 1790s Jena University had attracted many young up-and-coming academics, among them Fichte, Schiller, Hegel, Schelling, and Schlegel, all of whom launched their academic careers here. This no doubt contributed to the fact that Jena’s academic staff had a higher contingent of radical elements than average: between 1815 and 1819, several professors openly supported the student movement, most prominently among them Heinrich Luden, Lorenz Oken and Jakob Friedrich Fries. Oken and Fries both lost their posts after 1819 and endured lengthy professional bans.4 The Jena Burschenschaft was founded on 12 June 1815, with half of Jena’s student population in attendance. In a ceremonial act the Landsmannschaften dissolved themselves and united as one, symbolising the overcoming of the territorial division of the nation. The Burschenschaft’s constitutional charter focuses on the social and political equality of its members and on the need for national unity to guarantee such equality for everybody (Elm, 22), provided they were German and Christian (and male). The former two qualifications have tended to be used as evidence of the inherently völkisch-nationalist and chauvinist principles of the Burschenschaft movement. Notwithstanding this, the new charter endeavours to emphasise democratic structures: the constitution was read out and voted on, and accepted. They proceeded to democratically elect nine ‘Vorsteher’ and 21 executive committee members (Schröder, ‘Gründung’, 70). They adopted ‘du’ as general address amongst each other to stress their equality, which was already practised by the Turner (Schröder, ‘Gründung’, 76). The Landsmannschaften also used some democratic structures, but were run along more oligarchic lines, priding themselves on their hierarchical set-up. They had a large underclass of trainees who had no rights. While the pat characterisation of Burschenschaften as modern-democratic and the Landsmannschaften as the class-dependent, decadent upholders of the Ancien Régime is too simplistic (see Haaser, 36–7), it is not entirely beside the point. 4
Both, however, resurfaced in the footnotes of political history: Oken became Georg Büchner’s ‘Doktorvater’, and Fries acted as examiner of Karl Marx’s PhD Thesis, which he passed.
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This is vividly illustrated by the vicious conflict played out at Erlangen in 1816, when Carl Sand endeavoured to set up a Burschenschaft at this conservative university with a strong Landsmannschaft tradition (see Heydemann, 52–4). Interestingly much in the Jena Burschenschaft charter is taken verbatim from the constitution of the Vandalia Landsmannschaft. This has been explained as due to time pressure and to the need to achieve a widely acceptable consensus between old and new practices. (Schröder, ‘Gründung’, 75) Herman Haupt, however, traced some general sentiments to the (clearly most congenial) Ordnung by Friesen and Jahn (Haupt, 31). It is also clear that members of the Vandalia were the driving force behind the national reformation of student organisations. Eight of the eleven leading founding members of the new Burschenschaft were veterans of the Lützower Jäger, the famous Free Corps. Although militarily unimportant, they became immortal through counting among them the young poet Theodor Körner, who died in action in 1813 and left behind a collection of songs about freedom and war, which was post humously published as Leier und Schwert and became a breviary among the national freedom fighters. The colours of the Lützow corps, black, red and gold, became the colours of the Burschenschaft, and they went on to become the German tricolour, illustrating the political importance these events have been accorded. The formation of the Burschenschaften is quite rightly regarded as the origin of modern German political parties, as the beginning of organised modern political activism, representing the bourgeois opposition, whose ‘party programme’ was to create a forum for modern constitutional political activity (see Büssem, 57; Steiger, 53). The Jena foundation ceremony in June 1815 occurred at an historically interesting point in time, less than two weeks after the foundation of the Deutscher Bund at the Congress of Vienna and three days before the battle of Waterloo. Both events mark the political crossroads that had been reached: Waterloo establishes the window of opportunity for change, Vienna symbolises the powerful resistance to it. Although Article 13 of the Bundesakte, signed in Vienna, which promised constitutional rule, might have given the Burschenschaftler some hope, the Deutscher Bund was dedicated to safeguard the
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absolutist forms of dynastic and monarchic government, and hardly any constitutions came to be agreed. One unsurprising exception was Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, which received a liberal constitution in June 1816, even guaranteeing the freedom of the press. However, due to increasing pressure from Austria and Prussia, this freedom was curtailed in 1817 and withdrawn in 1819.5 The mix of revolution-based and tradition-based approaches to social reform, or, put more emotively, the proximity, and interdependence, of ‘Deutschtümelei’ and Jacobinism, may at first sight indeed look peculiar. The politically progressive ideas were closely linked with a desire for national unity. The obvious lack of the latter and the widespread view that French models had become increasingly inviable resulted in a search for a distinctive German national tradition of reform. The reformers were looking for a German tradition that supported change, were looking in fact for a precedent for a German revolution. The new historicist outlook, so prevalent among German intellectuals at the time, suggested that social, political and cultural innovations, in order to succeed, needed to be in keeping with tradition and history. The young national democrats saw such a prototype of a German revolution in Luther’s Reformation.6 Fichte had presented the Reformation as the ‘Welttat des deutschen Volkes’ in his Reden an die deutsche Nation, thus endowing it with a worldhistorical significance that defined the Germans’ role in history and in the future.7 From this emerged the idea that what Luther had started, 5
6
7
Article 13 still dominated the discussions in Karlsbad in August 1819, where the Austrians successfully derailed attempts to clarify the positive nature of the ‘Verfassungsversprechen’ by those states which were considering modern representative constituitional systems (Würthemberg) or had already inaugurated constitutions with which they did not want the Bund to interfere (Bayern). The supporters of representative constitutions were a decided minority, and the notion of the separation of powers was rejected. Traditional solutions based on representations of the estates were just about acceptable. (See Büssem, 380–415.) Most of the Jena students, certainly the vast majority of the original members of the Urburschenschaft came from Protestant backgrounds, many studied theology or were parsons’ sons. The ideologues of this student movement, such as Arndt and Jahn, were Protestant, too. Hegel echoed this evaluation fairly precisely in his lectures on the philosophy of history. The link between the Christian and the Germanic, which had established itself as a standard topos in the German self-definition from the
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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 Metternich’s, makes clear: ‘Der einzige Flecken im Gemählde [der Stadt Heidelberg] sind die grotesken und widerlichen Figuren, die in schmutzigen altdeutschen Trachten […] mit Büchern 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 Schlegel’s influential lecture cycles on literary and cultural history. It forms the basis of Hegel’s 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 Büssem, 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 große Schuld auf sich geladen, als diejenigen ihrer Gegner, welche […] aus dem verwesenden Leichnam der Revolution den Peststoff verbrecherischer, das sittliche Leben vergiftender Grundsätze zogen, und ihn einimpften den Seelen der Jugend. Zu der Gedankenverwirrung, in welche der verunglückte Ausgang des Französischen Freithums selbst Männer und Greise versetzt hatte, waren die Bemühungen der Cabinette getreten, Frankreichs politisch-militärischen Despotismus, nach dem Beispiel, welches Spanien gegeben hatte, durch
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the Burschenschaft movement, was also known as ‘das Jakobinernest’ (Heydemann, 73). When the tercentenary of Luther’s revolutionary act at the church door in Wittenberg coincided with the fourth anniversary of the Völkerschlacht in the autumn of 1817, a commemorative event which would also provide a forum for demonstrations and discussions was inevitable. The Jena Burschenschaft set about planning the two-day event of the Wartburgfest, a sort of national student congress. Jahn and Luden were closely involved in the preparations, Fries and Oken attended. It inaugurated the next phase in the development of the Burschenschaften.10 Speakers expressed, and delegates felt, a strong sense of disappointment and disillusionment: political reforms towards a constitutional nation state were being blocked by the forces of Reaction. It seems that this frustration led to the inofficial act for which the Wartburgfest is really (in)famous, and which signals the beginning radicalisation of some parts of the Burschenschaft movement: the burning of books and other symbolic items on the evening of 18 October on the nearby Wartenberg. All the books burnt were recent publications. They either attacked the Burschenschaften and their aims, either for being Teutomanic or criminal enemies of the
10
Erweckung des Selbstgefühls der Völker, durch die Zauberkraft der Worte Unabhängigkeit und Freiheit zu stürzen. […] Die große Masse der unreifen Geister in Deutschland fand sich zeitig genug in denselben Hirngespinsten über allgemeine Freiheit und Glückseligkeit, Verdienstlichkeit und Volksgerechtsame verstrickt, mit welchem des unselige Spiel zwei Jahrzehnte früher 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 Carové 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, 118–21.) The Catholic Josef Görres also sympathised with the aims of the students, which necessitated his flight into exile once the persecutions set in after 1819.
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state, or they vigorously promoted conservative political principles.11 In the eyes of posterity, quite possibly the most damaging book to burn was the Code Napoléon, no doubt committed to the flames because it had been written by the French oppressor. Its burning has been interpreted as an indication of the political immaturity of the students, who, blinded by their Teutomania, could not see the constitutional foundations embedded in these laws. They also threw into the fire what they regarded as symbols of physical and ideological oppression by superpower militarism and authoritarianism, i.e. a Prussian ‘Ulanenschnürleib’, a military ‘Pracht-, Prahl- und Prunkzopf’ and an Austrian ‘Korporalstock’ (Steiger, 115). These insubordinate acts of anarchic destruction gave the conservative rulers throughout the Confederation the occasion to act tough. There can be no doubt that many were worried. A high-ranking French diplomat in Frankfurt compared the Wartburgfest to the ‘French crisis of 1788’ (Steiger, 131), in Berlin it was likened to the storming of the Bastille (Grab, ‘Burschenschaften’, 12). In the aftermath of the conservative backlash to the events at the Wartburgfest, Heinrich Luden advised the Burschenschaften to draw up a document summarising their ideas, which would bring the Burschenschaften into the public arena of political opinion (Schröder, ‘Gründung’, 78) and make them less vulnerable to accusations of being a secret organisation and enemy of the state. The Grundsätze und Beschlüsse des 18. Oktober, put together by Heinrich Hermann Riemann, chairman of the Jena Burschenschaft, and his fellow student Karl Müller, demanded national unity, constitutional monarchy, a unified German code of law, public trials by jury, equality of all citizens in all respects, freedom of speech and the press (Steiger, 153– 56). And they contained the oft-quoted sentence that ‘das Gesetz des Volkes soll der Wille der Fürsten sein’ (Elm, 28). The Grundsätze und Beschlüsse also evince that mix of desiring change built on tradition, which Günter Steiger long ago defined as their crucial weakness: they 11
Among them were Christoph Karl Heinrich von Kamptz’s Kodex der Gendarmerie, a compilation of police laws in force throughout the Confederation, Karl Ludwig von Haller’s conservative-reactionary Restauation der Staatswissenschaft, Saul Ascher’s Teutomania, August von Kotzebue’s conservative Geschichte des deutschen Reiches, and the Code Napoléon. (See Steiger, 111–15.)
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were not rigorously anti-feudal enough. Although they demonstrated progressive criticism of the princes, their authors at the same time hoped for acceptance by and assistance from the feudal regents (Steiger, 156–7). The authors, both veterans of the Lützow Free Corps, clearly still believed in the possibility of an alliance between the nation and the princes, holding on to the belief that had so successfully underpinned the Befreiungskriege. But Luden’s plan, and Riemann’s efforts, did not work out: the committed activists could not count on the support of the majority of the student body. Many students found the Beschlüsse too radical and rejected them. Typical, and correct, was the following assessment by one of their own: ‘Wenn ihr das unterschreibt, so kriegt ihr künftig keine Stellen.’ (Steiger, 157) The Beschlüsse in fact remained secret and were only discovered by the Prussian police in 1821 (Büssem, 56). At this point, the split between a moderate majority, whose political opinions and commitment were vague, and a radical politicised wing became apparent. Internally, the spectrum of the politicised members also stretched from moderate to radical. The most radical political faction of the movement came, not from Jena, but from Gießen: the circle of the Unbedingten, also known as ‘die Schwarzen’, around the brothers August and Karl Follen.12 Karl Follen’s political ideas evince a thorough reception (and admiration) of the ideals of the French Revolution. The Follens’ aim was the founding of a democratic republic of Germany as a unified nation state. For this purpose they drew up Grundzüge für eine künftige deutsche Reichsverfassung in 1817–18: Alle Deutschen sind einander an Rechten vollkommen gleich. […] Alle Macht der Beamten geht aus von des Volkes rechtlicher Allmacht und Alleinmacht, so wie alle Bestimmung für das Ganze. Seine gesetzgebende Gewalt übt das Volk aus durch von ihm selbst gewählte Vertreter. […] Seine richterliche und vollziehende Gewalt übt das Volk aus durch Richter und Beamte, alle den Volksvertretern verantwortlich. (quoted by Steiger, 160)
12
Karl Follen moved to a post as Privatdozent (in law) in Jena in October 1818. (See Büssem, 63.)
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The Follens’ constitution prescribed democratic processes in all decision-making, the separation of powers and an elected head of state. It intended to ensure citizens’ political maturity through the introduction of free general education. (See Steiger, 160–61; Schröder, ‘Politische Ansichten’, 228–9.) Unlike Riemann, Karl Follen reckoned that this sovereignty of the people was unlikely to be achieved through an alliance with the princes, or even by peaceful means. It would require politicising the masses, which would in turn lead to uprisings and the eventual breakdown of the current system. Karl Follen composed a political poem, Großes Lied (1818),13 the most propagandistic parts of which were distributed among peasants and artisans, reaching a circulation of 6000 (see Grab/Friesel, 80). In its entirety, however, the Lied is hardly a mass-propagandistic tool, but a ‘liturgy’ of mystic ecstasy for the conspirators, which was learnt by heart and not committed to print by its author. The Lied conceives of political revolution as a religious crusade that politically completes the spiritual process initiated by the Reformation. In a grand historical panorama it associates the desired national liberation with an ancient Teutonic drive for independence from the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, its political and social aims were clear: the overthrow of the feudal lords and the priesthood. When unrest broke out among the peasants in the Odenwald region in the autumn of 1818, the Schwarzen hoped that this might be the beginning of the revolution. Follen’s Reichsverfassung, and his Großes Lied, display exactly the mix of German tradition and German revolution, producing an amalgam of ancient Germanic traditions from Hermann via medieval ‘Kaiserherrlichkeit’ to Luther, Jacobin civil rights and natural law. Hans Wißkirchen argued that there are two distinct text levels to the Reichsverfassung, which he ascribed to different authors (and which for him explain the mix). Level one is more moderate and focuses on ancient German traditions. This Wißkirchen takes to be the ur-text written by August Follen, which was subsequently annotated and amended by the more radical Karl, who emphasised the Jacobin democratic elements (Wißkirchen, 59). Both the Reichsverfassung and 13
In content it is similar to Büchner’s Hessischer Landbote. Büchner’s collaborator Weidig descends politically from exactly this line of Hessian opposition. (See Steiger, 163.)
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the Lied share an emphasis on religion, in particular on sentiments surrounding and inspired by the Reformation, and on a glorious mythic or medieval German past. Ever since Heinrich Heine, these emphases have been interpreted as passive nostalgia at best, as an indication of an irrational and dangerous German ‘Innerlichkeit’ at worst. For thinkers such as Follen and activists such as Sand, whose Wartburgmanifest and his ‘Bekennerbrief’ display exactly the same mix of revolution and tradition, of religion and politics, it was clearly part of a counter-cultural identity that they pitted against the exploitative and disenfranchising systems run by the aristocracy and their lackeys. The Reformation has a crucial status in this countercultural identity. Not coincidentally, the book burning on the Wartenberg was to be a symbolic imitation of Luther’s burning of the papal bull in 1522. Historicist thinking decreed that only if the revolution were anchored in a German tradition would its realisation be plausible and successful. This connection, however, works on more than one level: as a propagandistic tool – in the way that the imagery and context of the Reformation inform Büchner’s Hessischer Landbote nearly 20 years later14– or as a legitimisation of such ideas which was genuinely believed. The French Revolution and the German Reformation are the constant reference points in the discussion about political change in Germany at this time. The French Revolution, particularly its violent (and regicidal) phase, was by many national(ist) reformers considered to be a failure rather than a model. Riemann wished to make clear that the German Burschenschaftler were no French revolutionaries. And yet the Revolution and Reformation were seen as related. The Reformation was the (more promising) German version of the French Revolution. Exactly such configurations underlie Fichte’s and Hegel’s interpretations of European history. They appear against the background of theological discussions that developed out of Enlightened theories of Protestant theological rationalism (Lutherische Aufklärungstheologie), which interpreted Luther’s battle for the unconditional freedom of the 14
Interestingly, Treitschke considered the Christian-Germanic element in Follen’s writings to be mere camouflage for purely Jacobin ideas, particularly St. Just’s (Wißkirchen, 46). Nor did the religious language or the appeal to an ancient German past suggest to the reactionary-conservative authorities that these people were political traditionalists.
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individual conscience as a battle for the freedom of individual reason. This equation between spiritual and political freedom was turned into a historical relation – one precedes the other – by constitutionally minded (theological) thinkers in the early decades of the nineteenth century and became a commonplace in liberal thinking. It is important to note in this context that this equation is a topos congenial to rationalist interpretations as well as to more Romantic or Pietistic approaches that prioritise a living inner spirit of freedom and justice, as evinced by the post-rationalist generation of Protestant theologians such as Schleiermacher and de Wette. All these interpretations share a focus on the need to complete the Reformation in the name of spiritual and political progress (see Lange, 215–30). Even if this places the German national revolutionaries’ preoccupation with the Reformation in a potentially rationalist and politically-minded context, for observers rooted in Western political traditions the religious dimension of this (political) identity must remain a difficult aspect. Do such metaphysical and spiritual concerns invalidate any political democratic principles, as has been argued by those who take modern German political traditions to be intrinsically non-Western? Does the spiritual always render the political irrational? Does this endeavour to base reform or revolution not only on political, but also on spiritual and historical principles necessarily lead to dogmatic self-aggrandisement? This mix of the political and the spiritual, of basing revolution on tradition, lies at the heart of the ‘problems’ that these ideas have caused later twentieth-century researchers, because they seem to combine a backward- and inward-looking, anti-rationalist stance with progressive political ideas.15 Western historians have found here the origins of German fascism, while GDR historians have praised the hidden antecedents of Marxism. The national(ist) element, trimmed with spiritual and cultural traditions, is dubious in both interpretations. Its presence has led to a devaluation of the democratic and constitutional trends in German thought in Western assessments, in GDR treatments it has been brushed aside as a lamentable error of immaturity. Yet it was integral at the time. In a pre-industrial economic situation only the revolutionary national Volk can occupy 15
See Heither et al., 37–41.
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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, ‘Duldet’s nicht mehr! […] Volk! Ins Gewehr!’ are lines from what is known as the Odenwälder Bauernlied, one of the publicised excerpts of the Großes Lied.16 Pointing out to the disenfranchised the inhuman conditions in which they exist became a time-honoured practise among revolutionaries, from Büchner to Meinhof. One of the first publications of the RAF in 1970 runs: ‘Denen habt ihr’s 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 RAF‘s aim to destroy ‘was das Volk kaputt macht’ (quoted by Backes, 63–4). 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 Stütze darstellt, daß ein solcher Staatszustand, auch wenn er die Volksmasse im Zaume hält, leicht durch den Vernichtungskampf Einzelner gegen Einzelne gestürzt werden kann. (quoted by Wißkirchen 56–7)
16
See Grab/Friesel, 73–4, and Steiger, 162. ‘Nieder mit Thronen, Fronen, Drohnen und Baronen! Sturm!’ is one of the closing lines of the Großes Lied (quoted by Steiger, 160).
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He held that individual acts of terror are necessary to wake up the oppressed and disenfranchised people from its passivity and mobilise them to engage in an (armed) struggle for liberation (see Büssem, 62). A war of annihilation against selected pillars of the system would not only have signal function but also accelerate the system’s breakdown. Follen made plans to set up a revolutionary organisation that would have revolutionary cells nationwide. He hoped to do this through the network of the Burschenschaften at the universities (see Büssem, 62). Agitation among the masses, ‘Basisarbeit’, and individual acts of terrorism are the two methods to bring about the oppressive system’s collapse.17 Compare this to Ulrike Meinhof’s ideas in Konzept Stadtguerilla (April 1971): Wir behaupten, daß die Organisation von bewaffneten Widerstandsgruppen zu diesem Zeitpunkt in der Bundesrepublik […] richtig ist, möglich ist, gerechtfertigt ist. […] Wir sagen nicht, daß die Organisierung illegaler bewaffneter Widerstandsgruppen legale proletarische Organisationen ersetzen könnte und Einzelaktionen Klassenkämpfe [und nicht, daß der bewaffnete Kampf die politische Arbeit im Betrieb und im Stadtteil ersetzen könnte.] Wir behaupten nur, daß die eine die Voraussetzung für den Erfolg und den Fortschritt des anderen ist. (quoted by Backes, 63–4)
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
Büssem suggests that Karl Follen only became interested in terrorism after attempts at inciting popular insurrections failed (see 62–3). 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, 195–6.) Sand was involved in distributing the excerpt ‘Dreißig oder dreiundreißig – gleichviel!’ of Follen’s Lied in the autumn of 1818 in Berlin (Steiger, illustration 46).
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August von Kotzebue to death in the latter’s home in Mannheim on 23 March 1819. After a failed suicide attempt Sand was arrested and tried, and finally, on 20 May 1820, executed. This 14-month span is a phenomenally long gap to intervene between arrest and verdict, especially in a case where there is such a self-evident perpetrator to a crime, who never denied his deed. The drawn-out nature of the case is an indicator of the impact of the deed on the legal and political landscape of the Confederation. It created an entire new system of dealing with ‘enemies of the state’. The assassination caused a stir all over Germany. A few months later (1 July), there was an attempt on the life of the Nassau prime minister Karl Ibell. There were even suggestions that a black list of targets existed (Haaser, 45). It was widely believed that Sand belonged to an extensive underground conspiracy aimed at the absolutist system. While there is no hard evidence that an organised underground group was planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, it is fairly clear that Follen and his inner circle knew of Sand’s plans. Follen is widely regarded as the ‘geistige Vater’ of Sand’s deed. He in fact condoned Sand’s action, and appeared impressed ‘daß da Menschen seien, bereit und entschlossen, durch eigene Aufopferung die Bande, die sich friedlich nicht lösen ließen, mit Gewalt zu sprengen.’ (quoted by Wißkirchen, 56) There was directly supportive contact between Sand and Follen, and Follen’s associates, Karl Christian Sartorius and Adolf Asmis, immediately before the assassination.20 Among other things, Follen and Asmis took into their care letters from Sand which were to be released to the press after the assassination. The Mannheim judge who questioned Sand and different members of the Follen circle afterwards, noticed a similarity in their responses, which, he concluded, suggested that they had discussed what to say beforehand (see Büssem, 143). Sand took great care not to implicate his comrades. He denied acting on behalf of an organisation, probably to protect his friends.21 He even officially 20 21
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 Büssem, 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
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resigned as a member of the Burschenschaft before he left for Mannheim. Part of a group or not, Sand had, in true PietisticProtestant tradition, executed the demands of his conscience. Not surprisingly, he saw his action in the context of completing the Reformation.22 Sand’s premeditated involvement of the media is particularly notable. His pre-prepared statements and proclamations, including the ‘Bekennerbrief’ to be left at the scene of the assassination, were designed to create a counter-account and stimulate public discussion. Uwe Backes has recently pointed out to what extent terrorism relies on the media to amplify the impact of terrorist activities and to what extent media and terrorists are in an almost symbiotic relationship: spectacular attacks make good copy and extensive coverage makes the most of the deed (Backes, 48). The resonance of the Kotzebue assassination in the press was phenomenal. Büssem has pointed out that the choice of Kotzebue as victim, often marvelled at in the past, guaranteed this mass impact (Büssem, 153). Kotzebue was famous and clearly identified with the unaccountable system of the Ancien Régime. His political views were conservative, and his provision of information to the Tsar, which had become public the year before, made him a hate-figure in the eyes of the bourgeois opposition. That many members of the bourgeois public agreed with Sand’s assessment of Kotzebue’s treacherous immorality is borne out in the scenes that attended Sand’s execution, which was conducted amid tight security. Large numbers of sympathisers lined the streets to the scaffold, some in mourning garb, most of them silent, a few expressing their admiration for Sand.23 While there was general condemnation of the murder, there was widespread approval of Sand’s motives among the
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 Brüder auf unserm Lande […]. Brüder, löset die alten Ketten des Papsttums, die Ketten der Herrscherwillkür! Glaube, Lehre und That sollen sich in Eines zusammenthun, und in der christlichen Begeisterung des freien deutschen Bürgers neu aufleben!’ (reprinted in Heydemann, 119–22, here 121–2). After the execution there was a rush onto the scaffold to grab souvenirs and dunk handkerchiefs, scarves, shirt sleeves in Sand’s blood (Heydemann, 102).
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bourgeois intelligensia, among them de Wette, Schleiermacher, Görres, and Lorenz Oken. Even the Prussian minister Freiherr vom Stein saw the reactionary governments as implicated in the murder (see Steiger, 186–9; Büssem, 129–33). The Wartburgfest and the Kotzebue assassination did not start a revolution, they instead radicalised the forces of Reaction. The Karlsbad Decrees, orchestrated by Metternich, were a direct consequence of the assassination. They banned the Burschenschaften as criminal and treasonous, re-enforced strict censorship of the press, introduced strict and unaccountable policing of the universities, and made it possible to prosecute as demagogues the leading figures of the national-democratic movement. A Central Commission – the first confederation-wide institution of any kind – was set up in Mainz to implement and co-ordinate the investigations and prosecutions, and Metternich mobilised his network of secret agents to keep anything suspect under surveillance. While at first sight the assassination might appear as Metternich’s worst nightmare, it was of course his dream, and he duly spoke of the ‘vortrefflicher Sand’ (Grab, 502) who had given him the occasion he needed to clamp down on all national and democratic activities. The measures of the Karlsbad Decrees were hardline, their creation partly illegal.24 They were rushed through the legal channels with the inconsiderate haste of emergency legislation. The Decrees were discussed and prepared at the Karlsbad conference in August 1819, to which Metternich had only invited the ten most powerful members of the Deutscher Bund, whom he considered most reliable. This contravened article 3 of the Bundesakte, which guarantees the same rights to all member states.25 On 20 September 1819 the Bundesversammlung at Frankfurt passed the required laws to enforce 24
25
See Brümmer, 38–42. This was noticed as early as 1844. Johann Ludwig Klüber and Carl Welcker pointed out the ‘Rechtswidrigkeit ihres Zustandekommens’ in Wichtige Urkunden für den Rechtszustand der deutschen Nation, Mannheim, 1844 (see Brümmer, 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 Büssem, 363.)
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the decrees. To ensure a unanimous vote in favour, which was necessary for additions to the Bundesakte, member states which had not been present in Karlsbad were left in no doubt by the superpowers about how to instruct their representatives. The usual debating period of fourteen days was shortened to four and the reservations that were voiced in Frankfurt were only recorded in a secret protocol. The official protocol of the meeting only recorded the unanimous vote.26 The oligarchic-democratic institutions and forces of the Bund declined to exercise their powers, a situation that could raise concerns similar to those raised during the 1970s in the connection with the state’s reaction to terrorism. On 26 Nov 1819, the Jena Burschenschaft officially disbanded, and the bourgeois opposition was silenced for ten, if not twenty years. Anyone versed in the history of the student movement, the APO, and the RAF will no doubt have noticed some parallels. There is a generation conflict.27 An idealistic and dissatisfied younger generation rebels against the values an older generation is holding on to after a prolonged period of political and military turmoil. They suspect that, despite promises to the contrary, reactionary forces are setting up the same old nasty system again. In the case of the Burschenschaften the period of turmoil originates in French Revolution and its political and military consequences, in the case of the 1960s revolutionaries it is the extended period of instability beginning with the outcome of World War I and leading up to their present. The historical situation has effected a moment of unusual liberality, a window of freedom that allows ideas of complete political change to flourish. Students and universities, i.e. the intelligensia, are the breeding-ground for the rebellious, antiestablishment ideas, not the materially seriously disadvantaged classes (or in the case of the Burschenschaften the economically active but politically disenfranchised middle classes). The radical fringe of this rebellious left-wing movement has become convinced that the change 26 27
See Büssem, 417–19, Steiger, 190–91, Brümmer, 39–40. Büssem suggests that there is not (49–50). But the fact that some radical professors are older than their students does not deny the fact that they too may stand against a system that is supported and condoned by a generation whose values are drawn from an earlier period (of monarchical absolutism in this case).
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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)
Such an anti-state attitude of critical negativity applies to the RAF too. The German political tradition is the lack of a continuous political tradition. This includes the absence of a clearly defined tradition of opposition. Instead there is a plurality of different 28
The difference is that most of the political-constitutional demands made by the student activists around 1817 seem to have been validated by the historical process. They have become reality. On the other hand, many of the political ideas of the radical left-wingers of the late 1960s, anti-capitalism and antiimperialism (anti-Americanism) in particular, seem to have become, after 1989–90, invalidated by the historical process. But perhaps it is still too early to judge this.
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approaches to and experiments in how modern society can be organised. It is no coincidence that both the concepts of fascism and communism received clear definition in Germany. Neither is it coincidental that rival enterprises of capitalism and communism could be set up within German borders, and last for 40 years. Equally, there is a democratic-progressive tradition, which runs from the constitutional hopes of the Befreiungskriege via the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–9, and the well-intentioned and ill-fated Weimar Republic, to its fulfilment either in the Arbeiter und Bauernstaat, as GDR historiography argued, or in the West German Grundgesetz, as the other side would have it. Both German states adopted the tricolour of the Lützow Free Corps. On the other hand, there is the tradition of the Obrigkeitsstaat, running from Catholic and feudal dependence, through enlightened absolutism and Prussian militarism, to the authoritarian state of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 1750 and 1950, none of these approaches had been able to establish a lasting presence. This leaves openness as well as insecurity, which allows radical oppositional fringes not just to exist, but to impact to a far greater extent than in a society that has an established political tradition. It is not just a question of a terrorist act, but the effect of this act on the ‘national psyche’. In a situation of shifting or uncertain political structures, anarchic disturbances carry much greater weight. By the same token, the radical fringe feels more justification to suspect existing political structures whole-scale. Political unease expresses itself in radicalism and violence, which, although only practised by a tiny minority, provokes a severe reaction on the part of the state. This in turn helps to foster the notion, or the myth, of political incompetence and unreliability. So is the Kotzebue assassination a typically German act, proof of the Germans’ irrational political immaturity that has remained untouched by Western ideas of rational political culture? In this context it is useful to remember that political violence in the name of (national)-democratic change was no isolated German phenomenon around 1819. Walter Grab gives a concise summary of the activities of national revolutionary emancipation in Europe (and beyond) between 1810 and 1822, and marks a bunching of violent climaxes and signal deeds, planned or executed
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around 1819/20.29 The difference is that in Germany the following 200 years of political fluidity contributed to keeping the connection between social and political progress and violent radicalism alive. Of course, the political unrest of the 1960s had a decided international dimension, too. But nowhere, with perhaps the exception of Italy, was the radical fringe as violent and as committed as in Germany. So the Burschenschaften, at least in their origin, emerge not so much as an example of the undemocratic nature of the German mainstream political tradition, but as an example of a political constellation where some believe that violent radicalism needs to spearhead democratic progress, a belief that gradually solidifying forms of (democratic) government and opposition would in time make unnecessary. In Germany, however, this process of solidification was interrupted too often to succeed.
Works Cited Backes, U. Bleierne Jahre. Baader-Meinhof und danach (Erlangen, Staube, 1991). Brümmer, M. Staat contra Universität. Die Universität Halle-Wittenberg und die Karlsbader Beschlüsse 1819–1848 (Weimar, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolge, 1991). Büssem, E. Die Karlsbader Beschlüsse von 1819. Die endgültige 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 King’s 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’, 24–8.)
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Elm, L. ‘Von der Urburschenschaft bis zur bürgerlichen Revolution’, in Elm, L., Heither, D., Schäfer, G. (Hg) Füxe, Burschen, Alte Herren. Studentische Korporationen vom Wartburgfest bis heute (Köln, Papyrossa Verlag, 1992/93), 16–45. Grab, W. Ein Volk muß seine Freiheit selbst erobern. Zur Geschichte der deutschen Jakobiner (Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1984). —— ‘Die Burschenschaften im Kontext nationalrevolutionärer Emanzipationsbewegungen anderer Länder 1815 bis 1825’, in Dedner, B. (Hg) Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1994), 11–29. Grab, W./Friesel, U. Noch ist Deutschland nicht verloren. Eine historisch-politische Analyse unterdrückter Lyrik von der Französischen Revolution bis zur Reichsgründung (Munich, Hanser, 1970). Haaser, R. ‘“…der Herd des studentischen Fanatismus und Radikalismus.” Die Universität Gießen und das Wartburgfest’, in Dedner, B. (Hg) Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1994), 31–77. Haupt, H. ‘Die Jenaische Burschenschaft von der Zeit ihrer Gründung bis zum Wartburgfeste. Ihre Verfassungsentwicklung und ihre inneren Kämpfe’, in Haupt, (Hg) Quellen und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Burschenschaften und der deutschen Einheitsbewegung, Band 1, 2nd edition (Heidelberg, Winter, 1966), 18–113. Heither, D., Gehler, M., Kurth, A., Schäfer, G. Blut und Paukboden. Eine Geschichte der Burschenschaften (Frankfurt a M, Fischer, 1997). Heydemann, G. Carl Ludwig Sand. Die Tat als Attentat (Hof, Oberfränkische Verlagsanstalt, 1985). Kranepuhl, P. ‘Die rechtsphilosophischen Auffassungen von Jakob Friedrich Fries und ihr Einfluß auf die Burschenschaftsbewegung’, in Asmus, H. (Hg) Studentische Burschenschaften und bürgerliche Umwälzung: Zum 175. Jahrestages des Wartburgfestes (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1992), 80–92. 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 Reformationsjubiläums von 1817’, in Dedner, B. (Hg) Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1994), 215–30. Prignitz, C. Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit: Deutscher Patriotismus 1750–1850 (Wiesbaden, Steiner, 1981). Schröder, W. ‘Die Gründung der Jenaer Burschenschaft, das Wartburgfest und die Turnerbewegung’, in Asmus, H. (Hg) Studentische Burschenschaften und bürgerliche Umwälzung: Zum 175. Jahrestages des Wartburgfestes (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1992), 70–79. —— ‘Politische Ansichten und Aktionen der “Unbedingten” in der Burschenschaft’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, 15, Hft 2 (1966), 223–50.
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Steiger, G. Aufbruch. Urburschenschaft und Wartburgfest (Leipzig/Jena/Berlin, Urania Verlag, 1967). Wißkirchen, H. ‘Karl Follen und die Gießener Schwarzen’, in Elm, L., Heither, D., Schäfer, G. (Hg) Füxe, Burschen, Alte Herren. Studentische Korporationen vom Wartburgfest bis heute (Köln, Papyrossa Verlag, 1992/93), 46–65.
CARL WEBER
Performing Counter-Culture in the Vorstadt: Nestroy’s Theatre in Times of Reaction and Revolt
The actor and playwright Johann Nepomuk Nestroy wrote and performed exclusively for theatres in the ‘Vorstadt,’ the outer boroughs of Vienna, where he attracted, and was hugely admired by, an audience comprised of all classes in the mid-nineteenth century capital. Nevertheless, throughout his career he kept upsetting his public, antagonised his critics, and was the focus of interventions by the censor and the police. Could we identify Nestroy’s theatre – that is, not merely the texts of his plays as they have come down to us but also the inimitable way in which he performed them – as a practice that might be subsumed under the concept of ‘Counter-Culture’? I believe so and, in assessing the counter-cultural potential of Nestroy’s practice as a playwright and performer, I propose as proof several of his texts and Nestroy’s critical reception. The actor Nestroy was the darling of mid-nineteenth century Vienna – and beyond, as his numerous guest appearances in Budapest, Prague and other cities of the Habsburg Empire as well as in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and other German urban centres, clearly demonstrate. When he died, in 1862, the London Times reported ‘that between 40,000 and 50,000 persons were assembled in the streets through which the coffin containing the mortal remains of the Austrian Aristophanes were carried.’ (Yates, Nestroy and the Critics, 1) Vienna’s population had just passed the 500,000 mark; if the Times was correctly informed by its correspondent, nearly one tenth of the capital’s populace paid their respect to the revered actor/playwright, and one Viennese newspaper even claimed that more than 200,000 persons were in attendance (Schübler, 260). The number of roles Nestroy performed is simply astonishing – from 1822 to his death, in 1862, he played 879 leading roles, 70 of them in his own plays.
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Comparably prolific as a writer, he has more than 80 plays credited to him – the imprecision of that number has reasons: several texts have been lost and most of those preserved were adaptations of existing plays or prose texts, consequently Nestroy’s authorship of certain pieces is still in dispute – in this respect he may remind us of Shakespeare. Indeed, critics among his contemporaries – and even more so after the rediscovery and revival of Nestroy’s œuvre in the twentieth century – liked to call him an ‘Austrian Shakespeare’. Nestroy did not fancy himself a ‘classical’ author, he wrote for the day and the commercial theatre he worked in. To that end he used any source that showed promise of box-office potential, while refashioning the source thoroughly to create his own inimitable kind of play. In all the texts he wrote and performed he asserted his opinions about the world as he experienced it, opinions that were changing with the times, of course. There is hardly a play that did not reflect the wretched aspects of Austrian society. Most of all, however, his plays testified to the resilience of those who were victims of that society’s harshness, veiled as it was by the sentimentality and ‘good humour’ the Viennese loved to indulge in. He kept revealing that indulgence as the mask behind which economic greed and sexual aggression were hiding, and exposed their corrupting effect on all human relationships before a public that often turned downright hostile when recognising their own image on Nestroy’s stage. Nonetheless, he retained his immense popularity. Reading Nestroy’s texts, one is struck by his inventive use of gestic language that is moving between Viennese street vernacular, the often belaboured ‘Schriftdeutsch’ used by the educated classes and those pretending to belong to them, and the pompous ‘Hochdeutsch’ that dominated the classical stages, such as the Imperial Burgtheater. His sophisticated wordplay and coining of puns matched Shakespeare’s ingenuity, as the critic Karl Kraus has pointed out, among others. (Kraus, 10) During most of his career Nestroy was forced to employ a kind of ‘ slave language’, mainly derived from the Viennese vernacular, with which he could communicate subversive content in terms understood by an audience from the victimised classes but not necessarily the bureaucrats in the censor’s office. It is a language that is not easily decoded today, since we lack the
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experience of quotidian life in Habsburg Austria and can only guess at the specific subtext that a given word or phrase may have suggested. Nestroy’s audience were citizens of a large metropolitan centre with a multi-ethnic population where at least ten different languages were spoken. Inevitably, their ears must have been finely tuned to the ways language reflected ethnic and social status. In addition, this audience was extremely sophisticated in matters theatrical, certainly no less so than our contemporary audiences are in regard to television, motion pictures and pop music. Consequently, Nestroy could to great effect exploit the genre of literary parody. He labelled 10 of his plays ‘Parodie’, ‘Parodierende Posse’, or ‘Travestie’. Among them were a parody of Flotow’s opera Martha (1848); the ‘Musical-dramatic Parody’ Lohengrin (1859); and a Tannhaeuser labelled: ‘Futuristic Farce with obsolete Music and contemporary Tableaus’ of 1857. Moreover, his plays frequently contained visual details and textual quotes that made fun of the classic German repertoire, opera and the popular melodrama of the time. The mastery with which Nestroy deftly employed and at the same time satirised the prevalent contemporary conventions of drama and opera has not been surpassed by any dramatist since. It should be no surprise that Nestroy offended quite a number of contemporary observers, among them fellow playwrights, journalists and other intellectuals, though there were also critics who greatly admired him. Condemnation of his writings and, especially, his acting ranged from the right to the left of the political spectrum. When reading reviews of his openings, and comments that appeared in memoirs and critical essays, one is often amazed how deeply he aggravated many of his critics. For instance, a reviewer of the Morgenblatt reported, in 1839, that Nestroy’s Die verhängnisvolle Faschingsnacht was a veritable success and, while lauding it for its ‘truthful scenes’ from ‘the life of the people’ and its humour, he went on to complain ‘dass ein solches Talent so von allem Geschmack und von höherer Bildung verlassen ist’ (Yates, Nestroy and his Critics, 13). An especially amusing statement if we recall that Nestroy had read law at Vienna University for several years. When five years later one of his plays flopped, a critic for the same journal lamented: ‘Nestroys Muse ist tief in den
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Schlamm der Gemeinheit versunken; es ist höchste Zeit, dass er sie zu retten versucht, ehe sie darin erstickt’ (Yates, Nestroy and his Critics, 13). Again and again we read accusations such as ‘a dreadful depravity’ launched against his plays and, even more so, against his acting. Frequently they were accompanied by laments about the lost innocence that supposedly graced the Viennese popular comedy of the past, a decline that was blamed on Nestroy’s influence. For instance, the acclaimed German author Friedrich Theodor Vischer declared: ‘Schon 1840 trat mir der Verfall der Volkskomödie unter den Händen Nestroys entgegen.’( Schübler, 231). On the left of the political spectrum, we find Karl Gutzkow, well known dramatist, novelist, critic, and prominent member of the group ‘Young Germany’. He complained, in an account of his 1845 visit to Vienna, that the ‘blasphemous Nestroy’ corrupted the morals of the lower classes with ‘the lewd insinuations and self-irony’ of his plays: Das ist entsetzlich, wie Nestroy, dieser an sich ja höchst talentvolle Darsteller, in seinem Spiel fast noch mehr als in seinen Produktionen dem sittlichen Grundgefühl und der gläubigen Naivetät des Volkes Hohn spricht. Es überlief mich kalt, ein ganzes Volk so wiehern, Weiber lachen, Kinder klatschen zu sehen, wenn [...]. Nestroy, die Achsel zuckend, die Liebesversicherungen einer Frau, die Zärtlichkeit eines Gatten mit einem satanischen ‘O je!’ oder dergleichen begleitet. (Gutzkow, 234–5)
Gutzkow offers the striking example of an intellectual’s arrogant conviction that the ill-mannered masses need to be elevated by the arts to a higher, i.e. bourgeois, morality. These were, of course, times – as W. Edgar Yates has pointed out – when the development of taste and manners in the German states paralleled that of the Victorian morality in England (Yates, Nestroy and his Critics, 14). As for the conservative position, the Viennese critic Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, who frequently found fault with Nestroy, called him the ‘Boz of the popular stage’, writing that, as in Dickens’s novels, ‘ist bei Nestroy alles und jedes ein Individuum; alles ist materiell, alles rohes Fleisch und Blut’. And he chided Nestroy for sharing Dickens’
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Leidenschaft für das Niedrige und Triviale im Leben, in der Gesellschaft, seine Anhaenglichkeit an den [sic] moralischen Trotteln und Kretins in den Spelunken des Volkslebens. (Yates, Nestroy, 5, 7)
Saphir claimed on another occasion: ‘Es fehlt ihm durchaus der Glaube an [die] Existenz einer hoeheren Idee und eines sittlichen Ideals’ (Yates, Nestroy, 7). Friedrich Hebbel, regarded as the leading playwright in mid-nineteenth century Germany, first appears to have admired Nestroy but, in October 1848, he accused the Vorstadt theatres ‘mit ihrem Nestroy’ of fostering anarchy. However, soon after he stated ‘sicher wird ein Kunstverständiger für einen einzigen Nestroyschen Witz de première qualité eine Million gewöhnlicher Jamben hingeben’ (Hebbel, 381). In 1861, he simply called him ‘der Genius der Gemeinheit’. By that time, the success of Nestroy’s Judith and Holofernes, a biting parody of Hebbel’s drama Judith, had by far surpassed the original’s reception. One conservative comment on Nestroy’s acting was voiced by the Burgtheater actor Carl Ludwig Costenoble, a usually unbiased and competent observer of his time, who complained Sein Wesen [...] erinnert immer an diejenige Hefe des Pöbels, die in Revolutionsfällen zum Plündern und Totschlagen bereit ist. Wie komisch Nestroy auch zuweilen wird – er kann das Unheimliche nicht verdrängen, welches den Zuhörer beschleicht. (Costenoble, 335–6)
Remarkably, this was written eleven years before the revolutionary year of 1848! Finally, there were these charges made by Friedrich Theodor Vischer: Nun aber dieser Nestroy: Er verfügt über ein Gebiet von Tönen und Bewegungen, wo für ein richtiges Gefühl der Ekel, das Erbrechen beginnt. Wir wollen nicht die tierische Natur des Menschen, wie sie sich just auf dem letzten Schritte zum sinnlichen Genuss gebärdet, in nackter Blösse vors Auge gerückt sehen, wir wollen es nicht hören, dies kotig gemeine ‘Eh’ und ‘Oh’ des Hohns, wo immer ein edleres Gefühl zu beschmutzen ist, wir wollen sie nicht vernehmen, diese stinkenden Witze, die zu erraten geben, dass das innerste Heiligtum der Menschheit einen Phallus verberge. (Vischer, 351)
Quite a condemnation, one has to admit.
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Reading Nestroy’s plays, it is hard to comprehend why they triggered such an irascible response. On the evidence of the texts that have been preserved, one would hardly expect them to rankle even the most prudish Victorian author to the degree of Vischer’s response. It must have been Nestroy, the performer, who provoked such reactions, as Gutzkow complained. The prolific ad-libbing, the innuendo by vocal inflection and mis-pronouncing of words, the pliable facial expression with its curl of the lip and wink of the eye, and the suggestive gesturing created with his long limbs and tall bony frame, set Nestroy apart from other contemporary performers. One of his friendly critics, August Silberstein, observed: [s]eine merkwürdige unerreichte Gabe: durch eine einzige Mundfalte, ein einziges Augenzucken die ganze geistige ironische Hoehe neben der scheinbar tiefst-dümmsten Rede anzudeuten. (Yates, Nestroy and his Critics, 4)
He was complemented in this highly gestic acting style by Wenzel Scholz, his principal partner during twenty-six of the thirty-one years Nestroy performed on Vienna’s Vorstadt stages. Scholz was short and fat, the perfect foil for the tall and bony Nestroy, who wrote leading parts for both of them into nearly every one of his plays. Theirs was a team comparable to film comics such as Laurel and Hardy, the Danish actors Pat and Patachon, and, in television, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney of The Honeymooners. Nestroy endured a perennial contest with the government’s censorship, abolished only during the months between the March Revolution of 1848 and Vienna’s capitulation to the Imperial army, end of October. Except for that brief period, Nestroy saw his scripts rigorously sanitised by the censors or sent back with a long list of required changes, if they were not entirely banned. He became an expert in self-censoring his texts while retaining lines and stage business that could be made trenchant again by the way they were performed. One censor complained: ‘Nestroy [habe] mit seinen Stücken wesentlich zur Entsittlichung des Wiener Volkes beigetragen’, and that ‘nur zu oft die harmlosesten Worte durch sein Mienen- und Händespiel zur gemeinsten Zote werden’ (Schübler, 134).
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The cunning with which Nestroy would insert subversive connotations into his performance has rarely been paralleled, nor has the way he braved a rigid censorship with his critique of contemporary social and political ills. On several occasions he provoked the intervention of the police and was, even if briefly, incarcerated whereas he frequently had to pay substantial fines for his extemporising. If there was a place in the German states during the nineteenth century where counter-culture was performed, it was the stages Nestroy acted on during thirty-seven years, nearly every night of the theatrical season. To further demonstrate some of Nestroy’s counter-cultural strategies, I will now present samples from plays performed during and after the aborted 1848 revolution as well as in the preceding period, the Vormärz. During the brief censor-less interval of 1848, Nestroy wrote and performed two plays, Die lieben Anverwandten and Freiheit in Krähwinkel. The first one, a very free adaptation based on Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, was a spectacular flop. Premiered two months after the March uprising, the text is brimful of satiric comments on the despised aristocracy and the newly rich bourgeois, like many Nestroy plays of the Vormärz. Probably the audience was put off by scathing remarks about the ludicrous behaviour of those mightily revolutionary burghers who suddenly appeared on the scene while previously having been obedient subjects of the Metternich system. One song commented on the unanticipated enthusiasm for the newly elected allGerman parliament in Frankfurt: Es gibt mancher sein’ Stimm’ und er weiss nicht für was; Gar mancher is als Wähler für Frankfurt ‘nein g’rennt, Der auss’r d’ Frankfurterwürsteln von Frankfurt nix kennt. (Nestroy, Stücke, 25/II, 4)
A deeply offended segment of the audience vociferously demanded Nestroy’s apology. He did not respond himself but sent out the stagemanager to ask for the audience’s ‘pardon’. In Freiheit in Krähwinkel, on the other hand, he stated his ardent belief in the rule of an enlightened and encompassing democracy, while not ignoring the pathetic conduct of self-styled revolutionaries who never dreamed of challenging the authorities before 1848. He
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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 Vienna’s political scene which promptly earned him reproach for maligning the ideals of the city’s liberals. The highlight of his own performance as the liberal journalist Ultra was no doubt Ultra’s 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 Krähwinkel 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 g’schieht ordentlich, seit ich wieder einem rechtschaffenen Menschen gleichseh’ (Nestroy, Stücke, 26/I, 19). Discovering on a good burgher’s door the inscription ‘Heilig sey das Eigentum’ he comments: ‘Wenn diese Worte dem Arbeiter nicht in’s Herz geschrieben wären, was nutzet denn auf allen Türen das Geschmier?’ (Nestroy, 19). Most surprising, and surely exhilarating the audience, must have been the play’s 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 Krähwinkel, synonym for bigotry and self-indulgence, as it was created by August von Kotzebue’s popular comedy of 1802, Die deutschen Kleinstädter. After the revolution’s defeat and the renewal of censorship, Nestroy wrote three plays that to varying degrees reflected on the revolution’s 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, Stücke, 26/II, 8)
Yet, this and similar statements come from the mouth of Nestroy’s role, the tailor Heugeign (literally ‘Hay-fiddle’), an ambitious but
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foolish young man who fantasises about a career in politics. The quoted line, so he tells us, was the answer he gave when in his inebriated sleep he dreamed of being sternly examined by a ghostly apparition whose outfit and pigtailed wig, as Heugeign describes them, clearly indicate that ghost’s reactionary stance. Later Heugeign explains to his prospective father-in-law: (Mit Begeisterung) Sie müssen mich noch wo an die Spitze stellen, sey’s Bewegung oder Clubb, liberal, legitim, conservativ, radical, oligarchisch, anarchisch oder gar kanarchisch, das is mir Alles eins, nur Spitze! (Nestroy, Stücke, 26/II, 10)
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 is’s jetzt kommen, für Wien is’s a Schand, Wir sind noch fad’r als Berlin mit sein Sand und Verstand – Fallt d’Umstaltung so aus, sag’ I, ‘nein, Da hört es auf ein Vergnügen zu seyn.’ (Nestroy, Stücke, 26/II, 17)
The audience expected Nestroy’s songs to express his opinions, and here he clearly refers to the Vienna of the day, less than four months after the Imperial Army had brutally crushed the revolution. His songs were always cleverly constructed and strategically placed, their meaning could either be supported or contradicted by the accompanying music, not to mention the mimetic fashion in which he might deliver them. Heugeign is a simple mind whose ambitions by far exceed his talents, a social type that was the target of Nestroy’s sarcasm in many of his plays. One would assume that his audience was capable of understanding Heugeign’s utterances in their frame of reference and ‘read’ them according to Nestroy’s performative gestus. He created in Heugeign quite a complex character, laughable in his flights of fancy but vulnerable and devoted to his fiancee, Linerl, who is by far the most sympathetic figure in the play, as is often the case with Nestroy’s young female protagonists. Her love for Heugeign does not keep her from criticising his frequent stupidities. Early in the play, she declares that she had joined the ‘Deutsche Frauenverein’, an organisation founded in August of 1848, that pursued a socially progressive and democratic agenda – and the context of her line
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indicates the playwright’s approval. Her father, played by Scholz, is appalled by her declaration; he is the typical Vienna petit bourgeois who constantly fears for his property and yet considers leaving town at the slightest probability of political unrest. At the time, censorship had been re-established, even if in somewhat less restrictive fashion than under Metternich. Quite possibly Nestroy inserted into his text statements that were intended to outwit the censor, placing them in a context where audience members would understand them as articulating a reactionary position, as in Heugeign’s dream, for instance. Furthermore, there always was occasion to manipulate the text in performance according to the way he wanted it to be understood. He also may have tried to convince the authorities of his loyalty, to avoid feasible repercussions that his well known stance during the revolution could have provoked. In November 1849, Höllenangst opened, a farce Nestroy adapted from a contemporary French comedy, moving the plot from seventeenthcentury France to an unspecified German city and changing it thoroughly. It begins with the entry of a political fugitive, a Freiherr von Reichthal who, returning from exile in England, discovers that he had been deceived about the chief minister’s death he was counting on. He now seeks shelter in the house of his niece’s former wet-nurse, who is married to a cobbler (played by Scholz) and has a son Wendelin (played by Nestroy), a former factory worker and then prison guard. The son helped the political prisoner Reichthal to escape, then absented himself from his post and now is in hiding from the police. In the neighbouring building, a local judge, Thurming, has paid a secret visit to his wife, Reichthal’s niece, whom he secretly married, whereas her guardian, Freiherr von Stromberg, tries to make her enter a convent, a step that would let her inherited fortune fall to him. This is melodrama at its most convoluted form and, in Nestroy’s hands, its most hilarious parody. Thurming has to flee from Stromberg’s house abruptly in the wee hours of the night and, while a thunderstorm is raging, he climbs over a roof and through the cobbler Pfrim’s window into the room where Wendelin is asleep, who terrified by thunder and lightning promptly believes he has been visited by the devil. After a sequence of increasingly madcap actions and mishaps, the narrative is brought to an improbable Happy End without the
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slightest pretext of a reasonable conclusion: all the scoundrels are punished and every boy gets his girl. The patently absurd ending clearly signalled that in post-revolutionary Austria there were no Happy Ends when evil ministers would suddenly die and honest successors be appointed. Yet, the play’s conclusion may also have been a kow-tow to the Imperial government, to distract the censor’s attention from lines that might have become quite subversive when performed by Nestroy and Scholz. Audiences as well as the press did not receive the play favourably; they seemed to be puzzled and upset by its often contradictory responses to the moment’s political climate. Nestroy, as the proletarian Wendelin, entered with a song describing what would happen if Nature should rise against all the injustices the Heavens decreed. Each verse deals with a different segment of Nature’s realm in rebellion, i.e. the Minerals, the Flora and Fauna, and ends with a variant of the refrain: Doch das möcht’ ich seh’n, wenn Vernunft thät’ erwachen In diese Drey Reich’, was der Himmel thät’ machen; Wenn s’ so kämen zum Himm’l ihre Rechte begehr’n, Meiner Seel’, ‘s müsst dem Himmel hölln’angst dabey wer’n. (Nestroy, Stücke, 27/II, 7)
Another song of Wendelin/Nestroy seemingly complains that no one believes anything anymore, but concludes all five verses this way: Ich lass’ mir mein Aberglaub’n Durch ka Aufklaerung raub’n, ‘s is jetzt schön überhaupt, Wenn m’r an etwas noch glaubt. (Nestroy, Stücke, 27/II, 17)
It might be read as a call for holding on to the ideals of the recent revolution, yet cleverly disguised as the backward beliefs of a proletarian who is the play’s veritable, if somewhat foolish, hero. At the play’s end, Wendelin and his father appear as pious pilgrims on their way to Rome to be absolved of the pact with the devil Wendelin believes to have concluded – a scene that ridicules religious beliefs in a fashion that would never have escaped the censor’s pencil under Metternich.
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Nestroy’s 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 play’s protagonist. Another one of Nestroy’s 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 theatre’s director, Carl, apparently due to its controversial content, and never performed in Nestroy’s lifetime. But let us go back to the Vormärz, 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 Vormärz. Even though, as Gutzkow wrote in 1845: Metternich und Sedlnitzky lassen zwar kein einziges Shakespearesches Stück aufführen, in welchem ein zweideutiger König oder schlechter Minister vorkommt, aber was man so gewöhnlich in Oesterreich Komödien nennt [...] und viel Nestroy, das lässt man zu. (Gutzkow, 229)
It was obviously Nestroy’s manner of performance that earned him the recurrent condemnations for being a cynic, a promoter of anarchism, a pornographer, and a tasteless panderer to his lower class audience. However, many of the seemingly innocuous Vormärz texts are full of subtle and not so subtle hints that things are not quite well in Biedermeier Vienna. A good example is provided by Das Mädl aus der Vorstadt, oder Ehrlich währt am Längsten, a farce in 3 acts based on a French comédie-vaudeville. Nestroy kept the bare skeleton of his source text but changed all of the characters. Opening in November 1841, it was a success with audiences and also most of the critics. Nestroy wrote for himself the role of the ‘Winkelagent’ Schnoferl (the name means literally Snooper); a ‘Winkelagent’ was a small time hustler and arranger of petty business affairs, a con man as well as gossip monger. Not the idea of a particularly sympathetic
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character, but in Nestroy’s 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 Nestroy’s 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 Vienna’s 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 Vormärz 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: ‘Schaut’s, 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, 265–6) The farce clearly reflects the economic plights which haunted Austria during the Vormärz. 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 vorg’lassen wer’n; Nach 3 Wochen kommt d’Reih an ihn und er darf’s wagn,
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100 In Demut sein Bitt um ein Dienst vorzutragn – Man hört ihn in Gnaden und antwort’t ihm dann: ‘Wir wolln sehn, was sich thun lasst, adieu lieber Mann!’ Der jubelt jetzt froh: ‘I hab mein Glück gmacht heut!’ Na, lass ma ein Jeden sein Freud. (Exit.) (Nestroy, Stücke, 17/II, 12)
By the time Nestroy performed his farce with songs Der Unbedeutende, in 1846, the economic crisis of Austria had become quite severe. Food prices doubled within two years after 1845. In the city of Linz, one third of the population lived below the officially acknowledged poverty limit. The capital Vienna was flooded with starving people from Bohemia and other provinces that had been devastated by the economic crisis (Macartney, 313). Der Unbedeutende responded to that crisis. For himself, Nestroy wrote the part of the carpenter Peter Span, the ‘insignificant man’ of the title, whose sister had been disgraced by Puffmann (played by Scholz), corrupt secretary of the millionaire Herr von Massengold, a dumb and lecherous man who has no opinions but those his cherished secretary and his dishonest friends are suggesting to him. Span eventually succeeds in establishing the innocence of his sister who had been maligned for sexual and moral depravity, due to one of Puffmann’s devious schemes. Span is one of the most sympathetic but nevertheless funny characters Nestroy created for himself. When Puffmann tries to bribe Span, so that the latter will retract his justified charges against Puffmann, the carpenter replies: Sie wollen mir Ihren Reichtum produzieren? das is ja eine ganz verfehlte Spekulation, wenn man die Nachsicht des gereizten Armenbraucht, sollte man ihn am wenigsten erinnern an die angeborne Feindschaft zwischen Arm und Reich. (Nestroy, Stücke, 23/II, 23)
Span’s class-conscious argument makes us think of the final lines in Brecht’s comedy Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, when Matti remarks about the irreconcilable difference of rich and poor that ‘sich das Wasser mit dem Öl nicht mischt’. Span’s statement of 1846 certainly is harsher than Matti’s, written nearly a hundred years later. Franz Mautner noted:
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Zwei Jahre vor der Revolution musste neben den künstlerischen Werten auch diese Haltung Beifall finden; dass Nestroy bei der Premiere fünfunddreissigmal hervorgerufen wurde, hatte er gewiss nicht nur ihnen oder seinem Spiel zu verdanken. (Mautner, 272)
Nestroy’s portrayal of Span made the play a hit with his Vorstadt audience, many of whom were of Span’s 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 Nestroy’s 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 Grundsätzen 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
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Zeit der Zoepfe’, the time of pigtails that were in fashion during the eighteenth century. Reichmann’s study offers, however, much valuable sociological information, in particular her analysis of the distribution of parts in Nestroy’s 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 gentleman’s men, not to mention the many who appear as extras in crowd scenes (Reichmann, 193–9). 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 Privatmänner’, 5 ‘Rentiers’, 4 ‘Spekulanten’, 3 ‘Millionäre’. 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 father’s financial troubles. There are 33 widows with one or more children, equally bent on finding them well-to-do matches. Compared to 105 of
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such single parents who tend to treat their children as commodities, we find only 31 ‘complete’ families, i.e. couples with one or more children (Reichmann, 206–7). They are usually of lower class and show genuine concern for the well-being of their children. Nestroy especially took aim at the legal guardians of wealthy orphans who conspire to get control of their ward’s fortune. There is no comparable body of work in German drama where the commodification of the most intimate human relationships is so consistently criticised and derided. As an actor and author Nestroy never ceased to subvert the prevailing values and mores of Imperial Austria while he kept ridiculing the follies and pretensions of contemporary literature, drama and opera. In a truly comprehensive meaning of the term, Nestroy was performing ‘Counter-Culture’ in the Vorstadt. He had no counterpart in the German culture of his time.
Works Cited Costenoble, C.L. Aus dem Burgtheater. 1818–1837. Tagebuchblätter. Hg. K. Glossy, J.Zeidler (Wien, Konegen, 1889), Band 2. Gutzkow, K. ‘Wiener Eindrücke’, in Gutzkow, Gesammelte Werke Auswahl in zwölf Teilen (Berlin, Deutsches Verlaghaus Bong & Co.), Band 11, 223–260. Hebbel, F. ‘Das Versprechen hinterm Heerd’ im Burgtheater.’ In Hebbel, Gesammelte Werke in 3 Baenden ( Berlin, Karl Voegels Verlag. 1928.) Band 3, 340–348. Kraus, K. ‘Nestroy und die Nachwelt. Zum 50.Todestage’, in Die Fackel (Wien, 13. Mai 1912), 349/50, 1–23. Macartney, C.A. The Habsburg Empire 1790–1918 (New York, Macmillan, 1969). Mautner, F. H. Nestroy (Heidelberg, Stiehm Verlag, 1974). Nestroy, J. Stücke, in Sämtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, Hg. J. Hein, J. Hüttner, W. Obermaier, W.E.Yates (Wien, München, Jugend und Volk, Deuticke, 1977–). Reichmann, E. Konservative Inhalte in den Theaterstücken Johann Nestroys (Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 1995). Schübler, W. Nestroy. Eine Biographie in 30 Szenen (Salzburg, Residenz Verlag, 2001) Vischer, F.T. ‘Eine Reise.’ in Kritische Gänge, Hg. R.Vischer (Leipzig, Verlag der Weißen Bücher, 1914) Band 1, 309–450.
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Yates, W. E. Nestroy. Satire and Parody in Viennese Popular Comedy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972). –––– Nestroy and the Critics (Columbia, S.C., Camden House, 1994).
MALCOLM HUMBLE
Das Reich der Erfü llung : A Theme in Wilhelmine Counter-Culture
Satirical treatments of a society at a distinctive phase in its history can have the (sometimes unintended) effect of blinding the reader, especially in a later age, to the forces within it which ran counter to the image it had of itself and the image which appears in the work of its critics. Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan (1918, serial publication having been halted in 1914 in order to forestall censorship) seems in retrospect to encapsulate those features which now appear most repellent about the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II: militarism, authoritarianism, rigid conformity, greed and hypocrisy. Surviving photographs and film images, in which overdressed and self-satisfied aristocrats and bourgeois strut the pavements, bow to and salute one another and either ignore or despise the lower orders, can all too often confirm this picture. Although Heinrich Mann’s principal satirical device, the parallel he successfully establishes between his anti-hero Diedrich Hessling and the Kaiser, is devastatingly effective, he can offer little positive alternative which might provide his readers with a strategy for future change, as Social Democracy, as represented by the worker Napoleon Fischer, is shown to be complicit with the machinations of Hessling and his fellow Honoratioren. Moreover, the only challenge delivered to these is the melancholy and nostalgic appeal to the democratic principles of the abortive 1848 revolution made via the Bucks, father and son, who are eloquent in words but ineffective in deeds. It is generally agreed that the ending, in which Hessling’s speech in praise of the system on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument to his sovereign is drowned by a thunder-storm, implies its apocalyptic destruction. Within the terms of the novel, in which survival is guaranteed only by the policy of ‘wer treten wollte, mußte sich treten lassen’ or by a withdrawal into the passive aestheticism of Buck junior, there seems no room for a counter-culture representing a
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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 ‘Gründerzeit’), 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 Bundesfürsten, 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 Bildungsbürgertum 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 man’s 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
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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 Hauptmann’s 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 scheußlicher hinzustellen wie es schon ist, dann versündigt sie sich damit am deutschen Volke. Die Pflege der Ideale ist zugleich die größte Kulturarbeit, und wenn wir hierin den anderen Völkern ein Muster sein und bleiben wollen, so muß das ganze Volk daran mitarbeiten, und soll die Kultur ihre Aufgabe erfüllen, dann muß 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
The sculptures of the Siegesallee, since removed after damage at the end of World War II, were considered even at the beginning of the century to be an anachronistic approach to the commemoration of Germany’s past, and were consequently satirised in a spate of cartoons. In attacking what he defined as the art of the gutter, Wilhelm was pointing to a deep division within contemporary German culture and within the Bildungsbürgertum which sustained it. For him Naturalism, in its concern with urban squalor and its attachment to the principle of radical mimesis, was not only ugly but politically subversive. It was in his eyes the artistic expression of Social Democracy and thus hostile to the system embodied in himself. It would be easy to take the Kaiser at his word and view the conflict between culture and counter-culture as one between official art and a narrowly defined Naturalism. However, one is then left with the problem of placing in relation to this opposition the vast amount of art and literature which cannot be subsumed under these headings. Decadence, Impressionism, Jugendstil, the increasingly monumental art which has been defined as Stilkunst, all clearly the work of the 1
Quoted in Akademie der Künste Berlin, Berlin um 1900, 199–200.
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Bildungsbürgertum, cannot in the majority of cases be assigned to either of these extremes. In search of the counter-culture which existed during the Second Reich, we have to look more closely at conventional definitions of Naturalism, and then take into account the development within the Bildungsbürgertum of an alternative culture which is inspired by monism and Lebensreform. Because the generally accepted view of Naturalism has proved so useful in explaining what is innovative in those texts which have survived – the early prose works of Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf, Gerhart Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang and Die Weber – it is not surprising that it should have remained unquestioned. Early Naturalist theory accords with the characteristic features of Naturalist production, as well as with the influence of scientific positivism, Zola and Ibsen. Because earlier in the nineteenth century Heine and the writers of Jungdeutschland had turned against what they called the ‘Kunstperiode’ in the name of political emancipation, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the early Naturalists were politically motivated in rejecting poetic realism, the aestheticism of Paul Heyse and the bombast of Gründerzeit art. However, the relations of some Naturalists to Social Democracy were complex and increasingly strained, and the authors normally identified with a narrowly defined Naturalism soon broke away from it. The career of Gerhart Hauptmann provides ample evidence that this Naturalism represented merely one of a series of options, none of which was in the service of a political cause. If we adopt a broader definition of Naturalism, however, which would associate it with Darwinism and monism, we can view it as a paradigm which allows us to situate central aspects of other major artistic and cultural trends of the time, including Jugendstil and Stilkunst.2 It can be shown that the narrow definition of Naturalism, epitomised by Arno Holz’s Die Kunst. Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze, cannot account for either Gerhart Hauptmann’s development or the contribution of the group of writers who settled in the Berlin suburb Friedrichshagen, who included Bruno Wille, Wilhelm Bölsche, Heinrich and Julius Hart. Their view of a 2
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.
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scientifically based literature, which draws on Darwin and his principal German disciple Ernst Haeckel, leads to a revision of the positivist concept of Naturalism. Haeckel’s reputation in the first decade of the twentieth century was considerable; indeed, it spread further than that that of Nietzsche, who, while his reception by key figures in literature and art is well known, did not reach far beyond an elite. Haeckel on the other hand was a best-seller from well before the turn of the century, and his photograph decorates the living-room of Vockerat’s house in Friedrichshagen in the first act of Hauptmann’s Einsame Menschen. His popularity peaked in 1904 with a special Haeckel number of the magazine Jugend (February 16) and his proclamation as anti-pope at an International Conference of Freethinkers in Rome. Haeckel and his disciple Bölsche espoused Goethe’s organic view of nature and saw in him a predecessor of Darwin. Although Haeckel, as a ‘pure’ scientist, emphasised the element of conflict and struggle in evolution, even he was ready to postulate a spirit (Geist) in natural phenomena in order to distance himself from the mechanical materialism of his scientist predecessors (Ludwig Büchner and Jacob Moleschott) and place his own view in close relation to a longer German tradition, represented not only by Goethe, whom he quotes extensively, but also by Schelling and Gustav Theodor Fechner. Bölsche was to write a long essay on the last of these, which begins by pointing out that his birth almost coincided with the death of Novalis (Hinter der Weltstadt, 1904), while Bruno Wille was to include a ‘Gespräch mit Haeckel’ in his Offenbarungen des Wacholderbaums of 1901. As Haeckel put it in an essay of 1892, which appeared in Freie Bühne, the periodical most closely associated with literary Naturalism: Unzweideutig drücken wir damit unsere Überzeugung aus, daß ‘ein Geist in allen Dingen’ lebt, und daß die ganze erkennbare Welt nach einem gemeinsamen Grundgesetze besteht und sich entwickelt. Insbesondere betonen wir dabei die grundsätzliche Einheit der anorganischen und organischen Natur.3
There could be no more succinct summary of the monist Weltanschauung. Wilhelm Bölsche took the acclimatisation and popularisation of Darwin a stage further by reducing the element of 3
Freie Bühne 3 (1892), 1157 (quoted in Kafitz, 17).
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struggle in his exposition of evolution and reinforcing the aesthetic element already present in Haeckel’s presentation of the biosphere in his richly illustrated Kunstformen der Natur (1899). Bölsche also managed to combine idealism, suggested by the optimistic teleology he sees present in the manifold processes of adaptation, with a pansexualism which finds expression in the title of his most popular work, Das Liebesleben in der Natur, which appeared in three volumes, published by the Eugen Diederichs Verlag from 1898 to 1902. The brothers Hart, remembered now, if at all, as theoreticians reacting in a militant spirit against an art they despised (Kritische Waffengänge), base their Naturalism on a monism which is indistinguishable from that of Haeckel, Bölsche and Wille. In the first part of Julius Hart’s Der neue Gott (1899), contemplation, rather than analysis, ensures that the divisions which normally characterise our view of nature are resolved: ‘Natur und Geist fließen ineinander und werden zu einem Einzigen, unser Ich breitet sich aus als das All der Dinge und das All der Dinge mündet in unserem Ich.’4 In Julius Hart’s poem ‘Nebeltag in Berlin’, in which this Weltanschauung is expressed in literary form, the metaphor of the isles of the blessed is introduced at two points to define the goal of man’s evolution: [...] Es treibt der Menschheit Schiff Nach tausend Wettern doch zu jenem Hafen Der Seligen Inseln, wo die Stürme schlafen [...] Euch Kommenden vorauf fliegt unser Geist, Ein Feuer in der Nacht; der euch die Pfade Zum grünen Wunderland der Seligen weist, Zum blühenden Land der Liebe und der Gnade [...]
and the poem ends with a vision of the ‘Himmelsstadt’ (quoted in Kafitz, 20). These religious connotations indicate an attempt to endow a modified Social Darwinism with some of the attributes of the Christianity which all these Naturalists considered superseded. The isles of the blessed is merely one of many metaphors – Arcadia, Elysium, New Jerusalem, Eden, Golden Age, Hesperides, 4
Julius Hart, 187, 220, 231–2, 262–4 (quoted in Kafitz, 20).
