German Orientalisms

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German Orientalisms

THE UNIVERSITY Or MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2004
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
O Printed on acid-free paper
2007 2006 2005 2004
4 3 2 I
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or
otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kontje, Todd Curtis, 1954-
German orientalisms / Todd Kontje.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0o-472-II392-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. German literature-History and criticism. 2. Orientalism in
literature. 3. Orientalism-Germany. I. Title.
PTI49.A2K66 2004
830.9'325-dc22
2003024638
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2004 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ P rinted on acid-iree paper 2007
2000
2005
200 4
4
2
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any torm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP wtalog record for this book is availableJi·om the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Konge, Todd Curtis, 1954German orientalisms I Todd Kontje. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISilN 0 -472-11392- 5 (cloth: alk. paper) I. German literature-HistOly and criticism. 2. Orientalism in literature. 3. Orientalism- Germany. I. Title. PT 149.i\2K66
83o.32s-
2004
dc22
By a strange coincidence, this book was accepted for publication on
March 21, 2003, at the very moment that the United States unleashed
the full force of a bombing campaign on Baghdad designed to inspire
"shock and awe" within the Iraqi regime. Picking up where his father
left off, President George W. Bush launched what some might view as
the latest Western "crusade" against the East, continuing a venerable
tradition that extends back into the Middle Ages.This time it was dif-
ferent, however: President Bush's repeated references to a "Coalition
of the Willing" allied to defeat Saddam Hussein could not hide the
fact that the United States and Britain entered the war without the
support of the United Nations and against the express will of some of
its closest allies, including France, Russia, and Germany.
This recent diplomatic rift reminds us that "the West" does not
exist today as a single, monolithic block, and, indeed, it has rarely done
so in the past. By the same token, the Orientalism that Edward Said
famously defined as a form of Western knowledge and power over
the East must also be understood in a more nuanced way that allows
for historical and national differences. This book is about the pecu-
liarities of one such national tradition. I look at various manifestations
of Orientalism in German literature from the Middle Ages to the
present, or, more precisely, I consider multiple German Orientalisms in
their distinction from one another and in their contribution to the
construction of the identity of a nation poised between western
Europe and the East.
My book grows out of recent work on colonialism and German lit-
vi Preface
erature, current interest in minority literature in Germany and other
contemporary European nations, and the transformation of Germani-
stik into German Studies as part of a broader trend toward globalizing
literary studies and rethinking the role of national cultures in a post-
national world. Rather than continuing the important work of those
who focus on the "margins" of contemporary German culture, how-
ever, German Orientalisms takes seriously the need to revisit the "core"
of the national literature-not as a nostalgic reaction to contemporary
trends but because of recent developments in literary production, cul-
tural theory, and contemporary politics. The book explores the ideo-
logical function of German literature in the shaping of a national
identity and vindicates the power of the literary imagination.
I would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foun-
dation and the National Endowment of the Humanities for their sup-
port during the 2001-2 academic year.Thanks also to the Council for
Research in the Humanities at the University of California, San
Diego, which supported earlier trips to Gottingen and Berlin. I was
privileged to present portions of my work in progress at the Univer-
sity of California, Irvine; Weissenfels, Germany; Oberlin College;Yale
University; and the University of California, Berkeley. My thanks to
these institutions and also to Neil Donahue, Jens Rieckman, Hans-
Peter Soeder, Heidi Thomann Tewarson, Steven Huff, and W. Daniel
Wilson for their work in arranging these visits.Arthur Groos, Douglas
McGetchin, William Arctander O'Brien, Laurel Plapp, John Smith,
Robert Tobin, and Lynne Tatlock are among the many individuals
who provided support and encouragement in various ways; my
thanks to them and my apologies to those I have momentarily for-
gotten. An earlier version of the section on Botho Straul3 in chapter
3 was published as "Botho StrauB"Der junge Mann': Cultural Mem-
ory, National Identity, and the East," in Signaturen der Gegenwartsliter-
atur: Festschrift fir Walter Hinderer, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, 141-53
(Wiirzburg: Konigshausen und Neumann, 1999). I am grateful for
permission to reprint portions of this article here.
Special thanks are due to Lisa Lowe, John A. McCarthy, and Jeffrey
Sammons for their unflagging support; without their help I would
never have gotten the grants that enabled me to complete the project.
Preface vii
I am grateful to Christopher J. Collins for his willingness to pursue
the project for the University of Michigan Press, as well as to Sara
Friedrichsmeyer and David Luft, who both read the entire manuscript
and offered invaluable suggestions for improvement. I also very much
appreciate the warm support of an anonymous reader who recom-
mended publication of my work and regret only that I cannot express
my thanks more directly. Sadly, Susanne Zantop did not live to see the
completion of the project she both helped to inspire and so graciously
supported with letters and advice. I dedicate the book to her memory
and to my family, who helped me in many ways to write the book but
who continually remind me that other things are more important.

Contents
Introduction: The Location of German Literature
I
1. Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation
15
Wolfram's Parzival and the Making of Europe
15
Early Modern Nationalism and the Ottoman Empire
32
Baroque Orientalisms: Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus
and Lohenstein's Arminius
39
2. Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire
61
Herder's Historicism
64
Novalis: A Provincial Cosmopolitan
83
The Bildung of the German Nation
o101
Linguistic Nationalism and the East
105
Inventing Germanistik and Making Wolfram German
III
Goethe's Orientalism: Between Essence and Irony
118
3. Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents
133
Mann, Baeumler, and Bachofen: The Dark Side
of Romanticism
133
Tiptoeing toward Democracy: Mann's Sexual Politics 138
Symbolic Geographies on the Magic Mountain
146
Botho Strau3: Apocalypse Now
162
x Contents
4. The Nearest East
Germany's Eastern Frontier
177
177
Teutonic Knights, Prussian Patriots, Nazi Ideologues 18 I
Eichendorff's Christian Soldiers
188
At Home on the Border: Heimat, Nation, and
Empire in Freytag's Poetic Realism
196
Giinter Grass and the Literature of Migration
209
Conclusion: Toward a "Bastard" Literature?
225
Ozdamar's Hybrid Heroines
228
Michael Roes's Postmodern Orientalism
23 I
Coda: Literature in an Age of Cultural Studies
237
Notes
245
Works Cited
277
Primary Literature
277
Secondary Literature
283
Index
305
Introduction: The Location
of German Literature
This book is about the role of symbolic geography in German litera-
ture. I focus on the canon, that is, on authors and texts that have been
considered typically, representatively, quintessentially "German."
German Orientalisms is therefore a book about German national iden-
tity as reflected in and constructed by major works of German litera-
ture. Much has been said about the role of history in narratives of
national identity, about the need on the part of "imagined commu-
nities" to "invent traditions" that forge bonds between present and
past.' "Who are we?" prompts the question "Who were we?" and, in
turn, "How did we become what we are today?" Equally important
to a sense of national identity, however, is the understanding of geo-
graphical location that arises in response to such questions as "Where
are we?" "How did we get here?" "How do we define our position
with regard to our immediate neighbors?" "How do we relate to the
rest of the world?" Such questions can of course be answered factu-
ally, with references to maps and borders, latitude and longitude.
Geographic locations also have symbolic connotations, however. It is
one thing to say that Germany lies in central Europe and another
when Thomas Mann says that Germany is "das Land der Mitte" (the
land of the center) that must find a balance between Western ratio-
nalism and Eastern mysticism. Geography, at least as it is convention-
ally understood, dwells in the realm of facts; symbolic geography, in
contrast, is the province of the literary imagination.
My primary focus is on the role of the East in the symbolic land-
2 German Orientalisms
scape of German literature. As such, my work contributes to the
study of European Orientalism, but with a concentration on the
peculiarities of one national tradition. Edward Said defines Oriental-
ism in its most specific sense as an academic discipline devoted to cul-
tures from the Middle East to India.2 In fact, the deciphering of East-
ern languages and literatures by a handful of scholars in the late
eighteenth century had such a profound impact on the European
imagination that Raymond Schwab has written of an "Oriental
Renaissance" that rivaled the significance of the rediscovery of classi-
cal antiquity during the early modern period.3 The Orientalism that
arose in the late eighteenth century was not entirely innocent, how-
ever, for attempts to understand the East arose together with Euro-
pean imperialism and colonialism. Hence Said describes Orientalism
"as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having author-
ity over the Orient" (3), that is, as a form of knowledge that is
directly linked to the exercise of power.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Said concentrates primarily on British
and French Orientalists, as those two nations also had direct colonial
interests in the East. Germany was different: "there was nothing in
Germany to correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the
Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost
exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the
subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual,
the way Egypt and Syria were actual for Chateaubriand, Lane,
Lamartine, Burton, Disraeli, or Nerval." Hence Said concludes that
"at no time in German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the
nineteenth century could a close partnership
have developed
between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained national interest in
the Orient" (19). If by national interest Said means a direct material
stake in foreign colonies in the East, he is certainly correct: Germany
not only had no official colonial policy until 1884, but "Germany"
itself did not exist as a unified nation-state until 1871.4 If, however,
we define national interest more broadly as an intellectual effort to
locate and preserve a sense of communal identity, then we can indeed
speak of a German national interest in the East. In fact, the very lack
of a unified nation-state and the absence of empire contributed to the
development of a peculiarly German Orientalism. German writers
Introduction 3
oscillated between identifying their country with the rest of Europe
against the Orient and allying themselves with selected parts of the
East against the West.
In the first case, Germans were motivated by an urgent desire to
overcome their proverbial belatedness and to join ranks with other
European nations as they set out to conquer the world. Scarcely a
decade after Bismarck had united Germany through three quick
wars, the new nation embarked on an aggressive policy of colonial
expansion that culminated in the Griff nach der Weltmacht (grasp for
world power) in the First World War, and the quest for more
Lebensraum in the Second.5 Yet German aggression toward the East
did not begin ex nihilo on April 24, 1884, the so-called birthday of
German colonialism. Germans had participated in the first Crusade
against Muslim "infidels" that began in 1o95; in the later Middle Ages
the Teutonic Knights turned their attention toward the heathen
"Saracens" of eastern Europe; and German soldiers and writers from
Luther to Lohenstein waged a series of campaigns against the
Ottoman Turks.
Not all German encounters with the world beyond western
Europe took place on the battlefield. During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, for instance, the Germans could not compete
with the imperial ambitions of other European nations, but they did
participate individually in the exploration of the world, and collec-
tively in the resulting expanded intellectual horizons. Travelogues
from Adam Olearius's Moskowitische und Persische Reise [Journey to
Moscow and Persia] (1633-39) to Georg Forster's Reise um die Welt
[Journey around the world] (1778-80) piqued the curiosity of Ger-
man readers and catered to their taste for exotic adventures of the sort
depicted in Robinson Crusoe (1718), Gulliver's Travels (1726), Die Insel
Felsenburg (1731 -43), and Candide (1759). Eighteenth-century schol-
ars set out to organize the profusion of plants and animals in the
newly discovered lands into scientific categories, cartographers pro-
duced increasingly precise maps, and ethnographers described the
appearance and customs of the various peoples they encountered.
As European scholars became increasingly aware of human diver-
sity, they also became preoccupied with questions of racial differ-
ence.6 Here, too, German intellectuals contributed actively to the
4 German Orientalisms
scholarly discourse. In Gottingen, for instance, Johann Friedrich Blu-
menbach wrote a treatise entitled De generis humani varietate nativa
[On the natural differences in the human race] (1775) that distin-
guishes on the basis of skin color and skull shape between five differ-
ent racial types; his colleague Christoph Meiners divided people into
only two broad categories, Caucasian and Mongolian. Immanuel
Kant, for his part, opted for four different races: white European,
black African, yellow Asian, and copper-red American Indian.7 Such
categories were hardly neutral. Christoph Meiners, to take a particu-
larly crass example, declared that only whites could be considered
beautiful. In his view, dark-skinned peoples are not only ugly, but
also stupid and vicious.8 Hence he excuses even the harshest treat-
ment of such peoples by their colonial masters as a necessary evil:
"Unlimited violence is often necessary and also beneficial when bet-
ter men exercise it against the less noble. For, unfortunately, there are
not only individuals, but entire peoples who cannot be moved of
their own accord toward virtue, but who need/want to be forced
[sondern gezwungen seyn wollen]."9 Isaac Iselin, for his part, writes that
the peoples of Asia had grown so used to despotism that the Euro-
peans actually did them a favor by taking control: "It was a genuine
good fortune for these nations to be conquered, oppressed, and
devoured."'°
In the course of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment effort
to classify nature and human beings on a static grid yielded to a
dynamic model of organic development, a process that Foucault
described as "the mutation of Order into History."" While ethnog-
raphers and anthropologists produced synchronic accounts of existing
world cultures, universal historians wrote diachronic narratives that
led from the distant past to the present. Increasingly, writers broke
with biblical authority in their effort to locate the beginnings of
human civilization, looking beyond the ancient Holy Lands and far-
ther to the East: to the Caucasus and even India. In his Essai sur les
moeurs et l'esprit des nations [Essay on the manners and customs of
nations] (1756), for instance, Voltaire maintained that Western cul-
ture owes everything to the Orient, the "cradle of all the arts,"'2 and
he speculated in his Philosophie de l'histoire [Philosophy of history]
(1766) that "the Indians toward the Ganges are, perhaps, the men
Introduction 5
who were the most anciently united into a body of people."'3 Ger-
mans quickly joined the debate. Isaac Iselin, Johann Christoph Gat-
terer, and Christian Ernst Wiinsch agreed that human beings arose
somewhere in Asia, while Johann Friedrich Blumenbach located the
point of origin more precisely in the Caucasus.14
Race played a central role in such narratives of universal history. If
all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve, philosophers
wondered, how can one account for current differences between
peoples? Were there in fact multiple ancestors of different races from
which modern peoples descended, a polygenetic theory to which
Voltaire subscribed, or did certain branches of the originally white
human race degenerate into inferior blacks and Mongols, as Blumen-
bach contended?'5 Others wondered how Europeans had ascended
to what they assumed was their position of racial and cultural superi-
ority. Hence ethnography soon combined with universal history, and
Germans joined other Europeans in the effort to trace the cultural
development that had made them not only different from the rest of
the world, but also-as most believed-better.'6
By participating in the intellectual project of Orientalism, Germans
sought to overcome their sense of cultural and political subordination
to other European powers, suggesting that although they had neither
nation nor empire, they nevertheless belonged to modern European
civilization. On one level there is an obvious difference between
plunging one's sword into the sand of an island one claims for Britain
or Spain (or into the body of an unfortunate "native" who gets in the
way), and dipping one's quill into an inkpot in Gottingen or Weimar
to begin writing an anthropological treatise or a work of universal
history. On another level, however, the two are not completely
unrelated: as Mary Louise Pratt has argued, the seemingly neutral
effort of Europeans to organize their understanding of the world was
also part of an effort to control and exploit natural resources and for-
eign peoples. Hence she distinguishes between violent conquest and
what she terms anticonquest: "the strategies of representation whereby
European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the
same moment as they assert European hegemony."'7 Categorizing
individuals and peoples as racial inferiors obviously makes things eas-
ier for the consciences of those who seek to conquer or colonize
6 German Orientalisms
them, as do narratives of universal history that culminate in the tri-
umph of European civilization. "It is impossible, in other words,"
write Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for instance, "not to link
both Hegel's philosophical recuperation of the Other within absolute
Spirit and his universal history leading from lesser peoples to its sum-
mit in Europe together with the very real violence of European con-
quest and colonialism."'8 Dipesh Chakrabarty puts it more suc-
cinctly: "Historicism enabled European domination of the world in
the nineteenth century."'9
Thus, to a certain extent, Germany's intellectual participation in
European Orientalism compensated for its inability to be a real player
on the international scene. The German intellectuals succeeded so
well, in fact, that postcolonial theorists routinely employ German
thinkers such as Hegel as spokesmen for a monolithic European
imperialism.20 Yet the history of European imperialism is also a his-
tory of intra-European conflict writ large.2' If we look more closely
at Hegel's Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte [Lectures on
the philosophy of history] (1821-31; 1837), for instance, we find that
in his mind, at least, there is a clear distinction between Germany and
other European nations. In considering the early modern period,
Hegel notes that the Germans did not participate in the beginnings of
European imperialism: "while the rest of the world set out for the
East Indies, America--set out to win riches, to establish world dom-
inance over lands that circle the earth,"22 the Germans, led by Luther,
liberated themselves from the authority of the Catholic Church by
basing faith on the individual's relationship to God. Luther thereby
granted the individual unprecedented autonomy in a way that was
particularly suited to the German national character: "The pure
inwardness [reine Innigkeit] of the German nation was the proper
ground for the liberation of the spirit" (563). The German capacity
for spiritual freedom more than compensates for Germany's failure to
join the rest of Europe seeking world domination. In a logic we will
encounter frequently among German writers of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the absence of empire becomes a source of
moral strength and national pride.23
In an effort to distinguish more precisely between the German
intellectual tradition and those of Britain and France, it is useful to
Introduction 7
recall Norbert Elias's discussion of "the difference between Kultur
and Zivilisation in German usage."24 Today the concepts are often
taken to be roughly synonymous, with culture and civilization stand-
ing together against primitivism and barbarism, but the terms
emerged in quite different social contexts in the eighteenth century.
British and French civilization developed in the court societies of
centralized nation-states, whereas the German concept of Kultur
arose among politically disenfranchised middle-class intellectuals scat-
tered throughout the German-speaking provinces. In
France,
upwardly mobile individuals could penetrate the circles of the ruling
elite, whereas in Germany, class distinctions remained rigid. Isolated
bourgeois intellectuals focused instead on their inner personal devel-
opment or Bildung. Most important, civilization was made for export,
while Kultur was an indigenous product for local consumption only.
"To a certain extent, the concept of civilization plays down the
national differences between peoples; it emphasizes what is common
to all human beings or-in the view of its bearers-should be" (5).
The process of civilization sends a democratizing message to the rest
of the world: anyone can become a member of civilized society if he
or she is willing to accept certain universal values. At the same time,
of course, such serene self-confidence in one's own higher civiliza-
tion could be used to legitimate French and British imperialism.
Once "nations consider the process of civilization as completed within
their own societies," as Elias puts it, "they see themselves as bearers
of an existing or finished civilization to others, as standard-bearers of
expanding civilization" (4i). While civilization thus "expresses the
self-assurance of peoples whose national boundaries and national
identity have for centuries been so fully established that they have
ceased to be the subject of any particular discussion," Elias continues,
"the German concept of Kultur places special stress on national dif-
ference and the particular identity of groups." Civilization expands;
"Kultur delimits" (5). German notions of national identity became
based on exclusionary concepts of ethnicity and historical ties to the
homeland rather than abstract ideas potentially open to anyone, any-
where.25
From a German perspective around 18oo, therefore, the notion of
an imperialist Kultur would seem to be a contradiction in terms: Kul-
8 German Orientalisms
tur is by nature delimiting, exclusionary, and thus implicitly anti-
imperial and anticolonial. One can bring the benefits of civilization
to non-European peoples-or impose civilization on them by
force- but one cannot turn "natives" into Germans. Or can one?
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German ethnographers,
historians, and linguists began to view themselves as the direct
descendants of an "Aryan" culture originating in the Caucasus or in
the mountains of northern India, as distinguished from the Semitic
culture of the Middle East.26 From this perspective, the Germans had
no need to conquer and colonize eastern lands, for they were already
part of a greater Indo-European whole. The politically fragmented
Germans could thus adopt a high moral ground in condemning the
violent conquests of other colonizing nations, while quietly absorb-
ing selected portions of the Middle East and Central Asia into a pan-
German Kultur.
German Orientalism thus oscillates between a compensatory Euro-
centrism and an anti-Western, anti-Semitic Indo-Germanicism. Seen
from this perspective, the Germans are doubly damned: in the first
instance they turn belatedness into an excuse for self-righteousness
even as they participate in the intellectual project of European Ori-
entalism and look forward to the day when they, too, can claim their
place in the sun; the second lays the groundwork for a theory of Ger-
manic racial superiority that led to Hitler and the Holocaust. In other
words, German Orientalism was directed both outward and inward,
motivated by a desire to conquer as much of Europe and the rest of
the world as possible and to eliminate racial "inferiors" within the
homeland.27 Informed by an Aryan model of ancient history that was
"conceived in sin," as Martin Bernal puts it,28 in a world where every
European, "in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently
a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric," to quote
Said,29 the Germans were more equal than others, it would seem, and
the biggest sinners of them all.
Such arguments gain force because they lack nuance. Daniel Gold-
hagen won international notoriety in the 1990s with a similarly
sweeping argument that claimed that all, or almost all, "ordinary Ger-
mans" hated Jews to the point that they were willing and even eager
to contribute to their complete elimination.30 In a world in which
Introduction 9
neo-Nazi extremists continue to deny the existence of the Holocaust
and younger generations grow up with little sense of history, it is vital
that the story of twentieth-century German barbarism be told and
retold, and in this regard Goldhagen's book served a useful purpose.
Yet blanket denunciations of an entire people inadvertently exoner-
ate the individuals who perpetrated particular crimes, while ignoring
those, however few, who resisted.3' As Peter Schneider has argued,
remembering the "good Germans" does not necessarily play into the
hands of apologists who would turn ordinary Germans into Hitler's
victims; in fact, he claims, remembering those who chose to hide
Jews from the Nazis in Berlin actually highlights the guilt of those
who did not.32 Recent studies of nineteenth-century German colo-
nialism have similarly advocated a more variegated approach to the
past. Without ever losing sight of the suffering and injustice perpe-
trated by European imperialists on the rest of the world, Russell
Berman has argued that the German intellectual tradition also con-
tains moments of genuine openness to foreign cultures and significant
cross-cultural exchange.33 Susanne Zantop also warned against read-
ing history as a reductive teleology.34 While concentrating for the
most part on the negative consequences of German "colonial fan-
tasies," she found pockets of resistance in literary works by Kleist,
Heine, and Keller. One of the most interesting aspects of her work,
in fact, is the way in which it vindicates canonical works of German
literature even as it condemns racism, sexism, and xenophobia in
popular fiction and also in nonfictional texts.
Many of the authors I examine in this book display similar resis-
tance to ideological straitjacketing. The works of Wolfram von
Eschenbach reveal a sense of humor and tolerance toward the foreign
that contrasts markedly with both the majority of his more dogmatic
contemporaries and such nineteenth-century admirers as Richard
Wagner. Lohenstein's dramas demonize the sultans of the Ottoman
Empire, but his historical novel Arminius offers a multifaceted image
of the Orient that indirectly illuminates the complexities of local
dynastic politics and nascent nationalism in seventeenth-century
Europe. While often implicated in Eurocentric thought, Herder
appreciates cultural difference to a far greater degree than his openly
racist contemporaries. Novalis may seem a reactionary Romantic at
10 German Orientalisms
first glance, but he is actually a revolutionary republican and cos-
mopolitan visionary. Goethe sternly resists political liberalism and
bandies about Orientalist cliches but also criticizes the excesses of
German nationalism and envisions a future Weltliteratur. Thomas
Mann, recently converted from antidemocratic conservatism to sup-
port of the Weimar Republic, attempts in his works of the 1920s to
recapture elements of Romanticism that have been hijacked by the
protofascist right. Although accused at various times (and with vary-
ing degrees ofjustification) of pornography, misogyny, and Eurocen-
trism, Giinter Grass has consistently opposed German revanchist sen-
timents toward Poland and sought to rethink the place of Germany
and Europe in an era of globalization, mass migrations, and ecologi-
cal change. Michael Roes, finally, writes a postmodern travelogue
that combines the autobiographical and ethnographical reflections of
two sympathetic narrators who display a degree of openness toward
the foreign and critical distance toward their own German back-
grounds that distinguishes them from their more bigoted traveling
companions and fellow anthropologists.
While acknowledging the centrality of the "long" nineteenth cen-
tury to the study of European imperialism and German Orientalism,
my work begins earlier and extends to include several contemporary
writers. A sense of belonging to a common Christian culture began
to emerge among Europeans already during the Middle Ages, in part
through contacts with the East during the Crusades, while particular
national identities within Europe began to coalesce during the early
modern period in opposition to the Ottoman Empire as well as to
each other. Hence I begin my study not with Herder's historicism,
but, rather, with a look at cross-cultural contacts in Wolfram von
Eschenbach's Parzival and images of the East in the Baroque novels of
Grimmelshausen and Lohenstein. Subsequent chapters are arranged
in roughly chronological order, although I have at times interrupted
historical continuity for the sake of thematic coherence. Thus chap-
ter 3 views Thomas Mann's work in the context of a tradition of
German conservative thought that extends from the Heidelberg
Romantics of the early nineteenth century to the neoconservativism
of Botho Straul3. Chapter 4, in turn, focuses on German encounters
with the "Nearest East" of eastern Europe, a theme that recurs from
Introduction 11
the medieval Teutonic Knights through the nineteenth-century Pol-
ish-Prussian border tensions reflected in the work of Eichendorff and
Freytag to the most recent fiction of Giinter Grass. I conclude with a
brief look at novels by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar and Michael Roes that
engage with but also modify a long tradition of German Orientalism.
These contemporary German authors write at a time when
national identities have begun to unravel in the post-Cold War era of
"Empire."35 Borders between Germany and other members of the
European Union have grown increasingly porous, a process symbol-
ized most dramatically by the adoption of a common currency in Jan-
uary 2002. As Europe has grown increasingly united within, new
tensions have arisen on its borders. The immense discrepancy in
wealth between Europe and its neighbors to the south and east has
attracted millions of political and economic refugees, while declining
birth rates and an aging population within Europe have created a
pressing demand for foreign labor. To many observers it seems
inevitable that Europe will have to absorb unprecedented numbers of
immigrants, resulting in a new multicultural society. In response to
this perceived threat, conservative politicians across Europe have
won new support for anti-immigration policies designed to stem the
tide of undesirable aliens, breathing new life into old Orientalist
stereotypes. From a still larger perspective, however, "Fortress
Europe" finds itself besieged by global pressures from both East and
West. An American-led process of globalization threatens to swamp
European culture under a sea of fast food and Hollywood movies;
national economies have become deeply enmeshed in a web of
transnational capitalism; and the members of the European Union
have come under pressure to provide tactical and military support for
the foreign policy initiatives of the United States. While occasionally
chafing in their role as unequal partners of a Western alliance, Euro-
pean nations have found themselves the target of a new "Occidental-
ism," that is, a hatred of modern Western society that has spawned a
new Islamic fundamentalism and a campaign of global terror.36
Despite claims to the contrary, however, nations have not entirely
disappeared, and some have argued that the persistence of nationalism
is a good thing. Recalling the origins of the nation-state in eigh-
teenth-century liberalism, Gregory Jusdanis reminds us that nations
12 German Orientalisms
often served progressive causes in the past, while today's separatist
movements enlist nationalist sentiments in their effort to resist the
homogenizing forces of globalization.37 The history of German
nationalism in the twentieth century has left a rather different legacy
to the present, however. In an often noted irony of history, the open-
ing of the Berlin Wall on the evening of November 9, 1989, not only
spelled the end of a repressive regime in the East, but also recalled
Hitler's abortive beer-hall putsch of November 9, 1922, and the
Reichspogromnacht or Kristallnacht of November 9, 1938. Hence
what might have been unmitigated joy at Reunification in 1990 was
tempered by memories of the past, memories that have repeatedly
thwarted attempts in recent decades to declare that Germany should
finally be considered a "normal" nation. The implication of German
Orientalism in the Aryanism of the Third Reich also casts its shadow
over contemporary debates about immigration and the status of for-
eigners in Germany. Are today's Turks yesterday's Jews?
Because Orientalism has more to do with Western ideology than
Eastern geography, the actual location of "the Orient" matters less
than the consistency of a certain Orientalizing discourse. Hence this
book is not another study of Germany's relations with one particular
country or region.3s At various times the Orient will be identified
with the Holy Lands of the Crusades, the Ottoman Empire of the
early modern period, India for the Romantics, and even eastern
Europe for Eichendorff, Freytag, Mann, and Grass. As the Orient
functions differently across time and within the works of individual
authors, I prefer to speak of German Orientalisms rather than a single
German Orientalism. It would be tedious to place "the Orient" in
quotations throughout the book, so I do not, but it should be under-
stood that the phrase refers more to an ideological construct than to
an actual place.
In the texts I examine, relations between Germany, Europe, and
the East are often depicted in terms of gender or sexuality.39 During
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, colonial
encounters often take the form of love affairs between European men
and non-European women. The frequently retold tale of "Inkle and
Yarico" centers on a shipwrecked British sailor who falls in love with
an Indian maiden on a desert island in the Caribbean. At the first
Introduction 13
opportunity, however, this treacherous individual sells his pregnant
lover into slavery to finance his journey back home.4° On the surface,
the sentimental narrative condemns Inkle's actions and the institution
of slavery he supports. At the same time, however, this story (and
many others like it) contains a subliminal message about the white
man's irresistible appeal that implicitly legitimates the European con-
quest.4' Heinrich von Kleist's novella Die Verlobung in Santa Domingo
[The betrothal in Santa Domingo] (1811i) offers a particularly subtle
reworking of this theme.42 These tales of interracial love during the
"Age of Empire" are variants of a much longer Orientalist tradition
in German literature that extends from the cross-cultural romances of
the so-called Spielmannsepen of the late twelfth century and Gah-
muret's adventures in the first books of Wolfram von Eschenbach's
Parzival through romantic interludes in Lohenstein's Baroque novel
Arminius to sexual encounters between German men and Middle
Eastern women in Botho Straul3's Derjunge Mann.
The homophobic counterpart to these heterosexual romances por-
trays Oriental despots as debauched hermaphrodites-Lohenstein's
lurid dramas-and eastern armies as effeminate hordes that threaten
family values and inspire German men to rise up and stand firm
against the foreign floods. Such appeals to manly German virtue recur
from Ulrich von Hutten's anti-Turkish polemics of the 1520s to the
protofascist ideology of Hans Bliiher and the members of the German
Freikorps in the aftermath of the First World War.43 A variant to this
theme portrays Germany favorably as the feminine or androgynous
alternative to the hypermasculine imperialism of western European
nations. Adam Miiller, for instance, praises Germany's feminine
receptivity to Eastern influence in contrast to the manly aggression of
its European counterparts; Thomas Mann's protagonist Hans Castorp
will proudly proclaim that he is not the sort of man who would
engage in duels over women, and perhaps not a man at all-at least
not in any traditional sense; the homosexual protagonist of Michael
Roes's Leeres Viertel, finally, gradually distances himself from his het-
erosexual companions and his European origins as he explores alter-
native performances of masculinity on the edge of the Arabian desert.
I focus on fictional texts that make use of the Orient in their effort
to define what is German. Hence I am more interested in narratives
14 German Orientalisms
set in the West that make reference to the East than nonfictional trav-
elogues or fictions set entirely in the East; more interested, for
instance, in Lohenstein's Arminius than Olearius's Moskowitische Reise,
in Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg than in his Joseph novels or Her-
mann Hesse's Siddhartha. Although I discuss a broad historical range
of texts and many different authors, I make no attempt to offer a
comprehensive survey of all references to the Orient in German lit-
erature, which would in any case be impossible.44 In an effort to focus
the discussion in a meaningful way, I have selected authors and texts
deemed central to the German national literature. But how and when
were certain authors and texts selected to represent their national cul-
ture? In addition to discussing the symbolic geography of the literary
works themselves, I will also consider the place of literature in the
nineteenth-century institution of criticism known as Germanistik and
conclude with some reflections on the location of literature in con-
temporary German Studies. I am interested, in other words, in the
state of the discipline today, the history of the discipline in the past,
and the place of literature in both, or, as they say in the real estate
business, location, location, location.
CHAPTER ONE
Crusaders, Infidels, and the
Birth of a Nation
WOLFRAM'S PARZIVAL AND THE MAKING
OF EUROPE
Before modern European nations came into being, Europe itself had
to be invented. Between the years 950 and 1350, as Robert Bartlett
has argued, members of local communities scattered throughout
Europe began to think of themselves as belonging to a common
Christian European culture. Examining such developments as popu-
lation growth, changes in military and agricultural technology, com-
mercial expansion, new international religious orders, and new uni-
versities, Bartlett shows how European society gained greater internal
cohesiveness while expanding outward toward more sharply drawn
boundaries between itself and the rest of the world. Christian Euro-
peans rallied to Crusades against infidels abroad and pogroms against
the Jews at home. Bartlett views the expansion of medieval Christian
culture as an early form of colonialism and finds in the later Middle
Ages the seeds of modern racism. Hence he concludes that the
"European Christians who sailed to the coasts of the Americas, Asia,
and Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries came from a soci-
ety that was already a colonizing society. Europe, the initiator of one
of the world's major processes of conquest, colonization, and cultural
transformation, was also the product of one."'
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (ca. I200-I210) provides a
particularly subtle commentary on the process of the "Europeaniza-
15
16 German Orientalisms
tion of Europe" in the High Middle Ages.2 Despite his claims to the
contrary, Wolfram clearly based his work on Chretien de Troyes's
Perceval (ca. I I80-90).3 In three significant ways, however, Wolfram
expands on his source: he adds a lengthy preface about Parzival's
father, Gahmuret; he concludes Chretien's fragment with a reconcil-
iation between Parzival and his half-brother Feirefiz; and he intro-
duces what is probably a fictional source for his romance composed
by "Kyot." Each of Wolfram's additions brings his romance into
closer proximity with the non-Christian world: Gahmuret marries,
impregnates, and then abandons the black heathen queen Belakane;
she gives birth to the piebald heathen Feirefiz who eventually con-
verts to Christianity; and the Provengal Kyot gets his tale from a cer-
tain Flegetanis in Jerusalem whose mother was Jewish and whose
father was heathen (presumably Muslim).4 At the center of the
romance stands Parzival himself, who develops from an ignorant fool
into a faithful husband, a knight of the Round Table, and the king of
the Holy Grail. The story is thus Christian to the core, but one that
places the development of its Christian hero into world-historical
context, both geographically, as Wolfram explores the relation of
Christian Europe to its non-Christian neighbors to the south and
east, and chronologically, situating Parzival's Christianity between a
heathen past and an envisioned universal Christianity of the future.
By the time Wolfram began writing around 1200, Europeans had
been in contact with the Middle East for hundreds of years. In 777
Charlemagne received an Arabian emissary in Paderborn, and during
his reign he maintained cordial relations with Harun ar-Rashid, who
ruled over much of the Middle East and northern Africa.5 In the cen-
turies that followed, Europeans maintained some contact with the
East through trade and the occasional pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but
relations with the Orient entered into a dramatic new phase when
Pope Urban II announced the First Crusade in May o1095. Within
four years European knights had recaptured Jerusalem, marking the
beginning of a two-hundred-year period of intense interaction
between Latin Christendom and the Islamic world.6
By definition the Crusades were hardly an exercise in cross-cul-
tural understanding. Crusaders enlisted in what they believed was a
just war against infidels, waged in the service of the true religion.
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 17
Forgiveness of sins was promised to all who joined the Christian
army, and those who died in battle could expect their crown in
heaven.7 As time passed and contacts with the East increased, how-
ever, the arrogance bred of ignorance yielded to a more nuanced
appreciation of Islamic culture. Crusaders who settled in the Latin
kingdom of Jerusalem began to "go native," adopting local customs
and learning the Arabic language.8 Saladin inspired admiration
among many Europeans for his chivalry and generosity. Contacts
with the Islamic world extended beyond the Crusader states as well,
most notably into Sicily and Spain. Many of the advances in science,
medicine, mathematics, and
philosophy associated with the
"Twelfth-Century Renaissance" came to the West from the East.9
Important works of Greek antiquity had been preserved only in Ara-
bic translations, and Islamic culture itself was in many ways more
advanced than the peasant societies of northern Europe. Although we
should be cautious to speak of religious tolerance in any modern
sense, the period around 1200 does seem open to at least some under-
standing and cultural exchange between East and West in a way that
contrasts with both earlier ignorance and the growing racism of the
later Middle Ages.'o
In German literature of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries
we find a sustained interest in the Orient and the Crusades. As in later
centuries, the East appealed to the European imagination as a fabu-
lous realm of untold riches and erotic adventures. The hero of Pfaffe
Lamprecht's Alexanderlied (ca. 1140-50), for example, tells of croco-
diles who ate his men in India, ferocious elephants, battles with
giants, and forests full of comely maidens. The eponymous hero of
Herzog Ernst (ca. I 18o) finds the immaculate marble streets of a
Mediterranean city at least as miraculous as the people he meets with
the heads of birds; he seems particularly impressed with the hot and
cold running water in the bathrooms. Good plumbing was no substi-
tute for the true religion, however, and authors of the period adopted
various strategies to address the relations between Christian Europe
and the non-Christian world, including propaganda, romance, and
theology.
The Song of Roland is the best-known example of a militant Chris-
tianity at war with heathendom. The story goes back to an actual bat-
18 German Orientalisms
tle of 778 in which Basque forces ambushed and destroyed Charle-
magne's rearguard army as it tried to retreat over the Pyrenees into
France. The historical event became the stuff of legend over the next
several hundred years, until it was written down in French early in
the twelfth century, shortly after the First Crusade." In approxi-
mately 1170 the German Konrad der Pfaffe (Conrad the Priest) com-
posed his own version of the tale, which he claims to have translated
from French into Latin, and then from Latin to German.'2 The plot
is much the same as in the original French, although the German ver-
sion is more than double the length. While the anonymous French
author plunges into the story in medias res, Konrad stresses the reli-
gious significance of the battle throughout his tale.'3 The lines are
clearly drawn between Christians and heathens, and Konrad's Kaiser
knows exactly what he wants to do: "destroy the heathens / spread
Christianity" [die haidenscaft zestoren, / di cristin gemeren].14 In
Konrad's world there is a seamless fit between military strategy and
religious purpose. His heroes receive absolution for their sins before
battle and will become martyrs if they die. If they win, their God
wins too, and the defeated heathens have only two choices: accept
baptism or die. Peaceful coexistence between the two religious cul-
tures is not an option.
Confrontation between East and West takes place primarily on the
personal level in the so-called Spielmannsepen, which often center on
a Christian hero in search of a heathen bride.'5 For example, Sanct
Oswald (ca. 1170) begins with the unmarried English King Oswald in
need of an heir. An angel tells him that he should journey abroad to
marry the heathen queen Pamige of Aron. After many adventures
Oswald does manage to abduct his bride and bring her back to En-
gland, converting Pamige's father and thousands of defeated infidels
along the way. As it turns out, the heathen Pamige already believes in
Christ and is eager to be baptized. In a second surprising turn of
events, God forbids the couple to consummate their marriage once
they are back in England, recommending that when they feel the
urge they should plunge themselves into buckets of ice water kept
conveniently close to the bed. Oswald, after all, becomes a saint,
although in preserving his chastity the author seems to forget that he
set out originally to sire an heir.
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 19
Orendel (ca. 1180-1200) follows a similar pattern: the hero sets out
from his native Trier to win a heathen bride who is also already
Christian in her heart. Many miraculous adventures follow, heathens
are baptized or slain by the thousands, and in the end Orendel gets his
bride. He, too, is forbidden by an angel to sleep with his wife, but all
turns out for the best-from the perspective of the faithful, at least
as they soon die and go to heaven. As noted earlier, these tales have
much in common with the interracial romances that were popular in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The medieval narratives also
demonstrate European superiority, and the authors of St. Oswald and
Orendel shed no tears for the infidels who get slaughtered along the
way. The heathen brides are not really heathen at all: they cannot
wait to marry a Christian and become baptized. In the end, both tales
are clearly more about salvation than sex: the hero wins his bride for
Christianity and forgoes the pleasures of the bedroom for his eternal
reward.
The anonymous Ezzolied presents a theological justification for the
Crusades based on a typological understanding of history.16 The orig-
inal version of Das Ezzolied actually predates the First Crusade; it was
probably composed shortly before Gunther von Bamberg left on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem in o1064. The second, longer version of the
poem dates from approximately 12O-3O.17 Das Ezzolied retells
Christian salvation history in condensed form, moving from Creation
to the Fall and the promise of Christ's return. Along the way the
author offers a good example of the interpretive strategy that enabled
Christians to reclaim the Old Testament as part of their own tradi-
tion: "The figural interpretation changed the Old Testament from a
book of laws and a history of the people of Israel into a series of
figures of Christ and the Redemption."I's For example, the author of
Das Ezzolied first narrates the story of the Passover and then com-
ments "That all had a spiritual meaning, / That refers to Christian
things" [Daz was allez geistlich, / daz bezeichnot christinlichiu
dinc].'9 The sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament prefigures Christ's
sacrifice in the New. His death frees us from the grasp of hell and
enables us to return to the paradise we once enjoyed in Eden, just as
the Israelites escaped Pharoah's grasp and returned to the Promised
Land. The journey will not be easy, for "our old enemy" blocks our
20 German Orientalisms
path, but our leader is strong and "with his help we will repossess the
land" [mit im besizze wir diu lant] (593). Figuratively speaking, the
author writes of the Christian's spiritual journey, yet the same passage
could easily be used quite literally to justify a Crusade to recapture the
Holy Lands. For the medieval imagination, the two in fact go hand
in hand: the events that take place in this world are partial revelations
of eternal truths. "Thus the figures are not only tentative; they are
also the tentative form of something eternal and timeless; they point
not only to the concrete future, but also to something that always has
been and always will be; they point to something which is in need of
interpretation, which will indeed be fulfilled in the concrete future,
but which is at all times present, fulfilled in God's providence, which
knows no difference of time."20
Thus German medieval literature before 1200 conceives of the
non-Christian world as an enemy to be overcome, a bride to be won,
and an ancient realm of partial revelation since superseded by Chris-
tian truth. Wolfram von Eschenbach draws on all three traditions in
his literary works, while modifying them in accordance with his own
convictions. Wolfram's distance from the militant Christianity of the
Song of Roland is most evident in Willehalm, his updated version of the
chanson de geste. Composed approximately between I215 and 1225,
the epic tells of the defeat of Willehalm's Christian army on the bat-
tlefield of Alischanz in 793, the hero's journey in search of military
allies, and the eventual Christian triumph over the Islamic forces.2I
Like Konrad der Pfaffe before him, Wolfram writes as a Christian
poet and repeatedly praises Christianity as the one true religion. Yet
Wolfram does not share his predecessor's ferocious hostility toward
the Islamic world. Willehalm's wife Giburc, herself a convert,
reminds her fellow Christians that all men were originally heathens,
and that not all heathens will be damned. As Christ was merciful to
his enemies, so we, too, should be merciful to our foes. Hence Wol-
fram condemns the indiscriminate killing of the defeated Muslims:
"Was it a sin to slaughter them like cattle? I deem it a great sin, for
they are God's handiwork, all two-and-seventy languages of them
that are His."22
Wolfram's recognition of the common humanity of Christians and
non-Christians arises not from indifference to matters of faith, but
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 21
from a tacit acknowledgment that the enemy forces share much com-
mon ground. Willehalm's wife was once married to the heathen
Tibalt and has only recently converted to Christianity. Willehalm
himself was once held captive among the Arabs, where he learned to
speak their language. He steals Tibalt's Islamic wife because Tibalt
once had an affair with the Christian queen. While Konrad portrays
the Christian victory over Islamic forces as inevitable and absolute,
Wolfram presents an image of Christianity under siege. Not twelve of
the seventy-two known languages are Christian, according to the
narrator, and the allied Muslim forces threaten not just southern
France but the entire Holy Roman Empire. While it would be
anachronistic to speak of Wolfram's tolerance of Islam, his work does
reflect a changing world in which Christians have greater knowledge
of non-Christian cultures, and where the eventual triumph of Chris-
tianity over its foes no longer seems certain. His decision to compose
a chanson de geste in the early thirteenth century was itself unusual in
an era of courtly romance.23 He writes in his introduction to the epic
that the material was introduced to him by his patron Herman of
Thuringia, suggesting that he was commissioned to write the work,
yet Willehalm also gave Wolfram the opportunity to continue
reflections on the relationship between Christian Europe and its non-
Christian neighbors that he had already developed with great subtlety
in Parzival (ca. I200-I210).
Wolfram begins his romance with the story of Parzival's father
Gahmuret. Unlike the fairy-tale world of the typical Arthurian
romance, Parzival begins in a real place (Anjou) and with a real prob-
lem: Gahmuret is a younger son, and according to the laws of pri-
mogeniture enforced in that part of France, his older brother Galoes
inherits everything when his father dies.24 Eager to test his prowess in
battle, Gahmuret seeks service under the most powerful man in the
world: the Baruch of Baghdad. That the Baruch happens to be a hea-
then does not seem to concern Gahmuret in the least. Whether or
not his decision would have bothered the Christian audience of Wol-
fram's romance is another question. Knights did in fact serve non-
Christian overlords in the Middle East at the time of the Crusades;
that Wolfram's hero should do the same is thus not implausible from
a historical perspective, but still curious within a Christian romance.25
22 German Orientalisms
Two factors seem to be at work. On the one hand, Wolfram detaches
the knightly ideal from religious conflict in Parzival. Whereas the
Christian soldiers of the Song of Roland fight primarily for their God,
Wolfram's chivalric heroes can excel in battle for the Baruch, as
knights of the Round Table, and as knights of the Holy Grail. The
chivalric code cuts across religious borders. On the other hand, Gah-
muret needs the money: he fights as a mercenary for the man in the
best position to pay him what he is worth.26 Thus he simultaneously
exemplifies a certain chivalric ideal of military prowess and shows
how that ideal arises out of material need.
After establishing his fame and increasing his wealth, Gahmuret is
driven ashore by a storm to the distant kingdom of Zazamanc, where
two hostile armies are besieging the city of Patelamunt. The black
queen Belakane asks for help, and Gahmuret is happy to oblige-for
a price. Only in the course of their negotiations does a mutual attrac-
tion spring up, and by the time Gahmuret sallies forth into battle he
has become a Minneritter who fights in the service of his lady love.
After Gahmuret wins the day Belakane marries the conquering hero
and declares him king of all her lands. The romance that began with
its feet solidly on the ground of historical reality has turned into a
fairy tale.27 Gahmuret's love for Belakane is nevertheless unusual in
that she is both black and heathen. In this regard Wolfram's romance
deviates sharply from its literary precedents. The tale of a traveler
being washed up by a storm on what might be the North African
coast recalls the plot of the Aeneid, and scholars have noted that Wol-
fram models his story of Gahmuret and Belakane closely on Heinrich
von Veldecke's retelling of Virgil's epic.28 Religious differences do
not play a major role in the classical epic, however, whereas they do
in the twelfth-century Spielmannsepik, and it is against these works
that the originality of Wolfram's Parzival emerges most clearly. Sanct
Oswald and Orendel are both crusaders and proselytizers, while Gah-
muret fights for the heathen Baruch, has Saracens in his retinue, and
does not hesitate to help the heathen queen. He even falls in love
with Belakane and marries her without once asking her to convert to
Christianity.
This is not to say that Wolfram's characters are unaware of reli-
gious or racial difference. Wolfram begins his romance with a noto-
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 23
riously obscure preface that is clear about at least one thing: black is
the color of hell, and white the color of heaven. He later refers to the
black princes of Zazamanc as being the color of hell [die nich der
helle wairn gevar],29 and Gahmuret's fellow Christians seem to adopt
racist attitudes as a matter of course: his cousin Kaylet assumes with-
out any evidence that the black heathen armies must be inferior to
white Christians, and the ship captain who helps Gahmuret escape to
Spain assumes that "those whose skins are black" (3 i [55.5]) will set
off in hostile pursuit, forgetting that they have sworn allegiance to
Gahmuret and that he has rewarded them richly for their support.30
Upon arrival Gahmuret also becomes uneasy because everyone in
Zazamanc is black, while Belakane worries that her dark skin will
offend the man she hopes will save her kingdom.3' Yet Belakane's
beauty soon wins Gahmuret's love as well as his knightly services, and
he later states emphatically that he did not leave her because of her
skin color: "Now many a misinformed man imagines that her black
complexion drove me from her, and yet I looked upon her as the
sun" (5 I [91.4-6]). Wolfram also minimizes religious differences
between the heathens and the Christians, describing Belakane's tears
for her former suitor as "a pure baptism" [ein reiner touf] (17 [28.14])
and asking God's mercy for Razalic, "that brave and black-complex-
ioned pagan" [der kiiene swarze heiden] (25 [43-4]), even though he,
too, has not been baptized. Thus as Wolfram transforms Gahmuret
from a wandering mercenary into a courtly knight, he introduces him
into an idealized realm in which religious and racial difference no
longer seem of crucial importance. The world around him continues
to distinguish clearly between white and black, heaven and hell,
Christian and heathen, but for a brief period Gahmuret and Belakane
forget their differences in mutual love.
Questions of race and religion reemerge only when Gahmuret
deserts his pregnant wife in search of further adventure. His real rea-
sons for leaving are quite clear: "Here the proud man remained until
he began to grieve because he found no knightly activity, and then
his joy was pawned to sorrow" (31 [54.17-19]). Yet Gahmuret does
not tell his wife the truth about the reason for his departure. Instead,
he slips away deviously in the night, leaving Belakane a note in which
he contends that he would have stayed with her forever if they had
24 German Orientalisms
shared the same religious faith. Now, Gahmuret has never worried
about Belakane's religion in the past, and when she reads the note she
says without hesitation that she would have been willing to convert.
Instead of insisting on the superiority of the Christian religion in the
manner of the Spielmannsepik, Wolfram exposes Gahmuret's personal
duplicity and the inherent contradictions of the knightly virtue he
represents. As a typical chivalric hero, Gahmuret fights in Zazamanc
for his lady love and wins her hand in marriage and her kingdom as
reward. If Wolfram ended his romance at this point, we might have
assumed that Gahmuret and Belakane lived happily ever after.
Instead, the story continues to the point where the same spirit of
adventure that enabled Gahmuret to win his bride makes him want
to leave his wife. He does so with mixed feelings, however, for
although Gahmuret feels compelled by his irrepressible wanderlust to
leave, he also loves his wife and misses her when he is gone. She
remains behind, grief-stricken.
Gahmuret's predicament as a married knight-errant reaches near-
comic levels once he arrives back in Europe. Here he is pronounced
the winner of a tournament at Kanvoleis, which requires him to
marry the host Herzeloyde. At the same time Queen Ampflise of
France, under whose tutelage Gahmuret first became a knight, insists
that she should marry Gahmuret. Gahmuret protests that he is already
married to Belakane, but Herzeloyde dismisses the marriage to the
heathen as invalid. In the end a judge has to resolve the delicate legal
question of Gahmuret's conflicting obligations to the three women.
He rules in Herzeloyde's favor, and Gahmuret reluctantly agrees to
overlook his first marriage, to reject Ampflise's demands, and to
marry Herzeloyde.32 This time, however, Gahmuret strikes a
prenuptial bargain whereby Herzeloyde recognizes his right to attend
at least one tournament a month. Before long he dies for the Baruch
in battle against the Babylonians, leaving his second pregnant wife
behind. As a warrior, Gahmuret is without reproach; as a husband,
however, he leaves much to be desired. The two are not unrelated:
the military prowess that wins him wives makes him unwilling to stay
at home with his family. Arthurian romance is a man's world, full of
valiant heroes and their trophy brides. Wolfram inverts tradition by
showing us this world from a woman's point of view in Parzival,
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 25
which includes abandoned wives and grieving mothers (Belakane,
Herzeloyde), abused women (Jeschute, Cunneware), and women
who vent their frustration by abusing men (Obie, Orgeluse). For a
brief period Gahmuret and Belakane transcend religious and racial
difference in an idealized realm of heroism, tolerance, and love, but
Gahmuret's flight from Zazamanc soon exposes the negative conse-
quences of knightly virility and returns him to a world of racial prej-
udice and religious intolerance.33
In reaction to the suffering caused by Gahmuret's insatiable desire
for battle, the widowed Herzeloyde retreats to rural Soltane to raise
her son Parzival in complete ignorance of the codes of chivalry.
Blood will out, however, and before long Parzival sets forth to
become a knight like his father before him. As a result of his mother's
socially improper, if personally understandable, education of her son
to ignorance, Parzival's first steps into the world of chivalry end in
disaster. He steals a brooch and a kiss from Jeschute, only to expose
the innocent woman to savage beatings by her husband Orilus; then
he kills his blood relative Ither in a most unknightly fashion with a
hunting spear before stripping the corpse of its armor. He also makes
the otherwise silent Cunneware laugh, and although he means no
harm, she, too, endures a brutal beating as a result. Within a very
short period of time, however, Parzival makes up for his initial mis-
takes. With help from Gurnemanz he quickly learns the basics of
knightly conduct and combat. Like his father before him, Parzival
comes to the aid of a besieged city, marries its queen, and becomes a
knight of the Round Table. Unlike Gahmuret, however, Parzival
will remain faithful to his wife Condwiramurs in his years of wander-
ing in search of the Holy Grail.34
Parzival's quest for the Holy Grail distinguishes him most clearly
from both his father and the other knights of the Round Table, while
it also continues and deepens Wolfram's exploration of the links
between Christian Europe and heathendom. Soon after Parzival
leaves Condwiramurs he catches his first glimpse of the Holy Grail at
the castle of Munsalvaesche. Wolfram surrounds Munsalvaesche and
the Grail with an Oriental opulence: upon his arrival, servants bring
Parzival a cloak of expensive Arabian silk. Anfortas also wears rich
garments of Arabian cloth, as do Repanse de Schoye and the other
26 German Orientalisms
virgins who bear the Grail, and the Grail itself rests on green silk cloth
made in the East. It might be tempting to dismiss the repeated refer-
ences to Arabian silks in Munsalvaesche as a mere literary convention
or historical detail: expensive garments from the East feature promi-
nently in other Arthurian romances as a sign of wealth, and imports
of luxury goods to Europe from the East increased during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.35 In Wolfram's Parzival, however, the Ara-
bian textiles surrounding the Holy Grail point to deeper bonds
between the Christian symbol and its pagan roots.
The figure of Cundrie reinforces the ties between the Grail and the
East. In book 6 King Arthur recognizes Parzival's achievements by
making him a knight of the Round Table. At the pinnacle of his suc-
cess, however, the hideous Cundrie curses Parzival for his failure to
ask the crucial question at Munsalvaesche. Parzival departs alone from
what should have been his scene of great triumph, cursing God for
his misfortune and vowing not to rest until he again finds the Grail.
But who is Cundrie? We later learn that she and her brother Mal-
creature come from the land of Tribalibot by the river Ganges. The
fabulously rich Queen Secondille has sent Cundrie and Malcreature
to find out about the Holy Grail, and Cundrie has since become the
messenger of Munsalvaesche. Cundrie thus bridges two worlds: she is
heathen by birth and the hideously deformed product of a distant
Eastern land allegedly teeming with such mutants, and yet she has
been chosen to speak on behalf of the Christian Holy Grail. She
speaks Arabic as well as French and Latin and is well versed in dialec-
tics, geometry, and astronomy. Within Wolfram's romance Cundrie
plays a pivotal role: she sends Parzival on the quest for the Grail and
tells him about his brother Feirefiz, born to the black Queen
Belakane of Zazamanc and now married to Queen Secondille of
India. From this time on, Parzival's quest for the Holy Grail will be
linked to his family history, which includes on his mother's side
direct ties to the Grail kingship, but also, on his father's side, close
links to the heathen world.
Parzival makes significant progress in his quest for the Grail in
book 9, where the hermit Trevrizent convinces him to trust God and
repent his sins. Trevrizent also informs Parzival about the nature of
the Grail: its function as a link between heaven and earth; its ability
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 27
to sustain life; the chastity required of those who serve it; and the sins
of Anfortas that have left him in pain. At this critical juncture Wol-
fram introduces the mysterious Kyot as his source for the story of the
Grail. Whether or not such a writer actually existed has been one of
the perennial questions of modern Wolfram scholarship; the current
consensus seems to be that he probably did not.36 My interest here is
not in locating a source outside Wolfram's text but in underscoring
the role that Kyot plays in providing historical depth to the symbolic
geography of the work. In brief outline, Wolfram's history, or rather,
historiography, of the Grail goes as follows: the half-heathen, half-
Jewish Flegetanis first discovered the Grail and wrote about it in Ara-
bic. The Christian Kyot of Provengal then found the abandoned Ara-
bic manuscript in Toledo, Spain. Kyot learned Arabic in order to
read the manuscript and then sought further information about the
current keepers of the Grail in Latin chronicles from various Euro-
pean countries. Eventually he found the story in a source from Anjou
in a genealogy that traces the lineage of the Grail from mythical
heroes down to Parzival. Finally, Wolfram claims that he translated
Kyot's Provengal version of the tale into German.
By identifying a heathen-Jewish astrologer as the discoverer of the
Grail, and then tracing its translation into Christian Europe, Wolfram
embeds the Grail in a typological understanding of history of the sort
that informed the earlier Ezzolied and Annolied.37 The heathen Flege-
tanis can see the Grail, but only a baptized Christian can understand
its full significance as the revelation of Christ on earth. The heathen
world is thus not in fundamental opposition to Christianity, for hea-
thens already dimly perceive a light that shines more brightly for the
Christians. Such a typology allows for a kind of pseudotolerance, as
Christians can condescendingly applaud the heathens for having
grasped at truths that only Christians can fully understand. The figural
interpretation of history offers Christians a powerful tool with which
they can colonize the past, transforming alien cultures into prefigura-
tions of their own.
Wolfram calls just such a complacent pseudotolerance into ques-
tion in the concluding books of his Parzival. The dramatic climax of
Parzival's development occurs when he unwittingly fights his brother
Feirefiz. Like his father before him, Feirefiz has married an exotic
28 German Orientalisms
queen, while he also rules over his father's kingdoms of Zazamanc
and Azagouc. These two lands have been located by various scholars
in northern Africa, Ethiopia, or even India, as medieval geographers
often assumed that Ethiopia and India were the same place.3s Feirefiz
commands a massive and diverse force of twenty-five armies that
anticipates the heathen armies in Willehalm and reinforces the impres-
sion that Christian Europe stands exposed and vulnerable against a sea
of potential adversaries. Feirefiz has distinguished himself in battle
and won several brides as a result-Secondille is already his third such
conquest-but unlike Gahmuret, Feirefiz moves exclusively in the
heathen world and seems untouched by remorse as he switches from
one woman to the next.
Feirefiz has returned from the East "to these Western lands" [in
disiu westerriche] (398 [767.5]) in search of his father, but encounters
Parzival instead. As in the confrontation between Charlemagne and
Marsilion in the Song of Roland, Parzival and Feirefiz fight as repre-
sentatives of opposing cultures and opposing gods. Yet they are also
brothers, and before long their mortal combat turns into a family
reunion. As sons of the same father, Wolfram argues, they share a
common identity: "Both of them were, after all, sons of one man"
(386 [740.28]). Together with their father they form a single unit:
"My father and you and I, we were all one, but this one appeared in
three parts (392 [752.8-To]). The heathen Feirefiz speaks these lines,
even though the language unmistakably recalls the Christian concept
of the Trinity.39 Feirefiz weeps after this speech, and, as in the case of
his mother Belakane, heathen tears serve as a reminder of Christian
baptism: "his heathen eyes shed tears as in honor of baptism [al niach
des toufes dren]" (392 [752.24-26]). Here Wolfram seems to be making
the kind of condescending gesture noted earlier: Christianity remains
the superior religion; Wolfram is merely willing to overlook religious
differences temporarily in the name of blood relations, or, to put it
more strongly, Wolfram posits an omnivorous sort of Christianity
that can swallow up heathendom into a universal brotherhood that
effaces difference through a seemingly benevolent gesture. At the
same time, however, Wolfram allows for a more radical interpreta-
tion of the passage in which the common humanity of the two broth-
ers renders religious differences insignificant. To say that Feirefiz's
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 29
tears seem to honor baptism, or that his nominally Christian father,
his born-again brother, and his own pagan self should form a Holy
Trinity is potentially blasphemous in that it disregards what for the
Christian must be essential questions of religious faith and dogma.
Christianity becomes only a convenient metaphor for blood relations
that cut across religious boundaries.
It is important to keep these questions in mind when considering
Feirefiz's very curious conversion to Christianity. After the recogni-
tion scene Parzival introduces Feirefiz to the other knights of the
Round Table. Cundrie returns, wearing a characteristic combination
of Arabian silk cut to French fashion, and announces that Parzival
will be the next Grail king. To stress the significance of this most
Christian event, Cundrie cites astrological evidence-in Arabic!
Then Parzival picks his heathen brother to accompany him on his
way to becoming the Grail King in Munsalvaesche, which might
seem odd-given that his brother is a nonbeliever-unless we recall
that Wolfram has placed the Grail into close proximity to the heathen
world from the first. While Parzival finally asks his question, Feirefiz
falls in love with Repanse de Schoye, the virgin who bears the Grail.
Unlike the heathen Flegetanis, who could at least behold the Grail if
not understand its full significance, Feirefiz cannot even see it until he
becomes baptized. He agrees to do so cheerfully, not because he has
had a profound change of heart in his attitude toward Christianity,
but because he wants to get married-again. Despite his rather dubi-
ous motivations for accepting Christ, the baptism seems valid:
Feirefiz can see the Grail, marry Repanse, and move back to India
where his son becomes Prester John, the legendary ruler of a Chris-
tian realm in the Far East. Queen Secondille conveniently dies.
Feirefiz's conversion provides a striking contrast to Parzival's reli-
gious experience. Parzival begins his life in ignorance of God and
then rejects him in anger. For this sin he must undergo years of lonely
wandering and hardship before he meets Trevrizent and begins his
difficult path back to faith in God, reunion with his wife, and the
fulfillment of his destiny as Grail King. Feirefiz, in contrast, gets the
rewards of baptism without having to pay the price. He converts
casually, almost flippantly, motivated by sexual desire for a bigamous
relationship, and yet there is no indication that his conversion is
30 German Orientalisms
invalid or that there is anything wrong with his second (or is it his
fourth?) marriage. Wolfram's contemporaries may have been less trou-
bled by this seeming discrepancy between the two conversion experi-
ences than today's readers. We have become familiar with narratives
that portray conversion as a dramatic, life-changing event such as Saul
experienced on the road to Damascus, or St. Augustine underwent in
his garden. From medieval mystics through eighteenth-century Pietists
to today's charismatic Christians, such narratives center on a climactic
experience that is preceded by spiritual turmoil and followed by a sense
of amazing grace, and Parzival undergoes something of the sort during
his stay with Trevrizent. Yet such a protracted spiritual agony could
hardly have been the norm in an era of forced mass conversion. We
read at the end of the Song of Roland, for instance, that oo100,000ooo defeated
heathens were baptized on the battlefield. The only exception is the
heathen queen: "Her the king would convert by love to Christ in
France."4° Only those with the highest social status undergo more than
the most superficial conversion experience. One finds a similar distinc-
tion in the Spielmannsepik: Sanct Oswald baptizes heathens for three
days in a row in a process that evokes images of an assembly line, while
only his future wife embraces Christianity out of inner conviction.
Orendel's wife also accepts Christianity in her heart, while those hea-
thens not slaughtered are baptized by the thousands, whether they want
to be baptized or not: "whether they did it willingly or unwillingly,
they all had to become Christians" [sie deden ez gerne oder ungerne /
sie musten alle kristen werden].41 From the Christian perspective such
involuntary baptisms must have been considered valid, yet they seem to
function primarily as an outward sign of military defeat rather than the
culmination of a spiritual odyssey. Feirefiz converts willingly, but with
a similar superficiality; in the light of these literary precedents, however,
his conversion may not have seemed extraordinary.
However pragmatic Feirefiz's motivations for accepting Christian-
ity might have been, his conversion nevertheless has tremendous reli-
gious significance, for it enables the marriage that will produce
Prester John, who is destined to spread Christianity to India.42 In ret-
rospect, therefore, the flippancy with which Wolfram allows Feirefiz
to convert seems all the more puzzling-after all, those converted en
masse on the battlefield assume no such world-historical significance.
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 31
We can read this curious conclusion to Parzival in two contradictory,
yet complementary ways that correspond to Wolfram's ambivalent
portrayal of the relations between Christian Europe and the rest of
the world throughout his text. On the one hand, Feirefiz's conver-
sion brings Parzival to a resounding and triumphant conclusion. Wol-
fram envisions a Christianity that extends geographically to include
the entire known world, from Ireland to India, and chronologically
to include all of history, from the dimly understood visions of ancient
heathens and Jews to the salvation that awaits all believers. Flegetanis,
Cundrie, and Feirefiz play such a prominent role in the history of the
Grail because they demonstrate Christianity's ability to absorb and
transcend the heathen world. If there is any tolerance in this world-
view, it is the sort of temporary kindness that a cat might grant a
mouse before moving in for the kill.
On the other hand, Wolfram allows for a reading of his text that
introduces a note of irony into his Christian triumphalism.43 Let us
return once more to Feirefiz's conversion: What if he is a trickster
and the Christians are the butt of his joke? Feirefiz finds Repanse de
Schoye attractive; if he has to go through a baptismal ceremony to
marry her, so be it. The Christians may think they are winning the
most powerful king of heathendom to their heavenly cause, but he
could be going through the motions to satisfy his very earthly desires.
Who is in control? Does a hegemonic Christianity obliterate its ene-
mies, or does the heathen make blasphemous use of Christian rituals
for his own purposes? True, Feirefiz can see the Grail only after his
baptism, which would seem to confer divine sanction on his turn to
Christianity. Is it not conceivable, however, that he has also fooled
God, or at least manipulated God to suit his purposes? We know,
after all, that Parzival has not played by the rules in his search for the
Holy Grail. Trevrizent has told him that one must be called by the
Grail, and that it is therefore impossible to fight one's way toward it.
Nevertheless, Parzival successfully defies God's will in a way that
leaves Trevrizent astonished and confused: "Greater miracle has sel-
dom come to pass, for you have forced God by defiance to make His
infinite Trinity grant your will" (416 [798.2-5]).44 Perhaps Feirefiz
also forces God to grant him Repanse de Schoye by going through a
sham baptismal ceremony.
32 German Orientalisms
I do not mean to suggest that Wolfram is a closet infidel, or that he
does not take seriously his vision of a universal Christianity. Yet
Wolfram is humble enough to recognize the distance between his
utopian vision and contemporary reality. We recall the sense of
Christianity being under siege that he creates in Willehalm, in which
Europe stands as a small and highly endangered outpost in a largely
heathen world. In this regard, Wolfram captures the spirit of the
French Song of Roland, which-unlike Konrad's version-ends not
with the triumph of Christianity over heathendom, but with an
exhausted Charlemagne being dragged from his bed in the middle of
the night to fight yet another battle against the irrepressible heathen
foe. "'God,' says the king, 'how weary is my life.' "45 The irony sur-
rounding Feirefiz's conversion introduces a note of real tolerance
into Wolfram's world that contrasts with the pseudotolerance of
figural interpretation. Wolfram's God is an ironic one, capable of
winking at Feirefiz's blasphemy rather than burning him at the stake.
As Northrop Frye once wrote, "Nobody wants a poet in the perfect
human state, and, as even the poets tell us, nobody but God himself
can tolerate a poltergeist in the City of God.'"46 Feirefiz is just such a
poltergeist in the city of Plimizoel. Through him Wolfram portrays a
utopian Christianity that simultaneously effaces and embraces differ-
ence; one that is at once a totalizing vision of a Christian world that
transcends history, and one that recognizes and accepts existing dif-
ferences in the world around him.
EARLY MODERN NATIONALISM AND THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
While the Crusades helped forge a collective Christian European
community during the High Middle Ages, specific national identities
within Europe began to coalesce during the early modern period.47
In Germany we find reference to "the most splendid city ever built
on German soil" already in Das Annolied of the late eleventh century;
the adjective diutisk or tiutisk seems to have referred to both the Ger-
man people and the German language.48 The politically fragmented
Germans began to discover that they had common enemies in Rome
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 33
and Turkey, a common language that became more widely dissemi-
nated with the invention of the printing press, and a common past
revealed in the rediscovered works of Tacitus. To be sure, such Ger-
man patriotism differed significantly from the nationalist movements
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: German Humanists and
the Baroque poets of the seventeenth century could not envision the
radical force that would sweep away generations of dynastic rule and
establish secular nation-states during the revolutionary era, nor could
they imagine the pseudo-scientific racism and propaganda techniques
that would lead to the nationalization of the masses in imperial and
fascist Germany. Yet they shared a sense of belonging to a commu-
nity that was larger than their local town or province and distinct
from other parts of Europe at a time when Europeans were also
beginning to discover that the world was much larger than they had
previously suspected.
The voyages of discovery in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries did not transform European understanding of world geog-
raphy overnight. It took time before explorers realized that the West
Indies were not minor obstacles on a shortcut to Asia, but outposts of
vast new continents. Columbus himself "remained firmly anchored
in the Old World . . . so much so that he was the major influence in
preventing Europeans from regarding the new Western discoveries as
anything more than an extension of the Old World."49 Within a few
decades, however, Europeans began to realize the extent of their dis-
coveries and to revise their representations of reality accordingly.
Geography became emancipated from theology, as individuals
"sought explanations in natural causes rather than in divine provi-
dence."5° Globes replaced medieval maps that had arranged three
segments of a flat world around Jerusalem, and the heliocentric
model of the solar system gradually displaced the old Ptolemaic or
geocentric universe.5' The medieval Christian Europe that had been
united in the effort to recapture Jerusalem from the infidel now
began to break up into individual nations engaged in a fierce compe-
tition to map, conquer, and exploit the natural and human resources
of the New World.
While monarchs and merchants in Portugal, Italy, Spain, France,
and England rushed to finance new expeditions to uncharted territo-
34 German Orientalisms
ries, the Germans remained largely content to play only a minor role
in the initial European effort to establish global empires. Individual
Germans did participate in voyages of exploration, and there were a
few brief attempts to establish colonial enterprises.52 For the most
part, however, Germans participated only indirectly in the age of dis-
covery and conquest, publishing a disproportionate share of the ear-
liest accounts of the New World and soon profiting "from the influx
of specie from abroad."S53 Although curious about the New World,
most Germans had more pressing concerns, including local dynastic
conflicts within the loose confederation of the Holy Roman Empire,
long-standing tensions with the Roman Catholic Church that esca-
lated dramatically during the Reformation, and the constant threat of
invasion from the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
In o1095 Pope Urban II had issued his call for the First Crusade to
recapture Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks, a nomadic people origi-
nating in Central Asia. The Seljuks remained in power for nearly two
hundred years until they were swept aside by the Mongol invasions
of the thirteenth century. In this chaotic period a number of Turkic
peoples moved into Anatolia, including the Ottomans, named after
their early leader Osman. This group soon became dominant within
the region, and their empire expanded rapidly within Anatolia and
into the Middle East, across the Bosporus into the Balkans, and up to
the gates of Vienna, which they besieged in 1529 and 1683. Not sur-
prisingly, these Islamic invaders preoccupied early modern Euro-
peans. In France "there were twice as many books about the Turks,
who seem to have had a strong hold on the popular imagination, as
about America,"54 and the same was true for German cosmographers:
"The geographic interest of central Europeans was trans-Eurasian
rather than trans-Atlantic."55 Throughout the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries German knowledge of Asia grew increasingly
detailed as travelers published accounts of their experiences, and an
"Orientalizing cultural wave" [orientalisierende Kulturwelle] influ-
enced many aspects of German culture.56 By 1700 tobacco, tea, cof-
fee, and porcelain had all been introduced to the German-speaking
territories through contacts with the East, while Turkish costumes at
parties and tournaments had been popular since the early sixteenth
century. Despite widespread fascination with an exotic Orient, how-
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 35
ever, the image of Islam remained consistent and negative. "The
main themes-first, violence; second, lasciviousness; and third,
deceit-appear again and again, in many forms and endless variety
throughout the Middle Ages, and even survive today."57s For the
Germans who were beginning to establish a sense of national identity
around 1500, hostility to Rome went hand in hand with fear and
loathing of the Turk.
German national pride received an early boost with the rediscov-
ery of Tacitus's Germania in 1450, which together with his account of
Arminius's defeat of the Roman general Varus in the Annals was to
be of lasting importance for the German self-image.58 Tacitus
describes the Germans as a fierce, warlike people living in an inhos-
pitable climate. He regards the Germanic peoples not as barbarians
but rather as noble savages, whose rough-hewn virtues contrast with
the decadence of Roman civilization. Reasoning that northern
weather is so bad that no foreigners would want to invade, Tacitus
concludes that the Germanic peoples must have been the original
inhabitants of the region and that they had remained uncorrupted by
foreign influence. They lead rugged lives of rustic simplicity, practic-
ing a kind of rudimentary democracy, eating simple foods, wearing
simple garments, and drinking prodigious quantities of beer. Tacitus
claims that infidelity is rare and seduction is not a game for the Ger-
mans. All but the most powerful live in monogamous relationships
with women who breastfeed their own children, rather than passing
them on to wet nurses.
Conrad Celtis (1459-1 o508) quickly adapted Tacitus's implicit cri-
tique of ancient Rome into a German critique of modern Italy. Born
Conrad Pickel to the son of a vine-grower near Wiirzburg, Celtis
ran away from home, hitched a ride on a log raft down the Main,
and began his studies in Heidelberg, where he learned Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew.59 Celtis spent his life wandering around Europe, with
stops in Italy, Krak6w, and Nuremberg-where he befriended
Albrecht Diirer-before dying, probably of syphilis, in Vienna.