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Shangri-La, Atlantis – for an ideal future state or utopia, in this life or the next, which through the ages have inspired people to overcome (at least in spirit) the deficiencies of their present lot. Their appearance in German literature, especially in Romanticism and its long aftermath, testifies to the strong utopian strain in German culture. In the art and literature of the turn of the nineteenth century they become particularly prominent, as groups within the Bildungsbürgertum react against the increasingly over-rational and bureaucratic tendencies of a society which is transforming itself into a major industrial power at the cutting edge of scientific and technological progress. The isles of the blessed appear in a section of Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, in Julius Hart’s epic cycle Der Triumph des Lebens, in Holz’s Die Blechschmiede, Bölsche’s Das Liebesleben in der Natur, and finally in clear reaction against what had become a modish trend in a poem by Gottfried Benn (‘Gefilde der Unseligen’). Those who espoused a monist Weltanschauung were unwilling to postpone the fulfilment of their dreams until after death or in the distant future, and so they were faced with the question how their ideal might be realised here and now. Aware that neither state action nor political revolution would effect the necessary radical transformation of society, they saw the key to the future in the creation of communities close to nature detached from the society they despised, for only in such a ‘Nischengesellschaft’ would the life-style reform they envisaged be practicable. The Lebensreform movement of this time is a complex phenomenon covering a number of separate groups with specific aims – nature therapy, the creation of rural settlements, vegetarianism, nudism (‘naturism’), informal clothing, free dance – which have in common the achievement of a more natural way of life. These aims continue to be fostered by similar groups to the present day, but while the element of protest against the deficiencies of advanced industrial society is a constant thread through all such efforts, whatever their time and place, only in Germany in the Second Reich and to some extent in the Weimar Republic can Lebensreform be defined as a cultural revolt, pursued with an intensity which eventually finds expression in the youth movement, new educational institutions and even new forms of religion and racist ideology. ‘Lebensreform’ seeks a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism; it is Janus-faced: on
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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 movement’s 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, Bölsche 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 Bruno’s death on its three hundredth aniversary in the Beethoven-Saal in Köthener Straße 32, Berlin. The programme gives an idea of the loyalty of the organisers to traditional cultural ideals of the Bildungsbürgertum: Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont, played by the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, conducted by Carl Zimmer, was followed by Julius Hart’s Prolog (spoken by the actress Louise Dumont), a Festrede given by Dr Hermann Brunnhofer, a recital of Bruno’s poems by Max Laurence, the whole procedings being rounded off by a performance of Wagner’s ‘Eintritt der Götter in Walhall’ (see Kauffeldt/Kepl-Kaufmann, 351.) The Bund was the brain-child of Wille and Bölsche. 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 Bund’s meeting-place: Der kleine Saal war mit tiefsinnigen Ideenbildern von Fidus ausgestattet. Zwischen Lorbeerbüschen stand auf einem altarähnlich drapierten Tische das mächtig wirkende Giordano-Bruno-Bild von Fidus. Davor lagen blühende Fliederzweige. Dahinter auf ragendem Sockel Brunos Büste, flankiert von den Büsten Goethes und Spinozas. Am Rednerpulte das Goethebild von Fidus.
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Links an der Wand Haeckels Porträt. Wagners Vorspiel zu Parzival und ein Satz von Beethoven gelangten zum Vortrag auf dem Harmonium durch Herrn Carl Spohr [...]5
It would be fair to call the Neue Gemeinschaft and the Bruno-Bund sister organisations, but the Harts (who were founding members of the Bund) wished to go further than Wille and Bölsche beyond the propagation of a Weltanschauung to the practical realisation of their ideas. While the activities of the Bund were confined to a series of lectures and commemorations, the ‘Neue Gemeinschaft’ proceeded to establish an experiment in communal living which, while it proved to be unviable in the long run, did draw into the circle a number of figures whose later careers as writers and intellectuals have given them more lasting fame than the Friedrichshagener have enjoyed. Peter Hille, Else Lasker-Schüler, Erich Mühsam and Gustav Landauer have all left testimonies of their involvement, which are of interest largely for their exposure of the group’s deficiencies, but which also throw light on the appeal of such experiments to those seeking alternatives to the dominant culture. The ‘Neue Gemeinschaft’ began with meetings and Feste at various venues in the centre of Berlin before finding a headquarters in February 1901 at Uhlandstraße 144. Eventually it was able in March 1902 to establish a proper home in a villa in the suburbs near the Schlachtensee (Seestraße 35/37), which was decorated in a manner which reflected the ideology which underlay the group’s aims. An account of the interior survives in one of the group’s publications: Von der Veranda aus, die zu ruhigem, beschaulichen Denken enlädt, tritt man ein. Rechts grüßt von einem Postament herab die bekannte Nietzsche-Büste, während zur rechten Seite der Blick auf eine Kopie von Böcklins Toteninsel fällt, die eine ganze Wandfläche bedeckt [...] Außer den beiden Brüdern Hart, den geistigen Führern der Neuen Gemeinschaft, hausen dort noch Familien und Einzelwesen. Männer mit langem Haupt- und Barthaar und zarte Frauen in Reformkleidern. Zu dem oberen Stockwerk führt eine sanft aufsteigende Ebene – keine Treppe. Auf einer Biegung steht das Rednerpult, von wo aus die neuen Wahrheiten verkündet werden.6 5 6
Materie nie ohne Geist. Vortrag im Giordano Bruno-Bund zu Berlin (Berlin 1901), 3, quoted in Berlin um 1900, 377. Heinrich und Julius Hart (ed.), Neue Gemeinschaft (1902), Nr. 7, 6 (quoted in Sigrid Bauschinger, 63).
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Two flags, violet and green, representing positivism and metaphysics, flew over the building, while the rooms were decorated with Taoist epigrams, together with pictures and busts by Böcklin and Fidus. The publications had a logo combining the infinity symbol for the new Weltanschauung and the triangle as a sign of the unity of thinker, thought and thinking power. Communal life in the villa did not go beyond certain limits; members had their private space, in which their property remained theirs. A common kitty provided for basic expenses and shared meals. The demise of the group can be explained partly by its dependence on a basic subscription and voluntary contributions and by the reluctance of many of its members to engage in the physical labour necessary if it was to be self-supporting. As a report in the SPD organ Vorwärts pointed out: ‘Die Gartenarbeiten werden mehr zur Erholung von geistiger Tätigkeit, nicht zu wirtschaftlichen Zwecken, betrieben: wie denn die Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft überhaupt nicht die Absicht haben, Bauern zu werden oder zu einem Rousseauschen Naturzustande zurückzukehren’ (quoted in Linse, 80). However, discussions in the group led to the formation of the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft in 1902, and the archetypal Bohemian poet Peter Hille was able to find refuge and care there from an unsettled hand-tomouth existence before his death in 1904. Further activities included excursions to the rural environs of Berlin, one of which, held on 6 June 1900 and commemorated in a photograph, drew from Landauer the following comment: Mittwoch nach Pfingsten schließlich fand ein Ausflug der Hartgemeinschaft, etwa 70 Personen nahmen teil, nach Friedrichshagen statt. Ein schöner Moment voll religiöser Stimmung war es, als wir uns an einer schönen Stelle am Seeufer gelagert hatten; ein wundervolles Mondlicht auf dem See und den Kiefern, Gewitterwolken am Himmel und fernes Donnern, während eine Prologdichtung Heinrich Harts [Zur Weihe] vorgetragen wurde, der ein längerer ernster und aus der Tiefe schöpfender Vortrag Julius Harts [Der neue Mensch] folgte. Leben Leben! klang aus diesen Worten der beiden Brüder, und die Natur rief uns dasselbe zu.7
7
Letter of June 8 1900 from Landauer to Hedwig Lachmann, quoted in Linse, 67.
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Perhaps the most significant indication of the way in which the members of the ‘Neue Gemeinschaft’ attempted to live according to a secular Weltanschauung while preserving a religious element, is the series of Feste organised under new names to correspond to the cycle of the Christian year. These included, after a number of Weihefeste and Liebesmahle, a Fest des Todes and a Tao-Fest, and in 1903 a whole series beginning with Neue Dionysien on the night of February 21/22 (a fancy dress ball), followed by a Fest der Versöhnungen on Easter Monday, a Fest der Seligen on Ascension Day, a Fest der Unendlichkeit planned to take place at an astronomical observatory, another Fest des Todes on Buß- und Bettag and a Fest der Selbsterlösungen on Christmas Day. The purpose of these feasts is outlined in the publicity material for the ‘Neue Gemeinschaft’: ‘Sie [die Feste] wollen dem modernen Menschen ein Ersatz sein für die alten religiösen Feiern, die mit dem Verfall der alten Religionen und Kulturen für ihn Inhalt und Bedeutung verloren haben.’8 They represent a development of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which, with its roots in Wagner, was a major preoccupation of many artistic circles at this time: wollen wir jeder Feier das Gepräge eines in sich abgeschlossenen, organisch zusammenhängenden Kunstwerkes aufdrücken, in dem alle einzelnen Teile – Rede und Musik, Gemälde, Plastik, Dekoration und Schmuck – in inneren wesentlichen Beziehungen zu einander stehen. 9
The publications of the Neue Gemeinschaft also include two programmatic collections of essays under the series title Das Reich der Erfüllung. Flugschriften einer neuen Weltanschauung, the first consisting of proclamations by the Harts and the second of further speeches by the Harts, followed by contributions by Landauer (‘Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft’) and Felix Hollaender (‘Von festlicher Lebensführung’). A newsletter also appeared in two stages, from October to December 1900 and from December to November 1901–2. The manifestoes of the Harts can be read as sermons or occasionally even as parts of a liturgy. 8 9
From a promotion leaflet quoted in Linse, 72. Die Neue Gemeinschaft. Unsere Feste, quoted in Linse, 73.
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In defining the Reich der Erfüllung 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 Höppener) 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
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Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft, which had been the brain-child of members of the Neue Gemeinschaft. Founded in 1908, it became a centre not only of cottage industries modelled on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the garden city movement in Britain, but also of artistic developments, represented especially by the work for the theatre of the designer Edmond Appia and the choreographer Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (both Swiss), which made a significant contribution to international modernism. In 1898 the furniture manufacturer Karl Schmidt, inspired by William Morris, had founded the Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst; in 1906 he decided to move his works a few miles from the city and build a settlement which would differ from earlier factory villages in being controlled, not by the employer, but by an independent company in which the residents would be represented. In 1913 Heinrich Tessenow was commissioned to build the temple-like theatre which had the yin-yang symbol placed on the pediment over the entrance, a sign perhaps of the holism also evident in the monistic Weltanschauung. Yet the double aspect of Lebensreform counter-culture is evident even in a place where more familiar aspects of modernity can be traced, for Hellerau was also the base of two right-wing ventures: the Hakenkreuz Verlag, run by Bruno Tanzmann, who was also active in the Artamanen (a youth group formed in the cause of land settlement in the East) and promoted the racist ideas of Heinrich Pudor, and the land colony and school Vogelhof established by Ferdinand Schöll. (See Mosse, 117, 121–2, and Sarfert, 91–2.) An element of continuity is present in the efforts of all these groups to cultivate a more natural approach to life and art within the context of monism, for while those associated with Ascona and Hellerau made no declarations of allegiance to monism comparable to the pronouncements of the Harts, they demonstrated by their practice a more radical concern to live out the implications of the cultural revolt which had been adumbrated in the Neue Gemeinschaft. If there is an event which allows us to link the pansexual monism of the Friedrichshagener and the personal sexual freedom advocated by some of the habitués of the Ascona colony (e.g. Otto Gross, Fanny Reventlow and the dancer Rudolf von Laban) it is the meeting in Bayreuth in 1904 between Ernst Haeckel and the American dancer Isadora Duncan.
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Isadora wrote to Haeckel on 17 February of that year on the occasion of his seventieth birthday after reading his work in the British Museum; she had herself photographed sitting at a table with a picture of him in her hand and his works beside her. In a reply dated March 2, which she received when she was in Berlin, Haeckel expressed his admiration for her art and the hope that they might meet, for, as he put it, ‘als Autor der Anthropogenie würde ich entzückt sein, in den harmonischen Bewegungen Ihrer anmutigen Person das höchste Meisterwerk der entwickelnden Natur zu bewundern’, before signing off with best wishes for the growing success of her art-reform along the lines of evolving nature. Engaged to perform in the bacchanal in Wagner’s Tannhäuser during the 1904 Bayreuth season, Isadora invited him to attend the Festspiele and see Parsifal. She met him at the station, persuaded Cosima to allow him to sit in the box reserved for the Wagner family, and gave a party in his honour, to which she invited Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria and other royalty. Haeckel, although he failed to appreciate Parsifal, compared Isadora’s dance to the universal truths of nature, an ‘Ausdruck monistischer Weltanschauung’.10 Although an American with a tenuous connection to only one of the groups listed (Ascona, which she visited in 1913) Isadora surely epitomises some of the important features of the counter-culture which was emerging during the Second Reich. Equally representative of the character of Wilhelmine counterculture is the artist Fidus, whose work is referred to in numerous accounts of the turn of the nineteenth century. He was particularly active at that time, providing illustrations to Wille’s Offenbarungen des Wacholderbaums, including a picture of Goethe – entitled Macte Imperator – which later appeared in the magazine Jugend (Nr. 32, 1900). His later career shows how the more spiritual side of the monist synthesis appealed strongly to elements of the Bildungsbürgertum, especially the Youth Movement, for which Lichtgebet, portraying a naked youth with outstretched arms, became an icon. Fidus’s work indicates how Kitsch ingredients (especially the style he cultivated for the presentation of naked forms) could assist the propagation of a world view which its supporters hoped would not be 10
See Duncan, My Life, chapter 16 and Niehaus, 33 (the latter for the quotations in German from Haeckel).
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confined to a few esoteric circles, and his designs for temples demonstrate how Haeckel’s call at the end of his bestseller Die Welträtsel for places of worship dedicated to monism might be realised. Wilhelmine counter-culture is a complex phenomenon, on which it is possible to take more than one view. On the one hand, some of its features – secularisation (or at least the dissolution of the authority of throne and altar), the emergence of a group consciousness which might overcome the extremes of individual isolation and submission to state ideology, awareness of and occasionally involvement in an international avant-garde – which can be construed as part of the movement towards a modernity compatible with democracy, seem in the context of World War I and the turbulence of the Weimar Republic to lead in no clear direction or to be undermined and stifled even before the Nazi takeover. On the other hand later German counter-cultures could be said to have built on the foundations laid at this time, sometimes without being aware of their debt, at the same time ensuring that whatever nationalist or racist overtones were present in the cultural revolt of sections of the Bildungsbürgertum in the early years of the twentieth century would be excluded from the cultural developments of its second half.
Works Cited Bauschinger, S. Else Lasker-Schüler: ihr Werk und ihre Zeit (Heidelberg, Lothar Stiehm Verlag, 1980) Berlin um 1900: Ausstellung der Berlinischen Galerie in Verbindung mit der Akademie der Künste zu den Berliner Festwochen 1984. Akademie der Künste 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 (Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts London Band 10) (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1982), 207–36. Duncan, I. My Life (London, Victor Gollancz, 1996).
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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 Überlegungen zu einer Neubestimmung des Naturalsimus-Begriffs’, Deutschunterricht, 40, 2 (1988), 11–29. Kauffeldt, R./Kepl-Kaufmann, G. Berlin-Friedrichshagen. Literaturhautpstadt um die Jahrhundertwende. Der Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Munich, Boer, 1994) Linse, U. (Hg), Zurück O Mensch zur Mutter Erde. Landkommunen in Deutschland 1890–1933 (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 Künstlerkolonie (Dresden, HellerauVerlag, 1993).
DAVID MIDGLEY
‘Los von Berlin!’ Anti-Urbanism as CounterCulture in Early Twentieth-Century Germany
The growth of the industrial city generated some measure of revulsion and concern wherever it occurred in Europe. The problems posed by population density, pauperisation, unhealthy living conditions, and the emergence of new and unfamiliar patterns of social and cultural behaviour invited scathing characterisation by writers – Dickens’s ‘Coketown’, Cobbett’s ‘Great Wen’ – but they also prompted practical suggestions for reform wherever they arose (see Mumford, chapter 3; Glass). If German responses to the phenomenon have attracted special comment from historians and prompted them to adopt a distinctive line of analysis, then this is because of the way they relate to specific elements in German cultural tradition and political development. The particular rhetoric with which campaigners around 1900 respond to the deleterious effects of industrialisation in Germany owes much to the Romantic idealisation of nature, which had been a common feature of literary writing during the previous century; and the strong association between cultural identity and the natural landscape, which had become a characteristic feature of German Romantic nationalism during the same period, was taken up and exploited by the National Socialist movement after the First World War – even if anti-urbanism as such appears to have had no significant impact on policies that were actually implemented once Hitler was in power (see Bergmann, 354–60). In the standard literature on German environmentalism, the connections between anti-urbanism and Romantic nationalism have been traced back to Ernst Moritz Arndt and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl in the early and mid-nineteenth century, who establish a powerful sense of German identity as rooted in the landscape it inhabits, in the rivers, hills and forests which are coming under threat from human economic activity (Dominick, 22–30; Riordan, 8–16). Arguably the
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tendency of German writers to idealise rural life and to demonise the city can be traced back further still: Friedrich Sengle, in a much quoted article of 1963, saw the origins of the antithesis ‘Wunschbild Land, Schreckbild Stadt’ reaching back at least to the seventeenth century (Sengle, 621–2). Among the responses to Germany’s rapid industrialisation in the second half of the nineteenth century, there is definitely a strand of völkisch thought running from Paul de Lagarde’s Deutsche Schriften in the 1870s to Alfred Rosenberg’s Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts in 1930 which actively seeks to reverse the processes of urbanisation and to restore Germany to a predominantly agrarian economy (Stern, chapter 2; Rosenberg, 550–7). Antipathy towards the Großstadt is further reinforced in the 1920s by Spengler’s apocalyptic characterisation of urban civilisation in Der Untergang des Abendlandes as the degenerate last phase of any human culture (Spengler, 673–87). The legacy of such stereotypical thinking evidently continued to make itself felt in Germany well after the end of the Second World War (Bahrdt, 57–62). And those who look for evidence of continuity between the thinking of early Romanticism and that of National Socialism will find it in the writings and campaigning of Richard Walther Darré, the leading exponent of Blut und Boden ideology and the Reichsbauernführer in Hitler’s regime (Riordan, 24– 6; Dominick, 85–95; see also Mosse, chapter 1). Only recently has the scholarly investigation of German environmental campaigning in the early twentieth century begun to extricate itself from the dominance of these historical associations. The volume Antimodernismus und Reform. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Heimatbewegung, edited by Edeltraud Klueting and published in 1991, took a fresh look at the actual nature of campaigning activity and what it achieved; and William H. Rollins’s book A Greener Vision of Home (1997) presents a robust challenge to the conventional view that the Heimatschutz movement in the period before the First World War was essentially a manifestation of Romantic aestheticism. In this paper I consider the Bund Heimatschutz, which was founded in 1904, as a counter-culture to the dominant tendencies of its time, and attempt to situate that movement in relation to other reforming developments of the early twentieth century. In the light of the recent publications on the movement, I also offer a suggestion about the kind of research which is needed to
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clarify further the role the movement played in German cultural history. It is unlikely that the promoters of anti-urban attitudes in Wilhelmine Germany would have recognised themselves as a ‘counter-culture’, because as far as they were concerned, everything they were fighting against amounted to ‘Unkultur’. They saw the city, and Berlin in particular, as the focus of forces which were eroding cultural traditions, harbouring new and insidious intellectual attitudes, and generally fomenting a materialistic and individualistic outlook on life which directly threatened the communal values they associated with rural living and the small towns of the provinces. This antiurbanism was a way of focusing a broader antipathy for the impact of a dynamic liberal capitalism on life in Germany. The phrase ‘Los von Berlin’ is most commonly associated with the Alsatian-born writer Friedrich Lienhard, who used it as the title for an essay in the periodical Deutsche Heimat in 1902, in which he denounced the ‘corrosive’ negativism and ‘soullessness’ of contemporary literature (behind which he detected the influence of Nietzsche’s psychology and the naturalism of Zola), the scepticism of literary criticism, and the cynicism of the feuilleton writers, and blamed the ambience of the Großstadt for cultivating the sensational and the novel at the expense of any sense for abiding values. It was the dominance of that ambience that Lienhard was calling upon the rest of Germany to combat (Schutte/Sprengel, 220–4). But the slogan had been used before in a similar spirit in the pages of Der Kunstwart (Riffert, 11; see also Der Kunstwart, 17 (1903–4), 19, 357), a periodical established in 1887 by Ferdinand Avenarius with the purpose of defining and articulating cultural values for the German nation. Der Kunstwart was receptive to many intellectual currents of the time, including völkisch thought and social Darwinism, but its sense of ethical mission was focused above all on the notion of the integrative power of art, for the individual personality and for the national community, in an age increasingly marked by social divisions and economic specialisation (Kratzsch, 159–80). As such, the journal also provided a natural forum for the discussion of the impact of industrialisation on the natural environment, and of that special sense
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of a relationship between human beings and their environment which was implied by the term ‘Heimat’.1 The most tireless campaigner for the defence of the environment against the effects of industrialisation was Ernst Rudorff, a Romantic idealist who was bent on preserving the traditional system of social relations on the land, as well as the landscape itself. His proclamation of aims, published in 1897, speaks of the ‘rape’ of the landscape for such material purposes as railway construction, timber-felling for the paper industry, and the modification of river courses for shipping and for hydro-electric schemes; the ‘revolting’ advertisement of nature for the purposes of attracting tourists; and the general destruction of that ‘Ursprünglichkeit’ which, in his eyes, made nature what it was. He complains that servants are hard to come by because the young generation is being seduced away from the land by the prospect of better-paid work in factories; and he notes that conditions in the cities are even worse: ‘im großen und ganzen ist die Durchsetzung mit Mietkasernen, mit prahlerisch massiger moderner Architektur überall dieselbe; Spekulationswut, gedankenlose Sucht nach Neuerung und leerer Eleganz räumen hier wie dort mit dem charaktervollen Erbe der Vorzeit auf’ (see Rudorff, ‘Heimatschutz’, 403). The curse of the age, he concludes, is the subordination of socio-political and socio-ethical considerations to the demands of machine-production and the market economy. Rudorff’s views were greeted in Der Kunstwart with considerable sympathy, although its editor noted that his campaign would need to temper its zeal with an awareness of the practical needs of modern populations and a modern economy (see Der Kunstwart, 15 (1901–2), 7, 357; 17 (1903–4), 12, 653–7; and Kratzsch, 210–26). In practice, three phases have been identified in the development of the Heimatschutz movement (Sieferle, 149–73). The first goes back to Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl around the middle of the nineteenth century, and a social conservatism which sought to preserve a sense of intimate connection between cultural identity and landscape in the face of the early effects of industrialisation. The second is the Romantic idealism of Rudorff, which voices a nostalgia to return to an imagined state of nature after industrialisation has undeniably made its impact on society and the environment. But when the Bund
1
For the resonances of this term, see Applegate, 3–19; Boa/Palfreyman.
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Heimatschutz becomes organised as a reformist movement pursuing specific goals, then pragmatism does indeed temper the Romanticism. In this third phase, which runs up to the First World War and beyond, the most influential figure is Paul Schultze-Naumburg, another regular contributor to Der Kunstwart, who in addition to being the first President of the Bund Heimatschutz and the convenor of its working group on buildings (see Der Städtebau (1904), 5, 78), was also involved in a variety of other organisations concerned with urban development as well as environmental protection and the promotion of cultural values. Schultze-Naumburg had been associated with the artists’ Sezession in Berlin and Munich in the 1890s, and became a founder member of the Werkbund and the Gartenstadtgesellschaft as well as the Bund Heimatschutz and the Dürerbund, the executive arm, so to speak, of Der Kunstwart (Borrmann, 63–6; Jefferies, ‘Heimatschutz’; Klueting, ‘Heimatschult’ 1998, 50–1). Under his presidency, which lasted until 1913, the primary focus of the Bund’s activities was on buildings, and their first major success was to press for measures at national level against ‘bauliche Verunstaltung in Stadt und Land’ which were enacted in 1908 (Ringbeck, 217, 220–1; Jefferies 1995, 82–92). The time around 1904, when the Bund Heimatschutz was founded, was also the moment when a variety of other reform movements were getting under way. (These are now fully documented in a Handbook edited by Diethart Krebs and Jürgen Reulecke.) They included the legendary youth movement, which seems to have had its roots in the largely spontaneous organisation of youth groups in Berlin, who spent their weekends rambling and camping in the surrounding countryside. They included the establishment of rural boarding-schools (Landerziehungsheime) aimed at providing a more ‘wholesome’ education than could supposedly be found in the towns, and a vigorous art education movement. They included a variety of communal settlements, most of them short-lived, some of which were based on utopian socialist or communist thinking such as inspired the best-known Expressionist dramatists,2 some of which were decidedly Romantic in persuasion and wanted actively to combat the drift of populations to the city and encourage a ‘return to the soil’, and some 2
I am thinking here in particular of Gustav Landauer, whose idealistic conception of human community inspired both Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser.
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of which sought to cultivate a new awareness of nature and the body. Several of these settlements, particularly those in the last category, were associated with Berlin intellectuals, and were established indeed on the fringes of Berlin (at Friedrichshagen and Schlachtensee); even the famous artists’ community of Monte Verità at Ascona came to be referred to ironically as a ‘suburb of Berlin’ (Feuchter-Schawelka, 237). It was as if Berlin had itself become the focus for attempts to overcome the dominant life-style of Berlin. It was out of one of the Berlin-based communities (the Neue Gemeinschaft associated with the Hart brothers) that a German garden city movement emerged in 1902, inspired by the example of Ebenezer Howard in England (Welwyn Garden City did not yet exist, but Letchworth did); and the most substantial achievement of the German garden city movement was the new town of Hellerau near Dresden, which became a focus for various experiments in reform living in the decade before the First World War (see Malcolm Humble’s contribution to this volume). It even appears that most of the financial support for the Bund Heimatschutz came from the big cities (Applegate, 105). But at the same time that all these developments were taking place, approaches to city planning itself were also changing radically, and a forum for the discussion of these changes was established in 1904 with the foundation of a new journal, Der Städtebau.3 Municipalities themselves, of course, were faced with the problem of how to respond to the pressures arising from the growth of urban populations in the course of industrialisation, how to alleviate the effects of dense and unhygienic housing conditions, and the remedies were not as easy to achieve as they might appear to us nowadays. There were complex legal issues to resolve, particularly concerning questions of jurisdiction and property rights, before German cities could break out of their medieval boundaries – many of them were still walled – and develop less dense housing areas for their swelling populations. Frankfurt came to be thought of as a pioneer in this context because it led the way in resolving these legal difficulties; Berlin was thought of as lagging far behind because it had been committed since the 1870s to a particularly rigid and crude 3
The journal’s full title was Der Städtebau. Monatschrift für die künstlerische Ausgestaltung der Städte nach ihren wirtschaftlichen, gesundheitlichen und sozialen Grundsätzen.
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development plan which amounted to cutting land up into uniform plots on a ‘gridiron’ pattern and allowing developers to do what they wanted on each plot within certain limitations (Sutcliffe, 9–45). The result was precisely that dense speculative development and ‘characterlessness’ that the anti-urbanists complained of. But other cities were looking for more sensitive solutions to their problems, and early numbers of Der Städtebau reported on expansion plans for towns as varied as Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Augsburg, Hanover, Jena, Mainz, Wiesbaden, and Flensburg. Professional architects, as much as environmental campaigners, were looking for ways to get ‘away from Berlin’, or at least from that arbitrary and stylistically eclectic type of urban development for which Berlin had acquired an unsavoury reputation in the later nineteenth century. The presiding genius behind Der Städtebau, although he died shortly before it began to publish, was Camillo Sitte, a Viennesebased architect whose book Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen, originally published in 1889, became a common point of reference for city planners and anti-urbanists alike (see Rudorff, 404) because it was deeply critical of the approach to city development which prevailed in Berlin and which amounted to treating the issue as a purely technical one. Sitte was no backwardlooking Romantic (see Collins/Crasemann Collins). He was fully aware of the need to plan for modern industrial populations, but his book was concerned above all with overcoming the characterlessness of the geometrically planned industrial city and applying what could be learned from older approaches, particularly those of the medieval towns and the planned cities of the Baroque period, in order to make the modern city more hospitable and more aesthetically pleasing. His pet themes were the arrangement of public spaces (which should be designed to show off particular features of the buildings which line them, rather than being focused on their geometric centre) and the advantages of narrow winding streets rather than wide straight ones (because they, too, serve to show off attractive façades, and also provide some protection from driving winds). Sitte himself was no great friend of green spaces in cities (he preferred to see gardens kept separate from public thoroughfares, tucked away behind screens of buildings, and he did not like to see façades obscured by trees). But another complementary development on which Der Städtebau reports
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in its early issues is a growing interest in the ‘greening of the city’, providing public gardens and recreation areas as a municipal venture, by contrast with the private patronage of aristocrats and entrepreneurs (Krupps in Essen is the most often cited example) which had previously been the primary source of public gardens. So we now have a number of distinctive elements combining to determine the complexion of arguments and attitudes about living conditions and cultural values in the first decade of the twentieth century. In addition to the lobbying of the Romantic traditionalists who want to preserve whatever they can of earlier life-styles, we have the pressures of an industrial economy which militate towards maximising the financial return from individual building plots; and alongside the utopian projects to restore humanity in one way or another to living in touch with nature, we have the development of a professional approach to city planning which takes account of social and aesthetic questions as well as technical ones. Where the picture gets really interesting is when these elements start to interact in specific circumstances, in the context of specific building projects and organisational developments. Part of the record of such interaction shows an antagonistic relationship between traditionalists and modernisers, and the Bund Heimatschutz undoubtedly became a thorn in the side of those who wanted modern architecture to reflect the character of modern life, or to allow the individual architect scope for creative freedom. Der Städtebau was suspicious of the implications of ‘Altertümelei’ from the outset, and even before the formal foundation of the Bund Heimatschutz a contributor noted that a number of cities were not just trying to preserve the character of their existing old town, but insisting that new façades should exactly match the old; the contributor condemned this approach as a falsification both of the historical record and of the lived reality of the contemporary age, and wondered whether putting the control of city planning in the hands of the municipalities had been such a good idea after all (Der Städtebau I, 4, pp. 55–8). And when the Deutscher Werkbund, the most important association of architects, engineers and manufacturers, was set up in 1907, serious differences soon emerged between a faction spearheaded by Paul Schultze-Naumburg which wanted to commit the organisation to the continuation of traditional building styles and those
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like Henry van de Velde who wanted it to promote innovative design (Campbell, 53; see also Der Kunstwart, 24 (1910–11), 4, 278–84). The campaign of the Bund Heimatschutz against buildings with flat roofs was well under way before the First World War (Rollins, 133– 4); and this sort of conflict was to sharpen and become more political in the 1920s, when Schultze-Naumburg led a relentless campaign against modernist architects – although by that time he had openly espoused racialist cultural theories, and had parted company with the main Heimatschutz organisation, whose policies on the whole remained distinguishable from Nazi ideology (Borrmann, 151–3; Campbell, 270–2; Klueting 1998, 50–1; Ditt 2001, 35–45). This is the sort of evidence out of which the familiar image of the Bund Heimatschutz as a reactionary or even a crypto-fascist force has been constructed (see Bergmann; Speitkamp; Ditt 1990; Jefferies 1995, 53–5). But another part of the record shows us the fruitful outcome of collaboration and patient committee work. Birgitta Ringbeck has described the results of building projects in the state of Westphalia, where an official Kommission für Heimatschutz was established in response to the legislation against despoliation of the landscape of 1908 and appears to have worked flexibly and very effectively with architects and local authorities. Ringbeck’s account may be coloured by the fact that her research was part of a project initiated by the Westphalian Heimatbund itself, but the achievements she highlights include a plan for expanding the town of Soest, dating from 1915 (and partially implemented in the 1920s), which appears to be well ahead of its time because it attempts to conserve the medieval character of the old walled town and incorporate that central feature into the overall conception of an expanded town designed to meet modern needs. The design includes a green belt, a ring road, and a polycentric arrangement of garden suburbs with residential and industrial areas carefully separated. Ringbeck also describes developments of a garden-city type where the housing did not imitate traditional German rural styles, but rather the idea of the English cottage, and was designed to ensure modern standards of amenity for the families who would be living there (Ringbeck, 257). And she points to housing developments of the 1920s which combined the use of typical local materials with the application of standardised components, as the
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modernisers were recommending, in order to provide effectively and cheaply for the accommodation of a mass workforce in a predominantly rural area, and thus to counter the drift of industrial labour to the cities (Ringbeck, 268–9). The Bund Heimatschutz, she implies, was absorbing the impulses of technical modernisation in the pursuit of pragmatic solutions to the problems it cared most deeply about. Celia Applegate, too, in her close study of the Heimat movement in the Pfalz, shows how necessary it is to distinguish between the grand Romantic visions of the movement’s leading ideologues and the specific policies pursued in the regions: the latter were less concerned with opposing the processes of modernisation, and more with actively developing a local sense of identity in response to the political character of Germany that had resulted from the unification of 1871 (Applegate, 103–7). And William H. Rollins, in his book A Greener Vision of Home (1997), makes a bolder attempt to defend the Heimatschutz movement of the decade before 1914 against its detractors and present it as a pioneering development towards environmental consciousness as it exists in our own time. Rollins’ sharpest polemics are directed against those who apply an over-rigid conception of historical modernisation as a yardstick by which to measure the Heimatschutz and pronounce it backward-looking, and he builds on the work of Geoffrey Eley and others in arguing that the German bourgeoisie of the Wilhelmine period did not simply retreat from political life, but found ways of intervening constructively in public decision-making processes, of which the lobbying of the Bund Heimatschutz is a prime example. He is able to cite specific instances of such intervention; he provides information which shows that the membership of the organisation included a significant proportion from the commercial sector as well as the Bildungsbürgertum; and he points to the importance of regional civil servants helping to mould planning policies along the lines advocated by the Bund Heimatschutz, in support of his claim that the movement represented ‘a sober, methodical, and yet highly idealistic segment of the German middle class that took the initiative in trying to adapt their system to the changing needs of industrial society’ (Rollins, 128). Like Ringbeck he emphasises the need to relate the activities of the Bund
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Heimatschutz to the actual record of housing reform and urban planning. Both Ringbeck and Rollins, then, show why a proper assessment of the role of the Bund Heimatschutz should have due regard to the pragmatic dimension of its involvement in local planning. But there is one feature of the planning negotiations which Ringbeck describes that might serve to remind us of the need to examine their ideological significance as well. When justifications were made for the specific developments in Westphalia on which she reports, they were not just formulated in terms of the living needs of the prospective inhabitants and the desirability of maintaining the character of the environment, but often alluded to the intended relationship between the inhabitants and their environment. A phrase which recurs in this connection, but which appears in Ringbeck’s account without commentary, is ‘Bindung an die Scholle’ (Ringbeck, 256, 259). It is unlikely that this phrase, as used before 1914, carries the implications of patriotic fervour which were to become associated with the idea of German national territory under the impact of the First World War and the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty. Nor should it be interpreted over-literally: the settlements in question are for industrial workers, not agricultural labourers. The metaphorical use of the term ‘Scholle’ can be documented at least from 1874, in Nietzsche’s essay ‘Schopenhauer als Erzieher’, where it is associated with the smalltown parochial attitudes of which Nietzsche disapproves (Nietzsche, 289). But as a phrase it is clearly redolent of that strong Romantic sense of association between communal identity and the natural landscape which we know to have been an important initiating impulse of the Heimatschutz movement. And without looking at the detailed circumstances of particular negotiations, it is impossible to determine with any certainty whether the evocation of ‘Bindung an die Scholle’ should be interpreted as indicating an underlying ideology among the architects and planners making the proposals, or a concession on their part to the political preconceptions of those to whom they are making the proposals, or whether it is simply a gesture towards the general concern about ‘Landflucht’ and the undesirable consequences of dense urban living conditions which had become such a cliché by 1910 that it tells us very little about the actual attitudes of the parties concerned. Only an examination of the precise
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circumstances in which these housing developments were discussed could shed light on the ideological orientation of the community for which they were conceived and of the lobbying organisations involved. As far as the relationship between the Bund Heimatschutz and National Socialism is concerned, it is generally acknowledged that the nature of the aims and interests of the Heimatschutz movement meant that it was easily assimilated into Nazi culture (more precisely, into the Reichsbund Volkstum und Heimat) after 1933, and that this close association with National Socialism left the movement apparently discredited in many people’s eyes after the Second World War (see Klueting 1998, 55; Ditt 2001). By the same token, a pedantic attachment to traditional styles of house design also came to be disparaged after 1945 as part of the Nazi legacy (Sewing). But the history of research on the Bund Heimatschutz gives a clear demonstration of the importance of perspective in the evaluation of cultural-historical developments. The article by Winfried Speitkamp which appeared in the Archiv für Kulturgeschichte in 1988 illustrates the approach which had dominated since the Second World War: Speitkamp highlights the senses in which true continuities may exist between the use of such vocabulary as ‘Rasse’, ‘Volkstum’, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, and ‘Lebensraum’ by members of the Bund Heimatschutz on the one hand and by National Socialists on the other. Ringbeck, in 1991, responds to that familiar claim of a close connection between the Heimatschutz movement and Nazi ideology by emphasising that (a) wanting to preserve traditional building styles does not automatically make you a Nazi, and (b) Nazi interest in architecture focused in practice on the monumental and megalomaniac rather than the traditional (Ringbeck, 285). Among the secondary literature in English, Dominick is subtler than Speitkamp in his discussion of the ideological overlap between Heimatschutz and National Socialism, and Rollins is more ambitious than Ringbeck in his claims to have reinterpreted the historical significance of the movement, but they present the reader with a comparable pair of contrasting views. It seems to me that the respective approaches of Speitkamp and Ringbeck can be used to demonstrate the inherent dangers in two different types of perspective on the Bund Heimatschutz as a cultural movement, and in conclusion I should like to
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develop this sense of contrast into a more general reflection on the problems of interpreting the phenomena of cultural history. If we view historical developments in too broad a perspective, then we recognise only those features which appear generally characteristic of the whole picture and thus obscure the differences between one phenomenon and another. But if we adopt too narrow a perspective, then we lose sight of the connections between phenomena. The anti-urbanism we find in Wilhelmine Germany is not just a vague manifestation of antipathy towards urban conditions such as any individual may feel and act upon from time to time (as we may do at holiday time, when we joke about ‘escaping from’ or ‘returning to’ civilisation). This anti-urbanism distinguishes itself as an expression of anxiety in response to the rapid changes in life-styles and in the character of communities brought about by industrialisation in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, and by perceptions of the kind of city that is developing in Berlin in particular; and this particular anxiety finds the focus for its emotional energy in the physical appearance of locations, of what groups of individuals perceive as their ‘Heimat’. These emotional responses are occurring in a period when the sense of national and local allegiance is being reinforced by political experience, a period when the cultural identity of the unified German Reich is being constructed and defended in contradistinction to the perceived cultural identity of other European nations. In such circumstances it is the way that particular indicators of cultural identity are used to justify action, or to persuade others of the desirability of that action, that enables us to recognise signs of an incipient political ideology in the writings and activities of a movement. It is true that ‘Heimatschutz’, the desire to defend what is perceived as a cultural heritage, is not in itself an immediate indicator of ideological orientation, but this is a bland truth, and does nothing to convey the sense of specific historical circumstances. On the other hand, to assume that because two movements have certain items of vocabulary in common they necessarily mean the same things by them is to short-circuit the argument and overlook the possible distinctions of historical situation. The approach which is likely to lead to greater insight into historical processes surely lies in a combination of the two perspectives. It consists in recognising that the notion of ‘Heimatschutz’ has its legitimacy when it comes to human
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communities determining the character of the environment they live in, but also that it became a terrain on which emotional commitments were developed and nurtured which could in turn be used, under particular circumstances, to reinforce ideological persuasion. What we are dealing with is not a homogeneous phenomenon: the Heimatschutz movement is made up of various groups pursuing their particular goals in different parts of Germany, and the issues with which they are concerned were simultaneously of concern to other groups and organisations. The further research we need in this area should therefore be multi-dimensional. It should be capable of distinguishing between such factors as personal motivation, ideological orientation, organisational policy and regional variation, within the broad cultural and political context. It should relate the campaigning of the organisation in individual cases to the nature of the specific issue and to the particular constellation of political and material interests involved; and it should analyse the rhetoric used in specific instances in relation to the broader developments of usage as well as to the particular constellation of cultural factors involved at the time. Given the inherent complexity of the issues and the regional diversity involved, there is plenty of material there to keep a team of graduates usefully occupied for several years.
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 Großstadt. Soziologische Überlegungen zum Städtebau, (Opladen, Leske und Budrich, 1998). Bergmann, K. Agrarromantik und Großstadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim, Hain, 1970). Boa, E. and Palfreyman, R., Heimat – A German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890–1990 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000). Borrmann, N. Paul Schultze-Naumburg 1869–1949. Maler, Publizist, Architekt (Essen, R. Bacht, 1989). Campbell, J. Der Deutsche Werkbund 1907–1934 (Munich, dtv, 1989). Collins, G. R. and Crasemann Collins, C. Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City Planning (London, Phaidon Press, 1965).
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Ditt, K. ‘Die deutsche Heimatbewegung 1871–1945’, in Heimat. Analysen, Themen Perspektiven (Bonn, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Hg),1990), 135–54. —— ‘Eine “Symbiose von Erde und Menschentum”. Zur kulturplitischen Konstruktion von Raumbewußtsein in Westfalen im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Knoch, H. (Hg) Das Erbe der Provinz. Heimatkultur und Geschichtspolitik nach 1945 (Göttingen, Wallstein, 2001), 29–49. Dominick, R. H. The Environmental Movement in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871–1971 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992). Feuchter-Schawelka, A., ‘Siedlungs- und Landkommunebewegung’, in Krebs, D. and Reulecke, J. (Hg) Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880–1933, 227–44. Glass, R. Introduction to Urban Sociology in Great Britain, reprinted in Pahl, R. E. (Hg) Readings in Urban Sociology (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1968), 63–73. Jefferies, M. Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (Oxford, Berg, 1995). —— ‘Heimatschutz: Environmental Activism in Wilhelmine Germany’, in Riordan, C. (Hg) Green Thought in German Culture, 42–54. Klueting, E. (Hg.) Antimodernismus und Reform. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Heimatbewegung (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991). —— ‘Heimatschutz’, in Krebs and Reulecke (Hg) Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880–1933, 47–57. Kratzsch, G. Kunstwart und Dürerbund. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969). Krebs, D. and Reulecke, J. (Hg), Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880– 1933 (Wuppertal, P. Hammer, 1998). —— Der Kunstwart (Munich), 1887ff. Mosse, G. The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964). Mumford, L. The Culture of Cities (London, Secker & Warburg, 1938). Nietzsche, F. Werke. Vol. 1. Hg. Karl Schlechta (Munich, 1973). Riffert, J. Berliner Literatur oder Deutsche Literatur?, Der Kunstwart II (1888–89), 11. Ringbeck, B. ‘Architektur und Städtebau unter dem Einfluss der Heimatschutzbewegung’, in Klueting, E. (Hg) Antimodernismus und Reform, 216–87. Riordan, C. (ed) Green Thought in German Culture: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997). Rollins, W. A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904–1918 (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997). Rosenberg, A. Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich, Hoheneichen-Verlag, 1930). Rudorff, E. ‘Heimatschutz’, in Die Grenzboten 56, II, pp. 401–14 and 455–68. Schutte, J. and Sprengel, P. Die Berliner Moderne 1885–1914 (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1987). Sengle, F. ‘Wunschbild Land und Schreckbild Stadt’, Studium Generale 16, 10, 619–31.
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Sewing, W. ‘Architecture as Collective Amnesia’, paper given to the conference German Architecture and its Changing Past at the Architectural Association, London, 2001. Sieferle, R.-P. Fortschrittsfeinde? Opposition gegen Technik und Industrie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, Beck, 1984). Sitte, C. Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (Vienna, C. Graeser & Co., 1889). Speitkamp, W. ‘Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz in Deutschland zwischen Kulturkritik und Nationalsozialismus’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 70, 149–93. Spengler, O. Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich, Beck, 1981 [1923]). —— Der Städtebau. Monatsschrift für die künstlerische Ausgestaltung der Städte nach ihren wirtschaftlichen, gesundheitlichen und sozialen Grundsätzen (Berlin and Vienna), 1904ff. Stern, F. The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961). Sutcliffe, A. Towards the Planned City. Germany, Britain, the United States and France, 1780–1914 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981).
MARGARETE KOHLENBACH
Walter Benjamin, Gustav Wyneken and the Jugendkulturbewegung
Walter Benjamin’s work became known to a wider public only posthumously in the context of the student movement of the 1960s. His ‘Der Autor als Produzent’ (1934) and ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’ (1935–1939) were probably the two most important texts on which the more aesthetically-minded theorists of that movement relied in their attempt to define a materialist concept of counter-culture which could 1 accommodate their own Marxist aspirations. Benjamin himself, however, first encountered a theory of counter-culture, and indeed became involved in counter-cultural practice, in the context of the German Youth Movement. Before World War I, he aligned himself with the so-called Jugendkulturbewegung (‘youth culture movement’), an intellectually oriented sub-grouping, which was led by the educationalist and cultural critic Gustav Wyneken (1875–1964).2 This alignment is indicative of the interrelations that exist, in early twentieth-century German society, between radical conservativism on the one hand and counter-cultural orientations on the other. Benjamin (1892–1940) first met Wyneken as his teacher of German at the country boarding school of Haubinda in 1905 (see Benjamin, ‘Lebenslauf’ (1925), and ‘Lebenslauf’ (1912), 531–2; Brodersen (xiii, 23–7)). Between 1905 and 1907 Wyneken and Paul Geheeb founded their own experimental private school in Thuringia, the so-called Freie Schulgemeinde Wickersdorf, which for Wyneken 1 2
See also von Dirke (55–7), McCole (10–17) and Hillach (‘Walter Benjamin’, 64–89). Benjamin’s commitment to the Jugendkulturbewegung is documented in the editorial commentary in Benjamin, GS, II.3, 825–88. See also Brodersen (23– 76), McCole (35–70), Bröcker (13–67), Deuber–Mankowsky (299–313) and Hillach (‘Ein neu entdecktes Lebensgesetz der Jugend’, 872–90).
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would come to represent the ‘geometrical locus’ and the only existing realisation of what he called ‘youth culture’ (Wyneken, ‘Was ist “Jugendkultur”?’, 116–28). 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 Wyneken’s ‘strict and fanatic pupil’.4 After Wyneken’s 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 Wyneken’s idea of youth culture and the relations it bears to religion, art and politics. The second part analyses Benjamin’s work as a writer and activist of the Jugendkulturbewegung between 1910 and 1915.
Wyneken’s Idea of Youth Culture For Wyneken, ‘youth culture’ is not a description of social activities but an idea, an ‘infinite task’ or ideal (Wyneken, ‘Was is “Jugendkultur”?’, 126–8). He can therefore use ‘youth culture’ to criticise the existing Youth Movement. What he actually criticises are in particular the
3 4 5
Letter to Herbert Blumenthal, 30 July 1913, in Benjamin, GB I, 155. Letters to Ludwig Strauss, 11 September and 10 October 1912, GB I, 61–73, 69–70, esp. 64. Letter to Wyneken, 9 March 1915, GB I, 263–4. See also Letter to Hans Reichenbach, February/March 1915, GB I, 262.
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activities of the Wandervogel.6 With the Wandervogel, he concedes, Wilhelmine youth awoke to a life of its own, free of the deadening philistinism of the bourgeois family, the duplicity of the metropolis and the enslaving conventions of adult society as a whole. However, the vitalist romanticism of the Wandervogel is also a masquerade, itself full of artificiality, inauthenticity and escapism. The movement effectuates an external, physical change in young people’s way of life but fails to create a new spiritual culture. The Wandervogel therefore also fails to realise its own nature, for according to Wyneken the fact that the Wandervogel organises a new community life for the young means that it is a spiritual movement. In criticising the existing Youth Movement for failing to realise its own spiritual nature, Wyneken suggests that he is proposing an immanent critique of that movement.7 Furthermore, we may describe his criticism as insisting, in the face of subcultural activities, on counter-cultural intentions.8 The Youth Movement, he asserts, ought to achieve a permanent and socially comprehensive significance, indeed, it must effectuate a cultural revolution. It can do so only if it does not, as does the Wandervogel, ignore the school, the central institution in the life of the young; for it is only the school, or at any rate Wyneken’s own school Wickersdorf, which empowers youth to transform society as a whole by appropriating and extending the spiritual inheritance (‘Geistesbesitz’) of society. Finally, Wyneken’s counter-cultural programme can be described as being religious or quasi-religious. In Germany, he argues, Geistesbesitz comprises the attitude of a Luther and Kant and their uncompromising struggle to establish the ultimate foundation (‘letzter Grund’) of one’s convictions. Youth similarly strives for the unconditional. It ignores the demands of so-called reality and overcomes the means–ends considerations of Zivilisation by em6
7 8
For what follows, see Wyneken, ‘Was ist “Jugendkultur”?’, 118–26, Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 10–12, 33–43, 66–8, 81–4, 163–81, Wyneken, ‘Studentenschaft und Schulreform’, 180–96, esp. 190, and the discussions of Wyneken’s concept and rhetoric of ‘revolution’ in Kupffer (187–93, 282–91). On the importance of ‘immanent critique’ and ‘immanent criticism’ in Benjamin’s mature thought, see for instance McCole (71–114), Caygill (34–79) and Kohlenbach (sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2). For the distinction between ‘counter-culture’ and ‘subculture’, see Dirke (4).
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bracing the absolute and intrinsic values of Kultur. Adults will appreciate this ethos again only if and when a new religion comes over them. In the meantime, not only the transformation of society but also the redemption of mankind, if not the world,9 is entrusted to youth and its unconditional service of Geist. However, the fact that the Wandervogel organises collective events for the young does not in itself suffice to classify it as a spiritual movement. This would only be the case if it were true that any communal activity ultimately rested on spiritual or absolute values, an assumption which the organisers of Fahrten and campfires were far from embracing. In 1914 at the latest, the Wandervogel and other groups of the Freideutsche Jugend rejected Wyneken’s attempts to commit the Youth Movement as a whole to his own programme of spiritual revival (Kupffer, 85–103). Wyneken, for his part, was aware of the fact that the allegedly natural idealism of youth would not on its own realise his spiritual vision. He repeatedly emphasised the autonomous character of youth culture but also stated explicitly that its autonomy was possible only with regard to external circumstances. The creation of a spiritual culture, in contrast, would not emerge from within youth alone but required spiritual leaders (‘Führer’) in whom the new life originated. Youth culture was to be ‘autonomous’, then, only to the extent that the influence of competitors – the state, the churches, the family or rival educationalists – had to be discarded if Wyneken’s own spiritual mission was to flourish.10 His apparently ‘immanent’ critique of the Youth Movement, in other words, reflected his own interests and intentions. The classification of youth culture as spiritual places ‘youth’ at the centre of Wyneken’s thought, which combines a Hegelian rhetoric of ‘objective spirit’ with elements drawn from Fichte, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the idealistic monism of Eduard von Hartmann and 9 10
For the cosmological implications of Wyneken’s thought, see his Weltanschauung (esp. 122–7) and Kupffer (9–34, 197–217). Wyneken, ‘Was ist “Jugendkultur”?’, 119 and 127. It is noteworthy that Wyneken also construes the need for, and the will to comply with, spiritual leadership as features of the coming youth culture. For the interdependence between his notions of autonomy and leadership, see Kupffer (305–12) and Hillach, ‘Lebensgesetz’.
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Arthur Drews. What matters in the present context is not a detailed analysis of Wyneken’s eclecticism but the fact that he embraces whole-heartedly the Romantic assumption that the human world is not that of an independently existing external reality, but a counter-world, posited by our own spirit (‘eine von unserem Geist gesetzte Gegenwelt’). The essence of humanity (‘Menschentum’), accordingly, consists precisely in living in a world created by spirit (Wyneken, Weltanschauung, 122–3). Traditional religions rely on the magical power of the will and construe their counter-world according to physical and psychic needs. Yet the creative Weltanschauung of youth, which is to replace traditional religion, allegedly overcomes both the dependence on human needs and any wishful thinking by acknowledging what Wyneken calls ‘the law of autonomous thought’ and ‘the categorical imperative of truth’ (Wyneken, Weltanschauung, 15–17). Given that no reality independent of creative thought is accessible or relevant, however, the truth to which he appeals cannot consist in the correspondence of the envisaged Weltanschauung to reality. Its conception rests on the presupposition that spirit, in principle, is closer to ‘truth’ than is the realm of physical and psychic needs. And this presupposition cannot be ascertained objectively if, as Wyneken maintains, any reality other than that created by spirit itself is irrelevant. In Schule und Jugendkultur (1913), Wyneken clearly acknowledges the voluntaristic nature of his programme. ‘Youth culture’, he maintains, does not rest on positive religious belief or the socially acknowledged authority of existing institutions, nor does it rest on knowledge or objectively ascertainable reasons. In contrast, it rests exclusively on a particular will or decision: Aber wir handeln so, als ob wir wüßten, daß, uns unsichtbar, hinter dem Dasein Erlösung und Seligkeit auf ihre Stunde warten. Wir kränzen uns mit heiligem Willen, wir entzünden die Fackeln stolzen und tapferen Glaubens, und so schreiten wir unseren Weg, ohne Ziel doch der Richtung gewiß. Wenn es einen Heiland der Welt gibt, werden wir ihm begegnen; wenn er ausbleibt, so können wir doch nicht anders, als in seinem Sinne wirken. (Schule und Jugendkultur, 181)
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In basic agreement with Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of the ‘as if’,11 Wyneken here urges youth to live as if religion in general were true and to do so on the basis of a ‘heroic’ decision. With his religious decisionism12 he responds both to the widespread religious scepticism among European intellectuals after the Enlightenment and to the equally widespread appreciation, around World War I, of religiosity as such, that is, of a cultic exaltation of life that steers clear of specific or traditional religious beliefs (see Janz; Linse, Barfüßige Propheten). However, this characterisation should not lead us to underestimate his religious fervour. Wyneken radicalises contemporary cultic escapism by emphasising that the maxim ‘Serve Geist!’ (‘Diene dem Geist!’) ought to be the principle of all our actions (see Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 11). And he dismisses positive religions, above all Christianity, as being too secular, as being too entwined in ‘reality’ and the worldly running of the planet (Wyneken, Weltanschauung, 183–6). He is unclear about whether or not the hoped-for Weltanschauung of youth will lead to a new religion, but it is clear that what he wants to provoke in and through youth is the radical spiritual impulse of religions before their institutionalisation sets in. Religious impulses are not created ex nihilo, however. The posttraditional character of his Weltanschauung notwithstanding, Wyneken cannot help drawing on religious traditions. Thus he conceives the school with explicit reference to Luther’s conception of the church as an invisible assembly of souls in one spirit (Wyneken, ‘Wandervogel und Freie Schulgemeinde’, 135). The congregation of students and teachers in the so-called Schulgemeinden does not aim for the representation of differing interests, the collective organisation of school life or a playful preparation for the tasks of citizenship (see Wyneken, Der Gedankenkreis der Freien Schulgemeinde, 8). Rather, it is intrinsically valuable – ‘sie hat ihren Zweck in sich selbst’ (see Wyneken, ‘Die Aufgabe der freien Schulen’, 10) – and like the Church receives its mandate not from the state, any particular social group or its own members, but directly from ‘truth’ (Wyneken, Der 11 12
See also Kupffer (17, 209–12) and Hillach (‘Lebensgesetz’, 888–90). For the importance of decisionism in German existentialism and radical conservatism, see for instance Speth (167–72), Greiffenhagen (248–68) and Thornhill (62–75).
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Gedankenkreis der Freien Schulgemeinde, 8). Accordingly, the spiritual leader of the assembly, the creative educationalist, is answerable exclusively to a supra-human agency (see Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 27). Wyneken underlines the religious authority which he assumes for himself by frequently comparing himself to Jesus Christ, or by using the Latin terminology of the Church.13 Being counter-cultural, however, the authority which he seeks may find rhetorical support in, but cannot be derived from, existing religious institutions and their language, practices and beliefs. Ultimatily, it has to be based on the charismatic qualities of Wyneken’s own person. Even while breaking with Wyneken, Benjamin expresses his appreciation of his mentor’s charismatic authority: ‘Wir erfuhren, daß [...] die Person über dem Persönlichen steht; wir durften erfahren, was Führung ist.’14 In addition to the traditions of religious practice and thought and to his own charisma, Wyneken draws on art (‘Kunst’) to imbue youth with the required heroic religiosity. It is only the experience of the work of art (‘das Kunsterlebnis’), he states, which is able to vouch for the truth of religion independently of traditional belief.15 Art thus becomes the cultic medium of religious edification for those doubting the revealed truth of traditional religion. In his comments on literature and criticism, Wyneken combines the emphasis on a genuinely artistic approach with a metaphysical understanding of the work of art. While criticising ‘philistine’ audiences for failing to acknowledge the work of art as such, he finds in its genuinely artistic apperception a Platonic ‘vision or adoration of beauty itself’ and, indeed, the confirmation that the Holy Ghost rules the world. While it is wrong to look in art for something other than art, the experience of art as art allegedly 13 14
15
See Kupffer (168–73) and, for Hans Blüher’s 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 Wyneken’s charisma among members of the young generation, see Arnold Zweig’s account in Die Weltbühne 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 Benjamin’s mature work, see ‘Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie’, (159), ‘Ankündigung der Zeitschrift: Angelus Novus’, (242) and ‘Karl Kraus’, (243). For what follows, see Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 152–62.
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discloses a true higher reality (‘eine wirkliche Überwirklichkeit’). The autonomy of art, here, is the Trojan horse of Geist. Taken as a programme for social transformation or even ‘revolution’, Wyneken’s idea of youth culture amounts to the attempt to replace secular, interest-based politics with the communal realisation of spiritual values.16 The teaching of civics is only of minor importance in his conception of the school. He aims to create in his students a loving devotion to the spirit of mankind which in their later lives they will defend against the political sphere of ‘social egotism’ and ‘party fanatism’. To the extent that politics figures at all among the manifestations of ‘objective spirit’ to be studied in class, he conceives it not as a realm of social action and conflict, but as mankind’s practical profession of ‘the sacred nature of the state’, the personification, that is, of the ‘social will’, and the only power in the face of which the worthlessness of the individual is generally and absolutely recognised. Politics, we may put it, is to be de-politicised through the creation of a spiritual or ‘sacred’ Gemeinschaft.17 Wyneken’s disdain for the political explains the opportunism which characterises his attempts to find social support for Wickersdorf and its idea.18 Since for him ‘Wickersdorf’ represents the highest aspirations of mankind, with regard to which political antagonisms are irrelevant, he feels himself entitled to cooperate with the Social Democratic government after the Great War and to court the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. He defends Jewish colleagues against his rival educationalist Hermann Lietz in the so-called ‘Haubindaner 16 17 18
For what follows, see Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 101–12. For the affinities between Wyneken’s notion of politics, Hermann Keyserling’s thought and Theodor Lessing’s conception of ‘antipolitical politics’, see Kupffer (24–5, 237–8). For what follows, see Kupffer (51–2, 107–16, 144–50, 158–60). For Benjamin’s related advocacy of a strategic alliance with the Left, see Letter to Strauss, 7–9 January 1913, GB I, 83. Although Benjamin, in contrast to Wyneken, never aligned himself with any variety of nationalism, his later embracement of Marxism to some extent agrees with Wyneken’s practice of a merely strategic association with political forces. See Benjamin’s correspondence with Gershom Scholem of May 1926 and early 1931 (GB III, 158– 63, GB IV, 25–36), Benjamin’s ‘Moskauer Tagebuch’ of 1926–7, (esp. 330–1) and his ‘Paralipomena zu Surrealismus’ of 1928–9 (esp. 1033).
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Judenkrach’, but tables an anti-semitic motion in 1937 when trying to regain his former influence in the by then National Socialist Wickersdorf. After 1945, he negotiates with the Communist authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone in order to resume his duties as headmaster, and later, in West Germany, presents himself again as a (critical) supporter of social democracy. His very acknowledgment of German guilt for World War II reaffirms his anti-political conception of politics. Germany, he maintains, is guilty in the metaphysical sense of having deviated from the Platonic idea of the German people.19
Benjamin and the Jugendkulturbewegung Benjamin belonged to the numerous Jewish followers of Wyneken. Siegfried Bernfeld, the student leader of the Academisches Comité für Schulreform (ACS), which supported Wyneken outside of Wickersdorf, estimated that approximately one third of the 3000 supporters of the ACS and up to 90% of its Viennese members were Jews (Kupffer, 76). These figures become less surprising if we realise that Wyneken’s programme seemed to offer the possibility of a dignified response to the dilemmas that had come to characterise Jewish assimilation in Germany and Austria. On the one hand, Wyneken could hardly have emphasised more the traditional German value of Bildung, in which for some generations Jews had placed their hopes for social acceptance. On the other hand, he presented Bildung not as the property of the German establishment or Bildungsbürgertum, which to a large extent rejected Jews, but as a new life to be created by (or in) young outsiders.20 In following Wyneken, young Jews therefore no longer had to see themselves as begging for 19 20
See the discussion of Wyneken’s correspondence, from autumn 1945 onwards, with Knud Ahlborn in Kupffer (152–3). For Wyneken’s belief in the cultural function of outsiders in general, see Kupffer (45).
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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 society’s Geistesbesitz. Given the religious dimension of Wyneken’s programme, this may explain Benjamin’s characterisation of Wyneken’s followers as ‘Auserwählte 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 Gegenöffentlichkeit, an alternative sphere of public debate, among students of secondary and higher education.22 In a number of towns, so-called Sprechsäle 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
Letter to Wyneken, 9 March 1915, GB I, 264. For Benjamin’s reflections on the Wickersdorf movement and ‘Jewishness’, see letters to Strauss, 1912–13, GB I, 61–87, as well as Smith, Deuber-Mankowsky (282–312) and Rabinbach (89– 99). In my view, Benjamin’s reflections do not support the assumption that he intends to construct a notion of Jewish identity. For what follows, see Benjamin, Berliner Chronik, 475–84, Linse, Die entschiedene Jugend, Herrmann, Laermann, as well as Kupffer (74–84) and Brodersen (29–73). The indirect influence of Wyneken on the young activists was considerable. The pretentious and forcible manner, for example, in which Benjamin responded to an apparently minimal disagreement with his friend Fritz Heinle imitates the style in which Wyneken conducted the controversies with his colleagues and rivals. The same holds for the destructive manner in which Benjamin, Georges Barbizon (= Georg Gretor) and others dealt with their disagreement, in the early part of 1914, about the future editorship of Der Anfang. See letter to Carla Seligson, 17 November 1913, GB I, 182, the editors’ comments, GB I, 183, letter to Wyneken, 11 April 1914, GB I, 202–10, as well the correspondence between Benjamin and Barbizon, and the latter’s account of the disagreement, reprinted in the appendix of GB I, and Kupffer (48–9, 59–69, 84, 134–43).
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such as the romantic escapism of the Youth Movement or the function of education in society. The young activists all saw themselves as promoting Wyneken’s idea of youth culture and, indeed, as establishing a youth culture in his sense, but differed in their interpretations of what this meant. We can distinguish between an inward and spiritual adoption of Wyneken’s programme on the one hand, and a practical and socially-orientated one on the other. The members of the practical faction, which was represented among others by Bernfeld and Ernst Joël, came to pursue projects of working class education and to a considerable extent later engaged in Social Democratic or Communist politics. Benjamin, for his part, was an outspoken defender of the spiritual interpretation of ‘youth culture’. He worked hard to create the desired Gegenöffentlichkeit between 1912 and 1914, first within the Freiburg Abteilung für Schulreform, then as President of the Berlin Freie Studentenschaft. When he raised his own voice, however, he supported a highly elitist ideal of spiritual practice and, indeed, prophesied a new religion. Der Anfang, he claimed, had to be a purely spiritual journal, far removed from politics, and the idea of youth culture an illumination, the spiritual power of which excluded any determinate thought or intention.24 In ‘Die drei Religionssucher’, published in Der Anfang in 1910 when the magazine was still distributed in hectographed editions, Benjamin deals with the search of three youths for the true religion. Neither the second seeker’s romantic engagement with nature nor the search of the first in the established institutions of learning and cult can provide what they seek. Only the mystic vision of a new world that the third seeker experiences after a full working life may show the right way. His vision conveys the idea of a remote supernatural 24
Letters to Blumenthal (23 June 1913) and Seligson (15 September 1913), GB I, 124 and 175 respectively. According to Kupffer (79), Benjamin’s spiritual understanding of ‘youth culture’ was closer to Wyneken’s intentions than that of the political faction. However, Benjamin’s letter to Ernst Schoen (23 May 1914, GB I, 230–1), 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 Berlin’s young intellectuals.
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world which, however, is mysteriously connected to the position where he stands. It thus already displays a simultaneity of remoteness and proximity, or approachability, similar to that which will inform Benjamin’s mature notion of ‘aura’.25 In ‘Dialog über die Religiosität der Gegenwart’ (1912), Benjamin reflects upon the relationship between such simultaneity and religion, claiming that the desired new religion, like any, has to combine dualism, or the otherness or remoteness of the divine, with the striving for mystical union. (‘Dialog’, 22, 30–1, 34) Any mysticism after work is now discarded in favour of something eternal in ‘our daily work’ and, indeed, the cultic exaltation of convention.26 The young author rejects any moral fulfilment on offer within contemporary society – in humanism or the belief in moral autonomy, progress or evolution, or in pantheism and monism – since it fails to provide the desired sanctification of the everyday. Like Wyneken, he also rejects traditional religion as not truly religious, Judaism, incidentally, no less than Christianity.27 And he desires the sanctification of the everyday independently of any positive religious doctrine: nothing is known of the new god. Being external to contemporary and traditional beliefs, then, the desired religion has to come from outside society. The only short moments of happiness which ‘Dialog’ acknowledges are found in literature and art. In contrast to Wyneken, Benjamin seems critical of any sacralisation of art and even attempts a critique of aestheticism. Yet this critique remains ambivalent. On the one hand, he states that art has lost the ethical and enlightened character which it possessed in the truly pantheistic and humanist work of Goethe. The reception of Goethe has become the incarnation of an aestheticism which, since it ignores the suffering and ‘consciousness of a proletariat’, is dishonest and cannot provide that religious foundation on which the moral life of a community must be based. (‘Dialog’, 16, 18, 21–2) On the other hand, it is precisely from the pathological self-alienaton of the aestheticist literati that the new religion is said to
25 26 27
On Benjamin’s notion of aura in the context of contemporary conceptions of the sacred, see Recki (esp. 26–9, 49–59). ‘Dialog’, 20, 29–30. See also Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 67. ‘Dialog’, 1, 17, 22, 25, and letter to Strauss, 9 September 1912, GB I, 64.
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arise, and it is their ‘culture of expression’,28 and not the life of the masses, that requires a new religious basis (‘Dialog’, 28–31). Moreover, Benjamin discards the slogan l’art pour l’art in favour of ‘l’art pour nous’: art must provide life-values (‘Lebenswerte’). At the same time, the life-values which art can provide – beauty, a sense of form, Gefühl (‘feeling’) – are aesthetic in kind, and Benjamin follows Wyneken in embracing l’art pour l’art as the barrier which protects art, and life, from philistinism (‘Dialog’, 16–17). The aesthetes’ profound thought (‘dieses Geistreiche’) accordingly counts as both the herald and the enemy of religion.29 The basic assumptions in Wyneken’s cult of Geist explain Benjamin’s 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 aesthete’s 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 entgöttert’ (‘Dialog’, 19). The absence of metaphysical grandeur can disqualify social commitment for Benjamin only because he accepts his mentor’s imperative ‘Serve Geist!’ as the highest principle of all human action. The importance of ‘Die religiöse 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
Benjamin’s phrase ‘Kultur des Ausdrucks’ (‘culture of expression’) modifies the term ‘Ausdruckskultur’ in the subtitle of the influential journal Der Kunstwart und Kulturwart: Halbmonatsschau für Ausdruckskultur auf allen Lebensgebieten, in which Wyneken published some of his writings. See letter to Strauss, 11 September 1912, GB I, 61 and Kupffer (367). ‘Dialog’, 27. For the similarly ambivalent characterisation of spiritual profundity in the Trauerspiel study (completed 1925), see GS I.1, 404–6.
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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, Möglichkeit der Wahl, der heiligen Entscheidung überhaupt. Die Wahl schafft sich ihre Gegenstände [...]. (GS II.1, 73)
This promise of a re-creation of the sacred in modern society reinforces that decisionistic determination in Benjamin and his ‘young’ readers which, he claims, creates the sacred. Given this claim, then, Benjamin’s manifesto tries to provoke revelation into being. Of course, actual religious fulfilment must appear unlikely if the scepticism of youth is, as Benjamin also states, without limit. Yet the author counteracts this reason for possible failure by trying to make his audience benefit already from the desired sanctification. The future religion, he suggests, is already symbolically present in youth. The struggles (‘Kämpfe’) in which youth overcomes its reluctance to act are already a form of religious practice: they are Gottesurteile (‘ordeals’) in which nothing matters except that the sacred be revealed. Benjamin here enacts the very simultaneity of the remoteness and proximity of the divine that he deems essential to religion. Furthermore, he evokes the idea that Grace and the help of God will answer the need and desire of youth. This implicit recourse to personal conceptions of deity contradicts his claim that the new sceptical youth has no connection with traditional religions. His manifesto, however, does not aim for intellectual consistency but tries to promote a newly religious life. Given this aim, he cannot help following Wyneken in both drawing on, and rejecting, tradition.30 The assessment that the creation of a newly religious life among the cultural elite is Benjamin’s primary concern is confirmed by those texts of the young activist which do not directly deal with religion. In ‘Die Schulreform, eine Kulturbewegung’ (1912), he conceives education as the transmisson of spiritual values ‘sub specie aeternitatis’. The movement for school reform accordingly counts as 30
For more detailed analyses of ‘Dialog’ and ‘Die religiöse Stellung’ in the context of Benjamin’s early (and not so early) thought, see Deuber-Mankowsky (317–40), Hillach (‘Lebensgesetz’, 886–90) and Kohlenbach (esp. sections 1.3.3 and 2.1).
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the distinct and urgent expression of ‘the socio-religious problem’ of his time (GS II.1, 13). In ‘Unterricht und Wertung’ (1913) he demands a Nietzschean, ‘untimely’ and undemocratic Humanistisches Gymnasium which would reject all compromises with the requirements of vocational training (GS II.1, 40–1). And in the last text of his period as an activist, ‘Das Leben der Studenten’ (publ. 1915), he appeals to the tradition of messianic thought as well as to Plato, Spinoza, Fichte and Nietzsche in the attempt to construe the university as the site of a continuous spiritual revolution, radically separated from all practical tasks and social obligations (GS II.1, 75–87, esp. 82). To sum up, in the cultural field before World War I we find Benjamin in an extremely marginal and precarious position. His affinities with the Youth Movement place him outside of German hegemonic culture. His closeness to Wyneken’s idea of youth culture separates him from the main streams of the Youth Movement. Among the supporters of Wyneken, Benjamin is relatively isolated due to his rejection of any political practice which is not at the same time religious. Finally, at least from early 1914 onwards, Benjamin feels deserted by Wyneken himself, who fails to live up to his pupil’s ideal of a radically inward ‘outside’. It is not surprising, therefore, that after his break with the Jugendkulturbewegung, Benjamin engages in a highly esoteric form of writing, the intensity and intellectual isolation of which is exceptional even within the mystic strands of German twentieth-century thought. Yet there are things that Benjamin takes with him from his time as Wyneken’s ‘fanatic’ pupil: the necessity to draw on tradition to define his idea of revolution, a religious scepticism which separates him from any group of believers, and an ardent desire for sanctification which alienates him from secular life.
Works Cited Benjamin, W., Gesammelte Briefe (cited as GB) Hg. Theodor Adorno Archiv, 6 Bände (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 1995–2000).
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—— Gesammelte Schriften (cited as GS) Hg. R. Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhäuser, 7 Bände (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 1974–89). —— ‘Ankündigung der Zeitschrift: Angelus Novus’, in GS II.1, 241–6. —— ‘Berliner Chronik’, in GS VI, 465–519. —— ‘Das Leben der Studenten’, in GS II.1, 76–87. —— ‘Dialog über die Religiosität der Gegenwart’, in GS II.1, 16–35. —— ‘Die drei Religionssucher’, in GS II.3, 892–4. —— ‘Die religiöse Stellung der neuen Jugend’, in GS II.1, 72–4. —— ‘Die Schulreform, eine Kulturbewegung’, in GS II.1, 12–46. —— ‘Karl Kraus’, in GS II.1, 334–67. —— ‘Lebenslauf’ (1912), in GS VII.2, 531–2. —— ‘Lebenlauf’ (1925), in GS VI, 215–6. —— Moskauer Tagebuch, in GS VI, 292–409. —— ‘Noch einmal’, in GS IV.1, 435. —— ‘Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie’, in GS II.1, 157–71. —— ‘Unterricht und Wertung’, in GS II.1, 35–42. —— ‘Paralipomena zu Surrealismus’, in GS II.3, 1027–41. Bröcker, M. Die Grundlosigkeit der Wahrheit: Zum Verhältnis von Sprache, Geschichte und Theologie bei Walter Benjamin (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1993). Brodersen, M. Walter Benjamin: A Biography, trans. M. R. Green, I. Ligers, ed. M. Dervis (London, Verso, 1996). Caygill, H. Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (London, Routledge, 1998). Deuber-Mankowsky, A. Der frühe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen: Jüdische Werte, Kritische Philosophie, vergängliche Erfahrung (Berlin, Vorwerk 8, 2000). Dirke, S. von, ‘All Power To the Imagination!’ Art and Politics in the West German Counterculture from the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Fuld, W. Walter Benjamin: Zwischen den Stühlen (München, Hanser, 1979). Greiffenhagen, M. Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland (München, Piper, 1971). Herrmann, U. ‘Die Jugendkulturbewegung: Der Kampf um die höhere Schule’, in Koebner, Janz, Trommler, 224–44. Hillach, A. ‘“Ein neu entdecktes Lebensgesetz der Jugend”: Wynekens Führergeist im Denken des jungen Benjamin’, in Garber, K., Rehm, L. (Hg.) global benjamin: Internationaler Walter-Benjamin-Kongreß 1992, 3 Bände, (München, Fink, 1999), Band II, 872–90. —— ‘Walter Benjamin: Korrektiv Kritischer Theorie oder revolutionäre Handhabe? Zur Rezeption Benjamins durch die Studentenbewegung’, in Lüdke, M. (Hg.) Literatur und Studentenbewegung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977), 64–89. Janz, R.-P. ‘Die Faszination der Jugend durch Rituale und sakrale Symbole: Mit Anmerkungen zu Findus, Hesse, Hofmannsthal und George’, in Koebner, Janz, Trommler, 310–37. Koebner, T. Janz, R.-P., Trommler, F. (Hg)‚ Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit: Der Mythos Jugend (Frankfurt/aM, Suhrkamp, 1985).
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Kohlenbach, M. Walter Benjamin: Self-Reference and Religiosity (Basingstoke, Palgrave, in press). Kupffer, H. Gustav Wyneken (Stuttgart, Klett, 1970). Laermann, K. ‘Der Skandal um den Anfang: Ein Versuch jugendlicher Gegenöffentlichkeit im Kaiserreich’, in Koebner, Janz, Trommler, 360–81. Linse, U. Barfüßige Propheten: Erlöser der Zwanziger Jahre (Berlin, Siedler, 1983). —— Die entschiedene Jugend (1919–1921): Deutschlands erste revolutionäre Schülerund Studentenbewegung (Franfurt/aM, Dipa-Verlag, 1981). McCole, J. Walter Bemjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1993). Rabinbach, A. ‘Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism’, New German Critique, 34 (Winter 1985), 78–124. Recki, B. Aura und Autonomie: Zur Subjektivität der Kunst bei Walter Benjamin und Theodor W. Adorno (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1988). Smith, G. ‘“Das Jüdische versteht sich von selbst”: Walter Benjamins frühe Auseinandersetzung mit dem Judentum’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 65 (1991), 318–34. Speth, R. Wahrheit und Ästhetik: Untersuchungen zum Frühwerk Walter Benjamins (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1991). Thornhill, C. Political Theory in Modern Germany: An Introduction (Cambridge, Polity, 2000). Wyneken, G., Der Gedankenkreis der Freien Schulgemeinde: Dem Wandervogel gewidmet (Jena, Diederichs, 2. Aufl., 1919). —— ‘Die Aufgabe der freien Schulen’, in Wyneken, G. Der Kampf für die Jugend: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Jena, Diederichs, 1919), 5–12. —— Schule und Jugendkultur (Jena, Diederichs, 2. Aufl., 1914). —— ‘Studentenschaft und Schulreform’, in Wyneken, G. Der Kampf für die Jugend: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Jena, Diederichs, 1919), 180–95. —— ‘Wandervogel und Freie Schulgemeinde’, in Wynken, G. Der Kampf für die Jugend: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Jena, Diederichs, 1919), 128–38. —— ‘Was ist “Jugendkultur”? Öffentlicher Vortrag, gehalten am 30. Oktober 1913 in der Pädagogischen Abteilung der Münchner Freien Studentenschaft’, in Kindt, W. (Hg.) Grundschriften der deutschen Jugendbewegung (DüsseldorfKöln, Diederichs, 1963), 116–28. –––– Weltanschauung (München, Reinhardt, 1940).
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COLIN RIORDAN
The Green Alternative in Germany 1900–1930
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.
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What is a Green Alternative? The first distinction commonly drawn is between anthropocentric and ecocentric approaches. The extent to which human interests can ever be excluded from our consideration of nature, whether it is possible to distinguish meaningfully between the human and the natural, or whether it is possible for human beings to act in ways motivated by the intrinisic value of nature, remain matters of controversy. The distinction is further complicated in contemporary green debate by the recognition that nature is a fluid social construct rather than some static separate entity. Nevertheless, it will be useful to retain as a criterion for a green alternative the question of whether a particular group privileges or prioritises nature over what they would regard as human interests. Another commonly used distinction is an instrumental one which is repeatedly stressed by Andrew Dobson in his Green Political Thought: that between conservationism, environmentalism and ecologism.1 Conservationists hope to defend a particular natural feature or area against development. Their motivation is typically aesthetic, and is tightly focussed rather than arising from concern for the environment per se. Examples of conservationist campaigns can be found as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, but cannot be construed as any kind of radical alternative. Environmentalists, on the other hand, are actuated by a concern for the environment itself. They are aware of ecological interaction, but are not prepared to make a fundamental challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy in order to defend nature. Instead, they attempt to mitigate the worst effects of industrialism on the environment by adopting a pragmatic or managerial approach, campaigning on particular fronts, or against new developments which threaten the natural world. They will make compromises to achieve limited aims which they regard as 1
See Dobson, 14–38 and passim. The distinction Dobson draws has been critically evaluated since the first edition of his book (1990); see especially Hayward, 187–99. Blühdorn (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.
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practical and achievable. Rhetorical objections to human interference in the natural environment (such as deforestation or river channelling in the nineteenth century) might indicate a hitherto unsuspected level of early ecological awareness, but are not in themselves evidence of environmentalism in a modern sense. Environmentalism proper can reasonably be said to exist where there is evidence of active protest or campaign against damage to the natural environment which rests on a knowledge of the ecological effects of human action. To come to the third category, ecologists believe that tinkering with or restraining industrial society is wholly inadequate. The finite nature of the earth’s resources requires nothing less than a radical change in the structure of society, change which arises from the abandonment of economic growth and big industrialism in favour of small-scale, dispersed economies and egalitarian democracy. On their own, environmentalist objections to pollution, depletion of the water table and so on do not amount to ecologism. Ecologism is an ideology composed of a number of elements. Some of the elements have an ancient lineage, but together they amount to a coherent world view which, Dobson suggests, cannot have existed much before the publication of Limits to Growth in 1972 (Dobson, 35). The ecologist world view is holistic, that is, all things both organic and inorganic are interrelated and interdependent; interfering with one will have unpredictable effects on others. Ecologism must be based on scientific understanding of the global effects of human interference in nature, but is characterized by a critical stance towards the effects of science (in its technological guise) on global ecology. Human beings are a part of nature, but have no superior status or special right to exist within it. The prescription for radical change outlined above is accompanied by apocalyptic warnings of global doom, at least for the human race, in the event of inaction. At the risk of some simplification, ecologism is holistic, critically scientific, ecocentric, prescriptive and apocalyptic, with varying admixtures of misanthropism and mysticism. It is clear that in this definition, full-blown ecologism, or ‘deep ecology’ as Arne Naess would have it, would certainly amount to a radical green alternative. That is the standard by which I wish to judge some of the counter-cultural groups which existed in Germanspeaking countries in the early part of the twentieth century.
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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 Bund’s preservationist aims, others including traditional architecture, folk customs and art. The conventional wisdom has been that the Bund’s 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). Andersen’s view of the Heimatschützer 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, 149–82). 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
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evidence which allowed the environmental movement to blossom in the form in which we know it today. There seems little point, then, in trying to show that the League was in fact environmentallyminded in any modern sense. At this stage we are still confronted with a conservationist concern for the preservation of individual natural features, albeit a concern which was, as Rollins shows, remarkably well-informed. The most convincing argument in favour of the Bund Heimatschutz as pioneering environmental campaigners is the way in which the organisation raised the level of interest in damage to the natural environment. But in this respect it was by no means alone. Affiliated to the SPD, the Naturfreunde were formed as a tourist club in Vienna in 1895. The club was composed of walking enthusiasts and so-called ‘Walzbrüder’, itinerant skilled workers following the old tradition of walking to where the work was. These workers were able to disseminate political propaganda as well as their skills. In contrast to the Heimatschützer, the Naturfreunde were, of course, unafraid of criticizing capitalism, and especially private ownership. In 1906 they began a campaign for free access to a countryside large tracts of which lay in private hands. Their journal Der Naturfreund urged the association’s members to take part in an escalating series of protests ranging from legitimate lobbying of parliament to civil disobedience in the form of mass trespass. Whether the desire to allow large masses of people access to otherwise sparsely populated countryside can be termed environmentalist is debatable, whatever one may think of the demerits of private property. But it is clear that in resorting to extra-legal methods of protest, the Naturfreunde were foreshadowing modern environmental groups in ways unmatched by the conservative wings of the movement. Their protests were directed at a whole range of environmentally damaging projects from deforestation and industrial development to quarrying and peat-moor plundering. The Naturfreunde were also ahead of their time in making an explicit connection between capitalism and the exploitation of natural resources. However, they were unable to make the leap of faith necessary to reject industry altogether, and their motivation remained resolutely anthropocentric: rather than primarily wishing to preserve nature, their main aim was to make nature accessible to the working classes.
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Neither of these groups, then, represented a radical alternative, or a definitively green alternative, even if they can in some ways be seen as the forerunners of modern campaigning groups. The Bund Heimatschutz was timid and conservationist; the Naturfreunde primarily anti-capitalist without being necessarily anti-industry. More radical movements arose from different sources.
Origins of the Radical Green Alternative There were three main sources which fed into the groupings which are readily identifiable as counter-cultural: the Lebensreform movement, the settlement movement, and the philosophical and political ideas of Peter Kropotkin, Ludwig Klages and Gustav Landauer. Lebensreform The Lebensreform movement seems to have developed very much in tandem with the rapid industrialisation of Germany between 1848 and unification. Urbanization, industrialization and the sheer speed of modern life were held to be harmful to health, the cure being to use natural methods. Lebensreformer thus preached abstinence from harmful man-made substances or artefacts: alcohol, smoking, even spices were abjured (Hermand, 93). Vegetarianism, though not new, gained in popularity, while nudism represented an effort to regain the innocence of the natural state. Rudolf Steiner’s creed of anthroposophy was perhaps the most influential and enduring, leading to the foundation of organic farming. Lebensreform was essentially anthropocentric, prompted less by a primary concern for nature than by fear of the effects of technology on human health, even though it frequently involved elements which would today belong to a certain range of green politics, such as animal rights as a justification for vegetarianism. But practising Lebensreform was only fully possible if
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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. Nietzsche’s 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, Förderung und Weiterentwicklung der ideellen, lebensreformerischen und ökologischen Grundlagen, die vor hundert Jahren von der EDEN – Gemeinnützige – 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
See Linse for more details. See Macintyre for further discussion. See http://www.infomarketing.de/eden/index.html.
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‘ökologisch’ than concerned with the benefits to people of living close to nature. Self-development was the primary aim, as an early statement of principles reveals: Als zusammenfassende, jeden einzelnen moralisch verpflichtende Grundidee gilt der Vorsatz zur Führung eines naturgemäßen Lebens, im Sinne praktischer Selbstreform, daß heißt beständiger Selbsterziehung. (Linse, Zurück…, 48).
The intentions are certainly of the best: ‘Die sittliche Grundlage der Gemeinde soll sein: Gerechtigkeit und gegenseitig betätigtes Wohlwollen, sowie Milde gegenüber dem Tier’ (Linse, Zurück..., 48). There is a strong moral tone which might explain why such settlements tended to lose members and struggle to recruit: Wir müssen […] unentwegt darauf sehen, daß als Mitglieder nur Menschen zu uns kommen, die ernste Lebensreformer sind. Wenn Alkoholabstinenz und Vegetarismus auch nicht immer und ohne weiteres genossenschaftlichen Sinn verbürgern, so bietet ernste Selbstzucht und Meidung der Nervengifte und schädlichen Reizmittel immerhin noch die beste Gewähr, Reibungen im genossenschaftlichen Innenleben tunlichsts zu vermeiden. (Linse, Zurück…, 42)
And sternly, in a similar vein: Die Forderung naturgemäßen Lebens schließt in sich, daß Nahrung, Kleidung und äußerer Aufwand nur Mittel zum Zweck, nicht Selbstzweck sein sollen und also Genußsucht, sowie äußerer Prunk hier keine Stätte finden sollen’ (Linse, Zurück…, 48).
Puritan efforts of this kind to forge a new way of living undoubtedly amount to a conscious attempt to create an alternative, and can certainly be regarded as counter-cultural, though not in a subversive way. They do not, however, amount to a green alternative, partly because there is little or no evidence of any real ecological understanding – which could hardly be expected at that time – and partly because of the lack of any real political will to effect change. Groups such as this were inward-looking; rigorously interested in the health of their members rather than in recruiting the masses to a new philosophy of nature. At most, they hoped to set a good example. Among the best remembered of this kind of group are those associated with the Swiss village of Ascona, perhaps because of the
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fame of some of those involved.5 Ascona was founded by the brothers Gusto and Karl Gräser in 1900 (Green, 120–2). Their initial colony lasted only a year, but started a tradition, and led to the establishment of the sanatorium Monte Veritá, which prescribed ‘vegetarian food, sun baths, air baths, earth cures, and water cures’ for its patients, who included Hermann Hesse. The treatment was more than homeopathic; nature cures went together with cult celebration of air, water and light (Green, 123). Asconans were not environmental campaigners. Nature worship was, if not devoid of political content, then at least not overtly political, and ‘Naturmenschen’, in rejecting society, simultaneously had to renounce much potential influence. In any case, their long hair, bare legs and sandals more often than not made them objects of derision. The influence of such groups was slight and their members marginalized. But the very atomism and decentralization of these groups made them into a kind of prototype for later views of how an ecological society might look. The case must not be overstated: many of the adherents of these ideas were not only mystical, but thoroughly anti-science (the Gräsers, for example). Modern ecologism is inconceivable without a scientific basis to understand the world. Further, they lacked the kind of political manifesto without which radical ecologism has no blueprint for change. It was from the work of thinkers such as Kropotkin, Klages and Landauer that such a manifesto was to arise. Kropotkin, Klages, Landauer The work of Peter Kropotkin, particularly his Mutual Aid, gave a crucial theoretical underpinning to the settlement movement. Ultimately it is Kropotkin’s interpretation of Darwin that lies at the heart of his theory of mutual aid. The thrust of Kropotkin’s work is to focus on mutualism as the primary, though not the sole, factor in evolution.6 Recognizing that Darwin had proposed for the first time a 5 6
They include Hesse, D. H. Lawrence, Kafka, Jung, for example: see Green. Only relatively recently has Kropotkin’s pioneering work in this area received the recognition it deserves. The reason for this may be that ‘a socio-political
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scientific theory which allowed a rational exposition of holism, or ‘unity in nature’ as Kropotkin puts it (Kropotkin, 83), the anarchist geographer argued that practically all exponents of Darwinism, particularly in Britain, propounded the doctrines of competition and predation to the exclusion of other evolutionary factors. T. H. Huxley is taken as the prime advocate of such an approach, and it is he who is made responsible not only for the popularization but also the widespread distortion of the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’. While ‘fittest’ was almost always taken to mean strongest, a more appropriate interpretation would be ‘best adapted’. Mutualism, Kropotkin argued, figured far more often as a successful evolutionary adaptation than did competition.7 Deriving this lesson from examples of evolutionary adaptation, Kropotkin applies it to the social organization of human beings. Once the premise is accepted, the politico-constitutional logic is inescapable: the best behavioural adaptation for mankind is to live in small, cohesive communities in harmony with the environment, although Kropotkin sees no necessary conflict between industrial progress and preservation of the natural order. Yet living off the land in close contact with the natural environment has its compensations in terms of mutual aid and tribal morality. The mutualist values of African tribes are described in Mutual Aid as exemplary for the nations of the world. The publication in 1913 of an essay entitled ‘Mensch und Erde’ by Ludwig Klages provided the communalists with an impassioned case in favour of their attempts to rehearse an alternative way of living on the earth. The vitalist philosopher Klages rejected technology vehemently. In ‘Mensch und Erde’, Klages not only excoriates the destructive effects of industry on the environment, but apocalyptically accuses industrialists of matricide; they will end by destroying mother earth. Industrial technology is equated with the destruction of life: Zerrissen ist der Zusammenhang zwischen Menschenschöpfung und Erde, vernichtet für Jahrhunderte, wenn nicht für immer, das Urlied der Landschaft. Dieselben Schienenstränge, Telegraphendrähte, Starkstromleitungen durch-
7
climate ripe for competitive or negative interactions may have subconsciously influenced the way in which ecologists formulate research problems in the first place’ (Vandermeer, 221). Vandermeer confirms this analysis (221).
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schneiden mit roher Geradlinigkeit Wald und Bergprofile, sei es hier, sei es in Indien, Ägypten, Australien, Amerika; die gleichen grauen vielstöckige Mietskasernen reihen sich einförmig aneinander, wo immer der Bildungsmensch seine ‘segenbringende’ Tätigkeit entfaltet; bei uns wie anderswo werden […] Gräben zugeschüttet, blühende Hecken rasiert, schilfumstandene Weiher ausgetrocknet. (10)
Some of Klages’s analysis sounds astonishingly contemporary: ‘Was aber das heuchlerische Naturgefühl der sogenannten Touristik anlangt, so brauchen wir wohl kaum noch auf die Verwüstungen hinzuweisen, welche die ‘Erschließung’ weltfremder Küsten und Gebirgstäler nach sich zog’ (Klages, 11). In 1913, Klages recognized and articulated the possibility that mankind was exploiting the global environment in an unsustainable way. There is a real passion and rage here, and it is apparent that something approaching a modern environmental consciousness can be found at this time. The important point though is that Klages’s attack is against industry per se, not just capitalism, and it is decisively pro-nature as well as being straightforwardly antimodern. Incidentally, this polemic coincides with the period when the science of ecology crystallized into a recognizable modern discipline. After the First World War, alternative life-style groups began to take on a more political and distinctively ecological tinge, a development for which the anarchist Gustav Landauer was in some measure responsible. Landauer it was who translated Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid into German under the title Gegenseitige Hilfe in 1908. His adaptation of the ideas of Kropotkin and Tolstoy on socialist communes exerted an influence not diminished by his reluctance to become personally involved in the settlement movement. His ‘Aufruf zum Sozialismus’ (1911) proposed a form of non-Marxist, agrarian socialism which Rhys Williams describes as follows: What Landauer advocates, with increasing insistence in later essays, is a decentralized, small-scale community, producing only enough to satisfy its needs. Exemplary co-operative settlements on the land and the rejection of urban industrialism are the basic tenets of his socialism. (Williams, 61)
To that I would add that in his unequivocal rejection of industrialism, Landauer takes Kropotkin’s arguments a stage further. Like Klages, Landauer too sees industry per se as the problem, rather than simply
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viewing environmental depredation as one of the many faults of capitalism, as the Naturfreunde did.
Counter-Cultures: the Green Alternative The intellectual resources which thus existed by the beginning of the First World War brought about a qualitative change in the settlement movement. For the first time nature was not just appreciated for its intrinsic value, but placed ahead of human interests in order of priority. For the first time too, settlements were founded with a primary aim of reducing human impact on nature. Moreover, this proto-environmental approach is, again for the first time, couched in a political programme. At this point there is a case for identifying a genuine radical green alternative. There is a clear prescription for radical change accompanied by predictions of disaster in the event of inaction. The changes proposed specifically privilege the interests of nature rather than those of human beings, and implicite value nature intrinsically rather than for its benefits to society. The radical alternative is based on ecological principles derived from well understood scientific processes, and includes small-scale but advanced technology to achieve the stated aims. Though there is room for mysticism, and certainly for a passionate veneration of nature, this counter-culture is couched in a radical political programme which derives much of its inspiration from the sources outlined in the previous section. In January 1921 settlement revolutionaries met at Heinrich Vogeler’s Barkenhoff commune at Worpswede to plan a massive demonstration. Its aim was to seize control of the means of food production and to bring about a change in the way people lived their lives: ‘Brot, Sonne, Licht’ was the slogan. The two main initiators of the action were Leberecht Migge and Paul Robien. Migge was a landscape architect responsible for an innovatory approach to public gardens. His concept of the ‘sozialer Garten’ incorporated approaches to recycling and building with a low environmental impact which are
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readily identifiable as guided by ecological principles. A garden for him was less an aesthetic object than a means of self-sufficiency. The use of small-scale high technology would allow people to circumvent the necessity for massive capital investment in industry, and give a high quality of life with economical use of natural resources. At the Sonnenhof artists’ colony in Worpswede, Migge experimented with ecological approaches to gardening and to self-sufficiency. Paul Robien was no less than a nature revolutionary, whose political programme sprang from both a profound love of nature and a rejection of capitalism. The crucial feature which distinguishes him from others on the left such as the Naturfreunde was his rejection of Marxism for a decisively anti-industrial stance. Robien despised Marxist theory, inaccurately predicting that Kropotkin’s mutualist approach would one day emerge victorious. He could not understand why Marx did not regard agriculture as the key determinant in the revolution. For Robien, common ownership of the means of food production was the foundation of a just society, and the literal and metaphorical machinery of industry needed to be abolished along with capitalism. Moreover, Robien had a political programme which he hoped to put into practise by bringing about a ‘Naturrevolution’ which would motivate the masses to live on the land according to a carefully calculated plan of settlement. Robien’s renunciation of human interference in nature was indeed radical. While Migge was willing to countenance thoroughgoing cultivation of the countryside, and regarded urban living as an inevitable necessity which could be ameliorated by innovative planning of green spaces, Robien was determined that cultivation should be kept to the minimum necessary, and that as much countryside as possible should be left in a wild state (Linse, Zurück…, 95). It is quite clear that although Robien wishes to improve the lot of the proletariat, nature is accorded at least equal status: Dem allgemeinen Naturschutz wäre die größte Beachtung zu widmen. Wir dürfen nie von der Nivellierungssucht befallen werden, nie brutal und gewissenlos die Naturdenkmäler ausrotten. Die Natur wird da bald ihre rächende Hand erheben […] (Linse, Ökopax, 96)
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This does seem to betray a sense of the consequences of our impact on the environment, and is certainly testament to the value which the nature revolutionaries place on its protection. Even though the planned action was a miserable failure, lacking any support whatever either from the unions or from the masses, there is nevertheless early evidence here of an attempt to bring about radical change through political action. And there are enough other reasons to see precursors of radical political ecologism in Germany in this group. Migge and Robien articulated many of the standard elements of ecologist economics that we know today. Migge’s ‘Das grüne Manifest’, first published in 1919, recommends a series of measures to promote the productivity of land use in a sustainable way, drawing on a whole range of organic cultivation methods. The aim was to reach a society which can live off the land using recycling to renew resources, stretching small technology to its limits to do so. He drew on Chinese methods of cultivation which achieved high yields without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or weedkillers. He drew on Kropotkin, too, for his vision of ‘das grüne Land der Jugend, der Gesundheit und des Glücks’ (Linse, Zurück…, 85). His ‘Intensive Siedlerschule’ in Worpswede put these ideas into practice (Linse, Zurück…, 86). Robien remained a tireless campaigner for ecosocialism, stressing, in contrast to the nationalist Heimatschützer, that an internationalist approach was essential, and maintaining that the green vision absolutely necessitated a reduction in consumption. He also argued, on a scientific basis, that animals and human beings had an equal right to existence (Linse, Zurück…, 116). Taken together, these ideas do amount to something approaching an ecological vision, though it would perhaps be overstating the case to say that that deep green ecology, or ecologism, existed in Germany in the 1920s. Nevertheless, we do here certainly see a recognisable analysis of environmental impact, and we do have recognition of the finite nature of resources. Moreover, there is a prescription for change which involves small-scale communities and the use of small-scale technology to renew resources as much as possible. Although there is no clear prediction of apocalypse if change is not made, these people were certainly holistic in their approach, and there is no doubting the commitment to nature. Perhaps their most significant deficiency was support: they remained marginalized, despite persisting in their
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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 bürgerliche Naturschutzbewegung’, in F.-J. Brüggemeier and T. Rommelspacher (Hg.), Besiegte Natur. Geschicht der Umwelt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1989), 143–57. Blühdorn, I. ‘Campaigning for Nature: Environmental Pressure Groups in Germany and Generational Change in the Ecology Movement’, in I. Blühdorn, F. Krause, T. Scharf (eds.), The Green Agenda. Environmental Politics and Policy in Germany (Keele, 1995), 167–220. 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, 1900–1920 (Hanover (NH), 1986). Hayward, T. Ecological Thought. An Introduction (Cambridge, 1994). Hermand, J. Grüne Utopien in Deutschland. Zur Geschichte des ökologischen Bewußtseins (Frankfurt aM, 1991). Klages, L. Mensch und Erde: zehn Abhandlungen (Stuttgart: Kröner Verlag, 1956). Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution (London, Penguin, 1972). Linse, U. Ökopax und Anarchie: Eine Geschichte der ökologischen Bewegungen in Deutschland (Munich, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986). —— Zurück, 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 Ästhetik und Ökologie’, in J. Hermand (Hg.), Mit den Bäumen sterben die Menschen. Zur Kulturgeschichte der Ökologie (Köln, 1993), 149–82. Vandermeer, J. ‘The Evolution of Mutualism’, in B. Shorrocks (ed) Evolutionary Biology (Oxford, Blackwell, 1984), 221–30. 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), 55–73.
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SABINE EGGER
The Roots of the East German ‘Green’ Movement in the 1950s
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 Goethe’s pantheism, or ecological arguments developed in the nineteenth century. I would like to follow Raymond Dominick’s 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
See Becker, Bruckmeier, and Goodbody for an overview. In The Eclipse of Reason (1947), Horkheimer (4) defines the concept of ‘instrumental’ or ‘subjective reason’ as thought which has relinquished its capacity to reflect on the whole of human existence. He finds this exemplified in modern scientific-technical discourse, which he describes as a utilitarian way of thinking, ultimately concerned with the subject’s self-preservation in the short term. ‘Instrumental reason’, albeit less clearly defined, is at the heart of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung, jointly written between 1941 and 1944, a critique of the instrumental foreshortening of the substantive concept of reason, advanced by representatives of the European Enlightenment and German idealism, with the rise of modern positivism. For a critical discussion of Horkheimer and Adorno, see Wolin (23–61).
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cultural potential of Fortschrittskritik in the context of East German culture. Until the 1970s, the equation of scientific-technological and economic progress with social and humanitarian development dominated public discourse in the GDR. Despite growing concern among GDR citizens, as the negative effects of an increasing industrial production on the environment became apparent, there was no public debate on the interrelationship between ‘progress’ and the destruction of the environment. As late as 1987, the government saw a further acceleration of technological progress as the only solution for environmental problems. This is illustrated by state philosophers Wolfgang Eichhorn, Erich Hahn and Alfred Kosing’s keynote paper ‘Die wissenschaftlich-technische Revolution – technischer Selbstzweck oder Realisierung sozialer Zwecke?’ presented during the VIIth GDR Congress of Philosophy in 1987, in which the authors reiterate the government view of the merits of technological progress.3 It was only in the 1980s that the discussion of ecological and peace issues, first developing in groups within the Protestant Church, reached a wider public. The related issues of ‘peace’ and ‘environment’ were even to be a uniting factor between different oppositional groups in the Leipzig protest marches in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the communist system (Brand, 10). In literature, the dominant definition of progress, instrumental reason and anthropocentrism were much earlier identified as a cause of environmental destruction that might eventually result in the destruction of human life. This is expressed in poems by Sarah Kirsch, Günter Kunert and other East German poets in the 1960s – and then becomes a prominent topic in apocalyptic writing of the 1970s and 80s – but it is given expression even earlier, in the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski and Peter Huchel in the 1950s. Unlike the GDR environmental movement of the 1970s and 80s, Bobrowski, Huchel and their contemporaries did not set out to fundamentally change the dominant culture and its institutions. They did not participate in a counter-culture which, according to von Dirke’s definition, ‘challenge[s] the hegemonic 3
Published in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 1 (1988), 11–18, quoted in Schenkel (51).
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culture with a holistic approach, negating all of its values and traditions and struggling for radical and comprehensive change’ (von Dirke, 4). But in the absence of an open public debate on environmental, as well as other social and political issues in the GDR, poetry functioned as an alternative discourse to official ideology.4 It could be said, therefore, that the critical discourse on progress in the nature poetry of the 1950s had an emancipatory function in the context of GDR culture, despite this genre’s otherwise non-political or even conservative nature.5 The belief in the mutual interdependence of scientific, technological, economic and political progress is central to orthodox Marxist theory and Marxism-Leninism. Any criticism of this belief therefore had much further reaching cultural and political implications in the GDR than, for example, in West Germany. Marx had demanded that progress should be the fundamental principle of a socialist state’s constitution (Marx and Engels, Werke, 259). Marxist theory interprets history as social, economic and humanitarian progress from non-equal forms of societies, through capitalism and socialism, to the ideal of a classless communist society, in which the individual as a collective being will have achieved complete emancipation and self-fulfilment. Historical progress in a post-revolutionary Soviet-type society is, according to Marxism-Leninism, a linear and objectively determined process. The development towards a communist society, however, demands an increasing degree of control over the social and physical environment. Economic progress can only be achieved through the rational use of natural resources.6 External nature, in Marxist theory, has therefore no ‘intrinsic’ value except as the object of human work and of the material for the survival of the human being. While Marx had actually proposed the harmony of man and nature in a truly 4 5
6
My argument is based on Foucault’s theory of discourse, as outlined in The Archeology of Knowledge. Herzinger and Preußer (209), as well as Joppke, have claimed that the German tradition of ‘zivilisationskritischen, antiwestlichen, unpolitischen und utopischen Denkens’ which they detect in GDR and contemporary eastern German culture is by definition not emancipatory. Gorz (48ff.) even defines rationalisation, such as evident in the scientific control of nature, as the underlying principle of communism.
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communist society in his early writings, the later Marx, as well as Marxism-Leninism, discarded this concept and replaced it with the idea that the human being defines himself ‘against’ nature, through working on nature and transforming it into different objects for his use.7 Soviet-type of societies are dominated by a ‘monosemic’ discourse and unified by a shared goal: the realisation of communism through progress (Zima, 78). The dominant discourse in the GDR was monosemic in that it sought to prohibit any form of ambiguity. Official socialist norms were enacted through a binary system that juxtaposed ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘anti-Enlightenment’ values. AntiEnlightenment modes of thinking, i.e. subjective, non-rational, emotional modes, were considered to be the negative side of the equation and coded as ‘irrational’, ‘bourgeois-individualist’, ‘reactionary’, or even ‘fascist’ (Bathrick, 15–16). The Enlightenment ideal of progress, as a shared goal, particularly with regard to increasing economic performance to satisfy people’s material needs, served as a structurally integrating principle in the GDR. T. H. Rigby describes socialist societies in general as ‘mono-organisational’: they are complex hierarchical systems, centrally integrated by the Communist Party, and less determined by a set of formal rules, as is the case in a democratic society, than by the realisation of shared material goals (Rigby, 12). ‘Latenter Fortschrittsglaube’ was thus used to integrate the political goals of the party with the diversity of values and needs in society (Beck, 324). As long as the majority of the population believed in the potential benefits of continuing technological and economic progress for the fulfilment of their wishes, the idea of progress was able to integrate a broad spectrum of interests and values. It is worth stressing that the principles of consumerism and economic growth were far from absent in the SED’s planned economy. One SED slogan of the 1970s read ‘Was leisten, um sich was leisten zu können’ (Rüddenklau, 44). The level of consumption in West Germany was the ideal that the majority of East Germans
7
See Marx and Engels, Studienausgabe (101), for an example. For an analysis of the relationship between man and nature in Marx, see Haupt (209).
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wanted to achieve.8 Their realisation that this level of consumption and growth remained out of reach lead to a growing sense of disillusionment, particularly in the 1980s. Criticism of the idea of progress itself and the rational control of the natural environment, as voiced by the environmental movement, fell on open ears, and proved detrimental for the ruling party. It undermined the fundamentals of the dominant discourse, leaving the regime open to a whole range of challenges.9 Advances in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, as publicised in the wake of the Geneva Conference on Nuclear Energy in 1955, marked a new level of man’s technological ability to manipulate nature. The response of GDR scientists and politicians was largely positive (Stokes, 9). But more sceptical commentaries followed, arguing that the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the use of the new technology for the development of nuclear weapons could not be separated. In 1957, several scientific journals reported that flocks of migrating birds had disappeared after crossing areas in Nevada and the Bikini Atoll in which atomic bombs had been tested.10 Bobrowski’s poem ‘Vogelstraßen 1957’ (1957) responds to this event. There was no public outcry in the GDR, comparable to the ‘Kampf dem Atomtod’ campaign in West Germany against Adenauer’s nuclear policy, but poems such as Bobrowski’s and Stephan Hermlin’s ‘Die Vögel und der Test’ (1957) point to the destructive potential of 8 9
10
See Rüddenklau (44–5), Wensierski and Büscher (122–3), 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 (1–5) and Billington (18–20) for definitions of sub- and counter-cultures (1–5), as well as an overview of the West German environmental movement (von Dirke, 183– 208). ‘Zugvögel fürchten Atombomben’, Das Gewissen, 8 (1956), 2, and reprints of two Japanese publications in Die Vogelwarte, 76 (1955), 36, quoted in Heukenkamp (806).
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science and technology, the ultimate manifestation of which they see in the atomic bomb (Hermlin, 11). Bobrowski’s poem, stresses the mutual dependence of human beings and the natural world. The atomic explosion, described in part II, kills the migrating birds, which represent non-human nature, and it also entails the end of songs, which signify human culture. I Im Regen schlief ich, im Regenröhricht erwacht ich. Eh es blättert, seh ich den nahen Mond, hör ich den Zugvogelschrei, den Lufterschüttrer, den weißen Schrei, der die Luft zerschlägt. Schnell und scharf wie die Wölfe wittern, I Schwester, lausch! Wäinemmöinen singt durch den Wind, wirft aus Schnee den Fittich auf deine Schulter, wir treiben flügelnd im Liederwind – II aber unter großen Himmeln allein, verlassne Straßen der gefiederten Heere, die vergingen – schlafend auf den Winden fuhren sie, eine neue Sonne flammte, die Lohe schlug herauf, sie brannten im Aschenbaum. Dort sind aufgeflogen unsere Lieder auch. Schwester, deine Hände bleichen, du schläfst mir im Dunkel fort – wann soll ich singen der Vögel Angst? (Gesammelte Werke, Band 1, 114–115)
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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 Wainemöinen, 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’. Bobrowski’s poem questions scientific progress from an ethical point of view. Man has left his place in the cosmic order and put himself in God’s place, ruling, however, by instrumental reason. The result is the destruction of all life. Johannes Bobrowski’s 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
In an interview, he describes the central theme of his writing as ‘Die Deutschen und der europäische Osten […] Eine lange Geschichte aus Unglück und Verschuldung’ (Bobrowski, ‘Mein Thema’, in Selbstzeugnisse, 23).
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of nature, and recent acts in history, the original symbiotic relationship between the human and non-human natural world has been shattered. While Bobrowski draws for his imagery and portrayal of history on mythology, his ethical point of view is firmly based on his Lutheran faith – with regard to the idea of God’s creation, underlying ‘Vogelstraßen’, and the concepts of guilt, punishment and hope, evident throughout his poetry.12 Huchel’s post-war poetry is also dominated by images of a nature bearing the traces of human history. The ‘darkness’ of his increasingly hermetic verse arises from the perceived loss of an adequate language in a world devoid of meaning; it is a result of the disturbed communication with the sign system of the natural world, and with society. Huchel’s landscapes are symbolic – of history and existential fears – but nevertheless informed by an ecological point of view in that they stress the inter-dependence of all life. In ‘Psalm’, first published 1963 in Chausseen Chausseen, but written in the late 1950s, Huchel comments on the destructive course of human history. The concluding lines of the poem point to a humanity caught in the limited universe of instrumental reason, eagerly pursuing short-term goals, while their narrow focus makes them blind to the fact that this will eventually lead to their self-destruction. Daß aus dem Samen des Menschen Kein Mensch Und aus dem Samen des Ölbaums Kein Ölbaum Werde, Es ist zu messen Mit der Elle des Todes. Die da wohnen Unter der Erde In einer Kugel aus Zement, Ihre Stärke gleicht Dem Halm Im peitschenden Schnee.
12
On the religious dimension of Bobrowski’s work, see von Heydebrand.
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Die Öde wird Geschichte. Termiten schreiben sie Mit ihren Zangen In den Sand. Und nicht erforscht wird werden Ein Geschlecht, Eifrig bemüht, Sich zu vernichten. (Gesammelte Werke, Band 1, 157)
The image in the second stanza of human beings sheltering vainly in a concrete bunker beneath the surface of an earth turned into a desert evokes a post-nuclear scene. Termites are the only survivors and chroniclers; they will write an account of human history with their pincers in the sand, as is envisaged in the third stanza. Huchel reverses the subject-object relationship between human beings and animals as representatives of the natural world. Human scientists will, this time, not be able to do their research, as is predicted in the last stanza. Nonhuman nature will interpret the events from a different point of view. This non-human perspective proves superior; it is the lasting one. Humankind is seen as part of a larger natural world; the laws of the latter are superior to human science. Human progressive history is subordinated under the cyclical time of nature – implied by the image of the seed at the beginning of the poem, and by the fact that termites survive the man-made apocalypse, whereas humanity does not. Human hubris, which manifests itself in the failure of mankind to understand its place in the cosmic order of things, i.e. to recognise that ‘Ihre Stärke gleicht / Dem Halm / Im peitschenden Schnee’, is punished. These poems are representative of both poets’ work, in that they put forward a model of history based on cyclical natural time, rather than linear progress. Their poetic approach re-instates nature as a subject, instead of reducing it to an object. They thus participate in a discourse which subverts the official discourse as outlined earlier, and anticipate themes and perspectives which inform Günter Kunert’s ‘Warngedichte’, the nature poetry of Sarah Kirsch, the apocalyptic texts of Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, Volker Braun and others, the ‘Ecopoetry’ of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the non-literary
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discourse of the unofficial ‘green’ movement. In this respect, Bobrowski’s and Huchel’s poetry occupies an exceptional place in the GDR literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Most of their contemporaries produced ‘Aufbauliteratur’, i.e., literature participating in the ‘construction of socialism’, such as the poems of Georg Maurer or Johannes R. Becher. Their poetic landscapes represent social harmony in the Marxist sense of a humanised nature.13 In contrast to this, Bobrowski’s and Huchel’s critique of progress is based on a system consisting, to varying degrees, of Christian, humanist and ecological values14 – the same value system underlying the ‘wertkonservativen’ but politically emancipatory discourse of the later ‘green’ movement in the GDR.15 While the poems discussed were exceptional in the context of GDR culture, they were paradigmatic for a significant strain in contemporary West German and other German-speaking literary and non-literary writing. These texts, often nuclear dystopias, envisaged the destruction of humankind caused by the fatal illusion that man is placed outside and above nature. The experience of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and the fear of a nuclear Third World War, the latter largely provoked by Adenauer’s rearmament policy, resulted in a pessimistic view of technological progress propelled forward by 13
14
15
Agricultural and industrial scenes in ‘Aufbauliteratur’ tend to depict a productive – subject–object – relationship between workers and nature. Further examples include Hans Marchwitzka’s 1950s image of the transformation of nature into a new industrial landscape for the new socialist human being – ‘So wie unter ihren Händen die Hochöfen und die ersten Wohnhäuser von Stalinstadt wachsen, wie aus dem einstigen Wald eine klirrende und funkensprühende Schmiede wird, so festigt sich in ihnen immer mehr die Erkenntnis, daß sie Befreite sind, daß es keine Knechte und Herren mehr gibt’ (Schmid, 20) – but also Huchel’s early unfinished cycle ‘Das Gesetz’ (1950), in Gesammelte Werke, Band 1, 288–9, or Volker Braun’s ‘Durchgearbeitete Landschaft’ in Gegen die symmetrische Welt. Gedichte (1974). While their work is far from ‘Ecopoetry’, it is ‘ecological’ in the broadest philosophical sense, in that its assessment of man’s relationship with nature is defined by a holistic perspective which looks at the world as an ensemble of inter-dependent systems. For a definition of the term see Egyptien (17). This refers to Jürgen Wüst’s (40–4) contrasting of Erhard Eppler’s (254) term ‘wertkonservativ’ with the politically conservative ‘strukturkonservativ’, the former describing an attitude combining ‘traditional’ Christian and humanist values and progressive democratic politics.
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instrumental reason without the balancing force of an ethical framework. Examples include Reinhard Demoll’s Die Ketten des Prometheus (1952), Anton Böhm’s Epoche des Teufels (1955), and the völkisch-regressive novel Tanz mit dem Teufel (1958) by the Austrian Günter Schwab.16 They differ in their proximity to biologist or völkisch ideas, but share – also with Huchel and Bobrowski – a view of technological progress as a Faustian or demonic, ungodly aberration. While this view pertained to modern Western societies in general, as it did in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung, written in the 1940s, it seemed to apply to an even greater extent, to the – East and West – German context after the historical experience of a totalitarian regime that represented a hybrid of traditional forms of authoritarian rule with advanced technological means of domination and control. In the GDR of the 1950s and 60s, this critical discourse was restricted to few marginal voices in literature, philosophy and science. The official peace discourse, spearheaded by the East German government, promoted ‘armed peace’, and maintained that the only means of preventing conflict was the ‘all-round strengthening of socialism’, which, as Peter Wensierski points out, ‘implied primarily the population work ever more productively in order to develop an economically strong state’ (Wensierski, 80). There was no organised alternative movement. Dissenting voices were those of individuals who expressed their deep scepticism with regard to the official definition of progress on a metaphysical and, apparently, non-political level, and were therefore not regarded as threatening by the government. It must be added, however, that Peter Huchel’s collection of poems Chausseen Chausseen, including ‘Psalm’, was not published in the GDR, and that he lost his position as editor of the literary journal Sinn und Form in 1963 due to his non-conformist ideas of literature and culture. Bobrowski, on the other hand, was able to publish his work in the GDR until his death in 1965. One of the reasons for this might have been that he was awarded the literary prize of the Gruppe 47 in 1962, and had attracted considerate attention in the West. Other voices, whose questioning of progress included 16
For an overview see Dominick (148–60) or Hermand (118–28).
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explicit criticism of SED policies, were suppressed, as was the philosopher Ernst Bloch’s, whose Prinzip Hoffnung (1954–9) presented a vision of ‘reconciliation’ between man and nature. He was forced to resign from his professorship at the University of Leipzig in 1957. The philosopher and political theorist Wolfgang Harich, who suggested a limitation of consumption in 1956, and Rudolf Bahro’s to some extent ecological considerations in Die Alternative (1977), shared a similar fate, as Wensierski and Büscher point out (47–8). Until the late 1970s, the SED effectively suppressed such alternative voices, thus severely restricting their impact on the emerging environmental movement in the GDR. I would like to claim, however, that literature did exert some, if limited, influence despite repressive SED policies. Until the late 1960s, there was little censorship of literary texts dealing with environmental themes. Until the Biermann affair in 1976, poets in particular had, more freedom than prose writers to treat sensitive issues, probably due to the non-utilitarian tradition of the genre and its limited readership. Poetry readings, often held in churches, were later to be a feature of the emerging environmental movement in the GDR (Goodbody, ‘Deutsche Ökolyrik’, 392). Both Bobrowski and Huchel played a role in this context. They had a sizeable readership, and younger writers who were widely read in alternative circles, such as Wolf Biermann or Sarah Kirsch, referred to them as constituting important influences on their work and continued central aspects of their discourse.17 This also applies to Volker Braun who placed his poem ‘Die Vögel und der Test 2’ (1984) directly in the tradition of Hermlin’s and Bobrowski’s poems of the 1950s, by his use of imagery and intertextual references. Günter Kunert summed up his own criticism of the dominant definition of progress, which was to inform his poetry from the mid-1960s, in his much-debated response to a survey carried out by the GDR student magazine Forum in 1966 about the role of poetry in a socialist society undergoing a ‘wissenschaftlich-technische Revolution’ (Bahro, 17). He stated that 17
According to Nijssen (388–90), Biermann dedicated his song ‘Ermutigung’ to Peter Huchel. Bobrowski’s writing had a significant impact on Sarah Kirsch’s work, particularly with regard to her approach to nature and history, as Mabee shows (201–38).
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technological advances could not be equated with social and humanitarian progress. On the contrary, Auschwitz and Hiroshima were, in his view, caused by a worldview exclusively based on instrumental reason. The East German peace and environmental movements, which only came to wider public attention in the 1980s, were ‘closely linked with regard to discourse and membership’ – just as war and the destruction of the environment had been seen as problems stemming from the same root in the alternative discourse of the 1950s (Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 122). The peace movement emerged mainly from the campaign of conscientious objectors to military service, which had begun in the early 1960s, and in opposition to the premilitary training that was introduced into school syllabuses in 1978.18 Independent peace activists remained a small but growing minority, operating largely in scattered local initiatives under the ‘Patronat’ of the Protestant Church, (Bruckmeier, 13). Although the threat of nuclear war became a major concern in the movement in the 1980s, its members saw this – in contrast to the ‘official’ peace movement of the GDR government and sections of the western peace movement – as just one issue among many. Thus the unofficial movement in the GDR defined ‘peace’ and its preconditions very broadly, and attended to wider social, environmental, Third World and gender issues. Just as priests of the Protestant Church provided groups with meeting places and other resources through their ‘Offene Arbeit’, so Lutheran thought also provided the umbrella for the discussion of these various issues. While the movement was made up of a range of political and ethical viewpoints, with a strong representation of reformist socialism, Christian thought served as an ethical framework for the debate (Bruckmeier, 27). 19 Engagement for peace and environmental concerns were both seen as aspects of the individual’s responsibility to preserve God’s creation. Members of GDR environmental groups were, according to Dieter Rink, particularly willing to set a personal example, influenced by Christian values of asceticism and renun18 19
See Rüddenklau (28–37) and Becker (223–6) for an account of the development of the GDR peace movement. Also compare Hoffmann (166–8).
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ciation (Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 122). This inter-relatedness of environmental, peace and Third World issues, within a Christian discourse, is apparent in the design of the cover page of Die Erde ist zu retten, a small booklet, published in 1980 by the Kirchliche Forschungsheim in Wittenberg. According to Christian Halbrock, Die Erde ist zu retten was of great significance for the environmental movement’s development, since it contained for the first time information illuminating the ecological crisis in the GDR, which had previously been concealed by the government (Halbrock, 44). The publication of this information gave huge momentum to an ecological debate that had been sparked off within Church groups after the report of the Club of Rome about the limits of economic growth in 1972. The years that followed saw the emergence of a growing number of environmental groups with a workable grassroots structure and loose networks, mostly from within peace groups, in Schwerin, Leipzig and Berlin. They organised seminars, tree plantings, poetry readings and concerts. Attempts to reach a wider public through leaflets, information stalls or demonstrations were largely suppressed by police and Staatssicherheit and ignored by the GDR media. In October 1983, for example, three students were arrested for exhibiting dying trees from the Erzgebirge in a church in Potsdam (Goodbody, ‘Es stirbt das Land’, 333). Others were sentenced to several months in prison for similar actions. Many members of alternative groups left the GDR to escape constant state repression (Halbrock, 48–9). Compared to the total population, they had a relatively small membership, and lacked both funding and professional structures (Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 123). Nevertheless, they represented a politicised counter-culture with self-determined, albeit basic, organisational structures. Thematically, environmental groups focused on criticising industrial and technological development, including its negative impact on the natural environment and the actual political and ecological situation in the GDR. Unlike proponents of the alternative discourse in the 1950s and early 60s, they interpreted their moral responsibility in a political way and attempted to influence the public and political sphere. The ‘Friedensund Umweltkreis’ of the Pfarr- und Glaubensgemeinde BerlinLichtenberg, for example, which was founded in 1983, defined as its
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main task the collection and publication of data on ecological and political grievances in the GDR, in order to encourage a public discourse on issues otherwise suppressed by the state. Its members aimed for ‘das Durchbrechen des allgegenwärtigen Schweigens’ by debating topics such as the SED’s energy policy, particularly lignitemining and plans for the long-term expansion of nuclear power, the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, or the dying of forests in the GDR (Halbrock, ‘Beginn’, 50). The movement’s political weight was further increased with the founding of the first ‘Umweltbibliothek’ in Berlin in the 1980s. It served as a national focus for the ‘green’ movement, publishing a regular newsletter with the title Umweltblätter, as well as several issues of the dissident journal Grenzfall, which shows again the proximity of ecological, peace and human rights issues in the movement. Under increasing pressure from abroad and from the unofficial movement, a new official ecological association had been founded in 1980, the ‘Gesellschaft für Natur und Umwelt’ (GNU) with a membership of 40,000–50,000. Its role remained ambivalent, however, since it tried to maintain a balance between co-operation with church-based groups and loyalty to the state. By 1988 there were some 150 alternative, church-based, ecological groups, and a co-ordinating organisation, the ‘Grünökologischer Bund – die Arche’ was founded in Berlin (Goodbody, ‘Es stirbt das Land’, 332–4). Dissatisfaction with the environmental situation was one of the reasons why East German citizens took to the streets in their thousands in October 1989 and it continued to play a major role in the March 1990 elections.20 Surveys, cited by Goodbody, show that the environment took second place only to peace as a political concern (Goodbody, ‘Es stirbt das Land’, 334). This sudden change in the public perception of ‘progress’ can be explained through disappointment with the GDR government’s failure to achieve a standard of living comparable to that of the West, as well as through the level and visibility of environmental destruction and the government’s continuing efforts to maintain secrecy about pollution levels. The SED state was held directly responsible for the environmental problems 20
See Brand (10) and Pollack (167).
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caused by lignite-mining and chemical industries. The introduction of a new, environmentally friendly economic policy was one of the civil right movement’s primary and most urgent goals (Jordan, 240). Various aspects of the environmental situation were articulated at the mass demonstrations, especially in the severely polluted industrial areas in the south of the GDR. Environmental concern proved to be a uniting factor between different oppositional groups, it helped to bring people into the churches initially, and later out onto the streets – particularly in environmental disaster areas such as Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt (Jordan, 241). Calls for an ‘ökologische Wende’ served, as Dieter Rink argues, as a vehicle for a whole range of expectations concerning different areas of life. There was an overwhelming feeling among the wider public that ‘from now on, everything will be different and better’, which was, however, not based on first-hand knowledge of the realities of the new free market system (Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 125). In November 1989, members of Arche, of the official GNU, and activists of individual church-related environmental groups founded the ‘Grüne Partei der DDR’, based on the West German model. In March 1990, the Party won a number of seats in the first freely elected East German parliament, and in December 1990 it was represented in the allGerman Bundestag, as part of ‘Bündnis 90/Die Grünen’. Other GDR citizen’s action groups joined to form an independent association of ecological groups, which later became the ‘Grüne Liga’.21 This marked a further development in the movement’s legalisation and institutionalisation. In comparison to other areas of life, environmental problems have considerably declined in importance in eastern Germany. Since the early 1990s, economic concerns, in the context of rising unemployment, have been regarded as far more pressing. According to Dieter Rink and Oliver Geden, the ecological reformism fundamental to the movement until the Wende has, during the last decade, come under pressure in the anti-nuclear power sector from left-wing radical, anti-globalisation forces, and in other areas has lost 21
See Jordan (240–60) for a detailed account of the transformation of eastern Germany’s political landscape in the 1980s and 90s.
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ground to conservative, and even regressive, trends (Geden, 177; Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 126–31).22 Particularly striking is, in their view, the widespread lack of emancipatory, political ecology. Instead, there now seems to be a strong emphasis on traditional conservation, which is increasingly associated with Heimatschutz. Since the early 1990s, a considerable number of ecological villages have been established in eastern Germany. A well-known example, singled out by Rink, is ‘LebensGut Pommritz’ in Saxony, which is run on the basis of subsistence economy ideas developed by Rudolf Bahro in Logik der Rettung (1990). The foundation of this community owes much to support from Kurt Biedenkopf and subsidies provided by the Bundesland Saxony (Rink, ‘Institutionalization’, 129). Pommritz is one focal point within a growing network of ‘new communities’, complete with their own website.23 While they represent a further development of the commune projects of the 1970s, they are also informed by ideas of ‘deep ecology’ – a ‘spiritual ecology’ informed by aspects of natural religion and a biologist view of society (Jordan, 248). Jörg Bergstedt and Oliver Geden have warned that even politically right-wing ideologies are now gaining ground via the reception of esotericism within the environmental movement, though this claim has been challenged by other authors (Bergstedt, 149–51; Geden, 176–7). After its move from cultural marginality and illegality to political and cultural centre-stage, the East German ‘green’ movement seems to have shifted back to a new kind of marginality and a rather regressive outlook. Since its emergence as a counter-cultural movement in the 1970s, it has combined the forces of reformist socialism, conservative conservationism, pragmatic environmentalism and radical ecologism. In the 1970s and 80s it had a conservative dimension, not in the sense that it applied the idea of an organically grown or God-given social order that could not be changed, but in that its – politically progressive – ecological reformism was rooted in Christian traditions, according to Eppler’s definition of ‘Wert-konservatismus’ (Eppler, 255). Until the 22 23
Heinze (32–9), 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).
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1990s, its views were largely based on a value system defined by a combination of scientific ecological insights and ‘alternative’ Christian values, following models such as St. Francis of Assisi or Albert Schweitzer in extending the sphere of moral concern to encompass animals and plants. This provides the main link to Huchel’s and Bobrowski’s discourse of the 1950s and 1960s: their critique of progress is based on a similar value system. The literary discourse in their poems differs, of course, in a number of respects from the later green counter-culture. Largely restricted to the specific medium of literature, it remained on the non-political level of Innerlichkeit, and so did not constitute a politicised counter-culture with a view to reform society. Secondly, it put forward a deeply sceptical view not merely of technological, but of historical progress as such. It was not informed by a utopian, in either political or conservationist terms, practical vision. Nevertheless, I would still argue that these poems had a potentially emancipatory function in the particular context of GDR culture in that they undermined the official discourse on progress and reinscribed it at the level of formal technique as well as content. They put forward, in a subjective, emotional mode, a different view of the relationship between man and nature, and thus participated in ‘loosening’ the dominant, monosemic discourse of the status quo, which eventually resulted in its gradual marginalisation. On the assumption that literature, like any other discourse, participates in generating collective meaning, the poetics of individual lyrical poets partake in changing such meaning by contributing to a gradual shift of cultural values – particularly in GDR-culture, where literature had a special function in providing a forum for the discussion of topics largely excluded from the mass media.
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Works Cited Bahro, R. ‘Wozu wir diesen Dichter brauchen’, Forum, 29 (1966), 17. Bathrick, D. ‘Die Zerstörung oder der Anfang von Vernunft? Lyrik und Naturbeherrschung in der DDR’, in Grimm, R., Hermand J. (Hg) Natur und Natürlichkeit: Stationen des Grünen in der deutschen Literatur, (Königsstein, Athenäum, 1981) 150–67. —— 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 Bewußtsein und Lebensalltag (Opladen, Leske und Budrich, 1990), 216–24. Bergstedt J., Agenda, Expo, Sponsoring – Recherchen im Naturschutzfilz (Frankfurt aM, IKO, 1998), 149–51. Billington, R. et al. Culture and Society: A Sociology of Culture (Basingstoke; London: Macmillan, 1991). Bobrowski, J. ‘Mein Thema’, in Bobrowski, J. Selbstzeugnisse und Beiträge über sein Werk, Hg. G. Rostin, E. Haufe, B. Leistner (Berlin (Ost), Union, 1975), 23. —— Johannes Bobrowski: Gesammelte Werke in 6 Bänden, Hg. E. Haufe (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998) Band 1. Brand, K.-W. ‘Massendemokratischer Aufbruch im Osten: Eine “Herausforderung für die NSB-Forschung”, Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 3, 2 (1990), 9–16. Braun, V. ‘Die Vögel und der Test 2’, Neue Deutsche Literatur, 2 (1984), 5. Bruckmeier, K. ‘Vorgeschichte und Enststehung der Bürgerbewegungen in der DDR’, in Haufe G., Bruckmeyer K. (Hg) Die Bürgerbewegungen in der DDR und in den ostdeutschen Bundesländern (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993), 9–28. Dominick, R. H. The Environmental Discourse in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871–1971 (Bloomington, IND, Indiana University Press, 1992). Egyptien, J. ‘Die Naturlyrik im Zeichen der Krise. Themen und Formen des ökologischen Gedichts seit 1970’, in Goodbody, A. (Hg) Literatur und Ökologie (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 11–40. Eppler, E. ‘Konservatismus und Ökologie in der Bundesrepublik. Thesen’, in Hennig, E., Saage R. (Hg) Konservatismus: eine Gefahr für die Freiheit? (München, Piper, 1983), 254–56. Foucault, M. The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. Sheridan Smith, A.M. (New York, Pantheon, 1972). Geden, O. Rechte Ökologie.Umweltschutz zwischen Emanzipation und Faschismus (Berlin, Elefanten Press, 1996). Goodbody, A. ‘Deutsche Ökolyrik: 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
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Change 1989–1990. German Unity and German Identity in Literary Perspective (Berne, Peter Lang, 1991), 373–400. —— ‘“Es stirbt das Land an seinen Zwecken.” Writers, the Environment and the Green Movement in the GDR’, German Life and Letters, 47, 3 (1994), 325–36. Gorz, A. Kritik der ökonomischen Vernunft. Sinnfragen am Ende der Arbeitsgesellschaft (Berlin (West), Rotbuch, 1989). Halbrock, C. ‘Beginn einer eigenständigen Umweltbewegung in der DDR’, in Rüddenklau W. (Hg) Störenfried, 43–50. Haupt, J. Natur und Lyrik: Naturbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1983). Heinze, H. ‘Natur im politisch-literarischen Zeitgespräch: Einige Tendenzen in der Naturdiskussion der 80er Jahre’, in Kreuzer, H. (Hg) Pluralismus und Postmodernismus: zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte der achziger und frühen neunziger Jahre in Deutschland (Frankfurt aM, Peter Lang, 1994), 27–46. Hermand, J. Grüne Utopien in Deutschland. Zur Geschichte des ökologischen Bewußtseins (Frankfurt aM, Fischer, 1991). Hermlin, S. ‘Die Vögel und der Test’, Sonntag, 35 (1957), 11. Herzinger, R., Preußer, H.-P. ‘Vom Äußersten zum Ersten. DDR-Literatur in der Tradition deutscher Zivilisationskritik’, in Arnold, H. L. (Hg) Literatur in der DDR. Rückblicke (München, Text und Kritik, 1991), 195–209. Heukenkamp, U. ‘Johannes Bobrowskis Gedicht “Vogelstraßen 1957”. Die zerbrochene Elegie’, Weimarer Beiträge, 33, 5 (1987), 803–14. Hoffmann, L. ‘Umweltschutz als ein Motiv der Bürgerrechtsbewegung in der DDR – erfüllte Erwartungen oder enttäuschte Hoffnungen?’, in Brickwedde, F. (Hg) Umweltschutz in Ostdeutschland und Osteuropa: Bilanz und Perspektiven (Osnabrück, Steinbacher, 1998), 161–70. Horkheimer, M. The Eclipse of Reason (New York, Seabury, 1974). Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T.W. Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt aM. Fischer, 1969). Huchel, P. Gesammelte Werke, Hg. A. Vieregg (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp), Band 1. Joppke, C. East German Dissidents and the Revolution of 1989: Social Movements in a Leninist Regime (New York, New York University Press, 1995). Klein, A., H.-J. Legrand, H. J., Leif, T. (Hg) Neue soziale Bewegungen: Impulse, Bilanzen und Perspektiven (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999). Mabee, B. ‘“I wash tears and sweat out of old moss”: Remembrance of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sarah Kirsch’, in Martin, E. (ed) Gender, Patriarchy and Fascism in the Third Reich: The Response of Women Writers (Detroit, MI, Wayne State University Press, 1993), 201–38. Marx, K., Engels, F. Werke (Berlin (Ost), Aufbau, 1969), Band 1. —— Studienausgabe, (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1966), Band 2. Nijssen, H. Der heimliche König. Leben und Werk von Peter Huchel (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1998). Pollack, D. ‘Wie alternativ waren die alternativen Gruppen in der DDR? Bemerkungen zu ihrem Verhältnis zu Sozialismus, Demokratie und deutscher Einheit’, in Klein et al (Hg) Neue soziale Bewegungen, 167–79.
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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. ‘Mobilisierungsschwäche, Latenz, Transformation oder Auflösung. Bilanz und Perspektive der Entwicklung (neuer) sozialer Bewegungen in OstDeutschland’, in Klein et al (Hg) Neue soziale Bewegungen, 180–98. —— (with Gerber, S.) ‘Institutionalization in Lieu of Mobilization: The Environmental Movement in Eastern Germany’, in Flam, H. (ed) Pink, Purple, Green. Women’s, Religious, Environmental and Gay/Lesbian Movements in Central Europe Today (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs, 2001), 120– 31. Rüddenklau, W. Störenfried. ddr-opposition 1986–1989. Mit Texten aus den ‘Umweltblättern’ (Berlin, Basisdruck, 1992). Schenkel, M. Fortschritts- und Modernitätskritik in der DDR-Literatur: Prosatexte der achziger Jahre (Tübingen, Stauffenberg, 1995). Schmid, K.-P. ‘Ausgerechnet Stahl. Wie das ehemalige DDR-Kombinat EKO Stahl überlebte’, 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), 389–450. Wensierski, P. ‘The New Politics of Détente 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., Büscher, 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). Wüst, J. Konservatismus und Ökologiebewegung. Eine Untersuchung im Spannungsfeld von Partei, Bewegung und Ideologie am Beispiel der ÖkologischDemokratischen Partei (ÖDP) (Frankfurt aM, IKO, 1993). Zima, P. ‘Der Mythos der Monosemie. Parteilichkeit und künstlerischer Standpunkt’, in Schmitt, H.-J. (Hg) Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaften: Einführung in die Theorie, Geschichte und Funktion der DDR-Literatur (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1975), 77–108.
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STEFAN BUSCH
Bluthochzeit mit Mutter Erde: Repression und Regression in der Blut-und-Boden-Literatur
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 Besitzverhältnisse gegen die voranschreitende Modernisierung agrarischer Strukturen zu verteidigen suchten. In dieser ideologischen Konstruktion stand die ‘praktische ökonomische Bedeutung’ der Begriffe im Vordergrund: ‘Das “Blut” war eben die bäuerliche 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 spätere Blut-und-Boden-Literatur anschließen konnte. Dazu gehören u.a. eine rigide Stadt/Land-Dichotomie, in der die Stadt für alles Böse und Zerstörerische stand, eine ‘weltanschauliche’ Antimoderne – die ästhetische Mittel der Moderne nicht grundsätzlich ausschloß1 – sowie nicht selten auch schon ein mehr oder weniger aggressiver Antisemitismus. In Wilhelm von Polenz’ Roman Der Büttnerbauer (1895) z.B. sind diese Elemente eng verbunden: Städtische Kapitalisten, darunter führend ein jüdischer Getreidehändler, nutzen die finanziellen Schwierigkeiten der Bauern, um diese mittels Wucherzinsen von ihren Höfen zu vertreiben und mit dem Boden zu spekulieren – ein ‘Schicksal’, das auch den in Finanzdingen naiven Büttnerbauern ereilt, der sich am Ende erhängt, während auf seinem einst ererbten Boden der Bau einer Fabrik begonnen hat.
1
Vgl. Mecklenburg, bes. 75–81.
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Als Reaktion auf die sozioökonomischen Entwicklungen des 19. Jahrhunderts kam es zur Ausbildung eines ‘internationalen modernen Primitivismus’, eines ‘internationalen Antimodernismus bekannter Autoren’ (Mecklenberg, 123), in welchem Kontext sich allerdings ‘der deutsche literarische Antimodernismus eher kümmerlich’ (Ketelsen, 26) ausnahm. Für das erste Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts hat die deutschsprachige Literatur im Genre der regionalen Literatur2 Autoren wie Hamsun, Ramuz, Kazantzakis oder D. H. Lawrence keine Namen von gleichem Rang an die Seite zu stellen. Es ist nicht nur eine Frage der Perspektive, daß die deutsche Literatur dieser Zeit im Schlagschatten des “Dritten Reiches” erscheint, denn kaum, daß der regionale Roman als Genre greifbar wurde, war er auch schon durch den “völkischen” und nationalsozialistischen Roman diskreditiert’ (Meck 19). Den Übergang zur rassistisch-imperialistischen Ideologie markierten Romane wie Hermann Löns’ Der Wehrwolf (1910) und Hermann Burtes Wiltfeber der ewige Deutsche (1912): Löns und Burte haben das von der ‘Heimatkunst’ popularisierte Genre geschickt benutzt, indem sie dessen agrarkonservatives durch das zukunftsträchtigere völkisch-nationalistische Weltbild ersetzten. Ihre beiden Romane sind symptomatisch für den bruchlosen Übergang von der ‘Heimatkunst’ zur ‘Blut-und-Boden’-Dichtung. (Mecklenberg, 100)
Am Blut der Fremden, das in einschlägigen Texten vergossen wird, ist nichts Besonderes, so daß es dem stets vorgängigen Anspruch der Deutschen, die auch in der kolonisierenden Vorwärtsbewegung immer nur ihre legitimen Ansprüche verteidigen, keinen Abbruch tun kann. Wenn jedoch deutsche Siedler bluten, bedeutet dies einen sakralen Akt, ein Opfer, das Land und Leute untrennbar vereint. Der propagandistische Wert solcher mystifizierenden Machwerke für die Nazis ist offensichtlich. Es gab jedoch eine weitere Variante der Blut-und-BodenLiteratur, die von der kollektiv-expansionistischen als individuellregressiv zu unterscheiden ist. Nicht Lebensraumerweiterung und die angeblich bedrohte Blutsreinheit des deutschen Volkskörpers waren hier das Thema, sondern in ihr imaginierten Individuen ihre 2
Zum Begriff vgl. die Einleitung bei Mecklenburg, Erzählte Provinz.
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pathologischen Wünsche, Erlösung durch Regression in den Leib von Mutter Erde zu finden. Das Blut, das da floß, war das eigene. In dieser Variante der Männerphantasien verströmten die Helden in einem Akt verquälter Mystik ganz besondere Säfte in die empfangsbereite mütterliche Erde. Mud! Mud! Glorious mud! Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. (M. Flanders, The Hippopotamus Song)
Die Bildlichkeit entsprechender Texte erinnert in vielem an jene in der von Klaus Theweleit analysierten Literatur der soldatischen Männer. Mit der entscheidenden Ausnahme der Mutter lösen Frauen hier wie dort Gefühle der Bedrohung und nicht selten gewalttätige Abwehrreaktionen aus. Die faschistischen Charaktere, deren Männerphantasien Theweleit herausarbeitete, mußten sich Frauen als eine Bedrohung ihres starrgepanzerten Ichs vom Leib halten. Ihr Glück fanden sie, wenn sie als unbewegte Beweger in der uniformierten Masse mitströmten. Der Wunsch nach Lockerung und Auflösung bewirkte dann elementare Metamorphosen. Die Phantasien malen aus, wie sich ganze Felsmassive verflüssigen und die Glut den kollektiven Schwellkörper zum Leben bringt: Das braune Heer, gefügt aus kantigen Quadern, Liegt wie ein Riesenleib erstarrt im Feld. Die Gruppenzwischenräume scheinen Adern, Die leer sind und von keinem Saft geschwellt. Da bricht der Fahnen vielgeteilte Reihe, Rot wie ein Lavastrom vulkanischer Glut, Herein, und füllt zur feierlichen Weihe Die hohlen Adern mit lebendigem Blut. Aufblüht der Leib, und reckt die braunen Glieder; Ins große Ganze fügt sich Teil um Teil, [... reimt auf Heil ... etc.].3
3
Anacker, H. Fahneneinmarsch Zum Parteitag 1933; zit. nach Schöne, 70.