Along the way Celtis taught for five years at the University of Ingol-
stadt in Bavaria, where he delivered his inaugural address in the fall
of 1492. While Columbus was sailing in uncharted waters toward
the New World, Celtis exhorted his German students to rediscover
36 German Orientalisms
ancient philosophy and to hone their Latin style. Only thus could
they hope to attain immortality, Celtis proclaimed, and only thus
could they redeem Germany's tarnished reputation: "Do away with
that old disrepute of the Germans in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew
writers, who ascribe to us drunkenness, cruelty, savagery, and every
other vice bordering on bestiality and excess. Consider it a great dis-
grace to be ignorant of the histories of the Greeks and Latins, and the
height of shame to know nothing about the topography, the climate,
the rivers, the mountains, the antiquities, and the peoples of our
region and our own country.'"60
Celtis must have shocked many in his audience by seeking salva-
tion in Latin and Greek antiquity rather than Christian faith. "What
were they to think of someone who proclaimed that virtue and the
liberal arts could make a man 'truly blessed'? Or that immortality
could only be sought at the fountain-head of this new-fangled phi-
losophy and eloquence?"6' Yet he calls for both local patriotism and
knowledge of classical antiquity because he believes that the Germans
are "the last survivors of the Roman Empire" (47). Thus he addresses
an audience of "distinguished men and well-born youths, to whom
by virtue of the courage of your ancestors and the unconquerable
strength of Germany the Italian empire has passed" (z43). It becomes
a patriotic duty of the Germans to speak eloquent Latin as proof of
the continuity of ancient culture into the present. However, modern
Germans have been corrupted by the decadent influence of modern
Italy: "To such an extent are we corrupted by Italian sensuality and
by fierce cruelty in exacting filthy lucre, that it would have been far
more holy and reverent for us to practise that rude and rustic life of
old, living within the bounds of self-control, than to have imported
the paraphernalia of sensuality and greed which are never sated, and
to have adopted foreign customs" (53). On the one hand, then, Celtis
draws on Tacitus in his plea for the Germans to rediscover the rustic
virtue of a noble past so that they can defend their modern borders:
"Assume, O men of Germany, that ancient spirit of yours, with
which you so often confounded and terrified the Romans, and turn
your eyes to the frontiers of Germany; collect together her torn and
broken territories" (47). On the other hand, however, Celtis urges
the Germans to become as sophisticated as possible in their knowl-
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 37
edge of ancient history and languages in order to prove their worth as
the heirs to the Roman Empire. The ideal German, according to
Celtis, will be neither a decadent modern sensualist nor an uncouth
savage, but an eloquent Humanist who retains his native vitality in a
modern Germania that has become the worthy successor to ancient
Rome, and the upstanding alternative to the corruption of modern
Italy.
In 1511 the young Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) traveled to
Vienna, where he was accepted into a patriotic circle of Humanists
founded by Conrad Celtis, who had died in 1508.62 Over the
remaining dozen years of his turbulent life, Hutten was to become
the self-appointed champion of the German nation in its struggle
against Rome, hurling invective in a seemingly endless stream of cir-
cular letters (Sendschreiben), dialogues, and polemics. Hutten shared
Celtis's enthusiasm for the works of Tacitus, and his literary remains
include an unpublished dialogue entitled "Hermann oder Arminius."
In it Hermann stands before Minos, the judge of the Underworld,
and complains that he was not included on a short list of the world's
greatest military leaders. He goes on to boast at some length about his
accomplishments as the liberator of Germany from Roman tyranny.
In a sneering aside, he claims that Alexander would hardly have
defeated the Romans as easily he conquered "those effeminate
nations of Asia [jene weibischen Nationen Asiens] . . . those defenseless
peoples of India." According to Hutten's Hermann, even Alexan-
der's own uncle claimed that in fighting the Romans he had at least
done battle with men, whereas his nephew had merely subdued
Asian "women. "63
Hutten expanded these disparaging comments about Asiatic peo-
ples into a full-scale polemic in his impassioned, if somewhat repeti-
tive, "Vermahnung an die Fiirsten Teutschlands, die Tiirken mit
Krieg zu iiberziehen" [Admonition to the German princes to smite
the Turks with war] (1518). Hutten wrote his exhortation to inspire
the members of the German Reichstag to throw their support behind
a new crusade against the advancing Turkish armies, and he does
everything in his power to glorify the Germans and to vilify the
Turks. He urges the Germans to stop their petty feuds and to remem-
ber their glorious past, when they united to defeat the Romans.
38 German Orientalisms
Echoing Tacitus, Hutten proclaims that German blood has never
been diluted by foreign invaders, and that the old Germanic heroes
almost never married outside their clan, "so that they would not
besmirch their Germanness" [um nur nicht ihre Teutschheit zu
beflecken].64 These racially pure Germans now confront a Turkish
"flood of barbarians" [Barbarenfluth] (245) that has already con-
quered large segments of the Middle East and Africa, captured Con-
stantinople, moved into the Balkans and Hungary, and now poses a
direct threat to the German territories.
As they advance, the Turks spread moral corruption together with
military destruction: "Subject to every sort of lasciviousness and dis-
gracefulness at home, [the Turk] becomes in the end coarse, wild,
cruel, lecherous, treacherous, and inhumane [roh, verwildert, grausam,
geil, meineidig und unmenschlich]" (247). You have no idea how bar-
baric the Turks are, continues Hutten; they are willing to murder
their own family members and are now coming to rape our women
and strangle our children. Even though Hutten is unwilling to insult
the valiant German armies by suggesting that they can be compared
"with Asiatic effeminacy [mit der asiatischen Weichlichkeit] and also
with the womanish warriors [mit dem weibischen Kriegsvolk] of the Sul-
tan" (287), he nevertheless warns that the Turkish threat should be
taken seriously. Hutten thus presents something of a mixed message
in his appeal to the German princes: his Turks become effeminate
barbarians, girlish soldiers who spread gender confusion as they rape
and pillage their way into Europe. Against this Asiatic flood of her-
maphrodites stands a firm bulwark of German men: "For if we exam-
ine the meaning of this name, Germane, according to our under-
standing of Latin, means a whole man, or completely a man, or fully man
[ein ganzer Mann oder ganz ein Mann, oder vollkommen Mann], as if
you were to say a man who is perfect in every virtue" (295).
Hutten began to publish his anti-Roman diatribes on the eve of
the Reformation, and it is not surprising that he became one of
Luther's earliest and most fervent supporters. Luther shared Hutten's
hostility to Rome and accused the pope of-among other things
using German taxes to support Roman decadence "so that they can
live in voluptuousness safe from the Turks and tyrannize the world
with their useless bulls and letters."6S While Hutten fears the Turks as
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 39
a military force and a threat to German manhood, Luther couches his
anti-Turkish polemic in theological terms: "Turk is Turk, devil is
devil, you can be sure of that" [Tiirke ist Tiirke, Teufel ist Teufel,
dessen kannst du sicher sein].66 Whoever takes arms against the Turk
should not doubt that he is fighting against the enemy of God and the
blasphemer of Christ, "indeed, against the devil himself."67 Thus the
Christian who happens to strangle a Turk should not worry that he
might have shed innocent blood, "for certainly he throttles an enemy
of God and a blasphemer of Christ."'6 As God's enemy, the pope is
little better than the Turk, and thus Luther urges the Germans to take
arms against both foes: "Should we make war on the pope as well as
on the Turks, because they are both equally pious? Answer: against
the one as against the other, and in this way no injustice will be
done."69 Luther argues finally that the Germans have been so sinful
that God has sent the Turks as his "grim rod against us who have
sinned against you and deserve every misfortune."7 Luther thus adds
a psychological and theological dimension to the German hostility to
Rome and the Ottoman Empire that is lacking in Hutten's work.
Luther's Turks are both utterly alien and intimately familiar: an Asian
and Islamic threat from outside Christian Europe and the evil twin of
the Catholic Church within Europe; the incarnation of the devil and
the personification of the Germans' own sins.
BAROQUE ORIENTALISMS:
GRIMMELSHAUSEN'S SIMPLICISSIMUS AND
LOHENSTEIN'S ARMINIUS
The German anti-Turkish sentiment at the time of the first siege of
Vienna coincided with the first stirrings of national consciousness
among the Humanists and Luther's break with Rome. By the time of
the second siege of Vienna in 1683 the German nation was still reel-
ing from the devastating religious conflicts of the Thirty Years' War
(1618-48). Hope for a rebirth of the spirit of antiquity and productive
reform within the Catholic Church had only led to bitter sectarian
conflict and a pervasive sense of doom. "You see, wherever you
look, only vanity on earth" [Du siehst, wohin du siehst, nur Eitelkeit
auf Erden], proclaimed Andreas Gryphius (1616-64), "and wherever
40 German Orientalisms
we look, is fire, pestilence, and death that pierces heart and soul"
[und wo wir hin nur schaun, / Ist Feuer, Pest und Tod, der Herz und
Geist durchfihret].71 Gryphius shed his tears for a German Fatherland
that had been ruined by war and whose citizens, he feared, had lost
their faith in God. Meanwhile France had become the dominant
European power under Louis XIV and posed a new threat to German
lands, while the old menace of the Ottoman Empire remained.
During this period Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
(1621-76) and Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein (1635-83) published
what are arguably the two most important German novels of the sev-
enteenth century: Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch [The
adventurous German Simplicissimus] (1669), and Groflmithiger Feld-
herr Arminius oder Herrmann [Magnanimous commander Arminius or
Herrmann] (1689/90). The works exemplify the two major subgen-
res of the Baroque novel: the Schelmenroman or picaresque novel and
the heroic or courtly novel.72 The first-person narrative of Grim-
melshausen's work depicts the hero's experiences among the lowest
social classes of war-torn Germany in an episodic plot with elements
of gritty realism, whereas Lohenstein's massive novel portrays impos-
sibly handsome and heroic aristocrats in a complex, multilayered nar-
rative that begins in medias res and ends some 3,000 double-
columned pages later with multiple marriages and the revelation of
remarkably complicated identities. Despite their generic differences,
both works foreground patriotic themes: Lohenstein retells the story
of Arminius's battles with Rome that had captured the imagination of
the German Humanists, and he dedicates his story of politics, love,
and heroism "to the love of the Fatherland, and to honor German
nobility and [inspire] praiseworthy imitation," as he puts it in part of
the novel's lengthy subtitle. The word Teutsch in the title to Grim-
melshausen's work has multiple meanings: it refers both to the style
of the work, meaning roughly "upright, honest, forthright," and to
the genre: the work is the German counterpart to the Spanish
picaresque novel and the French roman comique.73 In a broader sense,
Simplicissimus's fate, as he moves back and forth between the Protes-
tant and Catholic armies, embodies that of the German nation torn
by the religious wars of the seventeenth century.
Finally, for generations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 41
readers, Simplicissimus was the guileless hero of the typically German
genre of the Bildungsroman who took his place in a lineage leading
from Parzival to Wilhelm Meister and beyond.74 Postwar critics have
tended to reject such a view as anachronistic, viewing Simplicissimus
as a satirical work whose hero lacks any sort of organic develop-
ment,75 yet the earlier view played an important role in establishing
the novel's position within the canon of Germany's national litera-
ture. Ironically, critics accused Lohenstein's more obviously patriotic
novel of being overly dependent on foreign influence (ube'fremdet),
and it has remained largely forgotten to all but the most intrepid
scholars of the German Baroque.76
The larger-than-life heroes of the courtly novel tend to move
within a world of correspondingly vast geographical dimensions.77
Lohenstein's Arminius contains episodes that stretch from Armenia to
India and from China to northern Africa, as well as an extended dis-
cussion of newly discovered peoples in the Americas. Simplicissimus,
in contrast, remains largely focused on the protagonist's experiences
within Germany. In many ways, however, traces of the increased
global awareness of seventeenth-century Europeans find their way
into Grimmelshausen's work. In the opening paragraph, for instance,
Simplicissimus ridicules the pretensions of recently ennobled aristo-
crats by pointing out that their ancestors were often "as black as if
they had been born and raised in Guinea."78 Simplicissimus claims
that the forest is as unknown to him as the road to China through the
frozen sea beyond Nova Zembla. He compares himself ironically to
a figurine of a Brazilian Indian with a roll of tobacco under his arm
and pipe in his mouth standing on the shelf of a curio collection that
also contains a Chinese drawing, and remarks that Switzerland seems
as foreign to him as if he were in Brazil or China. In his journey into
the magical Mummelsee Simplicissimus encounters representatives of
the entire known world displayed as if they were in a Trachten-Buch
(book with illustrations of various peoples in traditional costume)
(5o6). Simplicissimus also travels extensively in the real world, both
within Germany and to other European countries, including both
Switzerland and France. The pace of his wanderings accelerates dra-
matically in the fifth book of the novel when he travels via Moscow
to the Caspian Sea. There he is captured by Tartars who give him to
42 German Orientalisms
the king of Korea, who in turn frees him to travel to Macao via Japan.
Muslim pirates capture him in the East Indies and sell him into slav-
ery in Egypt, and the Egyptians, in turn, bring him to Constantino-
ple. Here he becomes a galley slave until he is liberated by the Vene-
tians. He makes a pilgrimage to Rome before crossing the Alps back
into Germany.
Despite the increased scope and specificity of Grimmelshausen's
knowledge of the world, Simplicissimus is at heart an antiworldly
book, a Baroque polemic against earthly pleasure, and an appeal to its
readers to focus on heaven's eternal delights. Simplicissimus's whirl-
wind journey across the globe brings him no lasting satisfaction:
"Your life has been no life, but rather a death" (543). He thus retires
to his old life as a hermit after bidding the cruel world farewell:
"Adieu oh world, oh despicable, wicked world, oh stinking, miser-
able flesh" [Adjeu O Welt / O schnode arge Welt / O stinkendes
elendes Fleisch] (ss550). Despite the graphic realism of many passages
in his novel, Grimmelshausen has little in common with a nine-
teenth-century realist such as Gottfried Keller, whose "God radiates
worldliness" [Gott strahlt von Weltlichkeit],79 or with Wolfram's
delight in the chivalrous exploits of Gahmuret, Gawain, and Parzival
and the generous sense that this world is good and the next will only
get better.8s The medieval poet leaves us with Feirefiz's laughter;
Grimmelshausen's protagonist flees a world in which all is vanity and
there is nothing new under the sun.
Or at least this is what the Simplicissimus of the Continuatio would
have us believe. This sixth and concluding book of the novel was
published separately and differs from the preceding books by a greater
tendency toward allegory and overtly moralizing statements. Yet the
vibrancy of the world portrayed in the original five books of the
novel betrays an interest in empirical reality that strains against the
ostensible message of its conclusion, much in the way that the author
of the sixteenth-century Faustbuch struggles to contain Renaissance
curiosity within the bonds of a medieval morality play.s8 Rather than
neatly illustrating a Baroque conviction about the vanity of earthly
desire, we can read Simplicissimus as a transitional work in which the
certainties of religious faith no longer seem adequate to repress fasci-
nation with a physical world whose horizons have been dramatically
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 43
expanded through nearly two centuries of European exploration.
Scattered references to the non-European world crop up throughout
the novel, as we have seen, but the so-called Jupiter episode elabo-
rates a more detailed vision of Germany's place within Europe and in
relation to the ancient world of Asia.
Near the beginning of the third book of the novel, Simplicissimus
encounters a man who claims that he is the incarnation of the Roman
god Jupiter. Jupiter predicts that a German hero will soon come to
punish evildoers and to reward the pious. Brandishing his magic
sword, this hero will supposedly have no need of an army as he trans-
forms the world into a place of strength, wisdom, beauty, and virtue.
He envisions each German city governed by two intelligent and vir-
tuous men, who together will rule the entire country in a single par-
liament that will end servitude and abolish taxes. Mount Parnassus
will be moved to Germany, Jupiter will no longer speak Greek but
only German, and Germans will rule the world as Rome once did in
the past. Evil princes will be punished, while good ones can either
stay at home and join their former subjects in a life of royal luxury, or
use up their excess energy conquering the remaining kingdoms of
Asia. The other European kings will realize that they are actually
German, or at least of German descent, and will thus voluntarily sub-
mit themselves to the new German rule. Finally, all Christian reli-
gions will be united once more into a single faith.
Like Wolfram, Grimmelshausen envisions a global Christianity,
but with two significant differences: his Asians will succumb to mili-
tary conquest rather than religious conversion, and world leadership
will pass from Christian Europe to the German nation. In making
modern Germany the heir to Greco-Roman antiquity, Jupiter
echoes the same nationalist version of world history that we encoun-
tered in Conrad Celtis, who together with Luther and Hutten would
doubtlessly have enjoyed the image of European nations voluntarily
recognizing German hegemony and of carefree German princes sub-
duing Asian infidels. The main question, of course, is whether we are
to take Jupiter's vision seriously. Grimmelshausen gives ample evi-
dence to suggest that his prophetic figure is only a delusional fool.82
Simplicissimus humors the madman by playing Ganymede to his
Jupiter, while his companions ridicule Jupiter's utopian vision in a
44 German Orientalisms
series of sarcastic comments. Eventually this modern "god" loses all
dignity when he drops his pants in public to brush away fleas that he
believes had come looking for his divine protection.
Such actions certainly compromise the messenger, but do not nec-
essarily invalidate the message itself, which must have contained
many appealing elements for Grimmelshausen's readers: to a people
who had suffered the random violence of war and pestilence, Jupiter
offers a vision of divine justice; to a society torn by religious strife
between Protestants and Catholics, he promises the return to a single
Christian faith; to a German nation under the sway of French cultural
hegemony and the threat of a new Turkish invasion, he offers the
fantasy of European supremacy and world domination. To take this
vermin-infested prophet of German greatness seriously as the harbin-
ger of Hitler and the Third Reich, as some fascist sympathizers did,83
would be ludicrous; yet to dismiss his vision out of hand would be to
deny its considerable utopian appeal to his contemporary readers.
Grimmelshausen has updated the chiliastic vision of medieval salva-
tion history in the post-Reformation world of nascent German
nationalism, but in a way that emphasizes the distance between his
utopian dream and empirical reality.
Thus Grimmelshausen introduces the Orient into Simplicissimus
both as a site for the hero's adventurous journeys and as the enemy of
Christian Europe. However quickly denied, the scope of Simplicis-
simus's travels throughout Asia signals a knowledge of the East that
far surpasses the rather vague geography of Wolfram's world and
betrays a curiosity that belies the familiar Baroque rejection of the
world's Unbestdndigkeit. Jupiter's dream of German princes subduing
Asian infidels reflects the ideology of the Turkish wars, and the hero
of Grimmelshausen's Der seltzame Springinsfeld [Strange Springinsfeld]
(1670)-one of several spin-offs of the Simplicissimus novel-actually
serves a brief stint in the kaiser's army battling Turks in Hungary. The
Orient in Simplicissimus also retains something of its medieval
significance as the birthplace of Christ and the center of the Christian
world. In the Continuatio Simplicissimus decides to become a pilgrim
and sets out for Jerusalem. He makes it as far as Alexandria, but war
prevents him from crossing into Judea. He sails up the Nile to Cairo
instead, but is captured by Arab pirates who put him on display as a
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 45
curiosity until some Europeans buy his freedom. Told that he cannot
expect a pause in the fighting in the Middle East, Simplicissimus
abandons his hope to visit Jerusalem and sets off on a new pilgrimage
to St. James de Compostella, only to be shipwrecked off the coast of
Madagascar. He spends the rest of his days on a desert island some-
where in the Indian Ocean.
We can read Simplicissimus's failure to reach Jerusalem as the
sacred counterpart to Jupiter's secular vision of Christian German
hegemony. Grimmelshausen portrays the latter's vision as an unreal-
istic dream whose even partial realization would cost more suffering
that he is willing to admit, as one of Simplicissimus's friends observes.
Yet Simplicissimus's attempt to reject Europe and return to the geo-
graphical center of Christian faith in Jerusalem proves equally unsuc-
cessful. Unlike Parzival, Simplicissimus does not find the Holy Grail,
nor does he become king of a sacred order that will rule this world
and that prefigures a perfect world to come. Instead, he sits by him-
self on a desert island writing his life history on palm leaves, isolated
both from the Christian community of believers and from the Ger-
man nation within Europe.
While Grimmelshausen spends only a few paragraphs describing
his hero's journeys to the East, Lohenstein devotes hundreds of pages
to his various characters' experiences in different parts of Asia. In the
fifth book of the first part of Arminius, for instance, the Armenian
Prince Zeno entertains his German listeners with tales of his journeys
through the Caucasus to Central Asia and India. Zeno visits with
Amazons, fights with Tartars against the Chinese, and listens to the
wisdom of an Indian sage. Along the way he experiences earthquakes
and storms, travels for weeks through deserts so dry that the men
have to drink their horses' blood, and sees wondrous silk paper,
porcelain, and white elephants. The novel thus clearly caters to the
Baroque taste for the exotic and the curiosity about the East.84 Yet a
modern reader expecting a straightforward adventure story might be
puzzled by certain aspects of Zeno's tale. At any moment a passing
reference to a foreign custom or experience abroad can trigger
lengthy discussions among Zeno's listeners in which each speaker
supports his or her point of view by citing a seemingly endless series
of examples drawn from works of classical antiquity. Lohenstein's
46 German Orientalisms
contemporary readers admired the erudition displayed in such pas-
sages, but by the eighteenth century critics began to reject his style as
tedious bombast or Baroque Schwulst.85 Lohenstein's decision to
alternate between exotic adventures and learned commentary may
well reflect pride in his knowledge of antiquity, but it also points
toward a changing understanding of history in the Baroque.
Throughout the seventeenth century most historians remained
committed to the biblical paradigm of salvation history.86 For exam-
ple, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle [Dis-
course on universal history] (168 I) leads in a straight line from Adam
to Christ to Charlemagne and his successors. Its immediate purpose is
to legitimate the rule of the current French king and to educate his
heir.87 Bossuet devotes most of his treatise to a summary of the Old
Testament, supplemented by information about ancient Greece and
Rome. If there is a contradiction between the Bible and other
ancient sources, Bossuet insists that the Bible is correct. Large areas of
the world, including most of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, find no
place in his narrative, not because he is unaware of their existence,
but because they lack world-historical significance from Bossuet's
perspective as a French Catholic at the royal court. Gradually, how-
ever, a new sort of universal history began to emerge that tried to
include all peoples of the earth, even if they did not fit into a biblical
paradigm. Although this new catholicity reflected a greater regard for
cultural and historical specificity, it by no means attempted to reduce
the past to a dry narrative that explained "wie es eigentlich gewesen."
Unlike Ranke and other nineteenth-century historians, the Baroque
writers wanted to use history as a source of moralizing fables applica-
ble to other historical periods.88 Zeno's tale and the discussions it
provokes typify this understanding of history as exemplum; Asia
serves both as an utterly alien source of wonder and as a springboard
to general reflections about the human condition.
Like Grimmelshausen, Luther, and the Humanists, Lohenstein also
portrays the Orient as the enemy of Christian Europe, although he
does so in particularly complex and fascinating ways. Lohenstein not
only had read widely about the Ottoman Empire but had personal
encounters with Turks and European travelers returning from the
Orient; he had even traveled up to the Turkish border in Hungary as
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 47
a young man.89 His first and last dramas also take place in the world
of the Ottoman court. In Ibrahim Bassa (1653) Lohenstein reworks a
theme made famous in Gryphius's Catharina von Georgien (1647).9°
Gryphius writes a martyr drama in which the widowed Christian
queen of Georgia refuses to marry the Persian king. She stoically
endures gruesome tortures before being burned at the stake, remain-
ing confident to the last that she will find peace and freedom in the
next world: "Earth revolts us [stinks] / we are going into heaven"
[Die Erden stinckt uns an / wir gehn in Himmel ein].9' In Lohen-
stein's first drama, set in the Turkish court in Constantinople, Sultan
Soliman imprisons and eventually beheads the Christian Ibrahim, for
he lusts after Ibrahim's wife Isabella. Portrayed as a weak and vacillat-
ing character ruled by his own libido and a Machiavellian adviser, the
Sultan decides at the last minute not to execute Ibrahim's reluctant
widow and sets her free. On one level, Lohenstein's drama is pure
anti-Turkish propaganda. It opens with an allegorical figure of Asia
lamenting her former greatness and her current state of corruption:
"Woe to me! To me, Asia, oh woe!" [Weh weh! Mir Asien / ach!
weh!].92 In the end Isabella, unlike Catharina, rejects martyrdom to
spread the news of Turkish tyranny: "So that I can tell the South,
West, and North what sort of horrible things the damned Turk has
done."93 At the same time, however, Lohenstein explores the sexual
dynamics of an absolutist court in a drama far more concerned with
politics and the psychology of power than Christian faith. On this
level Lohenstein's drama comments implicitly on the dynastic politics
of central Europe and not just the evil Ottoman Empire. While
Luther had viewed the Turk as the embodiment of Christian sin,
Lohenstein secularizes and psychologizes the image into a manifesta-
tion of human sexual desire.
Lohenstein's final drama transforms the uncertain despot of his
early work into a raging monster. Ibrahim Sultan (1673) was first per-
formed at the court of the emperor in Vienna at a time of a renewed
threat from the Ottoman Empire, and it, too, functions as anti-Turk-
ish propaganda.94 An allegorical figure representing the Bosphorus
tells the city of Vienna that it is not so much water as "Lust-oil and
the brimstone of mad desire" [Geilheits-Oel und Schwefel toller
Brunst]95 that flows around a Turkish capital reeking of murder,
48 German Orientalisms
incest, infanticide, and other horrible crimes. The Danube, in con-
trast, flows happily past a blessed land untouched by tyranny or
wrongdoing. After this paean to Leopold and Austria the action
begins as the Sultan threatens either to rape or to stab his brother's
widow. She draws her own knife, and only the entrance of the Sul-
tan's mother prevents a bloodbath. The incident sets the tone for the
rest of this lurid drama. We learn that the Sultan, who had once been
impotent, has discovered an elixir that has turned him into a raging
volcano (Ein feuricht Etna).96 He invites spectators to admire his
amorous exploits in a seraglio decorated with lewd pictures. Inflamed
by a portrait of his mufti's fourteen-year-old daughter, the Sultan
sends his procuress on an unsuccessful mission of surrogate seduction.
Eventually the Sultan rapes the resisting girl (who later commits sui-
cide), after having imprisoned his own mother and killed some of his
own children. An angry mob throttles his servile minister in public
and throws the Sultan into a prison where he is strangled by four
silent men.
As in the case of Lohenstein's first drama, the obvious indictment
of the Oriental Other contains a subtext that touches on questions
that would have been pertinent to the sexual politics of European
states as well, as Jane Newman observes: "Lohenstein's political
analysis reveals more similarities than differences between the Turks
and the Europeans at the time, especially as concerns the mechanics
of power at the court."97 Of particular interest, from today's perspec-
tive, is Lohenstein's treatment of the question of whether or not indi-
viduals should be held personally responsible for crimes committed in
despotic regimes. When the Sultan's henchman claims that he was
"just obeying orders" when he had the girl taken by force, it is
difficult not to think of more recent instances of individual perpetra-
tors trying to escape blame for their actions.
Lohenstein devoted the final decade of his life to the novel
Arminius and had completed all but the final chapter at the time of his
death.98 He portrays noble Germans in their struggle against corrupt
Romans in a reworking of material found in Tacitus. But who
exactly who are "the Germans" within the context of Lohenstein's
novel, and how does the historical fiction relate to the context in
which it was written? There are actually three sorts of Germans who
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 49
appear within Arminius: most obviously, there are the members of the
various Germanic tribes who have united under Herrmann's leader-
ship in the struggle against Rome. In addition, Lohenstein argues
rather implausibly that Germans either participated in most of the
major events of ancient history, or that ancient peoples were actually
of German descent; the modern reader will no doubt be surprised to
learn that both Spartacus and the first Amazon queen were Ger-
mans.99 Finally, the novel contains several subplots that seem to retell
the story of German resistance to imperial oppression in displaced
form, as in the case of the Armenian struggles against Rome, or the
Tartar battles with the Chinese.°°
Determining the precise relationship between the Germanic peo-
ples of the past and seventeenth-century central European politics is
more complicated. In one view, Herrmann stands for Leopold, and
Lohenstein intended his work as a glorification of the Austrian
Empire. Lohenstein dedicated the work to the Prussian Friedrich
Wilhelm of Brandenburg, however, and it seems unlikely that a Sile-
sian Lutheran would have expressed unqualified support for an Aus-
trian emperor who spearheaded the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
It therefore seems probable that we should not look for a one-to-one
correspondence between the Germans depicted within the novel and
any existing government within central Europe. Rather, Lohenstein
combines a utopian vision of a pan-German harmony under a toler-
ant confederation of the sort that existed under Herrmann with a del-
icate strategy of contemporary realpolitik that seeks a balance
between Protestant Brandenburg, Catholic Austria, and the patch-
work quilt of dynastic and religious loyalties within Silesia.'°'
Identifying the "Orientals" both within the fiction of Arminius and
in Lohenstein's contemporary society proves equally complex. On
the one hand, as we have seen, the Orient features directly as the var-
ious parts of Asia visited by Zeno and others in the course of the
novel. On the other hand, Lohenstein depicts many Romans with
the same decadent characteristics he attributed to the Turks in his
earlier dramas. These "Orientalized" Romans of antiquity, in turn,
refer in the first instance to the overly refined culture of modern
France, but also, indirectly, to the Ottoman Empire-"and the Turk-
ish theme continues beneath the surface like the dark bass voice of
50 German Orientalisms
the entire work."'02 Thus Lohenstein does not restrict the "Orient"
to a specific geographical location in Arminius, nor to a specific his-
torical era. To give some sense of the intricacies of Lohenstein's Ori-
entalism, I will focus in greater detail on episodes from the third and
fourth books in the first half of the novel. The first portrays the
Armenian Queen Erato and the second Herrmann's brother Flavius.
Book 3 begins with a pause in the battle between the Germans and
the Romans. Herrmann, his fiancee Thul3nelda, and his sister
IB3mene visit Erato, who had been defeated in battle while disguised
as a man. Herrmann says that women should not bear arms, but Erato
politely disagrees. Thul3nelda not only takes her side, but reveals that
it was she who had defeated Erato, and that she, too, had been wear-
ing men's armor. The two women join forces against Herrmann,
arguing that many noble women have performed valiantly in battle
without neglecting their feminine duties. The Amazons, for instance,
managed to combine "domesticity and virtue" by nursing their chil-
dren from the left breast and setting their bows where the right had
been. Their decision to have burned away (weggebrennet) their one
breast is more honorable than those "who take away weapons from
the female sex, that is, who tear their hearts out of their bodies and
chop their hands from their arms.'"1o3 Against Herrmann's contention
that most women lack the necessary physical strength for battle, Erato
argues that he should not make generalizations about the entire
female sex on the basis of a few "Pulster-Tochter" (literally, cushion
daughters) who have been deformed by a "decadent upbringing or
bad habits" (2oIb). Nurture, not nature, is generally responsible for
feminine weakness. By the same token, she continues, one should
not reject all men simply because more than one "Sardanopolis" has
spent all his time lolling around on furs in the seraglio, "and actually
made himself into a woman [ja der sich selbst zum Weibe gemacht], mar-
ried a eunuch and was angry at nature and his mother because he had
been born a man who could not offer himself up for sale in a whore-
house" (2oIb). There is nothing wrong with virtuous women who
fight in battle; it is rather spoiled women and effeminate men who
should be condemned.
Lohenstein thus uncouples biological sex from the performance of
gendered virtue. What matters is not whether one is a man or a
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 51
woman, but whether one acts with manly virtue or succumbs to
effeminate vice. As if to underscore this distinction, Lohenstein
makes it very clear that there is nothing masculine about the physical
appearance of his heroines. Beneath whatever sort of clothing or
armor they may happen to be wearing, they remain voluptuous
women of ravishing beauty as well as paragons of moral virtue.
Women who fight for a just cause or rule as legitimate queens do not
lose their essential femininity. Hence we should not confuse Lohen-
stein's "feminism" with the bourgeois movement for women's
emancipation that began at the time of the French Revolution.04
Such writers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, and
Theodor von Hippel attempted to extend the Enlightenment belief
in universal human rights to include women, just as the Haitian Rev-
olution raised the question of whether or not black slaves of African
descent should enjoy the same rights.'05 For the most part, however,
bourgeois revolutionaries around 1i8oo tended to believe that women
ought to fulfill their calling as wives and mothers in the domestic
sphere, leaving politics to men. Indeed, those women who did ven-
ture forth into the public sphere posed a threat to "natural" gender
distinctions and became suspect of aristocratic degeneracy. Lohen-
stein, in contrast, depicts a prebourgeois world in which a handful of
aristocratic women could exert considerable political power, either as
rulers themselves or as members of influential salons, without losing
either their femininity or their virtue.
Entire nations can be as corrupt as decadent individuals. Toward
the end of the conversation Herrmann dismisses the notion that a vir-
tuous people should have to live like savages, eating acorns and raw
meat, wearing coarse garments, and sleeping under the stars or in
oxskin tents. Nevertheless, he continues, experience has unfortu-
nately shown "that permissible comfort can easily slide into an ugly
indulgence" (2o4b). The Romans, for instance, have conquered
more people by infecting them with a taste for luxury than by sub-
duing them by force of arms, and their warm baths and lascivious
plays pose a great threat to the noble simplicity of traditional German
life. The conversation then segues neatly into the history of Erato and
the Armenians in their struggle against Rome, most of which is nar-
rated by Erato's companion Salonine. The details of ancient Armen-
52 German Orientalisms
ian politics are complex, to put it mildly, but in a nutshell the situa-
tion is as follows: the Roman Empire has designs on the ancient king-
doms of Armenia, Media, and Parthia that lay between the Black and
Caspian Seas in what is today primarily northern Iran. At times the
Armenians ally themselves with Rome against the Medes and Parthi-
ans, and at others they side with one or both of their neighbors
against Rome. The Romans impose their rule brutally upon the
Armenians, who periodically respond with equally brutal reprisals.'o6
We pick up the story when Erato, who had ruled Armenia justly
and well while disguised as a man, is forced to flee because the
Romans have placed her corrupt brother Tigranes on the throne.
Although Tigranes is Armenian by birth, he has been raised in Rome
and has all the attendant vices: he is a lazy and immoral person who
prefers being carried around in a sedan-chair to hunting or riding,
who allows two corrupt women to take over most of his own duties
as ruler, and who has a public affair with the wife of a high-ranking
official, "all of which, to be sure, were considered virtues in Rome,
but... were unknown to the Armenians and thus considered foreign
vices" (244a). Worst of all-from the perspective of the upstanding
Armenians-Tigranes fails to act like a man, and his opponents
repeatedly refer to him as "the womanly Tigranes" [den weibischen
Tigranes] (247b), or simply "a woman" [ein Weib] (245b). Again we
see the mobility of the "Orient" in Lohenstein's novel in a way that
contrasts markedly from the sort of geographical determinism we will
encounter in Herder's work. The Western Romans become Orien-
talized, while the Armenians to their east become Occidentalized, or,
more precisely, they become German. Hence the struggle of the
Armenians against Rome not only parallels that of the Germans, but
the two forces also become directly linked at the end of the novel:
Zeno marries Herrmann's sister IB3mene, and Erato marries his
brother Flavius.
Before the Armenian siblings settle into happily heterosexual mar-
riages with their German counterparts, however, they experience
extremely confusing sexual desires. After having ruled her country
for a time disguised as the male Artabaxes, Erato flees to the city of
Sinope. Here she enters a chariot race as a different man named Mas-
sabazanes and ends up racing next to Arsinoe, a "woman" who even-
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 53
tually turns out to be her long-lost brother Zeno. As they meet on
the track, they seem to experience love at first sight: "At first both
could not look at each other enough, indeed, a secret inclination
arose in each and such an impulse in their souls that they themselves
did not know how to explain" (253b). Why are they confused? Arsi-
noe/Zeno knows he is really a man, but he does not know that Mas-
sabazanes/Erato is a woman and cannot suspect that she is his sister.
His initial attraction to "him" would therefore seem to be homosex-
ual. Erato, for her part, knows she is really a woman, but does not
know that Arsinoe/Zeno is a man, so her attraction to "Arsinoe"
would seem to be lesbian. Soon both are pining away for each other
in a way that Erato's servant says would have been obvious to explain
if only "the equality of their sex [die Gleichheit des Geschlechtes] had not
stood in the way" (255b). Slightly later Erato decides to reveal her
true identity: "With that she tore open her dress and showed the
queen (of Sinope) and Arsinoe a pair of breasts as beautiful as any eye
has ever seen or which the most perfect woman can have" (259b).
Arsinoe/Zeno-still undercover as a woman-is visibly shaken, but
why? Erato guesses that "her alarm stems from the fact that since
Massabazanes has transformed himself into a woman, her [Arsinoe's]
love has therefore faded away" (259b). Precluding the possibility of
lesbian desire, Erato can only assume that "Arsinoe's" passion evapo-
rates when "she" finds out that she was interested in another woman.
"Arsinoe" is so disappointed that "she" becomes physically sick, but
the doctors are puzzled when "her" heart throbs whenever Erato
approaches the bed. A lesbian passion after all? No, for both Erato
and the reader finally learn that "Arsinoe" is actually a man. The sight
of Erato's perfect breasts did not disappoint "her" heterosexual
desires for a man, but actually aroused his heterosexual passion for a
woman. "Arsinoe" looks deathly ill, but actually Zeno is only
lovesick. The various combinations of homosexual and lesbian
desires that had so puzzled the characters involved turn into what
seems a safely heterosexual romance-except, of course, for the fact
that Zeno and Erato are actually brother and sister. Fortunately the
two would-be lovers are separated before they can consummate their
incestuous affair, and all turns out for the best.
Why does Lohenstein condemn the womanly Tigranes and yet
54 German Orientalisms
permit his cross-dressing hero and heroine to flirt with homosexual,
lesbian, and incestuous desires with impunity? The answer, at least on
the surface, is quite simple: the morally corrupt Tigranes is neither
fish nor fowl, he is an effeminate man and hence a bad king, whereas
Erato remains a virtuous woman beneath her armor, and Zeno is still
a man's man even when he is wearing a dress. With the aid of hind-
sight it is even possible to straighten out their seemingly deviant
impulses: the apparent same-sex desires that form the basis of their
initial mutual attraction turn out to be heterosexual, and the subse-
quent threat of incest turns out to be only the natural attraction of
two virtuous individuals for one another: "Thus virtue has the
strength of a magnet that draws even the most alien individuals
toward one another" (255a). On the other hand, however, Lohen-
stein narrates the tale of Zeno and Erato in a way that makes it as con-
fusing as possible for as long as possible, and the two characters expe-
rience their illicit desires as intensely real and hence extremely
disturbing. Perhaps we can explain "Arsinoe's" illness as heterosexual
lovesickness inflamed by the sight of Erato's breasts, but how, then,
are we to explain Zeno's initial homosexual attraction to "Mas-
sabazanes"? And why does the heterosexual desire that clears up
homosexual confusion turn out to be incestuous in nature? Who is
the real "Oriental"? The line between the lascivious Tigranes and his
virtuous brother and sister is perhaps not as clearly drawn as one
might at first suspect. They too experience "deviant" desires; the dif-
ference is that they work their way through to nonincestuous
monogamous marriages with partners of appropriate social standing,
whereas their womanly brother neglects his political duties and
debauches himself with another man's wife. The "Oriental" desires
that in Lohenstein's dramas seemed firmly rooted in the Ottoman
Empire are not only transplanted to ancient Rome-and, by impli-
cation, modern France-but also surface in otherwise exemplary
individuals of the sort one might find in Austria, Prussia, or Silesia.
Herrmann's brother Flavius provides the counterpart to Erato's
tale by describing his upbringing in Rome. The young German is
raised together with two sons of Caesar, Lucius and Cajus, and Lucius
in particular astonishes Flavius with his licentious behavior. His
"inclination toward lasciviousness" [Neigung zur Geilheit] (452a) is
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 55
already evident at age thirteen, which prompts Flavius to observe that
because the Germans wait longer to become sexually active, they also
remain potent until late in life, whereas the sexually precocious
Romans stunt their growth and age prematurely. The lubricious
Lucius soon comes under the influence of an Epicurean teacher
named Aristippus, who pretends to be a wise leader during the day.
At night, however, Aristippus puts on lipstick, nail polish, and rouge
and leads his wards into a room decorated "with the most erotic
images" [mit denen geilesten Bildern]. "He bathed us with sweet-
smelling waters, anointed us with Syrian balsam, and squandered all
the accoutrements of opulent Asia [des uppigen Asiens]" (454b). For-
tunately Sotion, a friend of Flavius's father, arrives just as Flavius is
about to enter this den of iniquity. He warns the boy that Aristippus
has already been condemned elsewhere for various vices, of which
"adultery, incest, and unnatural desires" (46ob) are only the least seri-
ous offenses. Meanwhile Aristippus has arranged for Lucius to spend
an evening with Moorish boys and girls, "against whose fiery erotic
charms the grace of white girls seemed cold as ice" (457b). While
Lucius sings the praises of black women, Flavius replies that Germans
prefer blondes. The story reaches its first climax when Sotion warns
the authorities that Aristippus is about to debauch a hundred youths.
The police break into his chambers to find the naked Aristippus
anointing a Priapus with wine and Caesar's two sons in compromis-
ing positions. The guards hastily tell the two boys to get dressed, but
most of the rest are imprisoned, banished, or executed. Aristippus is
strangled in prison and thrown into the Tiber with a rock tied to his
neck.
The message could not be clearer, or at least so it would seem:
while Lucius embraces Asiatic voluptuousness and Moorish women,
the noble German resists temptation and dreams of pale northern
beauties. Things become more complicated, however, when the
African Prince Juba, who is married to Cleopatra, sends his sixteen-
year-old daughter Dido to Rome. Lucius immediately desires the
dark-skinned beauty (who incidentally is not the character described
by Virgil), but she is attracted to Flavius and he also falls in love with
her, despite his stated preference for blondes. Lucius becomes jealous
and stabs Flavius, whereupon Dido grabs the knife and sinks it into
56 German Orientalisms
Lucius's neck. Advised by Caesar to get out of town, Flavius, who
has recovered from his wounds, decides to go to Africa to serve under
Dido's father. Unfortunately he is shipwrecked along the way, and
Dido mistakenly believes he has died. She leaves Rome, but a recov-
ered Lucius pursues her and forces Dido to seek refuge in a temple of
Diana. Lucius, "this horny stallion" [dieser geile Hengst] (48 ia), dies
trying to scale the walls of the temple, but by then it is too late: Dido
has not only taken vows of chastity, but has been forced to sacrifice
her virginity to a lustful priest. In the end her father has the priest torn
apart by lions and his fellow priests castrated, while Dido gives Flay-
ius a boat that enables him to escape back to Germany.
In some ways this interracial romance recalls that of Gahmuret and
Belakane, as both works tell of a European man's love for an African
woman. However, Wolfram's hero abandons his pregnant wife
secretly, while Dido openly urges Flavius to leave. He is sad to go but
is not to blame for her predicament, which results entirely from the
sexual aggression of Lucius and the priest. Given the conventions of
the courtly novel, it would be unrealistic to expect Flavius to con-
tinue his relationship with a woman who is no longer a virgin. Inter-
estingly, however, her race plays no part in his decision to leave her.
The story that starts out suggesting that the desire for black women is
a sign of moral turpitude among Orientalized Romans ends up por-
traying the black Dido as the innocent victim of Roman lust. Lohen-
stein thus shifts a collective allegory into individual psychology: the
undifferentiated mass of Moorish men and women imported to
debauch Roman youth yields to a tragic love story between a noble
German and an equally noble African woman.07
Lohenstein's Orientalism thus fluctuates between a harshly Euro-
centric rhetoric at a time of renewed threat from the Ottoman
Empire and a much more nuanced literary vocabulary that illumi-
nates both the psychological complexities of his protagonists and the
politics of his contemporary central Europe. In Ibrahim Sultan Lohen-
stein paints a garish portrait of an utterly depraved Turkish court
while praising the virtues of the Austrian monarchy. In Arminius,
however, he divorces the Oriental from any particular place or time,
transforming political geography into a moral topography. The Asian
Armenians become the counterparts of the virtuous Germans, while
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 57
the Romans sink into Oriental debauchery. Matters become still
more complicated, however, for distinctions between the Germans,
Romans, and Armenians are not as sharply defined as they might
seem at first glance: the German Flavius grows up in Rome with
Caesar's sons as his closest companions but manages to resist its cor-
rupting influence. Tigranes, in contrast, succumbs completely to
Rome's evil influence, even though he is an Armenian prince by
birth with an exceptionally virtuous sister. The movement of indi-
viduals across cultural and moral borders corresponds to the shifting
alliances between different countries and dynasties. On the one hand,
we have seemingly clear-cut divisions between
Germans and
Romans, but on the other, we find that Germans have often fought
in Roman armies in the past, and that Arminius struggles against the
constant threat that some of his fellow German tribal leaders will
transfer their loyalty to the Romans. The Armenians, for their part,
are engaged in a dizzyingly complex series of shifting alliances
between the Medes, Parthians, and Romans.
In this way the political geography of Arminius corresponds to the
intricacies of central European politics in the wake of the Thirty
Years' War. From a distant perspective, Lohenstein's political land-
scape seems divided into large, competing power blocks: Prussians
and Austrians, Protestants and Catholics, Germans and French, Euro-
peans and Turks. Read retrospectively through the lens of nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century politics, it seems as though he depicts
a familiar landscape in which discrete nation-states vie for power
within Europe, although the Ottoman Empire poses more of an
external threat and confessional differences play a larger role in the
intra-European conflicts of the seventeenth century. If we look more
closely, however, we see that Lohenstein recreates in Arminius the
complexities of local politics in Breslau and Silesia, where religious
and dynastic loyalties formed a delicate web of contested power rela-
tions. From this perspective, as Jane O. Newman has argued in her
seminal study of Lohenstein's dramas, the Baroque world of central
Europe begins to look like a distant mirror of today's postmodern,
postnational world. In his plays she finds evidence of "the same
hybridity, polyphony, and mobility that characterized Silesia itself"
during Lohenstein's life (36). Hence she argues against "the predom-
58 German Orientalisms
inant image of a monolithic early modernism" that originated in the
nationalist literary histories of the nineteenth century in favor of "a
more heterogeneously conceived early modern Europe [that] can
function as a model for the borderland in the many senses in which
that term is now used to describe the hybridity and contentiousness,
yet also the richness of the postmodern world" (175, 178-79).
The simultaneous presence of the macro- and micropolitics of
location in Lohenstein's Arminius prompts further reflections on cur-
rent efforts to redraw the disciplinary boundaries of literary and cul-
tural studies. If we focus on the broad conflicts between Germans and
Romans in the novel, and thus, by implication, on the tensions
between Austria and France, on the one hand, and Christian Europe
and the Ottoman Empire, on the other, we work on terrain mapped
out by scholars of the Renaissance, whereas a concentration on
moments of local complexity, hybrid identities, and border crossings
moves the novel into the domain of early modern studies.os The
term Renaissance came into vogue in the late nineteenth century and
prompted celebrations of great works of art by great men who repre-
sented great nations. Early modern studies arose in the late twentieth
century and inspired new research into a much broader range of lit-
erary and cultural artifacts, by women as well as men, and with a
greater sensitivity toward local politics and individual difference.
Both approaches clearly reflect the preoccupations of their age, and
both could be accused of producing anachronistic readings of the
past: whether looking for heroes or hybridity, critics are liable to find
precisely what they seek. From a more generous perspective, how-
ever, the move toward early modern studies allows us to appreciate
previously neglected aspects of Lohenstein's work and thus to situate
him more accurately in the political and cultural landscape of seven-
teenth-century Silesia. What makes Lohenstein's Arminius particu-
larly interesting, in fact, is the way in which it illuminates the com-
plex relations between local politics, nascent nationalism, and larger
geopolitical concerns.
The porous geographical boundaries in Lohenstein's work pro-
duce a correspondingly mobile sense of gender roles and sexual iden-
tity. I return in conclusion therefore to questions raised by the nearly
incestuous romance between Zeno and Erato. In portraying a
Crusaders, Infidels, and the Birth of a Nation 59
woman who rules as successfully as a man, Lohenstein continues his
long-standing interest in politically powerful women. As Newman
points out, questions surrounding the legitimacy of female rulers
were of central importance in the dynastic politics of seventeenth-
century Silesia.'°9 Unlike such morally ambiguous figures as Agrip-
pina or Cleopatra, however, the heroines in Arminius remain without
blemish. Generic convention may explain the difference: tragedies
traditionally portray flawed greatness, whereas courtly novels depict
idealized heroes and heroines. By subjecting his protagonists to a pro-
tracted period of same-sex and incestuous desires that they find
deeply disturbing, however, Lohenstein moves his novel toward the
psychological complexity of such eighteenth-century fiction as Karl
Philipp Moritz's Anton Reiser: Ein psychologischer Roman (1785-90) or,
for that matter, his contemporary Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse
de Cleves (1678). We are certainly far removed from the world of
Wolfram's Parzival, who has little psychological depth and no lan-
guage to express his feelings."0 Lohenstein's fascination with role-
playing, cross-dressing, and "deviant" sexual desires in fact makes
him a prime candidate for further study in our own era of critical
gender studies and queer theory, just as his works seemed morally
offensive to the bourgeois critics who largely ignored him in the
nineteenth century. As heirs to the Victorian age, we find that
Lohenstein's work still has the capacity to shock us with its graphic
violence and steamy sexuality. What we may perceive as violations of
middle-class taboos, however, were no doubt considerably less star-
tling to a prebourgeois age accustomed to public executions of the
sort described in excruciating detail in the opening pages of Fou-
cault's Discipline and Punish, or the slightly later sexual fantasies of
Marquis de Sade. The challenge, as always, will be to preserve a sense
of Lohenstein's historical specificity while remaining attuned to our
own changing critical concerns; the reward that Lohenstein's work
offers is a largely untapped reservoir of an exuberantly rich literary
imagination.

CHAPTER TWO
Romantic Orientalism and
the Absence of Empire
The Turkish retreat from the gates of Vienna in 1683 marked the
beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Sick
Man of Europe continued to languish until 1918, any real danger of
a renewed Turkish advance had vanished by the mid-eighteenth
century. As a result, the figure of the bloodthirsty Turk that had
dominated the Baroque stage yielded to a less threatening image of
the Orient as the site of untold wealth and sexual license. New ency-
clopedic collections of Oriental source materials in D'Herbelot's Bib-
liothdque orientale (1697) and translations of the oo1001 Nights into French
by Antoine Galland (1704-17) and German by Bohse-Talander
(1730) introduced Europeans to a poetic treasure trove that they
would continue to mine for centuries. A new taste for an exotic tur-
querie and chinoiserie arose in fashion, painting, and the decorative arts,
followed by a new wave of popular comic operas or Singspiele with
Oriental settings (most famously Mozart's Entfuhrung aus dem Serail of
1782).'
Much of the early-eighteenth-century European fascination with
the Orient was a product of the late-Baroque aristocratic culture
known as the Rococo, whose spirit of playful eroticism is best cap-
tured in the paintings of Frangois Boucher. The movement origi-
nated at the royal court in France, but it also exerted an influence on
German art and literature.2 Already in 1689 Heinrich Anshelm von
Zigler und Kliphausen (1663-96) published Die Asiatische Banise
[Asian Banise], a novel set in distant Thailand and Burma.3 This
61
62 German Orientalisms
action-packed work of fiction, which remained popular until the late
eighteenth century, portrays the valiant and virtuous hero's ulti-
mately successful attempt to rescue his equally virtuous and beautiful
bride from a hideously vicious villain. The exotic setting allows
Zigler to send his protagonist on a series of exciting and often grue-
some adventures: in the opening sequence, for instance, our already-
wounded hero-clad only in a blood-soaked Japanese robe-seeks
shelter in a cave, only to find himself under attack from a ravenous
tiger who has come to feast on stacks of bloated corpses left over from
recent mass executions. One finds a slightly lighter touch in the
"galante Romane" of the early eighteenth century, which often por-
tray erotic adventures in Oriental settings.4 The most important rep-
resentative of German Rococo literature, however, is Christoph
Martin Wieland (1733-1813), whose wonderfully urbane and witty
verse narratives draw on an eclectic mixture of ancient, modern
European, and Oriental sources. In his mock-heroic verse epic
Oberon (1780), for instance, Wieland combines elements of Shake-
speare's Midsummer Night's Dream with the medieval motif of the
Brautfahrt. A young European knight sets off to Baghdad to pluck
hairs from the Kalif's beard. He falls in love and has various adven-
tures-amorous and otherwise-in the East, before returning with
his converted Islamic bride to Europe.5
Wieland's cosmopolitan taste marks the end of the European
Baroque, but his works continued to influence both Goethe and, to
a certain extent, the works of the Early Romantics.6 In his autobiog-
raphy Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and truth] Goethe claims that he
was completely taken in by Wieland in his youth, and that he and
other writers of his generation devoured Wieland's Shakespeare
translations.7 During his Sturm und Drang years Goethe ridiculed the
older writer in the satirical drama Gotter, Helden und Wieland [Gods,
heroes, and Wieland] (1773), but Wieland responded graciously, and
when Goethe moved to Weimar the two quickly became friends.
Perhaps more surprising in the light of their subsequent reputations is
the extent to which Wieland also influenced Friedrich von Harden-
berg (1772-1801), who is better known by his pen name Novalis.
The young Romantic published his first poem in Wieland's Der
Teutsche Merkur in 1791 and borrowed the name Ginnistan from
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 63
Wieland for one of his last works, "Klingohr's Mirchen." Novalis's
earliest poetry is in fact so influenced by Wieland and other Anakre-
ontik poets that Richard Samuel suggested that "we can perhaps refer
to the young Hardenberg as a not unoriginal poet of the Rococo."8
In the later nineteenth century Novalis was celebrated as a Romantic
messiah for a Christian-German nation, while Wieland was scorned
as "the un-German corrupter of morals" [der undeutsche Sitten-
verderber] who was slavishly dependent on French literary fashions.9
Recalling the actual proximity of Novalis to Wieland thus corrects
the distortions of nineteenth-century hagiography that transformed
Novalis from an irreverent sensualist into a disembodied mystic. In
fact, it was just this sense of playful eroticism that that first drew
Novalis to Wieland: "It was thus the frivolous [das Frivole] in Wieland
that first attracted him."' More than just "frivolity" links Wieland to
Novalis, however, for the older writer introduced him to what
would become a particularly German sort of cosmopolitanism in the
wake of the French Revolution.
While Europeans were adopting a more playful attitude toward the
Orient in works of the Rococo, a few British civil servants were
beginning to sow the seeds of a new Romantic fascination with India.
In the 1770s Sir William Jones and Charles Wilkins, both officials of
the East India Company, began to learn Sanskrit and to send transla-
tions of ancient Indian texts and the manuscripts themselves back to
Europe. The discoveries touched off a wave of enthusiasm in Britain
and France that marked the beginning of the "Oriental Renais-
sance."" In Germany, Georg Forster's translation of the play Sakontala
(1i791) did much to popularize this image of a romanticized Orient.
The play, which William Jones had originally translated from Sanskrit,
featured an innocent Indian maiden who becomes bound to the king
in eternal love by the power of a magic ring. Novalis soon invested
the work with personal significance in a way that was typical for eigh-
teenth-century readers, whose experience of reality was often medi-
ated by literary texts-one thinks of Werther's fondness for Homer
and Ossian, or Anton Reiser's obsession with Goethe's Werther.
Novalis, who-with a nod to Samuel Richardson-had frequently
referred to Sophie von Kiihn as "Klarisse," began to call her "Sacon-
tala" as well. In an example of life imitating art, Novalis gave Sophie
64 German Orientalisms
an engraved ring as a symbol of their fidelity. If Wieland's verse nar-
ratives portrayed the Orient as the site of a fantastic and slightly risque
eroticism that appealed to Friedrich von Hardenberg's aristocratic
taste, Forster's Sakontala inspired an emotional intensity more typical
of the middle class. That Novalis and other Early Romantics should
have been susceptible to both images of the Orient is only surprising
if one expects individual desires to conform neatly to sociological cat-
egories. As we shall see, the Romantic poets' fascination with the
"mythical image" of India captured in Sakontala eventually gave birth
to the academic disciplines of comparative grammar and Indology at
the nineteenth-century German university.'2 The seemingly pristine
world of ancient India provided an antidote to the complexity and
corruption of modern civilization and an answer to the Romantic
quest for origins. Sanskrit displaced Hebrew as the original language,
and poets and philosophers became convinced that human civilization
had begun in India.
HERDER'S HISTORICISM
The work of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) had a decisive
impact on the development of German Orientalism and the history
of European Romanticism. Herder revolutionized attitudes toward
art and the individual, while laying the foundations for modern
nationalism and historicism. He broke with the neoclassical reverence
for antiquity as a timeless norm and celebrated the vitality of various
national cultures, both past and present.13 Against the conception of
the artist as a man of taste who imitates nature for the instruction and
delight of his audience, Herder championed the impassioned genius
as a Promethean figure who rivals God in the creation of autono-
mous art.14 His expressive theory of poetry emerged together with a
new kind of subject who is attuned to his or her feelings and wants to
communicate those feelings in language. Such individuals are
engaged in a dynamic process of organic growth or Bildung, deter-
mined by an unpredictable combination of internal predispositions
and external influences.'5 Christian salvation history, with its clearly
defined beginning, middle, and end, turns into "the secular mode of
the Bildungsgeschichte," in which individuals progress toward an
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 65
uncertain future.16 The literary genre that corresponds to this trans-
formation is the Entwicklungs- or Bildungsroman, but Herder applied
the same model of dynamic growth to the history of individual peo-
ples or nations, and to the history of the world as a whole.
Herder's philosophy of history finds its fullest development in his
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Ideas on the philos-
ophy of the history of humankind] (1784-91). In his huge, although
still fragmentary, work, Herder attempts nothing less than to trace the
history of humankind from its beginnings to the present, to survey
every culture in every corner of the globe, and to situate history on
the planet Earth in the context of God's entire creation. Arminius
already reflects increased interest in the non-European world, yet
Lohenstein relies more on ancient than modern sources and uses
world history as the Baroque equivalent of a data bank from which he
draws timeless moral exempla. Herder, in contrast, sets history into
motion as part of an all-encompassing organic development. Of par-
ticular interest is the way in which Herder negotiates a path between
Eurocentrism and an emerging German nationalism. As one might
expect, Herder often suggests that modern European civilization is
superior to that of other world cultures. At the same time, however,
Herder remains sharply critical of imperialist aggression in an era of
accelerating European exploration and colonization. Germans are at
once part of Europe, as the heirs to Greco-Roman civilization, but
also separate from Europe, as a politically fragmented nation that does
not (yet) have colonies outside Europe, and that feels itself to be the
victim of French cultural imperialism within Europe.
The Orient plays a crucial role in Herder's efforts to define
national identity in the context of universal history. While Georg
Forster's tales of the South Pacific fueled the German imagination
with images of pristine sites previously untouched by Western civi-
lization, the East was both a site of modern colonization and ancient
culture, Europe's closest and oldest Other, but also its spiritual
mother. In the Ideen Herder retraces the history of European civiliza-
tion as it moves from east to west in a way that makes a virtue out of
necessity, condoning Germany for its advanced state of European
civilization, even as he condemns the rest of Europe for its imperial-
ist aggression.
66 German Orientalisms
Herder had plans for the project that would eventually become the
Ideen since at least the time when he left Riga for France in the spring
of 1769. "For this purpose I want to gather data from the history of
all periods," he wrote in his Journal meiner Reise imJahr 1769 [Journal
of my journey in the year 1769]: "each shall provide me with the
image of its own customs, habits, virtues, vices, and happiness."'7
The passage already gives a sense of the encyclopedic scope of the
envisioned work and of the teleological thrust of the argument.
Herder's goal is both historicist and hermeneutic. On the one hand,
he wants to understand each culture on its own terms without
recourse to a single norm: "The human race has had sufficient happi-
ness in all ages, but each in its own way." On the other hand, inves-
tigation of the past helps us better to understand the present: "and so
I want to lead everything back up to our time, and learn how to serve
it properly" (30). Herder's efforts to inscribe unique historical events
within a narrative of human progress will become one of the central
challenges of the Ideen: how can individual cultures specific to one
place and time form part of a larger teleological development? In
order to see how Herder moved from the cryptic comments of the
Journal to the expansive vision of the Ideen, it is useful to look briefly
at several works written during Herder's remarkably productive years
in the early 1770s.
Herder is perhaps best known today as the contributing editor of
Von deutscher Art und Kunst [On German character and art] (1773), a
collection of five essays that became the manifesto of the German
Sturm und Drang movement and marked the beginnings of Euro-
pean Romanticism. Herder wrote essays on Ossian and Shakespeare
that have long been recognized as turning points in the history of lit-
erary theory. Inspired by Rousseau and filled with disdain for the
decadence of modern times, Herder based his new aesthetic on a
series of binary oppositions that value the primitive over the modern,
feeling over form, the spoken over the written word, and nature over
art. With one stroke Herder jettisoned the neoclassical image of the
poet as a skillful rhetorician or a cultivated wit and replaced it with
the romantic genius, a titantic figure who shattered the rules of polite
society in creating art that taps into the life force of nature and
expresses the passions of the soul. Within a year, Goethe was to pro-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 67
duce the quintessential romantic hero in Die Leiden desjungen Werther
[The sufferings of young Werther] (1774), the novel that electrified
Europe and made Rococo preciosity and enlightened cynicism seem
like the fashions of a bygone time.
That Herder should have chosen James Macpherson's modern
forgery of the Ossian material as an example of the primitive vitality
of an ancient people has a certain irony, of course, just as Herder's
eagerness to embrace Shakespeare as a primal force of nature ren-
dered him blind to the artifice and sophistication of the works of the
Elizabethan dramatist. Herder's enthusiasm leaves little room for
ironic detachment. He styles himself as a prophet, rhapsodically
preaching the good news of a popular vitality that he finds in the
songs of Celts, Lapps, Peruvians, and North American Indians. Yet
Herder's global primitivism also stands in the service of a new Ger-
man nationalism. After all, he entitled his volume "Von deutscher Art
und Kunst," in which the word deutscher has a polemical edge that
links it to the vitality of the Volk and hence makes it opposed to
everything French.'8 Herder in fact conducts a double polemic:
against the French and their culture as decadent, artificial, and based
on a sterile imitation of the ancients, and against the German aristo-
crats, who have forgotten their own Art or national character and
imitate the French instead. The appeal is thus class specific as well as
nationalist, as a member of Germany's new group of "non-noble
elites" argues against the French abroad and a German aristocracy
under French influence at home.'9
Herder thus views Germany as a cultural colony of France, and this
sense of being subject to an imperial power within Europe places a
distinct stamp on the "bardic nationalism" of Von deutscher Art und
Kunst. Katie Trumpener has argued that the cultural dynamics of
European imperialism were first developed within the Continent
before being exported to the rest of the world. Scottish, Irish, and
Welsh poets on the Celtic fringe of Great Britain turned to bardic
poets in the 176os as elegiac figures who gave voice to national tradi-
tions that were being destroyed by British imperialism. Bardic poetry
was a communal poetry, rooted in the people and their past, and
pressed into service for the cause of an anti-imperial Celtic national-
ism. The bard soon became a popular figure in English poetry as well,
68 German Orientalisms
but in a way that obscured his original political function: the English
"imagine the bard (and the minstrel after him) as an inspired, isolated,
and peripatetic figure" and thus fail to grasp the "historical and cul-
tural significance" of bardic poetry in its original communal con-
text.20
In transporting bardic poetry still further from the British Isles to
Germany, Herder seems unconcerned about the originally crucial
distinction between the bardic poets of the Celtic fringe and imperial
Britain.2' For Herder, both Ossian and Shakespeare are equally
British, or, more precisely, equally Germanic. In a short essay of 1777
entitled "Von der Ahnlichkeit der mittlern englischen und deutschen
Dichtkunst" [On the similarity of medieval English and German
poetry] Herder argued that England, having been conquered succes-
sively by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, was
essentially German, and that English verse was thus "a repository of
Nordic poetry and language."22 The bardic poetry that in its own
context was inspired by anti-English imperialism becomes part of a
larger pan-German nationalism for Herder, for whom the colonizing
power is not England but France. The crucial difference between the
English and the Germans, according to Herder, is that the English
have remained true to their cultural roots and thus produce first-rate
literature that reaches a wide audience, whereas the Germans have
forgotten their past, adopted the foreign garb of French culture, and
lost touch with the reading public. Hence Herder accompanies his
celebration of Anglo-Germanic culture with an appeal to his con-
temporary Germans to rediscover their own traditions, and he urges
them to make the effort to read recently discovered troves of
medieval verse. Another essay of 1776 implores the Germans to read
the works of Ulrich von Hutten, a "man for the fatherland."23
Herder also began collecting German Volkslieder at this time as part of
a cultural mission to preserve the voice of the people. These individ-
ual projects contribute to the effort to create a sense of "imagined
community" in Germany based on traditions either recovered or
invented from the past.
Herder's nationalism forms part of a broader movement among
German intellectuals that had been under way for more than a
decade: in his seventeenth Literaturbrief [Letter on literature] (1759)
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 69
Lessing had already called for an authentically German drama to
counter French Neoclassicism; Klopstock entered his bardic phase in
the mid-176os and inspired others to join the new cause; and
Friedrich Karl von Moser called for a new, pan-German patriotism in
his essay Von dem Deutschen National-Geist [On the German national
spirit] (1765). Herder's own "patriotic turn" took place in 1769 dur-
ing his extended stay in Nantes, France.24 Already in the Journal
meiner Reise we find disparaging comments about the French, whose
superficial brilliance cannot mask their lack of vital genius. Never-
theless, Herder feels compelled to go to France to learn its language
and become immersed in its culture and at times seems quite enthu-
siastic about the opportunity to become privy to the gossip with the
French capital: "To know anecdotes from Paris! To be familiar with
all those things that others are talking about!"25 Despite his professed
disdain for French culture, Herder was enough of an East Prussian
provincial to succumb to the lure of the European metropolis. Once
he had arrived in France, however, Herder felt increasingly alienated
from the foreign culture, and he returned to Germany in 1770 to
renew his polemics against French cultural hegemony.
Not all German writers around 1770 shared the enthusiasm for this
new "bardic nationalism." Wieland was particularly outspoken in his
opposition to modern affectations of supposedly ancient styles. Times
have changed so much since that time-"thank God!"-that a faux
primitivism only makes modern poetry look ridiculous.26 We live in
a time of the European Enlightenment and progress, he continues;
why should we wander around the forests pretending to be ancient
Germans? Interestingly, Wieland does not deny that nations exist:
"Nature has already provided each nation with its own Bildung, its
own temperament, its own merits and flaws," he states in a passage
that could have been written by Herder (270). Like the ancient
Greeks, the politically fragmented "German nation is actually not
One nation, but rather an aggregate of many nations." Nevertheless,
he continues, modern Germans-like the Spartans, Corinthians, and
Athenians in ancient Greece-have a single national character that
unites members of individual provinces. Wieland differs from his
contemporaries in the 1770s in his greater openness to foreign liter-
ary traditions. Confident that national identities remain firmly rooted
70 German Orientalisms
in nature, Wieland claims that individuals who try too hard to avoid
foreign influence only attain "a kind of individuality that often bor-
ders on caricature" (270). From Wieland's perspective, in other
words, being German is a given; one has only the choice between
being a progressive, cosmopolitan German open to international
influence or a narrow-minded nationalist who fears and loathes the
foreign.
Wieland's polemic targeted the poetry of Klopstock and Gersten-
berg directly, although in a broader sense it also included Herder and
the writers of the Sturm und Drang movement, most notably the
young Goethe.27 Yet the implicit opposition between Herder and
Wieland in the early 1770s needs further clarification. Herder was not
a nationalist in the sense that he focused myopically on an exclusively
German literary tradition. He was extremely well read and open to a
vast range of international literatures. Yet Wieland drew on highly
"civilized" ancient and modern literary traditions, while Herder
favored "primitive" works from many different indigenous cultures.
If they agreed on the greatness of an individual writer, it was often for
different reasons: Wieland praised Shakespeare despite his disregard
for traditional Aristotelian poetics, while Herder celebrated him
because he was willing to break the rules and obey the laws of
nature.28 Although there are already elements of bourgeois sentimen-
tality in Wieland, his work retains much of the aristocratic sense of
the self as a public performance in which "to exist means to play a
role, "29 whereas Herder seeks present authenticity arising out of a
continuous world-historical development. To put it another way,
Wieland was willing to mix and match the blossoms of many literary
traditions into a cosmopolitan bouquet, whereas Herder sought the
common roots of organically linked national cultures.
The most important ancient source of genuine poetry for Herder
came from the East and was preserved in the opening passages of the
Old Testament. While discovering the virtues of Ossian's bardic
poetry and Shakespeare's genius, the Lutheran minister was also
engaged in the study of what he termed "Die ersten Urkunden des
Menschlichen Geschlechts" [The first documents of the human race]
(1769).3° Much in the spirit of the essays in Von deutscher Art und
Kunst, Herder contends that ancient nations produced their own
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 7 1
poetic mythologies about the origins of the world. The Eddas of the
Celts, the theogenies and heroic songs of the Greeks, and the popu-
lar tales of the Spanish, old French, and Germanic peoples-in short,
everything now called barbarous-"is all One collective voice, a sin-
gle sound from such poetic documents of earlier times."3' Unfortu-
nately, continues Herder, we overly civilized moderns find it difficult
to appreciate the fresh spirit of these ancient works, because acade-
mics have buried the texts under suffocating layers of scholarly com-
mentary. Herder wants to brush this commentary aside and hear
again the revelations of these ancient texts as they were once
recorded "from the mouth of the people" (5:22). A highly detailed
stroll through the opening verses of Genesis follows, in which Herder
offers not so much critical commentary as an effusive appreciation of
what he terms the "sacred, ancient, poetic documents of the Orient"
(5:30). Herder insists that these opening verses express "a certain
completely pure Oriental way of thinking" [eine gewisse durchaus
reine Orientalische Denkart] (5:25), by which he means that the texts
are poetic, popular, authentically national, and "at the same time
enchantingly romantic" (5:26)-the same virtues he discovered in
the songs of other allegedly uncorrupted peoples, in Ossian's bardic
poetry, and in Shakespeare's "Germanic" genius. By casting aside
modern scholarship to listen to the Romantic voice of ancient Ori-
ental poetry, Herder once again rejects modern (French) civilization
for ancient (Germanic) culture. Thus in spirit, if not in actual fact, the
original Oriental was a German.
Thus far we have seen in Herder an unqualified praise for works of
largely, but not exclusively, Germanic peoples of the present, and
scattered individuals and groups of the past, including Ossian, Shake-
speare, Homer, and the Oriental authors of Genesis. Missing as yet is
the plot that will link the various historical moments together in a
single grand narrative. Herder took the first step in this direction in
yet another seminal essay of the early 1770s, Auch eine Philosophie der
Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit: Beytrag zu vielen Beytrdgen des
Jahrhunderts [Another philosophy of the history of human develop-
ment: Contribution to many contributions of the century] (i774). As
the subtitle of Herder's essay indicates, we are to understand the Auch
of his main title as a sign of modesty, but perhaps also ironically: he is
72 German Orientalisms
writing "yet another" history of humankind. Again drawing on
Rousseau, Herder expresses nostalgia for simpler times and primitive
peoples, yet he does not share Rousseau's pessimism about the course
of human history. In Herder's view, each culture arises at a specific
place and time; hence any desire on the part of one culture either to
emulate a foreign culture, or to impose its influence on another, is
inherently misguided. Nevertheless, each self-contained cultural unit
forms part of a larger historical narrative that leads from the origins of
the world in the East up to modern Europe. Herder claims that
humankind had its childhood in the Orient, its boyhood in Egypt, its
youthful maturity in Greece, and its first manhood in Rome; now
the "new man" has been born in the north.
Herder's understanding of world history finds its fullest elaboration
in his Ideen. In a philosophy influenced by Heraclitus and Spinoza,
Herder rejects notions of a transcendent God or of a universe with-
out God altogether, to reveal instead the "path of God in nature"
[Gang Gottes in der Natur].32 Nothing stands still in Herder's world.
Animals and plants are born, mature, grow old, and die, but also give
birth to the next generation that will continue the cycle of life. The
individual cycles form part of a larger plan that progresses upward
from rocks to plants, from plants to animals, from animals to human
beings, and from humans to God. Herder thus adapts the Enlighten-
ment's belief in human progress and applies it to the universe as a
whole, which he views as the unfolding of God in his creation
through time: "God is everything in his works" (6:17). The concept of
Bildung captures the ongoing process of formation and transformation
within God's world, and it becomes a moral imperative for humans
to keep pace with this change. For humankind holds a special place
in Herder's philosophy of history: with their upright posture, their
capacity for reason, and their use of language, human beings are the
crown of God's creation. They are thus obligated to pursue the
"noble Bildung toward rationality and freedom," which Herder
defines as Humanitdt (6:154). In such a world, laziness becomes a cap-
ital crime, just as it is for Goethe's Faust. Nature progresses, and we
must move forward with it or regress to a subhuman level: "should
he move backwards and become once again a stem, plant, an ele-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 73
phant?" (6:179). If we dedicate ourselves to the task of Bildung on
earth, we can hope for eternal life after death.