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Den Heroen der Blubo-Literatur in ihrer individuell-regressiven Variante waren solche orgiastischen Auflösungen ins marschierende Kollektiv versperrt; sämtlich handelte es sich bei den Protagonisten um Einzelgänger. Auch sie fürchten die Frauen, und die gewaltsame Abwehr verrät, was auf dem Spiel steht. Völlig gegensätzlich jedoch sind die Empfindungen, welche die Berührung mit der Haut der Erde auslösen. Den soldatischen Männern ist nur der ‘Strom der Bewegung’ erlaubt, den sie, wie es in einem nationalsozialistischen Trivialroman heißt, ‘in ein einziges Bett lenkten’4. Außerhalb dieses Kanalisationssystems – in dem alles offen zu Tage liegen und nichts ein dem Blick entzogenes Innen verraten soll – wird die Berührung mit Flüssigem zu etwas Bedrohlichem. Der Feind ‘flutet’, wogegen nur Dammbau an den Rändern, mehr der Körper als der Staaten, hilft; alles Warme und Weiche, darunter Schlamm und Sumpf, droht mit Unterspülung und vermag panikartige Abwehr auszulösen. Dagegen ist in den Romanen vom Blut und vom Boden das Verhältnis zur feucht-weichen Erde alles andere als angstbesetzt. Das Waten im Sumpfwasser, das Kriechen im Moor gewährt das größtmögliche Glücksempfinden. So ist der ‘eiserne Möller’ aus Konrad Bestes Roman Das heidnische Dorf (1932) hart ‘gegen die Menschen, so hart wie gegen sich selbst’; von ihm ist nicht bekannt, daß er ‘es je über sich vermocht hätte, vertraute Zärtlichkeiten von sich zu geben’, und seine Frau ‘war ihm untertan, gehorchte dem kurzen Befehl seines Wortes’. Insoweit könnte der Eisenmann auch der soldatischen Literatur entstammen. Doch er ist auch ‘ein Kind des Moores’, diesem ist er innig verbunden, und immer ‘rief es ihn wieder, das mütterliche Moor’ (Beste, 9–13). Die Betrachtung der mit sexueller Bedeutung aufgeladenen Landschaftssymbolik zeigt, wie hier die zwischenmenschlichen Schwierigkeiten einer sexuell unterdrückten Gesellschaft lediglich in anderer Form wiederkehren. Sexualität und Erotik, in ihrer vollen Körperlichkeit und kommunikativen Funktion abgewehrt, wachsen sich in dem übergeordneten Naturkosmos zu jenem Monster aus, das der autoritäre Charakter ohnehin in seinem eigenen Innern als bedrohende ‘Natur’ 4
Zitiert nach Geyer-Ryan, 238.
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empfindet – nur daß er bei sich selbst unterdrücken muß, was er auf eine höhere Ebene projizieren darf. So kehrt die Sexualität als verdrängte Lust am Körper in den Symbolen des landschaftlich Körperhaften wieder (Kuppeln, Spalten, Höhlen, glitschiges Moor). (Schweizer, 251)
Fügt man diese Beobachtung zusammen mit Klaus Theweleits Erklärung, wie sich das krankhafte Verhältnis der soldatischen Männer zum eigenen und zu fremden Körpern herausbildete, so dürfte man den spezifischen Pathologien in der regressiv-individuellen Blutund-Boden-Literatur auf der Spur sein. Theweleit nahm an, daß es zur Verhärtung der Haut zum Körperpanzer kam, wenn die ‘überfließenden’ Körperflüssigkeiten des Säuglings bei der gesamten Umwelt, einschließlich der Mutter, auf Ekel und Abwehr stießen und dem Kind auf diese Weise ein negatives Körpergefühl vermittelt wurde. Diese totale Sauberkeitserziehung, die nicht zwischen ‘guten’ und ‘bösen’ Flüssigkeiten und Umgangsformen mit ihnen unterschied, führte dazu, daß ein solches Kind sich nicht aus der (unlustvollen) symbiotischen Verbindung mit der Mutter lösen können [wird], es wird, wenn es gewaltsam aus der Symbiose gerissen wird, sich erleben als angefüllt mit ‘bösen’ Flüssen und ohne Gefühl seiner eigenen Grenzen. Wo andere Menschen ihre Haut haben, wird ihm – unter bestimmten gesellschaftlichen Voraussetzungen – ein Panzer wachsen. (Theweleit, Bd. 1, 428.)
Diese Voraussetzungen waren in der wilheminischen Gesellschaft gegeben. Doch was geschah, wenn die Mutter eine Schwachstelle im umfassenden System der Negativierung des Körperempfindens darstellte? Daß die Mutter der sozialen Deformierung entkommen wäre, ist nicht anzunehmen. Aber gerade dann, wenn die Mutter die Trockenlegungsmachinerie mitbediente sowie diese gleichzeitig durch Restformen einer liebevollen Anerkennung der kindlichen Flüssigkeitsproduktion sabotierte, entstand möglicherweise ein Panzer, der eine verwundbare Stelle aufwies. Eine solche Konstellation von allgemeiner Abwehr und zumindest relativer Anerkennung seitens der Mutter führte potentiell dazu, daß für den erwachsenen Mann das Glück fließender Körperströme allein durch ihre Verbindung mit der Mutter ermöglicht und legitimiert war. Wie beim soldatischen Mann
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war der Austausch mit den Frauen versperrt, hingegen suchten die Männer, um deren Texte es hier geht, den körperlichen Kontakt mit Mutter Erde. Die Liebe zu ihr und ihren Strömen nutzte eine Lücke im System der Verbote. Das Inzestuöse des Vereinigungswunsches blieb aufgrund der symbolischen Ausdrucksform im Rahmen dessen, was als Kunst galt. Die Texte machen jedoch fortwährend deutlich, daß die Sehnsüchte auf diese Weise keine Erfüllung fanden, und diese unaufgelöste Spannung zwischen den Wünschen der Körper und der Symbolik des Vereinigungsversuchs bewirkte die Tendenz zum Gewalttätigen und Autodestruktiven, die in den Texten zu beobachten ist. Die vorliegenden Überlegungen erheben nicht den Anspruch, mehr als nur erste Vermutungen zu sein. Auch wäre ein wesentlich größerer Korpus von literarischen und autobiographischen Texten von Blut-und-Boden-Autoren notwendig, um zu verläßlicheren Aussagen kommen zu können. Auf der Basis dieser vorläufigen Annahmen wird jedoch das Verhalten, das die männlichen Protagonisten der BluboTexte in großer Konstanz aufweisen, in seiner Nähe zu und seiner Verschiedenheit von jenem der soldatischen Männer erklärbar. Für die um die Volksgesundheit ringenden nationalsozialistischen Literaturwissenschaftler mußte gesund gewesen sein, wer Liebe zu deutscher Heimat und Natur bewiesen hatte. So galt Gustav Frenssen als ‘ein Stück ursprünglichen Germanentums’, als ‘ein ganz mächtiger 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 Sexualität. Auch in dieser Hinsicht ging Frenssen, der mit seinem Heimatroman Jörn Uhl (1901) seinerzeit häufig über die Buddenbrooks gestellt wurde, den Vertretern des Genres voran.5 Seine Romane sind durchzogen von einem Sauberkeitsfanatismus, und dieser hat deutlich ‘neurotische Züge, die mit seiner sonderbaren Stellung zum Komplex Liebe, Sexualität, Frau zusammenhängen dürften’ (Mecklenburg 121). Seiner Glorifizierung im NS-Staat widersprach er selbst in seinem Lebensbericht (1940). Gleich im zweiten Satz bekannte Frenssen dort mit verschämter 5
Zu Jörn Uhl vgl. Ketelsen, 148–71.
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Offenheit, daß er ‘mit [sich] selber und mit der Welt allerlei Schwierigkeiten gehabt habe’6. Dies darf als Untertreibung gelten, denn tatsächlich wurde er sein Leben lang von mangelndem Selbstbewußtsein und Sexualneurosen geplagt, und in seiner Jugend hatten ihn Suizidvorstellungen verfolgt. Die im Lebensbericht beschriebene Vision, ‘daß unser Volk als erstes im Abendland [...] den Quell des Lebens, Sinnlichkeit und Zeugung, reinige’ (L, 308), verweist wie die Phrasen von einer ‘sauberste[n] Redlichkeit’ (L, 21) und ‘natürlichen Sauberkeit’ (L, 42) auf Reinigungszwänge, die ausgelöst werden von der Vorstellung, alle Körper- und Sinnlichkeit sei schmutzig. Es klingt allzu bemüht, wenn Frenssen rückblickend betonte, er mache sich ‘wegen [s]einer Sinnlichkeit’ (L, 82) durchaus keine Vorwürfe und sei sehr froh, daß er als junger Mann ‘die Natur und ihr größtes Wunder, das Weib’, (L, 82) gesucht und, angeblich, genossen habe. Als Teil der Schöpfung entspreche solcher Naturgenuß dem Willen Gottes, denn alle Menschen seien ‘Gottes Gemächte’, leider jedoch ‘Gottes verunglückte Gemächte’ (L, 42). Von den Beziehungen der soldatischen Männer zu Frauen schrieb Klaus Theweleit, es habe sich bestenfalls um ‘Serenade[n] der Beziehungslosigkeit’7 gehandelt. Bei Frenssen ist die Unfähigkeit zur Nähe an der Überhöhung der Frau zum Naturwunder abzulesen – die Bezeichnung ‘Weib’ impliziert bezeichnenderweise gleichzeitig Herabsetzung sowie, durch den Anklang ans Bibeldeutsch, Distanzierung durch Überhöhung. Wo es unumgänglich wird, Frauen unterhalb der metaphysischen Sphäre wahrzunehmen, und ihre Körperlichkeit nicht mehr zu ignorieren ist, bedeuten sie eine Bedrohung, auf die mit als Züchtigung – der Frauen und/oder des eigenen Körpers – deklarierter Gewalt reagiert wird. Die gefürchtete Sexualität im eigenen Innern fand durch Übertragung auf die Natur ein legitimes, konventionell als ‘rein’ geltendes Objekt. Von Sublimierung kann dabei schon aufgrund der häufigen Drastik der Bildlichkeit kaum die Rede sein. So heißt es etwa in Friedrich Ludwig Barthels Gedicht Von Männern und Müttern: ‘Männer sind immer die Gleichen und immer liegen die Äcker / 6 7
Frenssen, Lebensbericht, 1. Im folgenden im laufenden Text zitiert als L. Theweleit, Bd. 1, 17.
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Breithin und dulden den Pflug’.8 Und Hermann Stehr wußte, daß ‘der Mensch des Volkes’ durch ‘Lockerungen seines Innern [...] manchmal hart an den Rand mancher Ausschreitungen’ gebracht wird, doch diese Gefahr ‘durch ein inniges, fast brünstiges Verhältnis zur Scholle’ zu meistern versteht. Den Ursprung solcher verquält-verquerer Sexualität sah Max Horkheimer in den durch die Moral der ‘bürgerlichen Männergesellschaft’ geprägten Mutter-Sohn-Beziehungen. Aus diesen habe ‘jedes sinnliche Moment gebannt werden’ müssen: ‘Sie und die Schwester haben auf reine Gefühle, unbefleckte Verehrung und Wertschätzung Anspruch.’ Dieser widernatürliche Purifizierungsprozeß resultiere schließlich ‘in der schwärmerischen, sentimentalen Empfänglichkeit für alle Symbole dunkler, mütterlicher, erhaltender Mächte’ (Horkheimer, 352–3). Mutter Natur muß gewähren, was den Männern von den Frauen nicht gewährt werden kann und nicht gewährt werden darf, sollen sie nicht als Hure gelten. Nach diesem Mechanismus laufen die meisten heroischen Leidensgeschichten der männlichen Protagonisten in der Blut-undBoden-Literatur ab. In den frühen Werken Ernst Wiecherts, der später für seine Zurückweisung der Nazis ins KZ ging, entsprechen sich das verquälte Verhältnis zu den Frauen und das Glück des einsamen Jägers in Wald und Moor.9 Frauen werden in dem 1922 erschienenen Roman Der Wald mit der Peitsche geschlagen, und das Glück des Helden liegt auf dem Rücken 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 Kühle durchbebte ihn wie den jungen Baum im ersten Laube. Der Dampf der Täler durchtränkte ihn wie mit heiligem Weihrauch. Das Leben der Erde drängte sich mit warmem Klopfen an sein Herz. Er legte die Kleider ab und warf sich ins Moos. Seine Hände streichelten liebkosend über das feuchte Gras, das sanft zwischen seinen Fingern hindurchglitt; sein Ohr drängte sich an die 8 9
Zit. nach Loewy, 125. Das folgende Zitat Loewy, 114. Über die Orte der Handlung in Wiecherts Romanen wurde gesagt: ‘Sie lassen sich zu einem typischen Muster zusammenstellen: Das Haus (in dem der Protagonist aufwächst oder lebt und von dem aus seine Expeditionen ins Menschenreich unternommen werden oder in das er sich zurückgezogen hat), wahlweise im Moor oder im Wald, gelegentlich auch in Kombination, die Äcker, der Boden, der dem Moor oder dem Wald abgerungen worden ist, meist an einem Fluß oder See gelegen’ (Delabar, 145).
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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 verhüllte. (Wiechert, Der Wald, 119)
Ähnlich wie Gustav Frenssen sprach Wiechert in seinem Lebensrückblick vom autobiographischen, ‘egozentrischen’10 Charakter seiner frühen Bücher. Er nannte den Roman Der Wald ein ‘krankes Buch’, eine gewaltsame Phantasie, die an die Stelle einer unglücklichen, unbefriedigenden Wirklichkeit getreten sei, und meinte selbst, daß ‘Psychologen und Psychoanalytiker [...] daraus eine Reihe mehr oder weniger zuverlässiger Erkenntnisse gewinnen’ könnten. Werdegang und schriftstellerische Entwicklung des Mecklenburgers Friedrich Griese, eines der erfolgreichsten Vertreter der Blut-und-BodenLiteratur,11 können in vielem als typisch gelten. Wie auch Ernst Wiechert berichtete Griese in einer Reihe autobiographischer Texte von einer glücklichen Kindheit in Dorf und Wald, aber diese Jahre waren spürbar überschattet von Spannungen im Elternhaus, mit einem Vater, der zu alkoholischen Exzessen neigte und nächtelang ausblieb, und mit einer Mutter, die still, aber für die Kinder deutlich spürbar litt. Der andeutungshafte Stil der Erinnerungen zeigt die Spannung zwischen dem Willen zur Aufrichtigkeit und dem Verbot, Schlechtes über die Eltern zu sagen. Zweifel am idyllischen Familienglück hätten die Brüchigkeit von Grieses Identitätskonstruktion auch für ihn selbst unübersehbar werden lassen. Wie Bauernromane nicht von Bauern geschrieben wurden,12 so stammt Heimat- und Blubo-Literatur häufig von Autoren, die sich nach Vergangenem als nach einem verlorenen Paradies, das nicht einmal eines gewesen war, zurücksehnten. Wie Griese waren viele solcher Autoren Söhne des Dorfes, das sie eines Tages in Richtung Stadt hatten verlassen müssen, um dort ihre Ausbildung, häufig zu Lehrern,13 zu beginnen. Die Trivialität ihrer Literatur ist nicht das Ergebnis ökonomischer Erwägungen oder Unbildung, sondern 10 11 12 13
Wiechert, Jahre und Zeiten, 120. Die folgenden Zitate ebd., 202 u. 177. Vgl. auch Wiechert, Wälder und Menschen, 238–9 et passim. Näheres zu Griese bei Busch, 36–81. Zu entsprechenden literatursoziologischen Aspekten vgl. z.B. Sengle, Zimmermann, 60-66; Vondung, 44–65. Vgl. Vondung, 52–3; Weil, 37–8.
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forcierter Naivität. Für den mythischen Charakter der Blubo-Literatur bedeutet dies, daß sie deutlich das Kennzeichen aller ‘neuen Mythologien’ an sich trägt: Der Mythos wird darin zur Konstruktion eines für die Vergangenheit angenommenen und für die Gegenwart oder Zukunft gewünschten oder erwarteten Zustands. Ein solcher ‘Mythos’ ist ein Widerspruch in sich – er ist ein Kunstprodukt und trägt ein rationales Moment an sich, das der Fraglosigkeit eines mythischen Zustands entgegensteht. Das Raunen von Ur-Zeiten und ursprünglichem Leben ist der Versuch, sich durch eine Hinterpforte wieder in das Wunschparadies der frühen Jahre hineinzuschmuggeln. Grieses Gedicht Geschlechter, in dem der Autor sich anklagt, aus der Art der Vorfahren geschlagen zu sein, stellt ein hervorragendes Beispiel für solche notwendigerweise sentimentalische ‘Heimatliteratur’ dar: Wehe, ihr alle, mir! Ihr schließt den Kreis um mich eurer Hände, schließt ihn fester und engt mich ein und schüttelt die Häupter, die wissenden Häupter, um mich, den Jüngsten, den Fehlgeborenen!
Unwürdig ist er der Vorfahren, die ihm als übermächtig erscheinen wegen ihres Einklangs mit einer Natur, die sie gleichzeitig verehrt und beherrscht haben sollen – ihrer ‘war alles’: Ich aber wohne auf fremdem Boden! Die Schwelle des Hauses, der ich entschreite, die kargste Krume des Bodens unter den Füßen – ureigen und fremd ist alles, ein Mietling bin ich der Erde! (Griese, ‘Geschlechter’, Im Beektal singt es, 7)
Daß Griese zu einem der herausragenden Blut-und-Boden-Autoren der zwanziger Jahre und des NS-Staates wurde, liegt gerade in den pathologischen Zügen seiner Psyche begründet. Wie bei Frenssen und Wiechert findet sich in Grieses autobiographischen Texten eine Reihe von Hinweisen auf ein verquältes Seelen- und Sexualleben. So wird berichtet, wie der Heimat- und Kontaktlose als junger Lehrer nachts vom Schreibtisch weglief und am folgenden Tag am Rand eines Feldweges seine Handschuhe und das Loch fand, das er in den
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verschneiten Boden gegraben hatte.14 In seinen ersten Publikationen, den Anfang der zwanziger Jahre erschienenen Romanen Feuer und Ur, schilderte Griese Versuche einer gewaltsamen Rückeroberung des Einklangs mit der Natur. In Feuer ist es ein Kriegsheimkehrer – Griese selbst war Kriegsfreiwilliger gewesen –, der sich von seiner in der Großstadt Berlin lebenden Frau trennt und einen Bauernhof übernimmt, um zum einfachen Leben zurückzufinden. Das folgende Zitat zeigt zunächst das Schwanken des Protagonisten, als sich ihm eine junge Bäuerin nähert. Griese läßt die anfängliche Lockung, die Möglichkeit sinnlichen Genusses, nicht gleich abblocken, aber dann siegt doch das internalisierte Verbot. Die ansonsten unerklärliche Gewalttätigkeit entspricht einerseits der Größe der ‘Bedrohung’, andererseits entspricht sie dem Empfinden, daß eine Frau, die zur Sinnlichkeit auffordert, nichts anderes verdient habe: Und ich fasse sie plötzlich um den Leib, hebe sie hoch und setze sie auf das Stroh in der Ecke. Sie lacht leise. Sie lacht vor Freude. [...] ‘Schwer ist das, Frieda.’ ‘Ich weiß es nicht. Schön ist es. Komm.’ [...] Schwer ist es. Dies ist noch schwerer. Dort steht die Peitsche. Ich fasse den Stiel fest, lasse die Schnur einmal sausen und schlage sie Frieda klatschend um den Leib.15
Die libidinösen Energien des Mannes gehören der reinen Mutter Natur, allein mit ihr will er sich austauschen. Dazu begibt sich der Protagonist als Jägersmann ins warme, feuchte Moor: Wenn mich die Lust faßt, gehe ich als Jäger. Dann denke ich nicht daran, daß ich für den Hunger schieße. Dann will ich einen balzenden Hahn haben [...]. Ich lasse dann nicht von ihm und sitze soviele Morgen im nassen Moor, bis ich ihn habe.
14 15
Vgl. Griese, Mein Leben, 33–6; Griese, Leben in dieser Zeit, 111–12. Die Szene wird in Ur einer Hauptfigur angedichtet. Griese, Feuer, 40–1. Im folgenden im laufenden Text zitiert als F.
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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 über die Knie im moorigen Grund, springe von Bülten zu Bülten, 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 Kräfte und Körpersäfte in sich aufnimmt und ihn so vor den bedrohlichen Verführerinnen bewahrt: Ich lag auf dem Rücken, alles in mir bebte und flog, und ich lag doch still wie ein gefällter Baum. Ein Saugen ging von der Erde in meinen Körper; sie versuchte, mir das schwärende Blut aus den Adern zu ziehen, um mich gesund zu machen. (F, 145) Mein Blut floß aus mir und floß mit dem Saft der Bäume zusammen [...] und ging wie ein Strom in die Nacht. Wie wohl ward mir. (F, 150)
Doch die Protagonisten bleiben schließlich unerlöst. In Feuer endet die Hauptfigur durch Selbstmord, in Ur häufen sich die Bilder verzweifelter Gewalt. Alles beginnt mit den schon bekannten Bildern: ‘Im Frühjahr ist das Land ohne Ende. Warm und offen ist es wie ein empfangendes Weib.’16 Dort liegt man natürlich gern: Warm liegt die Sonne auf den segendampfenden Äckern. Im Walde hinter Jürgen Boye ruckst ein Täuber. Die Erde duftet wie ein junger Leib, der sich unter einem dehnt. (Ur, 55)
Doch die Vereinigung gelingt nicht, und so endet, was als Liebe zur großen Mutter Natur begann, in einer Vergewaltigung: Jürgen Boye denkt auch wohl einmal an den Winterabend, an dem diese Sucht nach der Erde übermächtig an ihm riß. Ihm war damals, als [...] müsse er Blut aus dem eigenen Leib stoßen, um die harte Erde zu seinem Willen zu zwingen. Und er hätte auch – verdammt, er hätte! – sein Blut in die Erde laufen lassen. Und dort wäre der erste Pfahl eingerammt worden. (Ur, 74)
Nicht nur kehrte die verbotene Lust am Körper als Liebe zu einer Natur wieder, in der das Körperliche die symbolische Gestalt von 16
Griese, Ur, 51. Im folgenden im laufenden Text zitiert als Ur.
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Spalten, Höhlen etc. angenommen hatte, gleicherweise ist nun deutlich, daß die libidinöse Energie sich mit den Symbolen nicht zufrieden geben konnte. Auch der Versuch, durch Überhöhung in einen mystischen Akt eine Steigerung zu erreichen, blieb unbefriedigend. Dieser Sachverhalt erklärt die wachsende Verzweiflung der Protagonisten in Grieses frühen, deutlich autobiographischen Romanen. Die Feuchtigkeit der Erde war schließlich nicht mehr genug: Die Wasserphantasien färben sich blutig, und der Wunsch nach Vereinigung wird, wie gesehen, zur brutalen Vergewaltigung. ‘[...] und Blutverteilung ist im Gange’17 – mit diesem Vers Gottfried Benns ist der hier behandelte individuell-regressive Teil der Blut-und-Boden-Literatur gut charakterisiert. Deren Vokabular läßt sich beim frühen Benn mit seiner von regressiven, anti-rationalistischen Sehnsüchten getriebenen Lyrik durchaus finden: Hier schwillt der Acker schon um jedes Bett. Fleisch ebnet sich zu Land. Glut gibt sich fort. Saft schickt sich an zu rinnen. Erde ruft. (Benn, ‘Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke’, Sämtliche Werke, 16)
Bei allen Anklängen der frühen Gedichte Benns an Blubo-Vokabular bleibt diesem gegenüber jedoch immer die parodistische Distanz zu hören. Der Grund liegt im Festhalten an der verhaßten, aber nicht aufgegebenen Rationalität. (Vgl. Eckel, 45–60) So folgt bekanntlich dem Wunsch, ein ‘Klümpchen Schleim in einem warmen Moor’ geblieben zu sein, die Selbstreflexion einer Ratio, die sich ihrer Unhintergehbarkeit bewußt bleibt: ‘Schon ein Libellenkopf, ein Möwenflügel / wäre zu weit und litte schon zu sehr’ (Benn, ‘Gesänge I’, Sämtliche Werke, 23). Jenseits der ‘konjunktivisch formulierten Wünsche’, (Eckel, 50) wunschlos glücklich zu sein, liegen Lüge, Selbstbetrug und die verbale Gewaltsamkeit von Autoren, die sich in einem Zirkel gefangen finden. Bei Benn ist es gerade die nolensvolens aufrecht erhaltene Spannung zwischen Ratio und der Sehnsucht nach einer prä-rationalen Urheimat, die sein eigentümliches Pathos 17
Benn, ‘O Nacht –’‚ in Benn, Sämtliche Werke, 46.
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ausmacht. In der Fortführung von Blubo mit den Mitteln des Expressionismus führt hingegen die irrationalistische Jagd nach einem Ur-Glück unter Verleugnung der Vernunft nicht zur Erfüllung der Sehnsucht nach Auflösung in der Natur, sondern nur zu einer aufgesteilten Künstlichkeit. In seinem Gedicht Mutter schilderte Paul Alverdes, daß er ‘als der Scholle hingeschmiegter’ Sohn auf Mutter Erde seiner Liebe freien Lauf lassen konnte: Dann küss’ ich, die mich trägt, die braune Furche und spreche grüßend also: Sieh, da bin ich, der fortzuschnellen glühend ich begehrte, Geschoß, von Wünschen steil ins All gejagt – 18
Es bleibt nicht bei der sprachlichen Gewaltsamkeit. Wo expressionistisches Pathos und Blubo-Kult sich in dem Wunsch nach Verströmen im Leib der großen Mutter trafen, war der metaphysisch überhöhte inzestuöse 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 Schoß der Schöße mich wie vordem nie verströmen: in die Erde! Sie, gleich Keiner keusch und ohne Scham, schenkt tausendfältig, was sie nahm. [...] Ich werde lebendigen Leibes von der Erde empfangen. Blut heißt hier Samen. Knie nieder! Bete! Amen ... Amen ... (Franck, 310)
Für solche Männerphantasien existieren keine Entsprechungen bei Autorinnen. Ohnehin gibt es von Frauen nur wenige Texte, die der Blubo-Literatur zugerechnet werden könnten. Und wo es sie gibt, sind sie nichts weiter als Trivialliteratur mit einigen zeittypischen Versatzstücken. Der fehlende Wunsch nach Vereinigung mit Urmutter Erde führte dazu, daß sie sich nur oberflächlich dem Vokabular sowie 18
Alverdes, P., Mutter; zit. nach Loewy, 119.
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den formalen Vorgaben einschlägiger Texte anschlossen. In den Femhof-Romanen der Josefa Berens-Totenohl etwa ist gleich zu Beginn erkennbar, daß die Sexualität in einen zugelassenen, zur ewigen Liebe verklärten und einen anderen dunkel-bedrohlichen Bereich aufgespalten ist, wobei letzterer in stereotyper Weise von einer Zigeunerin repräsentiert ist. Nicht nur wird die Romanhandlung von diesen dunklen Mächten getragen, sondern sie bestimmen auch die Rezeption des vor wie nach 1945 erfolgreichen Buches: Die Leser genießen das Verbotene und dürfen es gleichzeitig verurteilen. Zu diesen trivialliterarischen Mustern tritt allenfalls mit dem Kraftmeiertum des sauerländischen Wulfsbauern-Geschlechts ein Modephänomen der Zeit. Bezeichnenderweise verfällt die Autorin andernorts, wo sie sich emphatisch zum Thema Blut ausläßt, im Stil der Friederike Kempner der unfreiwilligen Komik: ‘Ein tief Geheimnis brennt im Blut / Der Bauern auf dem Munkhof – ach!’ Sehr bald schon nach dieser ominösen Klage werden die Fallstricke erahnbar, die das Schicksal für das starke Geschlecht bereithält: ‘Unselig, wenn des Blutes Strom / zu Seiten sich ein Bette gräbt.’19 In Ernst Wiecherts Romanen – und in der Mehrzahl der Romane des konservativen Lagers i.w.S. – werden Haltungs- und Verhaltensänderungen ‘meist als Erkrankung oder Gesundung beschrieben’, sie sind also ‘nicht Resultat eines Lern-, Erfahrungsoder Anpassungsprozesses’ (Delabar, 140). Dies gilt nicht nur für die fiktiven Charaktere, sondern läßt sich auch für die Autoren und ihr Selbstverständnis feststellen. Wie Ernst Wiechert, der seine frühen Texte als krank bezeichnete, tat auch Friedrich Griese seine ersten Romane rückblickend als Symptom junger Leiden ab. (Vgl. Griese, Mein Leben, 52 u. 54.) Diese Pathologisierung bedeutete ein organologisches Sich-Zurechtlegen, ohne daß ein eigentliches Verständnis erreicht worden wäre; das Wesentliche galt aber ja ohnehin als dem Verstand unzugänglich. Solche Parallelen dürfen aber nicht über den entscheidenden Unterschied hinwegtäuschen: Nicht nur ‘ist die unbedingte Identifikation des Autors mit seinen Figuren, und sei es über den Nachweis pathologischer Elemente oder Strukturen, kaum zu halten’ (Delabar, 141), sondern das Pathologische bedingt geradezu die 19
Berens-Totenohl, J. Einer Sippe Gesicht; zit. nach Loewy, 121.
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Differenz. Der Akt des Schreibens nämlich ist der Versuch der Erfüllung ungelebter und unlebbarer Wünsche, gleichzeitig trennen sich in ihm die Autoren und ihre Geschöpfe. 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 Wünsche erfüllt werden sollen, vereitelt diese. Erzähltechnisch schlägt 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 Selbsterklärungen der Autoren und das Ausbleiben eines Verstehensprozesses führten dazu, daß das Grundmodell ihrer Erzählungen über Jahrzehnte hinweg das gleiche blieb. Der Blick auf die Rezeptionsseite zeigt, daß die regressivindividuellen Blut-und-Boden-Romane für ein breites Publikum erst Attraktivität gewannen, wenn das offen Pathologische zurücktrat und auf ein akzeptables Maß 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 verhüllten Selbstaussprache im Medium pathologischer Charaktere. Seine folgenden Romane und Stücke durchzog eine panerotische Atmosphäre, so etwa das Drama Mensch, aus Erde gemacht, das 1933 in einer Inszenierung von Jürgen Fehling und mit Heinrich George in der Hauptrolle auf die Bühne des Berliner Schauspielhauses gelangte. Grieses größter Erfolg jedoch wurde der Roman Winter (1927), für den er einen Literaturpreis erhielt. Darin ist die Sexualität gleichsam objektiviert. Erzähltechnisch und inhaltlich soll alles in dem Buch seinen natürlichen Gang gehen, und auch die Sexualität soll ganz im Einklang mit den Gesetzen der Natur gelebt werden dürfen. Wenn die Gutstochter den geliebten Knecht nachts in ihr Zimmer läßt, so röhrt der Naturbursche wie ein Hirsch in der Brunftzeit, nur leiser: Sie fühlte seinen Arm um ihren Leib. Aus seinem Munde kamen Laute, tief, verhalten, fast unhörbar. Und ihr zuckte noch ein Erinnern daran durch den
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Sinn, daß sie an warmen Dämmermorgen vom Moor herüber ähnliche Töne gehört hatte. (Griese, Winter, 27)
Doch der Lauf der Natur verträgt sich weder mit den Gesetzen der Agrarwirtschaft noch mit den Moralvorstellungen der Dorfbewohner. Die Gutstochter muß 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 Sexualität auf der einen sowie einer christlich geprägten repressiven – und nicht zuletzt ökonomischer Vernunft folgenden – Sexualmoral auf der anderen Seite durchzieht sämtliche Bauernromane, so neuheidnisch sie sich zunächst auch geben mögen. Der Schluß liegt nahe, daß gerade diese Antagonismen die Romane zur geeigneten Lektüre für das städtische Lesepublikum machten. In ihrer Widersprüchlichkeit boten sie sowohl den Ängsten wie auch den unterdrückten Wünschen Anknüpfungspunkte: Einerseits erfüllten die Geschichten von der Liebe auf dem Lande einen Wunschtraum im Wunschraum, andererseits waren die Urzeit-Idyllen unterschwellig von den kulturellen Repressionen der Gegenwart geprägt. Die Leser konnten sich also für die Zeit der Lektüre dem Unbehagen in der Kultur entziehen; gleichzeitig empfanden sie, daß nicht etwas ganz anderes, sondern die eigene Sache verhandelt wurde. Dies gilt auch für Ernst Wiecherts spätere Romane, von denen der Autor schrieb, daß ihnen eine Genesung vorausgegangen sei. Sein erfolgreichstes Werk wurde Das einfache Leben (1939). Doch die Grundkonstellation darin gleicht in vielem noch der in den frühen Texten, nur daß deren aggressiver Gestus einem rein defensiven Modell, dem Abkehr des Protagonisten von der unverändert 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 zurückgezogen hat. Die Liebe zur Natur beseelt auch diesen Helden, doch ist die angestrebte Vereinigung nicht mehr körperlicher Art, sondern als ersehnte unio mystica ins Metaphysische überhöht. Gerade die Allgegenwart des Eros in einer ‘dezenteren’,
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vergeistigten Form machte – neben dem offensichtlichen Eskapismus – das Buch zu einem enormen Erfolg beim Lesepublikum des Nachkriegsjahrzehnts.
Zitierte Literatur Benn, G. Sämtliche Werke, Hg. G. Schuster, Bd. 1 (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1986). Beste, K. Das heidnische Dorf (München, Langen-Müller, 1932). Braun, F. X. ‘Gustav Frenssen in Retrospect’, Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 39 (1947), 449–62. Busch, S. ‘Und gestern, da hörte uns Deutschland’. NS-Autoren in der Bundesrepublik. Kontinuität und Diskontinuität bei Friedrich Griese, Werner Beumelburg, Eberhard Wolfgang Möller und Kurt Ziesel (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1998). Corni, G. ‘Richard Walther Darré – Der “Blut-und-Boden”-Ideologe’, in Smelser, R., Zitelmann, R. (Hg) Die braune Elite I. 22 biographische Skizzen (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 31994), 15–27. 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 1933–1945 (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 135–150. Eckel, W. ‘Benns Entdeckung des Geistes’, in H. Steinhagen (Hg.) Gedichte von Gottfried Benn (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1997). Franck, H. Klaus Michel. Dramatische Dichtung in fünf Akten (Leipzig, Haessel, 1926). Frenssen, G. Lebensbericht (Berlin, Grote’sche 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), 217–60. Griese, F. Im Beektal singt es (Eisenach, Erich Röth Verlag, 1938) —— Feuer (Wismar, Hinstorff, 1921). —— Leben in dieser Zeit 1890–1968 (Flensburg, Wolff, 1970). —— Mein Leben. Von der Kraft der Landschaft (Berlin, Juncker u. Dünnhaupt, 1934). —— Ur. Eine deutsche Passion (München, Delphin, 1922). —— Winter (Lübeck, Quitzow, 1928). Horkheimer, M. ‘Autorität 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).
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—— Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland 1890– 1945 (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1976). Loewy, E. Literatur unterm Hakenkreuz. Das Dritte Reich und seine Dichtung. Eine Dokumentation (Frankfurt a. M., Hain, 1990). Mecklenburg, N. Erzählte Provinz. Regionalismus und Moderne im Roman (Königstein/Ts., Athenäum, 1982). Schöne, A. Über politische Lyrik im 20. Jahrhundert. (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1972). Schweizer, G. Bauernroman und Faschismus. Zur Ideologiekritik einer literarischen Gattung (Tübingen, Tübinger Verein für Volkskunde, 1976). Sengle, F. ‘Wunschbild Land und Schreckbild Stadt. Zu einem zentralen Thema der neueren deutschen Literatur’, Studium Generale, 16 (1963), 619–31. Theweleit, K. Männerphantasien, 2 Bde. (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1990). Vondung, K. ‘Der literarische Nationalsozialismus. Ideologische, politische und sozialhistorische Zusammenhänge’, in Denkler, H. Prümm, K. (Hg) Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich. Themen – Traditionen – Wirkungen (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1976), 44–65. Weil, M. ‘Vorwort’, in Weil (Hg) Wehrwolf und Biene Maja. Der deutsche Bücherschrank zwischen den Kriegen (Berlin, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 1986), 5–40. Wiechert, E. Der Wald (Berlin, Grote, 1936). —— Jahre und Zeiten. Erinnerungen (Erlenbach-Zürich, Eugen Rentsch, 1949). —— Wälder und Menschen. Eine Jugend (München, Langen-Müller, 1936). Zimmermann, P. Der Bauernroman. Antifeudalismus – Konservativismus – Faschismus (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1975).
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STEVE GILES
Limits of the Visible: Kracauer’s Photographic Dystopia
Introduction One of the most striking aspects of Thomas Levin’s recent translation of Kracauer’s 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 Kracauer’s 1927 essay on photography, published in the Frankfurter Zeitung some four months after ‘Das Ornament der Masse’,2 is accompanied in Levin’s 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 Kracauer’s 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
3
On the ‘new photography’, see Vierhuff and Mellor. Kracauer, ‘Die Photographie’; cited as P. Unlike ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, ‘Die Photographie’ has generally not received detailed and sustained critical attention, notwithstanding the major upsurge in Kracauer scholarship since his centenary year of 1989. The only exception is Mülder (72–7, 96–101), who does not focus on the aesthetic assumptions that underpin ‘Die Photographie’. Brief discussions may also be found in Barnouw (27, 29–30, 60–2), Frisby (127, 153–5), Hansen (54–5), Levin (21–2), Mülder-Bach (370–3), Rosenberg (361, 363), and Schlüpmann (102–5). See Giles, ‘Cracking the Cultural Code’.
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illustrated magazine but also compares her to a Tiller girl. But the reader’s 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 Kracauer’s 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-Nagy’s pioneering monograph of 1925 through to Franz Roh’s fototek volumes of 1930.4 Yet Kracauer’s response to the ‘new photography’ is disconcerting not only because it reminds us of Sherlock Holmes’s 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 Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen about miraculous events in the land of Cockaigne. One – albeit enigmatic – response to that query is suggested by Kracauer’s review of Kafka’s novel Das Schloß which, like its predecessor Der Prozeß, Kracauer characterises as a stencil of a fairytale, ‘die Matrize eines Märchens’.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 Kracauer’s 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
See Moholy-Nagy, Malerei – Photographie – Film and Sechzig Fotos; Biermann, Sechzig Fotos. Kracauer, ‘Das Schloß’, 390. Kracauer claims that fairytales mediate truth, in that they constitute an anticipatory dream of truth’s successful invasion into the world. This invasion involves defeating the blind forces of nature, the ultimate meaning of fairytales being the abolition of mythology in favour of truth. As in ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, this utopian dimension of fairytales is bound up with the Enlightenment project, a point reinforced when Kracauer observes that the fairytale explodes the seemingly irrevocable natural order of things in order to put them in their right place – which is not the one ordained by nature (Kracauer, ‘Das Schloß’, 392). These notions recur in the photography essay, not only in the reference to the land of Cockaigne which introduces the essay, but also in his invocation towards the end of the essay of an ‘authentic’ way of representing contemporary realities (P, 96–7).
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thematic constellations in ‘Die Photographie’. Finally, ‘Die Photographie’ will be contextualised in terms of modernist aesthetics and Marxist critiques of photographic representation.
Photography before Theory Writing in 1980, some 150 years after the emergence of photography in nineteenth-century France, Victor Burgin suggested that photography theory ‘does not yet exist’ (Burgin, ‘Introduction’, 1). Even though Burgin’s own perspective on photography theory is a very particular one, emphasising its need to satisfy materialist and semiological criteria, his point is well taken. Photography developed at a time when aesthetic theory in Europe was dominated by two major paradigms, Realism and Romanticism; as the nineteenth century drew to a close, these mutated into Naturalism and Symbolism. Photographic discourse for much of the nineteenth century reflects the tension between the view that art should mirror reality or be a window on the world, and the notion that art should seek to embody the emotions or psychology of its creator (Burgin, ‘Introduction’, 2–3, 10). At one extreme, we find Samuel Morse’s insistence – anticipating the radical Naturalism of Arno Holz – that photography represents nature so perfectly that artistic mediation falls away; thus photographs ‘cannot be called copies of nature, but portions of nature itself’.6 At the same time, this naïve empiricist view of photography, which apparently legitimises the latter’s claim to objective, documentary status, also provoked the dismissal of photography’s artistic pretensions by such luminaries as Gautier, Baudelaire and the Goncourt brothers (Sekula, 95–6). This, in turn, precipitated attempts to establish photography as an art form by invoking Romantic-Symbolist criteria, a tendency influentially exemplified in the work of the major US photographer Alfred
6
Quoted in Sekula, 86.
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Stieglitz. Stieglitz’s magazine Camera Work, which appeared between 1903 and 1917, self-consciously asserted the special status of artistic photographs by foregrounding their status as precious and unique artefacts, so as to distinguish them from the cheap, mass-produced fare of contemporary journalistic media (Sekula, 92–3, 97–9). In fact, it has been suggested that by the early 1920s – in western Europe and the USA, at any rate – there had developed two clearly articulated but polarised discourses on photography, namely the documentary and the fetishistic, the scientific and the magical,7 which clearly betray their roots in the aesthetic theories of the 1880s and 1890s. On the one hand, we have the photographer as witness, producing images of reportage which ostensibly provide empirically verified and verifiable information. On the other hand, we find the photographer as seer, using imagination to transcend empirical reality and express inner truths. Certain aspects of these artistic discourses are particularly relevant to Kracauer’s photography essay. For much of that essay, Kracauer characterises photography in Realist/ Naturalist terms, in such a way as to disqualify photography from attaining artistic status. Similarly, his much-cited methodological manifesto in Die Angestellten explicitly rejects photographic reportage, in favour of a process of mosaic reconstruction of reality that produces the latter’s image.8 Before we move on to analyse Kracauer’s photography essay in detail, though, there is another strand in early twentieth century aesthetic theory which must be attended to. It has been argued that despite all the differences between them, Realist (Naturalist) and Romantic (Symbolist) aesthetics have one crucial feature in common. Both construe the image as a ‘relay’ between the image – whether it be a painting or a photograph – and a ‘founding presence’ which is said to generate and legitimate it (Burgin, ‘Photographic Practice’, 54–5). Cubism, however, demolishes this presupposition. In so doing, Cubism inaugurates a radically new perception and practice of painting, whereby the painterly surface is construed as a material 7 8
See Sekula, especially 93–5. On the rather different approaches to photography in the Soviet Union, see Watney, especially 157–66. Kracauer, Die Angestellten, 15–16.
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entity in its own right (Burgin, ‘Introduction’, 10). This redefinition of art is taken to its logical conclusion in the theoretical and practical work of Russian Suprematism, and achieves canonical academic status in the writings of Clement Greenberg.9 But the focus on the artwork as a totally autonomous material object, whose surface is its content, cuts the ground from under both of the dominant discourses that had hitherto established photography as an art form (Burgin, ‘Introduction’, 11). If, however, art was to be neither resemblance nor expression, neither document nor symbol, no longer embodying empirical or intuitive truths, did this mean that photography was now bereft of its much-sought-after artistic legitimacy? It is, perhaps, no coincidence that from around the mid-1920s onwards, in Germany in particular, new attempts are made to define photography in its own terms.10 Let us now consider Kracauer’s contribution to that project.
Kracauer on Photography Memory One way of approaching Kracauer’s photography essay is to introduce some seemingly irrelevant quotations from Samuel Beckett’s 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
On Suprematist aesthetics, see Bowlt, 112–58, and Malewitsch. On Greenberg and photographic aesthetics, see Burgin, ‘Photography, Phantasy, Function’, 208–9. See Vierhuff, 7–8, 13–22.
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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, 29–30) 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 façade, behind which the Idea is prisoner. (Beckett, 78–9) Das Gedächtnis bezieht weder die totale Raumerscheinung noch den totalen zeitlichen Verlauf eines Tatbestandes ein. Im Vergleich mit der Photographie sind seine Aufzeichnungen lückenhaft. […] Das Gedächtnis achtet der Daten nicht, es überspringt die Jahre oder dehnt den zeitlichen Abstand. Die Auslese der von ihm vereinten Züge muß dem Photographen willkürlich dünken. (P, 85–6) Umgekehrt wie die Photographie verhalten sich die Gedächtnisbilder, die sich zu dem Monogramm des erinnerten Lebens vergrößern. 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 zurück; die Photographie faßt den Restbestand, den die Geschichte abgeschieden hat. (P, 90) Die Totalität der Photographie ist als das Generalinventar der nicht weiter reduzierbaren Natur aufzufassen, als der Sammelkatalog sämtlicher im Raum sich darbietenden Erscheinungen, insofern sie nicht von dem Monogramm des Gegenstandes aus konstruiert sind, sondern aus einer natürlichen Perspektive sich geben, die das Monogramm nicht trifft. Dem räumlichen Inventar entspricht das zeitliche des Historismus. (P, 95) Dem Bewußtsein läge also ob, die Vorläufigkeit 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 Bewußtsein dieser Verpflichtung; es zerschlägt die natürliche Realität und verstellt die Bruchstücke gegeneinander. (P, 97)
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Rather than developing a systematic linear argument, Kracauer’s essay could be seen as a montage of insights which compels the reader to (re)construct an assemblage of contradictory dualisms: history and historicism, fragment and totality, truth and garbage, memory and photography. The most important of these oppositions is memory and photography. At the same time, when Kracauer speaks of Gedächtnis as being the inverse of photography, the memory he has in mind is not Proust’s voluntary memory, forever hanging out its dirty linen on the clothes rack of the mind, but its involuntary counterpart, which gives epiphanic access to the essence of the self and the past.11 The distinguishing features of Gedächtnis are clarified in relation to photography. Gedächtnis has no pretensions to totality or completeness, whether temporal or spatial; its principles of organisation are radically at variance with photography, in that Gedächtnis focuses on the identification of ‘intended meaning’ (P, 85–6). Furthermore, just as photography – as we shall see later – is the representational counterpart of historicism, so Gedächtnis is essentially linked to History as such. Whereas photographs merely record the detritus of History, Memory images embody its truth-content and constitute a space in which, ultimately, History’s decisive features converge (P, 87). Memory images and History are also implicated in Kracauer’s notion of the monogram (which, as indicated in the quotations above, is alien to photography). He suggests that a person’s real or authentic History may be found in their final Memory image, which excludes all determinations not intrinsically related to that person’s essence (P, 86). What this means is that, strictly speaking, only fragments or shards of the characteristics that ostensibly identify a person enter into their History, but those that do condense into that person’s 11
See Beckett, Proust, 31–4. Barnouw (29) notes that ‘Die Photographie’ was influenced by Proust without indicating how, and presumably bases her comments on Mülder’s suggestion that Kracauer’s negative evaluation of photography is based on Proust (Mülder, 74–5; Mülder-Bach, 370–1). This viewpoint seems to be influenced by Kracauer’s own discussion of Proust’s critique of photography in his Theory of Film (14–17), written some 30 years after ‘Die Photographie’. However, neither Barnouw nor Mülder relate the aesthetic presuppositions implicit in ‘Die Photographie’ to Proust’s model of memory.
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monogram. To use Kracauer’s example, ‘Das Monogramm des Eckart ist die Treue’ (P, 87). Crucially, though, Memory images are not the only repositories of monograms: authentic fairy tales also contain traces of monograms which have been set down by the imagination. This, of course, is why ‘Die Photographie’ is prefaced by a fantastically utopian passage from the brothers Grimm. Nevertheless, at this point in our discussion the reader/listener could be forgiven for asking the question ‘But what has this got to do with photography in 1927?’ The answer, at least in part, is to be found in the relationship between Kracauer’s account of Memory and his comments on consciousness and Art. Art and consciousness As we have already noted, Kracauer associates Memory images with truth. But Kracauer’s conception of truth is as idiosyncratic as his specification of Memory. He contends that truth may only be discovered by a liberated consciousness, which he glosses as a form of consciousness that is freed from subjection to basic drives and can therefore grasp their demonic nature. As long as Memory images remain in thrall to ‘das unkontrollierte Triebleben’ (P, 86), they will be opaque. But, as soon as knowledge clears away the jungle of the soul and restricts the compulsions of nature, Memory images can achieve transparency and embody truth. It would be easy to dismiss Kracauer’s argument here as a simplistic piece of Enlightened Freudianism. His account of liberated consciousness should, however, be understood in the context of the dialectic of human linguistic and semiological development outlined towards the end of ‘Die Photographie’. Following Bachofen and Marx, Kracauer proposes that as the ‘original’ identity of human beings and nature disappears, so too the symbolic order that seemed to be imbued with natural meaning disintegrates. In other words, the price that humanity pays for enhanced self-consciousness and selfawareness is a loss of intrinsic significance comparable to the ‘metaphysical homelessness’ delineated in Kracauer’s early writings. Kracauer suggests in fact that the evaporation of transcendent or
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innate meaningfulness has now reached the stage where nature is irreducibly and irrevocably meaningless, or mute, so much so that contemporary society must confront a fateful alternative. On the one hand, a dystopian future, where humanity regresses to the condition of being dominated by a nature which is inert or mute and eradicates emancipated consciousness; or, on the other hand, a utopian era, where liberated consciousness has the opportunity fully to realise itself over and against mute nature (P, 95–6). But, because photography appears to be deeply implicated in Kracauer’s dystopian vision, human society has reached a critical turning-point: ‘Die Wendung zur Photographie ist das Vabanque-Spiel der Geschichte’ (P, 96). Even here though, as the roulette wheel is about to make its final spin, all is not lost. Just as Memory is antithetical to photography, so it is also intimately connected with another mode of human representation, namely Art. Indeed, Kracauer indicates that great Art approaches the transparency of the final Memory image discussed earlier, in which History is condensed. Moreover, he continues, if History is to be represented in Art, then the surface context associated with photography must be destroyed: Kracauer’s conception of Art is, in other words, radically anti-mimetic. He cites with approval Goethe’s insistence – pace Eckermann – that Art transcends natural necessity and works with its own laws (P, 87), and goes on to claim that a portrait painter who subjected him/herself to natural necessity would, at best, produce: photographs! And, even though Art since the Renaissance is said to have entertained a close relationship with nature, Kracauer contends nonetheless that Art has always sought to achieve higher aims, by presenting knowledge in the medium of colour and contour. As a result, Art is fundamentally antiphotographic. Art-works do not strive to resemble the objects they depict, nor is their configuration governed by an object’s spatial appearance. Instead, Art grasps the significance of an object and mediates that significance spatially, by conveying to us what Kracauer terms the object’s ‘transparency’, or Transparent. This rather obscure notion is clarified to some degree when he compares the art-work to a magic mirror that reflects us not as we appear, but as we wish to be or intrinsically are. The ‘transparency’ to which Kracauer refers also
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seems to be associated with the idea of an image on transparent material, such as glass, which is lit from behind as with a Chinese lantern; somewhat ironically, the term can also be used to refer to a photographic slide. In the contemporary world, however, Art too has reached a turning-point. Kracauer notes that the epoch of nature-based Art inaugurated by the Renaissance may be coming to an end, and he refers in passing to three categories of contemporary Art that seek to reject natural verisimilitude. First, he mentions modern painters – presumably Cubists, Constructivists or Dadaists – who put their pictures together from photographic fragments in order to underline spatially the simultaneous coexistence of the reified appearances they represent (P, 88). Secondly, the works of Franz Kafka are said to be imbued by a liberated consciousness which has demolished natural realities and has disarranged or displaced the resulting fragments against one another (P, 97). Finally, film is credited with the capacity to transcend ‘normal’ or usual relationships between elements of nature by assembling strange or alien configurations through cutting and editing (P, 97). The implication would seem to be that in the contemporary world, Art can only fulfil its epistemological role by adopting the radically anti-Naturalistic representational techniques of the modernist avant-garde. At the same time, the pretensions of Art are being undermined by contemporary media. In a brief discussion which pre-empts the core argument of Benjamin’s Kunstwerk essay, Kracauer observes that mass reproduction poses a major threat to Art as the ‘original’ work disappears behind the multiplicity of its copies.12 Furthermore, the proliferation of illustrated newspapers and magazines threatens the survival of veridical consciousness itself. Photographic images in such publications are said to reflect and reproduce the world as it appears to be, a travesty exacerbated by their being at the disposal of the ruling social order. The ideological implications of mass-media 12
Benjamin quotes directly from Kracauer’s ‘Die Photographie’ in his ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’ (373), referring to that section of ‘Die Photographie’ where Kracauer discusses the implications of mass reproduction (P, 93–4).
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control are underscored when Kracauer describes the status quo as ‘eines der mächtigsten Streikmittel gegen die Erkenntnis’ (P, 93), and he concludes that never before has a society known so little about itself. Nevertheless, Kracauer’s critique of mass media owes at least as much to modernist aesthetics as it does to a Marxist theory of ideology, in that his critique is predicated on the former’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic ways of seeing: ‘In den Illustrierten sieht das Publikum die Welt, an deren Wahrnehmung es die Illustrierten hindern’ (P, 93; my italics). Historicism and representation Illustrated magazines, with their bombardment of visual imagery, could be seen as constituting the ne plus ultra of photography. As well as aiming to present a complete reproduction of the world accessible to the camera, Kracauer suggests, they register the people and events of that world from every possible perspective. As such, their procedure is analogous to that of the film newsreel, giving a sum total of photographs. The illustrated magazine’s aspiration to summation and completion is consonant with the impulse to totality which Kracauer attributes to both photography and historicism. Just as the totality sought by photography is an inventory of spatial phenomena which fails to embody the monogram of the objects depicted, so too historicism attempts to construct a temporal inventory which is equally inauthentic (P, 96). In Kracauer’s view, historicism is based on the assumption that a phenomenon can be explained purely in terms of its genesis or origins, by reproducing a series of events without any gaps (P, 85). But, Kracauer continues, historicism is drastically misguided, and singularly fails to capture History. The temporal interconnections between events valorised by historicism are actually tangential to the authentic interconnections mediated by the transparency or Transparent of History. Moreover, in view of the close relationship being posited between photography and historicism, it is rather ironic that photographic meaning cannot be established according to historicist criteria. Kracauer observes that the truth-claim of the sixty-year-old photograph of the grandmother
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cannot be validated with reference to an original which it resembles: its veracity can only be established in the context of an oral tradition whose attributions of identity are incomplete and uncertain (P, 83). Similar problems of validation occur in the case of contemporary photographs. The image of the film star discussed in the opening paragraph of ‘Die Photographie’ is taken by contemporaries to be a direct representation of the film star herself. Kracauer, however, takes this photograph to be an optical sign for the film star whose referential status appears to be metonymic: she is signified by her hairstyle, or the pose of her head (P, 89). Furthermore, the film star’s identity is confirmed with reference to an original which is itself an image: the image seen by cinema-goers on the silver screen (P, 83, 89), so that ‘unsere dämonische Diva’ appears to be little more than a simulacrum. Having anticipated key elements of contemporary semiological critiques of photography, Kracauer even foregrounds the code of transmission generating the diva’s photograph:13 ‘Wer durch die Lupe blickte, erkennte den Raster, die Millionen von Pünktchen, aus denen die Diva, die Wellen und das Hotel bestehen. Aber mit dem Bild ist nicht das Punktnetz gemeint, sondern die lebendige Diva am Lido’ (P, 83). At the same time, the materialist semiotic in nuce which Kracauer tantalisingly invokes is not elaborated on elsewhere in ‘Die Photographie’. Instead, as already indicated, he is more concerned to locate photography in a discourse whose primary terms of reference are grounded in modernist aesthetics, albeit with a Marxist ambience. His modernist predilections and his concern to preserve the category of Art constitute perhaps the key difference between Kracauer’s approach to photography and those of Brecht and Benjamin. Kracauer’s initial statement of the parallels between historicism and photography turns on the coincidental claim that both emerged at around the same time in the early nineteenth century. As his argument develops, however, the historical contextualisation of photography becomes rather more robust and extensive. Kracauer construes photography as the last historical stage in a series of pictorial representations that began with the symbol in human prehistory. As 13
On photographic codes of recognition, see Eco, 32–5.
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society develops, Kracauer argues, human beings become increasingly self-aware, so much so that consciousness is gradually emancipated from its encapsulation by nature. A linguistic and communicative order grounded in natural symbolism gives way to a world of abstract and figurative representations (P, 94). As human consciousness comes to dominate nature, symbolic and mythological modes of thought are supplanted by allegorical and conceptual thinking. Instead of being a repository of meaning, nature ultimately becomes intrinsically meaningless, a process which can be traced in the development of European painting since the Renaissance. Modern photography, Kracauer contends, is fundamentally associated with the meaningless nature of the contemporary world, which is a product of capitalism. Indeed, the very mode of representation characteristic of photography is intrinsically connected to contemporary capitalism: Nicht anders als die früheren Darstellungsarten ist auch diese einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe des praktisch-materiellen Lebens zugeordnet. Der kapitalistische Produktionsprozeß hat sie aus sich herausgesetzt. Dieselbe bloße Natur, die auf der Photographie erscheint, lebt sich in der Realität der von ihm erzeugten Gesellschaft aus. (P, 95–6)
Kracauer’s opposition of photography and Memory now becomes somewhat clearer. Memory images seek to be repositories of meaning, whereas photography presupposes a world from which meaning has been evacuated. And, whilst Memory takes photographs to be composed partly of detritus, from photography’s point of view Memory images are incomplete and fragmentary (P, 85–6). Similarly, whereas Art and History are obliged to destroy the surfaces valorised by photography in order to grasp and mediate a significance beyond visible appearances, for photography the unmediated spatial appearance of an object is its significance (P, 96). What is more, the radical disjunction between photography and Art also undercuts the misguided enterprise of ‘artistic’ photography that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. As far as Kracauer is concerned, ‘artistic’ photography is a mere imitation of Art, a hollow semblance like rhythmic gymnastics which seeks to incorporate a substance of which it knows nothing; indeed, ‘artistic’ photography is not even authentic in strict photographic terms, in
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that it wishes to tastefully disguise all traces of its technological nature (P, 88). Thus far, Kracauer’s 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 Städte in Flugbildern, holt die Krabben und Figuren von den gotischen Kathedralen herunter; alle räumlichen Konfigurationen werden in ungewohnten Überschneidungen, die sie aus der menschlichen Nähe 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 Kracauer’s 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
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with nature, as photographic technology presents consciousness with the reflection of the reality that has slipped away from consciousness (P, 97). It is not entirely clear what this reality is supposed to be; suffice it to say that Kracauer goes on to distinguish between a ‘correct’ order of nature’s inventory which does not yet exist, and the provisionality of the contemporary order of things (P, 96–7). Moreover, the disorder of the detritus reflected in photography is, he suggests, best represented by suspending normal or usual relationships between the elements of nature. In other words, one might conclude, the utopian dimension of avant-garde photography consists in its ability to mirror the sheer negativity of contemporary life and thereby intimate the ‘blank herausgetriebene[n] Mechanik der industrialisierten Gesellschaft’ (P, 97). And, whereas the muddle and jumble of illustrated newspapers is merely chaotic, the defamiliarised representation of natural elements and relationships is said to be redolent of the confusion of daily residues in dreams: presumably because like modernist Art, dream also ‘zerschlägt die natürliche Realität und verstellt die Bruchstücke gegeneinander’, a process which dream ‘verwirklicht überall dort, wo er Teile und Ausschnitte zu fremden Gebilden assoziiert’ (P, 97). Clearly, Kracauer rejects that tradition in photographic theory which legitimises photography in mimetic or naturalistic terms, but although his ‘positive’ alternative has some affinity with the notion of the photographer as seer, the key to his re-evaluation of the photographic lies ultimately in his attempt to synthesise the aesthetics of ‘making visible’ and ‘making strange’, bringing together the insights of Futurism/Formalism and Expressionism in the context of a general advocacy of modernist art forms. Kracauer’s critique of photography is grounded in a series of presuppositions about aesthetics and modernity that can be traced back to his earliest published essays on artistic themes from 1920 and 1921.14 His brilliantly succinct account of German Expressionism commends the Expressionist artist’s rejection of Naturalism and Impressionism in favour of an art form that dismisses the ontological 14
See, for example, Kracauer, ‘Schicksalswende der Kunst’ and ‘Georg von Lukács’ Romantheorie’.
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claims of the actual world as it presents itself to us, in order instead to express directly the world’s innermost being. Kracauer takes the view that Expressionism shatters ‘normality’ and proclaims its visions in art forms which hardly refer to the world of the senses, suspending familiar spatial relationships and embedding fragments of our perceptions into a matrix of lines and shapes whose structure is determined by the innermost needs of the artist. Even when recognisable objects and people do seem to emerge, their external configuration is but an empty mask that the artist removes in order to reveal the true visage. Contemporary actuality turns out to be shadowy and insubstantial, a chaos without soul or meaning, whose absurdity can only be represented in a distorted image. It should be evident even from this brief discussion that Kracauer’s position is complex and possibly contradictory. His representational requirements for contemporary art forms involve a Futurist/Formalist emphasis on defamiliarisation of ‘normal’ interconnections and relationships, which is to be achieved by adopting distorted or distorting perspectives. At the same time, his critique of mimetic depiction presupposes the categories of Expressionist aesthetics, but the ontological presuppositions and artistic prescriptions associated with Expressionism are ultimately at odds with those of Futurism/Formalism.
Theory after Photography Making visible, making strange It was suggested earlier in this discussion that artistic discourses on photography in the early years of the twentieth century were dominated by Realism/Naturalism and Romanticism/Symbolism, but that with the emergence of Cubism both of these positions were undercut. Instead of being construed as a mediator of a prior or preexisting reality, whether external or internal, the visible surface of the painting came to be seen as an autonomous entity in its own right. The
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dispute between Realism/Naturalism and Romanticism/Symbolism, which had turned on the nature of the truths that art should mediate, was thereby transmuted into a more radical confrontation concerning the very essence and possibility of representation as such. At one extreme we find the fundamentalist Naturalism of Arno Holz, according to which art has a tendency to revert to nature, ‘wieder die Natur zu sein’ (Holz, 174); at the other, the non-objective Suprematism of Kasimir Malevich, whereby art must utterly abandon subject matter and objects in favour of the sheer superficiality of artefacts such as White on White.15 The Holz–Malevich axis is, however, intersected by an alternative modernist perspective, which certainly rejects the representational ideology of Naturalism, yet also wishes to retain a determinate relationship to ‘nature’, whether human or otherwise. Russian Futurist/ Formalist and German Expressionist aesthetics are fully aware of the Holz/Malevich concern with the adequacy of artistic representations, but they integrate that concern with more general reflections on a crisis of consciousness (which itself, ironically, has Romantic/ Symbolist antecedents16). In order to illustrate this point, let us consider some quotations from Viktor Shklovski and Kasimir Edschmid17 Bei dieser algebraischen Methode des Denkens faßt man die Dinge nach Zahl und Raum, wir sehen sie nicht, sondern erkennen sie an ihren ersten Merkmalen. Der Gegenstand geht gleichsam verpackt an uns vorbei. Nach dem Platz, den er einnimmt, wissen wir, daß er da ist, aber wir sehen nur seine Oberfläche. (Sklovskij, 13) Und gerade, um das Empfinden des Lebens wiederherzustellen, um die Dinge zu fühlen, um den Stein steinern zu machen, existiert das, was man Kunst 15
16 17.
Reproduced in Grey, 242; as the facing page in Grey suggests, the only answer to White on White is Alexander Rodchenko’s Black on Black (Grey, 243). For a particularly illuminating recent discussion of Suprematism and early Soviet art, see Clark, 225–97. See Watney, 154–6. On the Futurist antecedents of Formalism, see Erlich, 46–57. The Futurist roots of Shklovski’s 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’, 41–7.
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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 Länge der Wahrnehmung steigert […]. (Sklovskij, 15) Das Verfahren der Verfremdung bei L. Tolstoi besteht darin, daß er einen Gegenstand nicht mit seinem Namen nennt, sondern ihn so beschreibt, als werde er zum ersten Mal gesehen […]. (Sklovskij, 17) Es kamen die Künstler der neuen Bewegung. […] Sie sahen nicht. Sie schauten. Sie photographierten nicht. Sie hatten Gesichte. (Edschmid, 56) So wird der ganze Raum des expressionistischen Künstlers 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, Häuser, Krankheit, Huren, Geschrei und Hunger. Nun gibt es ihre Vision. Die Tatsachen haben Bedeutung nur so weit, als, durch sie hindurchgreifend, die Hand des Künstlers nach dem faßt, was hinter ihnen steht. (Edschmid, 57)
Shklovski and Edschmid both inhabit a world where everyday perception has been deadened, and authentic seeing has been eroded, if not rendered impossible. Like Kracauer, Shklovski implicitly relates this loss of vision to a process of rationalisation and disenchantment, in consequence of which we never ‘see’ beyond the surface of things. Also like Kracauer, Edschmid distinguishes between the authentic visionary space of the Expressionist artist and mere photography, bound up no doubt with the surface actualities of social facts. But there are also crucial, if subtle differences between Shklovski and Edschmid, and between Futurism/Formalism and Expressionism. While Shklovski wants art to make things visible by making them look strange, thereby reinstating Sehen at the expense of Wiedererkennen, Edschmid suggests that art can achieve the same strategic aim of restoring authentic vision by making visible essential relationships which are otherwise inaccessible to everyday perception. Edschmid therefore requires the artist to break through the surface of
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actuality in order to grasp and mediate its otherwise non-visible essence, whereas Shklovski advocates intensification of our perception of objects by making them more palpable. Hence Shklovski wants the stone to be more stony, whilst Edschmid wants the building to transcend its stony objectivity: ‘Ein Haus ist nicht mehr Gegenstand, nicht mehr nur Stein, nur Anblick, nur ein Viereck mit Attributen des Schön- oder Häßlichseins. Es steigt darüber hinaus’ (Edschmid, 58). This basic discrepancy between intensification and transcendence of perception is, I would suggest, the primary reason why Kracauer’s attempt to bring together the aesthetics of Futurism/Formalism and Expressionism is fraught with difficulties. Similarly, if we were to apply these contradictory positions to photography, then two contrasting representational practices would be implied: on the one hand, the adoption of bizarre perspective and point of view associated with the more radical exponents of neue Sachlichkeit, and on the other the ‘painting with light’ associated with, say, Christian Schad or Man Ray. In both cases, the documentary and evidential force of photography would appear to have been forsaken, and realist art forms modelled on the traditional truth claims of photography would appear to be hopelessly anachronistic and irredeemably flawed. This presumption, paradoxical though it may seem, is also at the core of Adorno’s reassertion of the possibility of realism after modernism. In the course of his sociological and philosophical reflections on the contemporary novel from 1954, Adorno presents a critique of realistic representation whose argumentation is strangely redolent of Kracauer: 18 Nicht nur, daß alles Positive, Greifbare, auch die Faktizität des Inwendigen von Informationen und Wissenschaft beschlagnahmt ist, nötigt den Roman, […] der Darstellung des Wesens oder Unwesens sich zu überantworten, sondern auch, daß, je dichter und lückenloser die Oberfläche des gesellschaftlichen Lebens-
18
Interestingly, Adorno’s use of the term ‘lückenlos’ to characterize the impermeable nature of the inauthentic surface of social life is anticipated in ‘Die Photographie’. There, Kracauer describes the photographic image of the diva as ‘eine lückenlose Erscheinung’ (P, 83) and contrasts photography with the ‘lückenhaft’ record of memory (P, 85). Both Kracauer and Adorno imply that authentic artistic representation must be syncopated or fissured.
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Steve Giles prozesses sich fügt, um so hermetischer diese als Schleier das Wesen verhüllt. Will der Roman seinem realistischen Erbe treu bleiben und sagen, wie es wirklich ist, so muß er auf einen Realismus verzichten, der, indem er die Fassade reproduziert, nur dieser bei ihrem Täuschungsgeschäfte hilft. (Adorno, 64)
Adorno advocates a mode of novelistic composition whose fundamental aim is realist and demystificatory, lifting the veil of reification so as to reveal those essential societal relations that would otherwise remain hidden from view. This aim is to be achieved by breaking through the façade of surface deception in true Expressionist fashion; as Kracauer himself might have written, ‘In der ästhetischen Transzendenz reflektiert sich die Entzauberung der Welt’ (Adorno, 65). But if the façade is not to be reproduced, how is the novel’s real object – an alienated social order – to be represented? Edschmid, after all, insists that the Expressionist should replace the brute facts of human misery with their ‘vision’, liberating them ‘von dem dumpfen Zwang der falschen Wirklichkeit’ (Adorno, 58). Kracauer’s famous answer, which applies as much to sociology as it does to aesthetics, is encapsulated in his methodological remarks in Die Angestellten: Hundert Berichte aus einer Fabrik lassen sich nicht zur Wirklichkeit der Fabrik addieren, sondern bleiben bis in alle Ewigkeit hundert Fabrikansichten. Die Wirklichkeit ist eine Konstruktion. Gewiss muss das Leben beobachtet werden, damit sie erstehe. Keineswegs jedoch ist sie in der mehr oder minder zufälligen Beobachtungsfolge der Reportage enthalten, vielmehr steckt sie einzig und allein in dem Mosaik, das aus den einzelnen Beobachtungen auf Grund der Erkenntnis ihres Gehalts zusammengestiftet wird. Die Reportage photographiert das Leben; ein solches Mosaik wäre sein Bild. (Kracauer, Die Angestellten, 16)
Although he dismisses the façade of photographic reportage, Kracauer insists on the need to construct – from empirical impressions, observations and reports – a mosaic that will constitute a valid image of socio-economic realities. Crucially, whilst Kracauer endorses the modernist/Expressionist critique of Naturalistic representation, his aesthetic and epistemological alternative to ‘mere photography’ also questions Expressionist transcendence. Even in 1920, Kracauer had noted that although Expressionism was necessary, its mission had
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been completed, and he concludes ‘Schicksalswende der Kunst’ by rejecting Expressionist abstraction. We might infer that, like Adorno, Kracauer wishes to establish a mode of realism whose underlying metaphysic draws on Expressionism, but whose representational strategies owe more to Futurism/Formalism and avant-garde montage.19 In that respect there are intriguing parallels with two other Marxist aesthetic theorists who were exercised by problems of photographic representation after modernism, namely Brecht and Benjamin.
Marxism and Representation Our discussion of Futurism/Formalism and Expressionism identified subtly different understandings of ‘making visible’ and its relationship to the process of ‘making strange’, in theory and in practice. As we have seen, the issues raised are relevant not only to modernist aesthetics, but also to Marxist theories of artistic representation, and even to sociological method. Kracauer’s critique of photographic reportage as a basis for analysing industrial relations uncannily anticipates Brecht’s contemporaneous musings on this topic and those of his sociological mentor Fritz Sternberg, the locus classicus in Brecht’s case being his critique of photographic realism in Der Dreigroschenprozeß: Die Lage wird dadurch so kompliziert, daß weniger denn je eine einfache ‘Wiedergabe der Realität’ etwas über die Realität aussagt. Eine Fotografie der Kruppwerke oder der AEG ergibt beinahe nichts über diese Institute. Die eigentliche Realität ist in die Funktionale gerutscht. Die Verdinglichung der menschlichen Beziehungen, also etwa die Fabrik, gibt die letzteren nicht mehr heraus. Es ist also tatsächlich ‘etwas aufzubauen’, etwas ‘Künstliches’, ‘Gestelltes’. Es ist also ebenso tatsächlich Kunst nötig. Aber der alte Begriff der Kunst, vom Erlebnis her, fällt eben aus. Denn auch wer von der Realität nur das
19
On montage as a core aesthetic feature of avant-garde texts, see Bürger, 97– 108.
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Like Kracauer, Brecht suggests that the ‘reality’ of a factory cannot be conveyed by a ‘merely photographic’ reproduction of the immediately visible surfaces of social life. In Brecht’s view, this is because socioeconomic realities have become functional and human relationships reified in such a way that they are not immediately given in experience, visual or otherwise. Brecht, too, argues that a new type of art is needed, which (re-)constructs fundamental societal relationships. His argumentation here, as he himself notes, was strongly influenced by his discussions with the Marxist sociologist Fritz Sternberg.20 Sternberg had suggested that there was a fundamental difference between the late medieval/early modern era, and contemporary industrial society. Whereas in the sixteenth century, key societal relationships were visible to the naked eye (and thus amenable to photographic representation), in the twentieth century such relationships have to be rationally reconstructed, thus rendering their photographic representation inadequate or impossible.21
20
21
See, for example, this comment by Brecht from ca 1930: ‘Die Fotografie ist die Möglichkeit einer Wiedergabe, die den Zusammenhang wegschminkt. Der Marxist Sternberg, in dessen Wertschätzung sie wohl mit mir übereinstimmen, führt aus, daß aus der (gewissenhaften) Fotografie einer Fordschen Fabrik keinerlei Ansicht über diese Fabrik gewonnen werden kann’ (Brecht, ‘Durch Fotografie keine Einsicht’, Schriften 1, 443–4). See the following extracts from Sternberg, recording comments which he made in conversations with Brecht in ca 1928–9: ‘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 wortwörtlichen 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’ (14–15).
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This line of argument – together with Marx’s account of commodity fetishism and Korsch’s critique of naïve realism – underpins Brecht’s advocacy of a cognitive or abstract type of realism from 1932 onwards.22 Nevertheless, Brecht also insists on the importance of making societal realities visible, notably in the inimitable phrase ‘um das zu Sehende jedermann sichtbar zu machen’ (Brecht, Der Dreigroschenprozeß , 449). This is a recurrent theme in Der Dreigroschenprozeß, where the process of making visible is even likened to producing a photographic print from a negative.23 At the same time, Brecht’s dictum ‘um das zu Sehende jedermann sichtbar zu machen’ must be grasped in relation to the aesthetic coordinates that frame Futurism/Formalism and Expressionism. At one level, ‘Brecht the post-Expressionist’ is committed to ‘making visible’ socio-economic structures and relationships which are not immediately given in sense perception. At another level, however, ‘Brecht the post-Formalist’ advocates an aesthetic of estrangement that heightens our perception of aspects of social behaviour which are literally embodied in the gestus. As he writes around 1940: Es ist der Zweck des V-Effekts, den allen Vorgängen unterliegenden gesellschaftlichen Gestus zu verfremden. Unter sozialem Gestus ist der mimische und gestische Ausdruck der gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen zu verstehen, in denen die Menschen einer bestimmten Epoche zueinander stehen. (Brecht, ‘Kurze Beschreibung einer neuen Technik der Schauspielkunst’, 646)
On the one hand, ‘making strange’, as the V-Effekt seeks to defamiliarise and thereby reveal the societal gestus that underlies interactive processes; on the other, ‘making visible’, in that otherwise abstract societal relations are to be displayed to the audience in the palpable form of observable, physical behaviour. As Brecht observes with reference to Shakespeare’s King Lear: Wenn König Lear (1. Akt, 1. Szene), sein Reich unter die Töchter verteilend, eine Landkarte zerreißt, so wird der Teilungsakt verfremdet. Es wird so nicht
22 23
For further discussion, see Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 175–7. See Brecht, Der Dreigroschenprozeß, 460; Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 74.
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Benjamin’s critique of photographic representation in his ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’ takes as its starting point Brecht’s commentary on Krupp and AEG,24 and cites both Brecht and Kracauer’s photography essay in its account of contemporary photographic theory and practice. By the time Benjamin’s essay appeared in 1931, the ‘new photography’ had fully established itself, and his perspective on photography differs from Kracauer’s in two main ways: he is prepared to concede a greater positive potential to the ‘new photography’,25 and he is much more sceptical of the aesthetic categories within which photography had traditionally been located. In particular, following Brecht, Benjamin criticises the auratic view of art adhered to by photographic theorists and pays much more attention to issues of photographic technology. His positive strategy – and his more positive response to the ‘new photography’ – involves assimilating Brecht’s critique of photographic realism to the artistic practices of Surrealism and Constructivism. Benjamin also rejects photographic reportage in favour of an aesthetic of ‘making strange’: the camera has the potential to produce images which shock the viewer and interrupt his/her mechanisms of association, creating a space for the incorporation of photography into what Brecht had referred to as the ‘Literarisierung aller Lebensverhältnisse’ (Benjamin, ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, 385). This brings photography into that realm of ‘complex seeing’ which all three – Kracauer, Brecht and Benjamin – by the late 1920s
24
25
In some quarters this essay is best known for its Brechtian critique (deriving directly from Der Dreigroschenprozeß) of the photography of neue Sachlichkeit (‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, 383–4), a critique which also plays a crucial role in Benjamin’s theory of the avant-garde in ‘Der Autor als Produzent’ (110–11). For further discussion of Benjamin’s indebtedness to Brecht in this regard, see Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 133–6. See Benjamin, ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, 382–3.
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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 naïve 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 Adorno’s elitist but melancholic modernism and Lukács’s fetish for a pre-modernist realism?
Works Cited Adorno, T.W. ‘Standort des Erzählers im zeitgenössischen Roman’, in Adorno, T. W. Noten zur Literatur, I (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1971), 61–71. 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), 9–93. Benjamin, W. ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, in Benjamin, W. Gesammelte Schriften, Hg. R. Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1989-), II 1, 368–85. —— ‘Der Autor als Produzent’, in Benjamin, W. Versuche über Brecht, Hg. R. Tiedemann (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1978), 101–19. 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, 140–58. On complex seeing see Brecht, ‘Anmerkungen zur “Dreigroschenoper”’, 59.
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Bowlt, J.E. (ed) Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism (London, Thames and Hudson, 1991). Brecht, B. Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Hg. W. Hecht, J. Knopf, W. Mittenzwei, K-D. Müller (Berlin, Aufbau; Frankfurt aM, Stuttgart, 1988–). —— Der Dreigroschenprozeß. Ein soziologisches Experiment, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 1. Schriften 1914–1933, Band 21, 448–514. ——‘Anmerkungen zur “Dreigroschenoper”’, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 4. Texte zu Stücken, Band 24, 57–68. ——‘Durch Fotografie keine Einsicht’, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 1. Schriften 1914– 1933, Band 21, 443–4. —— ‘Kurze Beschreibung einer neuen Technik der Schauspielkunst, die einen Verfremdungseffekt hervorbringt’, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 2. Schriften 1933–42, Band 22, 641–59. Bürger, P. Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1982). Burgin, V. (ed) Thinking Photography (London, Macmillan, 1982). ——‘Introduction’, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 1–14. ——‘Photographic Practice and Art Theory’, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 39–83. ——‘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, 32–8. Edschmid, K. ‘Über den dichterischen Expressionismus’, in Best, O.F. (Hg), Theorie des Expressionismus (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1976), 55–67. 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 Kracauer’s “The Mass Ornament”’, Radical Philosophy, 99 (2000), 31–9. Grey, C. The Russian Experiment in Art 1863–1922 (London, Thames and Hudson, 1990). Hansen, M. ‘Decentric Perspectives: Kracauer’s Early Writings on Film and Mass Culture’, New German Critique, 54 (1991), 47–76. Holz, A. ‘Die Kunst. Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze’, in Meyer, T. (Hg), Theorie des Naturalismus (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1974), 168–74. Kracauer, S. Schriften 5.1. Aufsätze (1915–1926), Hg. I. Mülder-Bach (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1990). ——Schriften 5.2. Aufsätze (1927–1931), Hg. I. Mülder-Bach (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1990). Kracauer, S. ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.2, 57–67.
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——‘Das Schloß. Zu Franz Kafkas Nachlaßroman’, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.1, 390– 3. ——Der verbotene Blick. Beobachtungen – Analysen – Kritiken (Leipzig, Reclam, 1992). ——Die Angestellten. Aus dem neuesten Deutschland (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1971; first published in book form 1930). ——‘Die Photographie’, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.2, 83–98. ——‘Georg von Lukács’ Romantheorie’, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.1, 117–23. ——‘Schicksalswende der Kunst’, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.1, 72–8. ——The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays, translated and edited by T.Y. Levin (Harvard University Press, 1995). —— Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton University Press, 1997; first published 1960). Levin, T. Y. ‘Introduction’ to Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, 1–30. Malewitsch, K. Suprematismus. Die gegenstandlose Welt, Hg. W. Haftmann (Köln, Dumont, 1989). Mellor, D. (ed) Germany – The New Photography 1927–33 (Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978). Moholy-Nagy, L. Malerei – Photographie – Film (München, Bauhaus, 1925). ——Sechzig Fotos, Fototek Band.1, Hg. F. Roh (Berlin, 1930). Mülder, I. Siegfried Kracauer – Grenzgänger zwischen Theorie und Literatur. Seine frühen Schriften 1913–1933 (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1985). Mülder-Bach, I. ‘Der Umschlag der Negativität. Zur Verschränkung von Phänomenologie, Geschichtsphilosophie und Filmästhetik in Siegfried Kracauers Metaphorik der “Oberfläche”’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 61, 2 (1987), 359–73. Rosenberg, J. ‘Nachwort’, in Kracauer, Der verbotene Blick, 356–65. Schlüpmann, S. ‘Phenomenology of Film: On Siegfried Kracauer’s Writings of the 1920s’, New German Critique, 40 (1987). Sekula, S. ‘On the Invention of Photographic Meaning’, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 84–109. Shklovski, V. ‘The Resurrection of the Word’, in S. Bann, and J. Bowlt, (eds), Russian Formalism (Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1973), 41–7. Sklovskij, V. ‘Die Kunst als Verfahren’, in Striedter, J. (Hg), Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allgemeinen Literaturtheorie und zur Theorie der Prosa (München, Fink, 1981), 3–35. Sternberg, F. ‘Der Dichter und die Ratio. Erinnerungen an Bertolt Brecht’ (Göttingen, Sachse und Pohl, 1963). Vierhuff, H.G. Die Neue Sachlichkeit. Malerei und Fotografie (Köln, Dumont, 1980). Watney, S. ‘Making Strange: The Shattered Mirror’, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 154–76.
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JEROME CARROLL
The Art of the Imperceptible: A Discussion of the Aesthetics of Wolfgang Welsch
‘Inmitten der Kommunikation bleibt er allein zuständig für das Unvermittelte, den Einschlag, den unterbrochenen Kontakt, die Dunkelphase, die Pause’ (Strauß, 28 in Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 40). With this citation from Botho Strauß’s ‘Dankrede zum GeorgBüchner-Preis’, the contemporary German theorist, Wolfgang Welsch, closes his discussion of what he sees as a new category and a ‘neuer Fokus’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 7) for the discipline of aesthetics; the anaesthetic. This new focus must be understood in terms of Welsch’s suggestion for revising the discipline as a whole from its preoccupation with art to a broader concern with sensory perception. In the essay ‘Ästhetik und Anästhetik’, published in the collection Ästhetisches Denken in 1990, he characterises the anaesthetic as a negation of sensory perception: ‘Anästhetik’ verwende ich als Gegenbegriff zu ‘Ästhetik’. ‘Anästhetik’ meint jeden Zustand, wo die Elementarbedingung des Ästhetischen – die Empfindungsfähigkeit – aufgehoben ist. Während die Ästhetik das Empfinden stark macht, thematisiert Anästhetik die Empfindungslosigkeit – im Sinn eines Verlusts, einer Unterbindung oder der Unmöglichkeit von Sensibilität, und auch dies auf allen Niveaus: von der physischen Stumpfheit bis zur geistigen Blindheit. Anästhetik hat es, kurz gesagt, mit der Kehrseite der Ästhetik zu tun. (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 10)
Beyond Welsch’s essay, theoretical interest in the anaesthetic as a component of philosophical aesthetics has gathered pace in the last fifteen years, and with each application, the concept of the anaesthetic goes through a different permutation. For Donna Kerr, the anaesthetic is an obstacle to aesthetic utopia, arising from either ‘routines and understandings which are psychologically too comfortable’ (Kerr, 13) or ‘abrasive environmental conditions – conditions that can
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psychologically deafen and blind or psychologically numb or disable’ (Kerr, 13). Guy Sircello and Neil Leach employ the concept of anaesthetics with more polemic force. The object of Sircello’s invective is the ‘negative’ (Sircello, 39) trend in the general discipline of aesthetics away from objects and experience of beauty in particular, and the ‘aesthetic attitude’ (Sircello, 39) in general. This has been supplanted by an ‘anaesthetic’ (Sircello, 39) preoccupation with philosophical issues and a consideration of the modulations of the arts as an institution. Neil Leach’s anaesthetic is the effect of the ‘intoxicating world of the image’ (Leach, viii), which he sees as characterising contemporary architectural and general cultural practice. This cultural veneer is seen, by Leach as well as by Welsch, to erode critical awareness and to precipitate mindless consumption and a protective indifference in the face of overstimulation. In opposition to this involuntary response, Monica Sassatelli refers to the anaesthetic as a strategy whereby art reacts against this ‘banalization of the aesthetic’ (Sassatelli). This idea of the anaesthetic as a strategic deployment in art is also central to Welsch’s work, but his application of the concept of the anaesthetic contains elements of all of the above ideas. Contemporary approaches to anaesthetics seem to invoke two main understandings of the anaesthetic: firstly, as an involuntary response to the excess of aestheticised experience or the inoculation of routine; secondly, as an intentional and strategic response to or thematisation of this state of affairs in art. This split is also evident in Welsch’s work, and my central argument will be that this causes a problematic tension within his formulations on the anaesthetic. I will begin by outlining Welsch’s idea of aesthetics as a broader discipline, his conception of the problem of widespread, everyday aestheticisation, and his multifaceted concept of the anaesthetic, and then proceed to trace how Welsch returns from theorizing the aesthetic and anaesthetic in terms of sense-perception to insert the anaesthetic in a more conventional, and essentially Idealist, framework of aesthetics, which conceives of art in the more complex terms of truth and fictionality and the possibility of representation. I will argue that there are significant ideological weaknesses in these conceptions of oppositional art if they are to be conceived as resistance to aestheticisation, as well as that different emphases in Welsch’s conception of ‘the aesthetic’ give rise
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to two arguably incompatible ideas of how art functions, each relying on a distinct investment in the anaesthetic.
Aesthetics and Anaesthetics Welsch’s application of the concept of the anaesthetic needs to be understood in the context of his revision of the terms of the discipline of aesthetics, which he returns, following Baumgarten, to its etymological origins as a study of sensation and perception: ‘Ich möchte Ästhetik genereller als Aisthetik verstehen: als Thematisierung von Wahrnehmung aller Art, sinnhaften ebenso wie geistigen, alltäglichen wie sublimen, lebensweltlichen wie künstlerischen’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 9–10). ‘Aisthetik’ here refers to the Greek term aisthesis, which means perception, suggesting a conception of aesthetics that is broader than its modern focus on art. As Welsch explains, this new aesthetics would still include art, but would also encompass what Welsch refers to as the ‘ästhetische Auffassung der Wirklichkeit’ (Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, 148). But rather than simply involving a question of perception, this conception of reality as ‘ästhetisch’ rather than ‘realistisch’ is seen by Welsch to indicate ‘daß Wirklichkeit nicht gegeben, sondern gemacht ist’ (Welsch, Ästhetik im Widerstreit, 3). Significantly for my later discussion, he also remarks that aestheticised reality is fictional, that the ‘Grundlagen dessen, was wir Wirklichkeit nennen, fiktionaler Natur sind’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 7). In Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, Welsch refers to this aestheticisation of reality in various terms perhaps more plausibly connected with questions of perception. These include the cosmetic effect of the widespread façade-like renovation or ‘Verschönerung’ (Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, 10) of the built environment, and the mediation of reality by visual images (Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, 14) and marketing ‘image’ (Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, 17). This latter is seen to foster the presentation of everyday events such as shopping and eating as an ‘Erlebnis’ (Welsch,
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Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, 10–11). Seemingly instances of Peter Bürger’s ‘falsche Aufhebung der Distanz zwischen Kunst und Leben’ (Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde, 68), these phenomena underlie Welsch’s claim as to the broader relevance for contemporary reality of non-art aesthetics, which has become ‘ein generelles Verstehensmedium für Wirklichkeit’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 7). The motivation for Welsch’s elaboration of anaesthetics lies in this diagnosis of the state of contemporary aestheticisation. For Welsch, aestheticisation results in an overstimulation of the senses, which he traces back to Romantic-Idealist views on the human subject and its need for sensory gratification and intellectual exercise: Früher hatte solche Anregung kontemplationsfördernden Zweck. Kant beispielweise schrieb, die Einbildungskraft werde beim Anblick veränderlicher Gestalten – ‘eines Kaminfeuers, oder eines rieselnden Baches’ – in ein ‘freies Spiel’ der Phantasie versetzt und zu autonomen Bildungen angeregt. (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 14)
But contemplation has been replaced by an empty euphoria and subsequent apathy. What was once beautiful in an engaging way now comes across as an empty perfection and veneer, exploited in a widespread process of commodification. For Welsch, the anaesthetic is both the necessary and the only effective response to this phenomenon of aestheticisation. In the same way that Welsch’s understanding of aestheticisation is wide-ranging, his conception of the anaesthetic is also inclusive. In his terms, the anaesthetic refers to ‘jeden Zustand, wo die Elementarbedingung des Ästhetischen – die Empfindungsfähigkeit – aufgehoben ist’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 10; my italics). This embraces various ideas of the anaesthetic, such as the anaesthetic as an involuntary shutting off in the face of excess, as a cognitive prerequisite of perception, as a cultural version of this precondition, and as non-perception, both in everyday experience and in art. I will present these in more detail, before highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of Welsch’s formulations. For Welsch, as for Donna Kerr, the sensory excess, veneer and beautification which constitute everyday aestheticisation result in anaesthesia, as we are de-sensitised by the over-designedness of
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everything; aestheticisation ‘[schlägt] in eine gigantische Anästhetisierung um’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 13), or ‘Ästhetisierung […] erfolgt als Anästhetisierung’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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 Ästhetik desto mehr Anästhetik’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 16). At a significantly different categorical level, for Welsch, any perception de facto demands non-perception: ‘Das bedeutet freilich, daß dem Wahrnehmen selbst eine Art Anästhetik eingeschrieben ist. […] Und diese interne Anästhetik ist eine notwendige Bedingung der externen Effizienz des Wahrnehmens’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 34). This motivates Welsch’s observation ‘Kein aisthesis ohne anaisthesis’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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 Schlegel’s ‘“Lücke im Dasein”, die – selbst unsichtbar – dem Sichtbaren seine Bestimmtheit widerfahren lasse’ (both in Frank, 47). It also inhabits Hans Georg Gadamer’s rehabilitation of the idea of ‘Vorurteil’ and his related critique of the idea of ‘interesseloses Anschauen’ at the heart of Kant’s ‘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, Ästhetisches 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, Ästhetisches 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 Welsch’s theorisation moves from basic perception to more complex issues of ideology. In what follows I will argue that this complexity contradicts Welsch’s revision of the terms of the aesthetic as sensory, and comes back to haunt Welsch’s 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
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aspects to this. Firstly, there simply are aspects of reality which are beyond our naked perception, such as Welsch’s example of cancerinducing radiation (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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, Ästhetisches 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 Welsch’s conception of two directions in art. On the one hand, there is the ‘idealistische und romantische Tradition’ which privileges the ‘Ästhetischwerden’ as ‘Vollendung des Menschen und der Gesellschaft’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 20). This locates increasingly aestheticised reality, in the sense of both beautification and sensory overload, in what Welsch characterizes as a ‘moderner Programm ästhetischer Akkumulation’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 38) and a ‘moderne Utopie einer total-ästhetischen Kultur’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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 anästhetische Grundhaltung – gegen all die schönen und etablierten Angebote des Ästhetischen – die Methode der Wahl zur Aufdeckung der Anästhetik alles Ästhetischen. Deshalb hat die Kunst dieses Jahrhunderts, der das Ästhetische als solches suspekt geworden war und die den ästhetischen Gewohnheiten – den alltäglichen der Sinne wie den durch Kunsttradition eingeübten – mißtraute, radikale Schnitte gesetzt. (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 37)
Welsch’s account of the anaesthetic as a mode of art, as a consequence of these multiple and intersecting conceptions of the aesthetic and anaesthetic, seems to contain several distinct ideas of art, which I will categorise in what follows as the sublime, cognitive and pragmatic
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modes of the anaesthetic. Characterizing the contemporary accumulation of the aesthetic as sensory excess allows Welsch to conceive of art’s oppositional force in terms of an arrest of sensory perception: [Künstler] haben ‘unsichtbare Objekte’ geschaffen, Werke der Unbemächtigbarkeit. Ich denke etwa an Walter de Marias Vertikalen Erdkilometer – ein exemplarisches Werk des Entzugs; oder an Werke der Minimal art – an diese Maxima von Anästhetik bei minimalem ästhetischen Aufwand. (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 40)
This ‘minimaler ästhetischer Aufwand’, which I have labelled the sublime anaesthetic, suggests itself as a version of minimalist art which has gone one step beyond the evacuation of meaning from behind art – leaving just a surface – to the absence (or at least problematisation) even of surface. Walter de Maria’s ‘Vertical Earth Kilometer’ is the only example Welsch gives, but other examples in the sphere of sculpture might include Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ‘Cube’ (1966, ‘Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera, 1962–1972’ exhibition, Tate Modern, London, 31 May–19 August, 2001), whose composition from six inward-facing mirrors makes the artwork at once infinite and inaccessible, or Paul Ramirez Jonas’ ‘Man on the Moon’ (1991, Speed – Visions of an Accelerated Age exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 11 September–22 November, 1998), in which the artist has transferred a recording of the moon landing via phonograph onto a number of wax cylinders. To attempt to access the sound from their now three-dimensional physical and visual form would gouge an obliterating groove into the wax. There has also been considerable recent interest in questions of the representation of the invisible or imperceptible, as exemplified by three exhibitions in the UK in Spring 2001.1 The imperceptible has also been deployed in the field of music, as in John Cage’s infamous ‘4'33"’, which Cage saw, in a notable parallel with Welsch’s idea of art as a resistance to everyday aestheticisation, as a response to canned ‘musak’ (Solomon). A 1
Signatures of the Invisible, Atlantis Gallery, London, 2–29 March 2001, Exhibition to be Reconstructed in your Head, Custard Gallery, Birmingham, April 2001, Nothing, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, April 2001.
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rendition of Cage’s 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 Böll’s Dr. Murke, the common ground between this conception of silence as a refuge from auditory excess and Welsch’s formulations on the anaesthetic is apparent. Secondly, the references to ‘etablierte Angebote des Ästhetischen’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 37) and the processes of ‘Aufdeckung der Anästhetik alles Ästhetischen’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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 über Bilderfahrung und Bildarbeit, die sich daran macht, diese vorgängigen Prägungen zu exponieren und ihre Anästhetik zu durchbrechen’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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, 22–3).2 Thus the defamiliarising effect of silence is apparent, as Cage says, 2
The parallel between Cage’s focus on ambient, ostensibly non-artistic, sounds and Welsch’s intention of dismantling aesthetic’s exclusive focus on the institution of art via the theme of perception is apparent. For Cage, as Revill notes, the silent piece represents ‘the ultimate elision of art and life’ (Revill, 165).
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‘we had to conceive of silence in order to open our ears’ (in Revill, 164). Thirdly, anaesthetic art seems to make a claim to truth. Welsch is not explicit about this, but I have already noted the anaesthetic’s particular suitability for conveying the essence of contemporary technologically altered reality, characterised for Welsch by the pervasive imperceptibility which has rendered our sensory faculties as ‘Agenten des Falschen’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 19). This suggests that the imperceptible elements in art function as a preparation for the ‘real’ world, suggesting a pragmatic rather than critical function for art. But, confusingly, the imperceptible reality which this art replicates seems to be the opposite of the aestheticised reality which Welsch identifies in the increasing beautification and sensory overload which surrounds us. Indeed, Welsch highlights the ‘fiktionale Natur’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 7) of this aestheticised aspect of reality. This fictionality of the aestheticised – ‘aesthetic’ not only by virtue of its sensory appeal but also its ‘constructedness’ – implies, by antithesis, a second truth-claim for anaesthetic art. The ‘unsichtbare Objekte’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 40) of Welsch’s sublime anaesthetic seem to promise a kind of truth by virtue of their inaccessibility and their moment of resistance to the veneer and excess of aestheticisation.
Critical Perspectives on Anaesthetics Having multiple and varying ideas of how art functions is not necessarily problematic, though the tension should be noted between Welsch’s stated project of a broader discipline of aesthetics – ‘Ich möchte Ästhetik genereller als Aisthetik verstehen: als Thematisierung von Wahrnehmung aller Art’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 9–10) – and his return to a narrower focus on art. Perhaps the success of Welsch’s project depends on the extent to which he is able to articulate the interaction between everyday perception and his various models of art as particular and distinct modes of perception. However,
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my interrogation of Welsch’s formulations in what follows starts by asking what might be lost by theorising art at the necessarily basic level of perception. Moreover, returning to the question of Welsch’s divergent ideas of the way art functions, my criticism of Welsch’s anaesthetic is not that the sublime anaesthetic construed as sensory withdrawal and respite is unconvincing in itself, but rather that it is incompatible with Welsch’s alternative usage of the term anaesthetic as referring to unthematised or unconscious – that is to say, deeper – components of the cognitive process which accompanies perception. This incompatibility is compounded by Welsch’s valorisation of an alternative model of art where such latent elements of perception are exposed. The slippage in Welsch’s sublime anaesthetic from the idea of imperceptibility, and the issue of sense-perception, to the albeit more complex but utterly philosophical issues of truth and representation, raises the question as to whether the sublime anaesthetic really constitutes an effective opposition to everyday aestheticisation. Moreover, I will suggest that the version of truth in Welsch’s sublime anaesthetic reverts to an early Romantic model of the kind of truth that art can provide, its validity predicated on its indeterminate and unfixable nature. Welsch’s philosophical investment in the anaesthetic will also be seen to unlearn the lessons of Herbert Marcuse’s convincing exposition of the regressive ideology at the heart of certain strands of Idealist aesthetics (Marcuse, 56ff.). Nevertheless, I will make the case that the complexity of the cognitive anaesthetic has the advantage of allowing a more sophisticated conception of the anaesthetic which transcends a valorisation of sheer imperceptibility. As noted above, Welsch’s diagnosis of contemporary aestheticisation identifies several distinct but related features of contemporary reality, for example, the excess of sensory experience, the mediation of reality by images, the predominance of veneer over substance, and the thoroughgoing beautification of our environment. The difficulty arises with Welsch’s suggestion that one type of minimalist art can address all of these phenomena. Moreover, if one allows that these phenomena of aestheticisation include an ideological aspect, it is questionable whether Welsch’s anaesthetic, reduced to a binary treatment of aesthetics as ‘perception: on’ or ‘perception: off’, is equipped to address the ideological complexity of what is really
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occurring in processes of aestheticisation, for example commodification or the fetishization associated with Baudrillard’s concept of sign value (Baudrillard, 77). If aestheticisation is what Mike Featherstone refers to as an ‘intensification of image production’ (Featherstone, 65), as Welsch’s idea of a ‘mediale Bildwelt’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches 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, Welsch’s 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 Welsch’s 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 Schlegel’s idea of the ‘Lücke 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 Cage’s music, for example, ambient noise is valorised for its spontaneous and 3 4
For an excellent discussion of this intersection of philosophy and literary theory in Romantic thought see Bowie, 65–79. See Bowie, 38.
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unintentioned nature, as Cage himself says in one interview: ‘The essential meaning of silence is the giving up of intention’ (Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, 189). But the essential inaccessibility of this indeterminate truth exposes the sublime anaesthetic to Marcuse’s critique of Idealist aesthetics, as elaborated in the essay ‘Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur’. Whilst Welsch’s anaesthetic is conceived as repudiating the function of the beautified world as pleasant veneer, its inaccessibility suggests that in ideological terms it might actually replace beauty as the guarantor of an ideal, that is to say indeterminate, realm. John Cage’s suggestion that music is there to prepare the mind for divine influence is grist to Marcuse’s mill.5 In Marcuse’s terms this promise of revelation and respite, rather than seeking to change material conditions, performs a regressive consolatory function (Marcuse, 86), which ultimately serves to ‘affirm’ present conditions; ‘Die Kultur bejaht und verdeckt die neuen gesellschaftlichen Lebenbedingungen’ (Marcuse, 64). The idea that the reception of anaesthetic artworks involve a moment of contemplation does progress beyond a simple celebration of their alleged imperceptibility, a certainly is supported by the general philosophical questions about existence, perception and paradox that the works noted above seem to raise. For example, the effect of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ‘Cube’, which comprises six mirrors facing each other, is only achieved when we try to imagine what exists and what is visible within the confines of the cube. Similarly, the theatre of Robert Wilson, whose slowed-down and virtually wordless Deafman Glance might be conceived as an instance of the sublime anaesthetic, is designed to give the audience therapeutic ‘time for interior reflection’.6 This conception of art as offering a moment for contemplation is less contentious than the idea of sublime art as containing a kernel of truth. Moreover, it suggests a plausible mediation between the seemingly philosophical issues of the perception of the infinite or paradoxical in art and more everyday 5 6
See Revill, 168. Wilson, quoted in Innes, 202. The idea that Wilson is the theatrical equivalent of Cage is supported by the former’s KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia Terrace, which was performed over seven days at the 1972 Shiraz festival. See Innes, 202.
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perception, supporting Welsch’s idea of art as a moment of ‘recuperation’ from the excesses of the everyday world. But Marcuse’s critique of art’s affirmative function is again pertinent here. The idea of art as a meditation on such conceptually challenging issues is precisely the object of his criticism of the ‘Würdigung alles Schweren und Erhabenen’ that he associates with Idealism (Marcuse, 71). This is the stick to the carrot of art’s consolatory function, for Marcuse sees the preference for the conceptually difficult as a means of ensuring a ‘Disziplinierung des Individuum zum Sich-Fügen in eine schlechte Ordnung’ (Marcuse, 100). That Marcuse likens this ‘Disziplinierung’ to Stoic philosophy has resonance for Welsch’s formulations in view of the latter’s valorisation of the Stoic as the ‘perfekter Anästhet’ (Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 26). Marcuse’s austere position is perhaps excessively pessimistic: it does not follow necessarily that the conceptually difficult reinforces the ideology of a ‘schlechte Ordnung’. But his remarks are a useful corrective to the excessive claims of this kind of Idealist aesthetics, reminding us of the limitations of art which functions as little more than a distraction. Specifically with respect to Welsch’s formulations, Marcuse’s comments indicate that imperceptible art might serve only to set up a smokescreen in front of the suspect ideologies at work in aestheticisation, combatting one dubious ideology with another. In addition to the slippage from issues of perception to the philosophical issues of truth and the distraction of the conceptually difficult, there is the related shift of focus in Welsch’s formulations from questions of perception to the idea of the anaesthetic as a meditation on the issue of artistic representation. This is apparent in Welsch’s distinction between the modern faith in art as total representation and the modernist problematising of that function (see Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, 37–8). T. J. Clarke reads the increasing abstraction of art in the twentieth century as a striving to break out of the obligation of illusionist representation, and as a desire to attain a certain ‘immediacy’ (Clarke, 253). The idea of art as ‘Nothing’, the evacuation of any trace of content, is the reductio ad absurdum of this idea. Flaubert, for example, indicates in a letter written whilst writing Madame Bovary the desire to write ‘a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external […] a book which would have almost no subject, or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible,
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if such a thing is possible’ (Steegmuller, 131).7 More recently, John Baldessari’s piece, ‘no ideas have entered this work’ (1966–8), operates on the same principle. The inherent conceptuality of the work gives the lie to the notice which occupies the ‘blank’ canvas: ‘EVERYTHING IS PURGED FROM THIS PAINTING BUT ART, NO IDEAS HAVE ENTERED THIS WORK.’ As such, the imperceptibility of these instances of art appears as a by-product of the artist’s frustration at the obligation of more or less realist representation.8 Construing the anaesthetic as a meditation on the mode and limits of representation may be more convincing than conceptualising the anaesthetic as a somehow imperceptible truth, but only at the expense of its credibility as oppositional artform in the way that Welsch seems to intend. Conceiving the anaesthetic as somehow refusing representation seems to undermine Welsch’s claims that there is some special dialectic between the anaesthetic and everyday aestheticisation. This dialectic is plausible if we take the anaesthetic to denote the automatic switching off in the face of sensory excess, but not as an account of art’s turning against itself. It is questionable whether Welsch’s sublime anaesthetic even occurs in the same arena as aestheticisation, that is, the everyday, or whether it is only to be experienced in the security of the art gallery or the modernist text. Conceptual art’s tendency of slipping into philosophical navel-gazing, with a consequent Verharmlosung of its political edge, is particularly problematic for Welsch’s terms, because the inoculation of aestheticisation is just what the anaesthetic is supposed to counter. I want, however, to close on a more positive point regarding Welsch’s ideas on aesthetics and the anaesthetic, by returning to his usage of the term anaesthetic as denoting the latent and unthematised preconditions to perception. The awareness of the sophisticated processes of cognition which accompany perception inserts a 7 8
Cf. John Cage’s 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 ‘Catch–22’ 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 Malevich’s suprematist pieces do not signify ‘absolute blankness or emptiness […] they really are paintings!’ (Clarke, 268).
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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, Ästhetisches Denken, 36), the main object of Welsch’s 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 Welsch’s 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
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description of how art exposes what is going on behind the veneer of aestheticisation. Beyond the valorisation of a momentary withdrawal and respite from aestheticisation, a more critical and durable exposure of the process and implications of aestheticisation might be developed.
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). Bürger, 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: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1990). Innes, C. Avant Garde Theatre 1892–1992 (London, Routledge, 1993). Kerr, D. H. ‘Aesthetic Policy’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2.1, (1978), 5–22. 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, 21–2 (1991), 39–52. Solomon, L. J. ‘The Sounds of Silence: John Cage and “4'33" ”’, Solomon’s Music Theory & Composition Resources, 1998, 2 May 2001, http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm.
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Steegmuller, F. (ed and trans.) The Selected Letters of Gustav Flaubert (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1954). Strauß, B. Der Aufstand gegen die sekundäre Welt: Bemerkungen zu einer Ästhetik der Anwesenheit (München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1999). Welsch, W. Ästhetisches Denken (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1990). —— Grenzgänge der Ästhetik (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1996). –––– ‘Vorwort.’ Welsch, W. and Pries, C. (Hg) Ästhetik im Widerstreit: Interventionen zum Werk von Jean-François Lyotard. (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1991).
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CARMEL FINNAN
The Challenges of Zürich’s Autonomous Youth Movement
The so-called youth disturbances, or, depending on one’s point of view, Jugendunruhe, Bewegung der Unzufriedenen or Jugendkravallen, in Switzerland between 1980 and 1982 were defined as much by their international aspect as by their specifically Swiss character. Similar to other major cities in neighbouring countries since the 1960s, Switzerland’s main urban centres also became focal points for demonstrations against deteriorating living and working conditions in developed capitalist societies and the growing alienation these conditions produced. While this urban-based unrest had led to riotous public demonstrations in adjacent countries on a regular basis, the violent disturbances that spilled onto the streets of Zürich in the summer of 1980 and quickly spread to other Swiss cities were unprecedented by Swiss standards and sent waves of shock and incredulity across the country.
‘Nieder mit dem Packeis!’ Youth Protest in Zürich in the Early 1980s The outrage these disturbances provoked throughout Switzerland was itself symptomatic of the limitations and failure of the traditional Swiss mode of responding to internal criticism and non-conformity. From his chosen exile in Holland during the 1940s the Swiss writer Ludwig Hohl examined the conventional Swiss method of domesticating all potential conflict though its policy of ‘voreilige
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Versöhnung’.1 According to Hohl this appeasement process actually subdues all opposing viewpoints by quickly absorbing them into the mainstream democratic process, allowing Switzerland to avoid any serious encounter with dissent. In his 1970 essay Diskurs in der Enge Paul Nizon also criticises the inability of Swiss society to engage with nonconformity. According to Nizon, the Swiss manner of dealing with any discordant discourse that emerges is to suppress it. This specifically Swiss model of engaging with domestic conflict is also reflected in the relative absence of an organised youth sub-culture in Switzerland in the post-war period compared with its European neighbours, perpetuating the stereotypical image of Swiss youth as passive and over-conformist. The publication by the terminally ill Fritz Zorn of his autobiography Mars in 1977 seemed to confirm this image. According to Zorn the level of conformity demanded by Swiss society and to which he had obediently adhered had been achieved by totally repressing his anger and frustrations with Swiss social convention. The human cost of creating and maintaining this harmonious, social façade was being articulated in his adult life as a malignant cancer. However, on closer inspection the youth of Switzerland were not so docile and content as such dominant images suggest. The first postwar youth demonstrations to challenge Swiss conventions date back to 1958/59.2 The shock caused by these youth protests led to the setting up of a youth commission to examine youth issues in Switzerland in the hope that the establishment of such a democratic structure would neutralise any future dissent before it expressed itself in public protest. Nonetheless, since 1958 young people have taken to the streets in huge numbers almost every decade to confront the Swiss public with their demands. When Swiss youth began to publicly articulate their discontent in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their numerous critics were quick to point out that Switzerland had weathered the worldwide economic crises of the 1970s much better than its neighbours, and its youth had, therefore, nothing to complain about. Economically, Switzerland did indeed seem to maintain its ‘Sonderfall’ status in the 1 2
Hohl, 10. Hohl also termed this characteristic Swiss response to internal discord ‘eingeübte Harmonisierung’. See in this context, Gros, Zeugin, Radeff, 28.
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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 Zorn’s 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 erkläre mich als im Zustand des totalen Krieges’ (Zorn, 225). Similar to other youth movements across Europe in the early 1980s, Switzerland’s youth directed their protests as much against the dominant national culture as against the counter-culture movements of 3
4
The causes behind the eruption of protest in 1980 are summarised as an ‘elementarer Ausdruck des Unbehagens in einer technisierten und organisierten Gesellschaft, die nicht allein vom Zwang der Staatsgewalt, sondern ebensosehr vom Druck privater Gruppen und Machtzenren gelenkt und eingeengt wird.’ Quoted in Lenzburg, 279. Kriese, 180–183. The results of a survey show that Switzerland was on a par with Britain and Germany, ahead of Austria and behind the USA and the Netherlands.
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their parents’ generation. The 1980s generation expressed its separateness from its predecessors through the apolitical stance it assumed and its open distrust and rejection of the left-wing ideology that had informed the student protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In order to avoid repeating the ‘failures’ of the 1968 and 1970s revolts, particularly the compromises this generation made with the authorities, the 1980s movements totally rejected any notion of functioning as a long-term counter-culture movement that aspired to reform existing norms. They established themselves primarily as anticulture movements, grounded in the concept of negating whatever prevented them from realising their immediate aims. The apolitical stance and lack of any ideologically-based theory that defined these movements consequently contributed to their short-lived, discontinuous and heterogeneous character. As well as defining their different objectives, the 1980s anticulture movements also created their own distinctive protest style to reflect their separateness from their revolutionary predecessors. The chosen mode of documenting their difference and marginality was a stylised form of provocation, so well personified in the international Punk scene, an aggressive and cynical criticism of the culture industry, which attracted young people of all classes. The main issues that united these diverse movements throughout Europe related to their vehement criticisms of contemporary urban living conditions, ranging from the increasing mechanisation of working life to the diminishing standard of affordable accommodation. In all cases the protesters demanded immediate personal freedom, which they wanted to realise in an independent, autonomous space. Such a space, they claimed, could accommodate alternative life styles and living arrangements in a society that was becoming more rigid and technically controlled and one that clearly offered them ‘no future’. A specifically Swiss feature of the growing tensions during the late 1970s was that their protests were not grounded in economic issues, such as unemployment or lack of career opportunities, as was the case with their European neighbours. It was instead fuelled by socio-cultural matters, which were in turn reflected in the background of those who joined the protest. The most unifying factor of the movement was age, not class. It consists mainly of young, welleducated people from diverse socio-economic classes, ranging in age
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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 Zürich 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 Zürich to ‘high art’ at the expense of various alternative cultural projects.
‘Wir sind die Kulturleichen der Stadt’: Zürich’s Autonomous Youth Movement The disturbances that began on the streets of Zürich during the summer of 1980 and lasted intermittently for two years surpassed all other protests movements in post-war Switzerland both in the intensity of the confrontations and in their far-reaching consequences. While the citizens and civic authorities of Zürich were stunned by this sudden eruption of anger and frustration by its youth and their apparently intransigent demand for an Autonomes Jugendzentrum, the struggle for such a centre already had a long history of successive demands made by various groups and unfulfilled promises made by the civic authorities. It began twelve years previously when protesting Jimi Hendrix rock fans occupied the empty Globus commercial building in Zürich, demanding that it be used as an Autonomous Centre.6 The hard-line response of the city council polarised negotiations, which eventually deteriorated into rioting scenes and repressive police behaviour, since referred to as the ‘Globuskravall’. During the 1970s numerous self-help groups and sub-culture movements attempted to set up an autonomous centre that would 5 6
See Kriese (212–17) 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.
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provide a much-needed independent meeting place and accommodate alternative cultural events. All these attempts were thwarted by a lack of resources or the unwillingness of the various municipal authorities to support such projects. Even when the citizens of Zürich voted in 1977 to turn an unused factory building, ‘Die Rote Fabrik’, into a culture centre, the lack of necessary funding for renovation work meant that only very few rooms were available for alternative events. In continued to function mainly as a storage room for city’s theatre and opera. In May 1980 the umbrella group composed of various 1970s counter-culture groups and more recently formed sub-culture groups, formed Aktiongruppe Rote Fabrik (ARF) to further their demand for the necessary funding to accommodate and maintain an Autonomous Youth Centre. When the city announced its intention in May 1980 to grant an interest-free loan of 61 million Swiss Francs for renovation work to the City Opera House, dependent of course on the outcome of a census-based citizen decision, the ARF finally lost its patience.7 The first phase of Zürich’s youth disturbances began on 30 May 1980 when a group of about 200 demonstrators marched on a party being held at the city Opera House to gain support for the forthcoming referendum on the loan, chanting ‘Wir sind die Kulturleichen dieser Stadt.’ The protesters wished to confront the opera public with alternative forms of art, such as rock music, street theatre, etc., which were being continuously ignored by the Zürich’s municipal authorities. With the appearance of armed police, the peaceful protest rapidly degenerated into egg throwing and finally into a physical confrontation between protesters and police. The demonstrations, termed the ‘Opernhaus-Kravall’, lasted the whole weekend and ended after the authorities agreed to meet the protesters to discuss their grievances. On the Sunday the ARF formulated its demands which included the opening of the Rote Fabrik as an Autonomous Youth Centre in the autumn of 1980 as well as the right to demonstrate peacefully on the streets of Zürich without the threat of police brutality.
7
For a breakdown on how the city of Zürich distributed its cultural grants to various organisations in the city, see Hänny, 47–8.
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The disturbances on this first weekend and the damage caused to business property in Zürich’s city centre caused outrage across Switzerland. Nonetheless, the demonstrating youth of Switzerland achieved in one month of open protest and rioting what years of peaceful negotiation had failed to produce. On the 29 June 1980, an unused building was made available to accommodate the opening of an Autonomes Jugendzentrum (AJZ). Over the next few months the centre demonstrated its ability to organise itself according to its own democratic principles of personal freedom and self-government, resisting the pressure to organise according to the hierarchical structures that mirrored those of the Swiss state. During the months of June and July the movement raised the money to renovate the centre, setting up restaurants, a theatre, an independent radio station, and a drug treatment centre, run by various working groups which were successfully co-ordinated by the ‘Vollversammlung’.8 For the duration of the centre’s short existence its activities were marked by a steady deterioration in the relationship between the movement and its various detractors. Relations between the two sides were characterised by violent clashes between protesters and police, an increasingly aggressive and suspicious public climate that led to a mounting defamation campaign in the Swiss media against the movement and backlash responses from civic groups to the actions of the militant splinter group. One of the more light-hearted confrontations during the summer months and one that illustrates the creative and provocative nature of the movement’s challenge was the television show Telebühne on 15 July 1980, since referred to as the infamous Müller-Show.9 In typical Swiss democratic fashion the show set out to present a democratic, balanced discussion of recent 8
9
In the July issue of its own broadsheet Subito Nr Eins one of the movement’s members summarises the symbolic importance the existence of the centre represents: ‘Mit dem inneren Freiraum meine ich das Gefühl, zu leben berechtigt zu sein und all meine “verschrobenen” Ansichten und “komischen” Gefühlen […] Ich kann wieder an mich glauben und mich selbst gern haben. Nieder mit dem Packeis, die Isolation ist gebrochen. Der äussere Freiraum ist für mich das AJZ. Euses Hüüsli ist mir ebenso wichtig wie der eben genannte innere Freiraum […] Zukunftsaussichten und Hoffnungen habe ich in Bezug auf diesen Raum. Dass er wachsen möge.’ Quoted in Kriese, 41. See Züri brännt.
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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 Zürich’s town councillor, a more moderate view by the president of Zürich’s Labour Party, and the young couple ‘Anna and Hans Müller’ would represent the views of the movement. However, the ‘Müllers’ 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 ‘Müllers’ 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 world’s media focused their attention on Zürich.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
Coverage in international media included Der Spiegel (22.12.1980) and Time Magazine (30.3.1981).
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movement responded by producing their own successful publications and broadcasts.11 The centre was re-opened on 1 April 1981 and remained in operation until the movement itself closed it down on 12 October 1981. It opened sporadically during the winter of 1981, but was eventually razed to the ground in a police raid on 23 March 1982.
The End of the Movement The destruction of the centre also marked the dramatic end to the movement itself.12 The irony of its demise is that the centre’s biggest successes, the use of violence and its innovative drugs’ policy, directly contributed to its closure. Through the use of violent means of protest, the centre managed to achieve its primary aim in a relatively short space of time, i.e. the existence of an Autonomous Youth Centre. Also, the brutality with which the police reacted to the demonstrators gained sympathy and most importantly recognition for the aims of the movement, initially at national level and eventually internationally. Furthermore, the diversity of the many groups that constituted the movement and their alternative organisational structure contributed in no small way to its strengths in the early phase. However, when the movement began to lose momentum and focus, the lack of internal cohesion and increased inter-group confrontation enabled the small group of militants to take control. These militants gradually focused their escalating attacks on the movement itself, contributing to the eventual internal disintegration of the centre. The second, centre-related factor that led to the end of the movement and, in its final stages, contributed to the escalating internal violence, was the drug problem, particularly issues concerning the use of heroin. As a result of the progressive and alternative approach to drug addiction that the centre’s drug-care unit provided, the number of 11 12
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 Brächise, Damikaze, Hurrarie. See Kriese, 84–5. For his detailed analysis of the demise of the centre, see Kriese, 121–35.
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drug-related deaths in Zürich was drastically reduced (the numbers of deaths rose dramatically after the centre was closed). However, its policy of not exerting any controls on those using the centre attracted more and more problem cases, such as alcoholics and petty criminals. This huge influx of these diverse social outcasts quickly overstretched the financial resources of the centre and absorbed all its other functions. The enormous escalation of the heroin problem during 1981 can be traced back to the divergent policies of the centre and the police towards drugs. The provision of a supervised ‘room’ at the centre for fixing and dealing was introduced to restrict the use of heroin in the centre to one designated space and to provide the addict with a non-ghettoised space for fixing. It was intended that this ‘fixer room’ would de-stigmatise the habit, thereby assisting a recovery programme for the addict. What actually happened was that the ‘fixer room’ eliminated the street pusher, allowing the big dealers to sell directly to the addict which in turn reduced the price of heroin in Zürich and increased its quality, subsequently attracting dealers and addicts to the centre from all over Switzerland. The fact that the police turned a blind eye to the conspicuous presence of major drug dealers outside the centre, focusing their anti-drugs raids on minuscule hauls inside the centre, only encouraged unrestricted heroine dealing in the vicinity of the centre. By the time the centre was closed in March 1982 Zürich was rapidly becoming a major centre for heroin trafficking in Europe. However, while violence and drugs certainly played a major role in the demise of the movement, other factors also contributed to its eventual closure. After the initial demand of the movement for its own autonomous centre had been granted – in a surprisingly short time – the movement failed to organise effectively and formulate new projects. Instead it got stuck on the issue of an amnesty for those arrested and the repressive behaviour of its two identifiable enemies: the police and city council. Over time the movement became increasingly fixated on these two adversaries and the issue of repression, restricting its scope to that of a purely reactive movement. Also, even their most successful public events such as the Müller Show, never developed beyond acts of creative provocation, negating the arguments of the opposition without formulating their own alternatives, thus failing to proceed from random acts of negation to
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devising a sustained negative practice. Furthermore, the ambivalent relationship that existed between the 1980s anti-culture movement and their supporters and sympathisers in the 1970s alternative and subculture groups finally led to a complete break when the militants took control. Even though the younger anti-culture groups were openly distrustful of the older generation from the beginning and kept them at a distance, the older counter-culture groups provided the necessary support and grassroots infrastructure to mobilise various projects and actions. When the movement lost the active support of the counterculture groups early in 1981 it also lost most of its strength. This split also marked the beginning of the end of the centre and the movement. While internal problems were certainly an important factor, a major contributor to eventual demise of the movement was the undemocratic behaviour of the city’s municipal authorities and their supporters. The mistakes made by the authorities during the first weeks of the demonstrations characterised their reaction throughout the two years of disturbances. They stubbornly refused to recognise the representatives of the movement because of its alternative organisational structure and identified the whole movement with a small group of militants. This ‘false’ perception defined their attitude towards the movement as a whole and was responsible for the numerous missed opportunities to end the violent protests peacefully and democratically. Instead, by relying solely on the police and the legal system as a means of engaging with the movement, the uncompromising, rigid stance adopted by the municipal authorities only contributed to the spiralling of violence and a radicalisation of the movement. Their unyielding intent to close the centre at all costs totally blinded them to the constructive and very useful functions it provided, such as night shelters and progressive drug treatment, Furthermore, it also contributed in no small way to dealing with the serious heroin problem that developed in Zürich during the 1980s. The many specifically Swiss aspects of these disturbances are illustrated for example in the complete overreaction of the authorities and citizens of Zürich and Switzerland to the violent behaviour of the movement. In terms of the response to protesting youth within a European context, one critic describes the exaggerated Swiss reaction as follows: ‘In der Schweiz wird ihr Protest nicht nur gewaltsam unterdrückt, sondern trifft auch auf absolutes Unverständnis seitens
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der Lokalbehörden, was gewisse Manifestanten veranlaßt, ihre Stadt mit dem Packeis zu vergleichen’ (Gros, Zeugin and Radeff, 23). The violent outbursts of the protesters were focused mainly on property. Not one single life was lost and only a relatively small number of police received minor injuries during these disturbances, despite the fact that every male over the age of twenty in Switzerland has an army rifle and ammunition at his disposal. Given the unprecedented brutality used against them by the police, it seems remarkable that the rebelling Swiss youth remained so peaceful. Even they showed a certain Swiss restraint in stopping short of maligning Switzerland’s most important legend: its national army. However, the behaviour of the authorities exposed the hollowness of one of Switzerland’s most enduring myths: its unrivalled democratic system. Instead of seriously engaging with the genuine issues raised by the peaceful demonstrators at the initial stages of the protest, the authorities relied on a number of undemocratic methods to silence the movement. These measures included their refusal to acknowledge the genuine grievances raised by the movement, claiming that the driving forces behind the protests were non-Swiss ‘Drahtzieher’, whose sole aim was to attack Switzerland’s unique social system and economic prosperity. The excessive brutality used against peaceful protestors revealed further the failure of the political system to meet the challenges posed by the movement. Furthermore, the refusal to recognise alternative democratic models developed by the movement exposed the inability and unwillingness of the renowned Swiss democracy to engage with a system that could not be conveniently absorbed into their own democratic system, thereby producing the traditional Swiss ‘voreilige Versöhnung.’ The unwillingness of the authorities to engage in serious negotiations with the movement highlighted their general disregard for the issues raised by the youth movement. It also revealed the limitations and complacency of Switzerland’s census-based democracy and its reliance on non-democratic measures to ‘protect’ itself, measures which ultimately served the interests of a capitalist system and not its citizens. The reasons for the ‘failure’ of Zürich’s Autonomous Youth Movement mark, as Peter Bichsel claimed in 1982 (Bichsel, 88–93), the end of Switzerland’s innocence, or, as one
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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 Switzerland’s 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 Zürich 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 Zürich. 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 Zürich, 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 Zürich’s youth movement of the early 1980s, and one that has had lasting consequences for Switzerland’s image inter13 14
See in this context Lenzburg, 279–282. The referendum, carried by a 54% ‘Yes’ vote, introduced the use of heroin on medical prescription as a legitimate form of drug therapy. The tolerant attitude adopted by Swiss authorities towards soft drugs in recent years has led to a huge increase in the native consumption and production of various soft drugs. So much so, that on 8 September 2001 the Süddeutsche Zeitung queries the rapidly changing image of Switzerland: ‘Die brave Schweiz, eine völlig bekiffte Nation?’
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nationally, is that it proved that youth issues do not respect traditional political borders. The momentum and intensity with which Zürich’s youth movement became part of a greater European protest wave highlighted its international aspect and simultaneously undermined the traditional isolationist role Switzerland had sought to preserve within Europe. Since then internal and external events have repeatedly exposed Switzerland’s claim to be an ‘Insel der Glückseligen’ as an illusion.
Bibliography Bichsel, P. ‘Das Ende der Schweizer Unschuld,’ in Gruppe Olten (Hg), Die Zürcher Unruhe 2. Analyse, Reportagen, Berichte, (Zürich, Orte-Verlag, 1983). Gros, D., Zeugin, P., and Radeff, F. Jugendliche in der Schweiz. Wertvorstellungen und Verhaltensweisen (Zürich, Pro Helvetia, 1991). Hänny, R. Zürich, Anfang September (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 1981). Hohl, L. Die Notizen, oder von der Unvoreiligen Versöhnung 1944–1954 (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 1981). Kriese, H. Die Zürcher Bewegung. Bilder, Interaktionen, Zusammenhänge (Frankfurt/aM., Campus 1984). Lenzburg, S. (Hg) A Walk on the Wild Side. Jugendszenen der Schweiz von den 30er Jahren bis heute (Zürich, Chronos, 1997). Nizon, P. Diskurs in der Enge. Aufsätze zur Schweizer Kunst (Bern, Kandelaber, 1970) Zorn, F. Mars (München, Kindler 1977). Züri brännt. Das Buch zum Film (Zürich, Video Laden, 1981).
MATTHIAS UECKER
Aufrufe, Bekenntnisse, Analysen: Zur Politisierung der westdeutschen Literatur in den sechziger Jahren
Einleitung: Nonkonformismus und Gegenkultur Daß die westdeutsche Literatur der Adenauer-Ära grundsätzlich unpolitisch gewesen sei und den Problemen der Nachkriegsgesellschaft keine Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt habe, kann man kaum behaupten. Zwar entdeckte die Literaturkritik zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre auffällige Lücken im Gesellschaftsbild der Literatur und bemängelte vor allem die Aussparung der sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Aspekte der Industriegesellschaft (vgl. Trommler, 11), doch an oppositionellen Bekundungen gegen die Politik der konservativen Regierung und die restaurativen Tendenzen der bundesdeutschen Gesellschaft hatte es während der fünfziger Jahre wahrlich nicht gemangelt.1 Tatsächlich verstand ein Großteil der Autoren sich geradezu als Fundamentalopposition gegen die Normalität der Wirtschaftswundergesellschaft, die – getreu dem Motto von Günter Eich – ‘Sand, nicht das Öl im Getriebe der Welt’ sein wollte (Eich, 88). Aus der Sicht vieler Schriftsteller repräsentierte die Literatur eine Art Gegenkultur, die sich den herrschenden Normen des Materialismus und Opportunismus widersetzte und ihre Leser an grundlegende moralische Werte erinnerte, die unterzugehen drohten. Der Literatur an sich wurde ein subversives, Widerstand entfaltendes Potential zugesprochen, das aber von der Kontaminierung mit praktischen Zwecken freigehalten werden mußte (vgl. Enzensberger, Einzelheiten II, 113–37). Die Position eines Hüters von Wahrheit und Moral war daher fast unlösbar verbunden mit einem Mißtrauen gegenüber jeder 1
Einen repräsentativen Überblick gibt die Dokumentation von Wagenbach.
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Form von organisierter Politik und der Artikulation sozialer Interessen, das der nonkonformistischen Gesellschaftskritik ein antipolitisches Flair verlieh, sie zugleich aber auch zu praktischer Wirkungslosigkeit verurteilte. Opposition sollte sich in literarischer und ästhetischer Form äußern und damit in deutlicher Distanz zum politischen Diskurs. Die Romanfiguren, die den nonkonformistischen Impuls verkörperten, waren denn auch regelmäßig isolierte, depressive und von ihrer Umwelt unverstandene Einzelgänger, deren Protest sich auf symbolische und häufig selbstzerstörerische Aktionen beschränkte. Diese Haltung provozierte freilich in den frühen sechziger Jahren eine rasch um sich greifende literarische Selbstkritik, die in Auseinandersetzung mit den gesellschaftlichen Realitäten nach wirkungsvollen Alternativen zum Nonkonformismus suchte. Während sich schon aus demographischen Gründen das Ende der Adenauer-Ära abzeichnete und die konservativen Parteien begannen, sich über die Verteilung des Erbes zu zerstreiten, sah eine wachsende Anzahl von Autoren die Chance gekommen, endlich Einfluß auf die Entwicklung zu gewinnen und den eigenen moralischen Protesten doch noch Geltung zu verschaffen. Die ‘Inkubationszeit’ des Studentenprotestes (Trommler, 10) verlief parallel zu einer Umstrukturierung im Selbstverständnis und öffentlichen Auftreten eines Großteils der westdeutschen Schriftsteller. Die veränderten Einstellungen und Strategien dieser Autoren sollen in den folgenden Überlegungen am Beispiel einiger Publikationen aus der ersten Hälfte der sechziger Jahre analysiert werden.
Auf der Suche nach Alternativen Symptomatisch für die Veränderungen im Selbstverständnis der bundesdeutschen Literaten ist die wachsende Bedeutung von aktuellen, zeitkritischen Stellungnahmen und Analysen des Gesellschaftszustandes, die in den frühen sechziger Jahren nicht nur als vereinzelte Beiträge in diversen Feuilletons und Literaturzeitschriften erscheinen, sondern bevorzugt in Anthologien, also in Buchform, als Reaktionen
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auf organisierte Rundfragen publiziert werden. Neben die literarischen Aktivitäten, die die öffentliche Rolle der Schriftsteller fundierten, traten erstmals direkte und regelmäßige Interventionen in den politischen Diskurs, die anfangs vor allem die Form von Aufrufen und Bekenntnissen annahmen. Die erste dieser Anthologien war der von Wolfgang Weyrauch als List-Taschenbuch herausgegebene Band Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik mit Beiträgen von fünfzehn Autorinnen und Autoren. Die Porträts der BRD, die in diesen Beiträgen skizziert werden, können hier nicht im Detail nachgezeichnet werden – es muß genügen, summarisch festzuhalten, daß mit großer Regelmäßigkeit Konformismus, Materialismus und Konsumorientierung, die ‘Vergeßlichkeit’ gegenüber der Vergangenheit und die Gefahr neuer Kriege und Diktaturen in der nahen Zukunft als wesentliche Charakteristika der westdeutschen Gesellschaft beschrieben werden. Interessanter ist in unserem Zusammenhang, wie zumindest einzelne Autoren ihre eigene Position – und die der Literatur überhaupt – in dieser Gesellschaft und gegenüber ihren Problemen definieren. Weitgehende Übereinstimmung besteht darüber, daß die Literatur in der Wirtschaftswundergesellschaft der späten fünfziger und frühen sechziger Jahre keinen zentralen Platz besetzt, sondern allenfalls der Dekoration dient und nur für eine kleine Minderheit noch von Bedeutung ist. Die Mehrheit der Beiträge weist die Verantwortung für diesen implizit oder explizit beklagten Zustand einer Gesellschaft zu, die ‘Angst vor der Freiheit’ hat (Schallück, 105), sich nur fürs ‘Geldverdienen’ interessiert (Beheim-Schwarzbach, 98) und ihre ‘innere Leere’ (Richter, ‘Zu spät?’, 64) nicht durch ‘geistige Programme, Ideen’ (Schallück, 105) stören lassen will. Das ist im Prinzip die Position des Nonkonformismus, der die Schriftsteller als Außenseiter und Störenfriede gegenüber einer trägen, übersättigten und geistlosen Gesellschaft ansieht, als Clowns und Hofnarren, die außerhalb der Zeit stehen und zornig, aber in vollem Bewußtsein ihrer Wirkungslosigkeit an aufgegebenen Werten und Idealen festhalten und mit trotzigem Stolz betonen, daß sie ‘keinem Stammtisch angehöre[n], keiner Partei’ (Schallück, 108). In Frage gestellt wird diese Analyse in Weyrauchs Band von zwei Autoren, die der Literatur und den Schriftstellern selbst zumindest eine Mitverantwortung an der Situation zuschreiben: Auf der einen Seite führt Joachim Gaitanides, ein ziemlich unbekannt
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gebliebener Autor zeitkritischer Schriften, die ‘Ohnmacht unserer Literatur’ darauf zurück, daß sie eine undifferenzierte ‘Pauschalverdammung’ der Gesellschaft vortrage und deren ‘ansehnliches Leistungskonto [...] hochmütig’ ignoriere (Gaitanides, 11 u. 13). Die Literatur habe den Kontakt zur Gesellschaft verloren und erhebe maßlose und unerfüllbare Forderungen, die von der Bevölkerung aus reiner ‘Notwehr’ ignoriert würden (Gaitanides, 17). Eine Literatur, die Einfluß ausüben und wirken wolle, müsse den ‘Hunger nach Leitbildern und Maßstäben’ befriedigen und von einer ‘Beunruhigungsliteratur’ zur ‘Bindungsliteratur’ werden (Gaitanides, 20–2). Unter deutlich anderen Vorzeichen vertritt im gleichen Band auch Martin Walser die Auffassung, daß die Schriftsteller selbst für die Ohnmacht der Literatur verantwortlich sind und sie trotz aller Klagen über ihre Bedeutungslosigkeit sogar genießen: ‘Daß wir öffentlich ohne Wirkung sind, befreit ungeheuer. [...] Wir preisen uns, weil wir nicht sind wie jene! Aber wir lassen alles geschehen’ (Walser, ‘Skizze zu einem Vorwurf’, 110 u. 112). Gelegentliche Unterschriften unter Protestresolutionen seien nichts weiter als Versuche, ein schlechtes Gewissen zu besänftigen, damit die Autoren auch weiterhin beruhigt ihre luxuriöse Außenseiterposition genießen und ‘eine bedeutende Figur’ machen könnten. ‘In welche Verlegenheit brächten uns ein Staat, eine Gesellschaft, die uns zur Mitarbeit einlüden!’ (Walser, ‘Skizze zu einem Vorwurf’, 114). Diese Position – in Weyrauchs Band noch die isolierte Stimme eines der jüngsten Beiträger – wird in den folgenden Jahren zur Grundlage einer Neubestimmung der gesellschaftlichen Rolle der nonkonformistischen Literatur. Ihr Kernelement ist die Selbstkritik der jüngeren Autorengeneration, die die Wirkungslosigkeit der nonkonformistischen Literatur zumindest partiell für selbstverschuldet hält und von den Schriftstellern verlangt, sich aus der sicheren Beobachterposition herauszuwagen, um praktisch und pragmatisch zu intervenieren. Wenn man auch vorerst keine Einladungen zur Mitarbeit erwarten könne, so müsse man zumindest darauf hinarbeiten, die Voraussetzungen für solche Mitarbeit herzustellen. Das erste Beispiel für diese Anstrengung lieferte Walser nur wenige Monate nach seinem Beitrag mit einer Anthologie, die er pünktlich zum Wahlkampf im Herbst 1961 für Rowohlts Taschen-
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bücher zusammenstellte: Die Alternative oder Brauchen wir eine neue Regierung? Präsentiert wird der im August 1961 publizierte Band als spontanes Resultat einer Zusammenkunft von Schriftstellern, denen allein ‘die Besorgnis über den Bestand der Demokratie’ gemeinsam sei (Klappentext in Walser, Die Alternative, 2). Aus dieser Sorge heraus habe man sich verpflichtet gefühlt, öffentliche Antworten auf eine ‘Tagesfrage’ zu geben: ‘Brauchen wir eine neue Regierung?’ Und ‘ohne weitere Verabredung’ seien die Autoren ‘auf verschiedenen Wegen’ und mit ‘unterschiedlichem Temperament doch zur gleichen Antwort’ auf diese Frage gekommen (Walser, ‘Vorwort’). Die Versicherung, alle Autoren hätten individuell und geradezu spontan ihre Beiträge verfaßt, dient einerseits offensichtlich dem Zweck, das lange etablierte Selbstbild der Intelligenz zu bekräftigen, die Unabhängigkeit nur als organisationsfeindliche Individualität fassen konnte. Zugleich will man von vornherein den Verdacht zerstreuen, das Buch sei von den Interessen einer organisierten Gruppe oder gar einer Partei inspiriert. Tatsächlich erweisen sich aber bei der Durchsicht des Bandes ‘Temperamente’ und ‘Wege’ der Autoren als ziemlich ähnlich. Gemeinsam ist fast allen von ihnen nicht nur, daß sie die Titelfrage des Bandes zustimmend beantworten und sich darüber einig sind, wer diese ‘neue Regierung’ stellen soll. Vielleicht noch auffälliger ist die durchgehende Skepsis über die Fähigkeit der propagierten Alternativ-Regierung, ernsthafte Veränderungen durchzusetzen. Der SPD, deren Wahl von allen Autoren des Bandes dringlich empfohlen wird, traut man nämlich allenfalls zu, als ‘kleineres Übel’ das Schlimmste zu verhindern: ‘Bei allen Skrupeln, diversen Vorbehalten, Einwänden, Abstrichen, Gewissensbissen, Ängsten, bösen Vorausahnungen: SPD. Und wahrlich nicht begeistert. Und sicher nicht imstande, Begeisterung zu wecken und weiterzutragen’ (Rühmkorf, 49). Die Distanzierungsgesten gegenüber der SPD demonstrieren nicht nur das anhaltende Bedürfnis der Autoren, ihre politische Unabhängigkeit zu beweisen, sondern verweisen auf die grundlegenden Schwierigkeiten, die fast alle Beiträger mit dem Konzept einer pragmatischen Wahlempfehlung und -entscheidung haben. Das Godesberger Programm mit seiner Akzeptanz der zentralen Richtungsentscheidungen der Adenauer-Regierung für ein kapitalistisches
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Gesellschaftssystem und die Wiederbewaffnung wird von den Schriftstellern als opportunistisches Abrücken von einer prinzipiellen Oppositionshaltung wahrgenommen. Das Lager der moralisch legitimierten Gegenkultur scheint die SPD im Stich gelassen zu haben, um in Zukunft nicht alles grundsätzlich anders, sondern lediglich besser zu machen. Dagegen bemühen sich die Schriftsteller, die gegenkulturelle Oppositionshaltung der fünfziger Jahre bei gleichzeitiger Empfehlung eines ‘kleineren Übels’ aufrecht zu erhalten.2 Den Hintergrund für diesen Kompromiß bildet eine ausgesprochen alarmistische Perspektive auf die Zukunft. Ihre wenig enthusiastischen Wahlempfehlungen für die SPD geben die Autoren nämlich in erster Linie deshalb ab, weil sie von einem erneuten Wahlsieg der CDU/CSU unmittelbare Gefahren für die Grundlagen der ohnehin als instabil angesehenen westdeutschen Demokratie befürchten. Totalitäre Gruppierungen in den Regierungsparteien und der mit ihnen verbündeten katholischen Kirche könnten durch Verfassungsänderungen ihre Macht erweitern und durch die Diffamierung kritischer Einwände jede offene Diskussion abtöten. Vor allem an der Person des CSU-Politikers Franz-Josef Strauß, des vermeintlichen starken Mannes und voraussichtlichen Erben von Kanzler Adenauer, machen sich solche Ängste fest. Nicht wenige Beiträge stellen deshalb die ‘Alternative’ zwischen CDU und SPD als grundsätzliche Entscheidung um Leben und Tod dar: Unser Stück Deutschland hat keine Alternative mehr, bis auf eine: total oder nicht total, absolut oder nicht absolut, Endkampf oder nicht Endkampf, von der Landkarte streichen und gestrichen werden oder nicht. Das ist die Wahl, die einzige die uns bleibt, und vielleicht die letzte. (Enzensberger, ‘Ich wünsche nicht gefährlich zu leben’, 66)
Solche Zukunftsängste erklären wohl auch, woher ‘plötzlich diese Einmischung’ der Autoren kommt, dieser ‘unverhohlene Umgang mit Tagesfragen’ (Walser, Vorwort, 5). Wie ungewohnt solches Vorgehen offenbar ist, deuten die Legitimations- und Rechtfertigungsgesten an, die Martin Walsers Einleitung und einige andere Texte der Sammlung 2
Die Beziehungen der oppositionellen Autoren zur SPD dokumentiert ausführlich Krueger.