Specific human cultures arise within the broad sweep of universal
history. Like several of his contemporaries, Herder stresses the
importance of climatic influence on individual cultures.33 He begins
with the assumption that human beings are born with certain innate
characteristics, what we might call a genetic blueprint. Yet they are
also influenced by external factors or Klima (climate), by which
Herder means not only the prevailing weather conditions of a place,
but also a people's entire way of life, including their diet, occupa-
tions, leisure activities, and the arts, "together with a host of other
circumstances that have considerable effect through their vital inter-
action; they are all part of the climate that changes so many things"
(6:266). Just as certain climates produce certain plants and animals,
they also produce certain kinds of peoples or what Herder terms
nations: "Each nation has its own peculiar way of thinking that is
impressed upon itself all the more deeply because it has sprung from
its own way of life, is related to its sky and its earth, and is passed
down from one generation to the next" (6:298). Each nation has its
own myths that give voice to its particular character, as well as folk-
songs that express the national culture: "The songs of each nation are
the best witnesses to its feelings, desires, and way of looking at things"
(6:3 23).
Herder's understanding of national cultures as organic outgrowths
of particular soils and climates lays the basis for nineteenth-century
histories of Germany's national literature, and it also marks the begin-
ning of a Romantic or volkisch nationalism based on common ethnic-
ity rather than universal human rights. While such ideas would even-
tually mutate into the racist nationalism of the Third Reich, Herder's
belief in climatological determinism inspires his critique of Eurocen-
trism and his rejection of all forms of violent conquest of one nation
by another.34 "What people of the earth does not have some cul-
ture?" questions Herder rhetorically, "and how insufficient would
the plan of Providence be if that which we call culture-and which
we often should just call refined weakness-had been created for
each member of the human race?" (6:11-I2). It is both arrogant and
74 German Orientalisms
inconsistent to insist that humans around the globe should conform
to a single European standard of culture, and equally absurd to assume
that all past cultures have merely fertilized the earth with their ashes
"so that at the end of time their descendants would become happy by
means of European culture" (6:335). Other peoples have felt no need
to impose their will forcibly upon others. "We Europeans, on the
other hand, roam the earth as merchants or robbers and often neglect
that which is ours in the process" (6:462). Herder maintains that
Roman imperialism brought nothing but misery and destruction to
the world, and he dismisses the Crusades as "nothing but a mad event
that cost Europe a few million lives" (6:854). Modern European
imperialism is only the latest chapter in the history of injustice. The
Spanish treat America like the ancient Romans treated Spain: "as a
place to pillage" (6:599). Rather than plundering the world, the Cru-
saders, Romans, and modern Europeans should have stayed at home
and left other indigenous peoples in peace.
Despite his strident critique of European imperialism, Herder con-
tinues to harbor what from today's perspective seem some very Euro-
centric prejudices of his own. Black Africans are sensual, carefree, and
happy, Herder contends, but incapable of intellectual refinement.
How could it be otherwise in a land where the hot sun ignites only
seething passions in the human breast? Other peoples of the world
fare little better: a warm climate turns Polynesians into healthy,
happy, and lusty natives, while the American climate produces only
warlike barbarians. The Chinese and Egyptians made considerable
progress early on but got stuck in their cultural adolescence and have
since stagnated or declined. The Greeks, in contrast, produced an
ancient culture of unique quality in the history of the world. In other
words, different climates produce different cultures, according to
Herder, but that does not mean that all cultures are of equal value.
Nature has organized humanity into manifold cultures on an ascend-
ing scale of sophistication: "She placed the Negro next to the ape,
and she allowed the great problem of humanity among all people of
all times to be resolved from Negro rationality up to the brain of the
most refined human being" (6:633-34). The ancient Greeks were not
only different from the Africans: they were also better. Herder's
humanistic "tolerance" stands in close proximity to condescension:
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 75
"I accept you for who you are," he seems to say, "it is not your fault
that you come from an unfortunate climate that produces an inferior
culture." Or as Herder himself puts it: "Let us therefore pity the
Negro, but not despise him, for the organization of his climate could
offer him no more noble reward" (6:236).
What made ancient Greek culture superior, according to Herder,
is not only that it arose in a particularly favorable geographical setting,
but also that its culture or "national plant" [Nationalpflanze] (6:509)
could develop without corrupting foreign influence through its
entire natural life cycle: "they also lived through their phases so thor-
oughly and passed through the entire course of the same more com-
pletely than any other people in history" (6:567). The Jews, in con-
trast, have been cut off from their roots to survive only as "a parasitic
plant on the stems of other nations; a race of sly negotiators practically
everywhere in the world" (6:492; again 6:702). While Herder holds
out little hope for the Africans, who have the misfortune to be born
in a bad climate, the deracinated Jews can redeem themselves by
assimilating to a common European culture. Herder predicts that a
time will come "when in Europe no one will ask any more who is a
Jew and who is a Christian: for the Jew will also live in accordance
with European laws and contribute to the well-being of the state"
(6:702).
The somewhat tortured logic of this passage would seem to be as
follows: true, Jews are foreign parasites that suck the lifeblood of
European nations. However, Jews have the potential to become like
other Europeans if they assimilate completely to Christian European
culture. Laws that would prohibit such assimilation are barbaric.
Thus Herder condemns persecution of the Jews and would certainly
have opposed the kind of logic that produced the Holocaust. For a
Nazi, the Jew remains a Jew; nothing can change fact of race rooted
in the blood. Herder's "tolerance" takes a different tack: Jews will
become acceptable when they become indistinguishable from Ger-
mans, that is, when they cease to be Jews. Many eighteenth-century
German Jews in fact shared Herder's hope that they could be inte-
grated into Christian German society.35 The most famous of these
was Moses Mendelssohn, who served as the model for the protago-
nist of Lessing's Nathan der Weise [Nathan the Wise] (1779), the most
76 German Orientalisms
eloquent plea for religious tolerance to emerge from the German
Enlightenment. As Jeffrey Grossman points out, however, Herder's
reference to Jews as "parasites" nevertheless "put into circulation a
repertoire of images to be used later by more questionable figures and
political movements."'36 How could "parasites" ever really become
part of the German "Nationalpflanze" (6:509)?
Herder's comments on Jewish assimilation raise larger questions
about the possibility of change within a given culture and the trans-
mission of ideas from one organically rooted culture to another.
Herder's universe seems to march to the beat of two different drums:
on the one hand, we have self-contained organic cycles of the birth,
maturation, and decline of individual cultures, a process best exem-
plified by the ancient Greeks, and on the other, we have a notion of
history as progress along an ascending line that leads from nature
through humans to God. Climatological determinism stands in
conflict with Herder's Enlightenment faith in the human capacity for
development or Bildung.37
The tension between organically rooted national communities and
a larger narrative of human progress becomes most evident in
Herder's treatment of the Orient. After beginning the second part of
the Ideen with some brief and rather disparaging remarks about the
Chinese and peoples of the Arctic, Herder lavishes praise on the
beautiful people of ancient Kashmir, a hidden paradise where the
inhabitants are physically beautiful, intellectually gifted, and equally
skilled at poetry and science. Herder claims that Asian languages are
the oldest, that Asians invented both writing and the alphabet, that
they were the first to domesticate plants and animals, to cultivate the
arts and sciences, to establish trade, and to set up governments. He
even goes so far as to suggest that the Garden of Eden must have been
located in the mountains of India and that the river surrounding it
was the Ganges. Dismissing the efforts of those who seek to reconcile
ancient history with the literal truth of the Bible, Herder emphati-
cally restates his basic position: "Enough! The solid center of the
largest part of the world, the ancient mountains of Asia, supplied the
human race with its first domicile and has remained stabile through-
out all of earth's revolutions" (6:422-23).
Like Voltaire and others before him, Herder believes that the
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 77
human race not only began in Kashmir "but also that its culture had
the most beneficial impact on other nations from this point of origin"
(6:227). Ancient Greece in particular benefited from Asian influence,
and the modern Europeans, in turn, have learned from the Greeks:
"From the realm of beautifully formed peoples we got our religion,
art, science, the entire body of our culture and humanity, as much or
as little as we have of it" (6:228). In contrast, "the Negro invented
nothing for the European" (6:227). Not surprisingly, Herder has little
good to say about the Egyptians. Overvalued in their prime, Egyp-
tians have been degenerating ever since. The fact that they attained
what they did was only due to Eastern influence, and for this reason
Herder dismisses the claim that the Egyptians came from Ethiopia,
arguing instead that they probably came from southern Asia.
Herder thus provides support for Martin Bernal's claim that Ger-
man writers tended to downplay African influence in favor of the
"Aryan myth." However, Herder does not use his faith in European
cultural supremacy to justify the slave trade, or at least not explicitly.
The same cannot be said of some of Herder's German contempo-
raries, many of whom took a lively interest in ethical issues sur-
rounding slavery. The Gottingisches historisches Magazin, for instance,
published several articles apologizing for the slave trade. The treat-
ment of the slaves on board ship is not as bad as many people think,
one contributor wrote; splitting up families causes suffering, to be
sure, but Africans get over emotional distress quickly; conditions may
be harsh in the West Indies, but the slaves are still better off there than
they were in Africa.38 In another article the author concedes that
slavery causes great suffering for its victims, but points out that if it
did not exist, Europeans would have no coffee, sugar, or tobacco. He
therefore concludes that the benefits of slavery for humanity as a
whole justify the sufferings it causes the African people.39 Herder has
no patience for such arguments. A time will come, he predicts,
"when we will look back at our inhuman slave trade with as much
regret as that with which we regard ancient Roman slaves, or Spar-
tan helots" (6:642). Cultures should remain separate, if unequal, in
Herder's view; just because black Africans are inferior to white Euro-
peans does not give the Europeans the right to enslave them.
In certain cases, however, it is possible for one civilization to have
78 German Orientalisms
a beneficial effect on another. In seeking to explain how Asian cul-
ture migrated from Kashmir to Greece, and from ancient Greece to
modern Europe, Herder turns to organic metaphors. He describes
the Asian influence on Greece as a foreign seedling that takes root in
particularly fertile soil: "Gentle west winds fanned the crops that
were gradually transplanted from the heights of Asia and breathed
them full of life" (6:226). Modern Europeans, in contrast, receive the
benefits of Indo-Grecian culture from above: "We Northern Euro-
peans would still be barbarians if a benevolent breath of fate had not
wafted at least blossoms from the spirit of these people to us, so that
by being inoculated by the grafting of beautiful twigs onto wild stalks
we could, over time, be ennobled" (6:228). That is, the northern
European climate produces a barbaric culture; only the grafting of a
foreign "blossom" onto the native stock can inoculate Europeans
against their own cultural poison and eventually transform the plant
into something nobler. The image not only contradicts basic princi-
ples of horticulture-cherry twigs grafted onto apple trees do not
exert their influence downward to turn the trunk into a cherry tree
but also contradicts Herder's own belief in the native vitality of Ger-
manic peoples that he had stressed during his Sturm und Drang years.
The foreign influence that had proved so destructive to German cul-
ture when it came from France has a beneficial effect when it arrives
from India via Greece.
Despite his claim that each culture has its own independent valid-
ity, Herder nevertheless inscribes individual civilizations into a larger
narrative that leads him to justify "imperfect" cultures as necessary
stages in the course of human development: "Allow this to be the
stage of a still very imperfect culture; it is nevertheless necessary for
the childhood of the human race" (6:459). At times in the Ideen, as in
earlier texts, Herder praises the virtues of the noble savage: "Natural
man is certainly a more limited, but also a healthier and more vital
man on the earth" (6:3 59). More frequently, however, he stresses the
need and, indeed, the moral duty of human beings to develop
beyond the state of nature to what he terms Humauitdt. It is in fact
only through the process of Bildung that we become truly human at
all, "for actually we are not yet human beings, but become human
beings every day" (6:342). As a typical representative of his century,
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 79
Herder does not ask which culture has become the most highly
developed, but why European culture is the most advanced: "How,
then, did Europe attain its culture, and the rank that it is due above
other peoples?" (6:897). In recognizing the superiority of European
culture, however, Herder also acknowledges the negative conse-
quences of this development: "Human Bildung to rationality and
freedom" leads directly "to filling and ruling the earth" (6:154). Rea-
son is thus by its very nature instrumental reason; greater rationality on
the part of those who have developed their Humanitdt gives them the
freedom to rule the earth.
Herder therefore not only traces the development of Western cul-
ture out of its Eastern roots, but also considers the modern European
return as colonizers and conquerors to the lands in which their cul-
tures originated. He begins his discussion of India by lamenting its
current state: "How happy Industan could be if human hands had not
joined together to lay waste to the garden of nature and to torment
the most innocent members of the human race with superstition and
oppression . . . Happy lambs, why could you not graze undisturbed
and carefree on your meadows of nature?" (6:222-23). Such "lambs"
could offer little resistance to the warlike Mongolians who once
swept down from the north, or to the greedy Europeans who have
more recently brought them under their yoke. Here as elsewhere,
Herder condemns such imperialism: "All information and goods that
they bring to us from that region are no substitute for the evil that
they impose on a people that did nothing to them" (6:457-58).
Herder nevertheless follows this straightforward condemnation of
European rapacity with a more ambiguous comment about the
course of history: "In the meantime the chain of fate has been forged
in that direction; fate will either release them or lead them further"
(6:458). What is it that has "destined" the Indians to be the victims of
European aggression? Could they be partially to blame for their
unfortunate lot in life?
Although Herder laments the sufferings of the poor Indian
"lambs" of yore, he is not uncritical of contemporary Indian civiliza-
tion, voicing the familiar Western critique of the suttee and of Asian
despotism. The real "problem" with India is that it has remained
frozen in time, while the course of civilization has moved on.
80 German Orientalisms
Although Herder overtly condemns European greed, he therefore
suggests that the modern Indians share some responsibility for their
fate. The Indians suffer, but in a perverse way they want to suffer, or
at least are so stupefied that they do not notice their pain: "Asiatic
despotism, this heavy burden of mankind, occurs only among nations
that want to bear it, that is, who feel its oppressive weight less"
(6:464). The injustices of the caste system condition the Indians to
submit to external force as well: "sooner or later the Brahman rule
makes a people ripe for subjugation" (6:457). Because India has stag-
nated for so long, it neither produces significant cultural products of
its own nor can absorb foreign influence: "How could the seed of
progressive science, that in Europe breaks through every stone wall,
take root in these realms?" (6:461). The seeds of European culture
cannot sprout in India in the way that Indian seedlings once flour-
ished in ancient Greece, nor can the blossoms of Indo-Grecian
influence that had such a beneficial effect on the European stock be
grafted back onto the withered root of modern Indian culture.
Time has passed India by. The culture that ancient Indians once
inspired has returned to them in the form of European aggression,
and as a result, they cannot even enjoy the foreign fruit of a tree that
first took root on its native soil: "how could they even take the fruit
of this tree from the dangerous hands of the Europeans, who rob
them of all that surrounds them: political security, indeed, their land
itself?" (6:461). Herder concludes that the Europeans progressed
because they worked hard together, whereas Asians benefited initially
from a gentle climate that eventually lulled them into an infantile tor-
por: "In most despotically ruled lands nature clothes people almost
effortlessly" (6:368). The Indians begin the process of world-histori-
cal Bildung, but they can neither participate in it nor benefit from it;
instead they remain locked in an early stage of development and are
thus susceptible to conquest by those who have progressed further.
Herder simultaneously condemns European conquest and coloniza-
tion of the East and excuses it as the unfortunate but inevitable con-
sequence of the civilizing process that they once set into motion.
Where do the Germans fit into Herder's account of world history?
Herder prefaced the fourth and final book of his fragmentary work
with a quotation from Virgil's Aeneid: "tantae molis erat, Germanas
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 81
condere gentes" [Thus it was difficult to found the German people]
(6:673). Drawing on Tacitus's Germania, Herder characterizes the
Germans as a warlike people with strong, beautiful bodies and terri-
ble blue eyes. They attack boldly but obey orders from their superi-
ors. Such militancy has been a mixed blessing: once converted to
Christianity the Germans turned on their heathen enemies within
Europe with destructive force, attacking both unconverted Germanic
peoples and their neighbors to the east, in particular the Slavs: "thus
several nations, but most of all the Germans, have sinned grievously
against them" (6:697). On the other hand, the Germans did the most
to defend Europe from "the mad rage of the Huns, Hungarians,
Mongols, and Turks" (6:695-96), that is, from a series of Asian inva-
sions that threatened the integrity of Christian European culture.
Hence it was the Germans, Herder concludes, "who not only con-
quered, cultivated, and settled the largest part of Europe in their own
way, but also protected and guarded it; otherwise it would not have
been possible for that which has arisen here to arise" (6:696). During
the Dark Ages the German nation stood "as a protective wall and bas-
tion of Christianity for the freedom and security of all Europe"
(6:796-97). While most of the world degenerated into "Tartar disor-
der" [tartarische Unordnung], the Germanic peoples functioned as
the protective husk "in which the remaining culture was shielded
from the stormy times; the common spirit of Europe developed and
ripened slowly and secretly toward its influence on all regions of our
earth" (6:805). During the Middle Ages the Germans protected trade,
preserved what remained of classical culture in the monasteries, and
created new works of art to be enjoyed by all Europeans.
One of the keys to German superiority lay in their attitude toward
women and the family. "The German woman did not lag behind the
man; domestic diligence, chastity, loyalty, and honor have been a dif-
ferentiating characteristic of the women in all German tribes and
peoples" (6:797). Herder believes that the level of civilization in a
given society can be measured in terms of the way the men treat their
women, and most primitive societies fail the test: "From Greenland
to the land of the Hottentots this contempt for women is the rule.
. . Even in slavery the Negro woman is far beneath the Negro man,
and the most pitiful Caribbean thinks he is a king in his own house"
82 German Orientalisms
(6:319). According to Tacitus, the ancient Germans were different:
they took love seriously, tended toward monogamy, and were only
rarely guilty of infidelity. As noted earlier, Tacitus was probably less
concerned with ethnographical accuracy in his account of the Ger-
manic peoples than with setting up a positive counterpart to Roman
decadence, but his account of the ancient Germans' loyal wives and
breast-feeding mothers dovetailed nicely with Herder's understand-
ing of the natural distinctions between men and women: "A
woman's nature is different from man's; she feels differently" (6:316).
Virtuous women want to look their best, to keep things clean, to
support their husbands even at the cost of their own desires, and to
love and care for their children.
In such passages Herder echoes beliefs about gender roles
expressed in Rousseau's Emile (1762) and many other pedagogical
treatises of the late eighteenth century. The distinctions that Herder
and Rousseau found rooted in nature had their historical roots in the
changing economic structure of European society.4° In the old model
of the ganzes Haus, men, women, children, and servants lived and
worked together in the home. As state bureaucracies grew more
complex and demanded more labor, men from the educated middle
class began to work for local governments. The home became a pri-
vate feminized realm, defined in its opposition to the masculine
working world. Here women developed close emotional ties to their
children, organized the household, and provided a refuge for their
tired husbands. The new understanding of marriage and the family
was thus specific to the emerging middle class, whose members
defined their domestic virtues in opposition to what they perceived
as aristocratic libertinage. Lohenstein portrayed his noble characters as
paragons of virtue, to be sure, but he allowed his heroines to embody
martial valor and to assume positions of public authority in ways that
seemed not only improper, but also unnatural to the eighteenth-cen-
tury bourgeoisie.
Thus Herder's reflections on gender roles and family ties lead
directly to a sharp critique of both old-fashioned Herrschaft-rule
based on the personal authority of the local lord-and the impersonal
bureaucracy of the modern state.4' By defending the family as the
basis of German society, Herder expresses class-specific nationalist
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 83
sentiments in opposition to corrupting French influence and against
the injustices of the various absolutist governments in Germany: "for
the tyranny of aristocrats is a hard tyranny" (6:371). The state gov-
ernments can also alienate citizens from their families and themselves.
In contrast to Kant and Hegel, for whom the demands of the state
take precedence over individual desires, Herder stresses the impor-
tance of personal happiness in a society organized around the family
and the Volk: "Nature raises families; the most natural state is there-
fore a single people with a single national character" (6:369). Aggres-
sive expansion of the state to include those outside the national "fam-
ily" thus makes no sense: "Hence nothing seems so foreign to the
purpose of government as an unnatural expansion of the states, the
wild mixture of different types of people and nations beneath a single
scepter" (6:369-70). Nations should remain within their natural
boundaries where an ethnically pure people can flourish in whole-
some families with a minimum of government interference.
Herder elevates the medieval Germans to just such an ideal com-
munity. Initially the bellicose Germanic tribes commit their share of
sins against their European neighbors, but they soon protect Europe
against foreign invaders and provide a positive example to other
European nations of a community based on flourishing trade, the cul-
tivation of the arts, and domestic virtue. Unfortunately, Herder does
not continue his history of the Germans beyond the late Middle
Ages; a final volume was to have focused on the Renaissance, Refor-
mation, and more recent history. As it is, Herder leaves us with an
image of the Germans as the good Europeans who carry forth the
torch of human civilization that was first ignited in the Orient, while
criticizing other modern European nations who have returned to the
East as conquerors and colonizers. The absence of a German empire
becomes a moral advantage: while others exploit the rest of the
world, the Germans cultivate themselves at home.
NOVALIS: A PROVINCIAL COSMOPOLITAN
Few writers' reputations have undergone such thoroughgoing revi-
sion as that of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-I8oi). Throughout
the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, Novalis was
84 German Orientalisms
known as the most stereotypically Romantic of Germany's Early
Romantic writers. Artists and critics depicted him as an ethereal
figure who dreamed of a magical blue flower that would lead him to
a world of poetry and love, and as a Christian visionary who made a
private cult out of his grief for a fiancee who died young. In the
postwar years this slightly cloying image of a Romantic dreamer
gradually yielded to that of a hardworking civil servant who studied
geology and helped supervise the local salt distillation industry, a
flirtatious aristocrat who was not above a dalliance or two with local
peasant girls, and a transcendental philosopher whose relationship to
Christianity was at best unorthodox and at times bordered on the
blasphemous.42 The tendency in recent Novalis reception, in other
words, has been to pull him out of the clouds and back down to
earth. But precisely where on earth did Novalis think he was? What
was his attitude to the German nation? How do his works respond to
tensions within Europe, and to the growing European dominance
over the rest of the world? "Wir sind auf einer Mission," writes
Novalis in Bluthenstaub [Pollen] (1798), "Zur Bildung der Erde sind
wir berufen."43 What does Novalis mean when he writes that "we
are on a mission"? In what sense does he feel that the Germans are
called to educate and transform the world?
At first glance it might seem odd to think about Novalis in any sort
of global context. Obviously he was no Captain Cook or Georg
Forster, but even in comparison with Goethe or the Schlegels,
Novalis traveled very little within Germany, and not at all beyond its
borders.44 Among a "nation of provincials," Novalis was even more
provincial than most.45 Although he preferred to stay close to home
in reality, Hardenberg was nevertheless quite ready to voyage to dis-
tant lands in his imagination, as this early poem attests:
Nein! Freunde kommt, lal3t uns entfliehen
Den Fesseln, die Europa beut,
Zu Unverdorbnen nach Taiti ziehen
Zu ihrer Redlichkeit.46
[No, friends, come, let us flee / The chains that Europe offers /
Let us go to uncorrupted Tahiti / To its righteousness]
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 85
Like most Germans of the time, Hardenberg was an "armchair con-
quistador,"47 whose understanding of the world and its history came
primarily from his voracious reading. Yet the history of European
imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involved not
only the physical conquest of foreign places, but also the narratives of
universal history that made such conquest conceivable and desirable.
As someone steeped in the Idealist philosophy of Kant and Fichte,
Novalis was quite aware of the fluid boundary between the intellec-
tual and physical worlds. Fichte's influence was particularly impor-
tant, for he had transformed Kant's dictum that we can never per-
ceive things as they really are into a liberating philosophy that
celebrated the power and freedom of the human mind to shape or,
indeed, to create external reality.48 For Novalis, flights of the poetic
imagination become literally revolutionary acts that can transform the
world: "Signification by means of sounds and lines is an amazing
abstraction. Four letters signify God to me-a few lines a million
things. How easy it is to manipulate the universe in this way! . . . A
single command moves armies; the word freedom, nations" (2:413).
Like Herder before him, Novalis mapped out his vision of Ger-
many's place within Europe and in relation to the East long before
the country attained political unity or significant colonial possessions.
Herder conceived his philosophy of history during the prerevolu-
tionary 1770s and 178os, however, at a time when many German
intellectuals were beginning to chafe against the cultural hegemony
of France's ancien regime. Novalis, in contrast, began to write in the
wake of the events that placed France at the vanguard of a new, rev-
olutionary movement within Europe. Together with his Early
Romantic contemporaries, Novalis wanted to continue the French
upheaval of the political realm by revolutionizing the intellectual
world.49 He dreamed of writing a new Bible as part of the Early
Romantic project of Symphilosophie that aimed to shatter any tradi-
tional boundaries between categories of thought in an uncompromis-
ingly radical intellectual program. In a century already fascinated with
the philosophy of history, the French Revolution was immediately
perceived as a turning point that inspired new attempts on the part of
Novalis and his contemporaries to rethink the course of human
events and reconsider Europe's place in relation to the rest of the
86 German Orientalisms
world. To be sure, neither Novalis nor his Early Romantic friends
actually advocated political revolution in Germany; they were revo-
lutionary thinkers exhilarated by their self-appointed mission to
romanticize the earth.
Hence it came as a shock to his friends when Novalis unveiled a
seemingly reactionary collection of aphorisms entitled "Glauben und
Liebe" [Faith and love] (1798). Ostensibly a work of effusive praise
for the royal pair of Friedrich Wilhelm III and Queen Luise-who
had ascended to the Prussian throne on November 16, 1797
"Glauben und Liebe" defends hereditary nobility, criticizes the cur-
rent state of the French Revolution, and urges the Prussian subjects
to venerate the royal pair "as the ancients once venerated their gods"
(2:493). At second glance, however, "Glauben und Liebe" proves
considerably more subversive, particularly when read together with
the "Politische Aphorismen" [Political aphorisms] that were intended
as the second part of the original publication. Novalis writes that
although democracy and monarchy seem diametrically opposed, they
are in fact both part of a natural human development: in youth we
tend toward revolutionary democracy, but in later years we prefer to
settle down in a stable monarchy. Thus we should not rush to criti-
cize the French: "One ought to be at least politically, as well as reli-
giously, tolerant-let us concede the possibility that a rational being
may think differently than we do" (2:503). The French were not
wrong to revolt; they err only in their desire to make the Revolution
a permanent state of affairs.
If we look still more closely at "Glauben und Liebe," we find that
Novalis does not support the monarchy at all, or at least not in any
traditional sense. The king and queen are to function as ego ideals for
subjects who voluntarily permit them to assume this role: "Monar-
chism [depends] on the voluntary acceptance of a human ideal." The
power lies in the subjects who posit the royal couple as a symbol of
what they would like to become: "All humans should become fit to
be kings [thronfahig]" (2:489). Thus Novalis uses the language of
monarchy to advocate democracy, or, more precisely, he sees both as
inextricably intertwined: "no king without a republic, no republic
without a king" (2:490). The current royal couple functions as a suit-
able role model for the people precisely because they exemplify
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 87
bourgeois virtue in their attitudes toward gender roles and the fam-
ily: "The court should be classical private life in large format" [Der
Hof soll das klassische Privatleben im Grol3en sein] (2:493). Queen
Luise fulfills the role that has come to be associated with today's first
ladies: she does not concern herself directly with politics, but rather
with "the education of her sex, supervision of the youngest children,
household manners, care of the poor and sick (particularly those of
her sex), the tasteful decoration of the home, the organization of fam-
ily celebrations" (2:491). In celebrating the middle-class virtues of the
Prussian queen, Novalis presents a mirror image of the French revo-
lutionaries' condemnation of Marie Antoinette's aristocratic vice.50
The revolutionary sentiments are similar, but the French set out to
guillotine their unrepentant aristocrats, whereas Novalis envisions a
nonconfrontational world in which the royal couple becomes virtu-
ally bourgeois.
If "Glauben und Liebe" "was Hardenberg's most extensive politi-
cal writing, and the most controversial in his lifetime,"5' "Die Chris-
tenheit oder Europa" [Christianity or Europe] (1799) has had the
most influence on his subsequent reputation. Conservative nine-
teenth-century readers found in it the Novalis who fit their precon-
ceived image of the Romantic writer as antirevolutionary, pious, and
full of nostalgia for the good old days, while left-leaning critics from
Heinrich Heine to Georg Lukics condemned the text for its appar-
ent glorification of medieval Catholicism and its open hostility
toward the Reformation and the Enlightenment.52 Here, it might
seem, German Romanticism begins its fatal swerve from "progressive
Universalpoesie" toward obscurantism and political reaction. The
text was already controversial the first time that Novalis read it aloud
to his fellow Romantic writers in November 1799. Friedrich
Schlegel initially responded with great enthusiasm, but Schleier-
macher, Schelling, and Dorothea Schlegel greeted it with suspicion
and even open hostility. After intense debate the group turned to
Goethe for his opinion as to whether or not it ought to be published.
Goethe decided against publication, and as a result the essay remained
unknown to a broader reading public for decades. It finally made its
way into the fourth edition of Novalis's works in 1826, just in time
to accelerate the Christian conservative, German nationalist appro-
88 German Orientalisms
priation of Hardenberg's work. Novalis had unwittingly provided the
Restoration with the myth it needed to legitimate its existence, just
as the essay would later fuel the "conservative revolution" of the early
twentieth century.53 The interpretive tide began to turn in the late
I950s, however, and by 1983 Hermann Kurzke acknowledged that
his investigation of the ties between Early Romanticism and political
conservatism seemed hopelessly outdated and conceptually flawed:
"Romantic conservatism does not begin with Novalis."54 Novalis
only seems to glorify the medieval past; his main purpose is to point
the way toward a modern, post-Revolutionary, even post-Christian
future.ss
As in the case of "Glauben und Liebe," Novalis demands consid-
erable mental athleticism on the part of his readers to discover revo-
lutionary ideas beneath their reactionary dress. He begins his essay full
of seeming nostalgia for the good old days of the Middle Ages: "It
was a beautiful, splendid time, when Europe was a single Christian
land" (3:507). People felt safe and protected in a peaceful world.
True, the Church repressed speculation about threatening topics, but
it was better that the masses should remain ignorant and faithful
rather than begin to doubt on the basis of partial knowledge. The
Reformation and the Enlightenment dealt a double blow to this
seemingly idyllic world: first, Luther split the Church into warring
factions and introduced a love of the letter through his Bible transla-
tions that obscured the spirit of a unified Christianity; then the
Enlightenment further secularized Europe by introducing a narrow-
minded rationality that inspired hatred of God. Despite first appear-
ances, however, Novalis does not advocate a return to the past. In
fact, he makes it clear that nature moves in only one direction: "his-
tory consists of progressing, constantly expanding evolutions"
(3:51 o). Given the trend initiated by the Reformation and the
Enlightenment, it was inevitable that history would continue its for-
ward progress: "a second, more comprehensive and more thorough-
going Reformation was unavoidable, and had to occur in the coun-
try that was the most modernized and which had lain in a state of
torpor for the longest time" (3:517). In other words, there had to be
a revolution, and it had to take place in France. Because we cannot
go backward, we can only ask what will happen next. "Should the
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 89
Revolution remain French, as the Reformation was Lutheran?"
(3:518). Novalis's answer is no: "Germany is slowly but surely taking
the lead against other European nations" (3:519).
Novalis contrasted the self-centered violence of other European
nations against Germany's intellectual, artistic, and spiritual revolu-
tion: "While the other nations are preoccupied with war, [financial]
speculation, and partisan spirit, the German diligently transforms
himself into a member of a higher cultural epoch, and this progress
must give him a great advantage over the others in the course of
time" (3:519). Instead of lamenting a world grown pale through a
surfeit of mere reason, the Germans should enjoy their place in the
sun: "Poetry stands enticingly and colorfully like an adorned India
[wie ein geschmucktes Indien] in opposition to the cold, dead mountain-
tops of that scholastic reason [jenes Stubenverstandes]." Just as India is
located "in the center of the globe, so warm and splendid" while sur-
rounded by cold, fog, and darkness, so, too, Germany glistens above
the prosaic plains of Europe (3:520).
Novalis thus envisions two alternatives to a postrevolutionary
world: France stands for a modern nationalism arising out of the
Enlightenment that is by nature bellicose, mercenary, and separatist,
dividing Europe into warring factions, while Germany represents a
spiritual and poetic revolution that could bring peace and unity back
to Europe. The state of European affairs, in turn, has global conse-
quences: "The other parts of the world are waiting for Europe's rec-
onciliation and resurrection, so that they can join in and become fel-
low citizens of the heavenly kingdom [Mitbirger des Himmelreichs]"
(3:524). As an outgrowth of European civilization, French national-
ism tends toward imperialism, both within Europe and beyond.
Hence Novalis mentions as historically significant the new French
"approach to the Orient in recent political relations" (3:518), a
slightly veiled reference to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. German
Kultur, in contrast, has no such imperial ambitions, but it does have
cosmopolitan ties to other parts of the world. During the Middle
Ages Germany took part in a prenational world in which there was
not only a flourishing commerce of intellectual and earthly wares
within Europe, but also "out to the most distant India" [bis in das
fernste Indien hinaus] (3:509). Now Novalis envisions Germany lead-
90 German Orientalisms
ing the way to a new global culture in which national borders will
become as meaningless as they once were in the Middle Ages. Hence
the comparison between India and Germany is not merely acciden-
tal: both stand as islands of poetry in a prosaic world, but both were
once part of a broader unity that included Asia and Europe in a har-
monious whole, and both point the way toward a new global culture
in which non-Europeans can join with Europeans as "fellow citizens
of the heavenly kingdom."
Although it was withheld from publication for nearly three
decades, "Die Christenheit oder Europa" had an immediate impact
on the work of August Wilhelm Schlegel and Adam Miiller. Schlegel
elaborated the ideas outlined in Novalis's essay in his lectures on the
Geschichte der romantischen Literatur [History of Romantic literature]
(1802-3). The lectures were delivered when the memory of the
"Europa" essay was still fresh, but before the Napoleonic conquest of
German territories gave a more militant edge to German nationalist
sentiments. Here Schlegel, like Novalis and also Ludwig Tieck,
rejects the view that the Middle Ages were a barbaric period of his-
tory and claims instead that modern European nations, no matter
how different they may have become, share a common "mother and
root" [Mutter und Wurzel] in medieval times.56 Looking back to the
past, Schlegel notes that Germanic tribes had overthrown the Roman
Empire, thereby becoming the second great world conquerors and
the founders of a medieval culture common to all of Europe. Until
the sixteenth century Europe remained united, but since that time it
has been divided by "narrow-minded national egotism" [bornierten
nationalen Egoismus] (22). According to Schlegel, only the Germans
have remained cosmopolitan in spirit, capable of great empathy and
appreciation for the foreign, because they remember the original
medieval unity of Europe better than other modern nations. It fol-
lows that Germans can best lead the rest of Europe back to its former
wholeness: "if the Orient is the region from which the regeneration
of humankind originates, then we should view Germany as the Ori-
ent of Europe [so ist Deutschland als der Orient Europas zu betrachten]"
(37). Following Novalis, Schlegel argues that whereas the rest of
modern Europe has become narrowly nationalistic, Germans remem-
ber their old cosmopolitanism and are thus best suited to reunite
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 91
Europe. On the surface, Schlegel argues against modern nationalism,
and he spends some time condemning Klopstock's bardic poetry as
both philologically unsound and culturally misguided. Even as
Schlegel rejects petty nationalisms, however, he also asserts a larger
pan-European cosmopolitanism based on German leadership. Ger-
many can afford to be appreciative of other nations in modern
Europe because it is the source of all European culture in the first
place.
The paradoxical combination of nationalist pride in Germany's
cosmopolitan tradition becomes more pronounced in Adam Miiller's
Vorlesungen iTber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Literatur [Lectures on
German scholarship and literature] (18o6). In the fifth of these lec-
tures Miller praises Novalis effusively because he allegedly recog-
nized a truth that remained hidden even to Goethe: "the omnipresence
of Christianity in history and in all forms of poetry and philosophy" (italics
in original).57 In such passages one sees the beginning of the conser-
vative interpretation of Novalis that was to gain strength in the later
nineteenth century.s8 In many ways Miiller's secret conversion to
Catholicism and career as a civil servant for Metternich's Austria, his
opposition to the Stein-Hardenberg reforms in Prussia, his outspoken
anti-Semitism, and his advocacy of an organic state ruled by a monar-
chy and based on traditional family values all make his later life typify
the reactionary turn of Romantic politics in the Restoration era. At
least one prominent critic has speculated that Novalis's own career
might have followed a similar path had he lived longer.59 In the 18o6
lectures, however, Miiller is still close in spirit to the revolutionary
thrust of Early Romanticism. Of particular interest in the light of
both the "Europa" essay and A. W. Schlegel's lectures is Miiller's
claim that Novalis should be seen as a certain type of world con-
queror: "Novalis, molded more by Germanic poetry, natural science,
and the loneliness of his honorable trade, decided to conquer the
world with the spirit of poetry, striding through all ages, social classes,
trades, sciences, and relations" (55). In what sense does Miiller think
that Novalis is out to conquer the world? For a partial answer, let us
turn briefly to a closer look at his Vorlesungen.
Miiller regards Germany as "the fortunate land of the center" [das
gliickliche Mittelland], meaning that it is both "the mother of nations
92 German Orientalisms
in today's Europe" and its current cultural and geographic center
(18). As Germany is the focal point of Europe, so Europe is the focal
point of the world. It would nevertheless be wrong for Europe to
suppress the rest of the world through violent conquest: "Europe
should become the center of world civilization, not just its summit"
[Mittelpunkt der Zivilisation der Welt, nicht bloB ihr Gipfel] (27). The
riches of both Indias (the subcontinent and the Caribbean) should
shine into Europe, but only to be reflected from Europe back into
the rest of the world. Miiller envisions a benevolent, if rather conde-
scending, Eurocentrism, in other words, marked by productive
exchange between continents rather than ruthless exploitation; the
colonies exist primarily to benefit the European core, but Europe also
exerts a beneficial influence outward to those benighted lands on the
periphery.
While contemporary Europe stands poised between the Old and
the New Worlds, Miiller writes that the major events of the past have
involved the interaction between only Asia and Europe, whose civi-
lizations embody two contrasting human types. The European is
republican and Greek, whereas the Asian is Romantic, monarchic,
aristocratic, and-Germanic. In medieval times the Asian principle of
nobility blended well with European culture, but during the Renais-
sance and Reformation the spirit of the Old World, meaning Greek
republicanism, began to win out over the Germanic/Asiatic world of
the Middle Ages. In an interesting reversal, Miiller thus rejects the
common view that modernity began with the revival of antiquity
during the Renaissance and suggests instead that the real modern
period was medieval, German, and-Asian. Adding gender to the
mix, Miiller maintains that the Greco-European republicans are mas-
culine, whereas the Asian-German aristocrats are feminine. While the
rest of Europe roams the world in a manly sort of way, intoxicated
with the freedom of the ancient world, only Germany remains pas-
sive and feminine. But what if that toward which the others strive
were in the end "a German being/essence" [ein deutsches Wesen]?
(44). What if Germany is not a masculine conqueror who wants to
possess the world, but rather a "woman" who rules by serving?
"Everything that the others have is only permanently theirs to the
extent to which it is unified with that which Germany was, is, and
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 93
will be" (44). Miiller conjures the image of frenetic male nations out
to conquer a world that is already German in its essence. Hence Ger-
many does not need to practice active conquest, nor does Germany
need to feel bad about its receptivity to external influence, because
Germany is the world, and Novalis is its poet: "For if ever one man
seemed destined to this holy duty of mediating between German and,
indeed, all knowledge . . . it was Novalis" (56). By means of a
remarkable reversal, Miiller turns German fragmentation and subor-
dination into passive strength by trumping what he views as a petty,
masculine, Greco-European imperialism with a serene, feminine,
German-Asian cosmopolitanism. Novalis, not Goethe, becomes "the
true governor of the poetic spirit on earth" [der wahre Statthalter des
poetischen Geistes auf Erden].6o
With this set of oppositions in mind, let us turn to consider the
symbolic geography of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. In its current frag-
mentary format, the novel centers on the protagonist's journey from
Eisenach to Augsburg. Heinrich travels only a few hundred kilome-
ters to the southeast on the way to his mother's home, but he already
finds a warmer and more passionate climate that is better suited to
artistic inspiration. Here he falls in love and discovers his vocation as
a poet. We know from Novalis's fragments and Tieck's notes that the
budding writer was to have traveled much further in the completed
work: a sudden scene shift was to have placed Heinrich at the head of
an army in war-torn Italy. A storm would have driven him next to
Greece, and from there he would have traveled on to Jerusalem. In
the East Heinrich would have participated in the Crusades and
become familiar with Oriental poetry. After spending time in Rome,
Heinrich was to have returned to Germany, where he would have
had conversations with the Holy Roman Emperor. Finally, Heinrich
would have returned home to enter into a magically transfigured
poetic realm where time and space would cease to exist.
Even in its fragmentary form, Heinrich von Ofterdingen gives us a
good indication of the hero's future fate. On the way to Augsburg
Heinrich encounters Graf Friedrich von Hohenzollern, a retired
Crusader who lives as a hermit near the graves of his wife, Marie von
Hohenzollern, and his two children, all of whom died soon after
returning from the Orient to "the rawer Occidental air" (1:263). He
94 German Orientalisms
has brought back with him from Jerusalem an illuminated manuscript
written in a foreign language that seems related to Latin and Italian
(Provengal). Although Heinrich cannot understand the words, he
discovers pictures that bear an uncanny resemblance to himself.
Increasingly convinced that he has stumbled upon a mysterious
account of his own life, Heinrich pages through images that depict
his immediate present in the cave, events and figures from the recent
past, and episodes from the future: "Toward the end he seemed larger
and nobler. . . He saw himself at the Kaiser's court, on board ship, in
intimate embrace with a slender, darling girl, in a battle with wild-
looking men, and in friendly conversation with Saracens and Moors"
(I:265). The book within the book thus presents in condensed form
not only the major events of the novel as we have it but also the
uncompleted episodes of its planned continuation. Heinrich will
fulfill his destiny as a poet, but not before he has completed his grand
tour of the Mediterranean world. In broad outlines, then, Heinrich von
Ofterdingen was to have retraced the path of world history blazed by
Herder in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit: Hein-
rich would have traveled back to the source of Western civilization
in the East before returning via Italy to northern Europe.
In the existing novel, Heinrich first encounters figures from the
East during a stopover on the way to Augsburg. Here old Crusaders
tell him of their exploits in the Holy Lands and encourage Heinrich
to join them in their next campaign. For a moment Heinrich wants
to take part in their cheerful plans to bathe the Holy Sepulcher in
heathen blood-" Wir waschen bald infrohem Muthe / Das heilige Grab
mit Heydenblute" (I1:233)-but then he encounters victims of the last
Crusade in Zulima and her child. Her family has been slaughtered,
and she has been torn from her homeland to live in German exile.
She assures Heinrich that Muslims respect Christ as a prophet and
that the Christians would have been free to visit his grave without
violence. A chastened Heinrich von Ofterdingen immediately forgets
his martial enthusiasm and resolves to help her in any way possible.
This brief episode introduces two contrasting models of European
interaction with the Orient: the first captures the Crusaders' desire to
crush infidels through military conquest, whereas the second portrays
the Oriental woman as a helpless victim who needs to be rescued and
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 95
protected by the Western man. The Crusaders embody a stereotypi-
cally aggressive masculinity of the sort portrayed in the early medieval
chansons de geste, whereas Heinrich's gentler concern for Zulima
recalls the romances portrayed in the medieval Spielmannsepen and in
the intercultural romances of the eighteenth century. In keeping with
the bellicose attitude of the Crusaders, Heinrich von Ofterdingen con-
tains several passages that express an enthusiasm for war that seems at
best naive from today's perspective: "the true war is a religious war;
it goes directly toward destruction, and human madness appears in
the fullest form," intones Klingsohr. "Many wars, particularly those
that spring from national hatred, belong in this category, and they are
true poetry. Here the true heroes are at home, the noblest counter-
part to the poets" (1:285).
More often than not, however, Heinrich displays the poetic sensi-
bility that Klingsohr defines in opposition to warlike masculinity. If
in the first model the Orient becomes that which must be conquered
by Western man, in the second it becomes a woman who inspires
male development, in keeping with the Western tendency to imag-
ine the East as "passive, seminal, feminine, even silent and supine," to
use Edward Said's words.61 The feminized Orient simply is; Western
men are in the process of becoming. Hence Novalis would write of
Sophie "Sakontala" von Kiuihn, "She doesn't want to be anything-she
is something" [Sie will nichts sein-Sie ist etwas].62 Only Heinrich
develops from an innocent adolescent to a profound poet; Zulima
and Mathilde exist primarily to further his development. While
Heinrich and Klingsohr converse at great length about the task of the
poet and the meaning of history, Mathilde does little more than
blush, stammer a few words, and bring the men their breakfast. From
here it is only a short step to E. T. A. Hoffmann's parody of this
model of femininity in his novella Der Sandmann [The sandman]
(1817), in which the hero falls desperately in love with a beautiful
puppet.
Thus to a certain extent Heinrich von Ofterdingen exemplifies the
sort of ideology often criticized in feminist studies of the Bildungsro-
man.63 The global trappings of the novel are merely another vocabu-
lary for portraying male, heterosexual development in the sort of
modern nuclear family that emerged in the late eighteenth century.
96 German Orientalisms
In becoming a poet, Heinrich leaves behind the pragmatic working
world of his father to tap into what Friedrich Kittler has described as
the "primal orality" of the Mother's voice.64 In Augsburg, Heinrich
transfers his affections from his mother to Mathilde in a love whose
latently incestuous nature becomes manifest in the Rococo world of
the Mdrchen.65 In the context of the entire planned novel, Heinrich's
narcissistic return to the realm of the mother in Augsburg is only the
first stage of a journey that will lead him back to the cradle of West-
ern civilization; the family romance of part I is mapped onto a global
narrative of world history: "Where are we going? Always home-
ward" [Wo gehn wir denn hin? Immer nach Hause] (I:325). Hein-
rich's journey to the East functions both as a response to the sense of
"transcendental homelessness" that plagues the modern Western
world and as a desire to return to the protective embrace of hearth
and home.66 Hence in the Paralipomena to Heinrich von Ofterdingen
Novalis wrote that the novel was supposed to end "with a simple fam-
ily" (I:345; italics in original). The novel that grapples with weighty
metaphysical questions is also about the psychodynamics of the
nuclear family, just as the paean to the Prussian monarchy in
"Glauben und Liebe" is also a clandestine glorification of bourgeois
life.
On another level, however, Novalis uses Heinrich's encounter
with the feminized Orient to explore the hermeneutic problems
associated with modern consciousness. Zulima describes the Orient
as an ancient land that is littered with monuments inscribed with
indecipherable texts: "You think and think, you sense individual
meanings, and you become more and more desirous to guess the
deep significance of the ancient writing" (1:236-37). Paradoxically,
the very incomprehensibility of the inscriptions makes them produc-
tive for the self-understanding of the reader: "The unknown spirit [of
these inscriptions] inspires a strange thoughtfulness, and even if you
leave without the desired discovery, you nevertheless have gained a
thousand remarkable insights into yourself' (I:237). Such passages
introduce what might be termed Novalis's transcendental Oriental-
ism: what matters is not so much the Orient an sich, but the image of
the Orient in the mind of its beholder. The letters of an ancient or
foreign alphabet appeal to the imagination as ciphers of an unfallen
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 97
language in which the spirit is not yet divorced from the written let-
ter, yet their very incomprehensibility reminds the readers of their
exclusion from that world. It is tempting to view Zulima's descrip-
tion of the encounter with the incomprehensible inscriptions as
another variant of Orientalist thought in which the feminized East
appears as an inscrutable, yet infinitely enticing mystery to the West-
ern man. On the one hand, the inability to understand the East points
to a deficiency on the part of the man, as Alice Kuzniar has observed:
"short of getting a sex change, he cannot master what she already
is."67 On the other hand, she will never be more than what she is
"Sie will nichts sein-Sie ist etwas"-whereas he at least has the poten-
tial for growth and can struggle with problems that she cannot per-
ceive. In fact, those who view the ancient inscriptions are ultimately
unconcerned with what they really mean, but delight instead in the
insights they gain into themselves.
Before reading the passage exclusively as an implicit indictment of
male narcissism, however, it is important to stress that it is Zulima
who describes the attempt to decipher the inscriptions; thus at least
this "Oriental" woman is privy to the hermeneutic challenges sup-
posedly reserved for Western men. She describes an alternative form
of comprehension derived from the incomprehensible stones: rather
than grasping a truth that can be incorporated into an increasingly
solid sense of personal identity, she hints at a process of letting go, of
finding a source of delight in signs that frustrate rational comprehen-
sion. In the fragmentary second part of the novel Heinrich speaks in
a similarly paradoxical vein of a flower that is "the most unmediated
language of the earth" and that nevertheless must remain silent. "It is
renewed every spring, and its strange script is only legible to the
beloved, like the bouquet of the Orient. He will read forever, and
never be satisfied and discover new meanings, new more delightful
revelations of beloved nature every day" (1:329). In writing of nature
as speaking a silent language, Novalis finds another formulation for
the problem that he solves so brilliantly in his "Monolog." Language
is a mere game (Wortspiel) that exists only for its own sake, he claims
here, but people foolishly think that words refer to things. The truly
inspired writer could enter into the play of language and babble in the
freedom of its self-contained world, or, as he puts it in Die Lehrlinge
98 German Orientalisms
zu Sais [The novices of Sais] (1798), "genuine Sanskrit would speak
for the sake of speaking, because speaking would be its desire and its
essence" (I:79). As the subjunctive voice indicates, Novalis is not
talking about the actual Sanskrit manuscripts that were beginning to
be deciphered in the late eighteenth century, nor does he claim to
have written "genuine Sanskrit" in his own poetry. In O'Brien's
words, "the Ursprache figures a theoretical possibility in the present
or, more exactly, a kind of 'presence'-that is never historically real-
izable."68 He can only gesture indirectly toward such language by
means of the self-undermining rhetoric that produces the Romantic
irony of the "Monolog."69
As the image of the Orient shifts from infidel warrior to victimized
woman to a site of suggestively mysterious signs in Heinrich von Ofter-
dingen, the Western man undergoes a corresponding transformation
from militant Crusader to protective lover to a figure who becomes
increasingly passive, receptive to external influence, and open to
metamorphosis in a process that Alice Kuzniar has described as the
feminine or androgynous antithesis to the solidification of the self
characteristic of male Bildung.7° Underscoring the "passive nature of
the protagonist" (I:34o), Novalis envisioned a continuation in which
Heinrich "becomes a flower, animal, stone, star" (1:341). He was
eventually to have entered a magical world in which all distinctions
were blurred: "No more order in space and time . . . Everything has
to be intertwined, / The one must ripen and grow through the other
[Alles muf3 in einander greifen / Eins durch das andre gedeihn und reifen]"
(I:318-19). Images of androgyny abound in Novalis's works, most
famously in the concluding verses of the poem "Sehnsucht nach dem
Tode" [Longing for death] where he writes ofJesus as a bride and of
sinking down into "the father's womb" [des Vaters School3]
(I:157).7' In the fragment collection Das allgemeine Brouillon Novalis
asserts that "man, in a certain sense, is also woman, just as the woman
is man" [der Mann ist gewissermaaBen auch Weib, so wie das Weib
Mann] (3:262). The shifting notions of masculinity in Heinrich von
Ofterdingen correspond to the political categories sketched in "Chris-
tenheit oder Europa" and developed more fully in Adam Miiller's
Vorlesungen: if Heinrich's occasional accesses of aggressive masculinity
recall the nationalist partisanship of France and other European
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 99
nations, his "effeminate" or androgynous desire to efface difference
in the name of a higher unity recalls Novalis's vision of a gentler Ger-
man cosmopolitanism that will reawaken the prenational spirit of
European unity and reconnect Europe to the East.
Novalis formulated his cosmopolitan ideas in the broader context
of the shift among German intellectuals from prerevolutionary patri-
otism to postrevolutionary nationalism. Toward the beginning of the
eighteenth century Germans began to publish Moralische Wochen-
schriften (moral weeklies) on the model of the British Spectator and
Tatler. German journals such as Der Patriot encouraged personal
virtue and civic loyalty among a rapidly expanding middle-class read-
ing public. Such patriotism differed from later nationalism in that it
was provincial and pre-political.72 Germans were to remain obedient
subjects of their local lords, not active participants in a constitution-
ally governed nation-state. Such provincial patriots could also be cos-
mopolitan intellectuals without contradiction; hence Wieland argued
in the 1770s against the bardic nationalism inspired by Klopstock and
Herder, claiming that Germans would be foolish not to participate in
a broader European culture. The French Revolution introduced a
new model to European politics that transformed local patriotism
into modern nationalism. Subjects no longer looked up in loyalty to
their lords, but toward their fellow citizens who stood in solidarity at
their sides. In the loose confederation of the old Holy Roman
Empire, provinces retained considerable autonomy and geographic
boundaries remained porous. Individual regions within the revolu-
tionary nation of France, in contrast, became increasingly intercon-
nected and homogenous, while borders against external foes were
more sharply drawn. Filled with the sort of "partisan spirit" that
Novalis criticizes in his "Europa" essay, the new nation could easily
turn imperialist, and, indeed, the French revolutionary armies soon
set out to export their civilization to the rest of Europe.
In response to the French Revolution, the cosmopolitanism that
had been part of a compensatory provincialism became part of an
alternative program of German nationalism. The isolated German
intellectuals who once reached out from their provincial backwaters
to participate in European culture began to think of themselves as
part of a cultural nation (Kulturnation) defined in opposition to
100 German Orientalisms
French imperial civilization. As the elderly Wieland commented in
1793, this new sort of "teutschen Patriotismus" had not existed in his
youth. He remembers being told of his duty to obey his parents and
the mayor of the city, but not of his patriotic duty to Germany; in
those days, the word Teutschheit had not yet been invented.73 Now
German cosmopolitanism became a source of national pride. In this
spirit Novalis praises the German gift for literary translations, which
he sees as "an indication of the very high, uncorrupted character of
the German people. Germanness is cosmopolitanism mixed with the
strongest individuality [Deutschheit ist Kosmopolitismus mit der krafiigsten
Individualitaet gemischt]." Like the alchemist's elixir, Schlegel's Shake-
speare translation both enriches the German language and improves
the original English: "Only for us are translations elaborations
[Erweiterungen] . .. I am convinced that the German Shakespeare is
now better than the English" (4:237). Clearly we must not read too
much into "Fritz the flatterer's"74 kind response to his friend's cur-
rent project, but if there is nationalistic hubris in his comment about
the superiority of the German Shakespeare, it is not based on pride in
German linguistic or racial purity, but rather in the German ability to
absorb and transform foreign influence.
Novalis's Early Romantic cosmopolitanism stands poised between
prerevolutionary patriotism and post-Napoleonic nationalism. Look-
ing back somewhat cynically to the eighteenth century, it is possible
to view the new German cosmopolitanism as little more than the old
provincialism writ large. Given the continued isolation of German
intellectuals, their lack of national unity, and the absence of empire,
they could be nothing but cosmopolitans: "The Germans had no
fleet, no state, no 'Revolution,' but they had the idea of the [Holy
Roman] Empire and the Reformation . . . the 'world-spirit' [Welt-
geist] had become conscious of itself among them. If anyone was, the
Germans were 'cosmopolitans'-and nothing but that."75 Looking
ahead to the nineteenth century, we can see the anti-imperial Ger-
man cosmopolitanism turn into a more militant nationalism, begin-
ning already in 18o6. Perhaps Novalis would have become a conser-
vative nationalist, had he lived longer; he already plays a risky game
by flirting with reactionary rhetoric that could and did become dan-
gerous in the hands of subsequent ideologues. Taken on its own
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 101
terms, however, and in his immediate historical context, Novalis's
political thought has little to do with subsequent German nationalism
and imperialism; it expresses rather the utopian vision of a provincial
cosmopolitan.
THE BILDUNG OF THE GERMAN NATION
Napoleon's decisive defeat of the Prussian armies in the fall of 18o6
gave new urgency to the German nationalist movement. Some writ-
ers urged their fellow Germans to direct military action: Heinrich
von Kleist wrote ferocious verses about stuffing the Rhine full of
French corpses, while Theodor Korner and Ernst Moritz Arndt com-
posed poetry designed to inspire German soldiers in the battle against
Napoleon's troops. Other German intellectuals, however, encour-
aged the Germans to look first within themselves to discover what
had gone wrong and how it might be possible to rejuvenate the Ger-
man people in their hour of "deepest humiliation."76 Thus in his
Reden an die deutsche Nation [Addresses to the German nation]
(1807-8) Fichte called for a complete reform of educational policies:
"Bildung of the nation itself" in a program of "German national edu-
cation" [deutsche Nationalerziehung] was his goal.77 He claims that
the Germans are better suited to this sort of education than other
European nations because they are a people who have remained in
place for centuries (Stammvolk) and because the German language has
never been corrupted by foreign influence-true, the German lan-
guage has evolved over time, but there has been no sudden rupture
with the past. Fichte speaks of the German language as a living power
of nature that has the ability to touch life directly and change it for
the better. Reversing common logic, he contends that it is not indi-
viduals who use language, but language that creates individuals and
the Volk to which they belong: "thus it is not they who form the lan-
guage, but, rather, the language that forms them" (67). Here Fichte
expresses what Foucault identified as a new "episteme" in which
"language becomes the locus of tradition, of the unspoken habits of
thought, of what lies hidden in a people's mind; it accumulates an
ineluctable memory which does not even know itself as memory."78
Fichte takes pride in the belief that the Germans are caught up in the
102 German Orientalisms
vital force of their language; those nations that have adopted abstract
terms from foreign languages are "cut off from the living root" (68)
and thus incapable of higher development. Elsewhere, however,
Fichte concedes that at times the Germans have been seduced into
accepting foreign influence: "The ancient Germans believed that the
only way to escape barbarism was to become Roman" (83). Later
generations have looked to the Spanish or the English, "according to
whichever happens to be in fashion at the moment" (84). Now that
the French have invaded German soil, Fichte concludes, they pose
the most immediate military and ideological threat to Germany's
national culture.
Thus the logic of the Reden an die deutsche Nation is more complex
than one might expect at first glance. On the surface, Fichte claims
that the Germans know exactly who they are: a Stammvolk sustained
by a living linguistic tradition that distinguishes them from and makes
them superior to other European nations, in particular the French.
From this perspective, the victory of the French armies actually
becomes a sign of weakness on their part: the very desire to export
the Revolution is symptomatic of their own deracinated civilization.
The Germans, although temporarily subject to French military force,
have a vital indigenous Kultur that their oppressors lack. Fichte nev-
ertheless fears that the Germans will succumb to French influence out
of an unjustified inferiority complex. The real enemy is not
Napoleon's army but the seductive force of the foreign ideology that
threatens to alienate Germans from their own cultural tradition. For
this reason he warns against the appeal of such foreign words as
Humanitat, Liberalitat, and Popularitat, which in a German context can
only cause "impotence and a conduct without dignity" (17). Thus
Fichte both rallies the Germans against an external foe and warns
them not to become their own worst enemies. His proud references
to the continuity and vitality of German culture function as compen-
satory fictions designed to mask the sense that the German nation
exists only as a fragile figment of the collective imagination.
In response to Fichte's call for the Bildung of the German nation,
the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III encouraged his minister of
education, Wilhelm von Humboldt, to establish a university in
Berlin. Beginning in May 1809, Humboldt responded with a series of
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 103
memoranda in enthusiastic support of the idea. He admits that it may
seem odd to work on such a project at a time "when part of Germany
has been ravaged by war and another part is ruled by foreign masters
in a foreign tongue," and yet, he continues, never has the need for
"national education and Bildung" been greater.79 Elementary and
high schools are important for individual provinces, he argues, but
only the university can reach beyond local borders and exert an
influence "on the Bildung of the entire German-speaking nation."8s
Although conceived as an immediate response to defeat in war and
foreign occupation, Humboldt's plans for a new institution in Berlin
mark the culmination of a series of changes in the German university
in the course of the eighteenth century.8I Around 1700 the typical
German student could still expect to take courses in Latin in a cur-
riculum in which theology reigned supreme. Already in the late sev-
enteenth century, however, a few individuals-most notably Chris-
tian Thomasius-had begun to teach in German, and by 1750 German
had become the primary language for academic instruction. Professor-
ships began to be established in rhetoric, so that students could learn to
write well in their native language; philosophy displaced theology, and
aesthetics emerged as a subdiscipline of philosophy.
The place of the university within German society began to
change as well: in the seventeenth century the university had been a
community of scholars who formed an independent Gelehrtenrepublik,
but in the course of the eighteenth century universities were incor-
porated into the state. Professors became civil servants whose purpose
was to train the next generation of young men for careers within the
rapidly expanding government bureaucracies. Humboldt did not
conceive of such training in terms of practical instruction for specific
tasks, however. On the contrary, he felt that the university years were
to be devoted to acquiring a well-rounded humanistic education
defined in opposition to specialization in any particular area: "It [the
university] must only consider the harmonious development of all
capacities within its students."82 In his view, university studies should
aim for depth rather than breadth; the select handful of young men
suited for such an education should not memorize lists of disjointed
facts, but rather allow knowledge to flow "out of the depths of the
spirit [aus der Tiefe des Geistes heraus]: For only knowledge that stems
104 German Orientalisms
from within and that can be planted into the inner being transforms
the character."8'3 As Goethe's Faust had explained impatiently to his
assistant Wagner, rhetoric means nothing "when it doesn't come
from the heart" [Wenn es euch nicht von Herzen geht], "when it
doesn't flow from your soul" [Wenn sie dir nicht aus eigner Seele
quillt] .84
The male subject engaged in a process of development or Bildung
experiences his years at the university as a kind of suspended anima-
tion. By this I do not mean the sort of torpor often witnessed among
students in overheated lecture halls. Humboldt's student is fully alive,
intellectually and spiritually, but temporarily suspended from any
practical participation in the state. A little more than a decade earlier,
Humboldt's friend Friedrich Schiller had described just this sort of
practical impracticality in his theory of aesthetic education. Writing
in the wake of the French Revolution, Schiller maintained that the
best way to solve political problems was not by storming the barri-
cades, but by temporarily turning away from contemporary affairs to
contemplate works of timeless beauty. In such moments we experi-
ence what he terms "the aesthetic condition" [der asthetische Zus-
tand], in which all of our faculties are aroused and engaged in a state
of harmonious tension. Individuals thus entranced are in no position
to perform any particular task, but they return to reality refreshed,
ennobled, and ready to participate in "the aesthetic state" [der
isthetische Staat].ss In Schiller's admittedly somewhat utopian
scheme, German Bildung through a process of aesthetic education
functions as the peaceful, organic alternative to the French Revolu-
tion. Humboldt's university, in turn, becomes the institutional site
for the aesthetic education of Germany's intellectual elite in the wake
of the Napoleonic defeats. The university best fulfills its function for
the state when the state grants the university as much independence
as possible.
The logic of Bildung proceeds through a series of homologies: the
autonomous individual matures in an institution that is granted tem-
porary autonomy from the state in a process analogous to the experi-
ence of autonomous art.86 Both the aesthetic condition and univer-
sity study provide a contemplative moment in which the subject is
temporarily relieved of the need for practical activity in everyday life.
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 105
The young man may learn various facts at the university, but, as
Humboldt suggests, what he really learns is about himself. Self-
reflection forms an integral part of individual Bildung, and introspec-
tive moments play a central role in the corresponding literary genre
of the Bildungsroman. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, for instance, moves
in a seemingly random sequence from one event to the next in a way
that recalls the picaresque novel. From time to time, however, Wil-
helm steps back to contemplate his life, and for a moment, at least,
chaotic experiences seem part of a coherent narrative.8s When, for
example, Wilhelm reads the account of his own life that has been
secretly written by the members of the Turmgesellschaft [Society of the
tower], he marvels at their ability to make sense out of his confused
past: "for the first time he saw his image outside of himself-not, to
be sure, as in a mirror, a second self-but, as in a portrait, a different
self."88' Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen has a similar experience
when he leafs through an illuminated manuscript that turns out to be
a slightly camouflaged self-portrait. In such moments the protagonist
of the Bildungsroman becomes both the perceiving subject and object
represented, or, more precisely, the subject is constituted through the
act of self-reflection.
If individuals portrayed in the Bildungsroman gain a sense of who
they are in the present by looking back over the events of their past,
then the collective German subject could do the same by studying
the history of its national literature and the development of its lan-
guage. Thus the nationalism that inspired the restructuring of the
German university led to a new interest in both medieval literature
and the linguistic ties between modern German and its ancient Indo-
European roots. The combined German interest in the Middle Ages
and the Orient, in turn, gave rise to the academic disciplines of Ger-
manistik and comparative linguistics, and both informed the effort to
make Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival a paradigmatic work of the
German national literature.
LINGUISTIC NATIONALISM AND THE EAST
Fichte's nationalist linguistics set the stage for Friedrich Schlegel's
treatise Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier [On the language and
106 German Orientalisms
wisdom of the Indians] (18o8). As a young man Schlegel had been
one of the first German participants in the "Oriental Renaissance." In
his Gesprach hber die Poesie [Conversation about poetry] (i8oo)
Schlegel celebrated "the true Middle Ages" as "a fruitful chaos
toward a new order of things" that arose from the confluence of Ger-
manic and Oriental influences: "An uncorrupted wellspring of new
heroic songs poured over Europe with the Germanic peoples, and
when the wild strength of Gothic poetry met with an echo of the
charming fairy tales of the Orient through Arabian influence, a
cheerful guild of inventors of charming songs and strange stories blos-
somed on the southern coast toward the Mediterranean."89 Schlegel
lamented the fact that the "treasures of the Orient" were so inacces-
sible compared with those of classical antiquity and looked to the East
for a source of poetry that would revitalize the West: "We must seek
the highest form of Romanticism in the Orient [Im Orient mhssen wir
das hochste Romantische suchen], and only when we can draw from this
source will perhaps the semblance of southern passion that we now
find so attractive in Spanish poetry appear again in a limited way in
the West."9°
Schlegel began to deepen his knowledge of Oriental languages and
literature when he moved to Paris in 1802. Although he had origi-
nally intended to study medieval painting, he soon began to learn
Persian, and by 1803 he had immersed himself in the study of San-
skrit.9' Schlegel continued work on the project after returning to
Germany in 1804, and after long delays in which he grew increasingly
impatient with his publisher, the treatise finally appeared in the spring
of 1808. Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier thus marks the culmi-
nation of Friedrich Schlegel's interest in the Orient, but also the
beginning of the end. Soon after the essay appeared in print Schlegel
converted to Catholicism, and already in the text Schlegel distanced
himself from the ancient culture he had once so admired, sharply crit-
icizing the fundamental errors of Indian religion in the light of
"Christianity, which alone reveals truth and knowledge that is higher
than all rational blindness and insight. "92 Despite his reservations
about Indian pantheism and fatalism, Schlegel nevertheless maintains
his admiration for the Sanskrit language, and it is through his com-
ments on the development of modern European languages from the
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 107
ancient Indian root that Schlegel inaugurates a new phase in the his-
tory of German Orientalism.93
Schlegel subscribes to Fichte's theory of language as a dynamic, liv-
ing force of nature, but he extends the roots of Germany's linguistic
tradition back to ancient India. No longer content with the rather
vague Early Romantic references to India as the land of Poesie,
Schlegel writes an extended scholarly analysis of Sanskrit in compar-
ison with other languages. In Schlegel's view, there are two basic lan-
guage types: noninflected or agglutinative languages that move indi-
vidual atoms into different combinations, and inflected languages that
modify their roots from within.94 Although Schlegel claims rather
disingenuously that he does not mean to denigrate agglutinative lan-
guages such as Chinese, he clearly prefers the organic structure of
inflected languages such as Sanskrit or Greek, in which "every root is
like a living seed . . . Hence the wealth, on the one hand, and the
resilience and longevity of these languages, of which one can truly say
that they arose organically, and form an organic network"
(8:157-59).95 We can trace the history of inflected languages back
thousands of years and across continents "up to the simple origins of
their first roots" (8:159), where we find Sanskrit in its pristine clarity
and unsurpassed philosophical depth. Thus modern European lan-
guages gain dignity through a genealogy that leads back to ancient
Asia, and Schlegel even speculates that the peoples of northern India
may have migrated as far north as Scandinavia, although he decides
not to pursue "this very important question for history of our father-
land" (8:293) in this context. Schlegel nevertheless remains con-
vinced that "Asians and Europeans [form] only one large family; Asia
and Europe [comprise] one indivisible whole," and that we should
therefore view "the literature of all civilized peoples as a continuous
development and as a single intimately interconnected structure, as
One large entity" (8:315).
Despite the seeming generosity of this passage, Schlegel's implicit
denigration of agglutinative languages excludes many peoples from
this world-historical development, and his theory thus marks a con-
siderable constriction of Early Romantic cosmopolitanism into a
more narrowly defined Indo-European tradition. By 1823 the Ger-
man scholar H. J. Klaproth narrowed the tradition still further by
108 German Orientalisms
renaming Indo-European as Indo-Germanic.96 Although Schlegel
did not claim special status for Germany over other European nations
in Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, he was happy to sing Ger-
many's praises in his slightly later lectures on the Geschichte der alten
und neuen Literatur [History of ancient and modern literature] (1812).
Rejecting charges that the fall of the Roman Empire led only to bar-
barism, Schlegel claims that Germanic peoples actually brought light
to the Middle Ages, particularly when one compares their "so splen-
didly developing national strength" with the cultural stagnation of
the Byzantine Empire.97 In no other European country has "a people
[ Volk] been imbued since time immemorial with such spiritual
strength as the German, the first, indeed, the only people in Europe
in which the power of nature resting in the depths of humanity had
so revealed and preserved itself."98
The subsequent history of German Indology is well known, at least
in its broad outlines: in 1818 August Wilhelm Schlegel received the
first German chair for Sanskrit studies at the University of Bonn; the
second such chair went to Franz Bopp, the founder of comparative
linguistics, at the University of Berlin in 1821. Despite the fact that
classes in Sanskrit studies were poorly attended, German universities
continue to endow chairs in the field; indeed, the percentage of
growth in professorships of Indian philology and the related field of
comparative linguistics "outpaced all other subjects at the three
largest universities in the area that became the German Empire."99
German leadership in the fields of comparative linguistics and Indol-
ogy was widely acknowledged throughout Europe and North Amer-
ica during the nineteenth century. German scholars often occupied
chairs at foreign universities, while French, British, and American
Indologists found that a period of study in Germany was indispens-
able for their professional development. Travel to India, in contrast,
seemed expensive, dangerous, time-consuming, and ultimately
beside the point, as scholars were more interested in ancient lan-
guages than the modern individuals who happened to be living on
the subcontinent. As we have seen, Herder already expressed little
more than pity for the victims of British colonization, despite his
effusive praise for ancient India, and nineteenth-century scholars
maintained the focus on the past as they sought the roots of Indo-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 109
European culture. The claim for linguistic affinities between Sanskrit
and German gradually shifted to arguments about special racial bonds
between superior "Aryan" peoples, most notably in the work of
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and from here it is a short step to the
racist ideology of the Third Reich.'°°
As always, one must be cautious in tracing such a teleology from
the Romantic fascination with India to claims of Aryan supremacy in
Nazi Germany. To be sure, some German Indologists did lend their
scholarly weight in support of the fascist regime. Sheldon Pollock
recounts one particularly grotesque instance of the Munich Indolo-
gist and Nazi Party member Walter Wiist delivering a lecture to SS
officers on "continuities between ancient Indian and contemporary
German thought" that culminated in the claim that the ancient Aryan
Weltanschauung "is to be found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, a text that
thus evinces a spiritual continuum stretching from the second millen-
nium B.C. to the present."' According to Pollock's figures, approx-
imately one-third of the tenured German professors of Indology dur-
ing the 1930s were active party members, while the vast majority of
the rest did nothing in public to oppose the regime. Whether they
would have been allowed to voice such protest is another question,
of course; Pollock does mention that a handful of scholars who were
Jewish or married to Jews either fled the country or committed sui-
cide (94-95). By the same token, not all nineteenth-century German
Indologists were racists; to mention only one prominent example,
Max Miiller "thought 'Aryan' should remain only a linguistic cate-
gory because he believed there was no way of determining skin color
or other racial characteristics from the few existing linguistic
clues."'02 Even Friedrich Schlegel "did not get high marks from the
Nazis" because he was a proponent ofJewish emancipation who also
married a converted Jew and voiced qualified praise for the achieve-
ments of both Arabic and Hebraic languages.'03
Viewed in their immediate historical context, Fichte's and
Schlegel's works of the Napoleonic period do participate in the
widespread surge of German nationalist enthusiasm during the
Napoleonic years. At this point in time, however, nationalism had
positive as well as negative characteristics. Among certain intellectu-
als, to be sure, German nationalism went hand in hand with anti-
110 German Orientalisms
Semitism. Achim von Arnim's "Christlich-Deutsche Tischgesell-
schaft," founded in 18o6, excluded "Philistines," women, and Jews,
but it found room for Clemens Brentano and Adam Miiller.104 In
1811 Miiller proclaimed that he and his companions were waging
war on two fronts: an ironic battle against the Philistines and a seri-
ous struggle against the Jews, "against a breed without profession,
without talent, with little courage and less honor that with amazing
audacity is trying to sneak, press, and force its way into the state, sci-
ence, art, and society."'05 At the same time, however, many young
Germans expressed enthusiasm for Enlightenment ideals and hoped
to unite the country under a constitutional government that
respected human rights and civil liberties. The question, as Heine
viewed it years later, was not whether one should be a nationalist or
not, but whose nationalism would prevail. If the Germans could
complete the revolution begun by the French and, in turn, spread
freedom to the entire world, writes Heine in his preface to Deutsch-
land: Ein Wintermdrchen [Germany: A winter's tale] (1844), then there
would be no need for petty disputes about borderlands such as Alsace
and Lorraine, for all would be included in a larger unity: "all of
Europe, the entire world-the entire world will become German! I
often dream about Germany's mission and universal rule when I
wander beneath oak trees. This is my patriotism."'°6
Whose nationalism would prevail? The reactionary, anti-Semitic
monarchism of the "Heidelberg Romantics" or the revolutionary
liberalism that extended from the Early Romantics to the politically
engaged poets of the Vormirz? With the benefit of hindsight, we
know what happened under Bismarck and Hitler, but until at least
1848, the question was unresolved and a matter of hot dispute. And
whose Orientalism would prevail? Could Wieland, Goethe, and the
Early Romantics inspire a spirit of generous German cosmopoli-
tanism of the sort that still reverberates in Heine's confession of faith?