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prägen. Trotz der unverkennbaren Gemeinsamkeiten der Beiträge betont der Herausgeber Unabhängigkeit und Individualität aller Autoren und distanziert sich vorsorglich von einzelnen Argumenten, die jeder Beiträger allein zu verantworten habe. Zugleich wird darauf hingewiesen, daß intellektuelles Engagement in tagespolitischen Fragen anderswo durchaus üblich sei: ‘Nur in Deutschland gelten Intellektuelle immer noch als Außenseiter. In Frankreich, in Amerika kennt man Gruppen unabhängiger Geister, die den Kurs der Nation beratend mitbestimmen’ (Eggebrecht, 27–8). Erneut also wird die Hoffnung auf eine einflußreichere Rolle für die Schriftsteller und Intellektuellen artikuliert, die gesellschaftliche Anerkennung als ‘Gewissen der Nation’ (Klappentext in Walser, Die Alternative, 2) und als unabhängige Ratgeber suchen. Um einem solchen Status näherzukommen, haben sich die Beiträger nun dazu durchgerungen, ihren Lesern einen simplen und einheitlichen Ratschlag zur bevorstehenden Bundestagswahl zu geben. Sie verlassen damit die angestammte Position des prinzipiellen Außenseiters und treten mit ihrer tagespolitischen Intervention in direkte Konkurrenz zu den Hirtenbriefen der katholischen Bischöfe und den Leitartiklern der bundesdeutschen Presse. Allerdings schreiben sie nur selten aus einer Position der Autorität heraus, sondern ziehen es vor, sich mit ihren Lesern auf eine Stufe zu stellen. ‘Wir’, das heißt ‘jeder von uns’, muß ‘sich skeptisch und aufmerksam um den Wechsel der Regierenden’ sorgen (Lenz, 132). Nicht als Dichter oder Literaten schreiben sie, sondern als Bürger. Nur wenige Beiträger unternehmen den Versuch, eine solche Position mit einer literarischen Schreibhaltung zu kombinieren, also ihre spezifischen Fähigkeiten in die politische Stellungnahme einzubringen. Der Großteil der Texte liest sich vielmehr wie die Leitartikel, Kommentare und Leserbriefe der Tages- und Wochenzeitungen. Zwar fehle den Schriftstellern die ‘Übung in Sowohl-AlsAuch-Sätzen’ (Walser, ‘Vorwort’, 5), doch die Fähigkeit zur pragmatischen Abwägung begrenzter und allesamt wenig attraktiver Handlungsmöglichkeiten demonstrieren sie alle. Aus diesem Rahmen fällt am deutlichsten der kurze Beitrag von Günter Grass, der die Wahlempfehlung für die SPD mit einer selbstironischen Infragestellung der Wirksamkeit solcher Texte kombiniert. Grass möchte nämlich vor allem jene Wähler erreichen, die das Rowohlt-
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Bändchen gar nicht kaufen werden, er möchte katholische Nonnen, Ostvertriebene und sogar Konrad Adenauer zur Stimmabgabe für die SPD bewegen – und kann realistisch nur einen Erfolg ausmachen: ‘Nicht, daß ich sagen will, Oskar Matzerath wählt SPD, aber sein Sohn und Halbbruder Kurt [...] hat mir versprochen, wieder fleißig zur Kirche zu gehen und SPD zu wählen; ein Beweis mehr, wie einflußreich Schriftsteller sein können’ (Grass, ‘Wer wird dieses Bändchen kaufen?’, 77). Während das Ergebnis der Bundestagswahl solche Skepsis zu stützen scheint, könnten die öffentlichen Reaktionen auf die Anthologie, der anscheinend weithin Signalwirkung zuerkannt wurde, ein differenzierteres Urteil begründen. Noch über die Bundestagswahl hinaus druckte der Rowohlt-Verlag den Band nach, der bis Februar 1962 eine Auflage von 75.000 Exemplaren erreichte. Was zunächst ein isolierter, in auffälligen Farben gestalteter Sonderband der rororoTaschenbücher war, wurde im Nachhinein zum ersten Band der Reihe rororo aktuell erklärt, dem in unregelmäßiger Folge ähnliche publizistische Interventionen ins bundesdeutsche Zeitgeschehen folgten.3 Der Rowohlt-Verlag, der schon in den fünfziger Jahren in seinem breit gefächerten Programm der kritischen Publizistik ein öffentlichkeitswirksames Forum geboten hatte, wurde zur organisatorischen Plattform einer Bewegung, die die Literaten aus der nonkonformistischen Isolation heraus direkt ins Zentrum der aktuellen politischen Debatten führen wollte. Allerdings demonstrierte der im Dezember 1961 veröffentlichte Folgeband der Reihe die Schwierigkeiten, die sich aus dem politischen Engagement der Autoren ergeben konnten. Unmittelbar nach der Veröffentlichung des ersten Bandes war nämlich am 13. August 1961 die Berliner Mauer errichtet worden, und die vielfältigen intellektuellen Reaktionen auf dieses Ereignis dokumentierte Hans Werner Richter nun in dem Band Die Mauer oder Der 13. August. Von dem Wahlkampf-Beitrag des Sommers unterscheidet diese Sammlung sich nicht nur dadurch, daß sie versucht, eine Vielzahl 3
Der erste offiziell unter dem Namen ‘rororo aktuell’ firmierende Band erschien im Februar 1962 (Tempel). In den Buchanzeigen am Ende dieses Bandes werden die früher publizierten Sammlungen von Walser und Richter dann ebenfalls der neuen Reihe zugeordnet; dort finden sich auch die Angaben zur Auflagenhöhe beider Bände.
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gegensätzlicher Positionen zu dokumentieren, statt zielgenau in das Geschehen zu intervenieren. Symptomatisch ist vor allem ein Gefühl der Ohnmacht und Verwirrung, das Hans Werner Richter am Ende des Bandes zusammenfaßt: ‘Ohnmacht und Unterordnung, Verbitterung und Empörung, kleinliche Haarspalterei, Beschimpfungen, Provokationen und Verdächtigungen’ spiegelten sich in fast allen Texten der Sammlung. Als Ursache dieser Verwirrung identifiziert Richter eine ‘Ohnmacht’, die aus der ‘Unfähigkeit’ der Deutschen resultiere, ‘politisch zu denken und politisch zu handeln’ (Richter, ‘Nachwort’, 181). Der Pragmatismus einer Entscheidung für realisierbare politische Optionen, der die Wahlempfehlung des Sommers charakterisiert hatte, wurde angesichts des Mauerbaus erneut durch moralische Grundsatzdebatten ersetzt. In der dokumentierten Diskussion drückte diese Unfähigkeit zur Politik sich vor allem darin aus, daß ‘aus der politischen Problematik der Mauer’ binnen kurzem ‘die abstrakte Frage nach dem Gewissen der Schriftsteller’ geworden sei (Richter, ‘Nachwort’, 183). Während Richters Diagnose auf die journalistische Öffentlichkeit der Bundesrepublik zielt, dokumentiert seine Textauswahl, daß die Schriftsteller selbst an dieser Verschiebung von praktischen auf abstrakte Probleme beteiligt waren. Als Antwort auf die von Richter als ‘einzig sinnvolle Frage’ bezeichnete Aufgabenstellung ‘Was können wir tun?’ (Richter, ‘Nachwort’, 183) hatten nämlich Günter Grass und Wolfdietrich Schnurre wenige Tage nach dem Mauerbau einen Offenen Brief an die Mitglieder des Deutschen Schriftstellerverbandes in der DDR geschickt, in dem sie diese aufforderten, ‘das Unrecht vom 13. August beim Namen zu nennen.’ Ausdrücklich appellierten beide Autoren an ein spezifisches Berufsethos, das allen Schriftstellern eine besondere Verantwortung auferlege: Wer den Beruf des Schriftstellers wählt, muß zu Wort kommen, und sei es nur durch ein lautes Verkünden, er werde am Sprechen gehindert. [...] Wer schweigt, wird schuldig. (Grass, Schnurre, 65–6) Ich glaube, in Zeiten politischer Sprachverwirrung liegt die Pflicht zur Wahrhaftigkeit stärker auf ihm denn je. Ich glaube, einzig er hat die Kraft, der zusammengeschlagenen Humanität, und sei sie noch so verletzt, unter die zitternden Arme zu greifen. (Schnurre, 119)
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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-Generalsekretär ein, um die Weltöffentlichkeit auf die Berliner Vorgänge aufmerksam zu machen und Lösungen für die verfahrene Situation anzuregen. Neben den wenig überraschenden 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 ‘Naivität’ (Karsch, 105), ‘Weltfremdheit’ (Jauch, 143) und ‘Vorlautheit’ (Süskind, 104), andererseits aber auch mangelndes moralisches Engagement vorwarf (Ramseger, 127–8). Dabei wird rasch deutlich, daß die Kritik nicht allein auf die Reaktionen auf den Mauerbau zielt, sondern die grundsätzliche politische Haltung der ‘Nonkonformisten’ meint. Empörte Zurückweisung ernten Grass und Schnurre vor allem dafür, daß sie den von den ostdeutschen Autoren geforderten Protest vergleichen mit ihrer eigenen öffentlichen Kritik an der westdeutschen Gesellschaft. Diese Parallelisierung zeige ebenso wie viele Beiträge des Bandes Die Alternative, daß die engagierten Autoren von der Realität keine Ahnung hätten und von ‘Zerrbildern’ und ‘Illusionen’ zehrten (Siedler, 112 u. 114). Während die Intellektuellen sich auf französische und amerikanische Vorbilder berufen, hält man ihnen in der FAZ entgegen: Sie machen sich mit ihren unbedarften Versuchen, die Weltachse zu schmieren, innerhalb und außerhalb der deutschen Grenzen lächerlich. Etwas anderes wäre es, wenn der eine oder andere von ihnen bei Gelegenheit wieder einmal ein schönes Buch schriebe. (Maetzke, 128)
Unbeabsichtigt bestärken solche Kommentare das Fazit, das Kurt Hager zur gleichen Zeit in der DDR zieht: ‘Die Position dieser Schriftsteller ist doch auf die Dauer unhaltbar’ (Hager, 153). Zu einem ähnlichen Ergebnis kommt auch Günther Rühle in seiner Analyse des plötzlich so angestrengten Proze[sses], sich politisch zu engagieren. [...] Es hat die Schriftsteller verdrossen, daß die Öffentlichkeit über ihre Deklarationen leichthändig und mit hochbrauigen Argumenten hinweggegangen ist. Die
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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. (Rühle, 170–1)
Die überwiegend jüngeren Schriftsteller hätten krampfhaft nach ‘Anlässen’ für ihre Appelle gesucht, um aus solchen Publikationen eine gesellschaftliche Autorität zu gewinnen, die sich doch eigentlich aus etablierter literarischer Autorität ergeben müßte. Die ‘Einfalt’ ihrer politischen Texte aber demonstriere, daß man es allenfalls ‘mit literarischen Talenten zu tun hat, die sich ihre gesellschaftliche Aufgabe erst ertasten’ (Rühle, 172–3).
Einübung in den Pragmatismus Während die bei Richter dokumentierten Antworten der Schriftsteller auf solche Kritik vorwiegend beleidigte Abwehr und Unverständnis zum Ausdruck bringen, läßt sich in den folgenden Jahren ein Reflexions- und Lernprozeß beobachten, in dem die hier angesprochenen Intellektuellen sich bemühen, ihre ‘gesellschaftliche Aufgabe’ und vor allem die Bedingungen, unter denen sie Wirkungen erzielen können, genauer zu definieren. Dabei wird vor allem der Anspruch aufgegeben, aus der privilegierten Position des ‘Gewissens der Nation’ und Hüters der Wahrheit zu schreiben. War der moralische Appell an universal unterstellte Grundwerte in den frühen sechziger Jahren Ausdruck eines fundamentalen, gegenkulturellen Protestes gegen die politische Praxis, so adaptierten die Autoren Mitte der sechziger Jahre den Gestus einer ideologiefreien, sachlichen Kritik, die sich nicht mehr auf eine ohnehin nicht durchsetzbare Autorität der Intellektuellen berief, sondern auf die in der Praxis geltenden Werte der Effizienz und Logik. Damit verbunden ist ein leiserer Ton, der Verzicht auf Appelle und Aufrufe und eine Differenzierung der Äußerungsformen. Das beste Beispiel für diese Veränderungen liefert der wieder von Hans Werner Richter edierte und bei rororo aktuell publizierte Band Plädoyer für eine neue Regierung oder Keine Alternative, mit
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dem eine größere Gruppe von Schriftstellern 1965 erneut in den Bundestagswahlkampf eingriff. Titel, Aufmachung und Autoren scheinen die Sammlung auf den ersten Blick als unmittelbare Fortsetzung des vier Jahre älteren Buchs zu identifizieren. Schon der Blick ins Inhaltsverzeichnis signalisiert aber eine deutlich modifizierte Konzeption, die Richter selbst als Ausdruck einer pragmatischeren Haltung wertet. Alarmierte Warnungen vor dem Ende der Demokratie, einer Wiederkehr des Faschismus oder dem Atomkrieg treten in den Hintergrund. Ausdrücklich soll in dem Band ‘kein Bekenntnis zu einer Anschauung [...] oder zu einer Partei’ zum Ausdruck kommen, sondern eine ‘Anregung’, die ‘zur Meinungsbildung beitragen’ soll (Richter, ‘Die Alternative im Wechsel der Personen’, 9). Um dem Eindruck der Uniformität zu begegnen, der von Die Alternative ausging, hat der Herausgeber seinen Autoren offenbar statt einer allgemeinen, von allen gleich zu beantwortenden Frage sehr spezifische Arbeitsaufträge gestellt, so daß die Beiträge sich tatsächlich gegenseitig ergänzen, statt sich bloß zu wiederholen. Vor allem aber charakterisiert viele Texte der Sammlung ein Gestus der Recherche, Analyse und Infor-mationsvermittlung, hinter dem der generelle Appell an den Leser zurücktritt. Im Zentrum der Sammlung steht eine Gruppe von Beiträgen, in denen mit Porträts führender Oppositionspolitiker für eine ‘Regierung der Persönlichkeiten’ geworben wird. Aus Interviews und biographischen Recherchen, teilweise unter Verwendung literarischer Schreibweisen, entwickeln diese Texte eine Reihe unterschiedlicher Persönlichkeitsprofile, in denen individuelle Haltungen, Sprechweisen und biographische Lernprozesse im Vordergrund stehen gegenüber politischen Programmen. Begründet wird diese Personalisierung des Wahlkampfes damit, daß Programme und Konzeptionen, die traditionell die politische Auseinandersetzung bestimmt hätten, ‘infolge der schnellen Entwicklung morgen schon veraltet sind, und wer kann sich an solche Konzeptionen für eine Politik von morgen binden?’ (Richter, ‘Die Alternative im Wechsel der Personen’, 10). Mit mehrjähriger Verspätung scheinen die Autoren den Positionswechsel der SPD zur pragmatisch-postideologischen Partei nachvollzogen zu haben. Wo sie vier Jahre früher noch Opportunismus und moralischen Ausverkauf witterten, sehen sie nun eine erstrebenswerte ‘Beweglichkeit’ und ‘Geschmeidigkeit’ und propa-
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gieren einen Pragmatismus, dem Wirkungen wichtiger sind als moralische Reinheit. Beispielhaft sind die Überlegungen, die Hubert Fichte über Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker anstellt: Ich glaube [...], daß er gelegentlich die diplomatische Ausdrucksweise anwendet, um sich auch bei Diplomaten immer wieder Gehör zu verschaffen, daß er militaristische Überlegungen anstellt, um das Militär von seinen eigenen Überlegungen überzeugen zu können – und ist dies nicht umsichtiger gehandelt, als wenn er sich zu einer Eindeutigkeit entschlösse, der man praktisch jede Erwägung verweigert? (Fichte, 118)
Parallel zu den von Richter gesammelten Plädoyers westdeutscher Schriftsteller erschien in der Rowohlt-Reihe im Juni 1965 ein zweiter, direkt auf den Bundestagswahlkampf bezogener Band. Unter dem Titel Politik ohne Vernunft oder Die Folgen sind absehbar analysierten zehn junge Gesellschaftswissenschaftler Rethorik und Praxis der christdemokratischen Regierung in der Außen-, Sozial-, Bildungs- und Wirtschaftspolitik. Von den Beiträgen zu Richters Band unterschieden diese Texte sich einerseits in ihrer Konzentration auf die Kritik der bisherigen Regierungspraxis, aus der eine Wahlempfehlung für die SPD allenfalls implizit abgeleitet werden kann. Daneben beanspruchen die Texte mit ihrem umfangreichen Anmerkungsapparat ausdrücklich eine wissenschaftliche Autorität und präsentieren sich als Stellungnahmen von Experten für die jeweiligen Sachgebiete. Der bemerkenswerteste Beitrag des Bandes ist allerdings das Vorwort von Walter Jens, einem Autor der selbst in den beiden von Richter herausgegebenen Anthologien vertreten ist, hier aber seine intellektuelle Autorität nicht nur zur Werbung für die Beiträge der Sozialwissenschaftler einsetzt, sondern sogar zur Abwertung der früheren Intellektuellen-Initiativen gegenüber der neuesten Publikation: Der Wandel ist bezeichnend und sehr zu begrüßen: an die Stelle von ebenso ehrenhaften wie vagen [...] Schriftstellerbekenntnissen ist eine faktenreichnüchterne, von jungen Wissenschaftlern, Doktoranden und Assistenten getragene Analyse der Ehrhardschen Regierungspraxis getreten. Statt einem allgemeinen Unbehagen über Bonn und die Bonner Politik Ausdruck zu geben, hält man sich lieber an die Statistik, operiert mit Zahlen und Daten, läßt Fakten für sich selber sprechen und vertraut, auf Belege erpicht, dem Zitat. (Jens, 7)
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Was könnte bezeichnender für die kulturelle Situation der mittleren sechziger Jahre sein als die Selbstkritik eines literarischen Intellektuellen an den eigenen ‘ebenso ehrenhaften wie vagen’ Initiativen der vergangenen Jahre und die Zurücksetzung von schriftstellerischen Wahrheits- und Moralansprüchen zugunsten wissenschaftlicher Empirie? Was wäre charakteristischer als die Hoffnung auf ‘eine[n] beträchtliche[n] Teil der Studentenschaft’ (Jens, 10), als deren ‘Stellvertreter’ die Beiträger der Anthologie apostrophiert werden? Und was drückte den neu entstehenden kulturellen Konsens der politisch engagierten Schriftsteller besser aus, als Jens’ Votum für Fakten, Zitate, Zahlen und Daten? Die schleichende Veränderung der Kommunikationsstrategien der Autoren im Zuge der politischen Auseinandersetzungen hat zur Aufgabe einer spezifisch literarischen, moralisch begründeten Autorität und zur Unterordnung unter die Diskurse von Politik und Sozialwisenschaften geführt, an die Stelle des gegenkulturellen Protestes ist die Aneignung des herrschenden Diskurses getreten. In ironischer Form hatte Martin Walser solches Verhalten 1960 in seinem Roman Halbzeit als ‘Mimikry’ beschrieben – eine Camouflage, in der ein ‘Fremdling’ oder Außenseiter sich dem Erscheinungsbild der Mehrheit anpaßt, um nicht aufzufallen und zugleich seinen sozialen Status zu verbessern (Walser, Halbzeit, 9). Die Widersprüche, die sich aus einer solchen Haltung ergeben, kennzeichnen fast alle Interventionen und Aktionen in dieser Periode und gewinnen darüber hinaus auch Einfluß auf die literarischen Aktivitäten vieler Autoren. Aufschlußreich ist in diesem Zusammenhang Jürgen Beckers Feststellung, ‘daß Schreiben die Wirklichkeit konkret nicht verändert’ (Becker, 124): In seinem Text, dem fiktionalen Porträt eines ‘möglichen Politikers’, erklärt diese Einsicht die Entscheidung des porträtierten Intellektuellen, Politiker zu werden. Der Autor selbst aber, wie die meisten seiner Kollegen, schließt sich diesem Schritt nicht an, sondern versucht weiterhin, mit seinem Schreiben die Wirklichkeit zu kommentieren, um sie zu verändern. Was sich dabei als erstes veränderte, waren die Formen des Schreibens: Die moralischen Bekenntnisse und Aufrufe früherer Jahre wurden zunehmend durch sachlichere Analysen mit informativem Gestus ersetzt. Daneben erprobten einzelne Autoren auch Möglich-
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keiten des direkten Engagement. Vor allem Günter Grass verbrachte einen Großteil des Wahljahres 1965 damit, den Wahlkampf der SPD durch eine Wählerinitiative zu begleiten und zu unterstützen.4 Als prominentestes Aushängeschild der Sozial-demokratischen Wählerinitiative trat Grass bei über fünfzig Wahlkampfveranstaltungen als Redner auf und publizierte parallel dazu fünf seiner Reden als Broschüren. Interessanter als seine Argumente zur Wahl der SPD und seine Zustandsbeschreibung der Bundesrepublik ist in unserem Zusammenhang die Tatsache, daß Grass einen nicht unerheblichen Teil seiner Redezeit darauf verwendete, seine Rolle als Wahlkämpfer zu erklären und zu legitimieren. Grass spricht ausdrücklich nicht von einer Position moralischer Autorität und privilegierter Einsicht aus, sondern als jemand mit einem ‘verdächtigen Beruf’, dessen Kompetenz und Legitimierung zweifelhaft sind: ‘Sollte er nicht bei seinen Geschichten bleiben und den Politikern die Politik wie den Hühnern das Eierlegen und den Bürgern das Steuerzahlen überlassen?’ (Grass, Über das Selbstverständliche, 16). Gegen die Tradition, den Dichter als Außenseiter zu stilisieren, dessen Arbeit jenseits aller praktischen Zwecke angesiedelt ist, beharrt Grass jedoch auf der elementaren Bürgerpflicht der Teilnahme am politischen Prozeß: Denn der Ort des Schriftsteller ist inmitten der Gesellschaft und nicht über oder abseits der Gesellschaft. Darum fort mit allem geistigen Hochmut und dünkelhaften Elitegeist! [...] Genie wohnt nicht mehr im holden Wahnsinn, sondern in unserer nüchternen Konsumgesellschaft. Die Heiligen sind Pragmatiker geworden. (Grass, Über das Selbstverständliche, 44–5)
Haben solche Passagen ebenso wie die Berufung auf Traditionen und anerkannte Vorbilder während des Wahlkampfs die Funktion, die Interventionen eines Schriftstellers zu legitimieren, so dominiert im Rückblick auf die erneut verlorenen Wahlen der Vorwurf an die Berufskollegen und ‘Feuilleton-Ritter’ (Grass, Über das Selbstverständliche, 76), daß sie seinem Vorbild nicht gefolgt seien, sondern es sich weiterhin in der Rolle des kompromißlosen ‘Gewissens der Nation’ bequem gemacht hätten: 4
Vgl. auch die Dokumente zum ‘Wahlkontor deutscher Schriftsteller’ in Wagenbach (230–1).
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Der Prozeß der Politisierung, den Grass’ Wahlreden dokumentieren, geht also notwendig mit einer Neubestimmung der Rolle und Aufgaben des Schriftstellers einher. Als unpolitisch und elitär abgelehnt wird nicht nur die traditionelle Positionsbestimmung des Dichters als außergesellschaftliches Wesen, sondern auch die Figur des nonkonformistischen Gesellschafts– und Kulturkritikers, die keinesfalls als ‘Gewissen’ und moralische Instanz der Gesellschaft fungiere, sondern allein die Aufgabe habe, den Autoren selbst ein gutes Gewissen zu bescheren.5 Im Unterschied allerdings zur gänzlichen Verdrängung literarischer Qualitäten und Fähigkeiten, die zur gleichen Zeit von vielen seiner Berufskollegen befürwortet wird, hält Grass weiterhin daran fest, daß die politischen Interventionen des Schriftstellers von jenen besonderen Fähigkeiten Gebrauch machen müssen, die er allein in die Öffentlichkeit einbringen könne: ‘Zwar weiß er nicht genug über Arbeitsrecht und Rentenreform, aber er kennt Seiten der Gesellschaft, von denen sich die Statistik nichts träumen läßt. Er kann den einzelnen, das Individuum, aus der Masse lösen und benennen.’ (Grass, Über das Selbstverständliche, 16) Als Erzähler – notfalls sogar als Erzähler von Märchen und Fabeln – betätigt sich der Wahlredner, um nicht nur seine besonderen Talente nutzbar zu machen, sondern daneben auch Bedürfnisse und Wirklichkeitsaspekte zu artikulieren, die ansonsten aus der räsonnierenden Öffentlichkeit verdrängt und ins Reservat der Kunst gesperrt werden.
5
Als ‘unpolitisch, d.h. beim eigenen Interesse verharrend’ kritisiert Grass die ‘Ohne-Mich-Bewegung’ der fünfziger Jahre, die das gesellschaftliche Komplement zum Nonkonformismus der Schriftsteller bildete (Grass, Über das Selbstverständliche, 111).
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Dialektik der Radikalisierung Grass vertritt eine Kompromißposition zwischen der gegenkulturellen Haltung der fünfziger Jahre, die einer auf Effektivität und Konsum fixierten Gesellschaft die Subversivität des scheinbar Zwecklosen entgegenhielt, und dem wissenschaftsbegeisterten Pragmatismus eines Teils der jüngeren Autoren und Studenten, die die Literatur für wirkungslos und den Kanon der tradierten kulturellen Werte allenfalls für ein Mittel zur Aufrechterhaltung des Status quo hielten. Aus ihrer Sicht wirkte die nonkonformistische Gegenkultur der fünfziger Jahre als willkommenes Beruhigungsmittel, mit dessen Hilfe ernsthafte politische und soziale Konflikte auf das Feld der Kultur und Moral umgeleitet und damit letztlich entschärft worden waren. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, der sich an den Wahlkampfaktionen des Jahres 1965 schon nicht mehr beteiligt hatte, brachte zwei Jahre später die Kritik an derartigen Strategien auf eine prägnante Formel: Je weniger an reale gesellschaftliche Veränderung, an die Umwälzung von Macht- und Besitzverhältnissen zu denken war, desto unentbehrlicher wurde der westdeutschen Gesellschaft ein Alibi im Überbau. [...] Die Literatur sollte eintreten für das, was in der Bundesrepublik nicht vorhanden war, ein genuin politisches Leben. [...] Und je mehr die westdeutsche Gesellschaft sich stabilisierte, desto dringender verlangte sie nach Gesellschaftskritik in der Literatur. (Enzensberger, Palaver, 44–5)
Enzensbergers Kritik an der nonkonformistischen Gegenkultur ist ebenso pauschalisierend wie im Detail irreführend, sie artikuliert aber die Umrisse eines neuen gegenkulturellen Projekts, das nach der Bildung der Großen Koalition im Winter 1966 vorübergehend als besonders zukunftsträchtig erschien und für längere Zeit zumindest in seinen Schwundformen einen Großteil der westdeutschen Gegenkultur dominieren sollte. Den ehemaligen Mitstreitern in der Gruppe 47 und den Rowohlt-Publikationen der frühen sechziger Jahre warf Enzensberger ‘Selbsttäuschungen’, ‘theorieblinden Optimismus’ und Reformismus vor, die 1966 in einem vollständigen Bankrott der linksliberalen Intelligenz resultiert hätten. (Enzensberger, Palaver, 15–16, 43–5). Hatten seine Kollegen noch selbstgewiß an ihre Fähigkeit geglaubt, Gesellschaft und Individuen zutreffend darstellen zu können, so
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applaudierte Enzensberger den ‘Lachsalven’, mit denen neuerdings die Studenten auf die ‘Evangelien’ der Autoren reagierten (Enzensberger, Palaver, 44). Schriftstellern, die meßbare Wirkungen erzielen wollten, riet er, sich an der politischen Publizistik eines Ludwig Börne oder einer Rosa Luxemburg zu orientieren und die dokumentarischen Strategien Günter Wallraffs zu studieren (Enzensberger, Palaver, 53). Seine Zeitschrift Kursbuch, die in ihren ersten Nummern noch auf ein produktives Spannungsverhältnis von Literatur und ‘Realien’ gesetzt hatte, verzichtete seit 1967 fast vollständig auf den Abdruck literarischer Texte und konzentrierte sich statt dessen darauf, gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse in journalistischen ‘Dossiers’ zu dokumentieren. Vielleicht noch wichtiger war aber, daß das Kursbuch geradezu demonstrativ darauf verzichtete, literarische Autorität – etwa durch den Einsatz berühmter Namen – auszuspielen. Die Zeitschrift wurde vielmehr in zunehmendem Maße zum Forum jüngerer, noch unbekannter Autoren, und selbst Enzensberger trat häufiger als Materialsammler und Redakteur von Dossiers, denn als Autor im eigenen Namen auf. Autorität und Legitimität sollten aus deren Realitätsgehalt einerseits, andererseits aus der Verbindung zur organisierten Studentenbewegung entstehen. Enzensbergers Interventionen signalisieren in mehrfacher Hinsicht das Ende jener kurzen ‘Inkubationsperiode’, in der die Rowohlt-Kultur als Plattform einer Politisierung der westdeutschen Schriftsteller fungierte. Einerseits bekräftigt Enzensberger die Unterlegenheit der Literaten gegenüber Publizisten und Sozialwissenschaftlern auf dem Feld wirksamer politischer Interventionen. Fehlen den Autoren zur ernsthaften politischen Analyse die notwendigen Spezialkenntnisse, so wirken ihre Bekenntnisse und Aufrufe gegenüber den ‘Dossiers’, die im Zentrum von Enzensbergers Kursbuch stehen, sinn- und wirkungslos. Erscheint diese Position zunächst als die logische Konsequenz aus den pragmatischen Bekenntnissen der frühen sechziger Jahre, so rückt Enzensberger aber gleichzeitig von diesem gerade erst mehrheitsfähig gewordenen Pragmatismus der Wählerinitiativen ab. Zwar wendet er sich gegen die Rückkehr zu moralischen Argumentationen, doch gegen die Mimikry an dominante Formen des politischen Diskurses setzt er einen neuen Radikalismus, der seine Attraktivität gleichermaßen aus der Bereitschaft zum Tabubruch wie aus seiner Anschließbarkeit an den Aktionismus der neuen Protestbewegungen
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gewinnt. Und schließlich läuten Enzensbergers publizistische Aktivitäten auch das Ende der Sonderstellung ein, die der Rowohlt-Verlag in den frühen sechziger Jahren für 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 repräsentieren sollte. Damit nehmen die Autoren-Initiativen der frühen sechziger Jahre einen spezifischen Platz in der Transformation der westdeutschen Gegenkultur vom Nonkonformismus zum antiautoritären Protest ein. Aus dem Versuch, Vereinzelung und Isolation durch die Übernahme pragmatischer Argumente und Kommunikationsformen zu überwinden, resultiert schließlich der Anschluß an eine neue außerparlamentarische Gegenkultur, in der eben dieser Pragmatismus eine widersprüchliche Allianz mit radikaler ‘Systemkritik’ eingeht. Ermöglicht wird dieser Übergang einerseits durch die Formierung der Studentenbewegung, an der zumindest ein Teil der Intellektuellen sich nach der Bildung der Großen Koalition orientieren. Vielleicht noch wichtiger aber ist eine ideologische Kontinuität: die Abgrenzung vom moralisch begründeten Protest der fünfziger Jahre und das Mißtrauen der literarischen Intelligenz gegenüber den eigenen, literarischen Kommunikationsformen.
Zitierte Werk Becker, J. ‘Modell eines möglichen Politikers’, in Richter (Hg), Die Mauer, 121–5. Beheim-Schwarzbach, M. ‘Lieber Freund’, in Weyrauch (Hg), Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, 98–100. Eggebrecht, A., ‘Soll die Ära der Heuchelei andauern?’, in Walser (Hg), Die Alternative, 25–35. Eich, G. Fünfzehn Hörspiele (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1975). Enzensberger, H. M. Einzelheiten II (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1964). —— ‘Ich wünsche nicht gefährlich zu leben’, in: Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 61–6. —— Palaver. Politische Überlegungen (1967–1973) (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1974).
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Fichte, H. ‘Gewitztheit oder moralischer Mut’ in Richter (Hg) Plädoyer für eine neue Regierung, 112–20. Gaitanides, J. ‘Von der Ohnmacht unserer Literatur’, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, 10–21. Grass, G. Schnurre, W. ‘Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Deutschen Schriftstellerverbandes in Ost-Berlin’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 65–6. Grass, G. ‘Wer wir dieses Bändchen kaufen?’, in Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 76–80. —— Über das Selbstverständliche. Politische Schriften (München, DTV, 1969). Hager, K. ‘Intelligenz und Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Macht’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 145–55. Jauch, E. A. ‘Bloch und Schnurre’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 143–5. Jens, W. ‘Vorwort’, in Nedelmann, C, Schäfer, G. (Hg) Politik ohne Vernunft, 7–11. Karsch, W. ‘Der 13. August und die deutschen Intellektuellen’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 105–9. 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, 131–7. Maetzke, E. O. ‘Überraschung für Mongi Slim’, in Richter (Hg), Die Mauer, 128. Nedelmann, C. Schäfer, 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, 126–8. Richter, H. W. ‘Die Alternative im Wechsel der Personen’, in Richter (Hg.), Plädoyer für eine neue Regierung, 9–14. —— (Hg), Die Mauer oder Der 13. August (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1961). —— ‘Nachwort’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 181–184. —— (Hg), Plädoyer für eine neue Regierung oder Keine Alternative (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1965). —— ‘Zu spät?’, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, 60–6. Rühle, G. ‘Viele Briefe gingen kreuz und quer’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 168–73. Rühmkorf, P. ‘Passionseinheit’, in Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 44–50. Schallück, P. ‘Zwölf Fragen’, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, 101–9. Schnurre, W. ‘Von der Mitverantwortlichkeit des Schriftstellers’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 116–19. Siedler, W. J. ‘Die Linke stirbt, doch sie ergibt sich nicht’, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 110–15. Süskind, W. E. [ohne Titel], in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 104–5. 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. Lämmert, E. Schutte. J. (Hg) Die Gruppe 47 in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1991), 9–22. Wagenbach, K. Stephan, W. Krüger, M. (Hg) Vaterland, Muttersprache. Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat von 1945 bis heute (Berlin, Wagenbach, 1979).
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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, 110–14. —— ‘Vorwort’, in Walser, (Hg) Die Alternative, 5–6. Weyrauch, W. (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik. Fünfzehn Deutsche über Deutschland (München, List, 1961).
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INGO CORNILS
Writing the Revolution: the Literary Representation of the German Student Movement as Counter-Culture
‘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 today’s pillars of society committed their ‘Jugendsünden’ remained open to dramatisation and imagination, but, without any agreement in the media on what this past really was, this ‘dritte Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ 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,
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there has been no mention of it in the recent debate. It is almost as if these texts had no impact outside academic discourse and literary reviews. And yet, as I aim to show, it is exactly in the many literary representations of the German Student Movement that we can find answers to questions about the period that a purely historical or sociological approach simply cannot yield: What was it like then? What did people really feel? Why were they so angry that they demonstrated so violently in the streets? Why were they so elated that we can still feel the afterglow thirty-five years on? What was it about 1968 that it still fuels the public imagination?
The Impertinent Grasp of Historicisation In his book 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur, Wolfgang Kraushaar asks the question how we can actually approach the period without distorting it. He suggests that the period has become so complex in our collective memory that only the aesthetic sensibility of an artist can make sense of it: Vielleicht besitzt nur ein Schriftsteller oder Künstler die Freiheit, die notwendig ist, seine Erinnerungen, in denen die Imagination offenbar lebendig geblieben ist, vor dem immer aufdringlicher werdenden Zugriff der Historisierung zu schützen. (Kraushaar, 52; my emphasis)
From this historian’s point of view, the question of the narrator’s 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 Erzählerrolle, ihrer Angemessenheit oder auch Unangemessenheit, aufgeworfen. Geschichte schreiben heißt, ungeachtet aller legitimen Kritik an der bloß narrativ ausgerichteten Optik vieler Historiker, vor allem zu erzählen. Insofern besteht die vorentscheidende Frage darin, welche Rolle ein Autor als Erzähler einnimmt und welche Qualität ihr im Hinblick auf die Erzählkunst beigemessen werden kann’ (Kraushaar, 12).
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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 Jürgen 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!
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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 isn’t 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: ·
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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 Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung); an alienating university experience (memorably described in Timm’s Heißer Sommer when his protagonist Ulrich Krause is unable to produce his term paper on Hölderlin 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 Geissler’s Das Brot mit der Feile);
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sexual experiences (in the context of the Movement ‘die natürlichste Sache der Welt’ and yet fraught with endless difficulties because ideology and emotion don’t seem to fit together. These ‘liberating’ experiences are treated with humour by Darius in Die sieben Leben der Katharina Blasberg, whilst F. C. Delius gives an excruciatingly honest account of his protagonist’s frustrations in Amerikahaus und der Tanz um die Frauen); inability to communicate with one another (the fashion for amateur psychoanalysis and the insatiable desire of the 68ers to discuss everything without ever reaching an understanding makes a regular appearance: a well-observed political debate can be found in Kluge’s Neue Geschichten, while the personal angle is expertly dissected in Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung; the experience of living together in ‘Wohngemeinschaften’ (portrayed with all attendant rituals, i.e. the washing-up rota and the removal of internal doors, in Roland Lang’s Ein Hai in der Suppe oder Das Glück des Philipp Ronge); authoritarian parents (painfully explored in Plessen’s Mitteilung an den Adel and Vesper’s Die Reise); Germany’s Nazi past and the students’ response (memorably evoked in Schlink’s Der Vorleser); the grand coalition of CDU and SPD from 1966 to 1969 (the background threat of a supposed ‘police state’ is powerfully drawn in Viebahn’s Das Haus Che oder Jahre des Aufruhrs); the experience of the first ‘demo’ and clashes with the police (this collective experience is described in expressionist style in Scholz’s Rosenfest and, in closely observed detail and from various viewpoints, in Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung); the experience of the unity of ‘Denken, Handeln und Fühlen’ (memorably evoked in its absence after the demise of the Movement in Peter Schneider’s Lenz); the death of Benno Ohnesorg (this event normally changes the course of personal lives of the protagonists, e.g. in Timm’s Heißer Sommer or Lang’s Ein Hai in der Suppe. In the case of Scholz’s Rosenfest, the event no longer follows historical facts but is ‘fitted’ according to the requirements of the fiction);
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the Vietnam Congress in February 68 (a central event that symbolizes the international aspect of the German Student Movement, it is usually ‘woven into’ the narrative in some form or other. In Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung, two of his protagonists become friends there and, as a by-product, allow us a glimpse of Rudi Dutschke on the podium); reference to contemporary music and its impact: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Doors (beautifully recreated in Offenbach’s Sonja. Eine Melancholie für Fortgeschrittene, where the two protagonists produce an ‘eternal tape’ in the knowledge that music of this intensity and integrity will never be made like this again); reference to hallucinogenic drugs and their impact (another standard theme, countering the process of ‘Bewußtwerdung’ in Timm’s Heißer Sommer, followed to its disastrous conclusion in Vesper’s Die Reise); the attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke (arguably the central and most significant experience of the German Student Movement, and therefore a standard in most narratives.) The most laconic description of the impact can be found in Lang’s Ein Hai in der Suppe; the emergency laws debate (this complex political issue is difficult to integrate into a narrative. It features in Lang’s Ein Hai in der Suppe and provides the background for the actors’ strike at the Munich Kammerspiele in Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung); the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops (as historical background/‘Erlebnishorizont’, very much in the same way that ‘May 68’ in France is mentioned as an inspiration to an increasingly disillusioned German Movement); the impact of Critical Theory, especially Herbert Marcuse (evoked in Kluge’s Neue Geschichten and Rosenstrauch’s Die Grazie der Intellektuellen); Springer and the Bild Zeitung (as a wider background present in almost all narratives, the problem of manipulation is discussed in Fuchs’ Beringer und die lange Wut, while the blockades of the printing houses in Munich and Hamburg feature in both
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Schröder’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung and Uwe Timm’s Heißer Sommer); Marxist ideology and attempts to make it fit with existing socialism (this theme features prominently in Peter Schneider’s Lenz and Schimmang’s Der schöne Vogel Phönix).
The sheer breadth of the social impact of the Movement on German literature can be illustrated by looking at the social background of writers and that of their intended target groups. We have accounts from the perspective of the aristocracy (Plessen), working class (Geissler, Lang), academics (Jaeggi, Kinder), feminists (Buhmann), poets (Fried and F.C. Delius), pupils (Sonner), professional and experimental writers (Grass, Fichte, Chotjewitz), of course students (Timm, Schimmang), gays and lesbians (Offenbach), the legal profession (Schlink), and so on. In terms of target groups, we have the ‘average man in the street’, who, according to the programmatic statements of the authors in the AutorenEdition, deserved an easy-to-read narrative providing him with a ‘realistic’ portrayal of the world he knew together with suggestions on how to change it. The target group of authors like Vesper, Zahl and Viebahn, on the other hand, is ‘the scene’, i.e. the counter-culture in all its various guises from alternative lifestyle proponents to dropouts. Offenbach and Buhmann clearly write for women in the first instance, while readers of Jaeggi and Kinder will be found in academic circles. With the more recent publications, the targeted readership has opened up. While the ‘68ers’ as an age group that may want to see itself reflected in literature may be the main focus, other groups keen to find out about the era are implicitly invited by authors like Timm, Henle, Blasberg or Scholz. Various ‘regional settings’ create verisimilitude and connect seemingly ephemeral events into a whole Movement – we have narratives set in West Berlin (Peter Schneider, Schimmang, Zahl), Hamburg (Timm), München (Sonner, Schöfer), Karlsruhe (Lang), Frankfurt (Kluge), and so on. A second aspect is that most protagonists originally come from the cultural backwaters of the Federal Republic and are only drawn to the centres of the revolt as it hots up. Hence Schimmang’s hero originally hails from Ostfriesland, Timm’s hero visits his parents in Braunschweig before heading for
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Hamburg, and the Grips Theater’s Eine linke Geschichte contains a scene where the prodigal daughter, parka-clad lover in tow, visits her parents in their petit-bourgois flat and confronts their out-moded thinking and way of life. The message is that the Movement permeated all of society, and was, contrary to individual experience, a phenomenon that had an impact even where, according to the histories of the Movement, nothing had changed. In terms of stylistic variety, the literary representations of the German Student Movement cover the whole range of modern literature: from ‘simple stories’ (Kluge, Grass) via diaries (Brinkmann) and letters (Siekmann) to multiple points of view (Schöfer) and stream of consciousness (Viebahn); from realism (F. C. Delius) to surrealism (Rosenstrauch); from party-political correctness (Fuchs) to irreverent fun (Darius); from gently ironic satire (Henle) to farce (Zahl) and cabaret (Grips Theater). We have texts written during LSD trips (Vesper), and texts set in the future (Viebahn); we have the ‘traditional’ Bildungsroman (Timm, Lang), a travel novel (Peter Schneider), a road movie script (Scholz) and a tragedy-cum-thriller (Siekmann). We have elegies (Schimmang) and any number of love stories. And there is no shortage of sex.
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. Atack’s 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).
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Obviously, the field is not completely empty. Keith Bullivant includes the early texts in the ‘Death of Literature’ debate. Andrew Plowman discusses five books as autobiographical writing, and Ingeborg Gerlach another five as an expression of New Subjectivity in her study ‘Abschied von der Revolte’. We also have volumes on Peter Schneider (edited by Colin Riordan) and Uwe Timm (edited by David Basker), which contain valuable insights into their early books on the Student Movement. But all these studies look at selections that support the points their respective authors wish to make. Only Ralf Schnell has attempted to interpret a wider range of texts. In his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur nach 1945, he argues that these ‘thematically linked texts’ ought to be seen as ‘ein Plädoyer für die Literatur als ästhetisches Medium zur Verarbeitung gesellschaftlicher Mangelerfahrung in einem sehr traditionellen Sinn’ (Schnell, 421). His reading is largely psychological, namely, that the literary representations of the German Student Movement are acts of imaginary wish-fulfilment in the face of an unsatisfactory reality. This sort of interpretation, under the label of ‘romantic relapse’, has plagued the discussion of these texts since the 1970s. (See Ingo Cornils, ‘Romantic Relapse?) It is reflected in the neat labels critics have given them over the years: ‘Erfahrungsliteratur’, ‘Erinnerungsliteratur’, ‘Besinnungsliteratur’, ‘Veteranenprosa’ (Piwitt), ‘Verständigungstexte’, ‘literarische Verarbeitung der Studentenbewegung’, ‘literarisierte Revolte’ (Schnell), ‘Literatur des Abschieds von der Revolte’ (Gerlach), ‘epische Aufhebung der Studentenbewegung’ (Kiesel), and, most condescending, ‘Literatur zum Wohlfühlen’. The reason for the reluctance of many critics to seriously engage with or look at the whole breadth of the literary representation of the German Student Movement may be that the texts span so many styles and issues. Furthermore, with texts ranging from the subversive to the melancholy, from the ‘traditional’ to the experimental, there seems to be little chance of finding a common denominator. In her study Abschied von der Revolte, Ingeborg Gerlach suggests that we should distinguish two strands: the ‘Literatur des Abschieds von der Studentenbewegung’ and ‘Politisierungsliteratur’. Focusing on the former, and using mainly texts from the 1970s, she interprets the ‘Abschied’ as a reluctant return to ‘normality’:
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The resulting sense of loss necessarily leads to disillusionment and apathy: ‘der Rückzug des an der Härte der Welt gescheiterten Protagonisten endet im Zerbrechen des seines Zieles beraubten einzelnen’ (Gerlach, 26). This begs the question as to what to make of the other strand, which offers texts that convey a more optimistic outlook. Particularly the books published in the AutorenEdition (Fuchs, Geissler, Lang, Timm) assert that the German Student Movement has led to a lasting politicisation of many of the 68 generation. Characteristically, the protagonists in these books overcome their sense of loss and continue on the ‘long march’, often join the DKP (German Communist Party) as the authors listed themselves did, and find new hope in political co-operation between intellectuals and workers. Critics have been particularly scathing and dismissive of these texts, arguing that they ‘improve’ history and memory to such an extent that the result is a myth that has lost all reference to reality. It is interesting to note that the proponents of this type of aesthetic reflection, particularly Schöfer (one of the founders of the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt) and Timm (one of the founders of the AutorenEdition), have not given up on their quests – both Schöfer and Timm have published substantial new novels on the German Student Movement in 2001. While Schöfer’s book received relatively little attention outside the traditional left-wing reading groups, Timm’s novel Rot was very well received nationwide, was feted at the Frankfurt Book Fair and may even have been instrumental in bringing the history of the ‘68ers’ to a modern readership. However, if the current sceptical view of the merits of the German Student Movement prevails, these books will be seen as just another proof of the ‘anhaltende Wirklichkeitsverlust’, of which critics accuse ‘68ers’ as a matter of course. Gerd Koenen, a prominent former member of the Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland, who now denounces his radical past as ‘narzisstische Selbstinszenierung’,
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believes we should have nothing but pity for ‘treuherzige Historienmalereien’: ‘die Epopöe des roten Jahrzehnts läßt sich [...] nur aus einer Position der Anteil nehmenden Ironie noch erzählen’ (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 Timm’s Rot below). The question whether it is therefore pointless to discuss whether a historical account is ‘false’ or not may have become irrelevant (compare Scholz’s 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
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Movement display many similarities with the approach of the Romantics, who looked back not to the classics but to the, as they saw it, counter-cultural middle ages which represented a different kind of social order and discourse. Like the Romantic Movement, the German Student Movement had distinct phases, and it can be argued that the literature representing it can be divided into phases as well, such as revolutionary enthusiasm; exploration of new freedoms; resignation; reflection; historicisation; mythologisation; and finally re-organisation in new movements. There is a certain irony in the fact that the very counter-cultural act of ‘the great refusal’ which freed the West German students from their parents’ generation, with their authoritarian practices, taboos and guilt, has led to a breaking of traditions, including the tradition to maintain a continuity from one generation to the next. Conservative writers like Joachim Fest or Dietrich Schwanitz believe that by cutting the ties with the past the ‘68ers’ not only refused to communicate with their parents’ generation, but left their own utopian dream marooned on an island of time. Once the chain is broken, there is no need to continue any tradition, be it even the tradition of a utopian-led counter-cultural revolt. Hence, one could argue, the demise of the Green party (which saw increasing numbers of obituaries in the serious press after its decision to back the deployment of German soldiers in Afghanistan in November 2001, see Schmidt), hence also the rearguard action by ageing ‘68ers’ to demonstrate that they still matter and have a message for the next generation, and hence, finally, the continuing need to write about the Movement and its ‘historical project’ to create a moral and just society. According to Cornelia Klinger, the impulse to hold on to the elation of a revolutionary experience by romanticizing it need not be such a bad thing. The sentimental ‘look backward’ may be seen as part of the experience of ever faster change, particularly in the context of Marxist ideology which, as she reminds her readers, simultaneously looks back and forward to an ‘ideal’ state. Romanticizing the Movement, our texts thus aim to create intimacy in a world perceived to have ignored the students’ original message. The question for the critic is to determine whether the union of literary form and political content as an aesthetic whole actually works, and what it can achieve.
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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 begnügen, den Veteranen von einst das Gemeinsame, nämlich die vorentschiedene Realität im Kopf, zu kostümieren?’ (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 haven’t already heard, that we aren’t 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: Daß die Revolte vorbei sei, ist eine Zwecklüge und zugleich real; verleugnet lebt sie in lächerlichen Latzhosen totalitären Zuschnitts, obskuren Heilslehren, Trödel, in schäbigen Kneipen mit betäubender Musik. Zwecklüge: sie macht uns zu Rückwärtsgewandten, die am Vergangenen festhalten wollten, vernichtet fortwährende Gültigkeit und akute Not eines modernen Freiheitskampfes, der ohne ein würdiges Gedächtnis nicht leben kann, schließlich macht sie blind gegen die Schwächen und die Größe 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 Realität’ 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
For example at the Erlanger Poetenfest in September 2001, where Wolfgang Kraushaar, Barbara Sichtermann, Leander Scholz and Uwe Timm discussed the continuing relevance of 1968 with W. Martin Lüdke, himself editor of two volumes on the link between literature and the German Student Movement.
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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 Günter Grass can have a blind spot when it comes to the 68ers: his detached portrayals in Örtlich betäubt 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’ Ostpreußen springs to mind.
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The ‘collage’ that emerges from a synoptic reading of the whole family of texts, from the early angry and melancholic ones to the recent ones, which dare to be honest and also laugh at themselves, requires an aesthetic theory on the critic’s part that is capable of seeing beyond the faithful representation of historical events. It needs to explain why, despite the abject failure of the Movement, and the tangible sense of loss, writers stubbornly continue to re-create and reinvent the Movement.
It’s Not Dark Yet Their motivation, in the end, is the enduring belief that their analysis of the world was indeed the right one, that the long march they embarked on isn’t over yet, and that the dream they ‘bought into’ is still, against all odds, worth fighting for. But the initial impulse to rescue the essence of the Movement through the ‘ice age’ so that it can be revived sometime in the future (an interpretation that W. Martin Lüdke and Ralf Schnell put forward in the 1970s and 1980s) has been modified in recent years. The vocal exponents of the ‘68ers’ were, and still are, portrayed as ‘ewige Rechthaber’. This impression is reinforced in most literary representations: they are characterized by their ‘Gefühl, recht zu haben’ (Lang, Ein Hai in der Suppe), they are ‘die mit den festen Meinungen’ (F. C. Delius, Amerikahaus und der Tanz um die Frauen). Daniel Cohn-Bendit recently declared both triumphantly and defensively: ‘Wir werden die Welt verändern!’ The ‘68ers’ claimed, and still claim, the interpretative high ground, and insist that they have something that needs to be said and understood. However, with representatives of their generation in government (as a visible part of the dominant culture), after unification and the collapse of communism, we have a constellation that has utterly undermined the values, attitudes and message of their generation. Uwe Timm’s protagonist in his latest novel accepts the charges of selfrighteousness laid at their feet:
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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 fechten’s 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 Schöfer’s Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung and Timm’s 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 Schneider’s Lenz and Timm’s Heißer Sommer. Both Schöfer 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 Schöfer 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
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allows for the fundamental shift in political consciousness, emotional maturity, even cynicism,4 which was itself a by-product of the Movement (or a reaction to its demise). Thus the obituary that his protagonist weaves for his erstwhile comrade rehearses the utopian dream in all its infinite desirability whilst anticipating that in our current, ‘fallen’ state, such a dream may cause nothing but derision: es sollte anders sein, nicht nur etwas, höhere Löhne, niedrige Steuern, es sollte ein anderes Leben sein, selbstbestimmt, frei, eigensinnig, erfahrungsreich, nicht nur dem rechnenden kalkulierenden Verstand unterworfen, der Mut sich zu öffnen, Stolz auf die Schwächen, auch auf das Leiden, das eigene, eine andere Welt, keine laue, gleichgültige, nicht Leid und Glück nebeneinander dulden, die Welt neu aufbauen, klein schlagen und neu aufbauen, alles prüfen, nicht nur in Diskussionen, nicht nur reden, sondern die Lust in der Tat. Diese Gesellschaft, die auf einer Vernichtungslogik basiert, Vernichtung von Menschen, Tieren, Ressourcen, durch eine andere, friedliche, gerechtere zu ersetzen. Woran liegt es, daß das alles so hohl klingt? Jetzt, heute? Warum lachen Sie? (Timm, Rot, 79–80)
But Timm, free of the shackles of Realpolitik in the realm of the imagination, goes beyond the fashionability or expediency of this world-view. If the principles that the young ‘68ers’ fought for were morally and politically valid, then one potential conclusion must be to insist that these principles are still valid today. The point, then and now, is not to interpret the world in different ways, but to change it: Aber, liebe Trauergemeinde, könnte es sein, einmal ganz hypothetisch, also könnte es sein, daß einer von dem blutigen Rigorismus seiner Jugend im Alter, und mit Mitte Fünfzig dürfen wir von Alter reden, wieder erfaßt wird, sich an die Strenge des Urteilens erinnert, sich der Unbedingtheit des einmal Erkannten wieder verschreibt, keine Abschwächungen und kein bequemes EinerseitsAndererseits duldet, das jede zur Tat zwingende Entscheidung im vornhinein zersetzt? Sentimental, sagen Sie. Vielleicht. (Timm, Rot, 379)
4
‘Käme es heute zur Revolution, die Leute würden denken, es sei eine Werbeveranstaltung’ (Timm, Rot, 310).
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A Selection of Literary Texts dealing with ’68 (in chronological order) Fichte, H. Die Palette (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1968) Chotjewitz, P. O. Die Insel. Erzählungen auf dem Bärenauge, (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1968). Grass, G. örtlich betäubt (Berlin, 1969). Brinkmann, R. D. Erkundungen für die Präzisierung des Gefühls für einen Aufstand (Tagebuch 1971; Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1987). Grass, G. Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (Darmstadt, 1972). Struck, K. Klassenliebe (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1973). Viebahn, F. Das Haus Che oder Jahre des Aufruhrs (Hamburg, Merlin, 1973). Fuchs, G. Beringer und die lange Wut (München, AutorenEdition, 1973). Schneider, Peter. Lenz. Eine Erzählung (Berlin, Rotbuch, 1973). Geissler, C. Das Brot mit der Feile (München, AutorenEdition, 1973). Timm, U. Heißer Sommer (München, AutorenEdition, 1974). Lang, R. Ein Hai in der Suppe oder Das Glück des Philipp Ronge (München, AutorenEdition, 1975). Plessen, E. Mitteilung an den Adel (Zürich, Benziger, 1976). Kinder, H. Der Schleiftrog (Zürich, Diogenes, 1977). Vesper, B. Die Reise (Berlin, März, 1977). Kluge, A. Neue Geschichten, Hefte 1–18, ‘Unheimlichkeit der Zeit’ (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1977). Buhmann, I. Ich hab mir eine Geschichte geschrieben (München, Trikont, 1977). Jaeggi, U. Brandeis (1978) (Hamburg, Rotbuch, Verlag, 1998). Schimmang, J. Der schöne Vogel Phönix. Erinnerungen eines Dreißigjährigen (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1979). Zahl, Peter-Paul. Die Glücklichen. Ein Schelmenroman (Berlin, Rotbuch, 1979). Grips Theater Eine linke Geschichte (Textbuch) (Berlin, 1980). Offenbach, J. Sonja. Eine Melancholie für Fortgeschrittene (Frankfurt aM. Suhrkamp, 1980). Fauser, J. Rohstoff (Frankfurt aM, Ullstein, 1984). Zeller, M. Follens Erben. Eine deutsche Geschichte (Bad Homburg, Oberon, 1986). Ortheil, H.-J. Schwerenöter (München, Piper, 1987). Nadolny, S. Selim oder Die Gabe der Rede (München, Piper, 1990). Woelk, U. Rückspiel (Frankfurt aM, Fischer, 1993). Schlink, B. Der Vorleser (Zürich, Diogenes, 1995). Siekmann, A. Nächtlicher Abschied (Winsen, Hans Boldt, 1995). Rosenstrauch, H. Die Grazie der Intellektuellen. Natascha und der Factor S. (Mannheim, Persona, 1995). Wahl, M. 1968. Ein Heimatroman (Graz, Styria, 1996). Sonner, F.-M. Als die Beatles Rudi Dutschke erschossen (München, Kunstmann, 1996). Darius, B. Die sieben Leben der Katharina Blasberg (Köln, K&W, 1997).
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Delius, F. C. Amerikahaus und der Tanz um die Frauen (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1997). Özdamar, E. S. Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (Köln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998). Henle, I. Lebensansichten eines alten APO-Katers (Münster, Principal, 1998). Grass, G. Mein Jahrhundert (Göttingen, Steidl, 1999). Scholz, L. Rosenfest (München, Hanser, 2001). Schöfer, E. Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung. Die Kinder des Sisyfos (Köln, Dittrich, 2001). Timm, U. Rot (Köln, K&W, 2001).
Works Cited Assmann, A. Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München, Beck, 1999). Assmann, J. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München, 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 antiautoritären 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), 107–23. Eichelberg, I. Mai ’68 in der Literatur. Die Suche nach menschlichem Glück 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), 6–8. 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 (Würzburg, 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 ästhetischen Gegenwelten (München, Hanser, 1995). Koenen, G. Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Köln, 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).
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Kraushaar, W. 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur (Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2000). Löwenthal, R. Der romantische Rückfall (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1970). Lüdke, W. M. (Hg) Literatur und Studentenbewegung. Eine Zwischenbilanz (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977). Piwitt, H. P. ‘Rückblick auf heiße 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), 35–46. 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-Grün. 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 Gedächtnis. Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradierung (Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2001). Wolff, F./Windaus, E. ‘Was ist von der Studentenbewegung noch übriggeblieben?’, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 22. Januar 1977.
JAMIE TRNKA
The West German Red Army Faction and its Appropriation of Latin American Urban Guerilla Struggles
The West German Red Army Faction emerged in the context of international protest movements around 1968. While its members were critical of the West German student movements, they shared with them a common concern for the revolutionary texts and struggles of the day, drawing heavily in their own theoretical production on texts by the Black Panthers, Mao Zedong, and Latin American urban guerilla groups. Their reliance on and citation of texts that lie – at least superficially – outside of the West German context raises important theoretical questions for students of political theory and cultural studies alike, touching on ideologies of physicality, practices of communication in political movements, and violence and the discursive articulation of violence around other(ed) political subjects. By tracing a theoretical shift around the ’68 movement from a political concern for Third World liberation struggles to the radical identifications with the Third World performed by the RAF and other armed groups in the seventies, it is possible to identify what Arlene Teraoka has described as the Third World of German cultural fantasies: ‘not a geographical space or political reality, but a selfreferential German discourse in which “Third World” conceits are the stuff of which post-war leftist identities are made’ (Adelson, 608). Teraoka argues convincingly for the need to investigate how and why particular discourses on the Third World are employed, ‘the imaginative uses they serve, the cultural and political needs they meet’ (Teraoka, 5). The elaborate process through which Latin America and other parts of the Third World are discursively made should be understood in the context of discussions of the role of the (German) intellectual in post-war political-cultural processes more generally,
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and in this respect it is useful to situate the RAF within larger intellectual debates of the time which attempt to locate an ‘emancipatory German (and European) self’ (Adelson, 608) in the imagined space of the Third World. The development of this discursive making in the context of the protest movements around 1968 in West Germany proceeds first through the articulation of analogy between the political situation in Third World countries and in the Federal Republic, and then on to more affective identifications with Third World struggles and revolutionary leaders. In what follows, I will trace this shift from articulation to analogy to identification and appropriation of Third World liberation struggles with an emphasis on Latin America through specific examples taken from the later years of the student popular movement, early armed groups such as the Tupamaros West Berlin, and, finally, the Red Army Faction. In his historical account of student protest movements in the US and West Germany, Ingo Juchler has already pointed to the relative lack of attention on the part of historians to the reception of Third World liberation texts in the student popular movements in West Germany – especially texts produced in Latin America and in the Black Power Movement in the US (Juchler, 19). This failure to attend to theoretical production from the Third World within what is already a relatively small body of literature on these movements is, on the one hand, unsurprising: it may be read as symptomatic of larger, institutional failures to incorporate Third World discourses into our analyses of history, culture, and politics. On the other hand, it is indeed surprising insofar as the movements begin and end with reference to the Third World in so many ways: the December 1964 anti-Tschombé demonstration in Berlin is widely considered to be the first large-scale event of the movement. (Tschombé became a particularly controversial figure around 1961, as a suspect in the murder of opposition leader Patrice Lumumba of the Mouvement National Congolais and first Prime Minister of the Independent Republic of Congo.) The dissolution of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (and with it the movement leadership) in 1970 was, at least in part, prompted by a series of intense internal debates sparked by differing levels of identification with Third World struggles and
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models for social change, as evidenced by protocols of SDS delegate conferences as early as 1967 (see Juchler, 242–8). The shift from student popular to urban guerrilla movements hinges on the mobilization of radical sectors of the movement around identifications with the Third World.1 Different sets of identifications are deployed to different ends within what is too often treated as a more or less monolithic student protest movement that moves seamlessly into violent terrorism, masking the tensions within and between the movement and the various armed groups active in West Germany around this time. In the context of this series of developments, I will argue that the failure of the RAF and other urban guerrilla groups to engage with the full complexity of their identifications with Latin American groups is not an isolated phenomenon so much as it is an extreme case. The consequences of this failure are substantial: material, political struggles in the Third World are subordinated to the discursive construction of a Third World space of resistance in which the German revolutionary subject is central to the struggle’s successful resolution. While such identifications with can be traced throughout the Third World Movement in Germany, from the 1950s concern with the Korean war and Algeria at least through the 1980s solidarity with Nicaragua and El Salvador;2 what emerges as distinct in the case of West German urban guerrilla groups is a radical physical identification in struggle that supersedes moral or political identifications. This ideology of physicality shaped rhetorical and communicative strategies, and privileged an analysis of the social-symbolic dimensions of material violence over the implications of violence as such. From the beginning of the West German student movement, Latin America played a particularly important role in theoretical and symbolic terms. The significance of the Cuban revolution and of US 1
2
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 Rössel.
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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 Che’s ‘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 Wünsche 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 Germany’s 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 Left’s interest in Latin America.4 With German translations 3
4
Susan Buck-Morss’ recent work interrogating the relationship of the Haitian revolution and Hegel’s philosophy does well to point out how long a trend such selective dis- and relocations of Latin American experiences and ideas may in fact be in German intellectual history. The most notable of these were the 1968 Havana Cultural Conference, the 1966 Tricontinental Conference (organized in the interest of providing a forum in which to address some of the common concerns of leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America), and the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS) conference. The 1967 OLAS conference motto was adopted by the SDS-
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of Che Guevara’s writings, reception of his work and interest in Cuba increased still further in SDS and other leftist circles.5 Following the death of student protester Benno Ohnesorg in June 1967, the increasingly radical anti-authoritarian segment of the SDS looked to Guevara’s texts with the intention of putting his ideas into practice in West Germany. The organizational model in question, Guevara and Debray’s focus strategy, advocated the development of small, revolutionary cells in the rural areas of ‘underdeveloped’ countries in the Americas. These cells would be capable of defeating institutional military forces with the support of the people. Further, the cells would develop revolutionary agents and cultivate the subjective conditions for revolution as catalysts in the revolutionary struggle and, later, in the formation of the new society.6 It was the Brazilian leader Carlos Marighella’s adaptation of the focus strategy to the urban centers of Latin America that later served as a model for West German armed groups.7
5 6
7
organized International Vietnam Conference of the following year: ‘Die Pflicht jedes Revolutionärs ist es, die Revolution zu machen.’ As Juchler points out, the alliance of international movements represented at the Tricontinental conference and in particular the OLAS strengthened still further the already ‘im Verlauf des Jahres 1967 verstärkt vollzogene Identifikation mit den Kämpfen der Befreiungsbewegungen in der Dritten Welt’. In particular, ‘die proklamierte “Allianz” der Guerrillabewegungen Lateinamerikas und der durch [Stokely] Carmichael vertretenen militanten Afro-Amerikaner auf der OLAS-Konferenz, erweckte bei den radikalisierten Studenten den Eindruck einer sich formierenden “neuer Internationale” der Dritten Welt’ (Juchler, 392). In August 1966 it was the SDS publication Fazit that first published German translations of Che’s ‘Socialism and the New Man in Cuba’ and ‘Guerrilla Warfare: A Method’. See Debray. The educative/formative work of the cells was theorized in detail by Guevara in a number of different texts, most importantly ‘Socialism and the New Man in Cuba’, which seeks to counter the notion that socialism destroys the individual in favor of the social by outlining the actualization of individual potential in service of society. Following Guevara’s death in Bolivia in October 1967 during an attempt to put the rural guerilla strategy into practice, Carlos Marighella developed the urban guerilla strategy, adapting the organizational principles of Guevara and Debray to the urban centers of Latin America and, in 1968, launching an urban guerilla organization in Brazil. Dutschke and Krahl pick up this language explicitly as early as 1967. One example: ‘Die “Propaganda der Schüsse” (Che) in der “Dritten Welt” muß durch die “Propaganda der Tat” in den Metropolen vervollständigt werden, welche eine Urbanisierung ruraler Guerilla-Tätigkeit geschichtlich möglich
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Increasingly, movement leaders like Rudi Dutschke emphasized the importance of ‘sinnliche Erfahrung’8 of revolutionary agitation in the metropoles. This experience was contrasted to what they regarded as theoretical socialisms without significant practical elements. The concept of armed propaganda – so central to Latin American models – provided one possible means of such an active, sensual experience of revolutionary activity, and was discussed at length within the SDS. The shift from a theoretical linking of the Third World and the metropoles in political and economic terms to an identification with the Third World and Third World figures themselves proceeds through this perceived need for ‘sensual experience’ and fetishization of physical bodies engaged in struggle. Terms of embodiment are prominent in attempts to relate struggles in Latin America to the experiences of students in the West. Student leader Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s position provides a concise example: ‘Der Kampf der Guerilleros dort lehrt die revoltierenden Studenten hier eine politische Moral der Kompromißlosigkeit, deren Verkörperung nicht zuletzt Che Guevara darstellte’, (Krahl, in Juchler, 273). Embodied political ideals serve as a vehicle for the simplification of theoretical models advanced within the movement even as they complicate the question of identification; the difference is that of positioning oneself in solidarity with urban guerrillas and the insistence on being urban guerrilla leaders, aspiring to re-center the revolutionary struggle in the metropoles. This desire to identify with oppressed groups is in keeping with larger post-war German discourses explored in the work of critics like Sieg, Teraoka, and Zantop. Cultural memories of fascism worked in tandem with an increasing sense of internationalism to move the student-popular movement to question West German complicity in oppression of Other peoples in an attempt to repudiate their own sense of guilt and
8
macht. Der städtische Guerrillero ist der Organisator schlechthinniger Irregularität als Dekonstruktion des Systems der repressiven Institutionen’ (cited in Juchler, 242). This phrase occurs in Dutschke and Krahl’s 1967 ‘Organisationsreferat’ (see Juchler, 242). Contacts were made with Latin American student groups, and some German students in fact traveled to Latin America to participate in revolutionary cells (see Juchler, 247, no 383).
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shame through forms of active resistance against contemporary social problems and to position themselves as oppressed.9 After 1969, the tendency to form urban guerrilla groups based on the Latin American model became more pronounced in West Germany, particularly within the anti-authoritarian faction of the SDS. A more serious attempt to form urban guerrilla groups and to generate armed propaganda was consistent not only with shifting identifications with Latin America and Latin American guerrilla leaders, but also with a strong concern for the dissemination of alternative information and the media critique that had shaped the student popular movement from its inception, culminating in the 1968 anti-Springer campaign. The critique of popular media is significant for opposition movements not least because media concentration limits the vocabulary available for the discussion, description, and dissemination of social movements and their ideals. (The RAF and other armed groups also had a well-developed media critique, expressed in many of their communiqués and position papers.) In light of the concentration of popular communicative structures in a conservative media network, the development of alternative modes of communication itself became a site of contestation. In this context, I read the move in West Germany first to mobilize around and later to identify with ‘foreign’ struggles not just as symptomatic of the internationalism and anti-imperialist agenda of the ’68 movements more generally, but as an attempt to recuperate a vocabulary of resistance from different social and political struggles located in some way outside (or ‘untainted’ by) the German tradition. Privileging this communicative element enables us to trace a parallel shift within the student movement from the use of political analogy to Latin American urban guerrilla struggles and a preference for more ‘traditional’ communication in the form of public speeches, leaflets, protests, and happenings, to an identification with the Third World and adoption of extreme forms of highly mediated material communication, particularly the armed propaganda of the terrorist act, modeled on the urban guerrilla concept. The communicative-critical element of the 9
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.
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terrorist act is central: the disruption of public spectacle by means of political violence is not aimed exclusively at the object of a particular attack, but at the people watching.10 The relation of communication to the body in extreme, material communication suggests a series of questions about the invocation of Latin American revolutionary figures by armed groups. The alienation of many leftist groups from more ‘traditional’ forms of communication with the increasingly sensationalistic media coverage of the movement and subculture scene, as well as the increasing police violence toward demonstrators, is key to the radicalization of identifications with the Third World in West Germany of the late sixties. Ralf Reinders, a member of the Umschweifende Haschrebellen and later Bewegung 2. Juni, reflects that the experience of police violence solidified identifications with victims of violence in the Third World and the Black Power movement in the US: ‘Da haben die Leute begriffen, was Rassismus ist, als sie selbst was auf den Kopf bekamen. Vom Gefühl her begriffen: Du kriegst was auf den Kopf, weil du anders aussiehst. Vollkommen egal, was du machst’ (Fritsch and Reinders, 17). This physical element of identification – ‘wir kriegen alle was auf den Kopf ’ – in tandem with already pronounced conceptual identifications – Che as embodiment of a revolutionary struggle that is also our struggle – culminated in the mobilization of urban guerrilla groups in West Germany around Latin American figures not exactly as embodied difference, but as a kind of ‘embodied sameness’: different from all that is unjust in Germany past and present, the same as the struggling West German guerillas. What remained of difference was to be overcome precisely through physical participation in armed struggle: ‘Der Kampf selbst proletarisiert die Kämpfer’ was a common thread in written statements of West German armed groups, most likely picking up on the elaboration of proletarianization in Guevara’s writings. To what extent did armed groups attempt to use the bodies of Latin American ‘heroes’ like Che in place of other possible 10
For example, the bombing of a department store in protest against ‘consumer terror’ does not have as its aim the destruction of consumer goods, but the disruption of normative patterns of consumption, socio-economic transactions, and those publicly enacted social relations that take place in a department store on a day-to-day basis.
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expressions of the critical concepts they wished to articulate? Is the recourse to the corporeal, to the embodiment of particular experiences another attempt among so many in their written and enacted propaganda texts to exceed the theory of the theory-practice dialectic? How is Che’s body, the bodies produced in the creation of the ‘new man’, the bodies implicated in the creation of one, two, many Vietnams played out in the very physical communication of ideas through terrorist propaganda and its logic of the disruption of public spectacle? The privileging of bodies engaged in struggle enabled the completion of a radical identification with Latin America and the inauguration of the urban guerrilla in West Germany; arguably, laying claim to the experience of Latin American guerrillas and invoking the Panther slogan ‘trust your experience’ involved claiming the lived experiences of others uncritically as their own and inadvertently performing the isolation and cooptation of resistance movements against which the groups claimed to fight. The recourse to the Third World as the site of the sensual/corporeal, as the object of analysis of first world language and theory, but never itself the site of theoretical production, is problematic to say the least, obscuring real Third World agency and reproducing the terms of colonialist scholarship critiqued by postcolonial theorists.11 The theorization of urban guerrilla struggle, the social and political analysis that underlies it in Latin America, is largely obscured in the process of the West German appropriation of these organizational structures and experiences, as is apparent in the case of the Tupamaros West Berlin. The Tupamaros West Berlin took their name from the Uruguayan guerrilla group MLN-Tupamaros, themselves named for the historical indigenous resistance leader Tupac Amaru. The first and best-known act of the Tupamaros West Berlin was a failed bombing of a Jewish community house in 1969 on the thirty-first anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht, accompanied by a communiqué titled ‘Schalom und Napalm’ in which the group condemned West German philosemitism as preventing serious critique of Israeli aggression against Palestine, and suggested that reparations paid by Germany to the Israeli government served only to support the military conflict in 11
For a particularly detailed example, see Mignolo.
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the Middle East. The group concluded that a true anti-fascism could only consist in solidarity with Palestine: ‘Unsere Solidarität wird sich nicht mehr mit verbal-abstrakten Aufklärungsmethoden a là Vietnam zufriedengeben, sondern die enge Verflechtung des zionistischen Israel mit der faschistischen BRD durch konkrete Aktionen schonungslos bekämpfen’ (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
The Münchner Merkur went so far as to describe the broadcast as an ‘anarchistischer Mummenschanz auf deutschen Bildschirmen’ (Kersten).
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Latin American namesakes. Introduced by such dramatic lines as: ‘Tupamaros – das sind in Lateinamerika Rebellen gegen das Regime der Diktatoren und die Unterdrückung durch die Besitzenden. Tupamaros – das sind in der Bunderrepublik gewalttätige Wirrköpfe’ (‘Tupamaros’), the public response to the group failed to engage with the situations in either Uruguay or the Federal Republic. As it would happen, the Monitor Tupamaro was a fake, but after a week of editorializing, only a handful of papers even bothered to devote significant space to the discovery.13 Similarly, the RAF identifies itself as participating within an urban guerrilla struggle from its inception, but does not rely on such direct appropriations as the Tupamaros West Berlin/Munich, whose very names perform an identificatory appropriation and calls for recognition as other.14 This difference is key to the wider public understanding of the relationship of West German urban guerrillas to the Third World, particularly since the RAF – and this can be argued in terms of sheer volume of media coverage and state response, as well as of various attempts retrospectively to represent and negotiate the experience of the RAF of the 1970s – has had a more lasting and profound impact on (West) German culture and politics than have other armed groups. In its invocation of the theoretical production and historical experience of Third World liberation struggles, the RAF 13
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 RAF’s more traditional Leninist model with a conspiratorial underground diverged significantly from Marighella’s 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 übriggeblieben war: daß eine Revolution, soweit sie hier stattfinden kann, einen antiimperialistischen Charakter haben muß. Daß sie auch hier nur eine Chance hat zu bestehen, wenn sie die Bewegungen in der Dritten Welt berücksichtigt. Ohne Vietnam, ohne die Entwicklung in der Dritten Welt, wäre die RAF nicht geworden, was sie dann geworden ist. Unsere Hoffnungsträger waren die Tupamaros und die Black Panther’ (Wisniewski, 21).
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stylized the Third World as a space of revolutionary violence. In addition to identifying itself with these struggles in a more general sense, the group invoked specific historical examples of Third World struggles in the written elaboration of its positions, often decontextualizing and isolating these examples from their origins in the material realities of Third World countries and peoples, and used them to their own immediate ends to discuss the possibility of revolution and the constitution of the revolutionary subject in the context of the metropoles. While acknowledging the practical and theoretical origins of the urban guerrilla concept in Latin America, the RAF insisted that it could be applied to revolutionary activity in the metropoles with the same effect: ‘Das Konzept Stadtguerilla stammt aus Lateinamerika. Es ist dort, was es auch hier nur sein kann: die revolutionäre Interventionsmethode von insgesamt schwachen revolutionären Kräften’ (RAF, ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla’, 41). The RAF not only equates the revolutionary potential of the Third World and West Germany, but, in so doing, assumes that the material manifestations of social contradictions, which lead ultimately to the development of revolutionary consciousness, are equally felt in the first and Third Worlds. By rooting the plausibility of armed struggle in West Germany in an internationalist conceptualization of revolutionary struggle in general, the RAF likewise underestimates the investment of citizens of the metropoles in maintaining systems designed to uphold social privilege in the global order, even as what the RAF identifies as the domestic Third World suffers under and resists social oppression in the domestic context. Citing the work of the Italian communist group Il Manifesto,15 the RAF maintained that imperialism could not be overthrown without revolution in the West; only through unified international struggle could the force of imperialism be fragmented and, in this fragmented state, destroyed (RAF, ‘Konzept’, 33–4). In this manner, the RAF re-located the revolutionary subject to the metropoles and minimized practical differences between urban guerrilla initiatives in the first and Third Worlds. 15
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.
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Against this background of theoretical appropriation, the RAF failed to sustain positive aspects of their anti-imperialist critique or to see themselves implicated in the social relationships which enable the (re)production of imperialism. Yet even as many of the First Generation RAF’s theoretical and practical interventions were rooted in particular forms of appropriation of the Third World, I believe that it is likewise important to point out that many aspects of their critique undertake the important work of illustrating the relationship of West Germany to larger global processes. In particular, the group criticized West Germany’s support of US foreign military interventions and West German firms’ lucrative military production.16 Highly critical of the situation of the working poor in general, they drew attention as well to the poor working conditions for foreign workers in Germany, and criticized the Ausländergesetz as enabling ghettoization and surveillance of foreign workers (RAF, ‘Dem Volk’, 127–31). By focusing their attentions on a more sustained analysis of these and other groups, which they identified as marginalized in the domestic context, and on the concrete connections thereof to Third World struggles, the group might have been more successful in conveying to a broader public its critique of political and economic systems globally; the insistence on a radical identification with the Third World detracted from this project as it were, and contributed to their own marginalization from the West German public. Already in its first written statement – published, significantly, with the Black Panther symbol – the RAF distances itself from the West German Left, arguing that the only groups to whom they were accountable were those already marginalized in West Germany who – according to the RAF – gain nothing from the exploitation of the Third World and have no reason to identify themselves with the hegemonic classes: ‘Die können das kapieren, daß das, was hier jetzt losgeht, in Vietnam, Palästina, Guatamala, in Oakland und Watts, in Kuba und China, in Angola und New York schon losgegangen ist’ (RAF, ‘Rote Armee aufbauen’, 26). The unproblematized analogy with such diverse political struggles is a typical gesture in the RAF’s written statements. Rhetorically, the group accomplishes a dramatic, 16
This critique of domestic policies and structures is particularly strong in ‘Dem Volk dienen’.
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internationalist framing of their own practical interventions through its recourse to this kind of listing; the weight of repetition and example in its texts creates an imposing effect. While it could be argued that the function of political propaganda is not carefully to explicate a political program so much as to provoke an affective response and mobilize broad social groups, my point here is that the unquestioned discursive insertion of armed struggle in West Germany into the context of struggles internationally, as if its valence were identical, distracts from their very real critiques of West German complicity in upholding systems of oppression domestically and internationally. This makes all the more striking the fact that the first full-length position paper written by the RAF, ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla’, begins with a critique of the appropriation of Third World liberation struggles by the extra-parliamentary opposition in general and the student movement in particular. They explain: ‘Gewiss war das Pathos übertrieben, mit dem sich die Studenten, die ihrer psychischen Verelendung in den Wissenschaftfabriken bewußt geworden waren, mit den ausgebeuteten Völkern Lateinamerikas, Afrikas und Asiens identifizierten’ (RAF, ‘Konzept’, 34). Further, the RAF identifies simplifications of conflicts within the Third World and in the international context as ignorant and counterproductive for the revolutionary project (RAF, ‘Konzept,’ 34).17 Given the RAF’s own rhetorical (if not more broadly theoretical) simplifications of precisely such conflicts, this critique functions not just as critique, but as a means of discursively positioning themselves outside of a by then waning and splintered movement and claiming to be part of a more ‘authentic’, physical struggle. Theirs was not simply ‘psychische Verelendung’ and theoretical identification, but physical engagement in the guerrilla struggle; the suggestion is that they no longer need to identify with an outside struggle, because they have themselves assumed the struggle, are themselves embodiments of the ‘politische Moral der Kompromißlosigkeit’ (Krahl, cited in Juchler, 242) that the movement had so long attributed to figures like Che. In this way, an
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.)
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RAF practice built on theoretical identifications moves discursively to suggest that it exceeds those identifications. ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla’ explicitly cites the Latin American urban guerrilla as its precedent: Das Große Geschrei, das über uns angestimmt worden ist, verdanken wir mehr den lateinamerikanischen Genossen-aufgrund des klaren Trennungsstrichs zwischen sich und dem Feind, den sie schon gezogen haben-, so daß die Herrschenden hier uns wegen des Verdachts von ein Paar Banküberfällen so ‘energisch entgegentreten’, als gäbe es schon was aufzubauen wir angefangen haben: die Stadtguerilla der Roten Armee Fraktion. (RAF, ‘Konzept’, 44)
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 Verhältnisse mehr, als daß es sie aufdeckt’ (RAF, ‘Dem Volk’, 128). Elsewhere they explain: ‘BZ – Mai 1970: “Berlin ist nicht Südamerika.” Berlin ist ein Vorposten des amerikanischen Imperialismus. Unser Feind und der Feind Südamerikas.’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 Khrushchev’s statement to the US following their invasion of Cuba that ‘if you take Cuba, we’ll 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.
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subject, relying heavily on cultural fantasies of the Third World as a site of hope and resistance.19 Tracing the shifting identifications with and appropriations of Latin American and other Third World liberation struggles that emerged in West Germany in the early years of the student popular movement, and which seem to reach their climax in the recourse to extreme, physical communication through armed propaganda, can help us to complicate existing understandings of protest around 1968 and thereafter. Undeservedly popular accounts of terrorism like Jillian Becker’s Hitler’s Children, which privilege more strictly generational models of conflict, cannot adequately account for explicitly Latin American models of struggle and resistance. Further, re-centering the importance of Third World theoretical production is key to countering notions of the Third World as the site of the physical, the object of Western theoretical analyses rather than a space of active production and innovation in its own right. The failure seriously to interrogate the role of opposition movements’ reception of Third World texts and experiences limits our understanding of the role such appropriations played in countercultural formations of the day, from the Berlin subculture scene out of which many armed groups emerged, to later attempts to envision alternative social orders. Wolfgang Pohrt has argued that the process through which terrorist groups come to reflect images projected on them by state and media agents is in fact a reflection of the social constitution of the society in which a given group is active (9–10). What the experiences of the RAF and other radical groups can tell us 19
What stands out perhaps more than anything else in the RAF’s 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 ‘wäre 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 RAF’s 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, 191–3.)
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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), 608–10. Balsen, W. and Rössel, K. Hoch die internationale Solidatität. Zur Geschichte der Dritte Welt-Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik (Köln, Kölner Volksblatt Verlag, 1986). Baumann, B. Wie alles anfing. 1991 (Berlin, Rotbuch Verlag, 1994). Becker, J. Hitler’s 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), 821–65. 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. Gespräche über Haschrebellen, Lorenz-Entführung, Knast (Berlin, ID Archiv, 1995). Juchler, I. Die Studentenbewegungen in den Vereinigten Staaten und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der sechziger Jahre. Eine Untersuchung hinsicht-
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lich ihrer Beeinflussung durch Befreiungsbewegungen und -theorien aus der Dritten Welt (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1996). Kersten, H. U. ‘Bildschirm frei für Anarchisten?’, Münchner Merkur, 17 September 1970. Mignolo, W. Local Histories, Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge, and Border Thinking (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000). Pohrt, W. ‘Gewalt und Politik’, in Bittermann, K. (Hg) Die alte Straβenverkehrsordnung. Dokumente der RAF (Berlin, Verlag Klaus Bittermann, 1987), 7–19. RAF. ‘Die Rote Armee aufbauen!’ Agit 883, 61 (22.5.70), 1–3. —— ‘Die Rote Armee aufbauen. Erklärung zur Befreiung Andreas Baaders’, (5.6.1970) in Rote Armee Fraktion. Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RA (Berlin, ID Verlag,1997), 24–6. —— ‘Das Konzept Stadtguerilla’, (April 1971) Rote Armee Fraktion. 27–48. —— ‘Dem Volk dienen’, (April 1972) Rote Armee Fraktion, 112–144. Roth, K. H. ‘Die historische Bedeutung der RAF’, in Bittermann (Hg) 175–98. Sieg, K. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002). Teraoka, A. East, West, and Others: The Third World in Postwar German Literature (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1996). ‘Tupamaros’, Express, 16 September 1970, Köln/Bonn edition Wisniewski, S. Wir waren so unheimlich konsequent… (Berlin, ID Verlag, 1997). Wirth, H. J. (Hg) Hitlers Enkel – oder Kinder der Demokratie? Die 68er-Generation, die RAF und die Fischer Debatte (Gieβen, Psychosozial-Verlag, 2001). Zantop, S. Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, Duke University Press, 1997).
GERRIT-JAN BERENDSE
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction: Melville’s Moby Dick, Brecht’s 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 Germany’s 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 (62–71), Koenen (154–61), and Kraushaar (66–70). Two examples of this condemnation effort are Holthusen and Ulsamer.
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mechanisms of condemnation display an intriguing cultural historical parallel to the warnings of Hauptpastor Johann Melchior Goeze after the success of Goethe’s Werther in 1774. (See Mattenklott, 94, 96.) However, the history of the years of turmoil during the so-called ‘red decade’ from 1967 till 1977 fails to indicate any fascination of literature and the arts on the part of the agents of violence. Members of the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction, RAF) and the Bewegung 2. Juni (Second June Movement), for example, frequently stated their mistrust in ‘bourgeois liberals’, as they used to classify established Western European artists and writers. Even after Jean-Paul Sartre, Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass testified their sympathy with the cause, they were treated with utmost contempt. One has to keep in mind that, although the terrorists produced hundreds of pages to justify the actions prescribed in their urban guerrilla war, they granted only secondary status to the word. The language they habitually used in written communication was abstract, often indigestible.3 Their preferred mode of communication was action. Talkers were condemned as mere ‘idle word-spillers’, and the terrorists held the view that language, because of its slippery nature, was easily misused by the system and therefore not to be trusted. Although the interdiscursive cluster in which terrorism and the arts conjoin has a long, well-established and international tradition4, the liaison seems to be dominated by the writers’ agenda of representing violence and counter-violence in a fictional context. On the other hand, some older literary texts played a major role in the mental life and action programme of the first generation of the RAF, especially Bertolt Brecht’s didactic play Die Maßnahme (The Measures Taken, 1930–1) and, perhaps more surprisingly, the German translation of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick. (See Aust, 494, and Koenen, 381– 3, 405.) These texts were found in the cells of Stammheim prison after the death of the hard core of the Baader-Meinhof Group in October 1977, and were confiscated by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency (Bundeskriminalamt).
3 4
Enzensberger, ‘Die Leere im Zentrum des Terrors’ (245–9). On the terrorist rhetorics, see Leeman and Miller. See Widdowson, Scanlan and Berendse/Williams.
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Brecht and Melville were valued by the terrorists not because they added words to the cause, but because they provided imagery that supported their philosophy of the deed. This imagery was derived from a preoccupation in both works with corporeal appearance and sensation, which also characterised the terrorists’ hostile actions. The dramatic atmosphere in which these actions were carried out in public (encouraged by a deliberate exaggeration of facial gesture reminiscent of the gothic and expressionist tendencies long established in German art and literature) has been characterised by Rutschky as the ‘politics of the body’. Moreover, the terrorists became fascinated by the curious interest in both works, especially Melville’s, in the symbolism of the ‘colour’ whiteness, which was found to have a bearing on their own situation and their options. The terrorists’ reception of literature was based on its political utility: Brecht and Melville were read as guides for correct revolutionary behaviour within the RAF. They found in their works images and preoccupations which corresponded to their own situation. Both Die Maßnahme and Moby Dick displayed an intense concentration on bodily experience, including pain. Both were concerned with the dynamics of group belonging, with leadership, loyalty and exclusion. Likewise, the focus on bodily experience in Melville and Brecht applies to the rules of conduct the terrorists elaborated while in prison, rules which resulted in a vicious mechanics of physical violence, including mutilation. Stammheim had turned their lives upside-down: in contrast to their underground existence outside the prison walls, incarceration rendered the terrorists themselves the objects of terror. In spite of regarding this terror as issuing from the prison authorities and their old enemy the state, the terrorists had themselves invented a new species of terror. A new concept of collective suffering – of the victimised ‘corpus terrorismus’ – initiated by the collective and modelled in part on literary tropes, emerged from the experience of the group in prison. Evidence of this new situation was consciously presented to the outside world as a source of examples for future counter-cultural actions by next generations of the RAF.
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Literature and Terrorism Despite the condemnation of the mainstream literary scene in the late 1970s, the literary ambitions of the German terrorists were caught up in their actions in a very early stage: Peter-Paul Zahl, for example, was not only an active member of the so-called ‘hash-rebels’ of the Bewegung 2. Juni, but also a writer. In the late 1960s he was the managing editor of the counter-cultural magazine agit 883, which featured the first pamphlets written by Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler, accompanied by lyric poetry by, for example, Brecht, F. C. Delius and Zahl. After Zahl was arrested and convicted of shooting a police officer, he continued to write poems and short stories in prison. In the 1970s his idiosyncratic writing style, mixing prison blues and a rigid attack on West Germany’s system of political injustice, found a young and eager readership seeking to find a way to combine the search for an authentic inner self with political indictment. (See Schnell). After the hard core of the Baader-Meinhof Group had been put behind bars, the second generation of the RAF was supervised by another author, Peter-Jürgen Boock, who tried to establish himself as a poet, novelist and essayist during his imprisonment. (See Boock/Schneider.) Probably the best-known literary artefact produced by the German terrorist scene is the play Bambule by Ulrike Meinhof, which was commissioned by West German television. Meinhof’s feature film deals with a riot in an institution for maladjusted girls in Berlin, foreshadowing a violent, revolutionary attitude she harnessed herself with against a Federal Republic she perceived as a prison, thus the producer of institutionalised violence. (See Meinhof, Bambule and Teraoka, 209–24.) The play was never broadcast because Meinhof was engaged in another venture in the year in which it was completed: the spectacular act of freeing Andreas Baader in May 1970. This action is the first example of the theatrical staging of a terrorist action in West Germany, and is considered the starting signal for the formation of the RAF. The link between terrorism and the performing arts has frequently been scrutinised. In his essay ‘Our Theater of Cruelty’,
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Jean Baudrillard claims that terrorism as a global spectacle also reflects the specific society in which it occurs. Baudrillard characterises terrorist actions as a ‘[s]trange mixture of the symbolic and the spectacular, of challenge and simulation. This paradoxical configuration is the only original form of our time, and subversive because insoluble’ (Baudrillard, 114–15). On numerous occasions the Baader-Meinhof terrorists staged their actions as a combination of carnivalesque (almost hedonistic) happenings and didactic drama. When Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Söhnlein and Thorwald Proll set fire to two Frankfurt department stores in April 1968, they acted partly in accordance with the ideas of Dada, which were reinstated by the so-called fun-guerrillas of the Berlin-based ‘Kommune I’, whose purpose was to confront the West German population with the suffering of people in the Third World, especially the Vietnamese. The pain inflicted by these ‘Parallelaktionen’ was designed to expose the common tendency of people in the Western world to distance themselves from war and genocide and to delegate responsibility to others. For the terrorists, every German was involved in, and guilty of, the killings in Indo-China, and none could claim to be a mere spectator.5 As the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg later argued, in Shipwreck with Spectator, in a catastrophe there are no bystanders.
5
The performances were repeated during the trials against the arsonists in November 1968. A text was written by Söhnlein (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 fiancée of Gudrun Ensslin, the writer Bernward Vesper, in his series Voltaire Flugschrift 27 (1968). The trial in Stammheim (1975–7) 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.
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The Body as Weapon Violence, inflicted by West German terrorists in the early 1970s, was based on the instructions in the pamphlet ‘Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla’ (1970) by the Brazilian Carlos Marighella, and mainly consisted of bank robberies and bombings. Assuming they were the new breed of European guerrilla warriors, the actions of the BaaderMeinhof Group had frightening effects: chaos and uncertainty forced the state to reveal the true face that was hiding behind its humanitarian mask. In the words of the monomaniac Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick, ‘If man will strike, strike through the mask’.6 Revealing the true face of capitalism required a bodily approach, by presenting kidnapped or killed ‘enemies’ to the public as mere pieces of flesh, for example – a strategy later refined by the second generation of the RAF, and again, although not comparable in ideological terms, demonstrated by the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.7 The body plays a central role in political resistance. However, the terrorists themselves are physically untouchable.8 In the 1970s the active members of the RAF, for all their determination as the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle to unmask imperialism, found themselves increasingly caught up in a contradiction, for they were also masked, concealing themselves behind the communiqués which they sent to press agencies after the deed. Their staged spectacles did not conform to Brecht’s radical conception of politically active drama: for Brecht, audience, protagonist and antagonist were all involved in the didactic purpose of the play. Even the teacher needed a lesson. The terrorists, however, leaving the stage right after the bloody deed, perceived themselves as the unconquerable agents of violence,
6 7 8
Melville (167); cited henceforth in main text as MD. See Tolmein and Enzensberger, ‘Die Wiederkehr des Menschenopfers’. Berendse/Williams (22–4) and Scholz (216): ‘Obwohl der Körper im politischen Widerstand eine entscheidende Rolle spielt, sind die Terroristen immer körperlos, vor allem Andreas Baader und Gudrun Ensslin.’
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contained in the unemotional, invincible body of true guerrilla warriors.9 A number of vicious attacks directed at the ‘micro-physics of power’, as Michel Foucault had labelled the various representatives of the state’s power structures, had little effect on the status quo in Germany, and only a negative impact on mass opinion. These actions turned public opinion against the ‘freedom fighters’ and prompted the security services to increase their efficiency by way of new recruitment and the deployment of computer-based search-methods. Moreover, since, as Foucault has demonstrated, modern regimes do not operate at the command of central agencies of power, the terrorists were confronted with an impossible task in seeking to eliminate all the representatives of a dispersed system of power (Foucault, 26). The liquidation of structural power was acknowledged as a desperate, even an impossible endeavour, especially after the core members were imprisoned at a very early stage of the terrorists’ programme. The Baader-Meinhof Group – its individual members having been incarcerated – set about reviewing its concept of the body. The group’s function was transformed to accommodate the new situation: instead of the stress on the individual body as a tool of destruction, itself indestructible, a new concept appeared of a collective, more vulnerable, and therefore human image. Only as a reflection of the new collective corporeal self did the terrorist feel capable of striking back. The new politics of the body was mainly propagated through the distribution of photographs of starving bodies, which they made with sub-miniature photographic equipment that was smuggled into the high-security wing of Stammheim. The visualisation of the body in pain during the time of solitary confinement proved to be a more creative, and therefore persuasive and effective message, than the abstract written reflections in the various leaflets and communiqués on the destruction of the political status quo. As Elaine Scarry argues, the body in pain is the ultimate locus of terror, which carries the sufferer back behind the forms of social life constructed around language:
9
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.
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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, 320–3). 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’ (Über-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, 157–78). 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, 77–83). The photographs of the terrorists’ faces before, during and after their arrests provide a condensed visual narrative of West Germany’s 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
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Germany – it became common practice for members of the RAF to contort their faces when being arrested, thus rejecting their visual representation and drawing attention to the ideas behind the actors of the paramilitary campaigns. The importance of ideology was not to be compromised through a bourgeois focus on physical appearance. The turning point in their photographic tactics occurred directly after their arrests. Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Holger Meins, now incarcerated, decided to revise their physiognomy by taking each others’ pictures with a small Minox camera. The new facelift was later presented in a Swedish publication, texte: der raf.10 The relatively healthy-looking portraits of the prisoners were part of a strategy to provide for the outside world a stark visual contrast, by means of the body in pain images taken during their numerous hunger strikes, thus accusing the state of torturing its citizens. The terrorists articulated a radical message to the outside world by way of corporeal images; this strategy was designed to turn the body into the ultimate lethal weapon. The tortured bodies were to be ‘read’ as manuals of terrorist behaviour in a system that isolated deviant members of society. The texts by Brecht and Melville proved to be the models in this aesthetics of (self-)destruction.
White Terror in the 1970s Scholars of Herman Melville’s life and letters have read and studied Moby Dick in the light of the writer’s political views on the revolutionary upheaval in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. However, the same scholars admit that full appreciation of the novel did not occur until European literary Modernism was at its peak. (See Niemeyer, 221–39, and Friedman, 178–211.) Like the avant-garde publications of the early twentieth century, the novel became popular because of its innovative fragmented style and its artistic radicalism. The world had entered a new stage in the revolutionary conditions of 10
A similar obsession with physical appearance was found among members of the Japanese Red Army Faction. See also Steinhoff (830–45).
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modernity, nurtured by political violence. This combination of political violence and literature also fascinated Bertolt Brecht in the late 1920s, and half a century later, the members of the BaaderMeinhof Group. After the hard core of the Baader-Meinhof Group had been arrested, Melville’s powerful epic of the chase of the great white whale became a major influence on the thought of the terrorists and a source of terrorist action. The prisoners were particularly drawn to the hierarchical structure that governed life on Captain Ahab’s ship, the Pequod (MD, 115–23). Gudrun Ensslin used the crew list to create and distribute code names for the secret correspondence between the fellow inmates. Not surprisingly, Andreas Baader was crowned Ahab, the monomaniac ‘ungodly God’. (See Aust, 287 and Koenen, 381.) The terrorists’ correspondence reveals another strange preoccupation with Moby Dick: the obsession with the ‘colour’ white. Moby Dick’s variously interpreted whiteness found a new signifier in the ‘white terror’ practised by the German state. The concrete expression of this terror was the uniformly white and sound-proofed walls of the blocks of cells in Köln-Ossendorf, in which some RAF members were held in custody before their transfer to the highsecurity wing of Stammheim in 1975. (See Werber.) The whiteness and soundlessness of this institution symbolised the terror with which the state threatened its ‘enemies’. Robespiere’s term ‘white terror’, coined to define the terror conducted by the Jacobins after the French Revolution, was thus reinstated to signal the inherent antagonism between revolutionary humanity and state-sponsored inhumanity under contemporary conditions in Europe. In letters to her children, Ulrike Meinhof sees herself as being captured like a wild animal in a cage by a system that has revealed its sadistic side (Meinhof, ‘Briefe aus dem Toten Trakt’, 55–8). While Meinhof was suffering under the hostile conditions of solitary confinement and contemplated her tortured individuality, most of the other Stammheim inmates were applying the procedures of sadism towards their own ‘kind’; the RAF collective was entering the masochist zone, thus denying any concept of authenticity. If an individual inmate failed to integrate into the collective, it was the group’s responsibility to liquidate the deviant in order to safeguard the newly constructed terrorist ‘self’. Vicious acts of expulsion became
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common practice on the seventh floor in Stammheim and were scrupulously documented by the agents of self-inflicted pain.11 Melville devotes an entire chapter to the ‘whiteness of the whale’ (chapter 42). The great white whale concentrates in its being what Ahab sees as a metaphysical malice operative in the universe. But this is merely one of the various, sometimes contradictory discourses and allusions, that converge in the figure of Moby Dick: divinity, emptiness, uncertainty, and ‘a certain nameless terror’ (MD, 195). Terror is identified, however, not only with the great white whale which has dismembered Ahab, hunting the symbol of terror, but also with the hunter himself. In the person of the captain, terrorist and terrorised have become indistinguishable, just as human and animal attributes have become interchangeable in his mutilated body. Of Ahab’s ‘barbaric white leg’, the narrator Ishmael notes: ‘It had […] come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw’ (MD, 125). In the cells at Stammheim, isolated yet connected by subterranean forms of communication, the members of the Baader-Meinhof Group were also finding that terror was shifting from hunter to hunted, while the terrorist ‘body’ was forming a hybrid image in which two sources of terror – repressive and revolutionary – were being fused. At the same time, the symbolism of the ‘colour’ white was throwing up associations both disturbing and exhilaratingly apposite to their situation. Although all whales in the eye of Ahab are the manifestation of terror, Moby Dick because of his whiteness achieves representative status as the concentration and visible sign of terror at work in the world. Yet as the novel’s loquacious narrator, Ishmael, observes, whiteness is, in fact, ‘not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors’ (MD, 199). The whale’s whiteness, then, offers the illusion of oneness, of the merger of contradictions. For the crew of the Pequod, enthralled by their captain’s monomaniac grudge, the only adequate reaction is to transform their individual suffering into a collective weapon. On the second day of their final chase of the great white whale, the crew of the Pequod is described thus: 11
It has been argued that Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide to avoid further bullying, especially by Gudrun Ensslin. See Aust (261–7).
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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 man’s valor, that man’s 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)
The individual Stammheim prisoners developed a similar notion of oneness. Rather than continuing to complain about being the victims of ‘white terror’, the terrorists transformed the notion of whiteness into a weapon – a sign of the powerful collective body they were determined to forge. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact, that the prisoners were isolated from each other, they repeatedly claimed that their several lives constituted one coherent Super-Body. If one member, one hand or just one string of hair, were to function differently, the oneness of this body would be endangered. (See Theweleit, 54.) Any deviation had to be strictly avoided. In the role of Captain Ahab on the sinking ship of Stammheim, Andreas Baader often made remarks about the mechanism of integration and disintegration, finally ordering every inmate to deny their individuality in favour of the collective identity. In one of the letters sent to the comrades, by way of the complicated but effective system of communication (das info), he wrote in his distinctive idiom: hey you, listen to what i’m saying. the thing is, if somebody of us (i mean ‘us’ as in THE GROUP) writes to you, and i mean anybody who feels like it, i order you to answer, like we would do […]. if you are not capable of answering, it seems to me you have a wrong notion of the situation, i.e. you don’t want to respond […]. (2.5.1976; my translation)
Disobedience was punished with the utmost severity possible in their imprisonment: by the coldness of isolation from the warm body, called ‘THE GROUP’.
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Furchtbar ist es, zu töten This dictatorial determination to create one body out of different individual bodies resembles Brecht’s motif in The Measures Taken where unity is defined as the only way of regaining sovereignty over a world of conflicting images. The preoccupying problem of the play is precisely that faced by the German terrorists in Stammheim: in Elizabeth Wright’s words, the play ‘debates the problem of the individual within a collective, not that of the individual versus the collective, as so often argued’ (Wright, 125). Written with the help of his friends and colleagues Hanns Eisler and Slatan Dudow, Brecht’s play reflects on the avant-garde position of the communist party in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. The plot is quite simple: four Soviet comrades infiltrate China to educate the proletariat by teaching the classics of Marx and Lenin. The crux of the play is the disappearance of the body of a young Soviet activist who has been murdered by his three older and more experienced comrades. These accuse the young man of having been a deviant who has betrayed the revolution by not listening to the voice of the collective. The Measures Taken is far more problematic than this plotsummary suggests. Presented as the retrospective account of a murder case by three individuals reporting to the Communist Party (represented by the chorus), the play indicates a complicity by the murdered party in the event, i.e. his own death. This agreement (Einverständnis) between executioner and victim is one of the most important concepts in Brecht’s didactic plays. This concept not only emphasises the responsibility of the individual to sacrifice him- or herself in order to save the collective but, according to Rainer Nägele, settles the characters’ arrangement with death as well (Nägele, 311). The four agitators, comprising the three subjects and the one object of terror, frequently speak in one voice: DIE DREI AGITATOREN: Wir beschlossen: Dann muß er verschwinden, und zwar ganz. Denn wir können ihn nicht mitnehmen und nicht da lassen
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Also müssen wir ihn erschießen und in die Kalkgrube werfen, denn Der Kalk verbrennt ihn. DER KONTROLLCHOR: Fandet ihr keinen Ausweg? DIE VIER AGITATOREN: Bei der Kürze der Zeit fanden wir keinen Ausweg. Wie das Tier dem Tiere hilft Wünschten auch wir uns, ihm zu helfen, der Mit uns gekämpft für unsere Sache. […] Also beschlossen wir: jetzt Abzuschneiden den eigenen Fuß vom Körper Furchtbar ist es, zu töten. (Brecht, Die Maßnahme, 79–81)
The disappearance of one individual body in the whiteness of the lime strengthens the collective body. On the textual level Brecht has already managed to let the young comrade vanish in the white of the pages, since he is not able to present himself, but instead is represented by his executioners. Thus, his body becomes a transparent artefact, an amorphous commodity, which dissolves into the collective.12 Holger Meins, one of the incarcerated Baader-Meinhof members and first victim of the hunger strikes, reflected on the collective body in a similar way in das info in 1974: the human body merely consists of matter, like everything else in the world. the whole human being, his body and mind, is the realisation of matter, and what constitutes a human, the way he is, his freedom, is that his mind controls matter, i.e. the SELF and nature that surrounds him. […]. guerrilla is matter: that is our revolutionary struggle – that is the battle we fight till death follows, and we fight as a collective. (1.11.1974; my translation)
The negation and destruction of the individual body was deemed a necessary step (a decision or measure) to guarantee the life of the collective. Viewed as one organic unit, the collective body became what La Mettrie calls ‘l’homme machine’, capable of committing partial suicide by excising a dysfunctional limb. During the various hunger strikes the Stammheim inmates demonstrated the power of the 12
See Lethen, 300–20, and Nägele, 315: ‘Das […] beschriebene Blatt wird ausgelöscht mit den andern, damit sie “leere Blätter” werden, “auf welche die Revolution ihre Anweisungen schreibt”’.
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terrorist body by forcing individual comrades to serve the group at the expense of their own flesh.
Artistic and Political Radicalism Both The Measures Taken and Moby Dick displayed an intense concentration on bodily experience, particularly that of pain. This corporeality extended the terrorists’ politics of the body, and applied to the rules of conduct the terrorists elaborated while in prison. Between 1972 and 1977 these literary texts aided the translation of the custodial situation of the RAF prisoners into symbolic terms which established parameters for their dealings with each other, with the authorities, and with the audience of the German public they were still determined to address. The juxtaposition of radical forms of corporeality and acts of violence, both in their writings and on West Germany’s streets, was embedded in the artistic radicalism that found its peak in the mid-1970s and featured categories such as body cultism, subjectivity, authenticity, and a similar dose of morbid (self-) destruction.13 The immense destructive elements displayed by the RAF for the sake of political propaganda coincided with the revival of Dionysian rituals performed on West Germany’s alternative, mainly apolitical stages during the ‘red decade’, in for example, the Orgies Mystical Theatre of Hermann Nitsch.14 By tearing and disembowelling corpses of dead animals on stage in an environment of blood and gore, Nitsch intended to reconstruct an ancient or primitive sensibility of oneness with nature within a modern civilisation, from which many of the actors/spectators were in the process of distancing themselves. The speechless alternative, which promised to strengthen the collective consciousness, and to ‘gain a new understanding of the totality of human experience and knowledge’ (Dirke, 81), found its 13 14
See Dirke (67–103). 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 Nitsch’s so-called OMT, is discussed in McEvilley (65–83).
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counterpart during the strange happenings in Stammheim. The focus on bodily experiences by the imprisoned terrorists, however, obviously denied any care for the individual subject and its selfesteem. Their vicious mechanics of physical violence reached its climax on 18 October 1977, during the so-called death-night, or – what has become known as – the collective ‘suicide action’.15 The eerie dialogue between radical artistic and political narratives places the first generation of the RAF well in the tradition of previous European counter-cultures, in which literary-cultural forces seemed to have helped shaping political identity and developed new perspectives for the rebellious programmes of action. (See Roseman, 42.) And in the decades that followed the German Autumn the ‘ghost of Stammheim’ became a popular leitmotif in the works of many contemporary artists and writers who pursued the difficult task of representing the RAF and its obscure but unique corporeal sensation. However, the final act of the remaining commanding officers of the Baader-Meinhof Group in Stammheim may have been merely an act of desperation and not a manifestation of the art of terror.16
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).
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Works Cited Adelmann, R. and Nohr, R. F. ‘“Man versucht, sich zu öffnen”. Video und RAF – eine abgeschlossene Geschichte’, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 108 (2000), 77–83. Aust, S. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (München, Goldmann, 1998). Baader, A., Ensslin, G., Proll, T. and Söhnlein, H. Vor einer solchen Justiz verteidigen wir uns nicht. Schlußwort im Kaufhausbrandprozeß (Frankfurt aM, Edition Voltaire, 1968). Bakker-Schut, P. (Hg) das info. Briefe von Gefangenen aus der RAF 1973–1977. Dokumente (Köln, 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) 113–23. Berendse, G.-J. ‘Schreiben als Körperverletzung: Zur Anthropologie des Terrors in Bernward Vespers Die Reise’, Monatshefte, 3 (2001), 318–34. —— 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 Maßnahme (Fassung 1931)’, in Brecht, Die Maßnahme. Zwei Fassungen. Anmerkungen (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1998). –——‘The Measures Taken’, in Brecht, The Measures Taken and other Lehrstücke (London, Methuen, 1989). Briegleb, K. 1968. Literatur in der antiautoritären 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), 14–16. Enzenberger, H. M. ‘Die Leere im Zentrum des Terrors’, in Enzenberger, Mittelmaß und Wahn. Gesammelte Zerstreuungen (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1986), 245–9. —— ‘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), 178–211. Holthusen, H. E. Sartre in Stammheim. Zwei Themen aus den Jahren der großen Turbulenz (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1982).
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Koenen, G. Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Köln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001). Kraushaar, W. ‘Clowneske Gewalt und Revolte’, Kursbuch, 147 (2002), 62–75. Leeman, R. The Rhetoric of Terrorism and Counterterrorism (New York, Greenwood Press, 1991). Lethen, H. ‘Das Weiß der Stimme im Schallraum der Massnahme’, in Gellert, I. u.a. (Hg) Massnahmen. Bertolt Brecht/Hanns Eislers Lehrstück Die Massnahme. Kontroverse. Perspektive. Praxis (Berlin, Literaturforum/Theater der Zeit, 1998) 158–64. McEvilley, T. ‘Art in the Dark’, in Parfrey, A. (ed) Apocalypse Culture (Portland, Feral House, 1990), 65–83. Marighella, C. ‘Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla’, in Moss, R. Urban Guerrilla Warfare. With an Appendix: Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla by Carlos Marighella (London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1971), 19–42. Mattenklott, G. ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werther’, in Witte, B. and Schmidt, P. (Hg) Goethe Handbuch. Band 3: Prosaschriften (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1997), 51–101. Meinhof, U.M. Bambule. Fürsorge – Sorge für wen? (Berlin, Wagenbach, 1980). —— ‘Briefe aus dem Toten Trakt’, in Boock, P. J. (Hg) Schwarzes Loch. Im Hochsicherheitstrakt (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1988), 55–8. Melville, H. Moby Dick (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998). Miller, B.H. The Language Component of Terrorism Strategy (Washington, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Georgetown University, 1983). Nagel, H. Carlos Supermaus. Betrachtungen zur RAF und Staatsgewalt (Hamburg, Nautilus, 1987). Nägele, R. ‘Brechts Theater der Grausamkeit: Lehrstücke und Stückwerke’, in Hinderer, W. (Hg) Brechts Dramen. Neue Interpretationen (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1984), 300–320. Niemeyer, M. ‘Moby-Dick and the Spirits of Revolution’, in Hayes, K.J. (ed) The Critical Response to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1994), 221–39. Roseman, M. (ed) Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770–1968 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Rutschky, M. Erfahrungshunger. Ein Essay über die siebziger Jahre (Köln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1980). Scanlan, M. Plotting Terror. Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction (Charlotteville, University Press of Virginia, 2001). Scarry, E. The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford University Press, 1985). Schnell, R. (Hg) ‘Schreiben ist ein monologisches Medium’. Dialoge mit und über Peter-Paul Zahl (Berlin, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 1979). Scholz, L. ‘Hyperrealität oder Das Traumbild der RAF’, Akzente, 3 (2001), 214–20. Steinhoff, P.G. ‘Portrait of a Terrorist: An Interview with Kozo Okamoto’, Asian Survey, 16 (1976), 830–45. Teraoka, A.A. ‘Terrorism and the Essay. The Case of Ulrike Meinhof’, in Joeres, R.E. and Mittman, E. (eds) The Politics of the Essay: Feminist Perspectives (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993), 209–24.
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texte: der raf (Malmö, Verlag Bo Cavefors, 1977). Theweleit, K. ‘Bemerkungen zum RAF-Gespenst. “Abstrakter Radikalismus” und Kunst’, in Theweleit, Ghosts. Drei leicht inkorrekte Vorträge (Frankfurt aM; Stroemfeld, 1998), 13–99. Tolmein, O. Vom deutschen Herbst zum 11. September. Die RAF, der Terrorismus und der Staat (Hamburg, Konkret Literatur-Verlag, 2002). Ulsamer, L. Zeitgenössische deutsche Schriftsteller als Wegbereiter für Anarchismus und Gewalt (Esslingen, Deugro Verlag, 1987). Werber, N. ‘Die ewige Jagd auf den weißen Wal. Hobbes, Melville, Schmitt und die RAF – Zur Geschichte eines politischen Symbols’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 22.9.2001. Widdowson, P. ‘Terrorism and Literary Studies’, Textual Practice, 1 (1988), 1–21. Wright, E. Postmodern Brecht. A Re-Presentation (London, Routledge, 1989).
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UWE SCHÜTTE
‘Heilige, die im Dunkel leuchten’: Der Mythos der RAF im Spiegel der Literatur nachgeborener Autoren
Und als die Bundesanwaltschaft in Tateinheit mit Mordversuchen, Polizei und allen Richtern die Nationalhymne, die Hosen runter, Hand aufs Herz, zu singen angefangen hatte, hoben die Unterdrückten revolutionär die linke Faust und votierten derart stumm, ohne hier die Internationale anzustimmen, für ein Leben vor dem Tod für alle. (Rainald Goetz, Kontrolliert)
‘Der literarische Brandstifter unter den Biedermännern seiner Generation will nicht rechtfertigen, was geschehen ist, sondern ästhetisch fortsetzen, was einmal politisch beabsichtigt war: Feuer legen, die Welt auf den Kopf stellen.’ Der Schriftsteller, von dem hier die Rede der Kritikerin Iris Radisch ist, heißt Leander Scholz. 2001 veröffentlichte er seinen Debutroman Das Rosenfest, in dem die Geschichte der RAF als Liebesgeschichte zwischen Andreas Baader und Gudrun Ensslin nacherzählt wird. In der Kritik stieß das Buch durchweg auf Ablehnung. Man attestierte ihm fehlende literarische Qualität und eine oberflächliche Reflektion des Themas. Interessanterweise konzediert auch Iris Radisch in ihrer enthusiastischen Rezension die ästhetischen Mängel des Textes. Scholz, so schreibt sie, ergehe es literarisch‚ nicht besser als der RAF: ‘Von vier gelegten Bomben will höchstens eine explodieren’. Nichtsdestotrotz hält sie seinen Roman für ‘eine Provokation’, weil darin ‘natürlich rein poetisch und dank eines Literaturstipendiums, die Lebenslügen der Republik mitsamt ihren miefigen Kaufhäusern abgefackelt’ werden. Mit anderen Worten: Nicht ästhetische, textimmanente Faktoren definieren den literarischen Wert des Textes, sondern seine Referenz auf reale zeitgeschichtliche Vorkommnisse. Man wird zum ‘Provokateur’, zum ‘Brandstifter’, ja fast sogar zum ‘Revolutionär’, trotz –
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oder eigentlich: gerade durch ein Literaturstipendium und aufgrund der Wahl des richtigen Themas. Das allgemein bekannte Faktum des RAF-Terrorismus, die Toten auf beiden Seiten der erbarmungslosen Auseinandersetzung zwischen Staat und Guerilla, strahlt aus auf den Text, infiziert ihn mit Extremismus. Fast scheint es sogar, als ob der Roman seine Radikalität gerade dem Umstand verdankt, ‘rein poetisch’ zu sein, also per se gar keine Intervention im Bereich der gesellschaftlichen Realität anzustreben. Es ist dies freilich eine etwas verquere Logik. Dennoch hat derartiges Denken seit dem Ende des bewaffneten Aufstandes der ‘6 gegen 60 Millionen’ in vielen Bereichen eine erstaunliche Konjunktur erfahren. Die RAF ist zu einem Pop-Phänomen geworden, in der Literatur wie in der Musik. Bereits 1977 veröffentlichte Brian Eno einen Track namens RAF, der Samples von aufgezeichneten Telefonanrufen der Terroristen enthielt. Die Sheffielder IndustrialBand Cabaret Voltaire ließ 1980 den Track Baader-Meinhof nachfolgen. Deutsche Punkbands traten mit musikalisch eher mediokren Stücken hervor, die deutliche Anspielungen auf die RAF und die Vorgänge des Deutschen Herbst enthalten.1 1996 erschien die bisher umfangreichste popmusikalische Auseinandersetzung mit der RAF in Form des bemerkenswerten Konzeptalbums Baader-Meinhof von Luke Haines.2 Im selben Jahr erschien ebenfalls die ‘Tonträgeroper’ Deutsche Krieger von Andreas Ammer und FM Einheit. Sie besteht aus drei ‘Akten’, die Kaiser Wilhelm Overdrive, Adolf Hitler Enterprise und Ulrike Meinhof Paradise betitelt sind. Die CD mischt dokumentarisches Tonmaterial aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg, dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und dem Deutschen Herbst mit atmosphärischen Electronica-Klängen. Dadurch ermöglicht das Werk dem Zuhörer, historische Entwicklungslinien von Militarismus über Nazismus zum Terrorismus zu ziehen, bzw. Parallelen und Unterschiede zwischen den drei Epochen deutscher Geschichte zu erkennen. (Vgl. Brauners1 2
Vgl. z.B. S.Y.P.H. Klammheimlich (1979), Male Haftbefehl & Kontrollabschnitt (1979), Die goldenen Zitronen Alles was ich will (Nur die Regierung stürzen) (1990) & 6 gegen 60 Millionen (1994), Terrorgruppe 1977. Die Plattenfirma Virgin ließ am Vorabend der Veröffentlichung weite Teile Nordlondons mit Nachdrucken der BKA-Fahndungsposter plakatieren, verzichtet aber in Selbstzensur bis heute auf eine Veröffentlichung des Albums in Deutschland.
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reuther/Maida). Mit ihrem musikalisch wie intellektuell überzeugenden Deutungsversuch setzen Ammer & Einheit den Maßstab, 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 für eine Werbekampagne und die Illustrierte Tussi Deluxe druckte Fotos, in denen Kleidungsstücke mit nachgestellten Szenen aus der Geschichte der RAF beworben werden.3 ‘Die Idee des bewaffneten Kampfes’, so Rupert Weinzierl, wird als letztmögliche große Überschreitung, als letztmöglicher Tabubruch, letztmögliche ästhetische Sensation & letztmögliches 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)
Subversion, Rebellion und Revolution sind im Pop von Anbeginn an geläufige Topoi, denn, wie Weinzierl weiter ausführt, ‘revolutionärer Gestus und terroristische Militanz [haben] mit ihrem politisch eher unklar-theologischen Charakter hohe Popkompatibilität’ (Weinziel, 60).4 Das ursprünglich dissidente Potential der Popkultur jedoch wurde spätestens seit den achtziger Jahren durch die Kulturindustrie fast gänzlich assimiliert und umgepolt. Der Mainstream integrierte die subversiven Subkulturen, um sie zu zähmen und in den eigenen Dienst zu stellen. Eine Art umgekehrter ‘Marsch durch die Institutionen’ gewissermaßen. Das erklärt die Notwendigkeit und Rolle revolutionärer Symbolik im Pop. Die RAF mußte als mythisierbares Gespenst 3 4
Vgl. dazu Mohr. Wer sich die durch radical chic veredelte Mode nicht leisten kann, bekommt auf Londoner Straßenmärkten billige T-Shirts mit dem Aufdruck des RAF-Logos. Vgl. auch die Interviewäußerungen von Inga Humpe (DÖ F/2-Raum-Wohnung): ‘Die einzigen, die für mich so einen Popstarappeal hatten, das waren die Leute von der RAF. Da war ich Fan. Für mich waren das Helden. Das waren die einzigen, denen ich zugetraut habe, daß sie wirklich etwas ändern wollen’ (in Teipel, 69), aber auch Gabi Delgado (DAF): ‘Ich hatte immer eine Affinität 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 Ästhetik her’ (Teipel, 74).
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wiederauferstehen, um auf symbolischer Ebene die Leerstelle zu füllen, die die Neutralisierung der dissidenten Komponente des Pop geschaffen hat.5 Mit der falschen Pose des Revolutionären maskiert die Kulturindustrie ihren auf Profit und Konsumenten-Konformismus gerichteten Charakter. Diese kulturindustrielle Ineinssetzung von Pop und Revolution, folgt man Gerhard Pretting, hat entscheidende Konsequenzen. Pretting behauptet, daß jede revolutionäre Idee heute nur noch ‘Pop’ ist. Die Subversion ist außerhalb eines ökonomischen Verwertungszusammenhangs, der den Code des Widersprüchlichen sofort wieder in den Wirtschaftskreislauf integriert, nicht mehr vorstellbar. […] Nachdem man dem Volk so lang die Illusion der Partizipation, des ‘IHR seid das Volk’ eingeredet hatte, war jeder Anschlag auf Repräsentanten des Staates ein symbolischer Anschlag auf jeden einzelnen. Minimales Ereignis – maximale Wirkung. Und genau deswegen ist der Terror heute nur noch als symbolisches Pop-Produkt vorhanden, als ‘radical chic’. […] Nur wer mit terroristischen Mitteln handelt (minimaler symbolischer Aufwand – maximale reale Wirkung, maximale mediale Präsenz, Verkürzung der Inhalte etc.) hat noch Erfolg. Alles andere interessiert niemanden mehr. Es gibt keinen politischen Terror mehr, weil die Gesellschaft selbst durch und durch terroristisch ist. (Pretting, 8)
Was hat das mit der Literatur zu tun? Texte, die sich mit der RAF beschäftigen, 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 Widerständischen, die politische Veränderungsvorstellungen in ästhetisches Wohlgefallen transformiert? Oder enthalten die Texte zur RAF Momente, die sich dem Neutralisierungsprojekt widersetzen? Ist es in der Literatur vielleicht sogar möglich, einen autonomen Raum zu
5
Tom Holert und Mark Terkessidis argumentieren, Pop sei mittlerweile ‘die repräsentative Lüge einer Gesellschaft, die in ihrer scheinbaren Diversifizierung die ungeheuerlichste Kapitalkonzentration erlebt, und die in ihrer scheinbaren Freiheit die scheußlichsten Formen von Ausbeutung und Ausschluß einführt. Die einzelnen Pop-Produkte dienen ebenso wie Architektur, Kunst etc. der ästhetischen Selbstdefinition der Kontrollgesellschaft’ (Holert/Terkessidis, 17–18).
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schaffen, der den politischen Radikalismus der RAF in einer adäquaten literarischer Form zu spiegeln vermag? Aus dem mittlerweile umfangreichen Korpus von literarischen Texten, die die RAF explizit behandeln bzw. ihr thematisch nahestehen, will ich mich nun im wesentlichen auf im Laufe der neunziger Jahre erschienene Prosawerke beschränken.6 Dies nicht allein aus pragmatischen Gründen, sondern auch weil die Texte der im weitesten Sinn ‘Nachgeborenen’ sich unterscheiden von denen der ‘Ersten Generation’ von Schriftstellern, die sich mit der RAF beschäftigten. Damit gemeint sind so unterschiedliche Autoren wie Heinrich Böll, Erich Fried, Bernward Vesper, Christian Geissler, Peter O. Chotjewitz, Peter Schneider, Peter-Paul Zahl oder Peter-Jürgen Boock, da sie in – mehr oder weniger – enger Verbindung zum Personenkreis der extremen Linke standen, und ihre Texte daher oft in unmittelbarer Reaktion auf (tages)politische Ereignisse verfaßten. (Vgl. Dombrowa/Knebel) Anders hingegen Autoren wie Michael Wildenhain, Friedrich Christian Delius, Elfriede Jelinek oder Rainald Goetz, von denen im weiteren die Rede sein wird. Wenn sie über die RAF schreiben, so geschieht dies immer aus Distanz, lebenszeitlicher oder geografischer.7 Bezeichnenderweise ist die literarische Auseinandersetzung mit der RAF ab 1987 (aber auch schon vorher) fast ausschließlich auf den Personenkreis der Ersten Generation und die Ereignisse im 6
7
Den eigentlichen Wendepunkt wird dabei das Jahr 1987, also gleichsam der 10. Jahrestag des Deutschen Herbstes bilden. Es gehört zu den Charakteristika der kulturellen Auseinandersetzung mit der RAF im weitesten Sinne, daß diese sich um die ‘Jubiläen’ 1987 und 1997 intensivieren. Sie schreiben über ein Kollektiv, daß längst 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 überhaupt noch von einer ‘RAF’ sprechen kann. Vgl. dazu Wiesnewski et al. Die darin vorgetragenen Thesen sind zum Teil heftig angegriffen worden und bedürfen in der Tat gewisser Vorsicht, was Details betrifft, die generelle Richtigkeit ihres Arguments ist angesichts der großen Zahl von Indizien kaum von der Hand zu weisen. In Kellmann, Der Staat läßt morden wird anhand faktischer Beweise die Involvierung des CIA in die Brigate Rosse und seine Rolle bei der Ermordung von Aldo Moro demonstriert.
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Umfeld des Deutschen Herbstes beschränkt. Worüber die ‘nachgeborenen’ Autoren schreiben, ist nicht die aktive RAF, wie sie die Schriftsteller der ‘Ersten Generation’ erlebten, sondern das über die Medien, sowie Fotografien8 und Kunstwerke (Gillen, 406–435) vermittelte Bild der Terrorgruppe. Sie schreiben, kurzgesagt, über den Mythos der RAF. Klaus Theweleit hat kritisiert, daß die überwiegende Mehrheit der Kunstwerke aller Sparten, in denen die RAF zum Gegenstand der Darstellung gemacht wird, von einem ‘abstrakten Radikalismus’ geprägt ist. Damit, so Theweleit, wiederholt sich in der Kunst ein Phänomen, das seinen strukturellen Ursprung im konkreten linkspolitischen Umfeld Anfang der Siebziger besitzt. Als Folge des Verfalls der Studentenrevolte trat ein Radikalismus auf, der sich auf Gesten, auf Ansprüche, auf Forderungen beschränkt, revolutionäre Haltungen verbreitet in Sätzen, Parolen, dabei Analysen kaum mehr durchführt. Der Anspruch einer gewissen Realitäts-Kompatibilität verschwand komplett. Zu ‘stimmen’ hatte etwas nur noch in einem abstrakten Sinn. Das ‘Konkrete’ wanderte aus aus der linksradikalen Politik. (Theweleit, 35)
Gerhard Richters Zyklus 18. Oktober 1977 wird von Theweleit als Beispiel für solch einen pseudoradikalen Umgang mit der RAF angeführt: Die Angst […] mit der eigenen Produktion in Belanglosigkeiten zu verfallen’ nimmt sich einen Komplex wie ‘die RAF’ zum Sujet nicht wegen einer Übereinstimmung mit ihren Zielen oder Ideen, sondern aus einer abstrakten Identifikation mit deren exzeptioneller Lage. (Theweleit, 68)
Als ein anderes Motiv für die Anrufung der RAF sieht Theweleit das Bedürfnis 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 tatsächlichen Solidarität mit den 8 9
Proll, Hans und Grete versammelt die emblematischsten Fotografien zur Geschichte der RAF. Als Beispiele nennt er u.a. Claus Peymanns Anti-Distanzierungs-Zettel am Schwarzen Brett der Kantine des Stuttgarter Staatstheaters und Vlado Kristls Gemälde Die Verhaftung der Ulrike Meinhof.
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RAF-Kadern besitzt, sondern einen Akt der Selbstilisierung darstellt. Grundlegendes Merkmal des ‘abstrakten Radikalismus’ ist also ein immanenter, auf die eigene Person oder Kunstproduktion gerichteter Übertragungsprozeß, in dem einseitig das Symbolreservoir RAF identifikatorisch angezapft wird, der vampiristische Künstler als bürgerliche Person aber bewußt im Kontext der staatlichen Rechtsordnung verbleibt. Rosenfest von Leander Scholz darf so verstanden als ein Exempel für das von Theweleit beschriebene Phänomen gelten. Michael Wildenhain hingegen benutzt in seinem 1997 erschienenen Roman Erste Liebe Deutscher Herbst die Vorgänge des Jahres 1977 lediglich als Hintergrundfolie. Der gerade volljährig gewordene Ich-Erzähler des Romans hat als Bester seines Jahrgangs Abitur gemacht und steht vor der Entscheidung, was er mit seinem Leben anfangen soll. Die Ereignisse des Deutschen Herbstes nimmt er zwar bewußt wahr, doch bleiben sie zunächst ohne konkrete Auswirkungen auf sein Leben. Im Gegensatz zum Protagonisten beteiligen sich die drei weiteren Hauptfiguren des Romans an dem politischen Auseinandersetzungen: seine Freundin Barbara radikalisiert sich und wird bald verhaftet, die Lehrerin Manon zieht sich unter dem Druck eines Berufsverbotes aus dem politischen Engagement zurück und der Mitschüler Schöpps entwickelt ausgefeilte Umsturzpläne, verfügt aber nicht über die Willenskraft, seine Vorhaben in die Praxis umzusetzen. Der Fokus des Romans liegt jedoch nicht auf dem Politischen, sondern dem Privaten, also der Darstellung der Liebeswirren und der ‘rites de passages’ ins Erwachsenenleben. Anders als bei Scholz erscheint die RAF und das Projekt des revolutionärem Umsturzes in einem eher negativen Licht. Protagonist wie Erzähler bleiben distanziert, wenn etwa Schöpp seine Geschichtsphilosophie dozierend darlegt: Große Persönlichkeiten hätten in der Geschichte immer wieder als Katalysatoren gewirkt. Danach erwähnte Schöpp die Rote Armee Fraktion. Ja, sagte ich, und nickte. In ihr, der Stadtguerilla, sei verwirklicht, was notwendig wäre: Handlungen müsse man aus Axiomen ableiten können. Ja, sagte ich, und nickte. (Wildenhain, 171)
Steht Schöpps für den intellektuellen, sich in abstrakten, neoleninistischen Gedankenspielen verlierenden Zugang zur RAF, so
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verkörpert Barbara die sinnliche, körperbetonte Assoziation mit Linksradikalismus, der für sie ein Mittel zur Flucht aus einem repressiven Elternhaus wird. In einer Szene liest sie dem Protagonisten erst aus den Aufzeichnungen eines zwangsernährten RAF-Häftlings vor und fordert ihren Freund dann auf: ‘Komm her, [...] Und tu mir weh’ (Wildenhain, 124). Als sie später in der Haftanstalt vom IchErzähler besucht wird, treibt sie sich mit Absicht einen Holzsplitter in den Finger: ‘Unter Barbaras Nagel am Zeigefinger quoll ein Tropfen Blut hervor. “Siehst du”, sagte Barbara, “wir sind noch da”’ (Wildenhain, 173). Die wirklichkeitsfremde Theoretisiererei von Schöpps und der selbstzerstörerische Masochismus von Barbara lassen sich als Kritik an Theorie und Praxis der RAF deuten, deren kollektives Scheitern von Wildenhain im individuellen Scheitern seiner alltäglichen Figuren vorgeführt wird. Ohne massiv auf das Symbolreservoir RAF zurückzugreifen, gelingt ihm auf subtile Weise gerade aufgrund der kritischen Distanz ein durchaus zutreffender Kommentar der Terroristengruppe. Doch dabei bleibt es. Wildenhain leistet keine irgendwie geartete Analyse der RAF. Vielmehr bleibt die Stadtguerilla aufgrund der klaren Unterordnung unter die Ebene des Entwicklungsromans ein fast schon beliebiges Versatzstück, da der Roman, mit minimalen Änderungen, auch im Jahre 1968 hätte spielen können. Ist also die Marginalisierung der RAF der Preis, den man zahlen muß, um die stilisierende Vereinnahmung revolutionärer Symbolik zu vermeiden? Eine Antwort darauf gibt Friedrich Christian Delius. Delius ist einer der wenigen Gegenwartsautoren, die sich wiederholt und über einen längeren Zeitraum mit der RAF auseinandergesetzt haben. Seine aus den Romanen Ein Held der inneren Sicherheit (1981), Mogadischu, Fensterplatz (1987) und Himmelfahrt eines Staatsfeindes (1992) bestehende Trilogie unternimmt eine stilistisch wie perspektivisch variable Darstellung des Deutschen Herbstes. Ich möchte hier ausschließlich den letzten Roman besprechen, nicht nur weil er aufgrund seines Erscheinungsjahres zu den RAF-Texten der Neunziger gehört, sondern vor allem, weil Delius darin eine durchaus einmalige Form der Darstellung wählt. Franz Futterknecht beurteilt die Himmelfahrt eines Staatsfeindes als ‘eine[n] der ambitiösesten Romane von Delius. Dem entspricht eine komplexe
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Erzählstruktur, die eine Vielzahl von narrativen Perspektiven vernetzt, die sich wechselseitig komplementieren, kommentieren, relativieren und dekonstruieren’ (Futterknecht, 78). Himmelfahrt eines Staatsfeindes liefert eine zwischen Groteske, Satire und Tragödie changierende Schilderung des Begräbnisses der Stammheimer Selbstmörder. Die Beisetzungen jedoch finden nicht, wie in Wirklichkeit, auf dem Stuttgarter Waldfriedhof statt, sondern als ein feierliches Staatsbegräbnis in der BKA-Stadt Wiesbaden. Begleitet von einem Polizeiorchester werden die geschmückten Särge der Terroristen zu den Ehrengräbern geleitet, ein volksfestartiges Ereignis, das per TV live in alle Haushalte Deutschlands übertragen wird. Der Regierungssprecher erklärt dem Korrespondenten des Daily Mirror dazu: Unsere Politik ist bestimmt vom Gedanken der Versöhnung und des Abbaus von Gewalt, bestimmt von der Absage an den unchristlichen Geist der Rache. [...] ‘Wer tot ist, ist tot, und damit ist die Vergangenheit erloschen.’ Und sie dürfen es gern als Zeichen für die politische Reife der jungen deutschen Demokratie werten, wie schnell ein Satz wie ‘Im Tod hört alle Feindschaft auf’ sich verbreitete, ja binnen weniger Tage eine allgemeine Bekehrung auslöste. [...] Wer je an der Versöhnungsbereitschaft unseres Volkes zweifelte, ist in diesen Tagen eines Besseren belehrt worden. Darum haben auch Politiker von Regierung und Opposition, höchste Polizeibeamte und Juristen nicht gezögert, dem Haß ein Ende zu machen und die harte Linie mit einer großen Geste der Milde zu krönen, mit diesem feierlichen Begräbnis. (Delius, 455–6)
Kommentiert werden die – wahrlich gespenstischen – Vorgänge vom Geist des untoten Andreas Baader, der im Roman Sigurd Nagel heißt und für ein paar ‘Sekundenstunden’ (Delius, 442) als Wiedergänger eine Schonfrist zwischen Himmel und Hölle genießt. Delius hat in einem Interview erklärt, er habe sich bewußt vom Realismus abgewandt, ‘[u]m durch das Verfremden dieses Dokumentarischen, durch die große Umkehrung mehr von der Wahrheit hervorzukitzeln als das, was bisher in den ganz fleißigen Sachbüchern überall stand’ (Zürcher, 13). So wird bei Delius die fast schon symbiotische Beziehung zwischen Baader und Herold, welche Dorothea Hauser ausführlich in ihrer 1997 erschienenen Doppelbiografie dokumentiert hat, in überspitzter Form durch eine Szene vorgeführt, in der die beiden Kontrahenten sich in einer so symbolischen wie erotischen Begegnung durch einen Zungenkuß vereinigen. (Vgl. Delius, 630.)
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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 geläuterten, lebendigen Demokratie. Delius schafft dergestalt ein aus komplex verschachtelten Ironien bestehendes Szenario, denn der Suizid der Terroristen löste in der Tat eine beachtliche Folgereaktion aus, wenngleich es kaum der von den Stammheimern intendierte revolutionäre 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 geprägte Staatsform einer wahrhaft gerechten Gesellschaft, für die die BaaderMeinhof-Gruppe einst selbst in den Kampf zog und von der in feierlichen Bundestagsansprachen gerne die Rede ist. Es gehört jedoch zu den Qualitäten des Romans von Delius, daß das hier kurz skizzierte Bild von anderen Erzählebenen wieder relativiert wird. Neben dem vom redseligen Geist Baaders dominierten Erzählstrang läßt Delius in Form eines Tonbandprotokolls auch eine aussteigebereite Terroristin zu Wort kommen, die in einem Versteck in Luxemburg ihre Verhaftung erwartet. Ihr Monolog entblößt die autoritären 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 Erzählebenen, die zeigen wie ein ausländisches Mitglied der Untersuchungskommission zum Tod von Gudrun Ensslin von den deutschen Behörden gezielt behindert wird, sowie einen Strang, der anhand der Person des obersten Terroristenverfolgers vorführt, daß die Trauerfeierlichkeiten in Wirklichkeit nur ein geschickt inszeniertes staatliches Täuschungsmanöver sind, um bisher ungefaßte Terroristen anzulocken und verhaften zu können. Delius Roman beeindruckt nicht nur durch seine komplexe Struktur und die Polyphonie unterschiedlicher Sprachebenen, sondern vornehmlich durch den aufklärerischen Gestus des Autors, der als Intellektueller versucht, den autonomen Spielraum der Literatur als Experimentierfeld zur Unterminierung des gesellschaftlichen Kon-
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senses zu nutzen. Operativ für dieses Unterfangen ist bezeichnenderweise die Figur des italienischen Literaturwissenschaftlers Serratta. Neben seiner (behördlich vereitelten) Tätigkeit als Sachverständiger der Ensslin-Untersuchungskommission, arbeitet er an einer Fragment bleibenden Skizze, die den Titel trägt: Verbrecher, die gegen Verbrecher kämpfen. In deren Zentrum steht die Schleyer-Entführung als emblematisches Ereignis für die widerstreitende, ein eindeutiges Urteil verunmöglichende 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, daß Jürgen Ponto zwei Tage nach seiner Ermordung einen ‘Antrittsbesuch bei der größten kriminellen Vereinigung der siebziger Jahre, der Regierung Chiles, machen wollte, die das Tausendfache an Morden und Verbrechen begangen hat wie die kleine Rebellenarmee’ (Delius, 581–2). Schleyer, der im Roman Büttinger heißt, wird wiederholt als ‘Verbrecher’ apostrophiert, wie auch dem Krisenstab um Helmut Schmidt attestiert wird ‘nicht gegen die Nazis gekämpft [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 [...] überläßt, macht sie die Propaganda der Entführer lächerlich. Eine bessere Gelegenheit, einige der faschistischen Wurzeln des Staates und ebenso das schlechte Gewissen über dieses Erbe loszuwerden, gibt es nicht. So wird unter Berufung auf die Prinzipien des Rechtsstaates, der Staat zum Komplizen. (Delius, 581)
Delius versucht einen Beitrag zur politischen Bildung zu leisten, nicht eine Stilisierung des Autors als radikales Subjekt zu inszenieren. Trotz eines deutlichen Bemühens um eine differenzierte, vorurteilsfreie Annäherung an den RAF-Komplex bleibt eine kritische Distanz, welche die Validität der intendierten Aussagen beglaubigt und Delius in einem intellektuellen Feld verortet, das beiden Fraktionen kritisch
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gegenübersteht. Seine ästhetische Grundlage jedoch verbleibt ganz im konventionellen Ansatz Brecht’scher Manier, daß die literarische Verfremdung der Schlüssel zu einem besseren Verständnis der politischen Realität sein kann. Elfriede Jelinek hingegen hat 1990 mit Wolken. Heim. einen Text von weitaus radikalerer Ästhetik und einer zugleich beachtlichen Provokationskraft vorgelegt.10 Bereits die Gattungszuordnung wirft gewisse Probleme auf. Zwar handelt es sich bei dem Text um ein (wiederholt aufgeführtes) Theaterstück, doch reicht der von einem chorartigen ‘Wir’ gesprochene Monolog auf Grund seiner Musikalität und versepischen Form formal in die Lyrik hinein. In einer das verwendete Zitatmaterial fast durchweg adaptierenden Montage vermischt Jelinek Textpassagen aus den Hymnen und Oden von Hölderlin, aus Dramen Kleists, aus Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation, aus Hegels Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, sowie aus Heideggers berüchtigter Rektoratsrede, den Tagebüchern Goebbels und den Briefen der RAF aus den Jahren 1973 bis 1977. Diese Amalgamierung von Texten der letzten 200 Jahre, aus heterogenen Diskursen und mit gegensätzlicher politischer Ausrichtung, resultiert in einem eigentümlichen Stück Literatur, das vielstimming und monolithisch zugleich ist. Indem Jelinek der Sprache anderer Gewalt antut, entsteht ein sprachgewaltiges Gebilde über die Sprache der Gewalt. Es stellt nicht nur die Rezipienten vor Probleme, sondern zeigt mit seiner inkommensurablen Komponente auch die Grenzen der Applizierbarkeit von Theweleits Konzept des ‘abstrakten Radikalismus’ für die Literatur auf. Und dies, interessanterweise, indem der Text den Terminus von Theweleit gewissermaßen wörtlich nimmt. Indem nämlich die Mehrzahl der von Jelinek verwendeten Hypotexte dem Diskurs der Philosophie, genauer gesagt: der Tradition des deutschen Idealismus angehören, unternimmt die Autorin einen radikalen Umgang mit abstrakten Texten. Fernab jeglicher Identifizierung mit den ‘grands recits’ der Philosophiegeschichte exponiert sie deren chauvinistische, rassistische und nationalistische Züge. Dergestalt wird eine Entwicklungslinie gezogen, die ihren Ursprung in den 10
Vgl. die Darstellung der fast durchweg negativen Rezeption in der Tageskritik in: Polt-Heinzle (44).