Or would the more narrowly nationalistic belief in an Indo-Ger-
manic linguistic and racial kinship predominate? Here again, our
knowledge of the outcome in the works of certain German Indolo-
gists in the Nazi era can obscure the variety of positions within the
nineteenth-century academic discipline and impoverish the wealth of
the German literary imagination.
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 111
INVENTING GERMANISTIK AND MAKING
WOLFRAM GERMAN
While Friedrich Schlegel was exploring linguistic ties between Ger-
many and the East, others turned their interest to the history of the
national literature. Renewing Herder's faith in the voice of the peo-
ple, Arnim, Brentano, Gorres, and the Brothers Grimm began to col-
lect and publish German sagas, fairy tales, and Volkslieder. At a time
when our leaders have failed us, wrote Gorres in his preface to Die
teutschen Volksbicher (1807), the nation must look within, "to that
which is most its own and most worthy."'07 In seeking an indigenous
literary tradition allegedly untainted by foreign influence, the
Romantics turned above all to the Middle Ages. Now, the notion
that the Romantics single-handedly rediscovered medieval literature
has long since been dispelled as a myth. Major figures of the German
Enlightenment, including Gottsched and Lessing, devoted at least
some attention to the Middle Ages, while the Swiss authors Bodmer
and Breitinger made a systematic attempt to republish major works of
German medieval literature.'s8 Despite their best intentions, how-
ever, the new editions did not capture the popular imagination.
Goethe was typical in this regard: when he visited Zurich in 1779,
Bodmer failed to arouse his interest in a copy of Das Nibelungenlied,
and three years later Goethe left Christoph Heinrich Miiller's new
edition of the epic largely unread.'09 Already in the 176os Klopstock
had begun his patriotic phase by imitating what he believed were
pre-Carolingian bardic poets, yet the flurry of interest he sparked in
the earliest Germanic literature soon died as well."0 It was only in the
wake of the French Revolution that the Early Romantics began to
recuperate medieval literature for a broader audience. Beginning
with Tieck's editorial work in the 1790s and continuing through the
first decades of the nineteenth century, Germans scrambled to collect
and publish every scrap of medieval poetry they could find, while
writing modern literature in a medieval mode." Gradually the new
enthusiasm for German medieval literature made its way into the uni-
versity as well, and in 181o Friedrich Hagen von der Hagen was
awarded the first professorship for the study of German literature at
the University of Berlin, largely on the strength of his edition of Das
112 German Orientalisms
Nibelungenlied. What had begun as the work of a few poets and iso-
lated intellectuals soon became part of the official program of higher
education for generations of young men in the German university
system.
Given the patriotic bent of the early German medievalists, it is not
surprising that the heroes of Das Nibelungenlied took center stage in
their work, flanked by Hildebrand, Hadubrant, and the Recken of Die
deutsche Heldensage."2 Such characters could proudly join ranks with
the old Germanic hero Arminius in the struggle against the latter-day
"Romans" of France. "3 Wolfram von Eschenbach was more difficult
to enshrine in the pantheon of Germany's national heroes, even
though he had long been one of the most widely read medieval
authors.'4 In his literary works Wolfram draws on the international
traditions of Arthurian romance from England, Wales, and France, as
well as the Grail legends of the Middle East. His characters in Wille-
halmrn and Parzival seem unusually tolerant of non-Christian "hea-
thens," while paying little attention to national differences within
Europe. If Wolfram seems partial to anyone, in fact, it is to the royal
family of Anjou in western France, and not to his native Bavaria or to
the Thuringian court where he probably composed his works."5
While the Early Romantics respected Wolfram's talent, they viewed
him as part of a foreign, even Oriental, literary tradition. For exam-
ple, Tieck wrote that while Das Heldenbuch and Das Nibelungenlied
show close ties to a grandiose but also bloodthirsty and terrible
Nordic mythology, romances such as Parzival reveal "the gentle spirit
of the Orient and Persia and India.""'6 August Wilhelm Schlegel
found Parzival "extremely bizarre, but a great and rich composi-
tion.""7 Friedrich Schlegel, finally, praised Wolfram von Eschenbach
as "the most artful of all German poets of this time" but also noted his
"inclination to an almost Oriental wealth of imagination.""' While
these Early Romantic writers are uniformly appreciative, if slightly
puzzled, by Wolfram's "Oriental" exuberance, some minor nine-
teenth-century writers portrayed Wolfram critically as a Frenchified
Zivilisationsliterat whose works stand in uneasy proximity to "authen-
tic" works of German Kultur."9 In the long run, however, this would
not do: the Germans could hardly afford to concede one of their
major medieval authors to the French. Thus the task of nineteenth-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 113
century Wolfram reception was to find a way to reclaim him for the
national literature, to make Wolfram German.
The first step toward Wolfram's repatriation was to move early
Germanistik from patriotic enthusiasm to scholarly precision. As typi-
cal of the first generation of Germanisten, Friedrich Hagen von der
Hagen was not, strictly speaking, a scholar but more of a popularist
and patriot best known for producing a Feldausgabe of Das Nibelung-
enlied that German soldiers carried with them into battle against
Napoleon's troops. Soon after the French had been defeated, how-
ever, German medievalists began to demand a more scholarly
approach to their work.It20 A first turning point came in 1815 when
August Wilhelm Schlegel denounced Jacob Grimm's commentary on
a scene in Parzival as an example of"wilde Philologie" based more on
random association than compelling textual or historical evidence.I2'
In the ensuing decades Karl Lachmann developed a rigorous editorial
method intended to put an end to the reign of enthusiastic amateurs.
By basing his technique on principles established in the prestigious
field of Classical Studies, Lachmann gave new dignity to the emerg-
ing discipline of Germanistik and produced scholarly editions that set
the standard in the field.I22 Lachmann was passionately dispassionate
about his work, denouncing bumbling dilettantes as not only inept as
scholars but morally flawed. A meticulously precise editor whose idea
of a hobby was to collect misprints in newspaper articles,23 Lach-
mann turned the study of German medieval literature into a precise
science for a handful of initiates. It is therefore somewhat ironic that
Lachmann should also have paved the way for a broader popular
reception of Wolfram's Parzival. His lecture of October 1819, prob-
ably delivered at the monthly meeting of the Royal German Society
of Konigsberg, marked a turning point in the history of German
Wolfram reception.'24 Lachmann made the revolutionary claim that
Parzival was tightly organized around the protagonist's development
from a simpleton to the Grail king and that Wolfram thus could not
have written the sprawling, episodic Jiingere Titurel.125 With one
stroke Lachmann moved Parzival to the center of Wolfram-Forschung
and paved the way for Wolfram's entry into the national literature by
anachronistically turning Parzival into that most "German" subgenre
of the novel, the Entwicklungs- or Bildungsroman.I26 The modern
114 German Orientalisms
reception of Parzival coincides with the heyday of the German Bil-
dungsroman, the beginnings of academic Germanistik, and the contin-
uing history of German Orientalism.
In the course of the nineteenth century a rift developed between
the high priests of the Lachmann school and medievalists who con-
tinued to reach out to a broader audience.27 Popularizers included
San Marte (A. Schulz) and Karl Simrock, who translated Wolfram's
Parzival into modern German in 1836 and 1842, respectively, as well
as the early historians of the Germany's national literature, who
"were not writing for universities but for the general public." 28 One
such figure was Georg Gottfried Gervinus, who published his path-
breaking Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen [His-
tory of the poetic national literature of the Germans] between the
years 1835 and 1842. A political liberal, Gervinus wrote his volume
to inspire the nation to a sense of self-worth. Like many others,
Gervinus takes pride in the works of Goethe and Schiller, which he
views as the culmination of Germany's literary development, but
then moves to the surprising conclusion that the age of literature is
now past, while the time for political change has come. Goethe had
once claimed that Germany did not desire the revolutions necessary
to produce classical literature, but Gervinus disagrees: "But we do
desire such changes and directions; and if the nature of the develop-
ment should make revolutions necessary, then it is smarter to meet
them halfway rather than to avoid them."'29
In seeking the origins of the national literature, Gervinus turns to
the Middle Ages, devoting the first of his five volumes to a detailed
discussion of German medieval poetry. He claims that the Crusades
played a central role in overcoming the influence of antiquity and
allowing the national and modern character to take root, a turning
point that he describes as "a struggle for the individual Bildung of the
West versus the collective [Bildung] of the East" (I:I63). The West
began its inexorable development toward modern individualism,
while the East remained frozen in the past as the unchanging Other
of the Western Orientalist imagination. Gervinus singles out Das
Nibelungenlied as the national epic, whose heroes "full of healthy
strength, full of upright if also coarse characteristics, full of rough but
also pure, noble morals" contrast positively with the "shameless, dis-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 115
gusting, and windy contents of the British" and the "shallow, foolish,
and immoral contents of the French romances" (I:382-83). In Wol-
fram's Parzival, however, we encounter a different sort of hero who
stands on the cusp of a new age: "Thus Parzival depicts a youth full
of the drive toward external deeds, full of the Weltsturmerei of the
Heroic Age; but from the time of his isolated education there lay in
him the seed of an entirely new world and of a completely new kind
of character" (1:434). Parzival becomes the prototypical modern Ger-
man, combining old-fashioned valor with modern introspection.
The modern German, in turn, becomes the prototypical European
subject. In his popular Vorlesungen Tuber die Geschichte der deutschen
National-Literatur [Lectures on the history of the German national lit-
erature] (1845), August Friedrich Vilmar characterizes Parzival as "a
deeply German youthful character, full of innocence and yet full of a
desire for action, full of feeling for the homeland, and yet full of long-
ing to travel."130 As a representative of the ideal of the "story of the
education and development of the inner man" [Bildungs- und
Entwicklungsgeschichte des innern Menschen] (164), Wolfram's
Parzival can only be compared to Goethe's Faust. Like Gervinus,
then, Vilmar moves back the onset of modernity from the Renais-
sance and the Reformation to the beginnings of Western individual-
ism in the Middle Ages. In doing so, he finds a way to defend Ger-
man literature against the charge that it is belated. True, the Age of
Goethe came after the golden ages of English, Spanish, and French
literatures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but German lit-
erature had its first classical period already around 1200. Thus Euro-
pean modernity begins around 12oo00; the Germans got there first, not
last; and Parzival is the first modern hero.
We see the beginnings of a double movement in the work of these
nineteenth-century literary historians, as they simultaneously align
Germany with Europe in its development away from an unchanging
Orient and distance Germany from the rest of Europe by claiming
priority in the race to modern times. Both tendencies inform Richard
Wagner's influential reworking of Wolfram's Parzival into Parsifal
(1882). Wagner had become familiar with the Parzival story in 1845
through the translations by Simrock and San Marte as well as Gervi-
nus's literary history, although he would not complete his opera until
116 German Orientalisms
decades later shortly before his death.131 In the opera he drastically
simplifies Wolfram's plot: gone is the role of King Arthur's court and
Gawain's adventures; gone, too, is Gahmuret's love for the black
heathen queen Belakane and Parzival's joyous reunion with his half
brother Feirefiz. Instead, Wagner turns the work into a religious
melodrama in which the Christian Parzival rescues Anfortas and the
knights of the Holy Grail from their bondage to the evil heathen
Klingsohr. As Marc Weiner has convincingly argued, both Klingsohr
and Kundry figure as embodiments of both the Oriental and the Jew.
Wagner transforms Wolfram's tolerant cosmopolitanism into a work
of a xenophobic and anti-Semitic imagination in which chaste Ger-
manic Christians triumph over the seductive lure of Orientalized
Jews.'32
We can follow the legacy of this argument into the twentieth cen-
tury, particularly in several works that focus on the character of Parzi-
val's father Gahmuret. In 1937 Ernst Cucuel argued that the opening
books of Parzival were an intrinsic part of the whole and not a later
addition. He argues that Gahmuret is a consistent character whose
"irrepressible desire for battle" should be viewed as an expression of
a "heathen-German affirmation of life." 33 Two years later Friedrich
Panzer suggested that Wolfram had modeled Gahmuret on Richard
the Lionhearted. Writing a year before German bombs began to fall
on London, Panzer contends that the historical figure was a grandiose
example of British arrogance that Wolfram had transformed into "an
idealized and Germanified [eingedeutschter] Richard." 34 Panzer's
monograph appeared when the Dutch Willem Snelleman was writ-
ing his own study of Das Haus Anjou und der Orient in Wolframs
"Parzival. "i3s He, too, argues that Wolfram updated Chretien's Perce-
val by modeling Gahmuret on Richard the Lionhearted. Although
Snelleman concedes that Wolfram seems tolerant of certain noble
heathens, he argues that Christianity remains the superior religion.
Wolfram's Parzival becomes the leader of what he terms a European
Anti-Orientalist movement (Orientalism understood here as the
imperialist ambitions of the East over the West). Wolfram gives voice
to the Staufer's "global politics with its drive to the south and east"
[Weltpolitik mit ihrem Drang nach Siiden und Osten]-overtones of
Bismarck's ambitions in the Middle East and Hitler's designs on East-
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 117
ern Europe are unmistakable-and, in so doing, turns Chretien's
work into a "Germanic drama of the soul." 36
Not all views of the Orient were equally threatening, however.
Concurrent with efforts to turn Parzival into a Nietzschean Uber-
mensch, or even a German Christ who fought against the threat of a
new Asian invasion, came an attempt to stress the affinities between
modern German culture and the ancient Orient.137 Max Semper
argued in 1934 that Wolfram transforms a superficial but entertaining
French story into a work that is German to its inner core and that
gives the purest expression to the inherent characteristics of the Ger-
man Volk. Wolfram's reworking of the French source is not a foreign
graft but rather nourished by the juices of the new German soil [von
den Sdfien des neuen Mutterbodens durchflossen]. How then to account
for the "Oriental" elements of this Germanic work? "Because of
ancient spiritual affinities between Germans and ancient Persians."'3s
Efforts to link the German Parzival to the Aryan myth had in fact
begun several decades earlier. In 1913 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels pub-
lished an essay entitled "Der heilige Gral als das Mysterium der
arisch-christlichen Rassenkultreligion" [The Holy Grail as the mys-
tery of the Aryan-Christian race-cult-religion]. He argued that the
Grail Knights represented "the original Aryan religion" in a work
that inspired "a heroic Aryan racial hygiene." Liebenfels published his
work in a series entitled Ostara, which advertised itself as follows:
"Are you blond? Are you a man? Then read Ostara, the publication
of the blonds and those who fight for men's rights." 39 Although he
hardly fit the racial profile, Adolf Hitler heeded the call during his
formative years, not only reading Liebenfels's rantings about the
future triumphs of a blond and blue-eyed master race but also visiting
him several times in his Austrian castle.'40
My overview of nineteenth-century Parizival reception is admit-
tedly selective, but it does give some sense of how a prenational
writer with an "Oriental" imagination gradually became the author
of a modern Bildungsroman whose "typically German" hero combines
martial valor, dreamy introspection, and racial purity. In defining that
which makes Parzival both modern and German, critics portray him
as a Western individual whose active nature and capacity for growth
distinguish him from passive and static Orientals and as a noble Ger-
118 German Orientalisms
man who contrasts positively with the arrogant British or the
immoral French. An alternative tradition of German criticism cele-
brates Parzival as the incarnation of an Indo-Germanic ideal, an
Aryan hero who wages war against Orientalized Jews. Nineteenth-
century Parzival reception is thus about the making of a German
hero, which is part of the larger project of building a national litera-
ture.141 In contrast, the recent transformation of Germanistik into
German Studies is about the unmaking of the national literature, as
we shall see, or, more precisely, its redefinition in a postnational era.
GOETHE'S ORIENTALISM: BETWEEN ESSENCE
AND IRONY
In 1999 the German-Syrian writer Rafik Schami published a book
entitled Der geheime Bericht uber den Dichter Goethe [The secret report
about the poet Goethe]. The story begins in 1890, when a German
woman escapes pirates with her twelve-year-old son to find refuge
on an island in the Persian Gulf. Unhappily married to a British
officer stationed in India, the woman is pleased to remain undercover
on the island, particularly since she grew up in the Middle East and
speaks fluent Arabic. Her son soon becomes equally bilingual and the
best friend of the crown prince. Meanwhile Great Britain and Ger-
many have discovered oil in the Gulf, and the islanders realize that it
is only a matter of time before they will have to confront the Euro-
peans. The prince decides that they should get to know their future
partners by becoming familiar with their national literatures, so he
appoints a committee and sends emissaries to study at European uni-
versities. The woman's son spends his year abroad in Germany and
returns to present his secret report on Goethe. Most of the book then
consists of the young man's summaries of Goethe's works to an
appreciative audience. They are particularly impressed by his West-
dstlicher Divan [West-eastern divan] (1819) and find it hard to believe
that Goethe could have developed such empathy for Persian poetry
without ever having traveled to the Orient. The committee enthusi-
astically recommends that Goethe's works be acquired for the library
and taught in the schools. For a brief time the island becomes a cen-
ter for international understanding, but then the British destroy the
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 119
capital city and pump out so much oil that the island sinks beneath
the waves.
Seen generously, Rafik Schami's book serves a double purpose: it
presents an attractive portrait of Goethe to a new generation of prob-
ably skeptical German students and creates a utopian model of mutual
understanding between the Occident and the Orient at a time of
increased tensions between Germans and foreigners in the wake of
Reunification.142 The Turkish-German writer Zafer Senocak would
probably have been less than generous in his response to Schami's
book, however, for he had already sharply criticized Schami in the
early 1990s for his practice of ad-libbing fairy tales in an "authenti-
cally" Oriental manner to German audiences.143 In his view, Schami
presents the Germans with just the sort of kitsch they expect, thus
reinforcing rather than undermining old Orientalist stereotypes. In
his next book, War Hitler Araber? [Was Hitler an Arab?] (1994), Seno-
cak takes Goethe to task for doing the same thing, citing his Noten
und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verstandnis des West-ostlichen Divans
[Notes and treatises for a better understanding of the west-eastern
divan] (1819) as a prime example of Orientalism in its most negative
sense.144 In contrast with Schami's image of Goethe as a child-loving,
politically correct advocate of multicultural understanding, Senocak
sees him as a purveyor of destructive cliches for western Europe's
imperialist imagination.
What is interesting about the implicit dialogue between Schami and
Senocak is that it takes place in German in Germany between two
writers born in the "Orient": Schami came to Germany from Syria
when he was twenty-five, and Senocak arrived from Turkey when he
was only nine.145 At stake are questions of how to represent alterity at
a time of increasing global homogeneity, how to discuss allegedly
national characteristics in a postnational era, how to speak as an Ori-
ental in the Occidental metropolis. The debate also suggests that it is
time for a new look at Goethe's Orientalism, particularly in the Divan,
the major work of his Orientalist phase, but also in the late Novelle.
From its conception in 1814 to its completion in 1819, Goethe's
West-dstlicher Divan seemed out of step with the spirit of the times.
Nationalist enthusiasm had sent many of Goethe's contemporaries on
a quest to rediscover their Germanic roots in Volkslieder, Marchen, and
120 German Orientalisms
neglected works of the Middle Ages before heading off into battle
against the Corsican tyrant. To their dismay, many of these young
Germans found that their most famous poet remained decidedly cool
to such patriotic sentiments. While they girded themselves for war,
Goethe wrote passages in his autobiography in which he recalled
with fondness his friendship for a French officer stationed in his
house in Frankfurt during the Seven Years' War, and he was proud
that Napoleon claimed to have devoted himself to the repeated study
of Werther. His decision to embark on an imaginary journey to the
East in the summer of 1814 seemed to many an act of irresponsible
escapism or, even worse, a celebration of despotism in both East and
West.146 Years later the radical journalist Ludwig Borne was still furi-
ous at Goethe-whom he dubbed "the servile rhymester" [der
gereimte Knecht]-for what he felt was his self-importance and his
sycophantic praise of tyranny.147
Things looked considerably different from Thomas Mann's per-
spective during the Second World War. He found in Goethe a kin-
dred spirit who resisted national chauvinism. Germans should not cut
themselves off from the world, proclaims Goethe in Lotte in Weimar
(1940), but, rather, open themselves up to foreign influence so that
they, in turn, can influence others. Turning to a flag-waving local
high school teacher, Mann's Goethe offers a prophetic warning:
"Your [sort of patriotism] horrifies me, because it is the still-noble,
still-innocent early form of something terrible that one day will man-
ifest itself among the Germans in the most hideous stupidities."~48
Predicting disaster for Germans who set out to conquer the world by
force, Mann's Goethe views himself as the representative of a differ-
ent sort of German identity that combines "femininity and masculin-
ity at the same time . . . I am . . . womb and seed, the androgynous
art . . . This is the way the Germans should be, and in this I am their
image and model. Receiving the world into itself and giving back
gifts to the world . . . great by means of understanding and love,
through mediation [durch Mittlertum]" (298-99). As we shall see, the
Goethe of Lotte in Weimar articulates Mann's own concept of artistic
androgyny developed in opposition to the hypermasculine world of
German fascism, but Goethe's words already recall Novalis's and
Adam Miiller's critiques of those imperialist European nations who
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 121
flex their "manly" muscles in the effort to impose their will on the
rest of the world.
Despite his antipathy toward a newly militant nationalism based on
hostility toward the French, Goethe was willing to speak about
national characteristics of peoples and their poetry in terms that he
had learned from his old friend and erstwhile mentor Herder. In the
Noten und Abhandlungen Goethe claims that each nation begins by
writing naive poetry, and that the more spontaneous and natural the
original poetry is, the better the national literature will develop in
subsequent epochs. No matter how many times a country is con-
quered, there remains "a certain core of the nation in its character"
that inevitably resurfaces from time to time.'49 Poetry and religion
express the national characteristics of a people; they preserve images
of the distant past and establish a continuous tradition that leads up to
the present. Thus it makes little sense to compare poetry of one
national tradition to another, and none at all to assume the superior-
ity of ancient Greece and Rome. Again following Herder, Goethe
insists that we view national literatures as organic outgrowths of par-
ticular times and places, rather than measuring them against a com-
mon standard of classical antiquity: "compare them with themselves,
respect them in their own context, and forget that Greeks and
Romans ever existed" (3.I:20I).
Cultures may be different for both Goethe and Herder, but they are
not all equal. Unlike the Early Romantics, Goethe has nothing good
to say about Indian poetry or religion. He finds Indian religion worth-
less, its influence corrupting, and images of Indian idols hideous: "Still
today the Indian monstrosities are hateful to every pure sensibility;
how horrible they must have seemed to the image-less Muslims!"
(3.1:163). When Goethe writes approvingly about Oriental culture,
he means, in the first instance, certain poetic passages in the Old Tes-
tament that Herder had also praised as "the oldest documents of the
human race" and, in the second, Arabic and Persian poetry of the
Islamic period. As Goethe recalls in Dichtung und Wahrheit, the Old
Testament appealed to him even as a child as a calming antidote to his
overactive imagination: "I fled gladly to those Oriental regions, I sank
myself into the first books of Moses and found myself among the scat-
tered tribes of herdsmen simultaneously in the greatest solitude and
122 German Orientalisms
the greatest society" (14:155). Goethe based his earliest known dra-
matic fragment on the story of the archetypal Oriental despot Belsazar
found in the book of Daniel, and he claimed to have written a prose
version of the Joseph story in his youth.'s° Goethe's interest in the
Islamic world also began early.s' A translation of the Koran into Ger-
man appeared in late 1771; Goethe studied it carefully and copied pas-
sages from it. He did not complete his drama on the theme of the
charismatic leader who becomes a destructive genius, but "Mahomets
Gesang" [Muhammad's song] (1772) remains one of the most famous
lyrics of his so-called Geniezeit [time of genius]. Mahomet takes his
place alongside Faust and Prometheus as an amoral Kraftmensch, a
powerful force of nature who sweeps up his followers like a mighty
river and carries them to the sea.'52
The sense of the Orient as a site of primal simplicity and as a refuge
from the turmoil of modern times continues to inform "Hegire"
[Hegira], the first poem of the West-dstlicher Divan:
Nord und West und Siid zersplittern,
Throne bersten, Reiche zittern,
Fliichte du, im reinen Osten
Patriarchenluft zu kosten,
Unter Lieben, Trinken, Singen
Soll dich Chisers Quell verjiingen.
[North and West and South fall to pieces / Thrones burst, king-
doms tremble / Flee to enjoy patriarchal air in the pure East /
Chiser's well (the well of life) shall rejuvenate you amidst lov-
ing, drinking, and singing] (3.1:12)
Written on December 24, 1814, as delegates met at the Congress of
Vienna and Napoleon plotted his revenge on the island of Elba, the
poem gathers together the motifs that characterize Goethe's Orient in
the Divan: it is a simple land of love and war, wine and song, caravans
and coffee. It is also a patriarchal world, where fathers are respected
and seductive maidens conceal their charms behind veils. More than
simple, it is pure-"im reinen Osten"-where the spoken, not the
written word rules, a place of profound, originary depth ("des
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 123
Ursprungs Tiefe"). Goethe conjures an ancient, indeed, timeless Ori-
ental world of spiritual presence, poetic immediacy, and seductive
power that contrasts with the political turmoil and partisan strife of
modern Western society.53
We might call this aspect of Goethe's fascination with the East an
organic or essentialist Orientalism, and it is in this context that
Edward Said makes several passing references to the Divan in his
book.54 Yet there is another, seemingly contradictory, aspect to
Goethe's Orientalism that goes unnoticed in Said's work. The chief
characteristic of the Oriental style, according to Goethe's Noten und
Abhandlungen, is its eclecticism, its disregard for any sort of hierarchy,
its mixture of stylistic levels, just as at a European market or an Ori-
ental bazaar we might find healthy vegetables next to rotting weeds,
or buried treasure next to junk. Having identified the chief charac-
teristic of the Oriental style as a willingness to combine the incom-
patible, Goethe finds it impossible to resist a comparison to the nov-
els of Jean Paul Richter-even though he has just insisted that one
should not compare the works of Oriental poets to those of other
times or places. Goethe singles out Jean Paul as "a man who has pen-
etrated the breadth, heights, and depths of the Orient" more than any
other German writer (3.1:202). Like his Early Romantic contempo-
raries, Jean Paul shared an enthusiasm for a poetic image of India,
which would seem to make him an unlikely hero for Goethe, the
outspoken enemy of everything Indian.'55 As becomes clear in the
Noten und Abhandlungen, however, Goethe is interested in Jean Paul's
"Oriental" style, not the content of his novels: "Such a gifted spirit
looks around cheerfully and boldly in his world in a most peculiarly
Oriental way, creates the strangest connections, joins the incompati-
ble together, but in a way that weaves through a secret ethical thread
that guides it all to a certain unity" (3.1:202). Years earlier Goethe
and Schiller had enjoyed a running joke about Jean Paul as a Trage-
laph, literally a stag or male deer, but figuratively a Mischwesen or
Mischling (half-breed). 56 While Goethe strove for simplicity and clar-
ity at the height of his classical period, Jean Paul's quirky novels
seemed the product of someone "who had fallen from the moon."'57
Slightly later critics noted the contrast between the two writers but
reversed judgment, praising Jean Paul as the poet of modern Zerris-
124 German Orientalisms
senheit while denigrating Goethe's old-fashioned Classicism.'58 By
the time critics attacked the poet of Weimar Classicism, however,
Goethe had shifted into the eclectic, open-ended, non-organic style
of Faust II, the Wanderjahre, and the Divan. Goethe's relatively mild
comments about Jean Paul in the Noten must therefore be understood
as an indirect defense of his own Altersstil. '59
We thus have two different Orientalisms in Goethe's West-ostlicher
Divan: the one essential, organically rooted in the Middle East; the
other virtual, and transportable to Europe. Unlike his Romantic con-
temporaries, or Herder before them, Goethe seems uninterested in
tracing grand narratives of cultural evolution or linguistic develop-
ment that might provide an organic link between East and West, a
continuous, uninterrupted flow. Instead, Goethe bases his model on
a paradoxical fusion of opposites: his Orient is at once ancient and
modern, rooted and uprooted, essential and virtual. One might call it
an ironic essentialism, a transcendental Orientalism, or a postmodern
Romanticism; that is, Goethe makes easy reference to the Orient as a
world of presence, voice, and origin, but seems at the same time
aware that the source is always already erased, deferred, bracketed, or,
to put it more positively, that the Orient can always be appropriated
for an Occidental masquerade.
It is tempting to see anticipations of the postmodern pastiche in the
Oriental eclecticism of Goethe's Altersstil,16o although his fascination
with costumes and masks also harks back to an earlier, pre-Romantic
tradition of thefetes galantes and the chinoiserie of Rococo culture. As
late as 1818 Goethe included the figure of Muhammad in a Masken-
zug, a remnant of Baroque courtly culture in postrevolutionary
Weimar, while his earliest dramatic fragment Belsazar stands squarely
in the tradition of Baroque tragedy.'6' Before the revolutionary lyrics
of his Geniezeit, Goethe had experimented with the boundaries of the
Anacreontic tradition, and he remained deeply influenced by
Wieland's Rococo playfulness despite his early criticism of the older
writer. These vestiges of the Baroque and Rococo literary traditions
resurface in Goethe's late works, including the Divan, the Wander-
jahre, and Faust II. In the meantime, however, Goethe had become
perhaps the paradigmatic poet of modernity, the author who, from
the time of Werther and the Sturm und Drang lyrics, had given voice
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 125
to the impassioned genius, and whose Lehrjahre and Dichtung und
Wahrheit had become immensely influential models of the organic
development of the unique individual.162 In other words, Goethe
lived long enough that he not only witnessed and participated in
what Foucault termed the "invention of man" but also already antic-
ipated man's disappearance. It is therefore difficult to tell if we should
describe his late work as anachronistically "prehuman," presciently
"posthuman," or both.
To take only one example of the malleability of the self in the
West-ostlicher Divan, consider the famous exchange between Suleika
and Hatem in the "Buch Suleika" that begins "People and servant
and conqueror" [Volk und Knecht und Uberwinder] (3.1:84). In
rough paraphrase, Suleika says that you can play any role you like, as
long as you remain true to your self: "Alles kdnne man verlieren, /
Wenn man bliebe was man ist." To which Hatem responds that his
entire sense of self derives from her love, and that he would lose him-
self if she turned away from him toward another. Yet he could
quickly remedy the situation by shape-shifting into her new lover: "I
quickly transform myself into [slip into the body of] the beloved that
she caresses" [Ich verkdrpere mich behende / In den Holden den sie
kost]. The exchange thus simultaneously gives voice to the notion of
a deep, unchangeable self-"Highest happiness of earth's children /
Is personality alone" [Hdchstes Gliick der Erdenkinder / Sey nur die
Persdnlichkeit]-and of the self as something like a garment that can
be changed at will.'63 The poem concludes with what would seem to
be a note of gratuitous anti-Semitism, although the speaker is sup-
posed to be an Islamic poet of the Middle Ages and hence need not
be identified directly with Goethe's own views: "I would be, if not a
rabbi-I can't quite see to that-at least Ferdusi, Motanabbi [rival
poets], or in any case the kaiser" [Wollte, wo nicht gar ein Rabbi, /
Das will mir so recht nicht ein; / Doch Ferdusi, Motanabbi, / Allen-
falls der Kaiser seyn.] That is: I will be a chameleon for your love
(although I won't be a Jew).
The entire "Buch Suleika," which is the most fully developed seg-
ment of the Divan, is a self-conscious exercise in role-playing that
fluctuates between self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation. At
times Goethe, in his role as Hatem, marvels at the rejuvenating pow-
126 German Orientalisms
ers of love and boasts that lava still bubbles beneath the snow-capped
summit of his Aetna-like white hair. At others, however, Goethe
seems sadly aware that the present moment is only a brief reenact-
ment of youthful passion that must inevitably fade.
So, nach des Schicksals hartem Loose,
Weichst du mir Lieblichste davon,
Und wair' ich Helios der gro3e
Was niitzte mir der Wagenthron?
[So in accordance with fate's hard lot / you slip away from me,
most beloved; / and even if I were the great Helios, / what
good would my chariot throne do me?] ("Hochbild," 3.1:95).
The sense of loss reaches agonizing levels a few years later in the
"Trilologie der Leidenschaft" [Trilogy of passion] (1823), as Goethe
once again-and for the last time-records his experience of rejuve-
nating passion and its debilitating loss: "I have lost everything, I have
lost myself/ I, who was once the darling of the gods" [Mir ist das All,
ich bin mir selbst verloren, / Der ich noch erst den Gottern Liebling
war] (2:462).
Goethe counters the poignancy of these confessional moments in
his late poetry by splitting the self, as it were, either overcoming the
sense of loss by viewing the present moment as part of a sequence of
repetitions-what he terms "Wiederholte Spiegelungen"-or by
expanding the self through role-playing in the present. The poetry of
the Divan is in part about growing old, prompted by Goethe's return
to the Rhineland where he had grown up. A poem such as "Im
Gegenwirtigen Vergangnes" [The past in the present] struggles
toward acceptance of personal finitude in contemplation of the eter-
nal cycle of nature. Here he finds consolation in the sense that others
can enjoy what he once did, and, in granting others pleasure, he, too,
can find happiness. "Selige Sehnsucht" [Blissful yearning] proclaims
the esoteric doctrine that one must sacrifice oneself in order to sur-
vive, which can be understood simultaneously as an admonition to
transform oneself continually through Faustian striving, to acknowl-
edge one's place in the sequence of generations-"In the cooling of
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 127
the nights of love / that conceived you, where you conceived" [In
der Liebesnichte Kiihlung, / Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest]-and
to reproduce oneself through acts of poetic creativity-"And new
desire tears you upward to higher procreation" [Und dich reil3et neu
Verlangen / Auf zu hoherer Begattung] (3.1:24-25). The alternative
strategy for self-preservation lies in the willingness to pretend you are
someone else, just as Hatem tells Suleika he is willing to do. Goethe's
cheerful adoption of his role as Hatem becomes a way of transform-
ing personal confession into performance, just as his decision to pub-
lish some of Marianne von Willemer's poetry under his own name
undermines the sense of personal identity connected with modern
authorship.~164
The double aspect of the Orient as both the site of a simple soci-
ety living in harmony with nature that contrasts with the complexity
of modern Western civilization and as part of the artistic vocabulary
of the Western Orientalist imagination recurs in Goethe's very late
Novelle (1828). Long considered a timeless parable intended to
demonstrate "how the untamable, invincible is often better van-
quished by love and piety than violence," as Goethe himself put it,'65
the Novelle is generally read today as an implicit commentary on the
role of the aristocracy in Restoration culture.'66 Central to the sym-
bolic landscape of the text are the two castles owned by the ruling
family: the ruined fortress on the hilltop and the modern palace out-
side the bustling town. Servants of the ruling pair have been busy
tidying up the ruins into a picturesque park, while an artist draws pic-
tures of the old castle to hang in the halls of the new palace. The
fortress that was once an instrument of feudal warfare and power, in
whose halls "knights once strode up and down" (8:536), has been
transformed into a series of charming, "Romantic" pictures designed
to entice viewers to explore the ruins themselves. The same images
also suggest a continuity between the modern aristocracy and the
medieval knights, hence granting an aura of legitimacy to the ruling
pair. The function of both the spruced-up ruins and the commis-
sioned drawings is thus ideological in the sense that they uphold
existing power relations even as they cloak the violence that supports
such power under a nostalgic haze. The prince and princess live in a
world of make-believe, pretending to be feudal knights of yore.
128 German Orientalisms
Hence the prince heads off on a royal hunt of the sort one finds por-
trayed in the Nibelungenlied, the princess enjoys the adulation of sub-
jects allegedly delighted "that the first lady of the land was also the
most beautiful and graceful" (8:539) and allows herself to imagine
that the capital exchanges in the flourishing marketplace are still part
of a barter economy.
In keeping with the pseudofeudal fantasies of the modern aristocrats
and their loyal subjects is a desire to reenact the geopolitical struggles
of the medieval world. Young Honorio has honed his fighting skills
with exercises suitable for a budding Crusader: "the youth was hand-
some, he galloped up just as the Princess had often seen him in games
with the lance and the ring. In the same way his bullet hit the Turk's
head on a post in the forehead right under the turban as he galloped
past in the arena, just as he picked up the Moor's head from the
ground on his naked saber as he sped by" (8:545). The townspeople,
for their part, import entertainment from the East in the form of lions,
tigers, and their exotic keepers in the village square. As the garish
posters decorating the cages make clear, the caged beasts cater to the
locals' Orientalist imagination: "The grimly terrible tiger sprang
toward a Moor that he was just about to tear to pieces" (8:539-40).
Although the prince's uncle complains about the sensationalistic art,
the townspeople are only staging their equivalent of Honorio's aristo-
cratic war games. In both cases, images of the Orient raise the specter
of threatening, primal violence, but in a way that has been domesti-
cated for Occidental pleasure: the Turk's head is on a post, the Moor's
head lies on the ground, and the big cats are in their cages.
The threat of violence becomes real when a fire breaks out in the
marketplace and, in the ensuing confusion, the lion and tiger break
loose. Honorio has an unexpected opportunity to put his training to
the test: he gallops to the rescue and quickly dispatches the tiger with
a bullet to its head. He then falls to his knees and begs permission to
leave town and travel the world as a reward for his heroism, ostensi-
bly because he wants to be a better dinner companion to the well-
traveled guests who frequent the palace: "Travelers stream toward us
from all over, and when they speak about a city or an important place
anywhere in the world, they always ask us if we have been there our-
selves" (8:546). Just as Crusaders once brought back tales of foreign
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 129
lands to medieval Europeans, modern tourists now preserve memo-
ries of their travels that can be displayed in appropriate social gather-
ings. Honorio's request thus reflects his desire to contribute to the
cultural status of the local rulers by applying a cosmopolitan veneer to
the provincial dinner table. At the same time, his immediate recourse
to violence against the foreign, as represented by the tiger and, by
extension, his keepers, coupled with his desire for world travel, cap-
ture the spirit of nineteenth-century European imperialists out to
explore and exploit the rest of world, if here in the relatively harm-
less guise of a tourist. Honorio's practice on Turkish and Moorish
dummies has prepared him well for his role in granting legitimacy to
the local court and solidifying its sense of importance in the world.
No sooner has the princess tentatively granted Honorio's request
than the "Orientals" who owned the tiger appear: a woman, clad in
"respectable, but colorful and strange clothing" (8:546) and dark-
haired boy with black eyes. While Honorio gloats over his success,
the woman grieves for the dead tiger in an impassioned stream of
words that "plunges like a stream from boulder to boulder. A natural
language, short and choppy, made a vivid and touching impression"
(8:547). Honorio's quick-witted response to the crisis has had unfore-
seen consequences, for, in the eyes of the woman, he has needlessly
murdered a member of her family. When news arrives that a lion is
also loose, the prince agrees to let the mother and her son try to
recapture the animal without force, although men are standing by
with guns if necessary. The boy plays a seemingly random sequence
of notes on his flute, while his father, "colorfully and strangely
clothed like the woman and child" (8:548), delivers a short speech
"with an expression of natural enthusiasm" (8:55I). He begins in
praise of nature's beauty, as manifested in the image of a large rocky
outcropping crowned with ancient trees. It looks as though the boul-
der will remain in place forever, but in fact it will gradually erode, fall
into the mountain stream, and be carried to sea. Nothing remains the
same; nature is in a state of constant flux. Within the natural world
the lion rules: he strides beneath palm trees and through deserts, and
it seems that nothing can resist him. "But man knows how to tame
him, and the most horrible of creatures reveres God's likeness"
(8:5 50). As if to prove his point, the boy approaches the escaped lion
130 German Orientalisms
and, with a combination of poetry and music, manages to tame the
wild beast.
The foreign family thus brings us back to the "essential" Orient
conjured in the poem "Hegire." They are simple, devout people
who live in close proximity to nature and thus understand and respect
its power, as embodied in the lion, while nevertheless remaining
confident that they are in control: "For Daniel was not afraid in the
lion's den; he remained firm and calm, and the wild roars did not
interrupt his pious song" (8:55o-5i). Honorio and the townspeople,
in contrast, represent the Orient in a series of shopworn cliches: the
posters on the animals' cages inspire a tawdry sense of the sublime in
the marketplace, while Honorio has been pretending to be a latter-
day Crusader. As in the Divan, then, Goethe not only evokes a sim-
ple yet profound Orient that contrasts with modern Western society
but also signals his awareness that this image of the Orient is a prod-
uct of the Western imagination. In the poetry of the Divan, this self-
consciousness becomes the source of a playful irony and self-depre-
cating humor; in the Novelle, in contrast, Goethe portrays Honorio's
Orientalism in a more negative light, as it leads to unthinking vio-
lence. Ironically, Goethe employs one set of Orientalist stereotypes
to expose another: the "real" Orientals in the Novelle provide an
authentic counterpart to the modern Europeans' Orientalizing fan-
tasies, even though they are clearly figures who would be at home in
an allegory or a fairy tale.
The moral of the Novelle seems quite clear: in a world where
change is inevitable and human beings confront powerful and poten-
tially destructive forces, it is better to adapt and maintain control
calmly and judiciously rather than through immediate recourse to
violence. Given the story's contemporary setting, we can easily read
the outbreak of fire and the ensuing release of the wild animals as a
reference to the return of the repressed Revolution into Biedermeier
society or, more generally, as the disruptive force of change in the
modern world. In this context one recalls the famous prediction in
Lenardo's diary in the Wanderjahre: "The rampant machinery tor-
ments and frightens me; it surges toward us like a thunderstorm,
slowly, slowly; but it has taken its course, it will come and hit us."'67
Like Novalis's "Europa" essay, Goethe's late work is not so much for
Romantic Orientalism and the Absence of Empire 131
or against the Revolution or modernity, as it is post-revolutionary
and inevitably modern. One can neither stop the course of history
nor turn back the hands of time, but one does have a choice in the
way one decides to move forward. At the beginning of the story the
prince and his wife flirt with a reactionary nostalgia in their efforts to
establish symbolic continuity with the feudal past. At the same time,
however, they have built a new palace and revitalized the local econ-
omy, which suggests that they have adapted to modern times with-
out alienating their subjects. The prince's willingness to allow the
Oriental family to recapture its lion without force provides further
evidence that he possesses a maturity and wisdom that certainly sur-
passes that of the well-meaning but hotheaded young Honorio. The
Novelle thus reformulates Goethe's consistent response to a world in
the constant process of "formation, transformation" [Gestaltung,
Umgestaltung]:168 he prefers Bildung to violence, Neptune to Vulcan,
evolution to revolution.
Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur also responds to developments in
modern society. At a time when the pace of travel has quickened dra-
matically, he writes, it is inevitable that national literatures should
come into increasing contact with one another and become part of a
larger unity: "National literature does not mean much now; the time
for world literature has come, and everyone must work to accelerate
this epoch." Goethe does not deny that national cultures have their
own peculiar characteristics; he merely argues that many of his more
nationalistic contemporaries should avoid the "pedantic arrogance"
that prevents them from looking beyond the confines of their own
narrow world: "For this reason I like to look around at foreign
nations and I advise everyone to do the same."'69 If other Germans
were to follow Goethe's model, the nation could take a leading role
in the formation of the new Weltliteratur: "I am convinced that a
world literature is forming, that all nations are inclined in this direc-
tion and thus taking positive steps. The German can and should do
the most in this process; he will have a fine role to play in this great
convergence."'70 Goethe thus voices the sort of German cosmopoli-
tanism we have previously encountered in both Wieland and
Novalis, as he rejects narrow-minded nationalism and places Ger-
many at the center of a new world order.
132 German Orientalisms
Goethe's scattered comments about Weltliteratur in the late 182os
provide a theoretical justification for his lifelong poetic practice.
From the beginning Goethe had demonstrated his ability to feel his
way into foreign literary forms; his pseudo-Persian poetry of the
Divan is only one phase of a career that included Shakespearean dra-
mas, Pindaric odes, and Roman elegies. Such stylistic virtuosity is also
evidence of a cultural generosity, what Thomas Mann hailed as the
"feminine" receptivity that characterizes Goethe's "androgynous
art." The same openness to the foreign continues to inspire Rafik
Schami's admiration of Goethe's Orientalism. But if Goethe expands
his literary horizons only to reproduce Orientalist cliches, as Zafer
Senocak contends, does he not remain firmly within the bounds of
the Eurocentric thought he supposedly escapes? Yes and no. Goethe,
like anyone else, was a product of a particular time and place that
inevitably colored his perceptions of the world, and Goethe was well
aware of the threat of solipsism; his Werther is already driven to dis-
traction by the thought "that all consolation about certain points of
reflection is merely a dreamy resignation, for we paint our prison
walls with colorful figures and bright vistas" (8:23). Yet Goethe was
not Werther, as he was always quick to remind his readers, and we
need not take Werther's sense of self-entrapment at face value;
Goethe's understanding of the foreign may not have been perfect,
but that does not mean that there was no understanding at all. What
makes Goethe's Orientalism particularly interesting, in fact, is the
balance he maintains between empathy and irony: he not only has a
highly developed "negative capability" that allows him, like Hatem,
to transform himself into another at a moment's notice, but also an
ironic awareness that he is only playing a role, adopting a new mas-
querade. While Goethe does not shy away from images of the Orient
as a site of primal vitality and uncluttered wisdom, he also reminds
readers that such images stem more from the Western imagination
than the Eastern source. It is not so much a question, then, of
Goethe's generous understanding of the East, but more of his ironic
awareness of the Western desire for Oriental origins that casts a
kinder light on his imperial imagination.
CHAPTER THREE
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents
MANN, BAEUMLER, AND BACHOFEN:
THE DARK SIDE OF ROMANTICISM
In his autobiographical essay "Pariser Rechenschaft" [Parisian reck-
oning] (1926), Thomas Mann interrupts an account of his recent trip
to France with some pointed remarks about Alfred Baeumler's intro-
duction to an anthology of Johann Jakob Bachofen's works entitled
Der Mythus von Orient und Occident [The myth of Orient and Occi-
dent] (1926). Mann begins deceptively, praising Baeumler's "rivet-
ing" introduction to a German intellectual tradition that leads back
through Bachofen to the late Romantics of the Heidelberg school.
According to Baeumler, as Mann summarizes, writers such as Novalis
and Friedrich Schlegel were only "Romantics in quotation marks,
basically eighteenth century, infected with rationality, reprehensible.
Arndt, Gorres, Grimm, finally Bachofen are the true [Romantics],
for only they are most deeply ruled and determined by the big
'regression' [bestimmt von dem groj3en 'Zuriick'], by the maternal-noc-
turnal idea of the past."' Given the current political situation in Ger-
many, however, Mann questions whether now is the time to dredge
up "this whole Joseph Gorres-complex of earth, Volk, nature, past,
and death, a revolutionary obscurantism. . . with the tacit insinuation
that all this is once again on the agenda" (470). Baeumler's renewed
fascination with the irrational "Asiatic" world plays into the hands of
the "the crassest volkisch reaction" (472), continues Mann, at a time
when Germans need to look forward to a new humanism. From
133
134 German Orientalisms
Mann's perspective in the 1920s, in other words, the Early Romantic
"Oriental Renaissance" has transformed itself into fascist Orientalism.
Critics have been somewhat puzzled by the vehemence of Mann's
reaction to Baeumler's introduction. While Baeumler recognizes the
Heidelberg Romantics' appreciation of the dark side of the ancient
Asiatic world, he allegedly comes out clearly on the side of Western
rationality in the end. To be sure, Alfred Baeumler did join the
National Socialist Party in 1933, and he remained a loyal Nazi ideo-
logue throughout Hitler's regime, yet the 1926 essay supposedly
remains untainted by fascist thought. Mann was simply wrong about
the Bachofen introduction, one critic concludes, but right in his sus-
picions about where such thought might lead.2 In my opinion,
Mann's accusations against Baeumler's introduction were not as mis-
guided as we have been led to believe, although the urgency of
Mann's repeated denunciations may well have stemmed in part from
his need to repress aspects of his own still-recent conservatism.3
Baeumler had touched on an intellectual tradition of central impor-
tance to Mann in the 1920s, as the "un-political" writer steeped in
nineteenth-century thought struggled to come to terms with the con-
sequences of Germany's Griff nach der Weltmacht in the First World
War. As was the case with his Romantic predecessors, thinking about
politics for Thomas Mann almost always involved thinking about sex-
uality, and Mann's sexual politics, in turn, had their own complex
symbolic geography in which the East played a prominent role.
Baeumler locates the beginning of the late Romantic tradition of
thought that leads to Bachofen in the work of Friedrich Creuzer and
Joseph Gorres. In his Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker [Sym-
bolism and mythology of ancient peoples] (1805), Creuzer locates the
origin of human religion in Asia, or, more specifically, India. In
Creuzer's view, however, the symbolism of Eastern religion must be
superseded by Western mythology. Homer stands on the threshold of
the new world, between "the dark murkiness of the Near Eastern
religious service" and the colorful pantheon of Greek gods.4 Gorres
goes further in his Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt [History of
myth in the Asian world] (181o), placing the Greek triumph over the
East into a sweeping narrative of universal history that culminates in
the triumph of Caucasian Europeans over other "degenerate" races.
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 135
Echoing the racist anthropologies of Christoph Meiners and Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach, Gorres contends that three different races
developed out of the original humans who lived along the Ganges in
the mountains of northern India: first, the blacks sank down into cen-
tral Africa, where they remain in darkness and form "the lowest
stratification" of the human race.5 The remaining peoples then
divided themselves along an east/west axis, with the Caucasus
becoming a second focal point of ancient civilization alongside the
original Kashmir. Gradually, then, humans spread out to fill the rest
of the world. Gorres likens this development to the growth of a plant
that gradually sheds Slavic, Mongolian, Chinese, Indian, and Negroid
peoples like dead leaves that fall to the dark earth, while "life, as if
purified by this shedding, now drove its vital stem joyously toward
the West into higher atmospheres, so that it could unfold there in
European blossom" (53). Meanwhile Asian civilization stagnates,
leaving "the European Caucasian branch historically dominant"
(204). Gorres thus transforms his seeming nostalgia for the primal
unity of all peoples in ancient India into a self-congratulatory parable
that excludes the vast majority of humankind.
What distinguishes Creuzer and Gorres from earlier German
thinkers, according to Baeumler, was their grasp of the dark mythic
forces that lay just beneath the surface of what Winckelmann had
described as "a noble simplicity and a quiet grandeur" [eine edle Ein-
falt, und eine stille Grd3e] in ancient Greek culture.6 The West tri-
umphs, to be sure, but the Asian enemy has grown formidable. Their
work anticipates the later nineteenth-century view that human rea-
son stands in a precarious position against what Schopenhauer terms
the Will, Nietzsche the Dionysian, and Freud the Unconscious. In
Baeumler's view, however, Bachofen's profound grasp of the irra-
tional forces threatening Western reason makes even Nietzsche's
thought look superficial. In Das Mutterrecht [The matriarchy] (1861)
Bachofen views human history as an epic battle between the
"chthonic," feminine forces of the Orient and Occidental rationality
and patriarchy. He bases his theory on stereotypical distinctions
between male and female: the one is active, intellectual, progressive;
the other passive, corporeal, and static. Bachofen then turns this series
of binary oppositions into an account of world history: human civi-
136 German Orientalisms
lization began in Asia in the dark, undifferentiated realm of the
mother. Gradually, however, the bright light of Hellenic patriarchy
triumphed over the gynocratic East: "There bondage to the physical,
here intellectual development . . . there submission to nature, here a
rising above the same, a breaking through of the old barriers of exis-
tence, the striving and suffering of Promethean life instead of persist-
ing stasis, peaceful pleasure, and eternal immaturity in an aging
body."7 History, according to Bachofen, records the triumph of male
over female, rationality over irrationality, light over darkness, patri-
archy over matriarchy, and Europe over Asia.
Why, then, would Thomas Mann-the recent convert to Western
democracy-find anything offensive in Baeumler's introduction to
Bachofen's thought? The answer lies in two opposing tendencies in
Baeumler's work: the one inclines toward the irrational, the "femi-
nine," while the other reacts against the feminine with what could be
termed a hypermasculinity. Regarding the first: although the West-
ern forces of reason defeat Eastern irrationalism, Baeumler devotes
long stretches of his introduction in praise of those thinkers
Creuzer, Gorres, Bachofen, and others-who recognize the power
and, indeed, the seductive lure of the Orient. He praises Creuzer for
his "Orientalization and Romanticization of Antiquity" (cvii), and cred-
its Gorres for placing "life in connection . . . to the night and the past
. earth, body, Volk, and nature" (clxxvii). History, according to
Gorres, is not a sequence of ideas and deeds, "but, rather, a living
link, a sequence of generations bound by blood" (clxxx). In his work
we see what Baeumler describes as the beginning of the nineteenth
century, "the age of the earth and nationality" [das Zeitalter der Erde
und der Nationalitdt] (clxxx). In 1926, Baeumler's enthusiastic
description of the late Romantic understanding of the nation in terms
of blood and soil must have seemed more than a little suspicious to
Mann. To be sure, Baeumler goes on to describe the Apollonian vic-
tory over these "tellurian" forces, yet he lingers too long and too lov-
ingly with the enemy. From his position it would take only a short
step to abandon oneself completely to the irrational, "to plunge back
into the elemental" [ins Elementare zuriickzutauchen], as Wendell
Kretzschmar puts it in Doktor Faustus.8
Perhaps more important than the risk of regression to the ancient
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 137
realm of the mother is Western man's ongoing struggle against
renewed assaults of the feminine. Central to the work of both
Bachofen and Baeumler is the belief that the feminine, once defeated,
regroups and returns in new forms. Bachofen reads the victory of
Agamemnon and Apollo over the matriarchal world of Klytemnestra
and the Furies in Aeschylus's Orestia as only "the first act in the bat-
tle that Asia fights with Europe."9 History stages the same drama
again and again: "There is no final victory. To be sure, there are vic-
torious forces: again and again the mother gives birth to the son,
again and again the sun rises out of darkness, again and again the Ori-
ent is defeated by the Occident."'o Thus Baeumler begins his intro-
duction as an excavation of ancient history, but ends with an indict-
ment of modern times. Does patriarchy hold sway today? Not at all:
"It is an open secret that paternal authority, the rule of the man is
broken today" (ccxcii). A single glance at the streets of London, Paris,
or Berlin reveals that the "cult of Aphrodite" has displaced the
authority of Zeus and Apollo. In the decadent world of the modern
city, men and women have forgotten their natural roles. Hence
Baeumler cites Christoph Meiners with approval: "The more vicious
both sexes become, the weaker, or more weakened the men become,
while the women become bolder and more masculine" (ccxciii).
Equally symptomatic of the decline of Western civilization is the rise
of socialism and democracy, a trend that Bachofen resisted with all his
might: "He was an aristocrat in every sense. In his autobiography we
find sentences such as: complete democracy is the end of everything
good; because I love freedom, I hate democracy" (ccv).
In these passages Baeumler recites the entire litany of an antimod-
ern philosophy that protests against urbanization and the modern
masses, emancipated women and effeminate men, democracy, social-
ism, and anarchism-all features of modern Western society. The
ancient Orient has returned in the guise of the modern Occident. In
broad outline, Baeumler reduces history to two main phases: in the
first, Greece and Rome mark the first stage of the European triumph
over the East; in the second, Germany stands alone against the deca-
dence of western European civilization. In essence, Baeumler has
inverted the pattern noted in such Early Romantic thinkers as
Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Adam Miiller, who oppose
138 German Orientalisms
an expansive "effeminate" or hermaphroditic German cosmopoli-
tanism to the narrow nationalism and imperialism of their western
European neighbors. Now Germany braces itself in a manly way
against the incursion of effeminate Orientalized Occidentals. Hence
it is not surprising that another protofascist ideologue, Carl Schmitt,
reacted against the "feminine characteristics" [Weibermerkmale] in
Adam Miiller's thought, while strongly implying that the homosexu-
ally inclined Miiller was himself "not a real/proper man" [kein
richtiger Mann]." As Klaus Theweleit and Nicolaus Sombart have
argued, German men of the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods sought
to harden themselves against the threat of the feminine in all its mod-
ern guises by creating a kind of hypermasculinity based on intense
male bonding and the fear and loathing of the feminine,'2 while Ger-
ald Izenberg claims that a "social and psychological crisis of mas-
culinity helped shape both the thematic concerns and the formal
innovations of the early Modernist revolution in the arts" in which
Mann's work played a prominent role.13
In sum, Baeumler's introduction to Bachofen's work posed two
opposing threats to Mann's still-recent support of the Weimar
Republic: either the threat of an atavistic regression to a world of
anti-intellectual barbarism associated with the matriarchy of ancient
Asia, or an aggressive German reaction against the Orientalized world
of modern European democracies. To see how Mann arrived at this
position we need to look briefly at the development of his thought
from the beginnings of the First World War to Mann's speech in sup-
port of the German Republic in 1922, before turning to a more
detailed exploration of sexual politics and symbolic geographies in
Der Zauberberg.
TIPTOEING TOWARD DEMOCRACY: MANN'S
SEXUAL POLITICS
When the German army mobilized for war in August 1914, the
nation finally seemed poised to become a major world power. The
contrast with the German situation on the eve of the French Revo-
lution could hardly be greater. While at that time a few intellectuals
could envision a German nation comprised of a common culture and
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 139
language, most Germans lived as subsistence farmers under absolutist
rule in one of the many German provinces. By the first Griinderzeit of
the 185os, however, things began to change. The Zollverein (tariff
union) of 1834 had begun to ease trade within Germany, while
growing international commerce brought even the most provincial
of Germans into contact with a wider world: "The size of the harvest
in the American Midwest, the price of guano in Chile, the condition
of credit markets in distant cities all touched the lives of men and
women in the far corners of the countryside."14 With a stunning
rapidity that compensated for its belatedness, Germany transformed
itself within the course of little more than a single generation from a
provincial backwater into a major industrial and military power. A
series of three quick wars enabled Bismarck to unify Germany with
"blood and iron" in 1871; his government launched an official pro-
gram of overseas expansion in 1884, and by the turn of the century
Germany had embarked on an aggressive build-up of its navy to chal-
lenge its arch-rival England for control of the seas.'5 The First World
War was to have completed Germany's rise to power by securing its
dominance within Central Europe and establishing a correspondingly
broad base of colonies throughout the world.'6
As Germany's imperial ambitions grew, the direct "national inter-
est" in the East that Edward Said had missed in earlier German acad-
emic Orientalism arrived with a vengeance. One of Germany's
immediate aims in the First World War was to conquer and colonize
parts of Poland with ethnic Germans as part of a plan to set up "a
'protective wall' of Germans from the whole of east-central
Europe."'7 German hegemony in the east was to extend further to
the Ukraine, thus realizing the dream of finding German Lebensraum
in eastern Europe that had been championed by such conservative
thinkers as Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn.'s Further to the
south, Germany had ambitions in the Balkans, the Crimea, and Asia
Minor. The Ottoman Empire that for many centuries had been the
bane of Christian Europe was now Germany's ally.'9 Here the Ger-
mans sought not only oil and military protection against Russia, but
also cultural prestige. Hence beginning with the founding of the
Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft [German Orient society] in 1898, the
German government began to fund large-scale archaeological proj-
140 German Orientalisms
ects in Asia Minor.20 As part of an attempt to destabilize the Russian
and British Empires, Germans actively promoted revolution among
subjugated peoples from Ireland to India. Even as late as 1918, the
ultraconservative Fatherland Party dreamed of establishing a vast Ger-
man empire that would stretch "as far as the Pacific and the gates of
India."2 Wolfram von Eschenbach's old dream of extending the bor-
ders of Christian Europe into India through Feirefiz and Prester John
seemed on the verge of becoming a reality for the German Reich.
Like most German intellectuals, Thomas Mann was caught up in
the initial excitement at the outbreak of the First World War: "War!
It was purification, liberation that we sensed, and an immense hope"
wrote Mann in his "Gedanken im Krieg" [Thoughts in war]
(August/September 1914).22 Germany is the land of Kultur, genius,
and philosophical depth, he argues in this essay, and thus intrinsically
incompatible with and superior to the superficial world of rationality
and democracy at the heart of French civilization. Here Mann strikes
the first chords of a theme that he was to sound with obsessive regu-
larity over the next four years in his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
[Reflections of a nonpolitical man] (1919). He defends Germany as
the land of Romanticism, nationalism, and music, and as the home of
Nietzsche, Wagner, and Schopenhauer, while ridiculing the French
preference for the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as "feminine
and mendacious."23 "There is no doubt that this [French] nation
wants to be treated like a lady" [Diese Nation nimmt Damenrechte
in Anspruch] writes Mann in "Gedanken im Krieg," in full keeping
with the misogynist tradition of German conservative thought of the
Wilhelmine period.24 Misogyny slides into homophobia when Mann
mocks France for speaking in a hoarse "falsetto" [Fistelstimme].25 In
Izenburg's view, the outbreak of the First World War gave Mann a
convenient outlet for his struggle with his own homosexuality,
which he could now project against an effeminate France. Mann's
bellicose mood did not last long, however, and his strident tones of
August and September 1914 soon turned into an increasingly melan-
choly defense of a conservative tradition that he knew would not sur-
vive the war.
What distinguishes Mann most clearly from those who supported
Germany's bid to become a major world power was his at best luke-
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 141
warm support for Germany's imperial ambitions. Nearly two hun-
dred pages into his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Mann admitted
that the events of 1914 temporarily caused him to believe "that the
people to whom I have the honor to belong had great claims to
power, a legitimate right to their part in ruling the earth... Today I
have at least hours in which this belief wavers and nearly falls" (197).
Mann is more outspoken in the preface to this work, where he con-
fesses his "oppositional doubt about Germany's calling to 'Grand Pol-
itics' [zur Grof3en Politik] and imperial existence" (25). He speculates
that perhaps because he came from the provincial town of Liibeck he
somehow slept through the transformation of the nineteenth-century
German Biirger into "a capitalist-imperialist bourgeois" (129). Even
before the war, Mann's literary works and essays reveal little enthusi-
asm for Germany's desire to establish overseas colonies. One has the
sense that he agrees with the sentiments that he attributes to the old
Fontane: "The whole colonial policy is idiotic" [Die ganze Kolo-
nisierungspolitik ist ein Blodsinn].26
Mann couples his skepticism about German colonialism with a
sharp critique of the French "empire of civilization" [Imperium der
Zivilisation] (31). Like the Germans of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, Mann portrays Germany as the victim of a
French civilization that refuses to remain within its own borders and
thus disrupts German Bildung and Kultur. Not content with imposing
its values on the rest of Europe, France, together with Great Britain,
then set out to civilize the rest of the world. In some of the more
interesting passages of the Betrachtungen, Mann exposes what he
believes to be the inherent hypocrisy of British and French imperial-
ism. Where was the liberals' anti-imperialist moralizing when France
flouted international law and invaded Morocco? Nowhere to be
found: "he admired with wide eyes France's mighty colonial empire,
he admired the imperialist democracy" (347). The East India Com-
pany pretends that it is a humanitarian organization even though
hunger, pestilence, and premature death are rampant in India. In real-
ity, Mann contends, the British have no concern for the plight of
their "natives": "After all, they're dealing with Asia, with 'dark
masses,' with niggers. They are 'Europeans' and aristocrats toward
the outside world, if democrats at home" (349). Mann shares the fears
142 German Orientalisms
of the early Nietzsche that the democratization of education will
result in "a complete leveling, journalistic-rhetorical dumbing-down
and vulgarization [Verdummung und Verpobelung]" (25 1), and he fore-
sees a nightmarish world in which individual national cultures will
have been flattened into "a single homogenous civilization" (234).27
In such passages Mann
not only anticipates Adorno and
Horkheimer's indictment of the "culture industry," but also today's
critics of an American-led process of globalization. Incidentally, even
Mann was not entirely immune to the lure of American "culture":
years later he reported with bemused irony that while recovering
from surgery in the United States he had briefly developed a taste for
Coca-Cola.28
In retrospect, Mann's Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen remains a
confused and often troubling work. Although he is quick to point
out elements of racism and hypocrisy among British and French colo-
nialists, Mann frequently employed racist stereotypes of his own, as
when he expressed outrage at the fact that the Belgians were guard-
ing German prisoners with "Senegal Negroes . . . an animal with lips
as thick as pillows."29 Even in the "Pariser Rechenschaft," Mann
makes a self-deprecating reference to his own crude Nege franzo-
sisch.30 His denunciation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolu-
tion, and European democracy serves at best as a benchmark against
which we can measure his eventual progress toward support of the
Weimar Republic, a public campaign against Hitler, and the socialist
leanings that eventually made him suspect in the Red-baiting climate
of American McCarthyism.3' Already in the Betrachtungen, however,
Mann formulates his conservative manifesto in an elegiac mode and
voices increasing skepticism about Germany's imperial ambitions. As
the political climate grew increasingly unsettled and disturbing dur-
ing the postwar years, Mann sought to adapt to the new situation,
while retaining his respect for the German cultural tradition he had
defended so vehemently in the Betrachtungen. The most important
milestone in this development was Mann's essay "Von deutscher
Republik."
Mann delivered "Von deutscher Republik" as a lecture in Berlin
in the fall of 1922 and retained asides to his uncertain audience of
conservative students in the printed version. The talk caused some-
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 143
thing of a sensation, for the antidemocratic author of the Betrachtun-
£en had seemingly reversed course and was now declaring allegiance
to the Weimar Republic. Mann insisted somewhat disingenuously in
his preface to the essay that his opinions had undergone no funda-
mental change: "I have perhaps changed my thoughts,-not my
meaning" [Ich habe vielleicht meine Gedanken geindert,-nicht
meinen Sinn].32 Mann nevertheless knew that his comments would
prove controversial, and, indeed, the essay alienated some of Mann's
former conservative allies, while paving the way for his reconciliation
with his brother Heinrich and other liberals.33
Mann enlists two unlikely allies in his defense of democracy:
Novalis and Walt Whitman. Even Novalis's friends had found it
difficult to reconcile his radical thought with the seemingly reac-
tionary stance of "Die Christenheit oder Europa" and "Glauben und
Liebe," but by the 192os almost everyone had stopped trying. Begin-
ning during the Restoration and now again during the "Conservative
Revolution" of the early twentieth century, Novalis seemed per-
fectly suited to his role as a politically reactionary Christian vision-
ary.34 In a deliberately provocative strategy, Mann appropriates an
icon of the German right in support of his own nascent liberalism.35
Hence he speaks paradoxically of Novalis's political thought "as a
kind of Romantic Jacobinism," and insists that despite his praise of
the Prussian king and queen, Novalis was "most strongly influenced
by the French Revolution."36 Mann goes on to note Novalis's pro-
gressive attitude to world commerce, to praise the democratic
impulse of his Symphilosophie, and to cite his paradoxical notion of a
"democracy of kings" (148).
One might argue that if Mann were really serious about his com-
mitment to democracy, he could have chosen a less ambiguous part-
ner in support of his cause, to which one could respond that Mann's
commitment to the Republic was itself not unambiguous. To be
sure, Mann had no sympathy for the rising tide of German fascism;
already in the fall of 1921 he had made a disparaging reference to "the
Swastika nonsense" [der Hakenkreuz-Unfug] in a short article about
the "Jewish question."37 Yet Mann was not quite ready to throw
himself without reservation into the Western camp that he had
opposed so vociferously during the war years. During the early 1920S
144 German Orientalisms
he sought rather a specifically German alternative to both Western
liberalism and Russian "wildness": "As far as Germany is concerned,
it stands indecisively here as well, rich in spiritual mixtures, between
East and West," wrote Mann at the conclusion of his essay on Goethe
and Tolstoy in the summer of 1921; "Germany will not become Asi-
atic and wild, but, rather, European."3s As Germany strode rapidly to
the right and Mann stepped cautiously toward the center, Novalis
offered him a suitably ambiguous figure with which he could signal
his increased sympathy for Western democracy while remaining
squarely within a German intellectual tradition, a tradition, more-
over, that he sought to reclaim from its appropriation by the German
right. Hence Mann repeatedly reassures his hostile audience that they
should not think of the Republic "as an affair for smart Jew-boys
[schafer Judenjungen] , "39 despite his protestations elsewhere that he
was always a philo-Semite.4°
If Mann was indeed anxious to preserve his ties to German culture
even as he gradually shifted his political allegiances, why would he
also turn to Walt Whitman, the ecstatic celebrant of American
democracy? The simple and partially correct answer would be that
Mann really had undergone a change of heart by the summer of 1922,
and that his pairing of Whitman with Novalis was intended as a fur-
ther provocation to the German right. At the same time, however,
Mann's defense of Whitman allowed him an indirect way to counter
the conservatism of another German thinker: Hans Bliiher. Bliiher
had gained considerable notoriety in German circles through his early
work on male bonding in the German youth movement and had
captured Mann's attention with his two-volume work entitled Die
Rolle der Erotik in der Mdnnlichen Gesellschaft [The role of eroticism in
male society] (1917-19).41 Here Bliiher couples his argument that the
strength of the state depends on erotic bonds between men with dis-
paraging comments about liberalism, women, and Jews. Viewed in
historical context, Bliiher's work marks an extreme version of the
sexual politics of the European bourgeoisie on the eve of the French
Revolution. As we recall, members of the revolutionary middle class
identified themselves in part through their attitude toward gender
roles and the family. They rejected what they perceived as aristocratic
libertinage in favor of a "natural" division of labor along gender lines
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 145
in the nuclear family. The new nationalism combined homosocial
bonding between men in the public sphere with a corresponding
glorification of heterosexual domesticity.
Bliiher, in contrast, celebrates homosexual bonding between cer-
tain heroic men in the public sphere, while denigrating heterosexual
domesticity as an unpleasant necessity for the propagation of the
species: "Where families predominate in the life of the people, the
spirit stagnates; tradition rules under their regime, whereas revolution
rules in alliances of men [Mannerbhude]."42 Because Jews suffer from a
lack of masculinity, they will never be able to form the strong male-
male bonds necessary to form a state, "and so they pass through world
history with the curse of being always only a race and never a Volk.
They have lost their state" (170). A society that permits women to
penetrate the ranks of its Mannerbhnde is doomed to succumb to "lib-
eralism in all its unbearableness."43 Thomas Mann, in contrast, cele-
brates erotic passion in general, and Whitman's homoerotic passion
in particular, as symptomatic of an all-embracing democratism. Given
Mann's understandable reticence to reveal his own homosexual incli-
nations, his outspoken defense of homosexuality in "Von deutscher
Republik"-so outspoken, in fact, that his English translator felt the
need to expurgate the most explicit passages-is indeed remarkable.
Perhaps more important, however, is Mann's attempt to wrest the
political discourse about homosexuality from the hands of such right-
wing ideologues as Hans Bliiher. Male bonding need not be proto-
fascist, according to Mann; it can also be a sign of sexual and political
liberation.44
Mann pursues a straightforward goal in "Von deutscher Repub-
lik": he seeks support for the Weimar Republic in an unstable soci-
ety already showing an alarming susceptibility to fascist ideology. His
argumentative strategy, however, is far more complex. Like Novalis,
Mann prefers to infiltrate the enemy position and undermine it from
within, rather than toppling it through direct frontal assault. Thus
Novalis will praise the Prussian monarchy even as he surreptitiously
defends democracy, cloaking his vision of a postrevolutionary Ger-
man cosmopolitanism under a cloud of nostalgia for the Christian
Middle Ages. Mann, for his part, reads Novalis as a revolutionary
republican at a time when many hailed him as a prophet of the Ger-
146 German Orientalisms
man Reich and enlists Whitman's democratic eroticism in the strug-
gle against Bliiher's authoritarian homosexuality. As a political writer,
Mann's dialectical method of argumentation often confuses his
polemical intent.45 The polemicist, that is, wants to make things sim-
ple, to tell people what to do, as Mann proclaims at the end of his
talk: "Long live the Republic!"46 The dialectician, on the other hand,
makes things more complicated by reminding his readers that each
coin has two sides, that every argument in support of one position
can be inverted into support of another. The same combination of a
seemingly clear "message" within an infinitely replicating series of
dialectical inversions characterizes the wonderfully rich, if madden-
ingly contradictory, world of Der Zauberberg.
SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHIES ON THE
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
In a lecture delivered to students at Princeton University in 1939,
Thomas Mann spoke of Der Zauberberg as a German Bildungsroman in
the tradition of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, whose hero, Hans Castorp,
takes his place among such other "questers" as Wilhelm Meister,
Goethe's Faust, and even Parzival.47 Castorp goes through a process
of initiation on the mountain until he finds his own version of the
Holy Grail in his vision in the snow: "that is the idea of man, the
conception of a future humanity that has passed through deepest
knowledge of sickness and death." As Mann points out, however,
Castorp receives his vision "before he is torn from his heights down
into the European catastrophe of the First World War" (617). It is
this moment of rupture, this sudden tear in the fabric of history, that
distinguishes Der Zauberberg from the earlier works associated with
the Bildungsroman tradition. Wolfram von Eschenbach works within
a typological understanding of history in which human temporality
unfolds within the simultaneity of divine knowledge; Parzival culmi-
nates with an only slightly ironic vision of fulfilled time on earth in
which Christianity will extend from Europe to include the entire
world. By the late eighteenth century Herder and others reconceived
history as an open-ended progression toward an uncertain future.
Now that development has been interrupted; Mann looks back across
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 147
a chasm that divides the present uncertainty from an abruptly termi-
nated period of historical continuity. As Mann writes in his preface,
the story takes place, or, rather, "it took place back then, long ago, in
the old days of the world before the Great War, with whose begin-
ning so many things began whose beginnings, it seems, have not yet
ceased."48 The past has stopped making sense; history appears as a
fractured tradition, as discontinuity-but the present moment is not
"shot through with chips of Messianic time," to use Walter Ben-
jamin's phrase,49 but, rather, shot through with the bullets of the First
World War. Mann and his fellow Germans of the fledgling Weimar
Republic were left a legacy of a shattered generation of men who had
fought in the war and a seemingly endless series of crises including
widespread hunger, an influenza epidemic, inflation, the Munich
Revolution, and the beginnings of fascism.
Der Zauberberg is a book about symbolic geography, an essayistic
novel on the theme of Germany's position as "the land of the center"
[das Land der Mitte].S° "Positioned between East and West, it will
have to choose, will have consciously to decide, once and for all,
between the two spheres vying for its heart" (5o8 [708]). Settembrini
presents Germany's impending decision as a clear-cut choice
between diametrically opposed alternatives: "might and right,
tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge, the law of obdu-
racy and the law of ferment, change and progress. One could call the
first the Asiatic principle, the other the European, for Europe was the
continent of rebellion, critique, and transforming actions, whereas
the continent to the east embodied inertia and inactivity" (154
[218-I9]). Settembrini fears that in the hermetic world of the magic
mountain, at least, the West is fighting a losing battle: "'Asia is
devouring us. Tartar faces in every direction you look.' And Herr
Settembrini discreetly turned his head to glance over his shoulder.
'Genghis Khan,' he said, 'lone wolves on dusky steppes'" (238 [334]).
As a representative of Italian humanism and a champion of the
Enlightenment, Settembrini is hardly an impartial observer of the
hordes of "Mongolian Muscovites" (239 [336]) at the sanatorium,
and his blanket condemnation of Asiatic Russians does not do justice
to the complexity of the novel's symbolic geography. As we have
seen, the "Orient" was not a stable category, either in terms of its
148 German Orientalisms
geographical location or in terms of its symbolic significance in early
twentieth-century German thought, and the East plays an equally
complex and contradictory role in the world of Der Zauberberg. We
can begin by noting that the Orient appears in a least four different
locations in the novel, including eastern Europe, the Ottoman
Empire, and the Far East, as well as in the ancient myths of the
Mediterranean world.
Mann never tired of attributing the tension in his own character
between the respectable bourgeois and the morally suspect artist to
the conflicting influences of his north German father and his mother
from Brazil,5' and in keeping with this background, his early fiction
tends to move along a north-south axis. To mention only two of the
most famous examples, Tonio Kroger's "dark and fiery mother"
Consuelo comes "from far south on the map,"S 2 while the dissolute
Christian Buddenbrooks spends most of his adult life reminiscing
about his youthful adventures in Valparaiso, Chile. One of Mann's
earliest stories, "Der Wille zum Gliick" [The will to happiness]
(1896]), tells of the sickly and effeminate Paolo, who was born in a
northern German city after his father had married a woman from a
good family in South America. Unable to find happiness in the north,
Paolo travels extensively in southern Europe and northern Africa
before settling in Rome, "this modern metropolis in the South into
which the warm wind nevertheless blows the sultry sluggishness of
the Orient."53 As this early work already indicates, Mann's "Orien-
talized" south-whether conceived as southern Europe, northern
Africa, or South America-could easily expand to include regions
more traditionally associated with the Orient. Here Rome stands at
the border between East and West; in a more famous work, it will be
Venice. Gustav von Aschenbach finds himself wandering around
Munich disturbed and oddly excited by daydreams of tigers prowling
through tropical bamboo forests and decides to head south, "not
quite to the tigers,"54 but at least as far as Venice. Here beneath "the
sturdy splendor of the Oriental temple" of St. Mark's Cathedral, the
East comes to him in the form of a beautiful Polish boy and a disease
spawned in "the warm morasses of the Ganges delta."55 Der Tod in
Venedig links homosexual passion, illness, and genius to an Orient
that includes both southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia.56
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 149
Given that Mann originally conceived Der Zauberberg as a comic
pendant to Der Tod in Venedig, it is not surprising that we should find
certain thematic parallels between the two works.57 Eastern Europe
also features as a site of sexual desire and illness that inspires intellec-
tual activity in Der Zauberberg, although whether Castorp's somewhat
delirious "research" should be taken as a sign of genius remains an
open question; it certainly contrasts with the stern precision of
Aschenbach's prose.58 Castorp's feverish mental activity is sparked in
the first instance by his infatuation with the Russian Clavdia
Chauchat's gray-green eyes, "whose slightly Asiatic shape and place-
ment enchant his very core" (227 [319]). Chauchat's "'Tartar phys-
iognomy,' in particular her 'lone-wolf eyes'" (284 [399]), in turn,
reawaken in Castorp the repressed memory of his adolescent homo-
sexual passion for Pfibislav Hippe, a boy whose Slavic-Wendish-
German "racial mixture" [Rassenmischung] (I 8 [1 68]), high cheek-
bones, and bluish-gray eyes seem identical to those of Chauchat.
Inspired by his combined passion for Chauchat and Hippe, Castorp
begins attending the lectures of the Polish psychologist Dr.
Krokowski, who lectures on the link between love and illness, speaks
Russian, and who, according to the prudish Settembrini, "has but
one thought in his head, and it is a filthy one" (61 [92]). A number of
minor characters round out the image of an Orientalized eastern
Europe in Der Zauberberg: the salesman Anton Karlowitsch Ferge has
traveled widely in the most distant reaches of the Russian Empire,
and Castorp thrills to tales of the adventurously exotic Russian peo-
ples, "with Asia in their blood, prominent cheekbones, and a Finno-
Mongolian set to their eyes" (306 [430]). Russia is also home to the
pretty Marusja, the unobtainable or unapproachable object of
Joachim Ziemssen's heterosexual desires. Finally, we have the Rus-
sian "barbarians"-whom Settembrini ironically calls the "Parthians
and Scythians" of the ancient Orient (220 [3 Io])-whose diurnal sex-
ual athleticism disturbs Castorp through the thin walls of his room at
the sanatorium.
Castorp comes into indirect contact with the Ottoman Empire and
the Near East primarily through his contact with Director Behrens.
Pouting because Joachim refuses to join the after-lunch gathering on
the veranda-thus denying him a chance to flirt with Chauchat
150 German Orientalisms
Castorp takes his revenge by finagling an invitation to view Behrens's
amateur paintings. A puzzled and embarrassed Ziemssen realizes why
his cousin has developed a sudden interest in the fine arts when Cas-
torp pauses in front of Behren's crude portrait of Madame Chauchat.
A hilarious scene ensues, as Castorp rattles on rapturously about the
marvels of the human body while ogling Chauchat's decolletage in
the painting that he half-consciously carries with him around the
room. The entire scene of doubly displaced passion-medical and
philosophical discussions about a painting rather than direct contact
with Chauchat-takes place in Behrens's smoking alcove that has
been decorated in what he imagines is a "Turkish" style with objects
whose origins are "probably more Indian or Persian than Turkish"
(258 [362]). Behrens grinds coffee for the cousins in a Turkish mill
while sitting with Joachim on an ottoman covered with silk pillows.
While he chats lecherously about subcutaneous fat deposits on the
female breast and thigh, Castorp absentmindedly picks up the coffee
mill, only to blush involuntarily when he realizes that it is covered
with obscene engravings. As Castorp helps himself to a cigarette
imprinted with a golden sphinx, Behrens remarks matter-of-factly
that the mill and the cigarettes were given to him as a present by an
Egyptian princess, who we later learn had arrived at the sanatorium
together with her Jewish lesbian lover and a castrated Moorish ser-
vant. Taken together, the various decorations in Behrens's smoking
alcove evoke an "Orient" of the sort that might titillate the imagina-
tion of the fraternity member that Behrens once was and in some
ways continues to be: a fraternity cap hangs with crossed dueling
swords above a desk in the adjoining room, and Behrens still affects
the jargon of his college days. In keeping with the masquerade,
Behrens attends the Mardi Gras costume ball wearing a fez.
Still more exotic are the images of the Far East that make their way
to the magic mountain. During his early days at the sanatorium Cas-
torp overhears Herr Albin frightening female patients by playing with
a razor-sharp knife that he bought from a blind magician in Calcutta.
Albin then half-seriously threatens to commit suicide with a pistol as
part of what Castorp regards as a disgraceful but weirdly exciting
form of flirtation. Much later, as it turns out, Albin will supply the
pistols for the duel between Settembrini and Naphta, thereby
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 151
becoming the unwitting accomplice to Naphta's suicide. By this time
Castorp has had his adventures with the majestically incoherent
Mynheer Peeperkorn, "a colonial Dutchman, a man from Java, a cof-
fee-planter" (538 [751]). Peeperkorn, who at times resembles a hea-
then priest and at others a delirious alcoholic, regales Castorp with
tales of Indonesian love potions and exotic poisons. His Malayan
valet arrives at the sanatorium wearing a bowler and a coat with a fur
collar, but he appears in his native garb after Peeperkorn has com-
mitted suicide by injecting himself with cobra venom from artificial
fangs. In a scene that anticipates the racial stereotyping in the movie
Gone with the Wind (1939), Castorp gives Chauchat a final kiss while
the Malayan watches, "rolling his brown animal eyes to one side until
the whites showed" (616 [859]).
Film actually contributes to the atmosphere of theatrical exoticism
that invades the sanatorium. In a short article written in May 1923, on
the occasion of the filming of Buddenbrooks, Mann had praised film as
"an immense democratic power." While admitting that he often
passes the time waiting for trains in foreign cities by watching feature
films, Mann claims that he is particularly fond of newsreels and doc-
umentaries that bring him pictures of exotic locales.59 He goes on to
list several such images in a passage that he worked directly into Der
Zauberberg. During Castorp's brief phase as a Good Samaritan he and
Joachim take the terminally ill Karen Karstedt to the movies: "a rous-
ing tale of love and murder in the court of an Oriental potentate
unrolled silently before them; scene after opulent scene sped past, full
of naked bodies, despotic lust, and abject servility blind in its zeal, full
of cruelty, prurience, and fatal desire . . . In short, it had been pro-
duced with a sympathetic understanding of its international audience
and catered to that civilization's secret wishes" (3 , [436-37]). Once
the Oriental despot has been dispatched the film takes its audience on
a whirlwind tour that offers glimpses of "a cockfight on Borneo,
naked savages blowing on nose flutes, the capture of wild elephants,
a ceremony at the Siamese royal court, a street of brothels in Japan
with geishas sitting caged behind wooden lattices" (311-12 [438]).
Although the medium has become technologically more sophisti-
cated, these images of an Orient produced for Western consumption
are essentially no different than the toy that Castorp had once found
152 German Orientalisms
in his grandfather's china cabinet when he was a boy: "a little Turk in
a bright silk costume, whose body was rigid to the touch but con-
tained a mechanism that, though it had long since fallen into disre-
pair, had once enabled him to run across the table" (20 [35S]).
Beneath the various contemporary sites of an exotic and erotic
Orient in Der Zauberberg lies a mythic subtext, much as Leopold
Bloom retraces the voyages of Odysseus as he wanders through
Joyce's Dublin. Settembrini only half-jokingly refers to Behrens and
Krokowski as Rhadamanth and Minos, two judges of the Greek
underworld who sentence their wards to additional time in the
"Hades" of the tuberculosis ward, although in the inverted world of
Mann's novel one travels up to the mountains rather than down into
hell. In a sense, however, the direction that one travels matters less
than the fact that one leaves the flatlands behind. Hans Castorp's jour-
ney to the magic mountain resembles Faust's visit to the mysterious
"Mothers" in part two of Goethe's drama. "Descend, then!"
Mephistopheles commands his timorous partner; "I could also say:
ascend! It makes no difference" [Versinke denn! Ich konnt auch
sagen: steige! 'ist einerlei].6o In keeping with the topsy-turvy atmos-
phere, the magic mountain is also a realm of sexual inversion, cap-
tured most memorably in the slightly surreal Walpurgisnacht episode
in which Castorp finally consummates his affair with Chauchat/
Hippe after an evening of dreamlike conversation in French while
surrounded by cross-dressing party-goers. After having tasted of the
pomegranate of the underworld, to use Settembrini's phrase, Castorp
continues his forays into ancient Chaldean magic, listens to Naphta
discuss the role of the "lapis philosophorum, which is the male-female
product of sulfur and mercury-the res bina, the bisexual prima mate-
ria" (soi [699]) in medieval mysticism, and undergoes something of
his own purification, transubstantiation, and elevation (Steigerung) as
the concerns of the flatlands recede into oblivion.
Taken together, the various images of the Orient in Der Zauberbeng
present a dangerously alluring world of undifferentiated sexual desire
associated with both feverish intellectual activity and the threat of
violence or even death. Castorp's increasing absorption into the her-
metically sealed realm of the magic mountain, coupled with his cor-
responding alienation from the world of the newspapers that he no
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 153
longer reads, would seem to be symptomatic of an irresponsible flight
from reality. In this vein Settembrini accuses Castorp of wallowing in
an Asiatic realm of squandered time and purposeless passion. Cas-
torp's protracted stay at the sanatorium becomes what Frederick
Lubich has described as a "uterine flight," a reactionary regression to
the mother.6' The ascent into the crystalline air of the Swiss moun-
tains becomes a symbolic descent into the morass of an atavistic Asian
matriarchy.
Yet this is only part of the story. As Lubich himself argues, the
matriarchal world on the mountain can also be viewed as a utopian
alternative to patriarchal society, although we need not follow him
into the realm of postmodern French feminism to support this claim.
Instead, we can look back beyond Bachofen and Gorres to the Early
Romantic tradition that envisioned an Indo-Germanic cosmopoli-
tanism as an alternative to the aggressively imperialist nationalism of
postrevolutionary Western states. There are many moments in the
novel when the enclosed world on the mountain seems to present a
miniature version of just such a cosmopolitan community. The
streets in Davos are full of patients and tourists from around the
world, as Castorp and Ziemssen repeatedly note: "They were now
walking on a city sidewalk-it was immediately apparent that this
was the main street of an international resort" (71 [10o4]). Americans,
Russians, and Dutch with a slightly Malayan appearance mix with
Germans and Swiss, "all intermixed with a sprinkling of indetermi-
nate sorts who spoke French and came from the Balkans or the Lev-
ant, a motley set of adventurers" (310 [435S]). Even the cemeteries are
full of "unsettled folk who had found their way here from all over the
world and had returned now for good and all to the horizontal form
of existence" (31 6 [443]). Of course, the permanent residents of this
international community are dead, and they died young, while the
motley crew of shoppers in Davos-many of whom are also mortally
ill- enjoy the artificial paradise of a tourist trap. Yet the alternative
image of the sanatorium as a high-altitude underworld is no less
qualified. We can neither take the multilingual Behrens completely
seriously as the judge of Hades, nor can we view him without irony
as an ambassador to an unofficial League of Nations, and yet Mann
hints at both interpretations. The magic mountain offers Mann a
154 German Orientalisms
chance to play through possibilities, to consider intellectual debates
from multiple angles. Like the film clips shown in the sanatorium
from around the world, the diverse individuals assembled on the
mountain function as a simulacrum of an international community,
an experimental form of virtual cosmopolitanism.
The hermetically sealed world of the magic mountain represents
still more than the matriarchy in both its utopian and reactionary
guises. The modern patriarchal world of empire building and world
conflict also finds its way onto the mountain, if in similarly displaced
form. To approach this aspect of the novel by means of indirection,
let us return to the figure of Clavdia Chauchat. As noted, her Asiatic
features lure Castorp into a world of sexuality associated with
Bachofen's ancient matriarchy. Yet Chauchat also exhibits character-
istics of the modern, feminized, and Orientalized Occident so feared
by conservative ideologues such as Alfred Baeumler. Chauchat
neglects her physical appearance, ignores schedules, slams doors, lives
apart from her husband, and entertains other men behind closed
doors- all symptomatic of Western decadence, modern feminism,
and revolutionary anarchy.62 Chauchat's absent husband is not Rus-
sian, but a Frenchman living in Daghestan, a part of the Russian
Empire between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian Sea. Why
Daghestan, of all places? As Kenneth Weisinger has suggested,
Chauchat's husband is almost certainly involved in the oil industry
centered in the region.63 His presence there and his marriage to
Chauchat suggest both the European competition for natural
resources in the Caucasus and the Franco-Russian alliance, that,
together with Great Britain, was to form the Triple Entente against
Germany and Austria in the First World War. Thus Chauchat not
only represents the threat of an effeminate or feminist West but also
has ties to the masculine reaction against this threat that takes the
form of colonialism, imperialism, and militarism.
Castorp, for his part, comes not from the provincial city of Liibeck
that Mann later described as having preserved something of a
medieval ambiance,64 but from the modern metropolis and bustling
international harbor of Hamburg. Castorp grows up in this atmos-
phere of "global shopkeeping and prosperity," breathing in "the pun-
gent odors of the world's produce [Kolonialwaren] piled high" and
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 155
watching massive "ships that had sailed to Asia and Africa" undergo-
ing repairs in the dry docks (29 [47]). Perhaps, suggests the narrator,
these influences determined Castorp's decision to become a ship's
engineer, and we recall that he initially sets off with a copy of Ocean
Steamships to read in the train as he travels for a brief visit with his
cousin in Davos before he was to begin work at the firm of Tunder
and Wilms in Hamburg. As Weisinger points out, Castorp's place of
birth, his choice of career, and his interest in the English language all
point toward the intense rivalry between Germany and Great Britain
for control of the seas during the prewar period.65 Castorp, of course,
plays no direct role in such international rivalries. A lethargic youth
whose inheritance does not quite make him independently wealthy,
Castorp pursues his career as a ship's engineer with something less
than passionate zeal: "For he had the greatest respect for work,
although, for his part, he found that he did tire easily" (33 [52]). He
has already stopped reading Ocean Steamships before the train arrives
in Davos, and after a few abortive attempts to take it up again at the
sanatorium, he soon turns to more stimulating fare.
The international conflicts between world powers on the flatlands
and the high seas take place in the displaced form of male-male rival-
ries on the magic mountain. Following Eve Sedgwick and Christo-
pher Lane, Weisinger views the mountain as a site of heterosexual
conflict and homosocial bonding that enacts the dynamics of West-
ern imperial nations in the struggle to conquer and colonize the rest
of the world. The Oriental trappings of Behrens's smoking alcove not
only point to the "Asiatic" appeal of Chauchat's sexuality, but also to
the competition between Germany and Great Britain to control this
realm. Behrens offers Castorp indirect access to Chauchat, but also
stands in his way as a potential rival, as Castorp suspects that he has
done more than just paint her portrait. The scene begins with an
exchange that reads almost as a parody of Freudian symbolism, as
each man fondles his cigar and speaks lovingly of "her" temperament.
Mann ironically but effectively stages a double double entendre: the
men caress and trade phallic objects that they treat as female lovers.
The exchange thus simultaneously portrays a moment of homosocial
bonding between heterosexual men over Chauchat, while hinting at
a homosexual pederastic relationship between the young man and his
156 German Orientalisms
doctor.66 Mann further links this moment of homosocial bonding to
the dynamics of imperialism by pausing to detail the cigar cases that
Castorp has received in the mail from Bremen: "They came in beau-
tiful enameled boxes with gilt depictions of a globe, lots of medal-
lions, and an exposition hall with banners flying" (248 [349]). The
cigar cases present the sort of triumphalist advertising that Anne
McClintock has discussed in the context of Victorian England:
"advertising took scenes of empire into every corner of the home,
stamping images of colonial conquest on soap boxes, matchboxes,
biscuit tins, whiskey bottles, tea tins, and chocolate bars."67 The Ori-
ental decorations of the smoking alcove in which Castorp practically
drools over Chauchat's crudely painted flesh continue the double ref-
erence, pointing simultaneously to a realm of unbridled sensuality in
the East and to the Western imperialist efforts to tame and exploit
that realm. In a comic follow-up to this scene, Castorp later all but
admits with a wink and a nudge to Behrens that he has spent the
night with Chauchat. He chooses a poor moment to do so, however,
for Behrens is giving Castorp one of his periodic injections and-
accidentally?-hits a nerve just as Castorp makes his confession.
"'That's a critical nerve you happened to hit there, Director
Behrens,'" exclaims Castorp; "'Oh, yes, yes, hurts like hell.'" If
Behrens did in fact jab Castorp in anger, he quickly recovers his
composure and is cavalier enough to enter into Castorp's game by
offering his own lewd comment about Chauchat: "Rather nice, eh?"
[Niedlich, was?] (347 [485]).
Later in the novel, however, Mann portrays a kinder, gentler form
of male friendship that stands as an alternative to the sort of towel-
snapping jocularity that typifies Castorp's exchanges with Behrens. In
the most moving scene in Der Zauberberg Castorp watches his beloved
cousin die, and his violent reaction to the reappearance ofJoachim's
ghost during the seance suggests that this is one relationship that must
be left in peace. Castorp also develops a genuine fondness for Set-
tembrini, and at the very end of the novel they share a bittersweet
embrace in which Settembrini not only addresses Hans by his first
name- -"Giovanni"-but even embraces him and kisses him on both
cheeks: "a Mediterranean-or perhaps a Russian-kiss" (702 [979]).
Somewhat earlier Chauchat returns to the sanatorium with another
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 157
potential rival for Castorp, Mynheer Peeperkorn, and for time they
do eye each other suspiciously. When confronted by Settembrini and
accused of succumbing to Asiatic softness, however, Castorp declares
that he is not about to respond to the challenge with poison and dag-
gers like a passionate southern European: "in short, have me play
cock of the walk. That would be very manly of me, to be sure,
socially masculine and gallant. But I see it differently. I am not at all
manly in the sense that I regard other men as my rivals in courting
perhaps I am not masculine at all" (576 [804]). When later challenged
directly by Peeperkorn to confess that he has indeed been Chauchat's
lover, Castorp at first refuses to answer as he stares at the "bloodstains,
red wine stains here on the sheet" (596 [833]). Parzival had defeated
a series of adversaries when drops of blood on the snow had sent him
into a trance in memory of his absent wife, but this modern hero dis-
creetly admits to his affair and ends up drinking Bruderschaft with his
rival. A less macho encounter would be difficult to imagine, for
Peeperkorn has already confessed his impotence, and Castorp is quick
to comment "that I find it rather boastful and tasteless of me to call
myself 'the man,' although Clavdia to be sure is a woman" (599
[837]). At the moment Castorp is indeed no macho man, but
whether she is entirely a woman is another matter; at least on the
night in which he returned "son crayon" Chauchat/Hippe exuded a
distinctly hermaphroditic appeal.
Thus the Occidental patriarchy takes on its own ambivalence in
Der Zauberberg that complements the conflicting images of the Ori-
ental matriarchy. Just as the undifferentiated world of sexual desire
linked to the East is alternately associated with regression to reac-
tionary politics and progression toward utopian cosmopolitanism, the
world of decadent women and male rivalries in the West can result
either in hypermasculine militancy and imperial aggression or a
softer, more "effeminate" form of male friendship. To translate this
double dialectic within the novel back into an intellectual-historical
shorthand that Mann would have understood, the Oriental matri-
archy features both as the threateningly irrational realm conjured by
Gorres, Bachofen, and Baeumler and as the androgynous utopia of
Novalis and Adam Miiller. Occidental patriarchy, in turn, oscillates
between the protofascist male bonding of a Hans Bliiher and the
158 German Orientalisms
democratic ecstasies of a Walt Whitman. Perhaps as an indication of
his turn toward a less confrontational form of masculinity, Castorp
will eventually give up his beloved Maria Mancini for a local Swiss
cigar named "Oath of Riitli" [Riitlischwur] (698 [974]), a clear refer-
ence to the primal scene of Swiss democracy that features promi-
nently in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell-although, with characteristic irony,
Hans's rejection of Maria also marks his final divorce from any direct
engagement in the concerns of the flatlands.
With this set of oppositions in mind, let us turn to the most com-
plexly contradictory figure in the novel: Leo Naphta. As an eastern
European Jew, Naphta evokes an Oriental world of reactionary
Romanticism in its most threatening guise: he admires the work of
Gorres and Arndt, prefers medieval mysticism to enlightened ratio-
nality, and likes Gothic art over Renaissance Humanism. We learn
that his father was a kosher butcher, and that he therefore associated
religion with ritual slaughter from an early age. It will also be Naphta
who introduces Castorp to the world of ancient Mediterranean mys-
ticism, including the "bacchanalian excess" of the Eleusian Mysteries
(503 [701]). As Settembrini warns Hans and Joachim, Naphta is a
voluptuary in his personal life, given to fine silks and rich chocolate
cakes, as well as an intellectual who dares to tell the impressionable
young lads about a medieval hierarchy of knowledge that leads
upward from peasants toiling in the fields to the bed where lovers can
retreat from the world to commune with God. Settembrini responds
to Naphta's philosophy with a burst of righteous indignation: "Ah,
no, I am a European, an Occidental. Your ladder is pure Orient. The
East despises action" (370 [517]). From Settembrini's perspective,
Naphta is a particularly threatening emissary from the Eastern realm
of sexual excess and political regression, for Naphta can articulate the
seductive lure of Eastern mysticism to Castorp in a way that
Chauchat/Hippe cannot.
As always, however, Settembrini's perspective offers only a partial
truth. As Naphta is quick to observe, the West has its own tradition
of mystical thought. Moreover, he points out that there is more than
a little hypocrisy in Settembrini's self-righteous stance. Settembrini
speaks with pride of the cultural advances made possible by the Cru-
sades, of the liberal democracy of the nation-state and the hope to
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 159
establish a bourgeois world republic. At the same time, however, Set-
tembrini is such a fervent Italian nationalist he is ready to fight "a civ-
ilizing war" (38o [530]) against the encroaching Austrian Empire at a
moment's notice. What Settembrini presents as a desire for interna-
tional democracy and world peace becomes in Naphta's eyes merely
an excuse for international capitalism and world conquest. In con-
trast, Naphta's advocacy of a postnational revival of a Catholic-Com-
munist cosmopolitanism carries with it at least traces of the Early
Romantic alternative to the "masculine" aggression of the modern
nation-state. Symptomatic of this aspect of Naphta's character is the
"effeminate" luxury of his apartment: "the decor was first-rate, and
so ornate that despite the desk and bookcases the room did not have
much of a masculine look" (385 [538]). Such effeminacy is of course
a sign of decadence, from Settembrini's perspective, but it also has
positive associations as an alternative to the "Imperium der Zivilisa-
tion" that Settembrini represents.
Naphta, like Chauchat, also has strong ties to the West. He was
orphaned early when his father was brutally murdered in a pogrom
and raised by Jesuits, who are associated with the Counter-Reforma-
tion, international proselytizing, and an overly refined, morally
ambiguous "Jesuitical" logic. If Naphta's early experience of blood
sacrifice associates him with the "chthonic" world of the ancient
matriarchy, his commitment to revolutionary communism links him
to the return of the feminine in its modern guise as an anarchic, vio-
lent, revolutionary force in the Western world. To add yet another
layer to Naphta's crushing and contradictory symbolic burden, he
also represents the masculine reaction against modern effeminacy in
his advocacy of personal renunciation in the service of a higher cause:
"absolute authority and an ironclad bond-discipline and sacrifice,
renunciation of the ego, and coercion of the personality." Today's
youth only thinks it wants to be free, continues Naphta: "'Its deep-
est desire is to obey.' Joachim sat up straight. Hans Castorp blushed"
(393 [549]).
Forced to represent not only the East in both its guises as politically
reactionary mysticism and potentially progressive cosmopolitanism,
but also aspects of the modern, Orientalized West, it seems almost
inevitable that Naphta should commit suicide. He succumbs to the
160 German Orientalisms
internal contradictions of his character, despite Castorp's visionary
assertion that "man is the master of contradictions" (487 [679]). As T.
J. Reed and even Thomas Mann himself argued, the "Snow" chap-
ter unambiguously presents the moral of the story.68 Lest we over-
look the clear message, Mann has thoughtfully italicized it for us in
the text: "For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no
dominion over his thoughts." In pious appreciation of these profound
sentiments, Castorp resolves to change his life: "I will remember it. I
will be good" (487 [679]). Castorp's heartfelt pledge carries a hint of
vestigial piety of the sort that causes him to rub his hands together
before he eats, "perhaps because his forebears had prayed before
every meal" (13 [25]). Whether the moralizing message of Castorp's
vision in the snow does justice to the novel's conclusion is another
question, however. A good third of the novel remains between the
time that Castorp makes his vow to "be good" and our last glimpse
of him in the confusion of battle. Perhaps things will turn out for the
best; perhaps Castorp will survive the war and devote himself to the
long-neglected concerns of the flatlands, but Mann has given us little
reason to be optimistic. Der Zauberberg ends with a refrain that trans-
poses the triumphant harmonies of the vision in the snow into a final,
unresolved chord in a minor key: "And out of this worldwide festi-
val of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky
all round-will love someday rise up out of this, too?" (706 [984]).
Probably not, or at least not in the immediate future. What rose up
instead was the Third Reich and Second World War. Glancing
ahead, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus (1947) reworks the themes of
Der Tod in Venedig and Der Zauberberg into an analysis of Germany's
descent into fascism. Once again he links the East to sexuality, dis-
ease, and genius: Adrian Leverkiihn contracts the syphilis that tem-
porarily heightens his creative powers in Hungary, which is also the
site of his homosexual affair with the violinist Rudi Schwerdtfeger.69
Mann portrays fascism as a paradoxical combination of barbaric pas-
sion with rigid order, Asiatic femininity and Occidental masculinity,
or, as Castorp might have put it, a combination of Russia with Spain.
When Joachim Ziemssen's mother comes to care for her dying son,
she mentions that she and Joachim had run into Chauchat in
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 161
Munich, and that Chauchat has exhibited a disturbing lack of social
grace. "That comes from the Asiatic East and her illness" (495 [690]),
explains Castorp. The news that Chauchat has also visited Spain sets
him off on another reverie: "Spain-it lay equally as far from the
humanistic middle, not toward the soft side, but the hard. Spain was
not a lack of form, but an excess of form, death as form, so to speak"
(495 [690]).
The combination of a hypermasculine rigidity with raw passion
recurs in the strictly choreographed ecstasy of the Nazi rallies-and in
the twelve-tone music of Adrian Leverkihn. Here again, Mann
introduces a characteristic ambivalence into his portrayal of Lev-
erkihn and his music. On the one hand, he presents Leverkihn as a
cosmopolitan intellectual who resists the patriotic excesses of his
acquaintances and whose music has nothing to do with contempo-
rary German politics. From this perspective, Mann condemns not
Leverkiihn, but those irresponsible German intellectuals of the sort
that haunt the Kridwiss circle and dabble in reactionary thought
without considering the political consequences. On the other hand,
Mann borrows a kind of totalitarian logic from Theodor Adorno that
implicates Leverkiihn's music in the fascist politics he avoids. That is,
Leverkiihn's absolute music inadvertently but inevitably reproduces
the structure of the society in which it is written. Once again, Mann's
dialectical imagination is at odds with his humanist pathos. In count-
less public appearances, radio addresses, and essays, Mann worked to
condemn the Nazi regime that drove him into exile, and it would be
churlish not to acknowledge his efforts and their personal cost. Yet
his spokesman for humanist values in the novel, Serenus Zeitblom,
seems at best ineffectual and at worst complicitous with the regime
whose technical prowess he admires and whose resolution of the
"Jewish question" arouses only mild disagreement,70 while the apo-
litical genius Leverkiihn ends up writing a demonically inspired
musical counterpart to the dynamics of German fascism. To be sure,
the world did not end in 1945, and Mann continued to write for
another decade. The self-contained world of Dr. Faustus, however,
draws to an apocalyptic close that renders the prospect of a hope
beyond hopelessness tenuous indeed.
162 German Orientalisms
BOTHO STRAUB: APOCALYPSE NOW
The reclusive German writer Botho Straul3 (1944-) scored the media
sensation of the year with the publication of his essay "Anschwellen-
der Bocksgesang" [Rising/swelling song of the goat] in Der Spiegel of
February 8, 1993.71 In this essay, whose title translates more loosely as
"rising tide of tragedy" or "impending sense of doom," Straul3 gives
voice to a cultural pessimism that recalls the mood of Oswald Spen-
gler's Untergang des Abendlandes or Thomas Mann's Betrachtungen eines
Unpolitischen. As he had done in earlier works, Straul3 lashes out
against the mass media that obliterate all distinctions between public
and private. "Infotainment" has produced a nation of half-educated
dimwits: "What was once the dull mass is today the dull enlightened
mass [die dumpfe aufgekldrte Masse]" (267). Such disdain for the con-
temporary culture industry is not surprising for a writer who has long
admired the work of Theodor Adorno, and Straul3 drew predictable
charges of elitism for his comments. More provocative were the pas-
sages in "Bocksgesang" in which Straul3 seemed to express sympathy
for nationalism, to wax nostalgic for the virtues of discipline in the
home and in the state, and to lament the hostility toward soldiers, the
Church, and tradition in the Federal Republic of Germany. Perhaps
most troubling, however, was Straul3's contention that "racism and
xenophobia" are "fallen cultic passions which originally had a sacred
meaning that created order" (263). Within a few weeks an outraged
Peter Glotz objected that Straul3, perhaps unintentionally, provided a
cover for the worst sort of modern hate crime: "We had hoped that
this mixture of moods [Stimmungsmixtur] had drowned in blood in
1945 at the latest. In 1993 Botho Straul3 corrects us for the worse."72
The left-wing newspaper die taz reduced the controversy to a
provocative question: "Is Botho Straul3 a fascist?"73
For anyone who read the essay carefully, the answer would have to
be a resounding "no." "The crimes of the Nazis are so enormous,"
writes Straul3, "that they cannot be compensated by moral shame or
other bourgeois feelings. They place the German in shock and leave
him shaking . . . a guilt that exceeds human boundaries cannot sim-
ply be 'worked off in one or two generations."74 True, Straul3 styles
himself as a conservative in opposition to what he feels is the liberal
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 163
mainstream of German society, yet he draws a sharp distinction
between his own rightist position and the neo-Nazi thugs he
identifies as his worst, most bitter enemies. True, Straul3 cites Rene
Girard on the salutary effect that cultic sacrifices once had for ancient
communities, yet he distances this past from modern racism and
xenophobia. Straul3's primary goal is not to condemn foreigners in
contemporary Germany, but to condemn what he feels is the
hypocrisy of knee-jerk liberalism on the left. In this regard his own
conservative position parallels right-wing attacks on "political cor-
rectness" in the United States during the "culture wars" of the early
1990s, on those "tenured radicals" with children and credit cards who
cling to the moral high ground of their youth.75
Nevertheless, Botho
Straul3 is on dangerous territory in
"Anschwellender Bocksgesang." Nostalgia for blood sacrifice in the
name of the nation, however qualified, is not a sentiment that sits
well in a country still shaking from the Nazi past and the aftershocks
of neo-Nazi violence. At a time when Giinter Grass argued that the
memory of crimes committed at Auschwitz under an earlier German
regime gave his contemporary Germans "every reason to fear our-
selves as a unit,"76 Straul3 writes sadly about the loss of tradition and
seeks renewed connections to the mythic past. His essay was soon
reprinted as the first contribution to a large anthology that served as
the collective manifesto of Germany's new conservatism. Contribu-
tors to Die Selbstbewusste Nation [The self-conscious nation] (1994)
declared that it was finally time for Germany to become a "normal"
nation again. Deriding the "national masochism" and "German self-
hatred" of those on the left, the authors revived old cliches about
Germany as the land of "inwardness," "unworldliness," "homeland,"
and "homesickness" (Innerlichkeit, Weltferne, Heimat, Heimweh).77 In
language disturbingly reminiscent of Nazi ideology, one contributor
dared to speak of the peculiarly German experience of nature as a
"Nordically dark, tragic elemental force" [nordisch-diistere, tragische
Urgewalt] and proclaimed that it was time to revitalize the "splendid
tradition" of German Romanticism that leads from Tieck and
Eichendorff to Bachofen and Klages.78
For too long, these writers maintained, postwar liberals had
"fetishized" Germany's ties to the West. Thus a second volume of
164 German Orientalisms
essays challenged Germany's Westbindung and suggested that it was
time for Germany to remember its old role as the "land of the cen-
ter."79 In keeping with this spirit, Straul3 lashed out against liberals
who failed to understand the resurgence of nationalism in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia in the wake of the Cold War: "That a peo-
ple should want to maintain its customs against others and is willing
to contribute blood sacrifice to the cause is something that we no
longer understand and consider false and reprehensible in our liberal-
libertarian self-absorption."so In looking to the East, Straul3 joins
with other German conservatives of the early 199os who rejected the
West as the source of capitalist greed, ecological recklessness, and a
stupefying mass media. Echoes of the once-positive belief in a Ger-
man Sonderweg began to be heard again among a new generation of
Romantic anticapitalists in a replay of "the so-called 'Conservative
Revolution' of the 192os."81
That the media-shy Straul3 should have emerged as such a promi-
nent voice in the public debate came as a surprise, however, and he
seems to have felt some remorse over the furor aroused by the publi-
cation of his essay. In Die Fehler des Kopisten [The copyist's mistakes]
(1997) he refers wryly to the "song of the goat that I once carelessly
summoned" (36) and writes of the personal price he has paid for his
remarks: "Some who spit on me today used to visit me gladly .. .
Today he writes in the gazettes: hang him!" (11 8). One has the sense,
however, that Straul3 rather enjoys his own notoriety as the sacrificial
lamb of the current culture industry. Having adopted the pose of the
misunderstood loner, the prophet of disaster crying in the wilderness,
he retreated to his country home to pursue his melancholy thoughts
and to dismiss the affair as a "farce" and a "bitter joke" (118).
For those familiar with Botho Straul3's career prior to 1993, the
ideas expressed in "Anschwellender Bocksgesang" should not have
come as a surprise. His jeremiad against the evils of mass media in the
computer age had begun more than a decade earlier in Paare, Passan-
ten [Couples, passersby] (1981) and continue through Die Fehler des
Kopisten. Straul3 has also displayed a consistent interest in German
national identity in the wake of National Socialism, both before and
after Reunification. Evidence from the literary texts suggests that
Straul3 is anything but a flag-waving national chauvinist; a recent
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 165
reviewer has in fact dubbed him "the last social critic.S"82 In Paare,
Passanten, for example, he writes of "German National Socialism" as
"our unique place of birth," a point of origin for postwar society
from which there can be no escape.83 As a result of this past, Germans
lack "das nationell Positive," the capacity for a healthy attitude
toward the nation.84 The protagonist of the slightly earlier novel
Rumor (1980) does experience a brief surge of national pride "despite
Hitler" during a drunken conversation in New York about the con-
centration camps, yet even he admits that his sudden stab of "home-
sickness and love" is "to a doubtlessly imaginary country.s85 Bekker
in any case hardly qualifies as a positive role model. Certainly one of
the least pleasant characters to haunt postwar German literature,
Bekker staggers through the book in an alcoholic stupor, fluctuating
between incestuous desires for his daughter, hatred of his former boss,
and delusions of grandeur. Near the end of the novel he adopts a
group of unemployed Pakistanis, promises them jobs, and accepts the
offer of a bed in their crowded apartment, only to slip out before
dawn to alert the police and to have the illegal immigrants arrested.
The entire episode is an exercise in self-aggrandizement based on a
callous disregard for the human dignity of the foreign workers.
Straul3's most ambitious novel, Der junge Mann [The young man]
(1984), also contains sustained reflections on German national identity
in the postwar period. Here again, Straul3 seems to go out of his way
to discredit nationalist sentiments and those who represent them. In
the opening pages the narrator captures the atmosphere of his con-
temporary Berlin with a sketch of unemployed men of various ages
who spend their days drinking around the kiosk where he gets his
morning paper. Their only real friends are their dogs-German shep-
herds, of course. In this passage Straul3 collapses history into an eternal
present of the German language; these men "simply speak along in a
German babble, and, much older than they are, it continues its unin-
terrupted flow beneath time.'"86 Straul3 develops this idea in the sec-
tion of the novel entitled "The Forest." Here a young female bank
executive becomes lost in a mysterious forest where she finds a depart-
ment store called "The Tower of the Germans" (o50 [77]). The store
sells only voices from all social classes and from all periods of German
history. The owner of the store is introduced as the all-powerful Ger-
166 German Orientalisms
man: he has golden hair and kind eyes, but a nasty mouth like that of
a carp; he lives in a giant fish tank. Billing himself as "the essence of all
Germans," he contends that his influence extends to both halves of the
currently divided Germany and to all past epochs as well: "Not one of
them thinks German without me" (60 [90]). The bemused bank exec-
utive treats this pompous aquarium dweller "in all this German blus-
ter" (61 [92]) as a relic of the past, however, and proudly declares her
faith in the free self-rule of the German people before emerging from
his subterranean abode into the light of day.
That Germany's past cannot be shrugged off quite so easily
becomes apparent in the longest section of the novel, "The Terrace."
The section begins with the death of Hitler as Balthazar of the Old
Testament, ends with his burial, and consists primarily of conversa-
tions and stories among a group of postwar Germans on the model of
Boccaccio's Decameron or Friedrich Schlegel's Gesprach uber die Poesie
[Conversation about poetry] (18oo).87 Hitler/Balthazar dies at dawn,
yet time stands still in the pages that follow: "And so it was, and con-
tinued to be for many, many years, pervasively and without excep-
tion; and many believe that even today this strong and beautiful land
has not yet completely awakened from its Balthazar night" (123
[1 8 1]). The section contains a debate between Hans-Werner, a mod-
ern optimist who embraces the positive potential of the new com-
puter age, and the conservative ideologue Reppenfries, who laments
Germany's transformation from a nation rooted in the Volk into a
permissive modern society in need of "peace of mind and a sense of
conformity" [Fassung und Fiigung] (133 [195]). Reppenfries thus
anticipates some of the more disturbing ideas Straul3 voices in
"Anschwellender Bocksgesang," yet in the context of the novel his
character is severely compromised by his penchant for wearing uni-
forms and his brutal treatment of his wife.88 Like Bekker before him,
Reppenfries cannot be viewed uncritically as Straul3's spokesman in
the novel. The section concludes with a grotesque parade of postwar
Germans unable to break free of Hitler's legacy: "In this way, the
most evil of Germans was bound to his posterity into the third and
fourth generation by a long chain of tyrannies" (209 [298]). A series
of bitter caricatures leads seamlessly from the "professional antifas-
cists" of the 1950s to the student radicals of the 1960s, and concludes
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 167
with a cry of disgust at the motley crew of contemporary German
city dwellers: "ah, you lonely hearts, unhappy city dwellers, you who
can no longer be disappointed: you don't deserve to be united!" (211I
[300oo]). Taken together, then, the evidence from Straul3's prose texts
of the I980s suggests that while he is disturbed by the centrifugal
forces in modern society and the resulting loss of national tradition,
he remains acutely aware of the fascist past that makes it impossible
for Germans to celebrate the nation uncritically.
In addition to reflections on German history in allegorical and
essayistic passages of Derjunge Mann, Straul3 also places his novel into
an implicit dialogue with the literary tradition of the German Bil-
dungsroman. Parallels between Derjunge Mann and earlier texts associ-
ated with the Bildungsroman abound: the opening and concluding sec-
tions of the novel focus on Leon Pracht, who, like Wilhelm Meister
before him, sets off on a theatrical mission or Sendung. The phantas-
magoric dream sequences in the middle of this "Romantic Novel of
Reflection" [RomantischerReflexionsRoman] (7 [I5]) recall pas-
sages from Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Straul3 in fact alludes to
Klingsohr's Mdrchen (314 [221]).89 Like Hans Castorp on the magic
mountain, Leon Pracht listens largely in silence to the ideological
debates between Reppenfries and Hans-Werner (themselves reincar-
nations of Naphta and Settembrini). Unlike the stereotypical hero
who grows up, finds some sort of job, gets married, and becomes a
philistine, as Hegel once sarcastically put it, Leon Pracht never finds
his calling and drifts aimlessly from one odd job to the next. Here
again, however, he is in good company, as such literary predecessors
as Anton Reiser, Heinrich Lee, and Oskar Matzerath prove equally
incapable of settling down to responsible adulthood. Finally, the
reflections on German culture and history in Der junge Mann con-
tinue a tradition that extends from Wilhelm Meister's aspirations for
a German national theater to examinations of the Third Reich in
Mann's Dr. Faustus, Grass's Blechtrommel, and Siegfried Lenz's
Deutschstunde.
As in many of these earlier works, the East plays a prominent role
in the symbolic geography of Der junge Mann. In the opening seg-
ment of the novel we learn that Leon Pracht's father is a scholar of
ancient Middle Eastern religions with a particular interest in Mon-
168 German Orientalisms
tanus, the leader of a schismatic movement in early Christianity cen-
tered in ancient Phrygia (modern Anatolia). Montanus was an apoc-
alyptic prophet of the imminent end of the world who advocated
strict morality and severe penance, and whose followers sought
moments of frenzied ecstasy and divine rapture. The charismatic
movement threatened the hierarchy of the organized Church, while
the prominent role of two female prophets in its ranks was unusual
and provocative. As a young man Leon follows in his father's foot-
steps, dutifully learning Aramaic and Coptic while his contempo-
raries in the late 1960s are revolting against paternal authority. Leon's
expertise in religious mysticism attracts the attention of a young
dramatist directing Shaw's Saint Joan, and Leon begins his own direc-
torial career with an almost religious sense of mission: "I saw myself
as the new Montanus, and just as this visionary journeyed through
Phrygian towns and cities with his two prophetesses, Priscilla and
Maximillia, proclaiming the advent of the new Jerusalem, so I was
determined to lead a movement of renewal along with my two
actresses, at least in the theater and in the actor's art" (17 [31i]). As a
young man, Leon Pracht is particularly interested in the sexual com-
ponent of the esoteric religion: "I happily immersed myself in these
secret Christian writings, which constantly made reference to femi-
nine wisdom, to 'God the Mother,' to an almighty erotic grace, as it
seemed to me then" (io [22]). Thus this "unpolitical" German's early
interest in an obscure religious sect draws him into an exotic and
eroticized maternal realm that recalls Bachofen's descriptions of the
ancient Asian matriarchy.
The postmodern counterpart to this ancient matriarchal society
appears in the section entitled "The Settlement (The Outsiders) [Die
Gesellschaftslosen]." Here an unnamed protagonist who can plausibly
be understood to represent either Leon himself or his romantic Dop-
pelginger9° is hired by authorities in Frankfurt to conduct ethno-
graphic research on an unusual community living northwest of
Cologne. The origins of the group are somewhat obscure, but they
are described as "the modern men of the third industrial revolution"
(75 [i 4]) who have undergone a transformation into a different sort
of a society, perhaps as a result of radiation emanating from nuclear
stockpiles. The community is not economically viable, yet the
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 169
authorities support and study it as a form of social experiment that
might provide useful suggestions for life in a future "society with lim-
ited labor demands" (78 [117]). At the same time, they keep the
group under tight surveillance and guard against any expansion of the
movement.
The alternative society is known as "Synkreas," or "Syks" for
short, a name invented in jest by one of the observers who noted that
they are "creative-but only as inventive synthesizers, as collectors and
recyclers" (78 [I i8]). Combination matters more than innovation for
the members of this group, who value "dreams, games, collecting,
integrating concepts . . . [over] the iron rule of abstract logic, plan-
ning, progress and the dictates of tradition" (79 [120]). The Syks are
gradually doing away with binary oppositions in a deliberately impre-
cise language that substitutes ambivalence for logic. Their politics are
equally amorphous: although they are not a lawless society, the Syks
shift their allegiance rapidly from one form of government to the
next, moving from absolutism to dictatorship to democracy within a
matter of weeks. Their clothing changes as fast as their politics: some-
times they wear fanciful costumes; at other times they wear drab gray
outfits; at still others the men wear elegant suits while the women
wear only colorful body paint. Provisional "body-heat alliances"
[Wirmeverbande] (90) have replaced traditional marriages and fami-
lies.
It is difficult to reduce the Syks to a single allegorical meaning.
Certainly they recall aspects of German Romanticism, particularly in
their attitude toward religion.9' The Syks believe that one spirit flows
through everything, and they seek contact with this "Great Melt-
River" [Grol3en Schmelzflu3] (91 [135S]). In a passage recalling
Schelling's philosophy, they are said to believe that the human being
is not the crown of creation, "but he is certainly the first step on the
endless path of the universe coming to an awareness of itself [des sich
selbst zu Bewujf3tsein kommenden Universums]" (9I [136]). Yet the Syks
are also quite up-to-date, believing that the universal spiritual order
reveals itself in a modern semiconductor as well as in the intricate
maze of a termite heap. As "synthetic creators" they produce works
that evoke both Early Romantic "Symphilosophie" and the post-
modern pastiche. Elsewhere termed "Romantics of the electronic
170 German Orientalisms
revolution" (259 [369]), they express their neo-Romantic spirituality
"in the great electronic total" [in der grol3en elektronischen Totale]
(6 [14]) of the postmodern age.
Politically the Syks are equally ambivalent. To a certain extent
they exemplify some of the negative connotations of communitarian
thought.92 As their language disintegrates they become incapable of
the rational debate necessary in liberal democracies; their tight social
organization seems to answer the call for more "Fassung und
Fiigung" from the politically suspect Reppenfries; and the Syks'
longing for a muscular Messiah seems particularly questionable. At
other times, however, the peaceful Syks seem much closer to the
I96os counterculture or its New Age descendants than to the totali-
tarian culture of the Third Reich. Particularly noteworthy in this
regard is the decidedly international, or, more precisely, postnational
makeup of the community. At first mysterious climatic changes in
central Europe gave rise to small groups within existing social orga-
nizations. "The situation did not change radically until the sudden
advent of extensive migration and new patterns of colonization that
spread freely across national and state borders" (75 [114]). Within
such settlements a "new consciousness" (77 [I17]) arose that tran-
scended national borders. The Syks are a strange conglomeration of
Icelandic fishermen, French actors, Turkish tailors, and German
"psychagogues." While fascist society bonded men together in ser-
vice to a fatherland rooted in blood and soil, the Syks represent an
alternative "feminine" society: "all knowledge had become femi-
nine" (90 [i34]). The Syks live in the same forest where the bank
executive had discovered the "Tower of the Germans." The tower is
still there, but the German voices have vanished: "On the inside it
was completely bleak and empty, with only a spiral wooden staircase
rising into the heights, before reaching its bricked-up terminus
devoid of any view" (80 [121]). A postnational community has no
place for national tradition. Outside the settlement Germany has not
disappeared, however, and it is the task of Leon Pracht, or his alter
ego, to observe and comment on the Syks to the proper authorities.
He thus occupies a position analogous to that of his father in the
study of ancient religion: the rational, masculine, German ethnogra-
pher investigates an irrational, feminized, non-German society. The
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 171
postmodern and postnational community of the Syks, in other words,
seems to reincarnate the schismatic Christian community of the
ancient Orient. Each society, in turn, stands in an uneasy relation to
Germany's fascist past as both its close relative and its alien Other.
In "Die Siedlung" Leon unsuccessfully attempts to cross over into
Syk society, to "go native." Part 3 of this section begins with a lament
at how German society has worn him out: "Oh, larcenous people,
the Germans! From whom we have descended, and who have
brought us down" (ioi [149]). Leon's new research partner Ines does
not share his dissatisfaction, however, and busies herself with her
appointed tasks. Ines rejects both Leon's sexual advances and his offer
to bring her with him to the Syks. Still sexually frustrated, Leon then
fixes his gaze on a young Syk woman named Zinth, but she, too,
rejects him, and he is ordered by the Syk authorities to meet his
brother's wife in a chalet just outside the borders of the settlement.
Surprised to discover that his long-forgotten brother even has a wife,
Leon obeys and soon finds himself in the grasp of overwhelming pas-
sion for the woman. In the novel's most controversial sequence,
Leon ejaculates violently onto the silent woman's upturned face and
later discovers her vomiting in a bathtub full of human excrement.
Leon dives into the tub "like a good Christian knight" ( 112 [163])
and engages in mortal combat with what has become a monster, but
then faints to awaken alone in a bed with clean white sheets.
"Brrr," commented Caroline Fetscher in her review of this scene
in the novel. "Maybe he [Botho Strau3] needed to 'work through'
[these fantasies] [Vielleicht mufite er 'da durch'], but maybe he could
have left most of this report on his 'expedition' in a drawer [unpub-
lished]."93 The scene is indeed disturbing if we read it as a fragment
of Botho's great confession, although Straul3 insists elsewhere that
none of his works is directly autobiographical.94 In the context of the
novel, in any case, the scene frequently cited as evidence of Straul3's
pornographic imagination actually leads to the humiliation and defeat
of the male protagonist. Immediately after his ejaculation Leon feels
overcome with shame and remorse. The subsequent bathtub scene
certainly presents the woman in a revolting light, yet diving into fecal
matter is not exactly a task that ennobles the latter-day knight either.
As it turns out, the entire event has been arranged by the Syks from
172 German Orientalisms
the start as a way to wean Leon from his fascination with their cult.
What he had experienced as a uniquely passionate experience was
simply a service provided for the Syks by his brother's wife. In the
end the Syks present Leon with considerable charges for all services
performed in the chalet; he pays without protest, ironically footing
the bill for the Syks' successful effort to cast him from their midst.
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that his brother's wife is from
the Middle East. When first informed of his waiting visitor, Leon is
perplexed: "my brother's wife? Who could that be? As far as I knew,
my brother, the manager of a hotel chain, had been living abroad for
many years in several different countries of the Near and Middle
East" (o107 [i56]). His suspicions are confirmed when he meets the
woman. She does not wear exotic clothing, but "her bronze skin and
the narrow, finely sculpted face left no doubt as to her Levantine ori-
gins" (io8 [158]). This "Oriental" woman serves as a fitting repre-
sentative of the "effeminate" Syk society that stands in opposition to
modern Germany, while suggesting a link between the postnational
European cult and the mystical Middle Eastern religious sect of
antiquity. Ironically, however, the very woman who seems to initi-
ate Leon into Syk society actually sends him back to the Germany he
longs to escape. He awakens from his nightmarish adventures to see a
mighty (German) oak outside his window. On his way out of the
community he stops for a final conversation with his brother's wife,
who presses "her lovely exotic [Oriental] face" [ihr schones, mor-
genlindisches Gesicht] (II6 [169]) against a fence. Leon kisses her
fingertips, but Ines drags him away. He feels betrayed by her report
to the authorities, who show no sympathy for his "feminine" intelli-
gence and fire him. He spends the rest of the long, hot summer in a
shabby room in Frankfurt.
The Orient features prominently again in Leon's one clearly auto-
biographical narrative in Derjunge Mann. In the section entitled "Die
Terrasse" [The terrace] Leon describes how he once traveled to
Istanbul to attend the funeral of a Turkish actor and poet who had
been his close friend in Germany. The funeral takes place on the
Asian side of the city. Afterward the despondent German takes a ferry
back to the European shore. On the boat he fixes his downcast eyes
on the shoes of a woman standing next to him. They exit the ferry
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 173
together, and he finds himself drawn as if by a magnetic force to the
woman's apartment where they engage in frenzied sex. He awakens
alone and soon discovers that he is one of several men whom the
woman, named Mero, has seduced and enchanted. Only a fragment
of his own self escapes her spell and is drawn to the voice of a young
girl singing beyond the walls of Mero's garden. It turns out to be
none other than Mero herself, but as a sixteen-year-old girl. Before
long Leon and the younger Mero are locked in a magical embrace
interrupted by the older Mero at the height of Leon's passion. Fear-
ful that he will petrify into a "priapic column" (167 [240]), Leon begs
the older Mero to finish what her younger self began. She obliges
him briefly but soon becomes distracted by the young Mero. The
two are reunited as he watches, a scene that magically removes both
his sexual frustration and his grief. He leaves Istanbul feeling deeply
rested and at peace.
In several ways this episode recalls Leon's affair with his brother's
wife. Again the German man has passionate sex with an unfamiliar
woman associated with the Near or Middle East. Mewro is Greek for
madness or intoxication, and with her Leon experiences Dionysian
rapture.95 Once again, however, what begins as a male fantasy ends
with the woman in control, as Mero turns out to be a modern Circe
who steals men's souls. We later learn that Mero's widowed father
remarried when she was in her teens, at which point she developed
her seductive powers. In psychological terms, then, Mero suffers
from an unresolved Electra complex and becomes a kind of femme
fatale as a result. Leon, who as a young director had been the target
of abuse from two older actresses, again becomes subject to a power-
ful woman.
As it turns out, Mero is not Greek or Turkish at all, but the daugh-
ter of a German diplomat. The fact that Leon's "Oriental" seductress
is really German parallels the sense of disappointment he feels as a vis-
itor to the East: "My first impressions of the famed Golden Metrop-
olis consisted of nothing more than the shabby grayness of new hous-
ing developments" (154 [222]). Mero leads him to a dingy building
that Leon describes as "a somewhat more modest version of one of
those cheap and ugly concrete monstrosities that had contributed so
much to the disappointing impression the city of sultans, odalisques,
174 German Orientalisms
and magnificent tales had first made on me" (156 [224]). The Orient
is thus revealed as a Western fantasy that has little to do with life in
modern Istanbul. Correspondingly, the pseudo-Oriental Mero can
seduce men only if they have entered a fantasy realm that detaches
them from their normal waking reality: "The thin one, for example,
was caught while viewing the collection of the sultans' robes in the
Topkapi Seraglio, where blinding magnificence of fabric and pre-
cious stone had already half transported him into the realm of The
Thousand and One Nights" (163 [234]). Leon's grief and the unfamil-
iar, if disappointing, surroundings also make him susceptible to
Mero's wiles, and he, too, enters a fantasy world that intoxicates,
enthralls, but eventually releases him from its spell.
As in the earlier sections of the novel, the Orient features less as a
real place than as an imaginary space associated with loss of self, fem-
ininity and sexuality, mysticism and exoticism-a space, in other
words, defined in terms of its opposition to Western rationality, indi-
viduality, and masculinity. At the same time, however, Mero's Ger-
man identity suggests that the "Orient" is also part of Western con-
sciousness. Notably, Leon meets Mero on the ferry between Asia and
Europe: both stand on the threshold, in a space that simultaneously
underscores the opposition between East and West and undermines
the distinction. Leon's story, in turn, is embedded in the section of
the novel that draws clear parallels between the ancient Oriental
despot and the modern German megalomaniac. Hitler is at once the
embodiment of evil who released irrational passions in a fascist
regime that is diametrically opposed to the functioning democracy of
the Federal Republic "during what is, in the final analysis, a favored
period of German history" (4 [I 1]) and the ghost who haunts a post-
war Germany that remains "burdened with the bitterest legacy of the
malfeasant" (208 [296]). As if to underscore the tie between Ger-
many's Nazi past and the present Federal Republic, between
Dionysian intoxication and Socratic rationality, between Oriental
despotism and Occidental democracy, Straul3 freezes time in "Die
Terrasse" to a perpetual dawn: the rising sun of a new era remains
frozen in the East of the past.
Time does start moving toward the end of "Die Terrasse," and
Leon eventually emerges from a series of dreamlike adventures to
Fascist Orientalism and Its Discontents 175
find a woman's disembodied face in the forest. He picks it up, kisses
her on the mouth, and is finally able to close his eyes. Here, as when
he leaves Istanbul, when he awakens after his nightmarish struggle
with the monster in the bathtub, or when he escapes Ossia in his
tower at the end of the novel, Leon finds moments of liberation and
peace. Does the burial of Balthazar/Hitler that restarts the clock sug-
gest that the Germans have the chance to put the past behind them as
well, that the voices of history have been silenced? Two images seem
to suggest as much: Leon emerges from the dream garden in "Die
Terrasse" to find little cabins filled with technical equipment that
recalls the projection screen beneath the "Tower of the Germans,"
but the equipment is now covered with dust. After he leaves the Syks
Leon sees an entire archive of cassette tapes hanging in the oak tree
outside his window, but the tapes are shredded and hopelessly
ensnarled. In both cases the modern memory machines have become
dysfunctional. Yet despite such moments of relative calm, Leon
Pracht never achieves a sense of lasting personal or professional mas-
tery in the novel. Germany's past, it seems, might resurface at any
time. "'Throw the foreigners out [Auslinder raus]' and things like
that, that's what's going on here, it's just something in the air here in
Germany, like acid rain," says one character when under hypnosis.
Leon recoils in horror, rejecting a modern sociological explanation of
contemporary xenophobia for something approaching myth: "It
seemed to me, that emanating from this young creature were the
rustlings of an old malevolence, a historical curse, rather than the
anguish of youth or affluence" (135 [i v97]). The tapes from the
archive may be tangled, but the oak tree is still alive.
"It is too bad, just too bad about the ruined tradition [die verdorbene
Uberlieferung]," writes Straul3 near the end of "Anschwellender
Bocksgesang."96 In an essay notorious for its rebarbative prose, this
sentence stands out for its simplicity, if not banality. If in the same
essay Straul3 refers to the enormity of Nazi crimes, how can he
lament lost traditions and seek "a renewed link with 'long time,' the
unmoved" [Wiederanschlul3 an die lange Zeit, die unbewegte]?97 In
part, Straul3 continues his polemic against left-wing intellectuals who
read the past through a reductive lens leading always and only to the
Third Reich. As Volker Hage reported in a conversation of 1986,
176 German Orientalisms
"he [Straul3] had become allergic in the meantime to 'crude short-
circuits' of the sort that makes people immediately scream 'Heinrich
Himmler' whenever someone says 'Meister Eckhart.' That is the
continuation of barbarism with anti-fascistic means."'9 In another
sense, Straul3's interest in cultural memory can be seen as a manifes-
tation of a widespread attempt in the 1980s and 199os "to slow down
information processing, to resist the dissolution of time in the syn-
chronicity of the archive, to recover a mode of contemplation out-
side the universe of simulation and fast-speed information and cable
networks."''99 Such an appeal to memory and tradition runs the risk of
becoming a regressive, reactionary phenomenon of the sort Fredric
Jameson has derided in his comments on "nostalgia films."'00 As
Straul3 makes quite clear in the introduction to Derjunge Mann, how-
ever, the time is past when we could tell tales of organic personal
development, or when philosophy or religion could provide a single
grand narrative that would make sense of the world. On the one
hand, time for Straul3 hurtles forward in a series of transformations
that defy human efforts to order them in stories of either progress or
decline. On the other hand, the present moment seems frozen "in the
great electric totality" of the third industrial age. In an effort to avoid
both the negative totality of the simulacrum and the seductive lure of
an old-fashioned organicity, Straul3 structures his postmodern Bil-
dungsroman as a series of layers that thicken time, that provide it with
density and thus defy its inexorable onrush: "Instead of producing a
straight-line narrative, or striving for an all-encompassing develop-
ment, he will grant diversity its zones, instead of history he will
record the multistoried moment [statt Geschichte . . . den geschichteten
Augenblick], the synchronous event" (3-4 [Io]).'o' In conjuring the
past, however, Straul3 summons evil spirits as well as redemptive
solutions to cultural amnesia; as he put it, the tradition is itself verdor-
ben, contaminated by memories that continue to haunt the Federal
Republic. With his vision of Germany caught between a despised
present and a poisoned past, it is perhaps not surprising that Botho
Straul3 can only conceive of future change as catastrophe.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Nearest East
GERMANY'S EASTERN FRONTIER
In the fourth book of Giinter Grass's Ein weites Feld [Too far afield]
(i995), the protagonist Theo Wuttke and his constant companion
Ludwig Hoftaller travel to the German-Polish border town of Frank-
furt an der Oder. They plan to visit the site of some of "the Immor-
tal's" novels-a reference to Wuttke's alter ego Theodor Fontane
but also to stand at the eastern border of the newly reunified
Germany. Wuttke regrets that much of the formerly German terri-
tory portrayed in Fontane's novels has become Polish, but he con-
cludes that the current border must remain where it is: "here Ger-
many has to stop, unified or not."' Hoftaller at first ridicules the
notion that any border could be considered permanent in the uncer-
tain political climate of the early 1990s, but then, pointing to the east,
becomes more serious: "Still, it has to remain within limits. We have
to shield these far-flung areas, I mean secure them, before the hordes
descend. I'd call Poland a sort of boundary territory, or rather an out-
post, because what's coming at us from out there, Wuttke, poses a
real challenge. The East extends far, very far!" (419 [Soo]). Hoftaller
later returns to "his horrific picture of the Eastification of the West
[Verostung des Westens]" (ss554 [659]) and envisions a series of
fortifications along Germany's new eastern border: "That's the only
way we can safeguard our Germany from being overrun by foreign-
ers . . . Back then [in the Second World War] it was the Atlantic Wall
you hailed, but your vision can be just as convincing today if the wall
177
178 German Orientalisms
is erected against the East . . . Otherwise we'll be Eastified, I said"
(554 [659-60]).
Hoftaller makes these comments in June 1991, nine months after
Germany's official reunification in October of the previous year. The
erasure of the border between the two Germanies had once again
raised the question of where to draw the nation's eastern frontier.
Would the expanded Federal Republic accept the existing Oder-
Neisse boundary imposed by the Allied forces at the end of the Sec-
ond World War, or would it try to reclaim some formerly German
territories? Fears of a renewed German aggression toward the East
seemed justified in mid-November 1989, when Chancellor Helmut
Kohl visited a small town in western Poland. Here he was greeted by
a banner that proclaimed "Helmut, you're our Chancellor too!"2
Were there in fact huddled masses of ethnic Germans yearning to be
free of Polish sovereignty? The question sent novelist and essayist
Peter Schneider on a "journey through Germany's sense of national
identity" [Reise durch das deutsche Nationalgeftihl] that led him to
the tiny German minority in western Poland.3 What he found seems
to have both reassured and troubled him: yes, there were indeed
many Poles who sought entry to Germany, but primarily for eco-
nomic reasons. Ironically, Poles who had been categorized by the
Nazis as either ethnically German or "Germanizable" quickly gained
access to German citizenship, "while a compatriot whose father or
grandfather died in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi barbarians
has no case for asylum" (45 [36]). But what of those ethnic Germans
who remained in Upper Silesia? Did they really want to become part
of a new, larger Germany? Not at all, concludes Schneider: "They
want no more than what any minority has a right to: their language,
their history, their costume. . . Most of all, though, they want an end
to discrimination" (6I [so]). Revanchist sentiments existed only
among the far-right fringe within Germany, according to Schneider,
and not in the Polish border zones. In his view, Helmut Kohl was
playing a sinister game of electoral politics: by first vacillating on the
question of the Oder-Neisse boundary, Kohl catered to the demands
of former exiles from the East who might have been drawn to the
extremist Republikaner Party in local elections in the spring of 1990,
only to proclaim on the eve of the "two-plus-four talks" in July "that
The Nearest East 179
he was committed to reconciliation with the Poles." Thus Kohl
"added an international coup to his domestic one: the whole world
was relieved when he finally accepted the western border of Poland,"
even though he conceded on a point "that had previously been
regarded as a sine qua non of German unity. Kohl's high-wire act had
turned a dead issue back into a bargaining chip" (63).4
These two episodes from contemporary German literature mark a
recent chapter of Germany's engagement with what could be called
its Nearest East. For centuries conflicts along Germany's eastern fron-
tier have played an important role in the history of a specifically Ger-
man Orientalism. Hoftaller's comments raise the specter of an Asian
invasion flooding into Germany through Poland, while Schneider
fears a new German Drang nach Osten to bring formerly German ter-
ritories Helm ins Reich. In both cases, the "Orient" is not in the Mid-
dle East or distant India, but, rather, eastern Europe, East Germany,
or even East Berlin. In the novel Eduards Heimkehr [Eduard's home-
coming] (1998), for instance, Peter Schneider plays on Orientalist
stereotypes when he allows his West German protagonist to have an
affair with a woman whom he suspects of having grown up in the
German Democratic Republic. She refuses to satisfy his curiosity,
however, and instead makes fun of his Western prejudices: " 'Do you
associate something specific with an East German woman, something
a West German woman doesn't have?' 'Like what?' 'That she's some-
how more feminine, more straightforward, less tricky, easier to han-
dle. All the things a Westerner associates with the East. That camels
walk slower, smoke rises differently, alarm clocks go off later or not
at all, children are better behaved, women wear higher heels.' "
Once again the Eastern woman has become exoticized, eroticized,
and made available for the Western man's pleasure.
What Schneider portrays sarcastically resurfaces in a more sinister
fashion in Ingo Schulze's Simple Storys: Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen
Provinz [Simple stories: A novel of provincial East Germany] (1999),
in which a West German real estate speculator rapes a young East
German waitress. The rape occurs on July 2, 1990, the day after the
deutsche mark became the official currency throughout Germany,
thus making a rather heavy-handed comment on the West German
takeover of the East in an otherwise subtle novel. Giinter Grass is
180 German Orientalisms
even more relentless in his portrayal of reunification in Ein weites Feld
as the Western colonization or annexation of the East, a capitalist
Anschluf3 led by the "Handover Trust" (Treuhand): "The word on the
street was that the Trust was privatizing ruthlessly; it was a colonial
agency, subject to no parliamentary control" (512 [6io]). He even
makes the provocative suggestion that the privatization of former
state-owned businesses in the East can be compared to the forced
appropriation of Jewish property during the Third Reich. Remain-
ing consistent with a position he had maintained since the late 1960s,
Grass argued that a unified Germany had only brought misery to the
world in the past, and that the crime of the Holocaust made any
move toward a renewed union morally as well as politically suspect.
Grass's controversial stance on reunification marks the prelude to an
ongoing discussion about whether or not Germany can once again be
a "normal" country, one in which it might even be possible to take
pride in some of its achievements, and here, again, questions sur-
rounding Germany's eastern frontier have played their part in the
debate. The controversy that has flared up periodically since
Reunification has its roots in the "Historians' Controversy" (Histori-
kerstreit) of the 1980s. This by now well-chronicled public debate
began when several conservative German historians began to question
"whether Nazi crimes were unique, a legacy of evil in a class by them-
selves, irreparably burdening any concept of German nationhood, or
whether they are comparable to other national atrocities, especially
Stalinist terror.'"6 If the Nazi crimes, however bad, were at least no
worse than those of other nations, then the Germans could finally put
their past behind them and begin to function as a normal nation. Ernst
Nolte touched off the debate with an essay published in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung in 1986 entitled "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen
will" [The past that will not pass away], in which he raised the follow-
ing question: "Did the National Socialists carry out, did Hitler perhaps
carry out an 'Asiatic' deed only because they regarded themselves and
their kind as the potential or real victims of an 'Asiatic' deed?"7
The Orientalist presuppositions in Nolte's rhetorical question could
hardly be clearer: he implies that the threat of a barbaric "Asian inva-
sion" of Soviet troops justified the "Asiatic" atrocities of the Nazis on
the eastern front. In the same year Andreas Hillgruber published a slim
The Nearest East 181
volume in which he, too, argues that the historian must identify with
the Germans' desperate attempt to protect themselves from the Rus-
sian hordes. As Jiirgen Habermas was quick to point out, however, the
German stance on the Eastern Front also allowed mass killings in the
concentration camps to continue for months longer than might oth-
erwise have been the case.8 The very title of Hillgruber's work,
Zweierlei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches und das Ende
des europaischenJudentums [Two sorts of destruction: The shattering of
the German Reich and the end of European Jewry], implicitly equates
the murder of millions of innocent men, women, and children with
the military defeat of Hitler's army in a way that many have found
offensive.9 To be sure, Hillgruber has no sympathy for Hitler's Ost-
politik, which he acknowledges led to the decimation of the Slavs and
the annihilation of the Jews. He nevertheless insists on the legitimacy
of Hitler's army in their defense of German settlements in the East:
"The German army in the East served as a protective barrier for set-
tlements that had been German for hundreds of years, for the home of
millions of Eastern Germans who lived in a heartland of the German
Reich."1o After centuries of legitimate occupation of the East, Hill-
gruber argues, it was unfortunate that these Germans should so
quickly be identified with the criminal policies of the National Social-
ists. Expressing sympathy for German suffering in the East without
voicing support for Nazi policies requires a delicate balancing act, and
many felt that Hillgruber tilts the scales too far toward the Germans in
his account. Questions surrounding the propriety of depicting the
plight of Germans exiled from the East at the end of the Second
World War continue to haunt contemporary German literature, most
notably in Giinter Grass's novella Im Krebsgang [Crabwalk] (2002), to
which we will return. In order to understand present reflections on
Germany's Nearest East, however, it is particularly important to have
at least some sense of the past.