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philosophischen Begründungen des ‘Deutschtums’ besitzt, etwa Fichtes Darlegung des Authentischen der deutschen Sprache gegenüber den Sprachen der ‘Ausländer’, oder Hegels mit rassistischem Vokabular begründete Minderwertigkeit der ‘Neger’. Heideggers Rechtfertigung des Nationalsozialismus führt die Konsequenzen der Verführbarkeit Intellektueller vor. Die RAF schließlich entpuppt sich als Endpunkt der von Jelinek skizzierten Entwicklung. Sie verstand sich als Reaktion auf die unmenschlichen Verbrechen der Nazis, führte deren totalitären Geist aber in ihrer eigenen inhumanen Sprache und rigidem Denken, wie auch ihren mörderischen Methoden fort. Radikal abstrakt ist Wolken. Heim. des weiteren, weil darin nicht nur der literarische Realismus verabschiedet wird, sondern auch keine Namen oder identifizierbare Personen auftauchen. Statt dessen herrscht lediglich das polyphone Murmeln sich überlagernder Diskurse. Der Text bedarf also keines vampirischen Zugriffs auf ein Symbolreservoir, vielmehr impliziert er, daß nicht Personen, sondern Ideen das Agens der Geschichte sind. Diese These fortführend ließe sich argumentieren, daß das wahrhaftig Radikale nicht in ‘actiones directes’, sondern im Denken, bzw. dessen Kommunizierung in Form von Sprache/Schrift beheimatet ist.11 Wie auch in anderen Texten Jelineks dient Hölderlin als zentrale Quelle an Zitatmaterial. (Vgl. Burdorf.) Dessen Anwesenheit im vielstimmigen Chor der Sprechenden stellt die Interpreten von Wolken. Heim. oft vor Deutungsprobleme, die gelöst werden, indem man, wie Marlies Janz, dem kollektiven, chauvinistisch-nationalistischen ‘Wir’ der Deutschen eine solche Assimilationskraft zuschreibt, daß es sämtliche Diskurse, selbst den linksradikalen der RAF und den poetisch autonomen eines Hölderlin, problemlos zu absorbieren vermag (Janz, 123–4). Dem gegenüber soll jetzt kurz eine Lesart von Wolken. Heim. als RAF-Text vorschlagen werden, die den vermeintlich marginalen linksradikalen Diskurs ins Zentrum rückt. Das anonyme ‘Wir’ müßte so als das Ensemble der verstorbenen Stammheimer identifiziert werden. Jelineks Verfahren der reduzierenden, z. T. auch bereitwillig entstellenden Zitierweise, die etwa Hegel als virulenten Rassisten 11
Insofern stellt sich Jelinek natürlich selbst in gewisser Weise in die idealistische Tradition.
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erscheinen läßt, entspricht dabei der einseitigen Weltsicht der Stadtguerilla. Nimmt man eine diskursive Dominanz der RAF in Wolken. Heim. an, so wird auch der wiederholte Rekurs auf den Jakobiner Hölderlin und das emanzipatorische Potential seiner Dichtung durchaus widerspruchslos. Indem Hölderlin derartig mit der RAF kurzgeschlossen wird, legt der Text eine Äquivalenz, wenngleich keine Kongruenz, zwischen Wort und Tat, Geistigem und Körperlichem, dem Überdauernden und dem Augenblicklichen nahe. Das liest sich dann so: Komm, ins Offne, Freund, komm in die Erde! Sei bei uns! Laß dich festschnallen und Nahrung durch den Schlauch fließen! Nur herunter zu uns, und eng schließet der Himmel uns ein. Trüb ist es heut, es schlummern die Gäng und die Gassen, und fast will mir scheinen, es sei, als in der bleiernen Zeit. (Jelinek, 40–1)
Wolken. Heim. von der RAF her zu lesen, macht nicht zuletzt auch deshalb Sinn, weil sie chronologisch der Gegenwart am nächsten steht. Die Terroristen haben im Suizid das Scheitern ihres Kampfes erfahren und blicken – gleich dem im Text kurz aufgerufenen Benjamin’schen ‘Engel der Geschichte’ – auf die, in diesem Fall, geistesgeschichtliche Katastrophe der Deutschen zurück. Doch der vernichterische Sturm der Historie bläst auch für die irrlichternden RAF-Toten unaufhörlich weiter: ‘Auf der Erde kommen wir nicht zur Ruh, noch als Begrabene bleiben wir gegenwärtig, und wir kommen wieder, wir kommen wieder! Der Boden ist unser Übergang, hinüber ans Ende der Zeiten. Das Ende der Geschichte ist uns mißlungen’ (Jelinek, 24). Dieses Scheitern läßt sich primär verstehen als Mißlingen 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 verbrämten Destruktionsprozeß der Geschichte, der auf den Ersten Weltkrieg den Zweiten Weltkrieg folgen ließ, 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 faßt, denk ich, der darf sinken’ (Jelinek, 26). Kämpfen, für ein
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besseres Deutschland, eine bessere Welt. Das Mao-Motto ‘Dem Volke dienen!’ setzte die RAF daher einer ihrer frühen Programmschriften voran. In Wolken. Heim. liest sich das, mit Hölderlin, so: ‘O nehmt uns, nehmt uns mit in die Reihen auf, damit wir einst nicht sterben gemeinen Tods! Umsonst zu sterben, lieben wir nicht, doch lieben wir, zu fallen am Opferhügel fürs Vaterland, zu bluten des Herzens Blut fürs Vaterland’ (Jelinek, 26–7). Was die RAF dabei aber nicht realisierte, war, daß sie selber durch ihren Kampf an der unglückseligen chauvinistischen Tradition ihres Vaterlandes teilhatte, daß sie nicht befreite, sondern nur größere Unfreiheit und Tod stiftete. Wolken. Heim. erkennt die zentrale und in ihrer Symbolhaltigkeit überdauernde Relevanz der RAF, weil sie sich nicht nur in die Populärkultur, sondern auch unauslöschlich in die deutsche Geistesgeschichte eingeschrieben hat. So zumindest deute ich die Sätze, mit denen der Text beginnt: ‘Da glauben wir immer, wir wären ganz außerhalb. Und dann stehen wir plötzlich in der Mitte. Heilige, die im Dunkel leuchten’ (Jelinek, 9). Rainald Goetz gilt spätestens seit seinem spektakulären Schnitt in die Stirn als so etwas wie ein Experte für das Radikale in der Literatur. Sein Roman Kontrolliert aus dem Jahr 1988 ist das wohl komplexeste Erzählwerk, das bisher zur RAF erschienen ist und erfordert eine zweifellos eingehendere Analyse, als die folgenden Hinweise darstellen, welche im Kontext des bisher Erörterten lediglich einige stichpunktartige Schlaglichter auf den Text werfen sollen. Goetz hat wie kein anderer Schriftsteller die Verwandtschaft zwischen den Diskursen der Popmusik und des Terrorismus erkannt. Mit Live is life und You gotta fight for your right to party als Motti zitiert Goetz zwei Chart-Erfolge, die in ihrer Oberflächlichkeit den trivialisierend-entfremdeten Umgang mit der RAF spiegeln. Der Abschnitt über ein Konzert der britischen Avantgardeband Spacemen 3 hingegen eröffnet in der Beschreibung der kreischenden Feedbackklänge die Möglichkeit von authentischem Ausdruck in der Popmusik: ‘Haß und Kraft gehen der Musik nicht aus, die Nummern dauern, bis die Schönheit klar ist’ (Goetz, 267). Nicht mehr der bewaffnete Kampf, sondern Popmusik wie die von Spacemen 3 wird zur befreienden Formel ‘für ein Leben vor dem Tod für alle’ (Goetz, 186). In den Popzusammenhang gehört auch die gezielte Verwendung von RAFSymbolik. Das Buchcover ziert ein miniaturisiertes Foto von Goetz
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vor dem Kalaschnikow-Symbol der RAF. Die Anspielung auf die Bilder des entführten Schleyer konstatiert und parodiert zugleich die Mythologisierung der RAF durch mediale Symbole. Indem Goetz sich auf geschmacklose Weise den selbstilisierenden Techniken des ‘abstrakten Radikalismus’ bedient, ironisiert und überwindet er sie. Auch im Roman von Goetz werden diverseste Diskurse, einschließlich Zitaten aus RAF-Schriften (Goetz, 247) amalgamiert, jedoch nicht in einer Jelinek vergleichbaren Form der Montage. Der entscheidende Unterschied zu anderen Texten liegt darin, daß Goetz durch seinen aus klaustrophobischen Schachtelsätzen, obskuren Neologismen und sprachlichen Idiosynkrasien bestehenden Stil die Textverfahren der RAF emuliert, anstatt die Sprache der Terroristen zu simulieren. Formal entsteht dadurch kein Abklatsch des RAFDiskurses. Ähnlich wie bei Jelinek wird die Sprache der RAF erkennbar, und doch poetisch aufgehoben in einen anderen Sprachraum, den der Literatur, nahtlos integriert. Der Verschmelzung von Radikalem und Literarischem auf formaler Ebene korrespondiert auch inhaltlich eine enge Verbindung zwischen den Feldern der Kunst und der Politik. Goetz schöpft den Autonomieraum der Literatur aus, um auf radikale Weise über die Bundesrepublik und den Deutschen Herbst nachzudenken. Schleyer wird als ‘Arbeiterausbeuter’ und ‘Mörder’ bezeichnet, die Regierung ist ‘sozialdemokratischer Dreck’ (Goetz, 247), ‘führende Gangster der Wirtschaft lassen sich von Brauchitsch vertreten’ (Goetz, 250), die Isolationshaft der Gefangenen bedeutet ‘Folter’ (Goetz, 256). All das wird nicht erklärt oder gerechtfertigt, sondern als selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt. ‘[E]gal wie mörderisch der Staat als Mörder dasteht, trotzdem passiert nichts, keine Revolution bricht aus, kein konsequenter Terror brennt den Staat endgültig kaputt’ (Goetz, 256), beklagt der Erzähler. Zugleich werden die absurden Theorien der RAF hart angegriffen, der ‘Ensslinschwachsinn, ihre Volksschullehrerinnenkleinschrift, die sprachlich eine Lächerlichkeit ist, keine Revolution’ (Goetz, 93). Die Morde an unschuldigen Fahrern und Polizisten, sowie an Schleyer werden unmißverständlich als falsch und verbrecherisch verurteilt. Der promovierte Psychiater Goetz ist aufgrund seiner medizinischen Qualifikation gleichsam prädestiniert, die antagonistischen Vorstellungen von Staat und RAF in ihrer paranoiden Verzerrung der Wirklichkeit als pathologische Wahnsysteme zu erkennen. Darüber hinaus vermag er als
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schreibender Mediziner sich der diesen Beruf eigenen Haltung zu bedienen, eines unbestechlich-mitfühlenden Blicks, der gesellschaftliche Krankheitserscheinungen wie den Deutschen Herbst sezierend genau erfaßt. Durch diese Spannung unterscheidet sich Kontrolliert von allen anderen RAF-Texten. Problembereiche wie das staatliche Gewaltmonopol, die Grenzen des Rechtsstaates oder ganz allgemein der Definition von Demokratie können so gänzlich anders als in der gewohnten Weise durchdacht werden. Der Roman stellt provozierende Fragen, anstatt staatstragende Antworten zu liefern. Kontrolliert ist nicht zuletzt ein Roman über Literatur. Durch intertextuelle Verwebungen sprechen literarische Texte – Shakespeares Hamlet, Frischs Stiller, Zorns Mars, etc. Doch Goetz geht weiter, er will wissen, ob es eine konkrete Verbindung zwischen Literatur und Terror geben kann. Er findet sie im Tod, genauer: dem Akt des Suizids, der RAF und Literaten verbindet. Mit Bezug auf Uwe Johnson heißt es einmal: ‘Man kann sich aber auch im Alkohol ertränken, anstatt sich an den Strick zu hängen’ (Goetz, 76). Der ‘Wannseeselbstmörder’ (Goetz, 280) Kleist, macht Goetz aufmerksam, wurde am 18. Oktober 1777 geboren. Auf den Tag genau 200 Jahre später ging in Stammheim der Tod um. Ein bloßer Zufall, aber zugleich eine faszinierende Kongruenz. In der radikalsten aller Erfahrungen, dem sich selbst oder anderen zugefügten Tod, können ‘Idee und Tat, Abstraktion und Wirklichkeit, Denken und Handeln’ (Goetz, 263) miteinander in Beziehung treten: Das Wort Mord ist etwas ganz schön anderes, als die tatsächliche Mordtat bekanntlich, und die Wirklichkeit ist nicht von der wörtlichen Bezeichnung, sondern vom wirklichen geschehenen echten politischen Mord fasziniert. Faszinierend ist die Drohung, daß diese zwei getrennten Dinge, Mord und Mordwort, gerade weil sie getrennt sind, auch nicht getrennt sein könnten. Diese Faszination zu leugnen, ist Lüge, sich ihrer nicht zu bedienen, ein Fehler. (Goetz, 263)
Ein Fehler, den Goetz in Kontrolliert nicht begeht. Sein Roman zeichnet sich wie kein anderer Text ‘nachgeborener’ Autoren durch eine Fusion der gemeinhin als gegensätzlich verstandenen Bereiche von Politik und Literatur aus, die dem politischen Radikalismus der RAF einen literarischen Radikalismus an die Seite stellt. Entgegen den quasi-zensorischen Dichotomisierungen, die den öffentlichen Diskurs
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über die RAF bestimmten (und im Zeitalter des Kriegs gegen den ‘Terrorismus’ wieder in machtstrategischer Manier global aufleben), entwirft der Roman von Goetz ein verständniserweiterndes Netz der verbrecherischen Verkettungen von Staat und Guerilla, versteht sich aber deswegen zugleich als Aufforderung, den politischen Mythologisierungen, medialen Verfälschungen und ideologischen Selbsttäuschungen über das Vorhaben eines emanzipierenden Kampfes individualistisch entgegenzutreten. Wie Kontrolliert sowohl diskutiert als auch am eigenen Beispiel vorführt, hat das Scheitern des revolutionären Programms der RAF das extremistische Vorhaben einer Reformierung des ‘status quo’ mit allen möglichen Mitteln durchaus nicht desavouiert. Vielmehr läßt sich feststellen, daß sich das ‘Projekt Gegenkultur’ ähnlich wie die Aufklärung der ihm inhärenten Dialektik bewußt werden muß, wenn es sein utopisches Ziel erreichen will. Goetz’ Roman macht dazu ansatzweise Lösungsmöglichkeiten sichtbar. In Anlehnung an Walter Benjamin verweist er auf den Bereich der populären Massenkultur als ein Feld, in dem Strategien zur Infragestellung des gesellschaftlichen Konsenses ausgebildet und erprobt werden können. Es gilt eine alle subversive Gegenkultur zu entwickeln, die nicht wie die RAF den Weg der offenen Konfrontation wählt, sondern die Kulturindustrie gleich einem Bazillus infiziert und in ihrem Dissidenz neutralisierenden Potential schwächt. Nicht zuletzt da die Verlagslandschaft in allen Ländern mittlerweile weitgehend in den Griff multinationaler Unterhaltungskonzerne geraten ist, könnte die Literatur dabei an der Vorfront stehen. In seiner Rede ‘Der Autor als Produzent’ hat Benjamin am Beispiel Brechts dargelegt, daß der gesellschaftliche Nutzen (und damit die Berechtigung) von Literatur in der Solidarität mit der Gruppe liegt, die früher ‘das Proletariat’ hieß. An der Lage der sozial Benachteiligten aber, wie Benjamin konzediert, ändert gutgemeinte ‘Tendenzliteratur’ wenig, ‘da der bürgerliche Produktions- und Publikationsapparat erstaunliche Mengen von revolutionären Themen assimilieren, ja propagieren, ohne damit seinen eigenen Bestand und den Bestand der ihn besitzenden Klasse ernstlich in Frage zu stellen’ (Benjamin, 109). Tatsächlichen sozialen Fortschritt vermag nur solche Literatur zu erzeugen, die ihre ‘Tendenz’ in erster Linie auf den Bereich der Literatur und nicht der Politik richtet:
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Ein Autor, der die Schriftsteller nichts lehrt, lehrt niemanden. Also ist maßgebend der Modellcharakter der Produktion, der andere Produzenten erstens durch Produktion anzuleiten, zweitens einen verbesserten Apparat ihnen zur Verfügung zu stellen vermag. Und zwar ist dieser Apparat umso besser, je mehr er Konsumenten der Produktion zuführt, kurz aus Lesern oder Zuschauern Mitwirkende zu machen imstande ist. (Benjamin, 114)
Benjamin nennt als Beispiel für eine solche modellhafte Literaturform das epische Theater Brechts. Für den Bereich der deutschsprachigen Literatur, die sich mit dem Komplex der Roten Armee Fraktion beschäftigt, hat Rainald Goetz mit Kontrolliert ein nicht zu unterschätzendes Vorbild geliefert. Sein Text ist Teil eines ‘Projekts Gegenkultur’, das freilich nur allzu fragmentarisch besteht und dessen Erfolgsaussichten denkbar gering sind. Doch es gehört zu den Kennzeichen der Literatur, daß in ihr die Utopie wie nirgends sonst in der Kunst ein Obdach gefunden hat.
Bibliografie Benjamin, W. ‘Der Antor als Prodzeut’, in Benjamin, Versuche über Brecht (Frankfurt aM., Suhrkamp, 1978), 101–19. Braunersreuther, C., Maida, M. ‘Vom Sein oder Nichtsein deutscher Macht und Ehre. Über das Hörspiel Deutsche Krieger’ in Büsser, M. (Hg.) Testcard 9 (Mainz, Ventil, 2000), 90–7. Burdorf, D. “‘Wohl gehn wir täglich, doch bleiben wir hier.” Zur Funktion von Hölderlin-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 über sein literarisches Werk (Tübingen, Stauffenberg, 1997), 77–103. Gillen, E. (Hg) Deutschlandbilder. Kunst aus einem geteilten Land (Köln, DuMont, 1997). Goetz, R. Kontrolliert (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1988). Holert, T., Terkessidis, M. ‘Einführung in den Mainstream der Minderheiten’, in Holert, T., Terkessidis, M. (Hg) Mainstream der Minderheiten. Pop in der Kontrollgesellschaft (Berlin, ID, 1996, 17–18).
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Janz, M. Elfriede Jelinek (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1995). Jelinek, E. Wolken. Heim. (Göttingen, Steidl, 1990). Kellmann, K. Der Staat läßt morden. Politik und Terrorismus – heimliche Verbündete (Berlin, Henschel, 1999). Mohr, R. ‘Die Prada-Meinhof-Bande’, Spiegel Online v. 27.2.2002. Pretting, G. ‘Maschinenmusik. Vom Feind zum Freund’, Skug, 32 (1992) 42–4. Polt-Heinzl, E. ‘Nachwort’ in Jelinek, E. Wolken. Heim. Proll, A. Hans und Grete. Die RAF 1967–1977 (Göttingen, Steidl, 1998). Radisch, I. ‘Rote-Helden-Fraktion. Die Ästhetik der Schreckschußpistole: Leander Scholz und die poetische Verklärung der RAF’, Die Zeit, v. 15.2.2001. Teipel, J. Verschwende Deine Jugend (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2001). Theweleit, K. Ghosts. Drei leicht inkorrekte Vorträge (Frankfurt, Stroemfeld, 1998). Weinzierl, R. ‘Fight the Power! ‘Eine Geheimgeschichte der Popkultur & die Formierung neuer Substreams (Wien, Passagen, 2000). Wiesnewski, G., Landgraeber, W., Sieker, E. Das RAF-Phantom. Wozu Politik und Wirtschaft Terroristen brauchen (München, Knaur, 1997). Wildenhain, M. Erste Liebe Deutscher Herbst (Frankfurt, Fischer, 1997). Zürcher, G. ‘Friedrich Christian Delius’, in Arnold, H. L. (Hg) Kritisches Lexikon der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur.
MORAY MCGOWAN
Ulrike Meinhof im Deutschen Drama der Neunziger Jahre: Drei Beispiele*
‘Längst sind die Toten von Stammheim Teil einer bundesdeutschen Nationalmythologie geworden, die im nebligen Begriff des “Deutschen Herbstes” beziehungsreichen Ausdruck gefunden hat.’ So Gerd Koenen 2001 in Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Koenen, 363). Der unter der Bezeichnung Deutscher Herbst zusammengeknäulte Themenkomplex des Terrorismus und der Reaktion von Staat, Medien und Bevölkerung hat zweifelsohne vielseitige und anhaltende Wirkungen auf die politischen Mentalitäten der Bundesrepublik gehabt. So unterschiedliche Kommentatoren wie der damalige Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt und der Schriftsteller F. C. Delius haben die Bedeutung des Deutschen Herbstes, und auch seine Stabilisierungsfunktion, für die nationale Identitätsbildung der Bundesrepublik erkannt (Schmidt, Delius). Diese Bedeutung hielt über die deutsche Wiedervereinigung von 1990 hinaus an, ja mit dem zeitlich bedingten Abbau mancher Berührungsängste wuchs geradezu die quantitative und qualitative Beschäftigung mit dem Thema. Dies war vor allem zum zwanzigsten Jahrestag des Deutschen Herbstes 1997 zu beobachten.1 Der Terrorismus, seine Präsenz im nationalen Gedächtnis und seine Darstellung in der Geschichtsschreibung, in der Literatur, im Film, weist Züge eines kollektiven Psychodramas auf. Der Terrorismus sucht auch geradezu das inszenierte Spektakel, und der jeweiligen Tat folgt fast immer der Kampf um die Deutungen: Deutungen durch die Täter, durch den betroffenen Staat, durch die * 1
Ich danke Anja Flender für ihre sprachliche und inhaltliche Kritik. Neben der zahlreichen Buch-, Zeitschriften- und Zeitungsbeiträgen ist vor allem Heinrich Breloers Juni 1997 ausgestrahlte Fernsehserie Todesspiel zu erwähnen.
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Medien, usw. Dramen über den Terrorismus sind also unter anderem auch Dramen über Repräsentationsprozesse. 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 Qualität und Präsenz ihrer geschriebenen und gesprochenen Stimme in den Medien der sechziger Jahre; damit auch die Fallhöhe ihrer Entscheidung, diese etablierte Position aufzugeben und in den Untergrund zu gehen; ihr Leiden im Gefängnis; die auch und gerade in linken Kreisen verbreitete Tendenz, sie von den anderen führenden Figuren der ersten RAF-Generation abzusondern – also den Terrorismus und die Terroristen zu verdammen, Meinhof dabei aber zu verklären. Hier werden drei Bühnenwerke der 1990er Jahre betrachtet, die Meinhof-Figuren auf die Bühne brachten: Johann Kresniks Tanztheaterstück Ulrike Meinhof (1990), und zwei Sprechtheaterstücke, Dea Lohers Leviathan (1993), und John von Düffels 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 Deutschland’2 inszeniert. Leviathan dagegen nimmt keinen direkten Bezug auf die neunziger Jahre, sondern erprobt in einem Entscheidungsdrama um Ulrike Meinhofs Schritt in den Untergrund eine Rückbesinnung auf das Trauerspiel fehlgeleiteter moralischer und politischer Prinzipien. Bis zur Uraufführung von Rinderwahnsinn 1999 schließlich haben die Verwandlungsprozesse in der neuen Bundesrepublik, vor denen die Mauer bis zu ihrem Fall tatsächlich auch das westdeutsche Bewußtsein teilweise geschützt zu haben scheint, viele bislang konservierte Positionen in einen schnellen Verfallsprozeß gestürzt. Eine breite Anzahl von Themen, vom linken moralischen Rigorismus bis hin zu den deutsch-deutschen Befindlichkeiten, sind bei von Düffel nur noch leere Grotesken. Aber sein Stück erschöpft sich nicht in Kalauer2
Wahlslogan der SPD 1976. Die staats- und regierungsfestigende Wirkung des Deutschen Herbstes läßt sich durchaus als Bewährung des ‘Modells Deutschland’ auch und gerade gegen seine Kritiker von links verstehen.
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technik, billigen Zoten oder farcenhaftem Lächerlichmachen der Terrorismus- und RAF-Thematik, sondern unterhöhlt mit gerade diesen Mitteln festgefahrene Diskurse und Verhaltensweisen. Wie im folgenden zu zeigen ist, verkörpern diese drei Stücke ein Spektrum der formalen Möglichkeiten des Dramas in den neunziger Jahren. Sie nehmen dabei Positionen innerhalb dieses Spektrums ein, die zumindest teilweise den politischen Positionen widersprechen, die sie zu vertreten scheinen. Johann Kresniks ‘choreographisches Theaterstück’ (so Kresniks eigene Bezeichnung für sein politisches Tanztheater) Ulrike Meinhof, 1990 in Bremen uraufgeführt, verwebt eine bittere Trauerzeremonie für den tragischen Körper der deutschen Linken mit einem wütenden Angriff auf die nationale Triumphstimmung und die Konsumhaltung der Wendezeit.3 Seine Wut artikuliert sich in aufgebrochenen und angehäuften Bildern, die sich wie andere Kresnik-Stücke von Sylvia Plath (1985) über Frieda Kahlo (1992) bis zu Rosa Luxemburg (1993) konventioneller Muster weiblicher Opferidentität bedienen. Meinhof wird von drei verschiedenen Tänzerinnen getanzt, die oft gleichzeitig auf der Bühne stehen. Zu dieser Aufhebung der traditionellen Einheit der Person kommt die Aufhebung der chronologischen und räumlichen Einheit hinzu. Es gibt Sprünge, Brüche, Überschneidungen, Simultanszenen, Vermischungen von Fakt und Fiktion und kaleidoskopartige zeitgeschichtliche Anspielungen. So kehrt im ersten Abschnitt des Stücks die tote Ulrike Meinhof als nunmehr fast 60-jährige Journalistin im Trenchcoat in das sich gerade wiedervereinigende Deutschland von 1990 zurück. Hier ekelt sie sich über die Käuflichkeit des neuen deutschen Volks, der gleiche Ekel, den die geschichtliche Meinhof über die Konsumhaltung der Adenauerjahre empfunden hat.4 Dieser Ekel kommt in der Wut zum Ausdruck, mit der eine zweite, über der Bühne auf einer Galerie 3 4
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 ähnliches Motiv findet sich in Volker Brauns Simplex Deutsch (1978/9). Als Kragler, der fett und selbstzufrieden gewordene Kleinbürger aus Brechts Trommeln in der Nacht, Fernsehbilder über US-Bombenangriffen in Vietnam betrachtet und dabei Leber ißt, übergibt sich seine Tochter Ulrike und greift nach seinem Maschinengewehr.
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sitzende, Meinhof-Figur ihre Schriften auf die Bühne und ins Publikum schmettert. ‘Entstaltende Figuration’ nennt Hans-Thies Lehmanns Postdramatisches Theater solche Techniken der Auflösung der Erzähl- und Figurenintegrität durch szenische Anhäufung von heterogenen Zeichen (Lehmann, 154). Doch solchen formalen Dezentrierungsmitteln wird durch Kresniks eindeutige Auslegung der Meinhof-Geschichte widersprochen. Die Verwischung der Zeitebenen zwischen Nationalsozialismus, Adenauerzeit, Atomwaffen- und Notstandsgesetzprotesten, Deutschem Herbst und Vereinigungsgegenwart weist weniger auf postmoderne Antilinearität denn auf eine aggressiv behauptete geschichtliche Kontinuitätsthese hin. Kresniks Ansatz ist traditionell gesellschaftskritisch und inhaltsbezogen, für Jonathan Kalb sogar ‘painfully sincere’ und ‘irresponsibly simplistic’ (Kalb, 38). 1985 verkündete er in einem Interview: ‘Ich möchte auf der Bühne weiterkämpfen, weiterarbeiten, gesellschaftskritisch und politisch, und menschliche Probleme aufzeigen, Menschen darstellen, die mit unserem System gar nicht fertig werden. [...] Es muß nur grundsätzlich so sein, daß das ganze Stück am Schluß eine Aussage hat’ (Kresnik, 16 und 12). Kresniks politischer Ansatz deckt sich in vielem mit dem der politischen Journalistin Meinhof, deckt ihn aber mit seinen sie auf ihren Körper reduzierenden Bildern zu. So wird sein Projekt, sie aus der Verstummung und der Verfälschung zu retten, trotz seiner choreographischen Brillianz und seiner Sensibilität für menschliche Verletzbarkeit weitgehend unterlaufen. Denn Kresnik zeigt Meinhof beinahe ausschließlich als Opfer der ‘deutschen Verhältnisse’ wie Klaus Wagenbach sie 1976 in seiner Grabrede bezeichnete (Brückner, 197–200). Kresniks Meinhof erscheint trotz ihrer dreifachen Rollenaufteilung immer wieder als Körper, der immer wieder mißbraucht wird: durch ihren Ehemann Klaus-Rainer Röhl, durch die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, durch die Vertreter des Staates, durch Andreas Baader und die anderen RAF-Mitglieder.5
5
Kresniks Betonung der Opferrolle ist die zentrale Kritik von Wildenhain (Braun, 211–12).
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Meinhofs politische Texte6 sind im Stück präsent, jedoch nicht als diskursive Auseinandersetzung, nicht als Stimme, sondern als Requisiten: Text wird zu Papier, das aggressiv weggeschleudert, zerrissen oder zwischen die Finger, Zehen und Lippen des mißbrauchten Körpers der Meinhof in ihrem grauen Gefängniskleid gesteckt wird, während sie hilflos über die Bühne zappelt. Text wirkt hier nicht mehr als Waffe des schreibenden Subjekts, sondern als entfremdeter Gegenstand, als Waffe gegen das Subjekt. Meinhofs Schreibmaschine – Berufszeichen und Mittel zur Durchsetzung ihres Einflusses in der bundesdeutschen Mediengesellschaft7 – bleibt das Stück hindurch präsent. Ihr wütendes Rattern ist schon vor Spielbeginn bei geschlossenem Vorhang zu hören und wird später auf Maschinengewehr-Lautstärke verstärkt: das Wort nicht nur bildlich gesprochen als Waffe, sondern wie eine Vorwegnahme der Gefängnistexte der RAF als Gewaltmittel. Gegen Ende des Stücks verzichtet die in der Galerie sitzende Journalistin Meinhof auf ihre Schreibmaschine. Die Schreibmaschine wird auf die Bühne, in die Zelle der Gefangenen Meinhof geholt, die nun ihre Texte zerknüllt und aufißt, und schließlich das Farbband aus der Maschine reißt und als Fessel um ihren Körper wickelt. Kresnik führt hier eine mehrstufige Entmündigung vor. Mit der Aufgabe der zwar begrenzten, vielleicht widersprüchlichen aber immerhin realen Subjektposition in der journalistischen Öffentlichkeit wird das Wort nicht nur gegen passives Schweigen ausgetauscht, sondern als Mittel der Zähmung und Fesselung gegen den eigenen Körper gerichtet. Zuvor malt sich die Meinhof-Figur mit Schreibmaschinentinte zwei Kindergesichter auf die nackten Brüste. Dieses Bild von Meinhofs Zerrissenheit zwischen der Mutter- und der Terroristinrolle ist bezeichnend für eine Problematik des ganzen Stücks, die Meinhofs politische Stimme hinter ihrem Märtyrerinkörper verschwinden läßt, einem Körper, der als Objekt der Macht und des Machtblicks dargestellt wird. Meinhof wird bei Kresnik als deutsche Ikone, als 6 7
Zum großen Teil zunächst zwischen 1959 und 1969 in der Zeitschrift konkret erschienen und in Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen und Meinhof, Deutschland nachgedruckt. Ab 1964 etwa schreibt sie nicht nur für konkret, sondern verfaßt auch Rundfunkreportagen und dreht einige Filmbeiträge für die Fernsehserie Panorama; vgl. Brückner, 204.
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linke Germania am Marterpfahl dargestellt (vgl. Mario Krebs, in Ackermann, 145). Dabei werden die Opfer der Terroristen flüchtig und fast nebenbei bedacht. Meinhof wird ferner auf eine für ihre Ikonisierung typische Weise von den anderen Mitgliedern der ersten RAF-Generation abgegrenzt. Das Programmheft betitelt die letzte Szene zwar als ‘Tod und Verklärung’: eine Szene in der die eine Meinhof-Tänzerin als Trophäe zwischen Plexiglas-Scheiben gequetscht und zur Schau gestellt wird, nachdem sich eine zweite Meinhof verzweifelt die eigene Zunge amputiert hat. Aber das Stück stellt nicht nur Verklärungsprozesse dar, es verklärt. Nun ließe sich einwenden, ein Tanzstück könne nichts anderes tun als der Körperlichkeit den Vorrang vor der Schriftlichkeit geben, ja in der Möglichkeit einer alternativen Sicht zum Logos lägen die emanzipativen Chancen des Tanzes. Heiner Müller behauptet: ‘Ein Körper ist unverständlich. Ein Körper läßt sich nicht analysieren [...] man nimmt ihn wahr. Man braucht ihn nicht zu übersetzen’ (Müller, 43). Das erweist sich aber am Beispiel von Kresniks Ulrike Meinhof als Wunschbild. Die rasch aufeinanderfolgenden, ineinanderfließenden Bilder sorgen zunächst für Verwirrung, sind aber in den allermeisten Fällen in ihrer Figuren- oder Handlungszeichnung eindeutig. Auch ohne Dialog suggeriert das Stück eine deutliche Erzählung, nicht zuletzt weil Kresnik weitgehend unkritisch das Meinhof-Bild ihres ersten Biographen, Mario Krebs, übernimmt, der Kresnik bei der Dramaturgie assistierte, und der die Wagenbach’sche These von Meinhof als Opfer der ‘deutschen Verhältnisse’ vertritt. Kresniks Stück und seine Erstinszenierung sind mit ihrer Entstehungszeit eng verbunden. Im Februar 1990 bahnte sich schon die mit den Wahlen vom 18. März besiegelte Vereinigung Deutschlands auf westlich-marktwirtschaftlicher Basis an. Kresnik inszeniert Ulrike Meinhof gegen den Einheitsrausch und den bundesdeutschen Überlegenheitsdünkel und pocht gerade in diesem Kontext auf die unbequemen geschichtlichen Kontinuitäten. Hitler und Stalin, in eine Lederhose gezwängt, laufen wie ein groteskes vierbeiniges, vierarmiges Aufziehtierchen herum. Zu den beiden Wärtern, die die gefangene Meinhof mit langen stählernen Greifzangen traktieren, gehört ein SS-Mann. In einer PlötzenseeAnspielung werden die Leichen der Stammheim-Toten mit Fleischerhaken von der Bühne gezerrt. In der Schlußszene, in der die von ihrer
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Selbstverstümmelung blutbeschmierte Meinhof die zwischen den Glasscheiben ausgestellte Meinhof anstarrt, deren Gesicht wie auf einem polizeilichen Erkennungsfoto dem Publikum verzerrt zugewendet ist, läßt Kresnik das 1989 von Heino gerade neu aufgenommene Deutschlandlied abspielen.8 Dieser Kontrast wirkt aus der zeitlichen Distanz allzu billig und plakativ. Damals jedoch entstand die Inszenierung im Zeichen machtloser linker Wut über die Richtung, die die Wende unübersehbar anstrebte. Wenig später, im Jahr 1993, hat Kresnik den Titel einer Erzählung von Günter Gaus, Wendewut, für ein gleichnamiges Tanzstück verwendet, das viele der Motive aus Ulrike Meinhof in nur leicht abgewandelter Form aufgreift. Das Programmheft zur Uraufführung im Februar 1990 im Bremer Theater enthielt neben der Grabrede Wagenbachs einige zornige Meinhof-Essays aus den 1960er Jahren und Ausschnitte aus ihren erschütternden Briefen aus dem sogenannten Toten Trakt, aus der Isolationshaft. So hat das Programmheft, das wie fast immer im deutschen Theater als Teil des dramaturgischen Gesamtkonzepts zu verstehen ist, die Textlosigkeit von Kresniks tanzend sprachlosen Meinhof-Figuren ausgeglichen. Das gleiche Programmheft enthält jedoch Werbung: für einen Grundstücksmakler, für Edel-Klaviere, Perserteppiche, Schmuck, Pelze und das Bremer Spielcasino. Es wird für Objekte geworben, die die Angriffsziele von Meinhofs Konsumund Bürgerhaß waren und in der Inszenierung ihre bildliche Entsprechung finden (etwa als der Chor als pelzumhülllte Hamburger Schickeria auftritt). Wie Ulrike Meinhof selbst kämpft Kresniks Theater gegen eine Welt, in die es heillos und hilflos verstrickt ist. Sein Kampf, wie der ihrige, ist schon verloren. Das Problem einer kritischen Kunst in einer alles verschluckenden Warenwelt wird also im Programmheft plastisch vor Augen geführt, jedoch in der Inszenierung selber nicht reflektiert. Das zweite Beispiel einer Meinhof-Darstellung im deutschen Drama der 1990er Jahre ist Dea Lohers Leviathan (1993 in Hannover uraufgeführt; vgl. Schulz). Das gleichnamige Werk des englischen Philosophen Thomas Hobbes von 1651 wird im Vorspann der 8
1999 neuaufgelegt: Heino singt die schönsten Jahrhundertlieder (Ariola 54835).
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Buchfassung zitiert: ‘Der große Leviathan (so nennen wir den Staat) ist ein Kunstwerk oder ein künstlicher Mensch – obgleich an Umfang und Kraft weit größer als der natürliche Mensch, welcher dadurch geschützt und glücklich 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 Lösung’ (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 über eine Gestalt gewordene kollektive Obsession: Hobbes Leviathan wird auch von Hermann Melville in Moby Dick (1851) als Sinnbild für den weißen Wal, das Monster, das von der Besatzung des Pequod bis zu ihrer Selbstzerstörung gejagt wird, zitiert. Karl, die Andreas-Baader-Figur in Lohers Stück, zielt auf den bundesdeutschen Staat: ‘Ja/Wir werden ihn jagen/herausfordern/nicht müde werden/ihm so viele Widerhaken ins Fleisch treiben/bis er sich an ihnen verblutet’ (Loher, 210). Melvilles Moby Dick war eine beliebte Gefängnislektüre der Gudrun Ensslin, die ihre Mitgefangenen mit Namen aus dem Roman versah: Baader etwa war Kapitän Ahab, Holger Meins wurde Starbuck genannt (Aust, 274–7, Conradt, 261). 9 Das Stück zeigt jedoch nicht die RAF beim obsessiven Kreuzund-Quer-Segeln durch den Staatsozean, nicht die Zeit der Illegalität und des bewaffneten Kampfes. Es bietet stattdessen ein psychologisches Entscheidungsdrama über Meinhofs Aufgabe ihrer diskursiven Einflußposition als Journalistin zugunsten des bewaffneten Kampfs und des Aufgehens der individuellen Stimme im 9
Zu der Bedeutung von Melvilles Moby Dick und Brechts Maßnahme für die historische RAF vgl. den Beitrag von Gerrit-Jan Berendse in diesem Band, vor allem Berendses material- und aufschlußreiche Untersuchung der Symbolik der (Nicht–)Farbe Weiß und der Vorstellungen der RAF-Gefangenen zum kollektivierten Körper.
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Kollektiv. Während Kresnik ein geschichtliches und gesellschaftliches Panorama auf der Bühne darstellt und etwa in der Ausstattung des Sicherheitspersonals mit schwerer Schutzbekleidung und Helmen von Hochofenarbeitern den dahinterstehenden Staat durchaus als unheimlicher Moloch impliziert, konzentriert sich Lohers Leviathan auf den engen Zeitraum der wenigen Wochen der RAF-Gründung um 1970 und auf einen Wendepunkt, eine Entscheidungsschwelle im Leben ihrer Hauptfigur Marie. Das Stück kreist um die Entscheidung Maries, nicht nur ihr bürgerliches Leben, sondern die Legalität und damit ihre Kinder und ihre journalistische Karriere zugunsten der Sache, des bewaffneten Kampfes, aufzugeben. Diese Entscheidung wird als zentraler politischer Wendepunkt anerkannt, denn wie ihre Schwester Christine beschreibt, wird sie damit ihre hart erkämpfte Stimme im öffentlichen Diskurs opfern: Sie werden deine Stimme einfacher noch zu einer ungehörten machen indem sie deine Worte eingehen lassen ohne Widerspruch in die Archive dort bleiben sie folgenlos zitierfähig können deine Hellsicht deinen Scharfsinn ohne weiteres belegen die du nun aber unverzeihlich vergeuden willst es folgt ihr Aufschrei Aktion Befreiung Wie konntest du das tun geheuchelte Empörung hinter der sich die Erleichterung versteckt sie können sich nun sicher fühlen vor dem Stachel deiner Worte Gegen eine die sie Terroristin nennen brauchen sie keine Argumente. (Loher, 176)
In diesem Drama, das im Vergleich zu Kresniks Tanzstück der Meinhof-Figur durchaus eine Stimme gibt, geht es um den Augenblick, wo sie die Stimme aufopfert zugunsten der radikalen Aktion, beziehungsweise die Stimme der radikalen Aktion, in der und mit der sie fortan sprechen wird, wird nicht mehr die ihre sein. Die dramaturgische Zentrierung auf Maries Entscheidungskrise macht das Stück zu einem individuellen Drama, das für die Hauptfigur
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glaubwürdige moralische Entscheidungs- und Handlungsfähigkeit voraussetzt. Der dafür erforderliche psychologische Realismus der Hauptszenen wird aber durch Verspartien in den dazwischenstehenden Chor-Szenen aufgebrochen. Die durch diese Chorszenen geschaffene Distanz erschwert eine unkritische Identifikation mit der Entscheidungsagonie der Marie und damit eine Fortführung ihrer Verklärung. Zugleich erzeugen die Chor-Einlagen, die die Stimmen und Texte der Meinhof und anderer aus der RAF durch formalisierte Rezitationsrhythmen und Wiederholungen entnaturalisieren, eine Stimmenvielfalt, die die Individualstimme Meinhofs nicht nur verfremdet sondern zu verschlucken droht. Nicht nur die Chor-Szenen, auch die Handlung greift auf die griechische Antike zurück, insbesondere auf Sophokles’ Antigone. In der Auseinandersetzung zwischen der zum illegalen Handeln aus moralischem Rigorismus drängenden Marie und ihrer auch aus ethischen und menschlichen Gründen zur Vorsicht mahnenden Schwester Christine, nimmt jene die Antigone-Rolle, diese die Ismene-Rolle ein. Ebenso taucht Brechts Maßnahme, ein Lieblingstext der ersten RAF-Generation, in einem Szenentitel auf (Loher, 218). Rigorose Selbstaufgabe zugunsten der Sache wird auch in Maries Entscheidung zur Härte gegenüber sich selber und ihrer eigenen bisherigen humanistischen Ethik sichtbar. Die historische Ulrike Meinhof hat folgende Stelle aus Brechts Maßnahme mehrfach zitiert: Welche Niedrigkeit begingst du nicht um Die Niedrigkeit auszutilgen? Könntest du die Welt endlich verändern, wofür Wärest du dir zu gut? (vgl. Koenen, 405)
Der Zweck heiligt nicht nur die Mittel, er fordert geradezu Mittel heraus, die dem Zweck widersprechen und seine Verwirklichung immer ferner rücken lassen. Lohers Leviathan konstruiert damit für seine Meinhof-Figur Marie eine tragische Fallhöhe, die zu Kresniks Grundthese von Meinhofs geraubter Würde gehören könnte, aber in seinem Stück nicht zur Sprache, auch kaum zur getanzten Sprache, kommt. Das dritte in diesem Kapitel betrachtete Werk läßt Figuren und Motive aus der RAF-Welt fern jeder Tragödie nur noch als Elemente
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einer Farce auftreten. John von Düffels 1999 in Schwerin uraufgeführtes Stück Rinderwahnsinn reflektiert nicht bloß die Kommodifizierung der Revolte, sondern die Folgen eines tiefgehenden politischen und kulturellen Bewußtseinswandels im Laufe des Nach-Wende-Jahrzehnts. Dabei verwendet von Düffel im Gegensatz zu Kresnik und Loher viele Mittel des Well-Made Play – Einheiten des Ortes, der Zeit, der Handlung und der Figurenrede – um innerhalb dieser übersichtlichen Form ein Wechselbad von Umkehrungen, Verwirrungen, Widersprüchen und Überraschungseffekten hervorzurufen. John von Düffels ironische Erklärung der Schreibmotivation für Rinderwahnsinn sollte uns hellhörig machen für den Spielcharakter des Stückes. ‘Ich wollte meinen Vater umbringen [...] da ich ihn eigentlich sehr mag, habe ich gedacht, ich mache das über ein Theaterstück.’ Und weil seine Eltern, so behauptet er, wie Gudrun Ensslin und Andreas Baader aussahen (‘Sie wurden bei jeder Polizeikontrolle angehalten’10), rächt sich das 1966 geborene Kind von Düffel durch eine radikale Abrechnung mit sämtlichen linken Klischees. Bei Kresniks Ulrike Meinhof setzt sich die eindeutige ideologische Erzählhaltung den anti-illusionistischen Formelementen entgegen und lädt zur Identifikation mit Meinhof und mit Kresniks Entsetzen über ihre Behandlung im Gefängnis ein. Ebendiese linke Verklärungstendenz hat Maxim Biller zum bitterböse sarkastischen Aufsatz ‘Kommando Ulrike Meinhof’ provoziert, indem er die baldige Benennung bundesdeutscher Straßen und Schulen nach Ulrike Meinhof prophezeit. Bei von Düffel dagegen sind die Grundsätze der radikalen Linken und die Verklärungen durch manche Nachfolger nicht nur verdächtig sondern lächerlich geworden. Diese Linke, einschließlich des von ihr gepflegten Meinhof-Mythos, siecht in Rinderwahnsinn als groteske Selbsttravestie dahin. Rinderwahnsinn stellt sich dem dezidiert postmodernen Kontext der unaufhaltsamen Kommodifizierung von Zeichen: die Rote Armee Fraktion als ‘Prada-Meinhof-Bande’, wie ein Spiegel-Bericht zu 10
Zit. nach Krieger, ‘Murx dem Marx’. Von Düffels Monolog Born in the RAF kehrt diese Erfahrung satirisch um: Aus Protest gegen die anarchistische Laxheit seiner Terroristen-Eltern entwickelt der Erzähler ‘deutsche’ Tugenden wie Ordnungssinn und Effizienz.
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diesem Phänomen sarkastisch betitelt wurde (Mohr, ‘Prada-Meinhof’, 202). In dieser Welt bringt etwa die Rock-Gruppe Chumbawumba Platten wie ‘Ulrike’ oder ‘Meinhof’ auf den Markt.11 Das Café Baader, eine Kneipe in der Münchner Baader-Straße, bietet im Internet ein Lied vom ‘Meinhof-Café-Orchester’ an.12 Die ‘Rote Gourmet Fraktion’ von Ole Plogstedt und Jörg Raufeisen bekocht tourende Bands mit bizarren Speisen (Schallenberg). In diesem Kontext haben Fotobände über die RAF-Geschichte wie Astrid Prolls Hans und Grete oder der von Gerd Conradt herausgegebene HolgerMeins-Gedenkband Starbuck einen ambivalenten Status zwischen der Zurückgewinnung der Bilder aus dem Medienmonopol einerseits und eben deren Wiederauferstehung als Waren andererseits. Prolls Titel wird von Leander Scholz’ Roman Rosenfest aufgegriffen, indem er die Beziehung von Baader und Ensslin unter voller Ausnutzung ihres Kitschpotentials als Hänsel-und-Gretel-Märchen erzählt. Das vollkommene Scheitern der RAF beim Versuch, die Prozesse aufzuhalten, gegen die sie gekämpft haben, wird gerade hier besonders ironisch sichtbar, wo die RAF als Markenzeichen in der Warenwelt weitergeistert. Für die Zeitgenossen, die beim Wort ‘Starbuck’ zunächst nicht an Melvilles Steuermann und nur noch vage an Holger Meins, sondern am ehesten an die Café-Kette Starbucks denken (die 2002 die ersten zwei von 180 in Deutschland geplanten Filialen eröffnete13), ist die RAF, wie Reinhard Mohr 1999 schrieb: ‘allenfalls ein fernes Zeitgeist-Label [...] abgesunken in die Untiefen des historischen Bewußtseins’ (Mohr, ‘Niemals’). Von Düffels Stück setzt sich aber auch satirisch mit einer Tendenz auseinander, in manchen neueren Schriften zur RAF ihre teilweise recht banale Geschichte gerade mit Begriffen wie ‘Untiefe’ zu kollektivpsychoanalytischen Götterdämmerungsmetaphern hoch11
12 13
Zu finden auf der CD Slap, 1990; cf. Brian Eno und Snatch, RAF, 1978; Luke Haines, Baader-Meinhof, 1996. FM-Einheits ästhetisch 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. Kühl, ‘Die Coffeemaschine’. Unmittelbar neben diesem Starbucks-Bericht in der Lifestyle-Sektion der Zeit (‘Leben’) steht eine Kolumne von John von Düffel; die Ironie wird diesem zeitgeistsensiblen Autor nicht entgangen sein.
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zustilisieren. Klaus Theweleits ‘Bemerkungen zum RAF-Gespenst’ (1998) deuten die Vorgänge im Stammheimer Gefängnis als eine ‘Reinigung im Opferritual’ (Theweleit, 45f). Mariam Lau betitelt ihren Aufsatz 1997 in Merkur ‘Der deutsche Herbst als Exorzismus’. Gerd Koenens Das rote Jahrzehnt nennt sein Terrorismus-Kapitel in einer Celan-Anspielung ‘Schwarze Milch des Terrors. Bewaffneter Kampf als deutsche Selbstbefreiung’, und will Stammheim als beinahe wagnerisch klingenden Namen verstanden wissen (Koenen, 359–414). Theweleit, Lau und Koenen versuchen mit Recht den komplexen Zusammenhang des Terrorismus mit anderen in die Gegenwart reichenden Traumata der jüngeren deutschen Geschichte, dem Nationalsozialismus und dem Holocaust, zu beleuchten. Aber diese Arbeiten beteiligen sich dabei gleichzeitig an einer problematischen Mythisierung. Von Düffel ist sich der einmaligen Bedeutung des Phänomens Terrorismus in der bundesdeutschen Geschichte und auch dieser Mythisierungstendenz bewußt. In einem Interview im Jahr 2000 sagte er: ‘Aber wie die RAF-Leute mit dem ganzen Leben für seine Gesinnung einzustehen, das hat auch etwas Großes, Unbedingtes, Absolutes. Also Mythisches. Wie im Kino [...] Das Land zu RAFZeiten war der letzte große Abenteuerspielplatz der deutschen Geschichte’ (Grefe). Er sieht die sechziger und siebziger Jahre als geprägt von einer Mischung aus zwei nicht mehr möglichen Haltungen: Idealismus und Unschuld. Seine Art jedoch, das Thema entsprechend ernst zu nehmen, ist, es nicht ernstzunehmen, sondern ihm durch Umkehrungen und subversive Überraschungseffekte bis hin zum billigsten Kalauer seine Bedeutungsschwere zu nehmen. Sieht man Stammheim wie Dorothea Hauser in Baader und Herold: Beschreibung eines Kampfes als ‘Monument der Sprachlosigkeit zwischen zwei Generationen’, die in der Tatsache ihren Höhepunkt fand, daß der Stammheim-Prozeß in seiner letzten Phase fast nur in Abwesenheit der Angeklagten geführt wurde (Hauser, 212), dann kann man Rinderwahnsinn als spätes Angebot zur Entkrampfung dieser erstarrten Struktur verstehen. Denn das Stück zeigt sich zunächst als Familiendrama, wobei die sprechenden Namen einen psychologischen Realismus vom Anfang an verhindern, allegorische Erwartungen wecken und sogar Interpretationshilfen zu bieten scheinen, die immer wieder durchkreuzt werden.
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Muttermeinhof und Karlmarx haben zwei Kinder, Faustersterteil und Hänselundgretel: eine – statistisch zwar nicht mehr normale – Normalfamilie. Ulrike Meinhof galt 1981 in Claire Sterlings The Terror Network noch als ‘the Queen of West Germany’s radical chic’, die ‘some quality of intellectual quest, or revolutionary conscience, or moral scruple, or even a touch of glamour’ aufwies (Sterling, 24). In Rinderwahnsinn ist die Meinhof-Figur auf die Funktion eines autoritären Familienoberhauptes geschrumpft. Trotz der grotesken Verzerrung bleibt von Düffel in diesem Punkt dem aus den engeren RAF-Kreisen überlieferten Meinhof-Bild näher als es Kresnik mit seiner Opfer-Verklärung tut. Margrit Schiller etwa schreibt: ‘Ulrike war streng, bestimmt und ungeduldig’ (Schiller, 61). Revolutionäre Ungeduld und das Primat der Praxis prägen Muttermeinhofs Haltung den anderen Familienmitgliedern gegenüber, die sehr schnell in Gewalt übergeht. So bekommt der Sohn Faustersterteil wegen seiner ideologischen Abweichungen Stockhiebe und muß 100 Mal ‘Der Kampf geht weiter’ schreiben. Bei der Figur Muttermeinhof verwendet von Düffel jedoch auch jähe Brüche der ideologischen Haltung, um diese drastisch in Frage zu stellen. Revolutionäre Gewaltsprüche vermischen sich mit bürgerlichem Stolz: Man soll bloß keine Fettflecken auf die RAF-Bekennerschreiben tropfen lassen. Nach einem Bank-Besuch erzählt sie mit Sachbegeisterung von komplexen Geldanlage-Diskussionen, aber auch daß sie die Finanzmisere der Familie durch das Mitgehenlassen der ‘Spendenkasse des Muttergenesungswerks’ gelöst hat (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 39). Ihr Mann Karlmarx ist ein Parodie-Altachtundsechziger, bärtig und beleibt, der hinter verblaßten radikalen Parolen, vulgärmarxistisch verdrehten Theorien und antiautoritären Erziehungsprinzipien ein ruhiges und Konflikt umgehendes Leben sucht. Der Sohn Faustersterteil, ein promovierter Skinhead, will diesen von seinem Vater vertretenen, alles in Watte packenden sozialliberalen Konsens gewaltsam aufbrechen. Er trägt damit Züge der intellektuellen Neuen Rechten der neunziger Jahre. Er redet von Tötung und von der ‘Euthanasiewürdigkeit’ seiner trotteligen Schwester (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 10), zitiert halbverdaute Ideen von Nietzsche bis Bataille und fürchtet sich vor seiner Mutter. Statt soziales Gewissen fordert Faustersterteil in fernem Anklang an de Sade in Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade die ‘Geilheit’ als absolute
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Wahrheit und Handlungsleitung (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 45). Er will seinen Vater aus Enttäuschung über das untaugliche Weltbild umbringen, sowie aus Frustration darüber, daß die liberale Erziehung ihm nie die Möglichkeit zur Affektentladung gibt. Aber es wird kein expressionistisches Vatermordsstück, denn auch den Vatermordwunsch versteht und unterstützt Karlmarx sofort: ‘wir waren uns nie so nahe, mein Sohn’ (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 22). Das nimmt dem Sohn wieder die Kraft zum Mord. Die aus Stücken wie Martin Walsers Schwarzer Schwan in den sechziger Jahren bekannte HamletThematik, die Unfähigkeit zur Austragung der deutschen Variante des Vater-Sohn-Konfliktes, die in verwandelter Form in den späten siebziger Jahre unmittelbar nach dem Deutschen Herbst in der sogenannten ‘Väter-Literatur’ noch einmal auflebte, wiederholt sich hier in einem grotesken und kümmerlichen Zerrbild: Was Vater und Sohn über den Riß zwischen den Generationen und Ideologien verbindet, ist die Handlungsunfähigkeit. Hänselundgretel ist ein ungebildetes, pubertäres Mädchen, dessen nicht zu bändigender Geschlechtstrieb sich fetischistisch auf Fantasien über den unter seinen saloppen weiten Hemden nie sichtbaren Bauch ihres Vaters Karlmarx fixiert hat. Sie träumt von einem ‘fetten’ Vater und einem ‘fetten’ Ehemann. Aus dem weißen Leviathan, dem aus Melvilles Moby Dick bekannten Bild der verabsolutierten Obsession ist bei Hänselundgretel nur der fantasierte weiße Schlabberbauch ihres Vaters geblieben: ‘ein weißer Wal von ungeahntem Ausmaß/Über den, hinter vorgehaltener Hand/Die unglaublichsten Geschichten erzählt wurden’ (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 47). Zum einen sieht man hier, daß – so wie Faustersterteil die marxistische Gesell-schaftslehre mißverstanden hat – bei Hänselundgretel das eigentliche Ergebnis der angeblich emanzipierten Sexualerziehung eine absurd verschobene Penis-Fantasie ist. Anschließend fällt sie über den unerwarteten Gast her, den Vetter aus Dingsda, und bläht sich am Ende des Stückes zu einer grotesken Version einer expressionistischen Allegorie der mit dem neuen Deutschland Schwangeren auf. Zum anderen: Nicht nur die Moby-Dick-Selbststilisierungen der RAF-Gefangenen werden hier der Lächerlichkeit preisgegeben, sondern auch ihre psychoanalytische und kulturwissenschaftliche Deutung in der feuilletonischen und akademischen Begleitliteratur zum Phänomen Deutscher Herbst.
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Das Ergebnis ist eine groteske Farce des vergeblichen Bemühens, eine dysfunktionale Familie zum Funktioneren zu zwingen. Das Scheitern des Projekts der Achtundsechziger und die krampfhafte Mythologisierung der RAF und ihrer zeitgeschichtlichen Bedeutung werden ins Lächerliche verzerrt. Die Handlung wird durch das unerwartete Auftauchen des ‘Vetters aus Dingsda’ auf ihren Höhepunkt getrieben, eines Verwandten aus der DDR, der nach dem Fall der Mauer herüberkommt. Er will bloß die Toilette benutzen, doch wird sein Besuch von Muttermeinhof sofort als konspirativer Kontaktaufnahmeversuch verstanden. Aus Meinhofs akribischem Blick für gesellschaftliche Mißstände ist nur noch fehlgeleitete Gläubigkeit geblieben. In einer für die Farce charakteristischen Kette von Mißverständnissen und Zufällen schwängert der Vetter die Tochter Hänselundgretel und erschießt unabsichtlich den Vater Karlmarx. Die zum impotenten Greis verkümmerte linke Tradition erhält durch den zum Abtritt gewordenen Beitritt der DDR den Gnadenschuß. Die Namensgebung unterstreicht die Vertreibung des Pathos durch die Lächerlichkeit: Faustersterteil, Hänselundgretel, der Vetter aus Dingsda, also von Goethe über Grimm/Humperdinck zu Eduard Künneke, von der Tragödie über den Nationalmythos als Märchen zur Operette, von den Höhen des Kunstanspruchs in die seichte Unterhaltung.14 Das Stück bringt die Unzufriedenheit der RAF-KinderGeneration zum Ausdruck, denen das alt-neulinke Gerede ihrer Eltern und LehrerInnen suspekt, lächerlich, wirklichkeitsfern und lebenshinderlich vorkommen kann. Es zeigt aber auch den schon seit den Anfängen der RAF präsente Aspekt des Gespielten und Inszenierten.15 ‘Ort: Bühne’ steht als einzige Szenenanweisung, das Künstliche des Darzustellenden betonend (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 5). Immer wieder kehren Schlüsselmotive aus der mythischen Geschichte der RAF in grotesker Verzerrung wieder: Das symbolische Urinieren in das ehemalige Ehebett von Ulrike Meinhof und Klaus-Rainer Röhl gehört zu den Gründungsmythen der RAF (vgl. Vesper, 200). Bei von 14 15
In Eduard Künneckes Operette Der Vetter aus Dingsda (1921) geht es ebenfalls um die Verwechslung eines ahnungslos Ankommenden mit einem Erwarteten. Ich danke Carl Weber für diesen Hinweis. Zum Inszenierten des Terrorismus, vgl. Orr und Klaic. Zum Zusammenhang zwischen RAF-Terrorismus und Performance-Kunst, vgl. Pedersen, ‘RAF auf der Bühne’.
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Düffels Vetter aus Dingsda geht es dagegen um keine symbolische Verhöhnung des Bürgerlichen, sondern nur um eine gemeine Notdurft. Die Zwangsernährung, eines der emotions-geladensten Themen der Haftbedingungskontroversen, wird im fröhlich-verbissenen Füttern des Karlmarx durch seine Tochter trivialisiert. Blankobekennerschreiben dienen als Unterlagen für Strafexerzitien. Der Vatermord geschieht als absurder Zufall. Die Selbstzerfleischung der radikalen Linken wiederholt sich als Farce. Die Uraufführungsinszenierung durch Dieter Klaß 1999 in Schwerin unterstrich dieses Farcenhafte durch eine konsequente gegen-geschlechtliche Besetzung. Die Darstellung der Guerrilla-Gruppe als Familie dient nicht nur der Entrümpelung verstaubter Bewußtseinsreste der neunziger Jahre, sondern berührt auch in ihrer satirischen Überhöhung reale Strukturen. Im Untergrund wie im Gefängnis entwickelten oder verstärkten sich in vielen Terrorgruppen teilweise infantile Machtstrukturen, die denen einer Familie glichen (vgl. dazu Theweleit, 52f., Preusser). Von Charles Manson zu den Revolutionären Zellen, einer Parallelorganisation zur RAF in den siebziger Jahren, haben Gruppenmitglieder selber dies explizit anerkannt (Koenen, 379–80). Die Selbstbezogenheit der RAF im Untergrund – es ging bald nur mehr um Geldbeschaffung und Gefangenenbefreiung – verschüttete gerade die größeren politischen Fragestellungen, die sie beabsichtigte. In gleicher Weise erschöpfen sich die Außenkontake der von Düffelschen Kleinfamilie in Muttermeinhofs Ausflügen zur Bank und im mißdeuteten Besuch des Vetters. Eine Farce zieht häufig ihre Wirkung daraus, daß die Werte und Vorstellungen, aufgrund derer die Bühnenfiguren in der zwanghaften Handlung der Farce verstrickt werden, im Publikum überholt sind, überwunden sein müßten und dennoch weiter wirken. Daraus schöpfen viele gesellschaftskritische Farcen ihre Doppelbödigkeit als unterhaltsame Verunsicherung, als kollektive psychische Entsorgung. Rinderwahnsinn bietet ein von anachronistischen Zügen verzerrtes, ins absurde hochgedrehtes Psychodrama, von dem sich die deutsche Linke noch befreien muß, um sich voll seiner Zukunft im einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert zu stellen. Aber nicht nur die Linke: Das farcenhafte Motiv des Vetters aus Dingsda gibt jene Überbewertung der RAF-Stasi-Verbindung der Lächerlichkeit preis, die den westdeutschen anarchistischen und den ostdeutschen staatlichen Terror zu einer Einheit verschmilzt, Stammheim und der
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Deutsche Herbst nicht als Infragestellung der Demokratie sondern als deren Verteidigung und quasi als Vorposten der Wende versteht.16 Fast nebenbei erzählt der Vetter aus Dingsda vom vermeintlichen Rinderwahn, der die Kühe seines Schwagers heimgesucht hat: Eines Tages fangen die Biester an durchzudrehen Rennen im Kreis, springen ins Wasser, gehen Die Wände hoch Mein Schwager meint gleich, Rinderwahnsinn Schießt ein Tier nach dem anderen tot, bald Den ganzen Bestand Beim Abdecker fallen ihm die Hufe auf Gespickt mit Angelhaken Sein Sohn war tags zuvor fischen gewesen. (von Düffel, Rinderwahnsinn, 67)
Das ließe sich analog zu Dürrenmatt als die absurde Zufälligkeit verstehen, die unsere Welt trotz aller politischen Strategien so schwer regierbar macht. Es warnt aber auch vor überschnelle Fehldeutungen. Der Rinderwahnsinn bezieht sich im deutschen Kulturzusammenhang auf eine durch die Medien und durch die übertriebenen Reaktionen des Staates hochgeputschte Volkspanik über den Terrorismus. In Stammheim vergessen. Deutschlands Aufbruch und die RAF beschreibt Oliver Tolmein die RAF-Nachfolgegruppen der neunziger Jahre als ‘Farce’ und sieht in der sturen Weigerung der Behörden, auf die Deeskalierungsangebote und -bestrebungen der RAF-Restgruppen zu reagieren, ‘das ungebrochene Geltungsbedürfnis des deutschen Staates’ (Tolmein, 7). Der Buchdeckel von Rinderwahnsinn geht satirisch auf diese übertriebenen Reaktionen ein, indem er das inzwischen kommodifizierte Markenzeichen des roten RAF-Sterns mit schwarzer Kalaschnikov verwendet, um den Leser absichtlich irrezuleiten und ihn dazu zu bewegen über diesen Prozeß der Irreleitung zu reflektieren.17
16 17
Eine von Oliver Tolmein besonderes energisch angegriffene Tendenz: Stammheim vergessen, 54. Noch am 30. Mai 2001 brachte die Düsseldorfer Ausgabe der Bildzeitung neben einem Bild eines durch eine Rakete aufgerissenen Geldtransporters die Schlagzeile ‘Die Handschrift des Terrorpärchens?’ und das ihrer Leserschaft wie eine Warenmarke sofort bekannte Abbild des RAF-Sterns.
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Der Rinderwahn hat eine schrittweise Auflösung des Viehgehirns zur Folge. Die RAF war schon in ihren Anfangsstadien ein Irrweg – trotzdem sind ihm vernünftige Menschen jahrelang gefolgt. Die übertriebene Reaktion des Staates, der Medien und der Öffentlichkeit – auch der kritischen, linken – auf diesen Irrweg war selber eine Art Gehirnerweichung, ein Verlust der von Vernunft geleiteten gesellschaftlichen Einschätzungsfähigkeit.18 Kresniks Ulrike Meinhof zeigt trotz seiner postmodernen Mittel eher tradierte linke Zusammenhänge zwischen NS-Zeit, Wirtschaftswunder, Konsumhaltung und Populärkultur à la Heino und verdrängt dabei Meinhofs Texte zugunsten ihres zerschundenen Körpers. Dea Lohers Leviathan verleiht ihrer Meinhof-Figur im Sinne einer feministischen Kritik der linken patriarchalischen Bevormundung eine starke Stimme, tut dies aber in einem Stück, dessen formale Brechungen durch Chorszenen eine grundsätzlich traditionelle Figuren- und Handlungsstruktur nicht verbergen können: ein Schillersches Entscheidungsdrama um die Gewissenskonflikte einer Zentralfigur. John von Düffels Rinderwahnsinn widerstrebt postmodern den Ernsthaftigkeiten der linken Moderne und den Gegenreaktionen des Staates, der Medien, der Bevölkerung. Dabei läuft die Handlung trotz absurder Grundkonstellationen geschlossen wie in einer Gesellschaftsfarce ab. Es muß allerdings zweifelhaft bleiben, ob mit diesem Satyrspiel die Behandlung des Themas Deutscher Herbst als Trauerspiel der Deutschen tatsächlich ad acta gelegt werden kann.
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), 179–81. 18
Ein Werk wie Wolfgang Kraushaars 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur, die dem ‘Phantomschmerz RAF’ nur knappe 8 Seiten aus 350 widmet, bildet hier eine relativ seltene Ausnahme.
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Notes on Contributors
Gerrit-Jan Berendse is Professor of European Studies at Cardiff University, Wales. He recently edited, with Mark Williams, Terror and Text. Representing Political Violence in Literature and the Visual Arts (2002). Stefan Busch is currently Lecturer at Queen’s College, Oxford. He is the author of ‘Und gestern, da hörte uns Deutschland.’ NS-Autoren in der Bundesrepublik (1998). A book on the motif of blasphemous laughter in modern (predominantly German) literature is in preparation. Jerome Carroll is a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, working on the aesthetic theory of Wolfgang Welsch. He has published on Welsch and contemporary German drama. Ingo Cornils is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on romantic, utopian and fantastic thought, and he has published widely on the German Student Movement and German Science Fiction. Sabine Egger is Lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick and presently completing her doctorate on the poetry of J. Bobrowski and P. Huchel at the Humboldt University, Berlin. She has published on collective memory and identity in post-war German literature and on intercultural communication. Carmel Finnan is Lecturer in German at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Gustav Frank is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in German Studies at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on nineteenth-
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century German literature, and is currently working on National Socialist film. Steve Giles is Reader in German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. His recent publications include Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory. Marxism, Modernity and the ‘Threepenny’ Lawsuit (Peter Lang, 1997; 1998) and, co-edited with Rodney Livingstone, Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays (Rodopi, 1998). Malcolm Humble lectures in German at the University of St Andrews. He has published numerous articles, and (with Raymond Furness) A Companion to Twentieth-Century German Literature (1991; 1997) and Introduction to German Literature 1871–1900 (1994). Margarete Kohlenbach is Lecturer in German and European Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton. She has published on Goethe, German Romanticism, Georg Büchner, twentieth-century German and Austrian literature, and critical theory. Moray McGowan is Professor of German at Trinity College Dublin. He has published widely on post-war German literature and society. David Midgley is a University Senior Lecturer in German and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge University. He is the author of many articles on literary modernism, and of Writing Weimar. Critical Realism in German Literature 1918–1933 (2000). Maike Oergel is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen. National Myth in 19th-century England and Germany (1998) and articles and chapters on the construction of modern national identities, Romantic literary theory, Richard Wagner and Alfred Tennyson. Colin Riordan is Professor of German at Newcastle University.
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Nicholas Saul is Professor of German at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Poetry and History in Novalis and the German Enlightenment (1984) and ‘Prediger aus der neuen romantischen Clique’. Zur Interaktion von Romantik und Homiletik um 1800 (1999). He has also edited volumes on literature and science, threshold metaphors, and the body in German literature. Susan Tebbutt is Head of German Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. She is the editor of Sinti and Roma (1998) and has published numerous articles on the Romanies. She is presently completing a monograph on ‘Gypsies and Genocide’. Uwe Schütte is a Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Aston, Birmingham. His research interests include twentieth-century Austrian literature, contemporary German fiction, popular culture, and the history of socialism. Jamie Trnka is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at Cornell University. Her work focuses on representations of violence in Germany, Central America, and Mexico. Matthias Uecker is Senior Lecturer in German at The Queen’s University of Belfast. He has published extensively on twentiethcentury German literature and media, including Anti-Fernsehen? Alexander Kluges Fernsehproduktionen (2000). He is the co-editor of Berlin–Wien–Prag. Moderne, Minderheiten und Migration in der Zwischenkriegszeit (2001). Carl Weber is Professor of Directing and Dramaturgy at Stanford University. He has published numerous essays on Brecht, and edited and translated several volumes of works by Heiner Müller, most recently A Heiner Müller Reader (Johns Hopkins, 2001).