TEUTONIC KNIGHTS, PRUSSIAN PATRIOTS,
NAZI IDEOLOGUES
From its beginnings in the twelfth century, the German conquest and
colonization of Eastern Europe had intimate ties to the crusading
182 German Orientalisms
movement." In 1146 Pope Eugenius III called for a crusade to the
Holy Lands, but when he learned that the Saxons were more inter-
ested in attacking the Slavic pagans to their immediate east, he autho-
rized the northern Europeans to make war on their own heathens. In
doing so the pope, with the ideological support of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, transformed the concept of the crusade from the quest for
a particular place-the recapture ofJerusalem-to the spread of Chris-
tianity among heathens wherever they might be found. The Oriental
origins of the crusading movement were not entirely forgotten, how-
ever: the Order of the Sword Brethren referred to their Baltic enemies
as "Northern Saracens,"'2 for instance, and Joseph von Eichendorff
reports that the Teutonic Knights cultivated tropical plants and kept
exotic birds and even lions at their headquarters in Marienburg to
remind them of "the rich Orient" where the order began.13
The Teutonic Knights were the third military order to emerge out
of the crusading movement, following the Templars and Hospitalers.
The first headquarters of the order was set up in a tent on the beach
during the siege of Acre in 1190. For the next one hundred years the
order devoted itself "primarily to the defence and advancement of
the Latin colonies of the Near East."'4 Gradually, however, the order
shifted its focus to northern Europe: in the I220s the knights were
torn between the emperor's desire to use them for a new crusade to
the Holy Lands and the desire of a Polish duke to enlist their aid
against Prussian heathens. Acre fell in 1291, preventing the brothers
from further fighting in the Holy Land, and when Pope Clement V
and King Philip IV began a campaign against the military orders dur-
ing the first decade of the next century, the Teutonic Knights set up
a new headquarters in distant Marienburg-today Malbork in north-
ern Poland-"beyond the reach of any secular ruler."'5
By definition, the Teutonic Knights were Christian soldiers,
"monks of war" dedicated to poverty, chastity, obedience, and the
spread of Christianity by any means necessary. The Livdndische Reim-
chronik [Livonian rhymed chronicle] (ca. 1290) gives a good sense of
what the fighting was like.'6 The unknown author of this oldest
known history of the order chronicles the military history of the con-
quest of Livonia in the thirteenth century. He makes no pretense of
The Nearest East 183
impartiality: good Christian knights battle evil heathens, who get
what they deserve when they are killed. To be sure, the Christians do
not always win-the author records several devastating defeats suf-
fered by the Teutonic Knights-but in another sense, the Christians
can never really lose: either they convert or kill their foes, or they die
a martyr's death in trying. What strikes the modern reader of this
chronicle is the ferocity of the encounters described: heads are
smashed, prisoners burned alive, and corpses left in piles on the bat-
tlefield. Doubtless the knights believed in the justice of their cause,
but the conflict itself was a bloody and brutal affair fought on unfor-
giving terrain with acts of savagery committed on both sides.
While the Teutonic Knights were busy conquering the native
peoples of Poland and the Baltic, imported German settlers were col-
onizing the newly available territory. Robert Bartlett cites "the set-
tlement of tens of thousands of German urban and rural immigrants
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the so-called Ostsiedlung," as
one of the most significant "migratory movements of the High Mid-
dle Ages" that "has had historical ramifications of the first importance
down to the present."'7 The Teutonic Knights recruited settlers by
offering them land at low rent and freedom from enserfment or cap-
ture. Those who came to the country brought with them new farm-
ing tools and techniques, established dozens of new colonial towns
and hundreds of villages, and expanded trade from Germany to the
entire Baltic area.'s What nineteenth-century Germans would
describe as the spread of civilization to barbaric Eastern lands natu-
rally looked somewhat different from the Slavic perspective, particu-
larly since the Teutonic Knights continued their depredations long
after the Poles had accepted Christianity. In his novel The Teutonic
Knights (1900oo), for instance, the Polish Nobel laureate Henryk
Sienkiewicz portrays the order as a band of ruthless conquistadores
who rape and pillage the Polish countryside. Sienkiewicz is of course
no impartial observer, as he wrote his book at a time of increasingly
harsh Prussian rule, but his novel culminates in a historically accurate
account of the Battle of Tannenberg (known in Poland as the Battle
of Grunwald) in 1410o, in which the Teutonic Order suffered a crush-
ing defeat at the hands of allied Polish and Lithuanian forces. The
184 German Orientalisms
order continued to exist into the sixteenth century, but its power was
broken and the crusading movement essentially ended.
Although the medieval Order of the Teutonic Knights was largely
German, it was not a nationalist organization in the modern sense of
the term. "They were Catholic Christians first and Germans sec-
ond," 9 and the "original purpose was to use Germans to extend
Christendom, not to expand Germany."20 Subsequent generations,
however, gradually appropriated the Teutonic Order into Germany's
national history. The Humanists began the trend by celebrating the
Ordensstaat as Nova Germania, stressing the national identity of the
monks over their religious mission.2' While intellectuals of the
Enlightenment tended to condemn the order and its barbaric cru-
sades, nineteenth-century Prussian patriots viewed it more sympa-
thetically. Johannes Voigt laid the foundation for a positive assess-
ment of the order in his Geschichte Preufi3ens [History of Prussia]
(1827-39), and the Prussian civil servant Theodor von Schon spon-
sored a campaign to rebuild the Marienburg castle as a monument to
Prussian nationalism. Heinrich von Treitschke's Das deutsche Ordens-
land Preuf3en [The Prussian land of the Teutonic Order] (1862) intro-
duces a new belligerence into the discourse, praising the Eastern set-
tlements as a bulwark extending "from the German shore into the
wild sea of the Eastern peoples."22 He celebrates the Germanic con-
quest of the Slavs, whom he denounces as a culturally and racially
inferior people.
Treitschke was to have a lasting impact on German academic Ost-
forschung in the early twentieth century. One of his students occupied
the first German chair for the study of Eastern Europe in 1902, and
over the next several decades supposedly objective German acade-
mics eagerly or opportunistically combined racism with scholarship
in a way that parallels the links between German Indology and the
Third Reich. The latter scholars sought to establish the origins of
German racial superiority, the former propagated notions of Slavic
inferiority, and both were generously funded by the Nazi regime.
Hence, as Michael Burleigh summarizes, "it becomes clear that rela-
tions between the temples of learning and those at the sharp, opera-
tive, edge of the Third Reich were multiple and fluid."23
German prejudice against the "Asiatic" Slavs is already firmly in
The Nearest East 185
place in German accounts of the battle of Tannenberg of 1914, which
was viewed as the long-overdue German revenge for the humiliation
of the Teutonic Knights in 1410. "Eastern peoples, Asiatic and half-
Asiatic swarms of barbarians have plagued the 'West' repeatedly for a
millennium and devastated the land of European culture, but again
and again we have been able to defeat the barbarians."24 These com-
ments appear in a political pamphlet published in the wake of the
1914 battle, which is portrayed as the victory of "diligent German
cultural work" over "half-Asian hordes."25 From here it is a fairly
short step to Adolf Hitler's proclamation in Mein Kampf (1925) that if
"land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by and large only
at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the new Reich must
again set itself on the march along the road of the Teutonic Knights
of old, to obtain by the German sword sod for the German plow and
daily bread for the nation.'126 Heinrich Himmler envisioned the SS as
a reincarnation of the Teutonic Knights, and he oversaw the new
Germanic Lebensraum in the East. Here he pursued a double goal:
propagation of a new, "healthy," and superior Germanic race in the
simple agrarian environment and the enslavement or eradication of
Slavic and Jewish "subhumans."27
The fact that many German ideologues provided active or tacit
support for the murderous policies of the Third Reich does not mean
that German attitudes toward Poland and Eastern Europe were uni-
formly negative in the twentieth century, or that we can draw a
straight line from the late medieval Battle of Tannenberg to its mod-
ern counterpart. As in the case of German Indology, the history of
Germany's relations with the Nearest East contains countercurrents
and complexities obscured by reductive teleologies. In the late eigh-
teenth century, for example, Herder stands out for his fairly generous
assessment of the Slavs and his criticism of their mistreatment by the
Teutonic Knights.28 During the revolutionary era Kosciusko helped
inspire a new, positive image of noble, freedom-loving Poles among
German intellectuals,29 and again in the early 1830s Polish national-
ism became one of the most popular liberal causes in Germany and,
indeed, throughout Europe.
On November 29, 1830, a group of Polish conspirators attacked
Belvedere Castle in Warsaw, touching off what became known as the
186 German Orientalisms
"November uprising" (Novemberaufstand) against Russian rule.3° The
Polish patriots inspired a wave of sympathy among Germans who had
recently supported the Greeks in their war of independence against
the Turks. Dozens of largely forgotten German poets wrote Polen-
lieder in praise of Polish freedom fighters in their struggle against
tyranny and encouraged the Germans and other Europeans to come
to their aid.3' The German writers admired and even envied the
Poles, because they, like the British, French, and Americans, had at
least tried to throw off the yoke of tyranny, whereas the Germans had
not: "Still-alas! Still we have no Fatherland! / Still deep shame red-
dens the German cheek" [Noch-ach! noch haben wir kein Vater-
land! / Noch rothet tiefe Scham des Deutschen Wangen].32 Hence
the Germans seek not only to praise the Poles, but also to emulate
them: "Learn from Sarmatians to be Germans!" [Lernt von den Sar-
maten, Deutsche werden!]33 The Polenlieder were thus expressions of
liberal German nationalism directed against tyranny in general, but
also- at least implicitly-against Prussian rulers who declared their
solidarity with the Russian czars and the reactionary climate of
Restoration Europe. Hence it is not surprising that the Polish flag
was raised at the liberal Hambach festival in May 1832, and that Polen-
lieder were sung at all liberal gatherings of the period.34
In seeking to gain sympathy for the Poles, the poets stress Poland's
ties with the West, repeatedly invoking the memory of the Polish
King John Sobieski, whose troops saved Vienna from the Turks in
1683: "When the wild hordes of the Turks devastated Christianity, /
Sobieski's heroic sword liberated Vienna, the emperor's city."35 If
Poland once saved Christendom from Turkish infidels, should the
West not rally to the defense of a Poland now threatened by Asiatic
Russians? It was in these terms that August Graf von Platen couched
his "Aufruf an die Deutschen" [Appeal to the Germans] of Decem-
ber II, 1830.
Aus Europa muB hinaus
Jeder absolute Graus!
Moskowiten oder Tiirken
Wollen uns entgegenwirken?
Kehrt nach Osten eure Thaten, Asiaten!
The Nearest East 187
[Each absolute horror / must leave Europe! / Muscovites or
Turks / want to oppose us? / Turn your deeds toward the East,
Asiatics!]36
Almost a decade earlier the young Heinrich Heine had written that
Poland had been subjected to both Eastern "barbarism" from Russia
and overly refined Western civilization from France, resulting in
"those strange mixtures of culture and barbarism in the character and
family life of the Poles."37 While Heine criticizes many aspects of
Polish society, he shares the Polish aristocrats' enthusiasm for liberal
Western ideas and commends their patriotism, and hence he strikes
chords that would be echoed more forcefully in the Polenlieder. How-
ever, Heine's praise of Polish women as flowers on the banks of the
Ganges should be understood less as a serious comment about the
"Asiatic" nature of the Poles than as a self-conscious use of what had
become a Romantic cliche. On several occasions in his early work
Heine makes shorthand reference to India as the land of poetry, but
he also signals his awareness that the image has grown rather tired
since the days of Novalis.
Der Ganges rauscht, der grol3e Ganges schwillt,
Der Himalaja strahlt im Abendscheine,
Und aus der Nacht der Banianenhaine
Die Elefantenherde stiirzt und briillt -
Ein Bild! Ein Bild! Mein Pferd flirn gutes Bild!
Womit ich dich vergleiche ...
[The Ganges rushes, the Ganges swells, / the Himalayas glow in
the evening sun, / and from the night of the banyan groves / the
herd of elephants falls and trumpets- / An image! An image! My
horse for a good image! / that I could compare with you . . . ]38
Just as Heine was unwilling to recycle worn imagery without irony
in his youth, he was also reluctant to commit himself unambiguously
to revolutionary causes in later years. For all his antipathy toward aris-
tocratic abuses of power, Heine preferred to maintain his distance
from the unwashed proletarian masses in a way that differed from that
188 German Orientalisms
of his friend Karl Marx.39 A similar negativity informs his viciously
satirical reprise on the Polenlieder in the poem "Zwei Ritter" [Two
knights] (originally "Zwei Polen" [Two Poles]) included in the late
Romauzero (i85i). Here Heine portrays two "Poles from Polockia"
[Polen aus der Polackei] as dirty, drunk, and probably homosexual.
Heine's nasty bit of homophobia places him in a bad light in this par-
ticular case, although he may well be responding less to the exiled
Poles themselves than to the volumes of heartfelt drivel that had been
penned in their name.
EICHENDORFF'S CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
In his preface to the critical edition of Eichendorff's works published
in 1921, Wilhelm Kosch proclaimed Eichendorff "not only the most
popular, but also the most German of all German poets [der deutscheste
aller deutschen Dichter]."4° The widespread belief in Eichendorff's sta-
tus as a "typically German" writer was based on a highly selective
reading of his works that focused primarily on his lyric poetry and the
novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts [From the life of a good-for-
nothing] (1826). Eichendorff's happy-go-lucky picaro won the hearts
of his readers from the outset and has remained popular ever since;
between 185o and 1925 alone there were one hundred reprints and
new editions of the work. The Taugenicht's heartfelt piety, unaf-
fected simplicity, and cheerful willingness to proclaim "alles, alles
gut!" seemed to many, including Thomas Mann, "exemplarisch
deutsch."4"1 Eichendorff's poetry, which was inspired in form and
tone by the Volkslieder collected in Arnim and Brentano's Des Knaben
Wunderhorn [The boy's magic horn] (18o6), bridged the gap between
"Kunst- und Naturpoesie" and thus struck a tone that seemed in har-
mony with the vibrations of the German soul.42 Composers such as
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Robert Schumann increased
Eichendorff's popularity by setting his poems to music, and the songs
were often sung on class trips and in amateur choirs.43 Many of the
poems evoke moods of melancholy loneliness and sentimental yearn-
ing for adventure that no doubt moistened many a slightly beery eye.
Eichendorff's postwar critical reception differs dramatically from
his prewar popular appeal. As it turns out, Eichendorff was hardly the
The Nearest East 189
sort of sentimental simpleton he portrays in his most popular novella.
His first novel, Ahnung und Gegenwart [Presentiment and presence]
(i815), for example, begins in a stereotypically "Romantic" world,
but becomes increasingly involved with contemporary events at the
time of the Napoleonic Wars. The novella Das Schloj3 Dihrande [The
Castle Durande] (1836) also deals directly with the French Revolu-
tion and indirectly with the July Revolution of 1830.44 rViel Ldrmen
um Nichts [Much ado about nothing] (1832) ridicules the contempo-
rary literary scene, while other prose works comment dyspeptically
on liberal political movements. In addition to his prose fiction and
poetry, Eichendorff wrote political essays, literary histories, and the-
ological tracts. Obviously, then, Eichendorff was a multifaceted,
politically engaged writer. But was he "typically German"? Who did
Eichendorff think he was?
Joseph Karl Benedikt Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857) was a
Catholic aristocrat from Silesia who could trace his family roots back
to the eleventh century.45 He and his brother grew up surrounded by
the privileges of their social class and for many years tried to live in a
style befitting their social rank. Unfortunately, however, Eichen-
dorffs family experienced such serious financial difficulties that his
father had to leave town to escape his creditors. Over the next several
decades the bankrupt family was forced to sell one estate after the
next. As a result, Eichendorff had to work for a living in the Prussian
bureaucracy. Confounding the Romantic cliche of the creative
writer imprisoned in a dreary office, Eichendorffmanaged to be quite
productive in his dual role as Romantic poet and Prussian civil ser-
vant, a symbiosis that was actually encouraged by his superiors.46
Increasingly, however, Eichendorffs conservative political philoso-
phy was at odds with the centralized bureaucracy of the Prussian
state. As a Catholic member of the landed Silesian nobility working
in a government dominated by Prussian Protestants, Eichendorff was
a fish out of water, a walking contradiction in terms, and he finally
sought early retirement to begin a second career as an antimodern
Catholic polemicist in an era of secular humanism and revolutionary
change.
But was Eichendorff German? Or, in what sense would he have
understood the term? The immediate answer would be yes, of
190 German Orientalisms
course: Eichendorff enlisted in the legendary Liltzowischer Freikorps
at considerable personal and professional cost, and the "Wars of Lib-
eration" against Napoleon remained of decisive importance in deter-
mining his worldview. GrafFriedrich, the hero of Ahnung und Gegen-
wart, develops from his early impulse to turn away from the world
and devote himself to poetry to become a young patriot who anoints
himself in the Rhine before setting off to fight for the Fatherland. Yet
Eichendorff s loyalty to the German nation did not necessarily trans-
late into enthusiasm for the Prussian state. As his biographer Ginter
Schiwy puts it, "The Eichendorffs did not feel Prussian, but, rather,
Silesian and also Austro-German."47 Eichendorff's deep Silesian roots
actually strengthened the impression among later readers that he was
"typically German" in a nation composed of multiple provincial
identities.48 Hence in 1930 Herbert Cysarz would hail Eichendorff's
combination of "loyalty to the homeland and impulse to all of Ger-
many" [Heimattreue und Drang zum ganzen Deutschland] and pro-
claim that whatever rose up "from the native soil of Silesia" would
serve as a genuine testimony to the entire German spirit.49
Despite Cysarz's volkisch confidence in the Germanic purity of the
soil, Silesia was actually more of a multilingual border zone between
Prussia to the north and Austria to the south, and between the Ger-
man-speaking lands to the west and the Czech and Slavic territories
of the east,s5° much as it had been at the time of Gryphius and Lohen-
stein. Like many residents of the area, Eichendorff grew up speaking
Polish as well as German, and he also lived and worked for years in
the bilingual city of Danzig. Eichendorffs German patriotism does
not seem to have been based on linguistic chauvinism. Inspired by
Gorres's and Arnim's efforts to renew Germany's sense of national
identity from its popular roots, Eichendorff collected Silesian myths
and fairy tales drawn primarily from Polish sources.5' Later in Danzig,
Eichendorff insisted that the Prussian government should not be
overly concerned about Polish-speaking residents in its territory,
arguing that they could be just as patriotic as the Germans.52
Eichendorff's linguistic tolerance for Polish-speaking Prussian sub-
jects did not translate into sympathy for the Polish nation itself, how-
ever, and in this he stands in deliberate opposition to his liberal con-
temporaries, who responded warmly to both the July Revolution in
The Nearest East 19 1
Paris and the Polish uprising in Warsaw. Eichendorff vented his
spleen in a fierce satire of the Hambach festival titled "Auch ich war
in Arkadien" [I, too, was in Arcadia].53 Eichendorff sends an alter ego
off to the festival, who seems puzzled by much of what he observes:
"I found the Germans French, the French German, and both had
become a little Polish; at least each demands the liberum veto for them-
selves and wants to set up a big Polish parliament in Europe. I admit
that I'm not very familiar with either French or Polish, and I stood
there quite stunned in my old German coat."54 As fate would have it,
Eichendorff's historical drama about the Teutonic Knights, Der letzte
Held von Marienburg [The last hero of Marienburg] (1830o), had had its
premiere in Konigsberg in February 183 1, just three months after the
Warsaw uprising and at the height of liberal German enthusiasm for
Poland. Perhaps for this reason, the performance was not a success,
although according to one observer, the play suffered from poor edit-
ing and worse acting.55 Eichendorff felt strongly about his drama,
however, and sent a copy to Goethe in hopes of receiving at least his
approval. Unfortunately for Eichendorff, the book was discovered
years later still sealed among the toys of Goethe's grandchild.
Whether Goethe avoided the drama because he suspected its nation-
alist tendencies or whether he simply could not be bothered with yet
another unsolicited contribution to his library is difficult to know,
but the rejection must have contributed to Eichendorff's sense of
having been born too late, out of step with the spirit of the age.56
Eichendorff's antimodern tendencies emerge clearly in Der letzte
Held von Marienburg. The drama begins with the defeat of the Teu-
tonic Knights at Tannenberg. Heinrich von Plauen leads a retreat of
the forces into the castle at Marienburg and orders the surrounding
town to be burned to prevent it from providing shelter for the Polish
army. He wants to lead a counterattack, but his men refuse and even-
tually depose him. Plauen retires and dies just as the Poles are storm-
ing Marienburg, but his ghost appears on the ramparts of the castle
and drives back the astonished Poles. On the surface, Eichendorff's
drama is a piece of anti-Polish Prussian propaganda.57 While German
liberals celebrated the Poles as the defenders of Western civilization
against the Turks, Eichendorff stresses the continuity of the European
Crusades against both the Muslim infidels of the Holy Lands and the
192 German Orientalisms
heathen Poles of Eastern Europe. Hence when one of Plauen's men
wishes he were back beneath the palms in the magic gardens of the
Holy Land, Plauen reminds him that although the scenery has
changed, their crusading mission has not; the men should maintain
discipline "as if we were still on the battlefield among Saracens."S8
The Poles appear as a faceless horde, a raging flood of northern
infidels who must be defeated at any cost. Despite Plauen's efforts,
however, the defensive shield breaks down, forcing the knights to
take arms against a sea of Poles: "Wake up! The Christian bulwark is
broken / The blind flood rushes from the East, wake up! [Von Osten
braust die blinde Flut, wach't auf!]" (4:417).
The order would never have succumbed to the Poles, in Eichen-
dorffs view, if they had not already defeated themselves.59 Lax disci-
pline, moral turpitude, and lack of faith have so vitiated the order that
Plauen feels it is hardly worth the effort to rally the troops. In this
context we can consider the role of Rominta, a woman who first
appears in the garb of a Polish knight on the battlefield. She seeks
revenge, for Germans have killed her father and burned his castle;
while the Poles celebrate, she realizes that there are still Germans to
fight and seeks final victory in Marienburg. The Teutonic Knight
Georg von Wirsberg encounters her and is both astonished and cap-
tivated by the disguised woman. He later sneaks behind enemy lines
in a Polish overcoat and agrees to her demand that he overthrow
Plauen in order to win her love. The plot never gets very far: he sets
up an ambush, but Plauen foils the plot and has Wirsberg arrested as
a traitor. Rominta, for her part, has an abrupt change of heart and falls
in love with Plauen. She successfully warns him of Wirsberg's
renewed plans for an assassination, but a deeply disturbed Wirsberg
kills her and then casts himself over the parapets to his death.
Rominta fulfills a double function in Eichendorff's drama both as
the embodiment of the Polish enemy and as a catalyst that reveals the
inner corruption of the Teutonic Order. She takes her place in a long
line of female characters in Eichendorffs work who tempt men to
forget their Christian virtue, perhaps most memorably in the seduc-
tive statue of Venus that comes to life in Das Mamorbild [The marble
image] (1819). Ahnung und Gegenwart begins with an episode that
begs to be read as an allegory of the conflicting forces that beset men's
The Nearest East 193
souls: Graf Friedrich sails on the ship of life down the Danube and
looks up to the cross placed high on the cliffs above the river, until a
pretty girl in a passing ship catches his eye: "He shuddered. For it was
as if her glances suddenly revealed a new world of blossoming, mirac-
ulous splendor, ancient memories, and unknown desires in his heart"
(2:58). At first glance the chance encounter would seem to set the
tone for a mildly erotic Romantic novel, and, indeed, the opening
chapters of Ahnung und Gegenwart are full of strikingly handsome
heroes and extraordinarily beautiful heroines who always seem to be
falling out of their loose-fitting clothing as they exchange passionate
kisses. In retrospect, even Eichendorff agreed with the charge "that
sensuality sometimes looks out all too boldly from various passages of
my novel" (2:629). Yet the novel censors itself in a way that is quite
different in spirit from the cheerful, life-affirming eroticism in works
by Wieland, Goethe, and Novalis. For Eichendorff, as Egon Schwarz
puts it, "the eternal feminine draws us downward" [Das Ewig-Weib-
liche zieht uns hinab].6o Graf Friedrich resists all temptation and
sternly rebukes those less abstemious than himself. As a result, Ahnung
und Gegenwart exudes an uncomfortable combination of prurience
and prudishness.
Worst of all, from Eichendorff's perspective, are women who for-
get their "natural" gender roles and usurp the masculine monopoly on
genius. Hence he condemns the figure of Romane in Ahnung und
Gegenwart for her "mad genius that has blundered into the masculine"
(2:115) and much later writes a bitter diatribe against "Die deutsche
Salon-Poesie der Frauen" [The German salon-poetry of women]
(1847).61 The cross-dressing warrior Rominta in Der letzte Held von
Marienburg links the threat of gender confusion to the hordes of
infidels pouring into German lands from the East. Eichendorffs
Christian soldiers should steel themselves against the Polish floods, but
Wirsberg succumbs instead to the lure of the feminine. She takes up
arms in the understandable desire to avenge her father and stops fight-
ing as soon as she catches sight of Plauen, whereas he betrays both his
calling as a celibate monk and his service to the German cause.
Plauen hopes briefly for an influx of young pious knights from the
West, but decides just before he dies that the order's work is already
complete: "So let the order collapse / The cross that it planted in the
194 German Orientalisms
North will remain standing" (4:5o8). Plauen envisions himself at the
head of an army of resurrected Teutonic Knights marching toward
the Rhine beneath an iron cross: "A shudder goes through the Prus-
sian people / And once again they remember the great age" (4:509).
Although Plauen's contemporaries have failed, their predecessors tri-
umphed in bringing Christianity to the region, and Eichendorff calls
on the memory of this accomplishment to inspire his contemporary
Prussians to reclaim their former greatness and resist further threats
from the East.
Despite Eichendorff's patriotic appeal to the Prussian people at the
end of Der letzte Held von Marienburg, his critique of the order serves
as an implicit critique of modern Prussian society as well. The tension
between Eichendorff's appointed task as a Prussian propagandist and
his personal convictions as a conservative Catholic also emerges
between the lines of his essay on "Die Wiederherstellung des
Schlosses der deutschen Ordensritter zu Marienburg" [The restora-
tion of the castle of the Teutonic Knights in Marienburg] (1844).62 As
one might expect, Prussian patriotism stands front and center in the
commissioned essay. Eichendorff begins with an idealized image of
the Teutonic Knights as men of the noblest families throughout Ger-
many and imagines a poignant moment in which one of these knights
sat "alone on a stone bench at a window, looking to the west across
the broad fields, and raised a glass in honor of the distant home-
land."63 Having fought what Eichendorff elsewhere terms "an ideal
battle against the Asiatic infidels for the liberation ofJerusalem,"64 the
Teutonic Knights conquer new lands for Germany in eastern Europe.
The order eventually succumbs to the devious machinations of the
Polish King Jagiello and his "hordes drunk
with victory"
[siegestrunkenen Horden] (5:721), but the Poles prove incapable of
maintaining the land they have conquered, and their "Polish
(mis)management" [polnische Wirtschaft] (5:726) soon brings the
region to complete anarchy. Hence the Poles have only themselves to
blame for the partitions of the late eighteenth century. The restora-
tion project promises to bring Prussian order back to a building and a
region ruined by Polish slovenliness, and to rekindle Prussian great-
ness by cultivating the past: "People recognized that there can be no
progress that is not rooted in the past" (5:759). Eichendorff concludes
The Nearest East 195
his essay in praise of King Wilhelm IV of Prussia for sponsoring the
project that has blown a fresh breeze of "of German character and
spirit" into the old halls and thus reunited in brotherhood "the Prus-
sians on the front lines with their compatriots in the West" (5:804).
At first glance it might seem odd that the author of this patriotic
tract had twice requested early retirement from the Prussian civil ser-
vice when the tract appeared in February 1844, and that he did soon
retire effective July I of the same year. We find traces of Eichen-
dorff's dissatisfaction with the current Prussian regime displaced into
his critique of what he derisively terms "the age of powdered wigs
[Zopfzeit]" (the eighteenth century) in his essay. East and West Prus-
sia were finally reunited under Frederick the Great, but the castle
itself suffered in "a thoroughly prosaic and miserable . . . time of drab
utility" (5:755). In criticizing "that Philistine system of utility . . . that
thwarts all genius that does not apply itself immediately to the rattling
cogs of the state's machinery" (5:750), Eichendorff echoes his distinc-
tion between the mechanistic French state and organic German soci-
ety in his essay "Uber die Folgen der Aufhebung der Bischofe und
Kloster" [On the consequences of the dissolution of the bishoprics
and cloisters] (i819). Here Eichendorff regrets the loss of Germany's
many small states and argues that German unity is better served
through a loose federation of semiautonomous regions under moder-
ate aristocrats than through the constitutional "tyranny" of a central-
ized government. As Eichendorff puts it, "monotony" [Einerleiheit]
is not "unity" [Einheit] (5:488).
Eichendorff's essay "Uber die Folgen" functioned as his entrance
examination to the Prussian bureaucracy, while the "Wiederherstel-
lung" essay ended his career. By this time it had become clear that
Prussia was becoming just the sort of centralized bureaucratic state
that Eichendorff detested, and he devoted his retirement years to a
series of often bitter indictments of a godless age. If certain aspects of
his work seem unappealing today, it is not so much because of his
conservative convictions, but because of his self-righteous finger-
wagging and lack of generosity. Eichendorff was an often humorless
writer who not only was sure that he was right but also felt compelled
to tell everyone else that they were wrong. What continues to make
Eichendorff interesting today is the fact that he knew he was on the
196 German Orientalisms
losing side of history and incorporated this awareness into his better
literary works. As Adorno put it, Eichendorff's "superiority to all the
reactionaries who are claiming him today is shown by the fact that
like the great philosophy of his time he understood the necessity of
the revolution he was terrified of: he embodies something of the crit-
ical truth of the consciousness of those who have to pay the price for
the advance of the Weltgeist."65 Ahnung und Gegenwart moves from a
Romantic idyll to social satire and political engagement, but ends on
an oddly discordant note, as the isolated hero clings to his faith as the
only certainty in a world in which the old social order has been irrev-
ocably destroyed, and in which the future holds only vague threats of
the coming apocalypse: "everything points as if with a bloody finger
in warning of a great, inevitable catastrophe" (2:38 I). Heinrich von
Plauen closes his eyes in the hope of future redemption, but with the
certainty that the current Teutonic Order is thoroughly corrupt. Das
Schloj3 Diirande, finally, divides French society of the revolutionary
era into moribund aristocrats and revolting masses, and ends not with
a promise of better times to come but with a renewed warning of
impending disaster: "But you be careful not to awaken the wild ani-
mal in your breast, so that it does not suddenly break out and tear you
to pieces" (3:465). The constant threat of the irruption of the irra-
tional into Eichendorff's world suspends his work between the mod-
ern and the Baroque: his heroes keep their eyes on the Cross while
condemning the world, but remain anxiously aware that they are in
the grasp of forces beyond their control.
AT HOME ON THE BORDER: HEIMAT,
NATION, AND EMPIRE IN FREYTAG'S
POETIC REALISM
Two years before Eichendorff's death Gustav Freytag (1816-95) pub-
lished his first novel, Soll und Haben [Debit and credit] (i855). In
some ways, it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast
between two writers. Eichendorff spent his career as a reluctant
Prussian civil servant and a very late Romantic writer who looked
back to the idyllic world of his childhood, the simplicity of the folk
The Nearest East 197
song, and an idealized image of the Christian Middle Ages. Although
he was only a generation younger, Freytag seems to come from an
entirely different world. He directed his energies toward the future,
with boundless faith in the rising middle class, an enthusiastic devo-
tion to the German nation under Prussian leadership, and a convic-
tion that it was Germany's manifest destiny to extend its powers in
Europe and throughout the world.66 Despite these obvious differ-
ences, both Freytag and Eichendorff were extremely popular writers
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Freytag, no less
than Eichendorff, was considered "typically German." A success
from the time it was published, Soll und Haben went on to become
one of the best-selling German novels of all time.6v Freytag served his
country as a professor, politician, and writer, and he received official
recognition as well as popular acclaim for his dedication to the Ger-
man cause. His portrait was hung in the National Gallery in Berlin,
and the Friedrich Wilhelm University also awarded him an honorary
doctorate.68 On that occasion Freytag's old friend Heinrich von
Treitschke proclaimed that future generations of Germans would not
only learn from his works what it was like to be alive in the nine-
teenth century but would also understand "why in our days it was a
joy and a matter of pride to be a German professor."''69
In his later years Freytag seems to have accepted his role as a rep-
resentative German. Unlike Rousseau, who begins the tradition of
modern autobiography by proclaiming that while he may not be bet-
ter than anyone else, he is certainly different, Freytag begins his own
Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben [Memories of my life] (1887) by admit-
ting that although he may not be interesting, he is certainly typical:
"If I win the reader's sympathy, it will be precisely because the broad
outlines of my life and education look very similar to those of thou-
sands of my contemporaries."7' Freytag goes on to claim that he
owed his good fortune to the fact that he was "born a Prussian, a
Protestant, and a Silesian not far from the Polish border" (1:4). As a
Prussian, Freytag claims that he learned to subordinate his personal
desires to the fatherland as if by second nature; as a Protestant, he
could devote himself to his studies with an open mind; and "as a child
of the border I learned from an early age to love my German charac-
198 German Orientalisms
ter in opposition to foreign peoples" (1:4). Far from calling his iden-
tity into question, Freytag insists that living on the margins strength-
ened his sense of being German to the core.
The protagonist of Soll und Haben reflects Freytag's own sense of
being a typical German from the Silesian frontier. The novel is one
of the few nineteenth-century German works that actually fits into
the paradigm of the Bildungsroman as it is commonly understood. In
Hegel's frequently cited words, the young man introduced in this
sort of novel struggles against the world at first but eventually comes
to accept it as it is: "in the end he usually gets his girl after all and
some sort ofjob, gets married, and becomes a Philistine like everyone
else."7' What Hegel describes sarcastically takes place without a hint
of irony in Freytag's novel: we first encounter Anton Wohlfart as a
nearly penniless orphan on his way to begin work as a lowly scribe in
a large storage and shipping company; we leave him hundreds of
pages later as a full business partner in the firm who is about to marry
the owner's sister.72 Freytag portrays his hero as a pleasant but unre-
markable young man whose Horatio Alger tale of individual success
is a parable for the rise of the middle class and a celebration of its
devotion to work, the family, and the German nation.73
Like Freytag, Wohlfart grows up on the Polish-German frontier
before coming to work in Breslau, and subsequent journeys into Pol-
ish territory only strengthen his sense of self: "Only when you are
abroad do you learn to enjoy your local dialect; only in a foreign
country do you realize what the Fatherland is" (5:20). What Anton
describes as utterly foreign is in fact a border zone, where German
settlements alternate with Polish estates. Yet the German colonists
make no effort to assimilate aspects of Polish culture; in fact, they
anxiously seek to preserve the purity of their national traditions while
"abroad." Hence Anton is overjoyed to encounter one of these Ger-
man families on Polish soil: "Hurray! Here is a housewife, here is the
Fatherland, here are Germans" (5:25). As Wohlfart's friend Fink slyly
suggests, however, Anton may not so much be discovering his ethnic
purity as he is repressing his sense of cultural hybridity. Hence Fink
teases Anton about his origins when he introduces him to an aristo-
crat in Breslau: "My friend, proud lady, is half Slavic . . . although he
protests passionately when people doubt his German heritage"
The Nearest East 199
(4:183). While Freytag never seriously suggests that Wohlfart has Pol-
ish ancestors, Anton's vehement reaction suggests that the Poles func-
tion not only as an external enemy to the German way of life, but
also as an internal threat to his sense of self: the Poles are both that
which he is not and that which he fears he might become.
The sense of representative individuality that informs both Frey-
tag's autobiography and Soll und Haben recurs in monumental form in
Die Ahnen [The ancestors] (1872-80). This six-volume historical
novel follows successive generations of an extended German family
from the Roman occupation of the fourth century to the Revolution
of 1848. Although Freytag admitted that the final volume contained
autobiographical elements, he emphatically denied that he had
invented a flattering family history that extended his personal roots
back to the dawn of German history.74 The novel does not set out to
glorify a particular individual, but to subordinate the individual to the
history of the German people. Die Ahnen can in fact be read as a mas-
sive Bildungsroman whose subject is the entire German Volk as it
develops over more than a millennium: "The chain of ancestors that
bound each to the past became longer, the greater his inheritance that
he received from ancient times, and stronger lights and shadows fell
from the deeds of his predecessors into his life" (8:400). Freytag
echoes Herder's concept of the nation as an organic community that
develops over time, but he also begins to move toward the Social
Darwinism and biological racism of the later nineteenth century.
Who knows who lives within me, wonders the protagonist of the
final volume: "maybe I am a piece of the man who was once blessed
at this very spot by the Reformer [Luther], and maybe it was I in
another form who camped on this mountain, long before the noble
fortress was built" (13:311). This character sees himself as part of what
a later generation will call the "racial community" of the German
Volk, whose scattered voices join together "until it will burst out irre-
sistibly after centuries as the battle hymn of a victorious nation"
(I12:35).
In order to win victories, a nation needs enemies, and the Germans
portrayed in Die Ahnen take the field against foes ranging from Cae-
sar to Napoleon. The most consistent opponents of the Germans,
however, lie to the East. The hero of the first volume is a Germanic
200 German Orientalisms
Vandal who heads West into Germany as part of the Volkerwanderun-
gen. He is also the last good thing to come from the East in this novel.
Already in A.D. 724 the Germans from Thiiringen struggle against the
Wends or Sorbs, described as "a mighty people of the East [Ostvolk],
but horrible arsonists" (8:213). "These dirty dwarfs are full of tricks"
(8:284) sputters one character when he discovers that the Sorbs have
cheated in a drinking contest. In the third novel of the series, Die
Brhder vom deutschen Hause [The Teutonic Knights], the latest incar-
nation of German manhood participates in a Crusade to the Holy
Lands before joining the Teutonic Knights in their battle against the
infidels of Eastern Europe. Once Vandals and Burgundians had
streamed into Germany from the East; "now the strength of the Ger-
man people flowed back in much smaller waves from the West to the
East" (o10:324). The Teutonic Knights set up a city on the border that
they dedicate to the memory of their origins outside Acre in the Holy
Lands, stressing the continuity of their efforts in both the Middle East
and Eastern Europe. They dig protective moats, raise walls, and build
a city, and thus "new miles of the territory were torn away from the
heathens and settled by Germans" (o10:327). The fate of the German
territories ebbs and flows over the course of the centuries, but the
Germans are consistently described as a bulwark of upright settlers
against an encroaching flood of Slavic disorder and treachery.
The centuries-old conflict between Germans and Slavs recurs in
contemporary form in Soll und Haben, where Freytag presents the
Poles as an "Oriental" presence within Europe. When Anton crosses
into Polish territory to retrieve his firm's goods from Polish insur-
gents, it is as though he has crossed the border into Asia. He finds
himself within a huge, dilapidated courtyard "of the sort that you
often find in the inns of Eastern Europe that lie on large trade routes,
and which-like the caravansaries of the Orient-are to give neces-
sary protection to large wagon transports and a quickly gathering
crowd of people" (4:412-I13). Anton later agrees to oversee the man-
agement of a Polish estate purchased by the German aristocrat Baron
von Rothsattel. He arrives to find it in pitiably decrepit condition,
but with hints of its former pretensions: "The castle was set up for a
wild Asiatic residence . . . for a proud lord, for numerous guests, and
for a swarm of indentured servants who were supposed to fill the halls
The Nearest East 201
and antechambers" (5:I2). Instead he finds chipped paint, shattered
glass, leaking roofs, and overgrown gardens. Although Anton man-
ages to clean things up somewhat, Fink still finds the situation amus-
ing when he arrives unexpectedly a little while later: "Have a seat for
an hour next to me, like in the old days, Anton Wohlfart, baronial
bursar in a Slavic Sahara. Listen, you are in such a bizarre situation
that my hair is still standing on end in astonishment" (5:I60).
More ominous than Freytag's persistent denigration of the Poles in
Soll und Haben is his seemingly uncritical use of the most vicious anti-
Semitic stereotypes. Critics sympathetic to Freytag have argued that
he was not an anti-Semite, that he did not intend to denigrate Jews
in his novel, and that he may even have been embarrassed by these
characters in later years; the fact that there are almost no Jews in Die
Ahnen may point in this direction.75 Whatever Freytag's beliefs or
intentions might have been, it is difficult to read Soll und Haben today
as anything but an anti-Semitic novel, and its immense popularity in
the prewar years almost certainly reinforced popular prejudice against
the Jews.76 Simply put, all Jews portrayed in Soll und Haben-with
one possible exception-are bad, although some are worse than oth-
ers, and all are associated with the East. When he first meets Veitel
Itzig, a poor Jewish boy from the provinces, the obsequious and
unscrupulous Jewish businessman Hirsch Ehrenthal regards him with
disdain: "he was all majesty, vanity, despotism; no Asiatic emperor
can look down so proudly at the creature before his feet" (4:48). In
time, the thoroughly evil Itzig outsmarts and ruins his erstwhile men-
tor before committing murder and then suicide. Itzig lives at the
"Caravanserei" (4:1 16) of Loebel Pinkus, an inn where Jews of dubi-
ous reputation can stay without questions asked. Itzig, whose heavily
accented German has a "hint of the East" [ein ostlicher Hauch]
(4:118), soon discovers that Pinkus has an illegal business smuggling
defective goods "to the East. . . up to the Russian empire, up to the
border of Asia" (4:I20). Schmeie Tinkeles, an Eastern European Jew
who speaks barely comprehensible German, creeps (schleicht) rather
than walks, and knows more than is good for him about Itzig's
crimes, eventually slips out of town and heads for the Turkish border.
In a cast of Jews that ranges from the devious to the criminal,
Hirsch Ehrenthal's son Bernhard stands out as merely pathetic. He
202 German Orientalisms
does what he can to mend his father's evil ways, and an initially skep-
tical Anton befriends him, if in a rather condescending manner.
Bernhard is a sickly bookworm who spends most of his time in his
room. On one occasion, however, he accompanies his father to the
Rothsattel estate. Here he meets Lenore, the aristocratic beauty who
also attracts Anton for much of the novel. While Bernhard converses
shyly with her, a little girl falls into a pond on the estate and threat-
ens to drown. Bernhard tries feebly to rescue the child but is unable
to swim, so Lenore strips off her dress and plunges into the water.
When she emerges with the child, her wet undergarments cling to
her body, leaving little to the imagination. Chilled by the water, yet
feverish with desire, Bernhard falls ill and spends the rest of his short
life fantasizing about Lenore's half-revealed charms. While Freytag
allows his Christian German protagonists to pair off happily with
fiancees from appropriate social classes, he denies marriage to Bern-
hard and the rest of the younger generation of Jews, including most
cruelly Ehrenthal's daughter Rosalie, who is about to marry Itzig
when she receives news of his impending arrest and eventual suicide.
Before his fateful encounter with Lenore, Bernhard spends most of
his time reading Oriental literature in his room. As he explains to
Anton, the study of Hebrew has led him to learn other Asian lan-
guages. He proudly shows Anton one of his Arabic manuscripts and
reads aloud his translation of a Persian love poem. Like the good
Romantic that he is, Bernhard is sure that languages reveal "the peo-
ple's souls" [die Seelen der Volker] (4:282) and-with an implicit
nod toward Goethe's Divan-claims that his favorite poet is Firdusi.
His literary taste not only underscores his Jewish identity but also
points to the widespread enthusiasm for Oriental literature and fash-
ions during the Biedermeier period.77 Hence Anton's polite critique
of Bernhard's taste functions as a realist manifesto within the novel.
Anton disagrees vigorously with Bernhard's contention that everyday
life in modern Germany is cold and prosaic. "I have read that a few
times already in books, but I cannot understand why, and I don't
believe it at all. I think that if someone is dissatisfied with our life, he
will be even more dissatisfied with life in Teheran or Calcutta if he
lives there for an extended period" (4:273). The business world is not
at all dull, he continues: "the businessman experiences just as much
The Nearest East 203
grandeur, sensations, and action here as any horseman among the
Arabs or Indians" (4:274-75). Daily contact with the goods of inter-
national commerce provides Anton with a vicarious exoticism that he
finds every bit as satisfying as travel to distant parts of the globe:
"When I set a sack of coffee on the scales, I tie an invisible thread
between the colonial daughter in Brazil who picked the beans and
the young farm hand who drinks coffee at breakfast, and when I take
a stick of cinnamon in my hand, I see on the one side the crouching
Malay who prepares and packs it, and on the other a little old woman
in our suburbs who crumbles it over her cream of rice" (4:274).
Hence Anton thrills to the "Poesie des Geschiftes" (poetry of busi-
ness) (4:377) and politely but firmly rejects Bernhard's Oriental stud-
ies as Romantic escapism.
The exchange between Anton and Bernhard opens the broader
question of the relation between the provincial, the national, and the
international in Freytag's work. In the first instance, characters are
loyal to the local Heimat, which can be quite narrowly defined. After
his parents die and he leaves his native village, Anton identifies his
new family and home as the firm ofT. O. Schroter: "I am an orphan
and now have no other home than this house and this business"
(4:358). In Die Ahnen characters such as Hermann von Salza express a
similar loyalty to the province of Thiiringen: "For it lies in the cen-
ter like a heartland, and the greatest strength is gathered here; this I
can certainly say in praise of my homeland" (10:137). Local patriotism
does not preclude loyalty to the greater German nation, however;
indeed, as Lynne Tatlock has argued, one's sense of being part of the
German Heimat emerges directly out of one's regional identity in Die
Ahnen.78 Hence Hermann von Salza proudly proclaims that he stands
"as a Thuringian, and as the master of a brotherhood that calls itself
'from the German house' [Teutonic Knights]" (10:137). Anton
Wohlfart also feels part of a larger German nation, as captured nicely
when Schroter welcomes him with a glass of the national beverage
upon his return from a protracted stay in Poland: "The Rhine wine
also expects you to pay it homage after many a heavy Polish drink
... Welcome to the Heimat!" (4:492).
The relationship in Soll und Haben between national identity,
global commerce, and Germany's imperial ambitions proves more
204 German Orientalisms
complicated. As the conversation with Bernhard reveals, Anton takes
a vicarious delight in the way in which international commerce
establishes ties between distant peoples. Global trade has in fact cap-
tured his imagination since childhood. Each Christmas the Schroter
firm sent his father a package full of such exotic goods as sugar and
tobacco: "It was not the pounds of sugar and Cuban tobacco, it was
the poetry of this cozy connection to a completely foreign human life
that made him so happy" (4:8). Anton's first visit to the Schroter
warehouse rekindles this sense of childhood wonder: "Almost all
lands of the earth, all human races had worked and gathered here to
tower up useful and valuable things before the eyes of our hero ..
This delight in the foreign world, into which he had entered so
safely, did not leave him from this time on" (4:68, 70). Anton's obser-
vation of these products of empire grants him risk-free narcissistic
pleasure: people all over the world have toiled so that he can enjoy
looking at their products in the safety of the Schroter warehouse.
While Anton sinks his roots ever more deeply into the firm and his
native soil, his friend Fink has little sense of belonging to a particular
place or nation: "I don't really know where my home is" (4:314). In
many ways Fink is the most appealing character in the novel; his
irreverence and exuberance provide a welcome contrast to Anton's
tediously good behavior and sense of moral purpose. Fink is the son
of the co-owner of a large international firm based in Hamburg. Sent
by his father to a millonaire uncle in New York when he was four-
teen, Fink ran away, sailed around the world, and ended up in Val-
paraiso, Chile. While the polymath Bernhard has somewhat implau-
sibly mastered several Native American languages in his bedroom,
Fink has actually spent time around the Indian campfires and can
mimic their songs. Fink views his temporary apprenticeship at the
Schroter firm as a lark that he can leave at will, and does. Although
Anton takes pride in the fact that the company deals in "colonial
goods" [Colonialwaaren] (4:74), he firmly rejects Fink's repeated
offers to join him in world travel: "My good father often told me to
stay home and support yourself honestly. I will live in accordance
with his words" (4:3 58). In contrast to this German Antaeus, Fink's
peripatetic globetrotting resembles the circulation of international
goods and capital necessary to fill the warehouse that Anton regards
The Nearest East 205
with such excitement.79 Curiously, however, it is Fink who must be
cured of his wanderlust, while Anton reaps rich rewards for his desire
to remain at home. Under Anton's positive influence, Fink gradually
begins to take his job a little more seriously, and he even adopts mid-
dle-class morality when he reluctantly and with great resentment
agrees to Anton's demand that he break off an affair with Rosalie
Ehrenthal. Together Fink and his fiancee Lenore von Rothsattel pro-
vide a positive example of a younger generation of aristocrats capable
of adapting to modern times in a way that Lenore's parents cannot.
Most important, the man without a Heimat eventually settles down to
defend his German estate on Polish soil. As Fink sarcastically
observes, "I've passed through half the world and found something to
object to everywhere, and now I'm burrowing into this hole in the
sand where I'd like to light a fire every night against the Polish
wolves" (5:295).
If Fink and Anton are capable of positive development, the Poles
most definitely are not. Soll und Haben radiates a triumphant sense of
German superiority over Slavic peoples. Only German industry can
tidy up the mess of their "Polack slovenliness" [Polakenwirtschaft]
(4:375), and thus Anton takes pride in his role as a German imperial-
ist on Polish soil: "I stand here now as one of the conquerors who
have taken charge of this soil from a weaker race for free labor and
human culture. We and the Slays-it is an old struggle. And with
pride we feel that education, diligence, and [financial] credit are on
our side" (5:155). Toward the end of the novel the narrative voice
swells into an anthem of praise for Fink in his new role as a German
colonist: "His life will be an incessant victorious struggle against the
dark spirits of the landscape, and a crop of strong boys will spring out
of the Slavic womb; a new German race, full of endurance in body
and soul, will spread out across the land, a race of colonizers and con-
querors" (5:398).
Interestingly enough, however, Freytag's strident defense of Ger-
man imperialism within Europe does not coincide with a corre-
sponding desire to participate directly in colonial projects abroad.
Why does a novel that advocates the German conquest of Poland and
that expresses wonder and delight at the products of global commerce
encourage its protagonists to stop traveling and stay at home? The
206 German Orientalisms
answer lies in the peculiar combination of the contemporary and the
anachronistic in Soll und Haben. Although seemingly up-to-date in its
realistic portrayal of the German working world, Freytag's novel is
anachronistic to the extent that it portrays a soon-to-be outmoded
form of business rather than modern industrial production. As Frey-
tag himself puts it, the sort of warehouse storage and distribution
practiced by the Schroter company will seem as foreign to the next
generation "as we [find] a market in Timbuktu or in a Kaffir's kraal"
(4:58). The patriarchal relations between Schroter and his employees
represent "a last relic of the mediaeval family relationships of master
and apprentice" and not the new realities of the urban proletariat.8s
Thus the poetic realist Freytag seeks to portray capitalism with a
human face, idealizing the German industriousness of Anton Wohl-
fart and the Schroter firm, while either avoiding altogether the
unpleasant side effects of modern capitalism or projecting them onto
the Jews.s8'
The same desire to enjoy the benefits of capitalism without
acknowledging their human cost informs Freytag's portrayal of global
commerce. The good German stays at home and lets other European
nations do the dirty work of establishing foreign colonies and ship-
ping home the goods. Only Fink has firsthand experience with the
New World in this novel, and he finds little that he likes: after return-
ing to the New World, Fink ends up in a miserable little town in
Tennessee financed by speculation with his own money. Surrounded
"with a dirty and corrupt mob of emigrants, half of whom have suc-
cumbed to laziness and fever" (4:494), Fink finds himself holding
orphaned Irish babies (Paddykinder) (4:495) over chamber pots. He
soon returns to Europe with a new appreciation of the Old World:
"There is a powerful life there, he said, but in the turmoil I sensed
clearly for the first time that you are also worth something here"
(5:159). The only other character who wants to go abroad is the frail
Herr Baumann, who goes to church every Sunday and plans to be a
missionary. Eventually this "future apostle to the heathens" (4:86)
does quit his job to attend missionary school in London before head-
ing out into the world. He hopes to end up in Africa, where he can
not only convert heathens but also work to prevent "the heathen
slave trade" (5:357). Baumann presents slavery as an institution pecu-
The Nearest East 207
liar to certain African kings, apparently unaware that the Africans
may well be working for European slave traders, just as Freytag never
comments that the sugar and tobacco that so delighted young Anton
were almost certainly products of slave labor in the New World. The
Poetic Realism that softens the image of German capitalism also takes
the sharp edges off European colonialism.
Only in regard to Poland does Freytag take a hard-line stance, for
what I suspect are three interrelated reasons: first, the Poles are a
known and hated quantity, whereas the Malayan woman packing
cinnamon or the Brazilian girl picking coffee come from distant and
exotic lands. Freytag portrays the Poles with the venom that arises
out of the "narcissism of minor differences," and Fink is well aware
that he can get a rise out of Anton by suggesting that he might be half
Polish. Second, the Polish borderlands are right next door. Coloniz-
ing them does not commit the Germans to a program of overseas
expansion, but enables them to extend the base of the local Heimat.
Third, Freytag's advocacy of local imperialism over foreign adventure
may reflect concern over the rising tide of German emigration dur-
ing the 185os. As hundreds of thousands of Germans began to leave
for North and South America, Freytag urges his fellow Germans to
stay at home and solidify their position in central Europe, while
benefiting indirectly from European imperialism through interna-
tional trade.
In later years Freytag enthusiastically supported the expansion of
the German fleet, and he cosigned a call for the foundation of a Ger-
man colonial society in 1882.82 This development has been viewed as
typical for the evolution of German liberals disappointed by the failed
Revolution of 1848 into aggressive proponents of German imperial-
ism during the Wilhelmine era.83 Yet Freytag already takes pride in
Germany as a "nation of conquerors and colonizers" in Soll und
Haben. What has changed is not so much his fundamental assessment
of the German character, but his willingness to extend German
power beyond Europe. In retrospect, the Nearest East of Poland
becomes a testing ground for what is portrayed as a specifically Ger-
man form of colonialism. The Germans bring middle-class virtues to
a land populated by drunken, rebellious peasants and vain, decadent
aristocrats; hence they redeem a land mismanaged by incorrigible
208 German Orientalisms
Poles. The conviction of German cultural and, increasingly, racial
superiority could later be extended beyond eastern Europe to Ger-
man colonies in other parts of the world. Just as members of the
recently unified German nation conceived of their collective identity
in and through their local provinces, German colonists abroad con-
ceived of the German Empire as a further extension of the German
Heimat. Hence German colonists did their best to preserve their lan-
guage and culture intact while minimizing foreign influence. As a
result, as Kirsten Belgum has argued, German colonialism was
marked by a combination of pride in the fact that the Germans
were- at last!-joining the modern world of other colonial powers
and an antimodern nostalgia for a more traditional way of life.84 The
Heimat movement functioned in a similar way within Germany,
offering citizens of the newly unified nation-state a way to step for-
ward toward a new sense of collective identity while keeping one
foot in traditions of the past-whether real or invented.85
The German ambivalence regarding its belated but explosive entry
into modern times finds its characteristic literary expression in the
work of its most popular author, Gustav Freytag. Soll und Haben
combines an idealized and slightly anachronistic portrait of the Ger-
mans at work with an anticipatory vision of their destiny as a nation
of conquerors and colonizers: today, Poland; tomorrow, the world.
One might expect that the Prussian patriot Freytag would conclude
his fictional history of the German people in Die Ahnen with a cele-
bration of Bismarck's triumph in the Franco-Prussian War and the
unification of the German nation. Here, too, however, Freytag
hedges his bets, as he stops short in the early 185os. As he explained
in his autobiography, the shift from historical fiction to recent polit-
ical events would have been awkward. Besides, he continues, novels
should not be about political, religious, and social ideas. At all costs
he wants to avoid tendentious literature of the sort practiced by the
poets of the German Vormirz.86 Freytag's rejection of literary Ten-
denz goes hand in hand with his rejection of political revolution. The
Poles revolt, but we never learn why; hence their uprising appears
criminal rather than political, an irrational outburst rather than a cal-
culated attempt to correct an injustice.87 Die Ahnen also offers little in
the way of an explanation for the Revolution of 1848: "Maybe both
The Nearest East 209
the rulers and the ruled are sick, each in their own way, and we are
all in need of recovery" (13:301-2), speculates the strongly autobio-
graphical figure Viktor. By deliberately playing dumb about the
causes of the Revolution, Freytag pursues his own agenda, based on
a glorification of the politically quiescent German middle class and a
corresponding denigration of aristocrats, Jews, and Poles, all of which
are associated with the East.88 As a fellow Silesian from the German-
Polish border, Freytag shared Eichendorff s fear and loathing of the
Slavic hordes, and yet while Eichendorff looks back nostalgically to
the Teutonic Knights as an organic Christian community opposed to
both ancient heathens and, implicitly, modern, increasingly secular
Prussian society, Freytag's fiction breathes a notably secular air. Only
Baumann attends church on a regular basis; Anton spends his Sunday
mornings reading The Last of the Mohicans. Freytag's hero revels in the
modern business world and the German colonial adventure-up to a
point. The combination of a fuzzy-focus idealization of the German
world with harshly drawn caricatures of Poles and Jews no doubt
contributed to the lasting popularity and latent threat of Gustav Frey-
tag's Poetic Realism.
GUNTER GRASS AND THE LITERATURE
OF MIGRATION
If pressed to identify the single most recognizable figure of postwar
German literature, Giinter Grass would be the most obvious choice.
He finally won the Nobel Prize for literature in the fall of 1999 after
having been on the short list ever since he published Die Blechtrommel
[The tin drum] in 1959. When Heinrich B6oll won the award in 1972,
many thought Grass would have been the more obvious pick.89 Grass
has not only been the most famous living German author for decades,
but also the one whose works focus on topics of central importance
in twentieth-century German history. Die Blechtrommel, together
with the early novella Katz und Maus [Cat and mouse] (1961) and the
second novel Hundejahre [Dog years] (1963), provides an intimate
look at what it was like to grow up in Nazi Germany, and to experi-
ence the war and the early postwar years in the Federal Republic. Ein
weites Feld [Too far afield] (1995) depicts major events in more recent
210 German Orientalisms
German history: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Reunification of
1989-90. The novel was featured in a notorious cover photo in Der
Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, that showed a prominent
literary critic tearing Grass's novel in half above the caption: "The
Failure of a Great Author." Having grown up in a country where
book burnings were all too real, Grass was deeply offended by what
he termed "a barbaric act" of violence against his novel.9° In a way,
however, the very prominence of the attack reconfirmed Grass's sta-
tus.9' If some readers expressed disappointment with the work, it was
not only because they found it long and dull, or because they dis-
agreed with his critical stance toward the new nation, but because
they were hoping for the great German novel of Reunification by
Germany's greatest living author. After all, Goethe gave his name to
an entire age; Thomas Mann spent his years in exile proclaiming that
wherever he was, there was German culture; it seemed the least Giin-
ter Grass could do would be to fulfill his role as unofficial poet laure-
ate of contemporary German literature. And in a sense, simply by
writing the work and stirring up controversy about German
Reunification, he did just that.
Given Grass's reputation as Germany's most representative writer, it
might come as something of a surprise to read the following statement
in the introduction to a collection of his essays in English: "Giinter
Grass . . . is a figure of central importance in the literature of migra-
tion, and the migrant is, perhaps, the central or defining figure of the
twentieth century.'"92 The author of this introduction was none other
than Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, who has been
living under Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah or death sentence since the
late 1980s. Rushdie is just the sort of individual who comes to mind
when thinking of contemporary migrant literature: someone who has
lost his home, his language, and his culture, and whose works focus on
the complexities of postcolonial identity. Grass, in contrast, has been a
public intellectual for decades who has spoken out on television, on
the radio, and in person to his fellow German citizens. And yet, as
Rushdie reminds us, Grass has spent most of his adult life in exile from
the formerly German city of Gdansk/Danzig where he grew up. "In
one sense," he writes, "Grass is only approximately half a migrant. A
full migrant suffers, traditionally, a triple disruption: he loses his place,
The Nearest East 211
he enters into an alien language, and he finds himself surrounded by
beings whose social behavior and code is very unlike, and sometimes
even offensive to, his own" (xi). In another sense, however, Grass
qualifies as a migrant writer in the fullest sense of the word, according
to Rushdie, because he grew up in a Nazi culture that so corrupted
German language and society that both had to be reinvented after the
war. As he puts it, "Nazi Germany was, in some ways, another coun-
try. Grass had to unlearn that country, that way of thinking about
society, and learn a new one" (xiii). One of the things he learned, to
finish my paraphrase of Salman Rushdie, was doubt, a distrust of "all
those who claim to possess absolute forms of knowledge . . . all total
explanations, all systems of thought which purport to be complete";
and one of the things he lost was "the sense of home as a safe, 'good'
place" (xiii, xii).
Grass himself spoke of this loss when accepting the Nobel Prize: "I
come from a family of refugees, which means that in addition to
everything that drives a writer from book to book . . . I had the
irreparable loss of my birthplace. If by telling tales I could not recap-
ture a city both lost and destroyed, I could at least reconjure it. And
this obsession kept me going. I wanted to make it clear to myself and
my readers... that what was lost did not need to sink into oblivion,
that it could be resuscitated by the art of literature."93 Had he been a
different person or lived in a different time, Grass might have become
what was known in the late nineteenth century as a Heimatdichter, a
poet of the local homeland, an antimodern celebrant of the good old
days, in which members of a homogenous society lived in rustic sim-
plicity, bound by ties of common blood to their native soil. But the
Danzig that Grass conjures in his literary works is anything but
homogenous or harmonious: it is rather a city fraught with conflict
between Poles and Germans, Protestants and Catholics, Gypsies and
Jews, and a place of conflicted identities within individuals them-
selves. To take only the most prominent example, Oskar Matzerath,
hero of Die Blechtrommel, is never really sure if his father is a German
Catholic from the Rhine or his mother's Kashubian cousin turned
Polish patriot. The Heimat for Giinter Grass is always hybrid.
This local hybridity stems from the history of migrations that have
crossed and crisscrossed the city of Danzig over the centuries, each
212 German Orientalisms
leaving its mark. When the Russians burn down the city in the spring
of 1945, Oskar comments wryly that they are hardly the first to do so:
"For centuries Pomerellians, Brandenburgers, Teutonic Knights,
Poles, Swedes, and a second time Swedes, Frenchmen, Prussians, and
Russians, even Saxons, had made history by deciding every few years
that the city of Danzig was worth burning."94 As a member of the
German community expelled from Gdansk after the Second World
War, Grass is particularly interested in the Teutonic Knights who first
brought Germans to the region during the Middle Ages, although he
hardly presents them in the heroic light of an Eichendorff or
Treitschke. The greengrocer Greff in Die Blechtrommel can recite the
names and dates of all the grand masters of the order and speaks
enthusiastically about "the Germanic mission in the territories of the
order" (293 [382]), but Oskar is more interested in the slovenly
charms of Greffs wife than in the fanatical patriotism of this suicidal
pederast. More ironic still is Eddie Amsel's boyhood fascination with
the Germanic heroism of the Teutonic Knights in Hundejahre, for he
is a baptized Protestant ofJewish descent who later becomes a target
of anti-Semitic violence in the Third Reich. In the same novel Grass
observes that the Stutthoff concentration camp outside Danzig was
built on land originally drained by the Teutonic Knights.95 In Der
Butt [The flounder] (1977) Grass intersplices tales of the depredations
of the Teutonic Knights with memories of the Soviet crackdown on
Polish dissent in 1970.96
Thus Danzig is both local and global for Grass, the site of his own
personal origins, but also the nexus of a worldwide movement of
peoples and a place where larger geopolitical conflicts have been
played out for centuries. Der Butt is, among other things, a historical
novel about the city of Danzig from the Neolithic period to the pres-
ent, and Grass concedes in his Nobel speech that he is obsessed with
the city: "In a conversation dating back many years Salman Rushdie
and I concurred that my lost Danzig was for me-like his lost Bom-
bay for him-both resource and refuse pit, point of departure and
navel of the world" (298 [307]). Hence it should not have been such
a great surprise when Grass, this obsessive conjurer of local history,
should have begun to expand his gaze to global concerns in the 1970s
and 1980s. In Der Butt he transforms himself into a reincarnation of
The Nearest East 213
Vasco da Gama, setting out from Europe to explore the Indian sub-
continent. He returns to the theme in his semicomic Kopfgeburten
[Headbirths] (1980), in which a German couple goes on a tour of
Asian slums while trying to decide whether or not they should have
a baby, and he documents his own stay of several months in Calcutta
in the autobiographical narrative and pen-and-ink drawings of Zunge
zeigen [Show your tongue] (1988). In the following pages I focus on
the slightly later Unkenrufe [The call of the toad] (1992). This long
novella or short novel brings together the three major themes of
Grass's career: the city of Danzig/Gdansk, the history of Germany,
and the place of Europe in relation to the rest of the world and its his-
tory. It, too, is a tale of multiple migrations set into motion by the
events of 1989-90, which is to say that it is simultaneously local,
national, and global in its concerns.
Unkenrufe begins when a German man meets a Polish woman in
the city of Danzig/Gdansk on the afternoon of November 2, 1989,
one week before the opening of the Berlin Wall. The man is Alexan-
der Reschke, a widower about to turn sixty; the woman Alexandra
Pi tkowska, a widow of about the same age. On one level, Unkenrufe
is a love story about this not-so-young couple: they meet, become
involved, get married, and go off on a honeymoon. It is a told with
gentle irony by an author who was also in his early sixties at the time.
From the beginning, however, this tale of love is overshadowed by
the theme of death. November 2 is All Souls' Day, dedicated to the
memory of the dead, and when they meet, Alexandra is buying asters,
flower of the dead, to place on her parents' graves. Alexander is an art
historian who specializes in Baltic grave monuments and keeps a col-
lection of coffin nails as a hobby; Alexandra restores old works of art
that often have religious themes, including the sculpture of an angel
that is part of a resurrection scene. Convinced that they need to see
Naples before they die, the happy newlyweds head off to Italy and
visit the city, only to be killed shortly thereafter in an automobile
accident.
Death becomes the project that unites them in life as well.
Pitkowska's parents were born in Polish Vilnius, in what is now
Lithuania, and buried in Gdansk against their will. As it turns out, the
German Reschke had grown up in the city of Danzig; when he
214 German Orientalisms
returned for the first time to visit his parents' graves in 1958, he dis-
covered that the Poles had been so angry at the Germans after the war
that they not only drove out the living but also bulldozed the Ger-
man cemeteries. On their first evening together Reschke and
Pitkowska decide that they want to do something to ease the pain of
what Reschke is fond of calling "the Century of Expulsions" [Das
Jahrhundert der Vertreibungen],97 and so they found the German-
Polish-Lithuanian Cemetery Association that will allow displaced
individuals to be buried where they grew up: "The Century of
Expulsions will come to an end under the sign of homecoming" (69
[72]). The Lithuanian project never gets started, but the German
cemetery in Poland proves wildly successful. As soon as Reschke and
Pi tkowska lease land, the former German refugees start lining up to
buy their plots. Before long the aging Germans set up retirement
communities next to the Polish cemeteries so they can spend their
final years back home. At the airports walk-in coolers have to be built
to stack the frozen corpses shipped in from overseas. Then the Ger-
mans start digging up the graves of those already buried in the West
and shipping the remains back to Poland. Meanwhile the German
seniors in Polish retirement communities start getting visits from
their children and grandchildren, and before long construction begins
on birth clinics for the new German babies born on Polish soil.
This increasingly grotesque fantasy takes place during the
reunification year of 1989-90. The couple spends their first night
together on November 9, and they start making plans to ship the
corpses east even as living East Germans are rushing to the west. The
cemetery is consecrated on the same day that the Federal Republic
officially recognizes the Oder-Neisse border. From the beginning,
the Polish press views the project with suspicion. They reject what
Reschke conceived as "the ultimate in international understanding"
as incorrigible revanchism and accuse him of attempting a "recon-
quest through corpses" (II5 [117]). To his concern, the Germans
start requesting provocative inscriptions on their tombstones: "Here
Rests Our Beloved Father. . . in German Homeland Soil [In deutscher
Heimaterde]" (I24 [I26]). The Polish headlines become more shrill as
the Germans start shipping the remains of their loved ones back to
Poland: "An army of German corpses is intent on conquering our
The Nearest East 215
Western provinces" (163 [163]). Before long the couple that con-
ceived the project becomes alarmed at what it has become. As
Alexandra puts it in her slightly broken German, "We better watch
out or Poland will be on German menu. I say what I see: Germans
always hungry even when full. And that makes me afraid" (205
[203]). As new German graves are planned on a field where Reschke
once marched in the Hitler Youth, he and Alexandra officially with-
draw from the German-Polish Cemetery Association.
Where does Grass stand in relation to his characters? Unkenrufe is
narrated by a schoolboy friend of Reschke who also grew up in
Danzig, now lives in the West, and was born in 1927; if he is not
quite identical to Grass himself, he is certainly close.98 As a refugee,
Grass has frequently expressed sorrow at having lost his homeland,
and, given his sympathetic portrayal of the elderly couple in this
book, he may well approve of their attempt to heal old wounds
between the Germans and the Poles. As a satirist in the tradition of
Rabelais and Swift,99 however, it is often easier to tell what Grass
opposes than what he supports, and this is certainly the case in Unken-
rufe. He rejects first and foremost the Nazis who corrupted his child-
hood and who were ultimately responsible for the loss of German
territory to the east. He bitterly condemned Helmut Kohl's oppor-
tunistic vacillation on the question of the German-Polish border, and
his protagonist Reschke shares his sentiments.'°° Unkenrufe is also a
diatribe against German revanchism, against those former refugees
still fixated on recapturing the East. Finally, Grass opposes
Reunification for at least two reasons: German war guilt and con-
temporary capitalism. Looking to the past, Grass sees a nation for
which political unification has brought only evil to the world, while
he views the Federal Republic in 1989-90 as part of an omnivorous
Western capitalism that is about to swallow up Eastern Germany and
Eastern Europe all over again; as Alexandra puts it, "Germans always
hungry even when full."''o
Unkenrufe not only portrays intra-European conflicts but also
broadens to include issues of global concern. Later in the same
evening in which he first meets Pitkowska, Reschke goes to a bar
for a drink and strikes up a conversation with a man from India
named Chatterjee, who has a project of his own. Chatterjee has a
216 German Orientalisms
small fleet of seven bicycle rickshaws and a license for inner-city trans-
port in downtown Gdansk. To appeal to Polish customers, Chatterjee
paints his rickshaws red and white, but his customers at first are mainly
West Germans who have returned to visit their childhood homes. Very
quickly, however, Chatterjee's business starts booming, and before
long we find him taking over Gdansk shipyards, idled by the transition
to capitalism, to increase production of his rickshaws. He begins to
travel throughout Europe, extending his business to Amsterdam and
Copenhagen and many other cities in which downtown traffic is
banned, and the narrator envisions a not-too-distant future in which
his bicycle rickshaw model Solidarity "went into mass production and,
passing beyond the borders of Europe, was on its way to meeting the
needs of Africa, Asia, and South America" (176 [i77]).
Alexandra Pitkowska responds to this Asian interloper with char-
acteristic European prejudice. Claiming that he has "a foreign smell"
(136 [137]), she refuses to ride in his rickshaws and is outraged when
he hires Poles to do the pedaling: "'I should live,' cried Alexandra,
'to see Polish men doing coolie work'" (99 [O102]). Lumping Chat-
terjee into the universal foreign category of the "Turk," Pitkowska
claims that he, too, will be driven back, "same as we Poles at gates of
Vienna defeated Turks" (136 [138]). Reschke responds quite differ-
ently, however. A former liberal of the 1960s who now sympathizes
with the Green Party, Reschke is preoccupied with global warming
and the aftereffects of Chernobyl from the beginning of the novel.
We first see him in the Polish market photographing suspiciously
large mushrooms, and one of the first things that attracts him to
Alexandra is her low-tech mesh-net shopping bag. He soon becomes
an enthusiastic supporter of Chatterjee's environmentally friendly
bicycle rickshaws and even invests the profits of the German Polish
Cemetery Association in Chatterjee's business.
In Chatterjee, then, Reschke sees a glimmer of hope in his other-
wise gloomy assessment of humankind's future prospects. Reschke is
in fact so pessimistic that his students have nicknamed him "the
toad." As Reschke explains to Pi tkowska, "the call of the toad, even
more than the screech of the barn owl, has given rise to superstitions.
In many German fairy tales-in Polish fairy tales too, I'm sure-the
call of the toad foreshadows disaster" (103 [Io5]). Reschke, whom
The Nearest East 217
the narrator insists once swallowed a toad as a child, begins recording
toad calls in the Polish swamps, and he and Alexandra sometimes
spend their evenings listening to the tapes. He even convinces Chat-
terjee to replace the cheerful bell of a typical European bicycle on his
rickshaws "with the sadly beautiful toad call" (176 [i77]). Thus while
The Call of the Toad is a correct literal translation of the title of Grass's
work, a more figurative rendering might be Prophecies of Doom, or,
Impending Sense of Disaster. What sort of disaster? There are at least
three: the threat of a new German nationalism, the threat of
unchecked global capitalism, and the threat of ecological disaster at a
time of nuclear weapons, atomic energy, and global warming.
It is in this context that we need to view Chatterjee and his rick-
shaw project. Like Reschke and Pi tkowska, Chatterjee is also a typ-
ical product of this "Century of Expulsions." He was born in Pak-
istan in 1947, at the time of its partition from India. He fled with his
Hindu family to Bombay, where he grew up, but he also has relatives
in Calcutta and Dacca, Bangladesh. Chatterjee later studied English
literature and economics at Cambridge University and traffic science
in London; he speaks English, Polish, and German in addition to his
native Urdu. Chatterjee thus typifies the multilingual, multicultural,
hybrid identity of millions in the postcolonial world. His response to
his sense of displacement differs fundamentally from that of the Euro-
pean refugees in Grass's work, however: Pitkowska and Reschke
capitalize on the desires of the former residents of Danzig to recon-
nect with their roots. The German-Polish Cemetery Association is all
about the politics of a particular place, about the centripetal pull of
the Heimat. Chatterjee, in contrast, represents the centrifugal force of
a diaspora; uprooted several times in the past, he displays no interest
in returning home-and where would home be? England? India?
Pakistan? Bangladesh?-but is rather intent on expanding his business
in bicycle-drawn rickshaws throughout the globe.
It is quite possible to view Chatterjee's global rickshaw empire as a
largely positive, half-serious alternative to the various disasters that
Reschke fears, as it offers an environmentally friendly alternative to
modern industrialization, a cosmopolitan alternative to modern
nationalism, and a kinder, gentler form of global capital. But it is only
ha/f-serious, because the rickshaw business, like the Cemetery Asso-
218 German Orientalisms
ciation, grows with fairy-tale speed, and it is hard to take completely
seriously the image of Solidarity rickshaws filling the world's inner
cities with mournful toad calls. Largely positive, because Grass does
sound a note of caution about Chatterjee, who admits at one point
that he is "of Bengali origin only on his father's side. Not without
embarrassment he explained that his mother belonged to the mer-
chant caste of the Marwaris, that the Marwaris came from Rajastan in
the north and had immigrated into Bengal, where they soon cor-
nered the real estate market, acquired numerous jute mills in Cal-
cutta, and had not made themselves exactly popular" (136-37 [138]).
Chatterjee's father, described as "a lover of poetry, possessed by
dreams of power" (137 [138]), had named his son after Subhas Chan-
dra Bose-the Bengali leader whom Grass portrays as a racist despot
in Zunge zeigen-but Chatterjee insists that he takes after his mother
and is just a good, ethical businessman like the rest of the Marwaris.
Since he tells Reschke in the same breath that the Marwaris have a
rather dubious reputation, however, it seems difficult to take his
assertions without a grain of salt.
While Chatterjee may hope one day to conquer the world with his
rickshaws, he views himself more immediately as the spearhead of a
new Asian invasion into Europe. "As long as the old European order
prevails," he predicts to Reschke, "there will indeed be problems.
But it won't last. As the ancient Greeks knew, all is flux. We shall
come. We will have to come, because it's getting a little cramped
over there. Everybody pushes everybody else; the end will be one
great push that will be impossible to stop" (36 [40]). There is no need
to fear, however: the Asians will not practice violent conquest of
Europe, but will allow for the intermingling and peaceful coexistence
of the two cultures, thus revitalizing Europe "by new blood from
Asia" (46 [So]). Soon the Poles will worship the Hindu god Kali
together with their Black Madonna; the Lenin shipyard, formerly
known as Schichau, will bear the name of the Bengali national hero,
and streets once named after Soviet or German generals will be
named after Bengali businessmen. As Grass had already suggested in
Kopfgeburten, the Europeans will be aufgehoben into a new Euro-Asian
mix that both cancels out their former identity and preserves it in a
new form for a future in which even global warming has its benefits.
The Nearest East 219
Shortly before his death, Reschke envisions a "Polish-Bengali sym-
biosis [that] announces the predestined Asian future of Europe, free
from nationalistic narrowness, no longer hemmed in by language
boundaries, polyphonically religious, superrich in gods, and above all
blessedly slowed down, softened by the new warm and wet climate"
(233-34 [23 1]).
Grass's tongue-in-cheek image of a Euro-Asian utopia contrasts
sharply with his actual experience of Asian cities. Calcutta in particu-
lar horrified him to the point that he found it difficult to express his
reaction in either words or images. Grass has been duly criticized for
finding precisely the images of squalor and misery that he sought,
while ignoring other aspects of Indian culture, thereby perpetuating
the "hegemonic stance" and "eurocentric stereotypes" that he sets
out to refute.'02 Although the figure of Chatterjee has been said to be
based loosely on Salman Rushdie, one could argue that Grass por-
trays him as a stereotypical Indian businessman, just as his image of
the Polish Pi tkowska as moody, slightly irrational, and inclined to
bigotry could be condemned as prejudiced and misogynous.03 In
Grass's defense, one can point out that his images of India in Zunge
zeigen are not inaccurate, if also only a partial truth; one can even
admire his unflinching willingness to see and record images of
extreme poverty and misery that most wealthy Western tourists
would rather avoid. More important, however, is that Grass intends
his images of India as an indictment of the West. The goddess Kali
sticks out her red tongue in shame not at Calcutta itself, but at the
gross disparities in the global distribution of wealth and power that
make such misery possible.
Grass introduces the theme of global politics tangentially into
Unkeurufe by including scattered references to the Iraq invasion of
Kuwait in August 1990 and to the subsequent outbreak of the Gulf
War in early 1991. Reschke views the war with characteristic
ambivalence, finding the allied response both justified and barbaric.
The old Erna Brakup, however, who is part of the tiny and perse-
cuted German minority that had remained in Polish Gdansk after the
Second World War, expresses spontaneous sympathy for the human
suffering caused by the Gulf War: "An Arab's a human, ain't he?
Even if he's maybe done wrong. Who in the world hasn't done
220 German Orientalisms
wrong?" (i 56 [i57]). Chatterjee goes further, viewing the Gulf War
as a symptom of the impending decline of the West. As a horrified
Reschke summarizes, Chatterjee "believes that the Gulf War is
needed to make the pauperization especially of Asia and Africa intol-
erably evident. The crushing demonstration of military might, he
believes, simply highlights the impotence of Western thinking" (165
[i66]). Where Grass stands in relation to the opinions expressed by
the various characters in Unkenrufe is difficult to say in every instance,
but he certainly shares Chatterjee's concern about the increasing
poverty of the so-called Third World. "The affluent north and west
can try to screen themselves off in security-mad fortresses," predicted
Grass at the end of his Nobel Prize speech, "but the flocks of refugees
will catch up with them: no gate can withstand the crush of the hun-
gry" (300 [309]).
Unkenrufe marked Grass's last attempt to date to combine in a work
of fiction the themes of the city of Danzig/Gdansk and the Pol-
ish/German border with broader questions of globalization, migra-
tion, and impending ecological disaster. During the early 1990s he
concentrated his political and creative energies on German
Reunification and its aftermath, focusing on relations between the
two halves of the formerly divided country. More recently, however,
Grass has again worked to expand the horizons of his fellow Ger-
mans. "I know: these days everything has to be seen globally, under-
stood globally, and accepted as a global fate," remarked Grass in one
of several speeches about the plight of the Sinti and Roma minorities
within Europe.'°4 Noting that these "gypsies" have been persecuted
for centuries as a mobile minority that does not fit neatly into the
national boundaries of any single European state, Grass argues that
precisely this mobility, this willingness to cross national borders,
makes them model citizens of the new European Union. Grass links
his defense of the Roma and Sinti within Europe to a critique of the
European desire to wall itself off from African, Asian, and Russian
refugees, singling out for particular criticism both the Bavarian Min-
ister President Stoiber's comment about the threat of a new "racial-
ization of the German people" [Durchrassung des deutschen Volkes]
and the xenophobic election campaign of Roland Koch, whose slo-
gan "Children, Not Indians" [Kinder statt Inder] summed up his plan
The Nearest East 221
to stem the tide of Indian nationals into the German computer indus-
try by encouraging Germans to devote more attention to computer
literacy among their own children.o5 Not surprisingly, Grass again
agreed to campaign for the Social Democratic Party for the 2002 fall
election. "We must acknowledge that several million foreigners live
in our country," insisted Grass in March 2002. "We must be a hos-
pitable nation."'°6
In early February 2002, Der Spiegel once again featured Grass on its
cover story, this time in connection with his new novella Im Krebs-
gang. Grass tells the story of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by a
Soviet submarine on January 30, 1945, as it fled with a cargo of some
9,00ooo German refugees from the advancing Russian armies at the end
of the Second World War. By choosing to narrate this incident, Grass
broaches a topic that had been considered taboo in both the German
Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, although for differ-
ent reasons: citizens of the GDR, who had been taught to believe
that they were antifascist resistance fighters together with their Soviet
allies, could hardly be permitted to grieve for a German ship under
Nazi command sunk by Soviet torpedoes, whereas any effort to com-
memorate German victims of the Second World War in the FRG
seemed inappropriate in a country preoccupied with its guilt at hav-
ing begun the war and for its mass murder ofJews and other "unde-
sirables." Yet Grass argues through his alter ego in the novella that
the Germans were wrong to suppress the memory of the Gustloff.
"Never, he said, should his generation have kept silent about such
misery, merely because its own sense of guilt was so overwhelming,
merely because for years the need to accept responsibility and show
remorse took precedence, with the result that they abandoned the
topic to the right wing."'07 Im Krebsgang represents Grass's effort to
wrest memory from the hands of those right-wing revanchists, his
effort to mourn for those who suffered and died without, however,
demonizing the enemy or exonerating the Germans from their over-
whelming guilt in the Second World War.
Grass's latest attempt at Vergangenheitsbewdltigung is only partially
successful, however, not because his artistic powers have begun to
wane-on the contrary, most reviewers agree that Im Krebsgang is
Grass's best work in years-but because of the German inability to
222 German Orientalisms
escape from the shadow of the past. The Wilhelm Gustloff was named
in honor of a Nazi functionary who was assassinated by a Jew, David
Frankfurter, in Switzerland in 1936. Frankfurter immediately turns
himself in to the police and confesses his crime: "I fired the shots
because I am a Jew" (25 [28]). While he is sentenced to life in prison,
the Nazis quickly turn Gustloff into a martyr and saint; in the follow-
ing year his widow christens the new ship Wilhelm Gustloff in the
Hamburg harbor under the approving eyes of Adolf Hitler. Before
the war the Gustloff was used for "Strength through Joy" excursions
for party members in good standing, but after 1939 it remained in
port as a hospital ship in Danzig. Mixing fact with fiction, Grass
includes the pregnant Tulla Pokriefke, a familiar figure from Katz und
Maus and Hundejahre, among the thousands who pressed on board in
late January 1945. Tulla is one of the lucky few who escape the tor-
pedoed ship, and she gives birth to a son named Paul just as the Gust-
loff slips beneath the waves.
Grass narrates Im Krebsgang largely through the eyes of Paul
Pokriefke, who spent his childhood in the German Democratic
Republic before moving to Berlin shortly before the Wall was
erected in August 1961. Here he works as a reporter, first for the con-
servative Springer Verlag, then for the left-wing newspaper die taz,
and finally as a freelance journalist. Paul marries, has a son named
Konrad in 1980, but is soon divorced by his wife Gabriele. She moves
with her son to the small West German city of Molln. While surfing
the Internet several years later, Paul Pokriefke stumbles on a neo-
Nazi website devoted to the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, only to
discover that the webmaster is his own son. With horrified fascina-
tion he follows chatroom debates between "Wilhelm"-Konrad's
pseudonym-and "David." Together the neo-Nazi "Wilhelm" and
the presumed Jew "David" rehearse in cyberspace the ideological
debates surrounding the killing of Wilhelm Gustloff by David Frank-
furter. Eventually the virtual pair meets in reality at the site of the
former monument to Gustloff in Schwerin. Here history repeats
itself, albeit in reverse: "Wilhelm" shoots and kills "David"-who
turns out not to be a Jew at all-while "Wilhelm," that is, Konrad
Pokriefke, turns himself in to the police: "I fired because I am a Ger-
man" (188 [I75]).
The Nearest East 223
While Grass employs Paul Pokriefke as an objective reporter who
tries to give a responsible and accurate account of the Gustloff, his
son resurrects an unrepentant form of anti-Semitic German nation-
alism. Not coincidentally, Grass has Konrad grow up in Molln, site
of a notorious arson attack in November 1992 in which three Turks
were killed, suggesting that yesterday's (and today's) anti-Semitism
has close ties to the upsurge in antiforeign violence that has plagued
Germany since Reunification. Konrad later admits that he has had
loose contact with neo-Nazis in Molln, although he takes pride in
the fact that he is not a "vulgar Nazi" like some of the drunken skin-
heads who once attended his impromptu lecture on the Gustloff In
addition to his diatribes against "the world Jewish conspiracy"
[Weltjudentum] (76 [74]), Konrad resurrects the old fears of the
Russian hordes knocking at Europe's Eastern gates: "'This terror
still menaces all of Europe if no dam is erected against the Asiatic
tide . . .' As an added attraction he had scanned in and included a
poster used by the German Christian Democrats in the fifties, show-
ing a devouring monster with Asiatic features" (io6 [10o1-2]).
Although he places these words in the mouth of a discredited neo-
Nazi, Grass does not mean to deny that Soviet troops systematically
raped German women at the end of the Second World War. His
own mother was in fact raped by Russian soldiers,'o8 and he also
portrays such a rape in the chapter entitled "Die Ameisenstral3e"
[The ant street] in Die Blechtrommel. What Grass criticizes here, at
least implicitly, is the transformation of a single historical event into
a timeless stereotype that can be employed at will for reprehensible
political purposes, whether it be the quest for German Lebensraum
in Eastern Europe or the revanchist desire to reclaim former German
territories after the war.
Konrad Pokriefke's blind enthusiasm for neo-Nazi politics and his
copycat assassination of his chatroom sparring partner suggest that
German history replays itself compulsively in a way that undermines
efforts to overcome the past. Elsewhere Grass has noted the historical
irony that the Berlin Wall should have been reopened on November
9,109 and January 30 plays a similarly overdetermined role in Im Krebs-
gang as the date of Wilhelm Gustloff's birth in 1895, Hitler's seizure
of power in 1933, the sinking of the Gustloff in 1945, and the simul-
224 German Orientalisms
taneous birth of Paul Pokriefke. His son Konrad, for his part, chooses
April 20, 1995, for his murder of "David," a date that inevitably
recalls Hitler's birthday on April 20, 1889. History collapses into a
two-dimensional realm in which the past continues to haunt the
present, a point underscored in the final sentences of the novella. Paul
Pokriefke has convinced himself that his incarcerated son has finally
overcome his obsession with the Gustloff, only to discover that Kon-
rad is being hailed as a hero on a yet another neo-Nazi Web site:
"'We believe in you, we will wait for you, we will follow you' ...
And so on and so forth. It doesn't end. Never will it end" (234 [216]).
In a sense, Grass completes the centuries-old story of the German
Ostsiedlungen in the novella Im Krebsgang: what had begun as Ger-
many's seemingly irresistible Drang nach Osten ended in panicked flight
to the West. In another sense, however, Grass narrates his own ver-
sion of what Ernst Nolte termed "the past that will not pass away."
Unlike those who yearn for a new normalcy based on a repression of
the past, Grass has continued his lifelong effort to remind his readers
of that past, however uncomfortable its burden may be. As the
renewed debate about Germany's eastern frontier in 1989-90 made
clear, German designs on the East had not entirely disappeared, at least
in some quarters, just as recent outbreaks of antiforeign violence and
resistance to immigration point to the continuing existence of racism
and xenophobia in a reunited Germany as well as in other member
nations of the European Union. That Grass has chosen to tell the tale
of German refugees who suffered and died in the flight from advanc-
ing Soviet troops does not in some sense make him an apologist for
the Nazi regime."o After years in which the story was repressed for a
variety of ideological reasons in both East and West, Grass has decided
it is better to break taboos and acknowledge the victims without
excusing the perpetrators. Perhaps he has added only another chapter
to the never-ending story of Germany's relations with its Nearest East,
but he holds out the hope, despite his gloomy conclusion, that the
next installment may be in a lighter mode.
Conclusion: Toward a
"Bastard" Literature?
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Germans responded with
spontaneous sympathy for their Western ally. For a brief period, at
least, Germans seemed willing to forget that relations with the new
Bush administration had been anything but smooth in the months
preceding the attack. On May 7, 2001, for instance, the New York
Times had run an article by Roger Cohen entitled "America the
Roughneck (Through Europe's Eyes)" that detailed what the Euro-
peans had viewed as a series of American provocations to world opin-
ion: more weapons to Taiwan, harsh criticism of North Korea, a fail-
ure to support the World Court, and the abandonment of the Kyoto
Protocol on the environment. Citing "what the German weekly Der
Spiegel recently called 'the snarling, ugly Americans,'" Cohen
reported the widespread sense of schadenfreude that had greeted the
U.S. ouster from the United Nations Human Rights Commission in
the previous week. Such concerns seemed trivial while the images of
mass destruction on September i i remained fresh, and for a few
weeks it seemed tactless at best to voice criticism of a nation that had
so recently been shaken to the core.
Perhaps inevitably, however, expressions of unconditional Ger-
man solidarity with the United States began to yield to new criti-
cisms. One of the first to speak out was none other than Giinter
Grass. While expressing his sympathy for the "incomparable injustice
suffered by the American people as a result of these terrorist acts" and
225
226 German Orientalisms
even his tentative willingness to support a very limited action against
Osama Bin Laden, assuming it were possible, he feared that broad
military strikes would only kill the innocent and trigger unpredictable
and potentially disastrous reprisals. He remembered that the CIA
originally supported the Taliban in their struggle against the Soviet
Union, and he condemned the American neglect of third world
poverty and the U.S.-supported Israeli occupation of Palestinian ter-
ritory. Above all, Grass resisted the simplistic division of the world
into good and evil and insisted on his right to express sympathy for
the American people, but to remain critical of American policies.'
In the months leading up to the war with Iraq, German politicians
and the German media seemed to follow Grass's lead, voicing ever
sharper critiques of what many believed were recklessly aggressive
American policies that failed to take into consideration the concerns
of their European allies. Gradually the Germans, who had declared
their allegiance to the West after September I I, 2001, began to sense
that they shared some of the anti-American sentiments of their ene-
mies to the East. In June 2002, Die Zeit summed up the mood in the
subtitle to an article in its Feuilleton section: "Why Arabs and Euro-
peans hate America, both in their own way-and yet for similar rea-
sons."2 Americans-and Israelis-seemed crass, greedy, immoral, and
hypocritical imperialists who enjoyed vast, but undeserved, eco-
nomic and military powers and thus provoked resentment among
European intellectuals as well as Islamic Fundamentalists. Once again,
in other words, Germany found itself poised between East and West,
between the latest incarnations of Oriental "barbarians" and a new
generation of ugly Americans.
What makes this latest phase in the history of German Orientalism
different is that boundaries between nations have become more
porous and populations within nations increasingly diverse. On the
one hand, to be sure, the global "war on terror" takes place across
clear geopolitical borders, pitting the Western allies against Islamic
militants in remote regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. On
the other hand, however, the conflict has taken place within the
West itself. The terrorists scored their initial success against the
United States not with overwhelming force on a distant battlefield,
Conclusion 227
but by infiltrating enemy territory and turning Western technology
against itself. Each subsequent month has brought new arrests of
alleged terrorists living throughout the West, including in such Ger-
man cities as Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Such discoveries exac-
erbate tensions within an already nervous public and almost certainly
have contributed to the sudden surge of interest throughout Europe
in right-wing political parties with anti-immigrant policies. Mindful
of their past, the Germans have to date avoided the public contro-
versy stirred up by such figures as Joerg Haider in Austria or Jean-
Marie Le Pen in France, but fear and loathing of the foreign certainly
exists in Germany as well. Cooler heads have cautioned that what is
needed is not another round of "ethnic cleansing" but greater tolerance
and increased efforts at mutual understanding. Distinctions between
"us" and "them" have in any case become increasingly difficult to
make: second and third generation children of Turkish Gastarbeiter in
Germany, for instance, have a hybrid cultural identity that no longer
conforms to national stereotypes of either Germany or Turkey.
In light of the increasingly multicultural populations of many Ger-
man cities, and in response to an earlier rise in East-West tensions at
the time of the Gulf War, the Turkish-German writer Zafer Senocak
proposed half-seriously that it might be best if Germans and Turks
could learn to converse in a new language: "Maybe we, Germans and
Turks, would have to learn a third, common language that no one
except us would understand. . . A language that would inject us into
each other like a vaccine and immunize us against each other so that
we can be together without hurting each other."3 Elsewhere Seno-
cak refers to this new idiom as a "bastard" language brewed up by
modern alchemists: "No one knows how the new language will taste.
The bastardized language [that will create] new, unspoken, fictive
realities between the Koran and the Bible, between Byzantium and
Asia. "4 Senocak imagines a future linguistic mixture, but in a sense
the future has already arrived in the form of a bastard literature. By
way of conclusion, then, I would like to look briefly at works of con-
temporary fiction by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar (1946-) and Michael
Roes (1960-) that point toward new possibilities in the long history
of Germany's literary encounters with the East.
228 German Orientalisms
OZDAMAR'S HYBRID HEROINES
In 1992 Ozdamar published the first of two autobiographical novels,
Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei [Life is a caravansary].s The first-person
narrator tells of her childhood in Turkey during the 1950s and early
1960s. The primary focus is on her private experience in a family
forced to move frequently because of her father's largely unsuccessful
attempts to find work as a contractor, but the novel also gives a sense
of the social and political history of Turkey in the twentieth century.
The book ends when the protagonist, now seventeen, gets on the
train to become a Gastarbeiterin in Berlin, which is where the next
novel begins. Die Brhcke vom goldenen Horn [The bridge of the golden
horn] (1998) tells of the young woman's gradual sexual and political
awakening in the late 1960s. She works in factories and as a chamber
maid, becomes involved with several different men, discovers her
vocation as an actress, and becomes a committed socialist. She then
returns to Istanbul, where she studies acting and moves in radical
intellectual and political circles. The novel culminates in a chilling
account of the Turkish government's crackdown on leftist intellectu-
als in the early 1970s. The protagonist is kept in police custody and
interrogated for several days before being released, but many of her
fellow leftists are less fortunate: scores of young men are tortured, and
three prominent young socialists are hanged. In the end the protago-
nist gets back on the train to return to Berlin in 1975, although this
time she will continue to study acting rather than resume work as a
Gastarbeiterin.
Ozdamar actually did work for the East Berlin Volksbhhne in 1976
and has since worked as an actress, director, and playwright in Ger-
many and France. In 1991 she was the first nonnative German writer
to win the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann prize.6 Both novels have
gone into multiple printings, and Karawanserei "has been translated
into English, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Turkish, and Norwegian."7
The German Quarterly, the most widely circulated scholarly journal
devoted to the study of German literature in the United States,
devoted no less than three separate articles to Karawanserei between
1996 and 2001.8 As a less official but still significant indication of her
rising cultural status, in 2001 a large framed photograph of Ozdamar
Conclusion 229
hung with other prominent contemporary German writers on the
walls of the Kiepert Buchhandlung, at that time Berlin's largest book-
store. Although Ozdamar cannot compete in sales or cultural prestige
with a Giinter Grass or a Martin Walser, she has certainly attained
modest popular success and a substantial critical acclaim that would
be the envy of most writers of her generation.
But are her novels German? They are written in German and pub-
lished by a major German firm, so it would seem fairly obvious that
they are indeed works of German fiction. As several critics have
noted, however, there is something unusual about Ozdamar's lan-
guage in Karawanserei, for she frequently renders idiomatic Turkish
sayings "in deadpan German translation."9 As a result, readers not
fluent in both German and Turkish are never completely sure if an
unusual turn of phrase is a result of Ozdamar's linguistic creativity in
German, a literal translation of a Turkish expression, or perhaps a say-
ing drawn from a hybrid dialect of nonnative speakers in Germany.'o
Die Brucke vom Goldenen Horn employs considerably less stylistic inno-
vation, but raises a different question of its relation to the "German"
genre of the Bildungsroman.": Together with Karawanserei the novel
follows a familiar pattern: the protagonist grows up, experiences sev-
eral romantic entanglements, and decides on a choice of career. Like
Wilhelm Meister before her, the unnamed protagonist of Ozdamar's
novels also pursues her "theatrical mission." Yet the typical hero of
the Bildungsroman is a young German man, not a Turkish woman. As
we have seen, moreover, many of the young men portrayed in the
German Bildungsroman undergo a pivotal experience when they
travel to the East, whereas Ozdamar's protagonist has her formative
experience in the West. Consider finally the setting of the two nov-
els: Karawanserei takes place entirely in Turkey, as does more than half
of Die Bricke vom Goldenen Horn. Should we speak of them, then, as
Turkish novels that happen to be written in German? Here again,
however, Ozdamar complicates matters: in Karawanserei she reminds
her readers that the Germans had allied themselves with Turkey
under Bismarck and again during the First World War in a belated
effort to catch up with the imperial ambitions of England and Russia:
"The Germans were in a hurry. They were late and wanted to
expand fast toward the East."'2 The movement goes in the opposite
230 German Orientalisms
direction in Die Brhcke vom Goldenen Horn, for the postwar Germans
now seek Turkish labor: "Germany wants even more Turkish work-
ers," proclaim the newspaper headlines in Istanbul; "Germany is tak-
ing Turks."'3 Instead of portraying Turkey and Germany as discrete
nations, Ozdamar suggests that they are enmeshed in a symbiotic
relationship determined by individual ambition and mutual need.
The question of whether Ozdamar's novels are German or Turk-
ish turns out to be misleading. In terms of their style, content, and
genre the novels work rather to undermine such distinctions, to cre-
ate a linguistic and generic literary hybrid that corresponds to the
complexities of individual and national identities in contemporary
Europe-which both includes and does not include Turkey. The
division within the protagonist's identity in Die Brhcke vom Goldenen
Horn symbolized by her journeys between Istanbul and Berlin repeats
itself in miniature within Istanbul itself, as she takes the ferry each day
from her parents' home on the Asian side of the city to study under
European-trained actors on the European side of town. While she
reads Kafka and Brecht, Lenin and Marx, her Europhile mother dyes
her hair blond and her father trims his moustache to look like Clark
Gable. With varying degrees of sophistication, all three try to pass as
Europeans. Such attempts at passage can be read in two different
ways, however: on the one hand, Ozdamar presents the mother and
father as touching if slightly pathetic in their effort to mimic what
they perceive a Western European ideal. The deck is stacked against
them, for no matter how hard they try, they will never become that
which they emulate: "almost the same, but not quite."14 On the other
hand, the daughter's hybrid identity as a bilingual traveler between
Istanbul and Berlin, between Europe and Asia, provokes what
Majorie Garber has termed a "category crisis" in her study of "cross-
dressing and cultural anxiety." Resisting the tendency to resolve gen-
der ambiguity by assigning a fixed sexual identity to the figure of the
transvestite in Western culture, Garber explores ways to call estab-
lished categories into question, or, more radically, to allow them to
be constructed in the first place.'5 The mimic is doomed to failure; he
or she can only ape a preexistent ideal. The hybrid, in contrast, desta-
bilizes the ideal, by revealing that it, too, is a cultural construct mas-
querading as a natural identity. The same kind of logic can also com-
Conclusion 231
plicate notions of national identity and the identity of the national lit-
erature. In a sense, Ozdamar's postmodern and postnational novels
serve as the counterpart to Wolfram von Eschenbach's premodern
and prenational romance: both disrupt understandings of the national
literature as an organic outgrowth of a homogenous culture. National
literatures are made, not born, and Ozdamar's fiction reminds us of
this fact.
MICHAEL ROES'S
POSTMODERN ORIENTALISM
While Karawanserei and Die Brhcke vom Goldenen Horn tell a new story
about the "Oriental's" experience in contemporary Germany,
Michael Roes's novel Leeres Viertel, Rub' Al-Khali: Invention Tber das
Spiel [Empty quarter, Rub' al Khali: Invention about games/playing]
(1996) revisits the familiar theme of the Western traveler to the exotic
East. Part fictional diary, part adventure novel, part ethnographic
treatise, this unconventional novel is actually two books in one, that
is, two separate accounts of two different journeys to the East. The
first is set in 1993-94, shortly after the Gulf War at a time of civil
unrest in Yemen. An unnamed first-person narrator flies from Ger-
many to Yemen, where he is to begin research on traditional games
in Yemeni culture. Although warned of the dangerous political situ-
ation by his Western colleagues at his institute in the capital city of
Sanaa, the protagonist ventures ever further into remote areas of the
country, making risky contacts with the locals and eventually becom-
ing the hostage of a tribe living on the edge of the great desert known
as Rub' Al-Khali in the center of the Arabian peninsula. The narra-
tor carries with him a fragmentary account of an earlier expedition to
the same region. Around 18oo Alois Ferdinand Schnittke leaves
Weimar as the traveling companion of Baron de la Motte-Fauteuil
and two other German intellectuals. After a journey that takes
months to traverse the distance covered in hours by the modern pro-
tagonist's airplane, Schnittke finally reaches the Arabian peninsula.
One by one his companions are either killed or die from natural
causes, until he, too, becomes a prisoner of a tribe living on the edge
of the "empty quarter."
232 German Orientalisms
Schnittke and the present-day narrator not only travel along paral-
lel routes and share similar experiences, but they also seem kindred
spirits, distinguished from their colleagues by a greater degree of
openness toward the foreign and a correspondingly greater willing-
ness to question their own society and to reflect on their cultural
prejudices. As they travel through Istanbul and Egypt on their way
toward Yemen, Schnittke's companions keep to themselves and seem
crassly insensitive to ways in which their behavior offends local sen-
sibilities. Schnittke is not blind to some of the more disturbing aspects
of the foreign culture-in Egypt, for example, he stays next to a
square used for public executions and is troubled by the sight of
freshly beheaded corpses each morning outside his room-but he
reminds himself that Europeans have their own barbaric customs such
as the slave trade. He becomes increasingly impatient with his com-
panions' arrogance and ignorance, and finally tells them that their
fixation on the ancient Orient renders them blind to their present
surroundings: "What can you know of a land whose present you
essentially detest? Your journey leads through a European dream of
the Orient that could destroy the real East."'6 The present-day narra-
tor also rejects the bunker mentality of his fellow scholars while seek-
ing closer contact with the local people and greater knowledge of
their language and customs.
More often than not, however, both he and Schnittke become
acutely aware of their foreignness in moments when they are most
deeply immersed in the alien culture: "Now I have journeyed so long
and so far from home, but I have not really escaped it," writes
Schnittke. "It seems rather as if I had grown closer to its depths, to
the essence of that which we call home in proportion to the distance
[I have traveled]" (ioi). The contemporary anthropologist finds him-
self similarly troubled by the seemingly insurmountable gulf that
divides one culture from another: "Even if I could learn to under-
stand their world, how should it [their world] ever be able to under-
stand me?" (147). At other times he becomes suspicious of the moti-
vations behind his own academic discipline: "Isn't anthropology part
of a colonial strategy for controlling and exploiting the foreign?"
(239). As he later observes, however, even this tendency toward
compulsive self-reflection is a part of his own culture: "Still left-over
Conclusion 233
Protestant education: constant introspection, self-observation, self-
punishment" (683). The same critical awareness only pushes acade-
mic anthropology deeper into Western culture: "Even this critique
only represents the current state of anthropological reflection . . . We
cannot escape ethnocentrism. Even the critical reflection is a part of
our own cultural competence" (240).
The modern narrator is particularly aware of the extent to which
his experience of the East is mediated by images from Western pop-
ular culture. "We are not living in the imaginary Orient of Karl
May," cautions his colleague at the institute, "but in an autocratically
ruled third world state" (199). The narrator nevertheless feels at times
as if he has wandered onto a movie set: "I really feel like I have been
transported into the background of an Oriental feature film" (720).
This sense of being caught between cultures leads to a number of
bizarrely incongruous episodes in the novel. At one point the narra-
tor finds himself at a party at the institute in Yemen surrounded by
Westerners eating Spatzle, Knodel, rote Gritze, and other German
delicacies that have been flown in by Lufthansa. In this incongruous
setting the German culture takes on a sense of theatricality that mir-
rors the pseudo-Oriental atmosphere of a restaurant in Sanaa that
caters to foreigners: "the entire ambiance artificial in the highest
degree, an Arabic simulation of European expectations" (Soo). In
another episode the narrator has a moment of self-critical awareness
as he explains Freudian psychology to Yemeni schoolchildren: "For
a second I became aware of the craziness, indeed, the surreality of the
situation" (352).
Another such surreal episode occurs in the section titled "West-
ostlicher Diwan." The title inevitably recalls Goethe's work, but in
this case the Diwan refers not to a collection of poetry, but to a room
in Yemenese culture that serves as the rough equivalent of a Western
parlor. The difference, however, is that the visitor will never be
allowed beyond the Diwan to the interior of the home: "The wide-
spread custom in my home to first lead some guests through the
entire house is unthinkable here" (594). The Diwan thus functions as
a point of contact between the two cultures, but also as a boundary
that prevents deeper penetration. In this setting the narrator enter-
tains some of the students to whom he has been teaching English on
234 German Orientalisms
the edge of the desert, and one night one of them requests that he
sing them a song from his own country. The only piece of music that
comes to mind is "Silent Night," which he sings softly, haltingly, and
with considerable embarrassment: "I can't think about the absurdity
of this selection" (596). Afterward he cannot tell what sort of impres-
sion his song has made; the young men seem as melancholy as they
had been before the song, but then, as the narrator wryly comments,
"even at home, 'Silent Night' is not exactly considered an icebreaker
[stimmungsmacher]" (596). The moment of cross-cultural exchange
threatens to become a performance in the theater of the absurd. And
yet there is no mockery on the part of the students, who confidently
sing their own songs before politely taking their leave.
The novel thus fluctuates between moments of seemingly genuine
understanding between alien cultures and scenes in which the gaps
between individuals and peoples seem wider than ever. Like
Ozdamar's protagonists, Roes's characters find themselves suspended
between two worlds in a kind of bastard literature, as the bilingual
title of his novel already suggests. The awareness that the outsider can
never fully assimilate into the foreign group leads to an interest on the
part of both narrators in theatricality, in culture as performance. If
they cannot become the Other, there are at least moments in which
they can pass for the Other. Schnittke, by profession a comic actor,
scenery painter, and former director of a marionette theater, soon
finds that he can be mistaken for an Arab when he wears the appro-
priate clothing. The present-day narrator tries on a turban, has him-
self fitted in native garb, and is also occasionally confused for a local.
Both remain acutely aware, however, that they are only playing a
role: "On the other hand I understandably cannot get into the Ara-
bian skin," comments Schnittke; "I only disguise myself as an Orien-
tal" (94). "Of course I cannot forget my own cultural background"
(419), echoes the modern narrator. "Any attempt at a purely
superficial assimilation would in any case be a disguise and would
make that which divides us all the more visible" (418). Seen from his
own cultural perspective, dressing up in flowing robes might seem
like transvestism, and he concedes that the strange clothing makes his
movements more "effeminate." Nevertheless, he points out that
"soft, graceful movements are in no way considered typically femi-
Conclusion 235
nine in this culture" (419). There is in fact nothing natural about the
performance of gender in a given culture: "Gender is representation.
Not by chance we speak of gender roles. Whatever the biological
imperatives may be, masculinity and femininity are social masks and
sexual encounters are social stage productions" (755).
In Leeres Viertel and subsequent publications, Roes is particularly
interested in the social status of homosexuality in various cultural
contexts.'7 As one of his colleagues reminds the modern narrator
shortly after his arrival in Yemen, the East has long attracted gay
European men with the promise of readily available sexual encoun-
ters.s'8 "Gay Europeans are free to continue to visit their fictive Ori-
ent, but they should not try to pass off their erotic projections as
scholarly knowledge" (128). In fact, the narrator is warned, homo-
sexuality is punishable by death in Yemen. While hardly the "pro-
jected paradise of countless homosexual travelers to the Orient"
(128), Yemen does offer the narrator a few furtive homosexual
encounters and more lasting relationships with at least two young
men. On one level, in fact, Leeres Viertel is a gay novel about male-
male desire, and more than once the modern narrator insists on the
superiority of homosexuality over heterosexuality: "thus 'heterosex-
uality' essentially describes a relationship between unequals . . . that
is, a relationship based on force/violence, whereas 'homosexuality' is
a relationship between equals, who must and can define their roles
anew in every encounter" (302). As the quotation marks indicate,
however, the narrator finds the clear-cut distinction between hetero-
and homosexuality an oversimplification: "Sexuality is a multilayered
and contradictory phenomenon in every society. To want to describe it in terms
of simple dualisms . . . says more about the social concept than the social real-
ity" (italics in original) (23 I). Roes's novel is thus more queer than
gay; it is a European exploration of the performance of masculinity in
the East.
As has been the case with many novels discussed in this book,
Leeres Viertel has been said to have certain affinities with the German
tradition of the Bildungsroman, including both narrators' interest in
the theater and the desire on the part of both to learn and experience
as much as possible, including friendship and love.'9 Schnittke's ties
to classical Weimar also suggest links to Goethe and the concept of
236 German Orientalisms
Bildung. Finally, both narrators-like Gahmuret, Simplicissimus,
Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Anton Wohlfart, and Adrian Lever-
kiihn- make a journey to the East. There is a crucial difference,
however: neither Schnittke nor the modern narrator returns.
Schnittke, long uncertain about the goal of his journey, finally learns
that his companions seek nothing less than the Ark of the Covenant
and the tablets that Moses brought down with him from Mount
Sinai. The purpose of their journey, in other words, is to rediscover
the Eastern source of Western culture in a mission that recalls Parzi-
val's quest for the Holy Grail: "For if we find the tablets, then the
universality of the divine commandments cannot be denied by even
the most enlightened individual or the one most hostile to tradition"
(554). Unfortunately, Schnittke's companion, who had hoped to
return to his people "like a second Moses" (559), is bitten by a scor-
pion and dies. Schnittke alone remains to continue the search, but
when he is finally taken into a darkened room in a mysterious tem-
ple to view what he hopes may be the Ark of the Covenant, he is dis-
appointed: there is no clap of thunder, no flash of lightning. He opens
the chest, pulls out a stone tablet, and examines it closely in the
moonlight, but to no avail: "The tablets are blank" (772).
Schnittke's fragmentary text ends at this point, cut off both from
his distant homeland in Germany and from the promise of divine rev-
elation in the Orient. The modern narrator makes an unsuccessful
effort to find a continuation of his tale, but in the end Schnittke's fate
remains unclear. The same is true of the modern narrator. Unlike the
proverbial philistine who ends his Bildungsroman at home with a wife
and a job and a couple of children on the way, the modern narrator
finds himself a prisoner in a remote village on the edge of the Arabian
desert, wasted by dysentery and malaria, and filled with a paralyzing
sense of apathy and resignation. He has been taken captive and is pre-
sumably being held hostage, but for how long or for what purpose is
not clear. Toward the end of the novel one of his colleagues visits
him and urges him to flee, but the narrator feels compelled by his
word of honor to remain in the village. He had begun his journey as
a Western anthropologist who set out to produce an objective record
of the foreign culture, but his position has gradually shifted with his
increasing self-consciousness about his role as a scientist and partial
Conclusion 237
integration into Yemeni society. As he writes near the end of the
novel, he finally realized that he had chosen games as the topic of his
research not because of a desire to develop a new theory of the game,
"but rather to dissolve once again the division between game and
reflection; to experience once again that in the game our attitude and
our existence are one, as they were one in our childhood" (654).
The modern narrator travels to the East, in other words, to recap-
ture the lost innocence of childhood, a Romantic quest that parallels
Schnittke's search for the lost origins of Western culture. As in
Schnittke's case, however, the outcome of the modern narrator's
journey is profoundly ambivalent: in the final scene of the novel he
wills his weakened body to its feet and joins with his friend Ahmad in
the gentle flowing gestures of a martial dance "that people would call
'effeminate' in other cultures" (801-2). He loses himself in the dance
and experiences an instant of ecstasy, but then suddenly becomes
aware of the dust and the heat; his fever returns and the moment is
gone. In the morning all is forgotten. The modern nomads brush the
dust from their robes, climb back into their SUVs, "and drive in a dis-
orderly mass and without headlights out into the desert" (803).
Roes's Leeres Viertel offers us an appropriately inclusive conclusion
to the ongoing story of German Orientalism, for, as recent political
events have made clear, the history of relations between East and
West has by no means come to an end, and Germany's place between
the two worlds remains a matter of debate. Perhaps in the next
decade we will see a new hardening of positions between inflexible
enemies, or perhaps Ozdamar and Roes point the way toward a new
intermingling of cultures of the sort that Giinter Grass has also envi-
sioned in his fiction and Zafer Senocak has described in his essays. In
either case, literary reflections on Germany's symbolic geography
seem certain to continue for at least some time to come-to borrow
the title of Grass's Nobel Prize address, "To be continued .."
CODA: LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF
CULTURAL STUDIES
In what has quickly become something of a contemporary classic, the
late Bill Readings argued that the modern university was "in ruins"
238 German Orientalisms
because it could no longer fulfill its cultural mission for the nation in
a transnational era.20 An empty concept of "excellence" based on a
corporate model of productivity has replaced the university's former
role as the agent of Bildung to produce well-rounded subjects to
become citizens of the nation-state. Today, as departments are being
downsized and language teaching outsourced to part-timers who
often work without benefits, administrators legitimate their universi-
ties in quantifiable terms: the number of faculty publications, rank-
ings in national surveys, instructor approval ratings on course evalua-
tions, and-above all-in terms of enrollment. Immanuel Kant once
summed up the Prussian king's attitude toward the distinction
between academic and political freedom as follows: "think as much as
you want and about whatever you want, but obey!"2 Bill Readings might
have updated Kant's remarks for the modern university administrator
to: "You can think as much as you want and teach whatever 'sub-
versive' materials you want, as long as you get published and students
take the class."22
In welcome contrast to conservative pundits writing during the
199os culture wars, Readings does not dwell gloomily on the decline
and fall of Western civilization in an era when students have forgot-
ten how to read and politically correct professors have hardened their
hearts to the pleasure of the literary text. Instead, Readings views
changes in the university as part of the broader move toward global-
ization in the postnational era. His admittedly catchy title is some-
what misleading in that it suggests that the university that has fallen
into ruin needs to be rebuilt to its former glory. To be sure, Readings
seems to take malicious pleasure in ridiculing an institution that can
measure excellence in terms of eliminating faculty parking spaces.23
On a more serious level, however, he does not suggest that we return
to the good old days of a unified nineteenth-century national culture,
but that we learn how to "dwell in the ruins" of the modern univer-
sity. We can't go home again, as the saying goes, but even if we
could, we might find the old Heimat a little unheimlich.
Seen positively, the German theories of Bildung that emerged
around 18oo express a politically progressive humanism in which
education and ability replace the prerogatives of birth. Humboldt's
conception of the university continues to inform the philosophy of
Conclusion 239
liberal arts colleges in the United States today, although here too, no
doubt, the appeal to "excellence" has reared its ugly head. Yet the
universalizing gesture of German thought around 18oo has provoked
suspicion as well as acclaim. The idealized uniformity of the aesthetic
state looks suspiciously like the disciplinary regime that Foucault
describes in Discipline and Punish, a totality that can easily slide into
the totalitarian culture of the Third Reich. The "circuitous journey"
in which Romantics sought to regain lost innocence becomes a
prime example of Terry Eagleton's "ideology of the aesthetic," Paul
de Man's account of coercive pedagogy in Kleist's Marionettentheater,
and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's elaboration of the "Nazi myth" as
a totalizing "ideology of the subject" that conflates art with politics and
is racist to the core.24 Not surprisingly, many postwar Germans found
Adorno's negative dialectics more compelling than yet another
appeal to das allgemein Menschliche, while more recent critics of glob-
alization's homogenizing tendencies have been willing to join hands
with Lyotard in his efforts to "wage a war on totality."'25 In practice,
of course, there was nothing universal about aesthetic education in
the nineteenth century, for access to the university was denied to all
women and the majority of young German men. German humanism
was thus ideological in the sense that it masked power under the
cloak of egalitarianism. Finally, narratives of individual subject-for-
mation could easily be extended to narratives of national identity and
universal history. Only educated men in Western Europe were said
to have the capacity for Bildung; women and Orientals remain close
to nature, but incapable of higher development. Hence, as Marc
Redfield observes, "the narrative of Bildung clearly has enormous
political utility and is in fact inseparable not just from the rhetoric of
class struggle and colonial administration in the nineteenth century,
but more generally from the very thought of history itself."26
In implicit response to these criticisms, the academic discipline of
Germanistik that took root in Humboldt's university for the Bildung of
the German nation has yielded in recent years to the new German
Studies. For the sake of the argument, we can set up a series of overly
simplified binary oppositions between the two approaches to the
study of German literature: Germanistik works with close readings of
canonical texts; German Studies might work with the same texts, but
240 German Orientalisms
ask instead how and why they came to be considered canonical,
while other works did not.27 German Studies might also look at cul-
tural productions beyond the pale of traditional literary criticism such
as popular literature, film, national monuments, and festivals; address
questions of gender roles and sexual identity; and include formerly
silenced voices of women and minorities. The student of Germanistik
learns a discipline, symbolized most obviously by reading lists for
doctoral qualifying examinations, whereas German Studies prides
itself on being interdisciplinary in method and self-conscious about
the history of Germanistik as a discipline: when and why did German
literature begin to be taught at the university, and what cultural labor
did academic Germanistik perform for the German nation?28 Germa-
nistik has its origins in organic theories of the nation that can be traced
back through the Brothers Grimm to Herder, whereas German Stud-
ies is the product of a postnational, postcolonial era of global culture.
To give it a final twist, one might say that Germanistik was originally
a kind of German Studies: the famous Germanistenversammlung of
1846 included scholars of Germanic law, history, and language, as
well as literary historians. Their common goal was to get to know
"das deutsche Wesen" as it manifested itself in various cultural
forms.29 Again in 1933 Germanistik was redefined as Deutschkunde in
accordance with the racist ideology of Nazi Germany.30 The new
interdisciplinarity of German Studies tries to take the essence out of
Germanistik, to drain the blood from volkisch nationalism, and to
uproot Germanistik from its native soil.
There is thus a direct link between the structural transformation of
the university in the early twenty-first century and the transformation
of Germanistik into German Studies, a development that is part of a
larger move toward the globalization of literary studies. Contempo-
rary literature is often "more about nomads than natives," as Stephen
Greenblatt has put it, as traditional cultures have become increasingly
dislocated, deterritorialized, and diasporic. Hence he recommends the
study of multiple identities and impure ethnicities rather than stable
selves and organic communities.3' Contemporary German Studies has
similarly worked to decenter the discipline that Eberhard Limmert
once ruefully turned "eine deutsche Wissenschaft."32 Symptomatic of
this disciplinary shift are recent debates about the status of "Migrant
Conclusion 241
Literature" and so-called Auslandsgermanistik, that is, studies of Ger-
man literature conducted outside Germany's national borders.
In 1989 the New German Critique's special issue Minorities in German
Culture contained various articles about Turks, Poles, Jews, and Por-
tuguese living in the Federal Republic. While critics had begun to
acknowledge the existence of literature emerging from such groups,
it was not clear what it should be called: Ausldnderliteratur, Gastarbei-
terliteratur, Migrantenliteratur?33 As Leslie Adelson put it in a frequently
cited article (1990), the debate itself obscured a larger issue: "what is
at stake is not the appropriate category for the foreign 'addendum'
but the fundamental need to reconceptualize our understanding of an
identifiably German core of contemporary literature."34 There is
nothing natural about the process of canon-formation, in other
words. In fact, one of the central strategies of nineteenth-century lit-
erary historians was to discuss canonical works of German literature
as if they were products of German nature rather than the result of
cultural labor. For instance, August Koberstein begins his Grundrif der
Geschichte der deutschen National-Litteratur [Outline of the history of
German national literature] (1847) by distinguishing between books
that happen to be written in German and those works of the national
literature "which are artistic productions that bear a characteristically
German stamp in both their form and their inner essence."35 Migrant
literature unsettles such distinctions, both for contemporary literary
production and, by implication, the literature of the past.
Meanwhile, professors of German literature in the United States
were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their dependence on
the Fatherland. A series of publications, including German Studies in
the United States (1976), Teaching German in America (1988), Germani-
stik in den USA (1989), and The Future of Germanistik in the USA
(1996), had begun to reflect on the status of the discipline in North
America.36 What emerged was a story familiar to students of Ameri-
can history: in the beginning, we were a colony. German missionar-
ies came to America around 1900oo convinced of their cultural superi-
ority and eager to shed "mehr Licht" on the dark continent of North
America.37 Two world wars tarnished the German reputation consid-
erably, but the rapid expansion of American universities in the 1950s
and 1960s, coupled with government support for foreign language
242 German Orientalisms
study during the Cold War, led to a new influx of German intellec-
tuals into the United States.3s Until at least the 1970s, American Ger-
manisten continued to orient themselves toward the homeland, pub-
lishing in German and in Germany.39 But the natives were growing
restless; in a development that recalls Benedict Anderson's discussion
of the nationalism that arose among Creole pioneers in Latin Amer-
ica, that is, people of French or Spanish descent born and raised in the
colonial region who began to identify with each other more than the
mother country, American scholars of German literature began to feel
closer to their colleagues in other fields at home than to Germanisten
abroad.4° Finally, in 1995, Marc Weiner declared independence when
taking over as the editor for the German Quarterly. Pointing to the
influence of "culture studies, feminism, gay studies, and poststruc-
turalist theory" on American academics, Weiner proclaimed that we
should "no longer blur the lines between the kind of research and
teaching undertaken in this country and that found abroad, but to
acknowledge their configurations as different."4"1
Identifying institutional differences between the study of German
literature in Germany and the United States was an important first
step in the recent evolution of the discipline, but a first step only. To
many, the distinction between German Studies in the United States
and German Germanistik seemed overly simplistic at best, and evi-
dence of a new cultural arrogance at worst. The American scholars
seem either bold, innovative, and progressive in contrast to their staid
German counterparts or, to reverse the stereotype, superficial,
trendy, and politically correct. In the long run, reducing distinctions
between German and American scholars to a series of mutual carica-
tures serves little purpose, and Russell Berman has correctly warned
against a "new provincialism" among American scholars who remain
hostile to their counterparts in Germany, just as German academics
have a long history of looking down their noses at Auslandsgermani-
stik.42 From a more positive perspective, however, recognizing insti-
tutional diversity can lead to a productive cross-cultural exchange.
Some time ago Jeffrey Sammons called for the cultivation of a "dou-
ble optic" among scholars of German literature on both sides of the
Atlantic that would respect local contexts and yet inspire intellectual
discussion.43 In an analogous argument, Claire Kramsch has called
Conclusion 243
attention to the "privilege of the nonnative speaker" in foreign lan-
guage acquisition. The goal of language instruction should not be to
turn students into native speakers, she argues, not just because such a
goal would be unattainable, but because the goal itself is based on a
cultural myth: "the native speaker is in fact an imaginary construct
a canonically literate monolingual middle-class member of a largely
fictional national community."44 Within a particular national context
the language already consists of multiple layers and distinct individu-
als and groups; the nonnative speaker simply adds another voice to
the mix. Speaking a foreign language becomes an exercise in cultural
performance rather than a misguided attempt to assimilate to an ide-
alized norm. At stake in such arguments is the question of which
model of global culture will prevail in the age of empire: one that is
monolithic, monolingual, and focused exclusively on the present, or
one that acknowledges differences and encourages dialogue.
German Studies confronts a crisis in the form of a paradox: on the
one hand, the field has never been more vital, as theoretically sophis-
ticated literary and cultural critics pose new questions and explore
neglected terrains; on the other hand, however, the field has never
been more endangered, as enrollments sag, tenure lines disappear,
and university presses become increasingly reluctant to publish books
in the humanities, let alone German literature.45 No sooner did
scholars in the United States declare at least partial independence
from German Germanistik than they began to worry about being col-
onized anew by imperialist English departments next door.46 Suppos-
edly innovative German scholars in America are accused of practicing
only derivative versions of the latest trend in Franco-American the-
ory, while the rise of English to the global language threatens to
reduce German departments to service units of an increasingly
monolingual university. Finally, the move toward interdisciplinarity
within German Studies and the increased range of cultural produc-
tions scrutinized has often driven literature into the background, at
best, or caused it to disappear entirely into a ubiquitous and undiffer-
entiated cultural discourse. As a result of these developments, Ger-
man professors in the United States often feel like puzzled shopkeep-
ers, convinced that their product is better than ever even as potential
customers disappear in droves.
244 German Orientalisms
In response to this sense of crisis, several prominent voices have
proclaimed that it is time to recenter the discipline and to reinstate
literature at its core.47 How might it be possible to return to literature
in an age of Cultural Studies? One might simply ignore the institu-
tional changes that have transformed the field and try to return to a
nostalgic image of the past, but this would be a reactionary gesture
doomed to failure.48 The more interesting alternative is to reread the
history of the national literature from today's decentered, diasporic,
postcolonial perspective. That is, the point is not to silence once
again those who are finally being heard but rather to use their voices
to reawaken the past-and not only to find those writers who were
marginalized back then, but also to take a fresh look at canonical
authors and texts. We soon discover that many of the figures deemed
central to the German national literature were themselves products of
border zones and contested identities, and that they write about these
conflicts in their most famous works.
In the preceding chapters I have explored ways in which canoni-
cal German authors constructed a sense of common identity through
a symbolic geography that positioned the nation in various ways
between Europe and Asia, between the Occident and the Orient. In
doing so, I by no means intend to suggest that we should stop look-
ing at conflicted national, sexual, or ethnic identities in those writers
traditionally ignored by mainstream Germanistik, nor do I mean to
adopt a false pathos that claims marginal status for canonical texts.
Cultural power exists, and not just in the amorphous way that Fou-
cault sometimes defined it; many of the authors examined here were
given national prominence at the expense of others who were
silenced. More often than not, however, the literary texts themselves
display a sense of humor and generosity that subverts attempts at ide-
ological abuse and invites renewed reading. We can begin to preserve
literature in an age of Cultural Studies by situating it in a variety of
geographical, historical, and institutional contexts, but the task will
remain incomplete unless we also appreciate the literary imagination.
For literature retains its ability to dodge dogmatism, to slip between
ideologies, and even to be in two places at the same time, as in the
triumphantly subversive conclusion to Wolfram's Parzival. In other
words, one of literature's most enduring locations is elsewhere.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
i. Hobsbawm, "Introduction"; Anderson, Imagined Communities.
2. Said, Orientalism, 2.
3. Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance.
4. Hence Sheehan begins his German History, 1770-1866 by pointing out
the "obvious . . . fact that 'Germany' did not exist" during this period (1).
5. The original German title of Fischer's study Germany's Aims in the
First World War was Grif nach der Weltmacht.
6. On the widespread interest in racial theory during the Enlighten-
ment see Poliakov, The Aryan Myth; and Eze, Race and the Enlightenment.
Bernal (Black Athena, 189-224), Zammito (Kant, Herder, and the Birth of
Anthropology, 221-53, 302-7), and Zantop (Colonial Fantasies, 66-80) focus
more closely on German writers.
7. Blumenbach, Uber die nathrlichen
Verschiedenheiten im Menschen-
geschlechte; Meiners, GrundriJ3 der Geschichte der Menschheit; Kant, "Von den
Verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen," "Bestimmung des Begriffs einer
Menschenrasse," in Werkausgabe, 11:11-30, 65-82.
8. For a more detailed discussion of Meiners, see Zantop, "The Beau-
tiful, the Ugly, and the German."
9. Meiners, GrundriJ3, 218-19.
Io. Iselin, Uber die Geschichte der Menschheit, 2: Io8.
i I. Foucault, The Order of Things, 220.
I2. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, 1:197.
I 3. Voltaire, Philosophy of History, 73.
I4. Iselin, Uber die Geschichte der Menschheit, 345; Blumenbach, Uber die
nathrlichen Verschiedenheiten, 213. Other proponents of the "out of Asia" the-
ory included Gatterer, Einleitung in die synchronistische Universalhistorie,
63-64; and Wiinsch, Unterhaltungen uber den Menschen, 386. Further sources
can be found in Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, 183-99.
245
246 Notes to Pages 5-9
15. On Voltaire see Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, 175-76; Blumenbach
developed his theory of racial decline in his Uber die nathrlichen Verschieden-
heiten im Menschengeschlechte.
16. For example, "How did Europe become what it is?" questions
Schlozer in the introduction to his Vorstellung seiner Universal-Historie. "How
did this smallest part of the world raise itself up so far above the others
through Enlightenment, customs, and power?" (2-3).
17. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.
18. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 82.
19. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 7.
20. In Culture and Imperialism Said expands his focus from relations
between Europe and the Near East to those between the "first" world of
Europe and the United States and the "rest of the world," without, how-
ever, paying much attention to differences between individual European
nations. For an insightful critique of Orientalism as a monolithic discourse,
see Lowe, Critical Terrains.
21. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire, Ioo.
22. Hegel, Vorlesungen, 556.
23. Zantop in Colonial Fantasies explored just this sort of compensatory
pride in the absence of empire, claiming that it both led to a sense of Ger-
man moral superiority vis-a-vis other colonizing nations around 18oo and
also fueled the conviction that, eventually, Germans would establish a
kinder and gentler empire of their own.
24. Elias, The Civilizing Process, 3-28.
25. For a useful discussion of different types of nationalism, see Brinker-
Gabler and Smith, "Introduction."
26. Poliakov, The Aryan Myth; Bernal, Black Athena; Pollock, "Deep
Orientalism?"
27. Pollock views the German persecution of the Jews and others during
the Third Reich as a form of colonization that was directed inward, while
other European nations set out to conquer the world: "their 'othering' and
orientalization were played out at home" ("Deep Orientalism?" 77). In fact,
the Germans did both.
28. Bernal, Black Athena, 62.
29. Said, Orientalism, 204.
30. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners.
31. Berman, "An Imagined Community." For a more nuanced history
of Jews in Germany from 1743 to 1933, see Elon, The Pity of It All.
32. Schneider, "Und wenn wir nur eine Stunde gewinnen." For a subtler
understanding of the pressures that caused some Germans to become Nazi
perpetrators, see Browning's Ordinary Men.
33. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire.
Notes to Pages 9-16 247
34. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 16.
35. I refer to the work of Hardt and Negri (Empire). They contend that
the era of imperialism emanating from individual nation-states has yielded
to a "new global form of sovereignty" in a period of transnational capitalism
that they call "Empire" (xii).
36. Buruma and Margalit, "Occidentalism."
37. Jusdanis, The Necessary Nation.
38. For example, Germany's ties to India-real and imagined--have
been the topic of extensive research. See Sedlar, India in the Mind of Ger-
many; Halbfass, India and Europe; and McGetchin, "The Sanskrit Reich."
McGetchin's work includes a large and up-to-date bibliography.
39. Links between gender, sexuality, nationalism, and imperialism have
been much explored in recent years. Said's Orientalism has come under fire
for its failure to account for the variety of ways in which gender informs
colonial discourse (Moore-Gilbert offers a concise summary of these cri-
tiques with further references in Postcolonial Theory, 213-14 n. 6o). Useful
anthologies on the topic include Parker et al., Nationalisms and Sexualities;
and Herminghouse and Mueller, Gender and Germanness.
40. See the various versions of this tale in Price, Inkle and Yarico Album.
41. On interracial romance in the "contact zone" see Pratt, Imperial Eyes,
86-o107; and Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 99-161.
42. Kontje, "Passing for German."
43. Theweleit, Male Fantasies.
44. Balke's "Orient und
orientalische Literaturen" gives a good
overview of Orientalist motifs in German literature from the Middle Ages
to the present--and also makes clear why any comprehensive survey of
Orientalism in German literature would be impossible. Spies offers an older
and shorter but readable survey of Der Orient in der deutschen Literatur. Other
studies of German Orientalism focus on individual authors or specific his-
torical periods. For instance, Tekinay focuses on the Middle Ages (Mate-
rialien), Amman on the Biedermeier period (Ostliche Spiegel), and Nina
Berman on modernity (Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne).
CHAPTER 1
i. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 314.
2. I borrow this phrase from Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 269-91.
3. Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 156-59.
4. "Mit anderen Worten, nicht die keltisch-franzosische Gralsmythe
bildet den Mittelpunkt von Wolframs Epos, sondern das Zusammentreffen
von Orient und Okzident" (Goetz, "Der Orient der Kreuzziige," 6).
5. Tekinay, Materialien, 33. "Harun ar-Raschid und Karl der Grol3e,"
248 Notes to Pages 16-22
in Europa und der Orient 8oo- 9goo, ed. Hendrik Budde and Gereo Sievernich
(Giitersloh: Bertelsmann, 1989), 529-42.
6. Ereira and Jones's Crusades provides a lively and lavishly illustrated
introduction to the topic. For more detailed studies see Richard, The Cru-
sades; Riley-Smith, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades; Maalouf,
The Crusades through Arab Eyes; and Southern, Western Views of Islam.
7. Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Kreuzzugsdichtung, 7.
8. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, 38-41.
9. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, 268-337.
Io. On the growing intolerance of Islam in the later Middle Ages see
Southern, Western Views of Islam; and Bartlett, The Making of Europe,
221-42.
II. Sayers, "Introduction."
12. Konrad der Pfaffe, Das Rolandslied, 394 (lines 9080-83).
13. Wentzlaff-Eggeberg, Kreuzzugsdichtung, 77-82.
14. Konrad der Pfaffe, Das Rolandslied, 8 (lines 85-86).
15. Scholars no longer accept the view of the German Romantics that
the five works generally classified as Spielmannsepen or Spielmannsdichtung
(Konig Rother, Herzog Ernst, St. Oswald, Orendel, and Salman und Morof)
were written by wandering minstrels. See Schroder, "Vorwort."
16. Kuhn, "Gestalten und Lebenskraifte."
17. See commentary to Das Ezzolied, in Frhhe deutsche Literatur, 1411-25.
18. Auerbach, "Figura," 52.
19. Das Ezzolied, 590 (section 28, lines 335-36).
20. Auerbach, "Figura," 59.
21. On Willehalm see Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 207-74; Wentz-
laff-Eggebert, Kreuzzugsdichtung, 247-77; Mustard and Passage, "Introduc-
tion"; and Classen, "Emergence of Tolerance."
22. Wolfram, Willehalm, 758 (section 450, lines 17-19); English transla-
tion, 253.
23. Bumke, Hofische Kultur, I125.
24. Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 51. On primogeniture in Parzival
see also Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 217-28. Noltze's commentary is the
best introduction to the Gahmuret episode in Parzival; he also summarizes
earlier scholarship. On the idealized world of the courtly romance see Auer-
bach, Mimesis, 123-42.
25. Goetz, "Der Orient der Kreuzziige," II; also Noltze, Gahmurets Ori-
entfahrt, 70-71.
26. Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 78-79.
27. Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 95-97. See also Green, "Der Auszug
Gahmurets."
28. Tax, "Gahmuret zwischen Aneas und Parzival."
Notes to Pages 23-32 249
29. Wolfram, Parzival, volume 1.92 (section 51, line 24). I include page
references to the English translation of Parzival by Mustard and Passage par-
enthetically in the text. For the reader's convenience, I also include subse-
quent references to sections and lines parenthetically in the text. With this
information readers should be able to locate page numbers in several differ-
ent modern editions. A cite that reads as follows: (31 [55.5]) is a cite to page
31 of Mustard and Passage's translation of section 55, line 5.
30. See comments by Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 177 (to Parzival
49.14-15) and 195 (to 55-5).
31. See Noltze's commentary on the passages in Gahmurets Orientfahrt,
95-96, o108-9.
32. For a sensitive close reading of Gahmuret's dilemma see Pretzel,
"Gahmuret im Kampf der Pflichten."
33. Thus Green tells only half the story when he contends that Gah-
muret transcends his original material concerns to legitimate the knight's
profession as an ideal ("Der Auszug Gahmurets"). Gahmuret's furtive
departure from Zazamanc reveals the internal contradictions of that ideal.
On Gahmuret's guilt see Noltze, Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 192-214.
34. Ortmann argues that Gahmuret's adventures prefigure those of
Parzival, just as the events of the New Testament repeat and surpass those of
the Old ("Zur Frage"). See also Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 69-71I; and
Kuhn, "Parzival."
35. Bumke, Hofische Kultur, 178-83.
36. Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 164-67.
37. Schroder, "Kyot."
38. Kunitzsch, "Erneut," 88. Adolf argues that the Oriental sources for
the Grail, Prester John, and Feirefiz come from Abyssinia, not India ("New
Light"). Noltze inclines toward India as the location of Zazamanc and
Azagouc, which would provide continuity between the opening and con-
cluding books of Parzival (Gahmurets Orientfahrt, 87-89).
39. Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, 121.
40. The Song of Roland, 191.
41. Orendel, 212 (lines 3168-69).
42. Bumke, "Parzival und Feirefiz," 244-45.
43. As Bumke puts it, "Parzival hat sozusagen einen doppelten Schlul3:
das Harmonieprogramm fur diejenigen, die nach einer gliicklichen Lbsung
verlangten; und der irritierende Perspektivenwechsel fur. . . die von Wol-
fram gewiinschten Zuhbrer" ("Parzival und Feirefiz," 236-37).
44. On the unresolved contradictions of this passage see Bumke, "Parzi-
val und Feirefiz," 240. Groos also offers an excellent summary of the incon-
sistencies created by Trevrizent's "retraction" (Romancing the Grail, 220-41).
45. The Song of Roland, 203.
250 Notes to Pages 32-39
46. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, I128.
47. Anderson (Imagined Communities), Gellner (Nations and Nationalism),
and Hobsbawm (Nations and Nationalism since 1780) all date modern nation-
alism to the revolutionary movements at the end of the eighteenth century.
A sense of collective identity and patriotic pride emerged much sooner,
however. For a sweeping look at the emergence of nations see Armstrong,
Nations before Nationalism; for the beginnings of German patriotism see
Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche.
48. Das Annolied, 602; commentary to this passage on 1432-33.
49. Quinn, "New Geographical Horizons," 637.
50. Quinn, "New Geographical Horizons," 629.
51i. Johnson, "New Geographical Horizons."
52. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 18-30. On direct German participation in
exploration and conquest see Jantz, "Images of America in the German
Renaissance."
53. Hamilton, "What the New World Gave the Economy of the Old,"
875. On the German role in publishing accounts of the New World see
Hirsch, "Printed Reports."
54. Febvre and Martin, The Coming of the Book, 282.
55. Johnson, "New Geographical Horizons," 619.
56. Hultsch, Der Orient in der deutschen Barockliteratur, 17.
57. Daniel, Islam, Europe, and Empire, 6.
58. For an entertaining account of the German preoccupation with Tac-
itus from Humanism to Hitler, see Schama, Landscape and Memory, 75-134.
59. See Leonard Forster's introduction in Celtis, Selections.
6o. Celtis, Selections, 43. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text.
61. Forster, commentary in Celtis, Selections, 10o1.
62. For a useful overview in English of Hutten's life see Bernstein, Ger-
man Humanism, 116-28. See also Kurze, "Biographisches Nachwort."
63. Hutten, "Gespraichsbuchlein: Hermann," in Auserlesene Werke,
3:462-63.
64. Hutten, "Vermahnung," in Auserlesene Werke, 3:265. Hereafter cited
parenthetically in the text.
65. Luther, "An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation" (1520) in Aus-
gewdhlte Schriften, 1:189.
66. Luther, "Vermahnung zum Gebet wider den Tiirken" (1 541) in Aus-
gewdhlte Schriften, 4:278.
67. Luther, "Eine Heerpredigt wider den Tiirken," 173.
68. Luther, "Eine Heerpredigt wider den Tiirken," 173.
69. Luther, "Vom Kriege wider die Tiirken," 142.
70. Luther, "Vermahnung zum Gebet wider den Tiirken" (1 541) in Aus-
gewdhlte Schriften, 4:289.
Notes to Pages 40-47 251
71. Quotations from the poems "Thrainen des Vaterlandes" and "Es ist
alles eitel."
72. On the distinction between the two major subgenres of the seven-
teenth-century novel, see Alewyn, "Der Roman des Barock." The heroic
or courtly novel goes by various names in German, including "der Heroische
Roman, der Heroisch-Galante Roman, der Hofische Roman, and also der Staats-
roman" (Alewyn, 22).
73. Commentary in Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, 796.
74. On the reception history of Grimmelshausen's work see Meid,
Grimmelshausen, 196-244. Gerhard offers a still-useful look at the novel in
relation to Parzival and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (Der deutsche Entwick-
lungsroman, 61-86).
75. Alewyn, "Der Roman
des Barock," 31I; Heselhaus, "Grim-
melshausen," esp. 27-3 I; Meid, Grimmelshausen, 137-39.
76. Bergstedt, Reichsidee, 2. Good introductions to Lohenstein's life and
work include Just, "Leben und Werk," in Lohenstein, Turkische Trauerspiele,
xi-xxxvi; Gillespie, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's Historical Tragedies;
Spellerberg, "Daniel Casper von Lohenstein"; Asmuth, Daniel Casper von
Lohenstein; and Newman, The Intervention of Philology.
77. Alewyn, "Der Roman des Barock," 25.
78. Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, 17.
79. Keller, Der grune Heinrich, in Sdmtliche Werke, 3:3 I 3.
80. Bumke, Hofische Kultur, 430.
81. On the tension between "Ekel an der Welt" and "Interesse an
Empirie" in Simplicissimus, see Geulen, "Wirklichkeitsbegriff," 35.
82. Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche, 89-91.
83. Meid, Grimmelshausen, 239.
84. On the widespread interest in the Orient during the seventeenth
century see Hultsch, Der Orient in der deutschen Barockliteratur.
85. Asmuth, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, 65-74.
86. On changing paradigms of historiography in the seventeenth century
see Vosskamp, Untersuchungen zur Zeit- und Geschichtsauffassung, and Szarota,
Lohensteins Arminius als Zeitroman, 159-74.
87. Ranum, "Editor's Introduction," in Bossuet, Discourse on Universal
History.
88. Vosskamp, Untersuchungen zur Zeit- und Geschichtsauffassung, 35.
89. Just, "Lohenstein und die Tiirkische Welt," in Lohenstein, Thrkische
Trauerspiele, xxxvii-xlvii.
90. Gillespie, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's Historical Tragedies, 29-38.
Spellerberg, "Daniel Casper von Lohenstein," 653-55.
91. Gryphius, Catharina von Georgien, in Dramen, 203 (act 4, line 427).
92. Lohenstein, Thrkische Trauerspiele, 16.
252 Notes to Pages 47-56
93. Lohenstein, Thrkische Trauerspiele, 78.
94. Asmuth, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, 40; Spellerberg, "Daniel
Casper von Lohenstein," 647, 674-76.
95. Lohenstein, Thrkische Trauerspiele, ii I.
96. Lohenstein, Thrkische Trauerspiele, 120.
97. Newman, "Disorientations," 349. In her discussion of same-sex
desire in Lohenstein's play, Newman argues that women take an unusually
active role. Ibrahim Sultan, in her view, is more about political response to
tyranny, wherever it may occur, than about anti-Turkish propaganda. Cer-
tainly the play does concern itself with political matters that concern both
Europe and the Ottoman Empire, but at the same time it mounts an over-
whelming assault on an extreme example of Oriental decadence and despo-
tism.
98. Spellerberg, "Daniel Casper von Lohenstein," 649.
99. Szarota, Lohenstein's Arminius als Zeitroman, 15; Spellerberg, "Daniel
Casper von Lohenstein," 678; Bergstedt, Reichsidee und Liebesethik, 164.
ioo. Szarota, Lohensteins Arminius, 174-204.
1ol. Szarota argues that Lohenstein glorifies Leopold and the Holy
Roman Empire, although in a way that downplays religion and implicitly
pleads for greater tolerance within the realm (Lohensteins Arminius als Zeitro-
man). Bergstedt takes issue with Szarota, seeing Lohenstein more as a clever
strategist who pays lip service to Austria while trying to maintain some
regional autonomy for Silesia (Reichsidee und Liebesethik). Newman gives a
particularly nuanced account of the intricacies of dynastic politics in seven-
teenth-century central Europe and shows how Lohenstein balances civic,
regional, and imperial loyalties within his dramas (The Intervention of Philol-
ogy) .
102. Szarota, Lohensteins Arminius, 91.
103. Lohenstein, Arminius, 199b. Cited hereafter in the text with page
number and column (a or b). All references are to the first volume of the
novel.
104. On the relationship between gender roles and revolutionary politics
see Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, and Hunt, The Family Romance of
the French Revolution.
105. Kontje, "Passing for German."
o106. Szarota offers a detailed overview of both ancient Armenian politics
and the intricacies of Lohenstein's plot (Lohensteins Arminius als Zeitroman,
175-84).
107. See Newman's discussion of race in Cleopatra (1680). With refer-
ence both to Lohenstein's drama and sources cited in his footnotes to the
play, Newman argues that he provides "a more balanced, 'off-center' repre-
Notes to Pages 58-64 253
sentation of Rome's 'Other' [Africa] as an equal opponent" (The Intervention
of Philology, 152).
io8. Marcus provides a useful overview of the contrasting approaches
implied by the two terms in the title of "Renaissance/Early Modern Stud-
ies." Her work appears, appropriately enough, in a volume called Redrawing
the Boundaries.
109. See her discussion of Agrippina in The Intervention of Philology,
101-27.
I o. On Parzival's lack of psychological depth see Gerhard, Der deutsche
Entwicklungsroman, 41-45.
CHAPTER 2
i. Balke, "Orient und orientalische Literaturen," 837. See also Pape,
"Turquerie im 18. Jahrhundert"; Syndram, "Der erfundene Orient in der
europaiischen Literatur"; and Wilson, Humanitdt und Kreuzzugsideologie um
178o0.
2. Anger, Literarisches Rokoko.
3. The novel was reprinted in 1966 with an informative "Nachwort"
by Pfeiffer-Belli.
4. For example, see Bredeck, "August Bohse."
5. Other examples of Wieland's epic verse with Oriental motifs
include "Schach Lolo" (1778), "Ham und Gulpenheh" (1778), and "Clelia
und Sinnibald" (1783).
6. As Anger argued in his important monograph, "the German
Rococo forms a first and decisive step toward German Classicism" (Liter-
arisches Rokoko, 39). Wieland's influence on Goethe extends from Goethe's
earliest Anacreontic poetry to the West-Ostlicher Divan. Although Tieck and
the Schlegels were sharply critical of Wieland, his work nevertheless exerted
considerable influence on German Romanticism as well (Anger, Literarisches
Rokoko, 42-45).
7. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, in Sdimtliche Werke, 14:281, 537.
8. Samuel, "Einleitung: Dichterische Jugendarbeiten," in Novalis,
Schriften, 1:441. See also Anger, Literarisches Rokoko, 42-46.
9. Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg; Jorgensen et al., Wieland,
185-207; Sahmland, Christoph Martin Wieland, 6.
io. Samuel, "Einleitung," in Schriften, I:446; O'Brien, Novalis, 30-36.
I 1. Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance; see also Said, Orientalism.
12. Studies of German Romantic Orientalism include Willson, A
Mythical Image; G&rard, L'Orient et la Pensee Romantique Allemande; and
Behler, "Das Indienbild der deutschen Romantik." The best intellectual
254 Notes to Pages 64-70
history of relations between Indian and European (primarily German)
thought is Halbfass, India and Europe. McGetchin details the growth of
Indology as an academic discipline at the German university during the
nineteenth century ("The Sanskrit Reich").
13. On Herder's place in the "querelle des anciens et des moderns" see
Jaul3, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, 72-75.
14. Wellek hails Herder as "the first who sharply breaks with the neo-
classical past" (A History of Modern Criticism, 181). Abrams's The Mirror and
the Lamp provides a still-useful survey of the emergence of Romanticism, in
which Herder played an important role.
15. On the emerging concept of Bildung in the eighteenth century see
Stahl, "Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsromans," as well as further
references in Kontje, The German Bildungsroman.
16. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 188.
17. Herder, Journal meiner Reise, in his Werke, 9.2:30. Zammito provides
an indispensable guide to Herder's earliest years in terms of his close rela-
tions with Kant and in the broader context of the emerging disciplinary
divide between philosophy and anthropology during the 176os in Germany
(Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology).
18. See the critical commentary to Von deutscher Art und Kunst in his
Werke, 2:110 o9.
19. In distinction to the more common but imprecise terms middle class
or bourgeois, Sheehan introduces the term nonnoble elite to characterize the
growing group of university-educated German men who worked for the
expanding state bureaucracies in late eighteenth-century Germany and from
whose ranks many of the major writers of the period emerged (German His-
tory, 132).
20. Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism, 6.
21. Herder was not completely unaware of the distinction between the
ancient Celts and the Germanic Angles and Saxons. He refers to the dis-
tinction for the first time in the third book of Alte Volkslieder (1774),
"Englisch und Deutsch" (3:47). See also the commentary to this passage
(3:951).
22. Herder, Werke, 2:550.
23. Herder, "Hutten," in Werke, 2:609.
24. See commentary in his Werke, 2:795-803.
25. Herder, Journal, in his Werke, 9.2:10o2.
26. Wieland, "Der Eifer, unsrer Dichtkunst einen National-Charakter
zu geben," in Werke, 3:268.
27. On the historical context of Wieland's anti-bardic polemics see the
commentary to his Werke, 3:837-42.
Notes to Pages 70-82 255
28. "But who could read Shakespeare and not forget his flaws [when
considering] his beauty?" Wieland, "Der Geist Shakespears" (1773), in
Werke, 3:275. See also Herder, "Shakespear" (1773), in Von deutscher Art und
Kunst, Werke, 2:498-521. As McCarthy has pointed out, however, the dis-
tinction between Wieland's appreciation of Shakespeare and that of the
"Stiirmer und Dringer" was not as absolute as the latter liked to believe
(Christoph Martin Wieland, 39-41).
29. On the difference between aristocratic performativity and bourgeois
authenticity see Burger, "Dasein heif3t eine Rolle spielen," and Habermas,
Structural Transformation, 5-14.
30. Herder revised and expanded the material in the 1769 essay into
"Alteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts" (1774).
3 I. Herder, Werke, 5:I6.
32. Herder, Werke, 6:I6.
33. The best-known theory of climatic determinism is in Montesquieu's
The Spirit of the Laws, esp. book 14, "On the Laws in Their Relation to the
Nature of the Climate," 231-45. See also Iselin, Uber die Geschichte der
Menschheit, I1:62-68; and Wiinsch, Unterhaltungen uber den Menschen, 340-85.
34. Fischer places particular stress on the anticolonial aspect of Herder's
thought (Das Eigene und das Eigentliche, 184). I am less convinced that
Herder's thought remains devoid of Eurocentrism (Fischer, 185; see also
Berlin's enthusiastic portrait of Herder as a singularly tolerant cosmopolitan
thinker in his Vico and Herder, 145-216) and tend to agree rather with Zan-
top's assessment that Herder's works "are deeply inconsistent and contra-
dictory" (Colonial Fantasies, 79).
3 5. Elon, The Pity of It All, 33-66.
36. Grossman, The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany, 38. For a brief
overview of the shift from "assimilationist" to "eliminationist" anti-Semi-
tism see Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, 49-79.
37. On the tension in Herder between local cultures and a faith in uni-
versal progress see Fischer, Das Eigene und das Eigentliche, 220, 229.
38. "Historische Nachrichten fiber die wahre Beschaffenheit des
Sclaven-Handels" (1790). The articles in the Gottingisches historisches Maga-
zin were not individually signed, but the editors Christoph Meiners and
Ludwig Spittler write in the preface to the first edition that the magazine
contains only their own work (I [1787]: 2).
39. "Uber die Rechtmissigkeit des Negern-Handels." Given the persis-
tent racism of Meiner's GrundrifJ3 der Geschichte der Menschheit, I suspect that
he also authored this article from Gottingisches Historisches Magazin 2 (1788):
409.
40. Hausen, "Family and Role-Division." On the transformation of
256 Notes to Pages 82-88
eighteenth-century family life see Schwab, "Familie"; Stone, The Family,
Sex, and Marriage; Weber-Kellermann, Die deutsche Familie. Laqueur argues
that the eighteenth-century scientific efforts to distinguish biological differ-
ences between the sexes were often influenced by social conventions about
seemingly natural gender roles (Making Sex).
41. On the shift from Herrschaft to Verwaltung in eighteenth-century
Germany see Sheehan, German History, 24-41.
42. For an introduction to Novalis's life and works see Kluckhohn,
"Friedrich von Hardenbergs Entwicklung und Dichtung"; Schulz, Novalis;
and Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg. O'Brien has written the best and
most thoroughly demystifying study of Hardenberg to date, Novalis: Signs
of Revolution. On the nineteenth- and twentieth-century reception of
Novalis see Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg, 15-o104; and Mahoney, The
Critical Fortunes of a Romantic Novel.
43. Quoted from Novalis, Schriften, 2:426. Subsequent references to this
edition are included with volume and page number parenthetically in the
text.
44. Schulz, Novalis, 19.
45. I borrow this phrase from Applegate, A Nation of Provincials.
46. Quoted from Schulz, Novalis, 25.
47. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 17. Kant was another such individual
from an earlier generation: "travel literature allowed Kant to project a cos-
mopolitanism, to imagine safely from his provincial study a tumultuous
world of difference" (Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology,
57).
48. See O'Brien on "the profound influence of Fichte's Science of
Knowledge upon the Romantics' global aspirations" (Novalis, 145).
49. Brinkmann, "Friihromantik und Franzosische Revolution."
50. On French revolutionary polemics against Marie Antoinette as a
"bad mother" see Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution,
89-123.
5 I. O'Brien, Novalis, 16 I.
52. Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1o.
53. Kurzke, Romantik und Konservatismus, 237. On the controversy sur-
rounding the initial decision not to publish Europa, see O'Brien, Novalis,
227-30.
54. Kurzke, Romantik und Konservatismus, 256. "Romanticism and con-
servatism: for most modern scholars, that is considered a hopelessly outdat-
ed topic" (9).
55. O'Brien has been most vigorous in opposition to the familiar image
of Novalis as a Christian poet (Novalis, 216-71). Malsch noted earlier that
Hardenberg's Christianity is hardly orthodox ("Europa," 169).
Notes to Pages 90-100 257
56. A. W. Schlegel, Geschichte der romantischen Literatur, 20. In "Die alt-
deutschen Minnelieder" (1803) Tieck argues against "the belief in the bar-
barism of the so-called Middle Ages" and predicts that "the song of
Provence, the romances of the North, and the blossoms of the Indian imag-
ination will not remain foreign to us much longer" (191, 189).
57. Miiller, Vorlesungen uber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Literatur, 57.
58. Both Kurzke (Romantik und Konservatismus, 12-14) and Uerlings
(Friedrich von Hardenberg, 32-35) place Miuller on the cusp of the subsequent
conservative Novalis interpretation, while stressing that his own work
remains closer to the earlier tradition of a revolutionary Early Romanticism.
59. "The talk about Novalis becoming Catholic is thus not as misguid-
ed as most modern research makes it seem," writes Kurzke; "whether or
not Novalis would have viewed the Catholic revival in late Romanticism
as a confirmation of his prophesy is something we cannot judge, but it is at
least possible" (Romantik und Konservatismus, 253). For an overview of
Miiller's life see Schroeder and Siebert, "Biographische Einftihrung."
6o. Novalis referred to Goethe with this phrase in
Vermischte
Bemerkungen, no. 1i8 (Schriften, 2:466) and also in Blhthenstaub, no. Io6
(Schriften, 2:459).
61. Said, Orientalism, 138. Achim von Arnim ascribes a similarly passive
role to the gypsy princess Isabella in his novella "Isabella von Agypten"
(1812). See Friedrichsmeyer, "Romantic Nationalism," 57-60.
62. Quoted from Schulz, Novalis, 53.
63. For example, see Becker-Cantarino, "Priesterin und Licht-
bringerin."
64. Kittler, "The Mother's Mouth," in Discourse Networks, 25-69.
65. For a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of Klingsohrs Mairchen
see Kittler, "Die Irrwege des Eros."
66. Heading toward home is not the same as arriving at home. Hence
Kuzniar cautions against reading Novalis as a secular prophet of the Golden
Age and stresses instead moments of nonclosure in his work (Delayed
Endings, 1-11, 72-132).
67. Kuzniar, "Hearing Women's Voices," 1198.
68. O'Brien, Novalis, 206.
69. Strohschneider-Kohrs, Die romantische Ironie, 250-73.
70. Kuzniar, "Hearing Women's Voices," 1202-3.
71. See further references in Kuzniar, "Hearing Women's Voices"; and
Friedrichsmeyer, The Androgyne in Early German Romanticism.
72. For an excellent discussion of early German patriotism see Sahmland,
Christoph Martin Wieland, esp. 78-123.
73. Wieland, "Uber Teutschen Patriotismus" (1793), Werke, 3:745.
258 Notes to Pages 100-108
74. Hardenberg's younger brother had referred to him as "Fritz the
flatterer." See O'Brien, Novalis, 30-36.
75. Sombart, Die deutschen Manner und ihre Feinde: Carl Schmitt-ein
deutsches Schicksal zwischen Mannerbund und Matriarchatsmythos, 267.
76. Napoleon had a bookseller named Palm executed because he pub-
lished a pamphlet titled Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniederung (Pinson,
Modern Germany, 32).
77. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation, 24.
78. The Order of Things, 297.
79. Humboldt, Politische Denkschriften, 10:139-40.
8o. Humboldt, Politische Denkschriften, 10:140.
81. For a detailed history of eighteenth-century university reform see
Weimar, Geschichte der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft.
82. Humboldt, Politische Denkschriften, 10:256.
83. Humboldt, Politische Denkschriften, 10:253.
84. Goethe, Faust, lines 545 and 569. In Samtliche Werke, 7.I:39-4o.
Hence Kittler claims that (modern) German poetry begins with Faust's
"ach!" that inserts the emotion of a new humanism into the obsolete
Gelehrtenrepublik of the earlier eighteenth century (Discourse Networks, 3-4).
85. Schiller, Asthetische Erziehung, in Sdamtliche Werke, 5:570-669.
86. "Thus aesthetic, individual, and species formation all occur as an
interdependent system of homologies" (Redfield, Phantom Formations, 21).
87. Kontje, Private Lives in the Public Sphere, 51-78.
88. Goethe, Samtliche Werke, 9:884.
89. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, 2:296-97.
90. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, 2:320.
91. Strue-Oppenberg,
"Einleitung," clxxxviii-clxxxix. Strue-
Oppenberg provides a detailed account of the origins of the work, its struc-
ture, and its initial reception. See also Gerard, L'Orient, 84-128.
92. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, 8:3o01. Hereafter cited parenthetically in
the text.
93. Depending on one's perspective, Schlegel's scholarly approach to
Indian linguistics either marks the end of the "mythic image" of India in
German Romantic poetry (Willson, A Mythical Image, 199) or the begin-
ning of academic Orientalism (Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 72).
94. See summary in Foucault, The Order of Things, 282-85; also Said,
Orientalism, 98-99; and Bernal, Black Athena, 230-33.
95. It is therefore difficult to agree with Foucault's claim that "from now
on, all languages have an equal value; they simply have different internal
structures" (The Order of Things, 285). As in the case of Herder's Ideen, some
languages and cultures are more equal than others.
96. Schwab views Klaproth's switch from Indo-European to Indo-
Notes to Pages 108-12 259
Germanic as symptomatic of the "second phase of the Oriental
Renaissance" marked by an increasing German particularism against the
collaborative approach of the first phase (The Oriental Renaissance, 184-87).
97. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, 6:177.
98. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, 6:363.
99. McGetchin, "The Sanskrit Reich," 137.
ioo. See Riencourt, The Soul of India, 258-8I; Poliakov, The Aryan
Myth; and Bernal, Black Athena.
10o1. Pollock, "Deep Orientalism?" 90.
102. McGetchin, "The Sanskrit Reich," 298. McGetchin offers a wel-
come amount of detail that refutes the simplistic notion that all German
Indologists were racists and protofascists. Some were, to be sure, but others
were not (288-307).
103. McGetchin, "The Sanskrit Reich," 321.
104. On the simultaneous rise of German nationalism and anti-Semitism
during the Napoleonic Wars in Germany, see Elon, The Pity of It All,
99-Ioo.
105. Quoted from Schiwy, Eichendorff 291-92.
io6. Heine, Deutschland: Ein Wintermdrchen, in Historisch-kritische
Gesamtausgabe, 4:301.
107. Gorres, "Die teutschen Volksbiicher," in his Ausgewidhlte Werke,
I:I51.
io8. Kozielek, "Einleitung"; Liebertz-Griin, "Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing als Mediaivist"; Janota, "Zur Rezeption mittelalterlicher Literatur."
o109. Brackert, "Die 'Bildungsstufe der Nation.'"
Iio. On Klopstock's bardic poetry see Fischer, Das Eigene und das
Eigentliche, I 3 1-58.
III. Hunger, "Altdeutsche Studien als Sammeltaitigkeit"; "Die alt-
deutsche Literatur und das Verlangen nach Wissenschaft."
112. The Grimms' Altdeutsche Wiilder, for example, contains lengthy
articles on the German Heldenepos and the "Hildebrandslied."
113. Kleist's Die Hermannsschlacht (1808) reworks the story of Arminius
from Tacitus into a thinly veiled work of propaganda against the French.
See Angress [Kliiger], "Kleist's Treatment of Imperialism"; Fischer, Das
Eigene und das Eigentliche, 300-320; and Kontje, "Passing for German."
114. Even in the late Middle Ages Wolfram's Parzival was more widely
read than any other comparable text written around 1200, and its influence
extended to many literary works of the period. Schirok, Parzivalrezeption im
MIittelalter, 173.
115. Bumke provides an appropriately cautious overview of what we
can piece together about Wolfram's career from textual evidence (Wolfram
von Eschenbach).
260 Notes to Pages 112-19
1 i6. Tieck, "Die altdeutschen Minnelieder," 194.
117. A. W. Schlegel, Geschichte der romantischen Literatur, I125.
II 8. F. Schlegel, Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur, in Kritische
Ausgabe, 6:2o01.
119. Kiihnel, "Wolfram von Eschenbach als literarische Figur."
120. On the development of German Medieval Studies in the nine-
teenth century see Kozielek, "Einleitung"; Janota, "Einleitung"; Seeba,
"Nationalbiicher"; Wyss, "Der doppelte Ursprung"; Hunger, "Altdeutsche
Studien als Sammeltaitigkeit" and "Die altdeutsche Literatur"; Fohrmann,
"Einleitung"; and Krohn, "Die Altgermanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts."
121. Janota, "Einleitung," 32-35; Wyss, "Der doppelte Ursprung,"
84-85.
122. Sparnaay, Karl Lachmann
als Germanist; see also Janota,
"Einleitung"; Krohn, "Die Altgermanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts."
I23. Spaarnay, Karl Lachmann als Germanist, 25.
124. See the anonymous introductory blurb to the first printed edition
of Lachmann, "Uber den Inhalt des Parzivals," 289-90.
125. On the significance of Lachmann's essay for Wolfram scholarship
see Gotz, Die Entwicklung des Wolframbildes, 27-3 I; and Spaarnay, Karl
Lachmann als Germanist, 108-14.
126. Mann, "Der Entwicklungsroman," in his Essays, 1:289.
127. Krohn, "Die Altgermanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts," 299, 308,
319-20.
I28. Hohendahl, Building a National Literature, 202.
I29. Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur, 5:734.
130. Vilmar, Vorlesungen, 164.
131. Schulze, "Stationen der Parzival-Rezeption," 557.
132. Weiner, Richard Wagner, 241-59.
133. Cucuel, Eingangsbhcher des Parzival, 59, 77.
134. Panzer, Gahmuret, 68.
135. Snelleman, Das Haus Anjou, 4.
136. Snelleman, Das Haus Anjou, 204.
137. Schulze, "Stationen der Parzival-Rezeption," 560-64.
138. Semper, "Der persische Anteil," 123.
139. All quotes are from Schulze, "Stationen der Parzival-Rezeption,"
563-64.
140. Fest, Hitler, 36-37.
141. I borrow this phrase from Hohendahl's Building a National
Literature.
142. On the sharp rise in antiforeign violence in Germany in the wake
of Reunification see Adelson, "Coordinates of Orientation," xiii-xv.
143. $enocak, Atlas des tropischen Deutschland, 70-71.
Notes to Pages 119-23 261
144. $enocak, War Hitler Araber? 39, 49.
145. For an interesting collection of interviews with much autobio-
graphical information see Schami, Damals dort und heute hier; on $enocak see
Adelson, "Coordinates of Orientation," esp. xxiv.
146. On the most obvious level, Goethe's Divan contrasts markedly with
the politically engaged poetry of the "Wars of Liberation." See Laimmert,
"Die vaterlaindische Lyrik und Goethes Westbstlicher Divan." Schulz pro-
vides a succinct overview of the Divan in historical context in Die deutsche
Literatur zwischen franzosischer Revolution und Restauration, 725-38.
147. Borne, cited from Mandelkow, Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker,
1:512. Repudiations of Goethe's politics and challenges to the assumption
that Weimar was a tolerant, humanist island in a sea of petty German abso-
lutisms have emerged from time to time since Borne, most recently in
Wilson's expose of Das Goethe-Tabu.
I48. Mann, Lotte in Weimar, I148.
149. Goethe, Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 3, bk. I, 148. Hereafter cited in the
text.
15o. Dichtung und Wahrheit, in Werke, 14:156. Goethe returned to the
Joseph theme much later in the story "Sankt Joseph der Zweite" (1807) that
he included in the beginning of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Goethe
included fragments of his Belsazar drama in a letter to his sister from Leipzig
in December 1765 (Sdmtliche Werke, 4:658-61). He burned this early drama
in 1767 but included a prose summary of the plot in Wilhelm Meisters thea-
tralische Sendung. He substituted Hamlet for Belsazar in Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre.
151. The best source on Goethe's lifelong interest in the Islamic world
is Mommsen, Goethe und die Arabische Welt.
152. For an insightful reading of the figure of Muhammad as a genius
wounded by the constraints of modern society, and hence a paradigmatic
modern subject, see Wellbery, The Specular Moment, 131-47, 156-57. Years
later Goethe returned to the theme of Muhammad, translating Voltaire's
play of 1742 into German for the Weimar theater in 1799 (Sdmtliche Werke,
4:735-36).
153. Goethe's flight to the East at the end of the revolutionary period
mirrors his flight to Italy at its beginning. See in particular the third
"Roman Elegy," in which the poet refers to the British traveler who was
unable to escape the ubiquitous political song "Malbrough" and then boasts
that he is better hidden from contemporary events: "Nun entdeckt ihr mich
nicht so bald in meinem Asyle."
154. Said, Orientalism, esp. 167-68.
155. Jean Paul expressed his enthusiasm for India most clearly in his
novel Hesperus (1795), which contains an idealized image of a Hindu sage.
262 Notes to Pages 123-33
See Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 204; Willson, A Mythical Image,
130-36. More recently, Tobin has argued that Jean Paul's novel Siebenkds
(1796) situates images of male homosexuality in a free-floating Orient
defined by its distance from Europe ("Jean Paul's Oriental Homo-
sexualities," in Warm Brothers, 44-64).
156. Goethe to Schiller, June 1o, 1795: "Here's a tragelaph of the first
instance" [Hierbei ein Tragelaph von der ersten Sorte]. Briefwechsel Schiller
Goethe, I:Iio. See Birus, "Der 'Orientale' Jean Paul."
157. Schiller to Goethe, June 28, 1796: "I found [Jean Paul] pretty much
as I expected: as strange as someone who had fallen from the moon" [fremd
wie einer, der aus dem Mond gefallen ist] Briefwechsel Schiller Goethe, 1:217.
158. Mandelkow, Goethe in Deutschland, I:63-64.
159. Birus, "Der 'Orientale' Jean Paul," and also Schlaffer, "Gedichtete
Theorie."
16o. See Zagari, "Zu entschiedenerem Auffluge die Fittiche versuchen."
161. Commentary to Goethe's Sdmtliche Werke, 4:661.
162. On Goethe as a paradigmatically modern poet see Wellbery, The
Specular Moment; on the theme of modern Bildung in his prose see Bakhtin,
"The Bildungsroman and Its Significance," and also Moretti, The Way of the
World.
163. Freud used this poem to illustrate the difference "between narcis-
sism and being in love," presumably contrasting Suleika's focus on retain-
ing one's sense of self with Hatem's willingness to transform himself in
order to please his beloved, although he does not read the poem in detail.
As always, Freud tends to universalize his psychological categories, assum-
ing the dynamics of the Oedipal family as a timeless norm rather than the
product of a particular historical situation. I prefer to read Goethe's late
work as a particularly interesting blend of supposedly distinct historical
notions of the self. See Freud, Introductory Lectures, 520.
164. See Foucault, "What Is an Author?"
165. Goethe to Eckermann, January 18, 1827; in Samtliche Werke,
8:1062.
166. Commentary to Novelle, in Goethe, Sdmtliche Werke, 8:10o65-66.
167. Wanderjahre, in Sdmtliche Werke, 10:713.
168. Faust, line 6287; in Samtliche Werke, 7.1:257.
169. To Eckermann, January 3I, 1827; in Samtliche Werke, 39:224-25.
170. To A. F. K. Streckfluss, January 27, 1827; in Samtliche Werke,
37:443.
CHAPTER 3
i. Mann, "Pariser Rechenschaft," in Reden und Aufsatze, 1:470.
Notes to Pages 134-39 263
2. Kurzke, "Vorwort," 8. For a detailed study of the relations between
Mann and Baeumler see Bruntriger, Der Ironiker und der Ideologe. Bruntriger
wrote his work under Kurzke's supervision, and he shares his mentor's
opinion that Mann simply misunderstood Baeumler's introduction.
3. Bruntriger, Der Ironiker und der Ideologe, 450.
4. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 197.
5. Gorres, Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt, I12.
6. Baeumler, "Einleitung," xxxi, cvii. The famous Winckelmann
phrase occurs in his "Gedanken iber die Nachahmung der griechischen
Werke," 20. Winckelmann makes his comment in the context of a discus-
sion of Laokoon, who maintains his composure only in the face of extreme
physical suffering. Hence Baeumler's charge that he grasps only the bright
surface of the Greek world seems based on a superficial reading of
Winckelmann. Goethe, for his part, was hardly blind to the "chthonic"
forces at work in Greek antiquity and elsewhere; he spent much of his
mature life struggling to keep those forces within himself in check-or at
least this is the way that Mann chose to portray him in Lotte in Weimar.
7. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, 55.
8. Mann, Doktor Faustus, 88. English edition, 70.
9. Bachofen; cited from Baeumler, Der Mythus von Orient und Occident,
149.
1io. Baeumler, "Einleitung," ccxciv.
i i. Sombart, Die deutschen Manner, 32-33.
I2. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, and Sombart, Die deutschen Manner.
13. Izenberg, Modernism and Masculinity, 2.
14. Sheehan, German History, 763.
15. For an overview of the brief history of German colonialism, see
Friedrichsmeyer, Lennox, and Zantop, "Introduction."
16. According to Fritz Fischer's classic study, Germany's primary aim in
the First World War was to establish itself as the dominant European power
(Germany's Aims in the First World War). Fischer set out to refute the wide-
spread opinion among German historians and the German public that
Germany had been forced into a defensive war. On the contrary, Fischer
insists, Germany deliberately provoked the war and remained consistent in
its desire to become a major world power until the very end. Needless to
say, Fischer's theses provoked controversy when they appeared in 1961. See
Holborn, "Introduction to the American Edition"; Wehler, The German
Empire, 182-231I; and Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire,
370-72.
17. Fischer, Germany's Aims, 278.
18. On the German ambition to subordinate the Ukraine to German
interests, see Fischer, Germany's Aims, 534-45. On Lagarde and Langbehn,
264 Notes to Pages 139-44
see Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, esp. 66-70, 151. Moeller van den
Bruck was also convinced "that in the open spaces of the East lay
Germany's territorial destiny" (Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, 220).
19. See Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
20. For an authoritative overview of the cultural politics of German
archaeology, see Marchand, Down from Olympus, esp. 188-227.
21. Wehler, The German Empire, 217. See also Fischer, Germany's Aims,
on the envisioned "Imperium Germanicum" (607-8).
22. Mann, Essays, I:193.
23. Betrachtungen, I14.
24. Essays, 1:202. As Izenberg puts it, "France was behaving disgusting-
ly like a woman" (Modernism and Masculinity, I45).
25. "Gedanken im Krieg," Essays, I:2o1.
26. "Der alte Fontane," Essays, I:148.
27. See Nietzsche's lectures "Uber die Zukunft unserer Bildungs-
Anstalten."
28. Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus, I123.
29. "Brief an die Zeitung 'Svenska Dagbladet,' Stockholm," in Essays,
I:269; again, "Gedanken zum Kriege," Essays, I:279. Heilbut accuses
Mann of further racism "twenty years later when he caricatured Franco's
Moorish troops. Only in America, where he became a nominal ally of Paul
Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois, did he speak out for the rights of black
people" (Thomas Mann, 280).
30. "Pariser Rechenschaft," 438.
3I. Heilbut, Thomas Mann, 576.
32. Mann, "Von deutscher Republik," Essays, 2:343.
33. On Mann's political development during the 1920S see Reed,
Thomas Mann, 275-316; Hamilton, The Brothers Mann; and Heilbut, Thomas
Mann, 355-98.
34. For detailed surveys of the German Novalis reception between
1890-1945 see Kurzke, Romantik und Konservatismus, 36-49; and Uerlings,
Friedrich von Hardenberg, 523-41.
35. As Uerlings points out, Mann's attempt to enlist Novalis for the lib-
eral cause in "Von deutscher Republik" was an anomaly in the conserva-
tive climate of the 1920S (528).
36. Mann, "Von deutscher Republik," in Essays, 2:147.
37. Mann, "Zur jiidischen Frage," in Essays, 2:93.
38. Mann, "Goethe und Tolstoi," in Essays, 2:83.
39. Mann, "Von deutscher Republik," in Essays, 2:14o; again 153.
40. "Zurjiidischen Frage," in Essays, 2:86. On Mann's complicated rela-
tionship to Judaism see Heilbut, Thomas Mann (individual references to
Notes to Pages 144-48 265
Mann and the "Jewish question" listed in his index, 628), and Kurzke,
Thomas Mann, I187-214.
41. Bliiher's glorification of homosexual strength contrasted with an ear-
lier discourse that equated homosexuality with effeminacy. On the distinc-
tion between the two discourses about homosexuality in the early twenti-
eth century, see Tobin, "Making Way for the Third Sex," and Izenberg,
Modernism and Masculinity, I o I.
42. Bliiher, Die Rolle der Erotik, 2:178.
43. Bliiher, Die Rolle der Erotik, 2:204. For a detailed explication of
Bliiher's antiliberal, anti-Semitic, and misogynist thought, see Hewitt,
Political Inversions, 79-129. Although Bliiher's thought anticipated elements
of fascist ideology, Hewitt distinguishes between his anti-Oedipal psycholo-
gy and popular racial theories of the state among fascists. Above all, Hewitt
argues against the widespread equation of fascism with homosexuality. As
Theweleit also argues, the extreme misogyny and male bonding among
members of the protofascist Freikorps are "actually far closer to what we call
normal [hetero]sexuality" (Male Fantasies, 2:320; see also 1:56; 2:61, 307).
44. Heilbut, Thomas Mann, 371-83.
45. See, for instance, Corngold, "Mann as a Reader of Nietzsche," in
The Fate of the Self 129-59. Corngold argues that Mann's assessment of
Nietzsche undergoes no fundamental change, but that he merely--and
opportunistically--stresses different sides of a stable binary opposition at
various points in his career.
46. "Von deutscher Republik," Essays, 2:I66.
47. "Einfihrung in den 'Zauberberg,"'" in Reden und Aufsatze, 3:615-16.
48. Mann, Der Zauberberg, 9; English translation pages xi-xii. Hereafter
cited in the text with reference to the English translation first and the orig-
inal German second. For example, (154 [218-19]) is a cite to page 154 of
the English translation and to pages 218-19 of the original German.
49. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations,
263.
50. Miuller refers to Germany as "das gliickliche Mittelland" in his
Vorlesungen (18). See also Weigand, Thomas Mann's Novel "Der Zauberberg,"
96-139, esp. 104-7.
51. Mann's maternal grandfather was a Liibeck-born plantation owner
who had married a Brazilian of Portuguese-Creole descent. She was born
in Rio de Janeiro in 1851 and moved to Germany when she was seven
(Heilbut, Thomas Mann, 8).
52. "Tonio Kroger," in Schwere Stunde, 19.
53. "Der Wille zum Gliick," in Der Wille zum Gluck, 53.
54. Mann, Tod in Venedig, in Schwere Stunde, 191.
266 Notes to Pages 148-63
55. Mann, Tod in Venedig, in Schwere Stunde, 253.
56. On homoerotic elements in Der Tod in Venedi; see Tobin, "Why Is
Tadzio a Boy?"
57. "Einflihrung in den 'Zauberberg,"'" in Reden und Aufsatze, 6o6. On
the changing conceptions of the novel see Reed, Thomas Mann, esp.
225-46.
58. "What is the incidental yield of Hans Castorp's hermetic existence?
It is the development of genius!" (Weigand, Thomas Mann's Novel "Der
Zauberberg," 5).
59. "Der Film, die demokratische Macht," in Essays, 2:225.
6o. Goethe, Faust, lines 6275-76; in his Simtliche Werke, 3:193.
61. Lubich, "Thomas Manns Der Zauberberg."
62. Bohm, "Die homosexuellen Elemente," 147-49.
63. Weisinger, "Distant Oil Rigs," 185.
64. Mann, "Vom Beruf des deutschen Schriftstellers" (193 I) in Essays,
3:285-94; esp. 288. Mann used the same passage again in "Deutschland und
die Deutschen" (1945), Essays, 5:263, and again to describe the fictive town
of Kaisersaschern in the sixth chapter of Dr. Faustus.
65. Weisinger, "Distant Oil Rigs," 186-88.
66. Weisinger, "Distant Oil Rigs," 189-93.
67. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 209.
68. "Indeed, for all his subtlety Thomas Mann is simpler here than his
critics are sometimes prepared to believe. The clear-cut allegory was meant
to be read as a clear-cut allegory" (Reed, Thomas Mann, 254). Mann,
"Einflihrung in den 'Zauberberg,"'" 617.
69. Seidlin, "Doctor Faustus: The Hungarian Connection."
70. Zeitblom writes, "I was never able to agree fully with our Fiihrer
and his paladins on precisely the issue of the Jews and their treatment" (io
[12]). Much later in the novel, however, he does express horror when the
concentration camps are opened at the end of the war.
71. The article was subsequently republished together with several
responses in Gbrtz, Deutsche Literatur 1993, 255-69. All references are to this
edition.
72. Glotz, "Freunde, es wird ernst," 275.
73. Title cited from Deutsche Literatur 1993, 279.
74. "Anschwellender Bocksgesang," 261.
75. Kirchhoff defended Straul3 along these lines, claiming that his essay
had exposed weaknesses on the left: "Treffer tun eben weh" ("Die
Mandarine werden nervos," 277). Conservative critics of the "West
German PC-Society" accused the liberal mainstream of such extreme intol-
erance that they allegedly practiced a totalitarian "discourse Apartheid" that
Notes to Pages 163-76 267
treated conservative dissidents as harshly as the Nazis once treated the Jews
(Schacht, "Stigma und Sorge," 60, 63). For a cogent critique of this highly
dubious logic see Miuller, Another Country, 199-225, and Klotz and
Schneider, Die selbstbewuflte Nation.
76. Grass, "Writing after Auschwitz," in Two States-One Nation? 123.
77. In particular, see Bergfleth, "Erde und Heimat."
78. Bergfleth, "Erde und Heimat," 117, io6.
79. Zitelmann et al., Westbindung.
80. "Anschwellender Bocksgesang," 256.
8I. Brockmann, Literature and German Reunification, I 17. He surveys this
neoconservative trend in the fifth chapter (o109-36).
82. Greiner, "Der Rebell des Gesetzes."
83. Paare, Passanten, 171.
84. Paare, Passanten, 172.
85. Rumor, 33.
86. The Young Man, 2; Der junge Mann, 8. Hereafter cited in the text,
with reference to the English translation first followed by the German. For
example, (50 [77]) is a cite to page 50 of the English translation and to page
77 of the original German.
87. Herwig, "'RomantischerReflexionsRoman' oder erzahlerisches
Labyrinth?" 275; McGowan, "Botho StrauB," 255.
88. Federico, "German Identity and the Politics of Postmodernity,"
354-55.
89. On echoes of Romanticism
in Der junge Mann see Herwig,
"RomantischerReflexionsRoman"; Muller, "Transformationen roman-
tischer Inspirationsquellen"; and Willer, Botho Straufi, 77-90.
90. Liicke, Botho Straufi, 62-63.
91. Muller, "Transformationen romantischer Inspirationsquellen,"
197.
92. Federico, "German Identity and the Politics of Postmodernity."
93. Fetscher, "Wilhelm Meisters Wechseljahre," quoted in Liicke, Botho
Straufi, 163-64.
94. "Er habe im Grunde noch nie eine autobiographische Zeile ver-
fa3t," reports Hage. "Schreiben ist eine Seance," 208.
95. Herwig, "RomantischerReflexionsRoman," 276.
96. "Anschwellender Bocksgesang," 268.
97. "Anschwellender Bocksgesang," 259. "' Wiederanschlul3' (Is Botho
Straul3 aware of the historical context of this concept?)" wrote a flabber-
gasted Joachim Vogel in his response to the essay. (Vogel, "Tragodie eines
Einzelgaingers," 236-37.)
98. Hage, "Schreiben ist eine Seance," 214-15.
268 Notes to Pages 176-84
99. Huyssen, Twilight Memories, 7.
Too. Jameson, Postmodernism, 19.
101. See similar comments in Williams, "Botho Straul3 and the Land of
His Fathers," 294-95.
CHAPTER 4
I. Grass, Too Far Afield, 417; Ein weites Feld, 499. Cited henceforth
parenthetically in the text, with reference to the English translation fol-
lowed by the original German. For example, (554 [659]) is a reference to
page 554 of the English translation and to page 659 of the original German.
2. Schneider, The German Comedy, 42; Extreme Mittellage, 33. Both
versions cited hereafter in the text using the same conventions described in
note I of this chapter.
3. "Reise durch das deutsche Nationalgeftihl" is the title of the essay
that describes his trip to Poland in early 1990. In Extreme Mittellage, 33-53;
translated as "Sentimental Journey" in The German Comedy, 42-65.
4. This passage in the revised English translation of the essay is not
included in the original. On Kohl's seemingly deliberate vacillation on the
Polish-German border question, see also Fulbrook, The Divided Nation,
289.
5. Schneider, Eduard's Homecoming, 184; Eduards Heimkehr, 251.
6. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 1.
7. Quoted in Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 30.
8. Habermas's responses to the Historians' Debate have been pub-
lished in his New Conservatism, 207-67. See also Holub, Jurgen Habermas,
162-89.
9. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 19-23.
1o. Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang, 64-65.
II. On the history of the Teutonic Knights see Seward, The Monks of
War, 95-140; Christiansen, The Northern Crusades; Forey, "The Military
Orders, 1120-1312"; and Luttrell, "The Military Orders, 1312-1798."
I2. Seward, The Monks of War, 99.
I 3. Eichendorff, Die Wiederherstellung des Schlosses, in Werke, 5:710.
I4. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 78.
15. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 15 1.
16. See the excellent translation and critical edition of the anonymous
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle by Smith and Urban.
17. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, III, 113.
18. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 10o6-96; Christiansen, The Northern
Crusades, 213-17.
19. Seward, The Monks of War, I1I8.
Notes to Pages 184-88 269
20. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 86.
21. Wippermann, Der Ordensstaat als Ideologie, 68-69.
22. Treitschke, Das deutsche Ordensland Preuflen, 17.
23. Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, I1 . Burleigh provides a detailed,
highly readable, and utterly damning account of German Ostforschung in the
early twentieth century. On German Indologists and the Third Reich see
Pollock, "Deep Orientalism?"
24. Fischer and von Hindenburg, Bei Tannenberg 1914 und 1410, 4; see
also Evans, Tannenberg 1410o/1914.
25. Evans, Tannenberg 1410/1914, 4.
26. Hitler, Mein Kampf 140.
27. Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, 195-231. On Himmler's
conception of the SS as a knightly order modeled after the Teutonic
Knights see also Padfield, Himmler, 139, 164, 17o-71, 248 (further refer-
ences in index), and also Hohne, The Order of the Death's Head, 294-96.
Hohne quotes Himmler's boast that the German conquest of Eastern
Europe will be "the greatest piece of colonisation the world will ever have
seen linked with a noble and essential task, the protection of the Western
world against an irruption from Asia" (316).
28. See Herder, Ideen, in Werke, 6:696-99. For a detailed account of
German-Polish relations see Wippermann, Der Ordensstaat als Ideologie; and
Kozielek, Das Polenbild der Deutschen.
29. Wippermann, Der Ordensstaat als Ideologie, 130.
30. Delbriick, "Einleitung."
31. The most extensive collection of Polenlieder deutscher Dichter is
Leonhard's two-volume edition of 1911-17.
32. Leonhard, Polenlieder, 1:11 o.
33. Leonhard, Polenlieder, 1:79.
34. Eichendorff, commentary to "Auch ich war in Arcadien!" in Werke,
3:668.
35. Leonhard, Polenlieder, I1:32.
36. Leonhard, Polenlieder, 1:198.
37. Heine, "Ueber Polen," in Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, 6:63.
38. Heine, from the Friedrike cycle in his Neue Gedichte, in Historisch-kri-
tische Gesamtausgabe, 2:64-65.
39. On Heine's relations with Marx, see Sammons, Heinrich Heine, esp.
260-65. As Sammons puts it, "the activist Heine was not a 'poet of the peo-
ple,' for all his allusions to the 'folk' in his writings, but a poet against the
people's enemies" (260).
40. Quoted from Laimmert, "Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eichendorffs in
Deutschland," 204.
270 Notes to Pages 188-94
41. Limmert, "Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eichendorffs in Deutschland,"
205.
42. Limmert, "Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eichendorffs in Deutschland,"
205.
43. Schwarz, "Joseph von Eichendorff," 333.
44. For a nuanced reading of Eichendorffs portrayal of the French
Revolution in this novella see Koopmann, "Eichendorff, das Schlol3
Diirande und die Revolution." See also Eichendorffs essay "Der Adel und
die Revolution," which begins with the assertion that the "good old days"
of the Old Regime were "eigentlich weder gut noch alt." In his Werke,
5:391-416.
45. Schiwy, Eichendorff 667.
46. Friihwald, "Der Regierungsrat Joseph von Eichendorff."
47. Schiwy, Eichendorff 279.
48. On the idea that the sense of a collective German national identity
arose through, not against, provincial loyalties, see Applegate, A Nation of
Provincials, and Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor.
49. Quoted in Limmert, "Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eichendorffs,"
218-19.
so. Schiwy, Eichendorff 268.
51i. Schiwy, Eichendorff 268.
52. Schiwy, Eichendorff 436.
53. The story was probably written in 1832 but not published until after
his death in 1866. See the commentary in Eichendorff, Werke, 3:661-64.
54. Eichendorff, Werke, 3:85.
55. Schiwy, Eichendorff 440.
56. On Goethe's failure to read Eichendorffs drama, see Friihwald,
"Der Regierungsrat," 259-60; on Eichendorffs belatedness, see Schiwy,
Eichendorff 1 8-25-
57. Wippermann, Der Ordensstaat als Ideologie, I146.
58. Eichendorff, Werke, 4:448. Hereafter cited with volume and page
number in the text.
59. Faber argues that Der letzte Held von Marienburg is not so much about
the Polish-German conflict as it is about the internal corruption of the
Teutonic Order ("Das Kreuz um des Kreuzes willen"). To claim that the
drama is therefore not anti-Polish seems questionable, given the consistent
negative stereotyping of the Poles in the text.
60. Schwarz, "Joseph von Eichendorff," 356. The reference is of course
to the closing lines of Goethe's Faust II: "Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns
hinan" [The eternal feminine / draws us on high].
61. Eichendorff, Werke, 6:291-308.
62. See Riemen, "Der Deutsche Orden in Eichendorffs Sicht."
Notes to Pages 194-203 271
63. Eichendorff, "Die Wiederherstellung des Schlosses," in Werke,
5:710.
64. "Die Folgen von der Aufhebung," in Werke, 5:466.
65. Adorno, "In Memory of Eichendorff," in Notes to Literature, I:60.
66. For a succinct overview of Freytag's life and works see Kaiser,
"Gustav Freytag."
67. For statistics on the enormous number of copies sold, see Carter,
"Freytag's Soil und Haben," 327-28.
68. Sammons, "The Evaluation of Freytag's Soil und Haben," 3 16.
69. Gustav Freytag und Heinrich von Treitschke im Briefwechsel, 193.
70. Freytag, Gesammelte Werke, 1:3. Hereafter cited with volume and
page number in the text.
71. Hegel, Vorlesungen hber die Asthetik, 216-17.
72. "Bildung degenerates into an uncritical adoption of bourgeois norms.
Its goal becomes integration into the social status quo with the least amount
of friction" (Jacobs and Krause, Der deutsche Bildungsroman, 153).
73. Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle-Classes in Germany, 109, 115,
132. Other studies of Soil und Haben include Carter, "Freytag's Soil und
Haben" (1968); Sammons, "The Evaluation of Freytag's Soil und Haben"
(1969); Kienzle, Der Erfolgsroman (1975), 5-53; Steinecke, "Gustav Freytag"
(1980); Berman, The Rise of the Modern German Novel (1986), 79-o104;
Holub, Reflections of Realism (1991), 176-86; Rindisbacher, "From National
Task to Individual Pursuit" (2002), 186-99.
74. Freytag, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, in Gesammelte Werke, 1:239,
251.
75. See, for example, Martini, Deutsche Literatur im bhrgerlichen Realismus:
"Dies war nicht eigentlich antisemitisch gemeint" (423). Both Sammons
("Evaluation," 317) and Kienzle (Der Erfolgsroman, 37) argue that Freytag
was not a biological racist of the sort that emerged in the later nineteenth
century, while Carter insists that Freytag was merely offering realistic por-
traits of "Jewish hawkers, dealers, and first-generation immigrants"
("Freytag's 'Soll und Haben,'" 326).
76. See in particular Holub's withering attack on those who would
excuse Freytag's anti-Semitic caricatures (Reflections of Realism, 180). On the
lasting damage caused by such stereotypes in Freytag's immensely popular
and influential novel, see Bramsted, Aristocracy, 136; Mosse, Crisis of German
Ideology, 140, 163; Craig, Germany, 1866-1945, 84; and Steinecke, "Gustav
Freytag," 146.
77. Ammann, Ostliche Spiegel, documents the upsurge in interest in the
Orient in popular culture and literature in early-nineteenth-century
Germany.
78. Tatlock, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country." In examining
272 Notes to Pages 205-15
the development of German national identity through rather than against
the provincial, Tatlock draws on the work of Applegate, A Nation of
Provincials, and Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor.
79. See Rindisbacher's interesting contrast between Freytag's image of
a nationalistic bourgeois world that strives for complacency and stability and
Marx and Engels's stress in The Communist Manifesto on the dynamism of
capitalism that renders national borders obsolete and occasions the rise of
the proletariat ("From National Task to Individual Pursuit," 186-99).
8o. Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle-Classes, 1 16.
8 I. Holub, Reflections of Realism, 174-86, 196; Rindisbacher, "From
National Task to Individual Pursuit," 186-99.
82. Kienzle, Der Efolgsroman, 8.
83. Kienzle, Der Efolgsroman, 8.
84. Belgum, Popularizing the Nation, 142-82.
85. On the role of the Heimat movement as a mediator between past
and present, see Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor. As he points out,
some of the local "traditions" supposedly preserved in the nineteenth cen-
tury were in fact "pure historical invention" (117).
86. Freytag, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, in Gesammelte Werke,
I:254-55. For further thoughts on Freytag's refusal to continue Die Ahnen
up to the historical present, see Tatlock, "In the Heart of the Heart of the
Country."
87. Kienzle, Der Efolgsroman, 33.
88. As Berman argues, Soll und Haben is really a political novel beneath
the facade of a Bildungsroman (The Rise of the Modern German Novel, o101).
89. Jiirgs, Burger Grass, 255.
90. "Welch ein barbarischer Kraftakt!" [What a barbaric feat of
strength!] (Grass, FhnfJahrzehnte, 112).
91. Brockmann, Literature and German Reunification, I1-2.
92. Rushdie, "Introduction," x.
93. Grass, "To Be Continued... ," 298; "Fortsetzung folgt... ," 307.
94. The Tin Drum, 389-90; Die Blechtrommel, 512.
95. Grass, Dog Years, 270; Hundejahre, 325.
96. In "The Second Month," The Flounder, 107-68; Der Butt, 137-213.
97. The Call of the Toad, 27; Unkenrufe, 32. Hereafter cited parentheti-
cally in the text, with reference to the English translation followed by the
German original.
98. Preece also notes the proximity of Reschke to Grass: The Life and
Work of Gunter Grass, 181.
99. "Fortsetzung folgt... ," 305-6; "To Be Continued ... ," 296-97.
ioo. See, for example, the essays "Shame and Disgrace" (1989), "Much
Notes to Pages 215-28 273
Feeling, Little Awareness" (1989), and "Equalizing the Burden" (1989) in
the collection Two States-One Nation? all of which criticize Helmut Kohl's
policies regarding Poland.
101. As the essays collected in Two States-One Nation? reveal, Grass
consistently opposed German Reunification since the 196os. As a left-of-
center Social Democrat, Grass opposed both Soviet-led Communism and,
more recently, the American-led move toward global capitalism. See for
example his critique of globalization in "Fortsetzung folgt ... ," 308 ("To
Be Continued... ," 299).
102. Shafi, "Gazing at India," 40. Shafi repeats in this essay many of the
same points she made in "Giinter Grass' Zunge zeigen als postmoderner
Reisebericht."
103. "Grass appears all too willing to deal in stereotypes" (Preece, The
Life and Work of Gunter Grass, 183). Preece also suggests that Chatterjee "is
modelled loosely on Salman Rushdie" (182). Grass has hardly been immune
to such criticism in the past. Der Butt outraged many feminists in the 197os,
for instance, while he has also been accused of employing Jewish stereo-
types in Die Blechtrommel.
104. Grass, Ohne Stimme, 53.
105. Grass, Ohne Stimme, 27, 28.
1o6. "Grass nennt Unions-Verhalten unverantworlich," in Spiegel
Online, March 23, 2002.
o107. Grass, Crabwalk, 103; Im Krebsgang, 99. Subsequent references are
first to the English translation and then to the German original in the text.
io8. Preece, The Life and Work of Gunter Grass, 12.
109. Grass, MeinJahrhundert, 137; My Century, 96.
11o. On the debate surrounding Grass and other recent authors see
Hage, "Autoren unter Generalverdacht."
CONCLUSION
i. Grass, "Amerikanische Politik muss Gegenstand der Kritik bleiben."
2. Brooks, "Die biirgerliche Provokation."
3. $enocak, Atlas of a Tropical Germany, 35; Atlas des tropischen
Deutschland, 89.
4. $enocak, "Bastardisierte Sprache," in War Hitler Araber?, 32.
5. The full title of Ozdamar's work is Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei:
Hat zwei Thren, aus einer kam ich rein, aus der anderen ging ich raus.
6. Johnson, "Transnational Asthetik," 38.
7. Seyhan, "Lost in Translation," 419.
8. Seyhan, "Lost in Translation," 419, and Johnson, "Transnational
274 Notes to Pages 229-39
Asthetik," 38; Ghaussy, "Das Vaterland verlassen." Seyhan has included a
revised version of the earlier article in Writing outside the Nation, 141-50.
9. Seyhan, "Lost in Translation," 420.
10. Muller, "Ich war Midchen," 143.
I I. On the relation of Karawanserei to the Bildungsroman see both
Ghaussy and Johnson.
I2. Ozdamar, Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, I196.
13. Ozdamar, Die Bricke vom Goldenen Horn, 14.
I4. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 86.
15. Garber, Vested Interests, esp. 1-17.
16. Roes, Leeres Viertel, 284. Hereafter cited in the text. Roes employs
an antiquated orthography for Schnittke's portion of the text, while his
modern counterpart uses his own idiosyncratic style that avoids capitaliza-
tion of all nouns and replaces the German 13 with sz.
17. For instance, Roes's second novel, Der Coup der Berdache (1999)
explores the role of the "berdache" in Native American culture:
"Morphologically s/he is a man, but socially a non-man [Nicht-Mann],
which is not the same as a woman" (323). His fictional travelogue Haut des
Sidens (2000) comments at length on the homosexual relationship between
Queequeg and Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick, while the futuristic novel
David Kanchelli (200oo1) portrays the relationship between a judge and his
condemned brother, who is portrayed both as a homosexual and a rebel
freedom fighter against an oppressive transnational empire in the year 2023.
18. On homosexual tourism in the Orient see Boone, "Vacation
Cruises." For an interesting discussion of masculinity in Leeres Viertel see
Tobin, "Postmoderne Minnlichkeit."
19. Tobin, "Postmoderne Minnlichkeit," 325-26.
20. Readings, The University in Ruins.
21. Kant, "Beantwortung der Frage," in Werkausgabe, 11:61. Italics in
original.
22. On the contemporary university's ability to tolerate controversial
courses that draw students, see Hohendahl, "The Fate of German Studies,"
86. Several years before Readings, Schmidt had critiqued the role of"excel-
lence" in American higher education ("Wissenschaft als Ware").
23. Readings, The University in Ruins, 24. Culler claims that he first sug-
gested to Readings the example of excellence in parking at Cornell
University ("Coping with Excellence," 5o-51).
24. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, "The Nazi Myth," 294. See also
Eagleton, The Ideology
of the Aesthetic and de Man, "Aesthetic
Formalization." Abrams describes the "circuitous journey" of Romantic
thought in his Natural Supernaturalism, 197-252. Redfield offers the best
Notes to Pages 239-43 275
account of aesthetic ideology in the Bildungsroman, and I am much indebt-
ed to his work (Phantom Formations, esp. 1-62).
25. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 82. On the contemporary
upsurge in increasingly local nationalisms directed against globalization, see
Jusdanis, The Necessary Nation, 188-89, 196-97.
26. Redfield, Phantom Formations, 5I.
27. Kacandes, "German Cultural Studies," 11-12.
28. Peck, "There's No Place Like Home?"
29. Meves, "Zur Namensgebung 'Germanist' "; Janota, "Einleitung,"
8-o10; Liitzeler, "Wir sind unsere krisenreiche Vergangenheit," 26.
30. Seeba, "Critique of Identity Formation," 144.
31. Greenblatt, "Racial Memory and Literary History," 59. Greenblatt's
article is one of several contributions to the special topic of "Globalizing
Literary Studies" in this issue of the PMLA.
32. Laimmert, "Germanistik-eine deutsche Wissenschaft."
33. Seyhan, "Introduction," 8.
34. Adelson, "Migrants' Literature or German Literature?" 218.
35. Koberstein, GrundrifJ3, i.
36. Lohnes and Nollendorfs, German Studies in the United States; Benseler
et al., Teaching German in America; Trommler, Germanistik in den USA;
McCarthy and Schneider, The Future of Germanistik.
37. Lange, "Thoughts in Season," II; Schmidt, "The Rhetoric of
Survival," 167.
38. Hohendahl, "The
Fate of German
Studies"; Trommler,
"Einleitung," esp. 30-31.
39. Lange, "The History of German Studies in America," 9; Sammons,
"Some Considerations on Our Invisibility"; McCarthy, "Double Optics."
On the widespread German disrespect for Auslandsgermanistik see
Trommler, "Einleitung," 19; Hohendahl, "The American-German
Divide," 23-24.
40. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 47-65.
41. Weiner, "From the Editor," vii. In a parallel move, Keel argued that
it was time for German-American Studies "to be more Americanized and
at the same time begin to be de-Germanized" ("German-American
Studies," 344).
42. Berman, "Our Predicament, Our Prospects," 2. On the debilitating
effect of mutual caricatures see Hohendahl, "The American-German
Divide," 20.
43. Sammons, "Germanistik im
Niemandsland," II8. See also
McCarthy, "Double Optics."
44. Kramsch, "The Privilege of the Nonnative Speaker," 363.
276 Notes to Pages 243-44
45. The president of the Modern Language Association, Stephen
Greenblatt, recently addressed the problem to the field of literary studies
posed by the fact that many academic presses have severely curtailed the
number of publications devoted to language and literature (letter to mem-
bers of the MLA, May 28, 2002). How will younger scholars establish
themselves in the field and qualify for tenure if no one is willing to publish
their work?
46. Peck, "The British Are Coming!" 278.
47. Such was the repeated refrain in the "Colloquium on the State of the
Discipline" published in the millennial issue of the German Quarterly 73, no.
I (2000). See, for example, Berman, "Our Predicament, Our Prospects," 3;
Friedrichsmeyer, "Acknowledging
the Beautiful," 4; McCarthy,
"Centering the Discipline"; and Mews, "A Modest Proposal," 30. The
renewed appreciation of literature extends beyond the field of German
Studies. See the series of testimonials to the power of the literary text in the
cluster of responses to the question "Why Major in Literature-What Do
We Tell Our Students?" PMLA 117, no. 3 (May 2002): 487-521.
48. Many attempts have been made either to turn back the clock or to
bemoan the inevitable. See, for example, Ellis's bitter philippic Literature
Lost or Bloom's wistful The Western Canon.
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Index
Abrams, M. H., 254n, 274n
Ackermann, Josef, 269n
Adelson, Leslie A., 241, 26on, 261n
Adolf, Helen, 249n
Adorno, Theodor W., 142, 161,
162, 196, 239
Aeschylus, Orestia, 137
Alewyn, Richard, 2511n
Alexander (the Great), 37
Ammann, Ludwig, 247n, 271n
Anderson, Benedict, 242, 245n,
25on, 275n
Androgyny, 13, 38, 50-54, 58-59,
98-99, 120, 132, 138, 152, 157,
159, 230, 234, 237. See also
Homosexuality
Anger, Alfred, 2531n
Angress [Kliiger], Ruth K., 259n
Annolied, Das, 27, 32
Anti-Semitism, 8-9, 12, 91,
o109-o10, II6, II8, 125, 143-45,
2o01-2, 209, 212, 221-23. See also
Holocaust; Jews, German
Applegate, Celia, 256n, 27on, 272n
Armstrong, John A., 250n
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, o101, 133, 158
Arnim, Achimvon, 11o, 1III, 190;
Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 188
Asmuth, Bernhard, 25 In, 252n
Auerbach, Erich, 248n
Bachofen, Johann Jakob, 133-38,
153, 154, 157, 163, 168; Das
MIutterrecht, 135
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 262n
Balke, Diethelm, 247n, 253
Bartlett, Robert, 15, 183
Baeumler, Alfred, 133-38, 154, 157
Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, 257n
Behler, Ernst, 253n
Belgum, Kirsten, 208
Benjamin, Walter, 147
Berman, Russell A., 9, 242, 246n,
271n, 272n, 276n
Bernal, Martin, 8, 77, 258n, 259n
Bernard of Clairvaux, 182
Bernstein, Eckhard, 25on
Bhabha, Homi K., 274n
Bildung, 7, 64, 69, 72-73, 76,
78-80, 84, 98, 114, 13,; and
national education, 101-5,
237-39
Bildungsroman [Entwicklungsroman],
41, 65, 95-96, o105, 113-15, 146,
167, 176, 198-99, 229, 235-36
Bin Laden, Osama, 226
305
306 Index
Birus, Henrik, 262n
Bismarck, Otto von, 3, Iio, 116,
139, 208, 229
Bloom, Harold, 276n
Bliiher, Hans, 13, 144-46, 157,
265n; Die Rolle der Erotik in der
Mdnnlichen Gesellschaft, 144
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 5,
135; De generis humani varietate
nativa, 4
Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron,
166
Bodmer, Johann Jacob, II 1
Bohm, Karl Werner, 266n
Bohse-Talander, August, 61
Bill, Heinrich, 209
Boone, Joseph A., 274n
Bopp, Franz, lo8
Bbrner, Ludwig, 120
Bose, Subhas Chandra, 218
Bossuet, Jacques-B6nigne, Discours
sur l'histoire universelle, 46
Boucher, Francois, 61
Brackert, Helmut, 259n
Bramsted, Ernest K., 271n, 272n
Brecht, Bertolt, 230
Bredeck, Elizabeth, 253n
Breitinger, Johann Jakob, II 1
Brentano, Clemens, 110 , III; Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, 188
Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, 246n
Brinkmann, Richard, 256n
Brockmann, Stephen, 267n, 272n
Brooks, David, 273n
Browning, Christopher R., 246n
Bruck, Moeller van den, 264n
Bruntraiger, Hubert, 263n
Bumke, Joachim, 247n, 248n,
249n, 251n, 259n
Burger, Heinz Otto, 255n
Burleigh, Michael, 184
Burton, Sir Richard, 2
Buruma, Ian, 247n
Bush, George W., v, 225
Carter, T. E., 271n
Celtis, Conrad, 35-37, 43
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 6
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart,
109
Chanson de geste, 20-21, 95
Charlemagne, 16, 46
Chateaubriand, Francois-Ren6,
Vicomte de, 2
Chr6tien de Troyes, Perceval, 16,
116-17
Christiansen, Eric, 268n, 269n
Classen, Albrecht, 248n
Clement V, Pope, 182
Cohen, Roger, 225
Columbus, Christopher, 33, 35
Confino, Alon, 27on, 272n
Cook, James, 84
Corngold, Stanley, 265n
Creuzer, Friedrich, Symbolik und
Mythologie der alten Volker,
134-35, 136
Cucuel, Ernst, 116
Culler, Jonathan, 274n
Cysarz, Herbert, 190
Index 307
Arkadien," 191; Aus dem Leben
eines Taugenichts, 188; "Die
deutsche Salon-Poesie der
Frauen," 193; Der letzte Held von
Marienburg, 191-94, 196; Das
Marmorbild, 192; Das Schlof
Durande, I189, 196; "Uber die
Folgen der Aufhebung der
Bischofe," 195; Viel Ldrmen um
Nichts, 189; "Die Wiederher-
stellung des Schlosses der
deutschen Ordensritter," 194-95
Elias, Norbert, 7
Ellis, John M., 276n
Elon, Amos, 246n, 255n, 259n
Enlightenment, 4, 51I, 69, 72, 76,
87-89, 110o, III, 140, 142, 147,
184
Ereira, Alan, 248n
Eugenius III, Pope, 182
Evans, Geoffrey, 269n
Exploration, 33-34, 42-43, 84,
129
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi, 245n
Ezzolied, Das, 19, 27
Faber, Martin, 27on
Faustbuch, Das, 42
Febvre, Lucien, 250n
Federico, Joseph, 267n
Fest, Joachim C., 26on
Fetscher, Caroline, 171
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 85, o105,
o107, o109; Reden an die deutsche
Nation, 0I o1-2
First World War, 134, 138-40,
146-47, 154, 229
Fischer, Bernd, 25on, 251n, 255n,
259n
Fischer, Fritz, 245n, 263n,
264n
Fohrmann, Jiirgen, 26on
Fontane, Theodor, 141, 177
Forey, Alan, 268n
Forster, Georg, 84; Reise um die
Welt, 3, 65; Sakontala, 63-64
Forster, Leonard, 25on
Foucault, Michel, 4, 101, 125,244,
258n, 262n; Discipline and Punish,
59, 239
Frederick II, king of Prussia (the
Great), 195
French Revolution, 51i, 63, 85-89,
99, o104, III, 130-3 I, 138,
142-44, 189, 196
Freud, Sigmund, 135,262n
Freytag, Gustav, II, 12, 196-209;
Die Ahnen, 199-200oo, 2o01, 203,
208; Die Brider vorm deutschen
Hause, 200oo; Erinnerungen aus
meinem Leben, 197-98; Soll und
Haben, 196-209, 236
Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, 257n, 263n,
276n
Friedrich Wilhelm, elector of Bran-
denburg, 49
Friedrich Wilhelm III, king of
Prussia, 86, 10o2
Friihwald, Wolfgang, 27on
Frye, Northrop, 32
308 Index
Gervinus, Georg Gottfried,
Geschichte der poetischen
National-Literatur der Deutschen,
114-15
Geulen, Hans, 251n
Ghaussy, Soheila, 274n
Gillespie, Gerald Ernest Paul, 251In
Girard, Ren6, 163
Globalization, 1O, II, 119, 142,
220, 238-40, 243
Glotz, Peter, 162
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 1o, 70,
84, 87, 91, 93, 110o, III, 114,
118-32, 144, 191, 193, 210o, 235,
263n; Belsazar, 122, 124, 261n;
Dichtung und Wahrheit, 62, 121,
125; Faust, 72, 104, 115, 124,
131, 146, 152; Goitter, Helden und
Wieland, 62; "Hegire," 122-23,
130; "Im Gegenwairtigen Ver-
gangnes," 126; "Mahomets
Gesang," 122; Noten und Abhand-
lungen, 119, 121, 123; Novelle,
119, 127-3 I; "Selige Sehnsucht,"
126; "Trilologie der Leiden-
schaft," 126; "Volk und Knecht
und Uberwinder," 125; Werther,
63, 66-67, 120, 124, 132;
West-ostlicher Divan, 118-27, 130,
132, 202, 233; Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre, 41, 105, 125, 146, 167,
229; Wilhelm Meisters Wander-
jahre, 124, 130
Goetz, Hermann, 247n, 248n
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, 8-9,
255n
Gone with the Wind, 151
Gbrres, Joseph, III, 133, 136, 153,
157, 158, 190; MVlythengeschichte
der asiatischen Welt, 134-35
Goittingisches historisches Magazin, 77
Gottsched, Johann Christoph, I I I
Gbtz, Josef, 260n
Gouges, Olympe de, 5 I
Grass, Giinter, 1O, II, 12, 163,
209-24, 225-26, 229, 237; Die
Blechtrommel, 167, 209, 211-12,
223; Der Butt, 212; Ein weites
Feld, 177-80, 2o9-o10; Hunde-
jahre, 209, 212, 222; Im Krebs-
gang, 181, 221-24; Katz und
Maus, 209, 222; Kopfgeburten,
213, 218; Unkenrufe, 213-20;
Zunge zeigen, 213, 218, 219
Green, Dennis H., 248n, 249n
Greenblatt, Stephen, 240, 276n
Greiner, Ulrich, 267n
Grimm, Jacob, III, 113, 133, 240
Grimm, Wilhelm, II I, 240
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob
Christoffel von, 1o, 46; Der
seltzame Springinsfeld, 44; Simpli-
cissimus, 40-45, 236
Groos, Arthur, 249n
Grossman, Jeffrey A., 76,255n
Gryphius, Andreas, 39-40, 190;
Catharina von Georgien, 47
Gulf War, 219-20, 227, 231I
Gulliver's Travels, 3
Index 309
Vorlesungen fiber die Philosophie der
Geschichte, 6
Heilbut, Anthony, 264n, 265n
Heine, Heinrich, 9, 87, 187-88;
Deutschland: Ein Wintermdrchen,
110o; Romanzero, 188; "Zwei
Ritter," 188
Heinrich von Veldecke, 22
Heraclitus, 72
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 9, lo,
52, 64-83, 85, 99, lo8, III, 121,
124, 146, 185, 199, 240; Auch
eine Philosophie der Geschichte,
71-72; Die ersten Urkunden des
Menschlichen Geschlechts, 70-71;
Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte, 65-66, 72-83, 94;
Journal meiner Reise, 66, 69;
Von der Ahnlichkeit der mittlern
englischen und deutschen Dicht-
kunst, 68; Von deutscher Art und
Kunst, 66-67, 70
Herman of Thuringia, 21
Herminghouse, Patricia, 247n
Heroic (courtly) novel, 40-41
Herwig, Henriette, 267n
Herzog Ernst, 17
Heselhaus, Clemens, 25 in
Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, 14
Hewitt, Andrew, 265n
Hillgruber, Andreas, Zweierlei
Untergang, 18o-81
Himmler, Heinrich, 176, 185,269n
Hippel, Theodor von, 51
Hirsch, Rudolf, 250n
Historikerstreit, I 8o-8 1
History: as discontinuity, 147; as
exemplum, 46, 65; figural inter-
pretation of, 19-21, 27, 32; as
multilayered synchronicity, 176,
224; salvation history, 46, 64;
universal, 4-6, 46, 65, 71-80, 134
Hitler, Adolf, 8, 9, 12, 44, o110,
116-17, 134, 142, 165, 166, 174,
175, 18o, 181; Mein Kampf lo09,
185, 222-24
Hobsbawm, E. J., 245n, 25on
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor
Amadeus, Der Sandmann, 95
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, 260on,
274n, 275n
Hohne, Heinz, 269
Holborn, Hajo, 263n
Holocaust, 8, 75, 163, 165, 18o-81,
221. See also Anti-Semitism;
Jews, German
Holub, Robert C., 268n, 271n,
272n
Homer, 63, 71, 134
Homosexuality, 13, 140, 145-46,
155-61, 188,235. See also
Androgyny
Horkheimer, Max, 142
Hultsch, Paul, 250n, 25 In
Humanism, German, 33, 35-37, 39,
40, 158, 184
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, o102-5,
238-39
Hunger, Ulrich, 259n, 26on
310 Index
Janota, Johannes, 259n, 26on
Jantz, Harold, 250on
Jaul3, Hans Robert, 254n
Jews, German, 9, 15, 27, 75-76,
o109-o10, 143-45, 150, 158, 161,
21 . See also Anti-Semitism;
Holocaust
John Sobieski, king of Poland, 186
Johnson, Hildegard Binder, 25on
Johnson, Sheila, 273n, 274n
Jones, Sir William, 63
Jones, Terry, 248n
Joyce, James, 152
Jingere Titurel, Der, I13
Jiirgs, Michael, 272n
Jusdanis, Gregory, II, 275n
Just, Klaus Giinther, 251n
Kacandes, Irene, 275n
Kafka, Franz, 230
Kaiser, Nancy, 271n
Kant, Immanuel, 4, 83, 85, 238
Keel, William D., 275n
Keller, Gottfried, 9, 42, 167
Khomeini, Ayatollah, 210
Kienzle, Michael, 271n, 272n
Kirchhoff, Bodo, 266n
Kittler, Friedrich, A., 96, 257n,
258n
Klages, Ludwig, 163
Klaproth, Heinrich Julius, 107-8,
258-59n
Kleist, Heinrich von, 9, o101; Uber
das Marionettentheater, 239; Die
Verlobung in Santa Domingo, 13
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb,
69-70, 91, 99, III
Klotz, Johannes, 267n
Kluckhohn, Paul, 256n
Koberstein, August, GrundrifJ3 der
Geschichte der deutschen
National-Litteratur, 241
Koch, Roland, 220
Kohl, Helmut, 178-79, 215
Konrad der Pfaffe, 18, 20, 21, 32
Kontje, Todd, 247n, 252n, 254n,
258n, 259n
Koopmann, Helmut, 27on
Korner, Theodor, 101
Kosch, Wilhelm, 188
Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 185
Kozielek, Gerard, 259n, 26on, 269n
Kramsch, Claire, 242-43
Krause, Markus, 292n
Krohn, Riidiger, 26on
Kuhn, Hugo, 248n, 249n
Kiihn, Sophie von, 63, 95
Kiihnel, Jiirgen, 26on
Kultur [culture], 7-8, 71, 89, o102,
112, 140-41. See also Zivilisation
Kunitzsch, Paul, 249n
Kurze, Dietrich, 250n
Kurzke, Hermann, 88, 256n, 257n,
263n, 264n, 265n
Kuzniar, Alice A., 97, 98,257n
Lachmann, Karl, 113-14
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, 239
Lafayette, Madame de, La Princesse
de Cleves, 59
Lagarde, Paul de, 139
Index 311
Lennox, Sara, 263n
Lenz, Siegfried, Deutschstunde, 167
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 227
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, III;
Literaturbriefe, 68-69; Nathan der
Weise, 75-76
Liebertz-Griin, Ursula, 259n
Livldindische Reimchronik, 182-83
Lohenstein, Daniel Casper von, 3,
9, o10, 82, 190; Arminius, 9, 13,
14, 40-41, 45-59, 65; Ibrahim
Bassa, 47; Ibrahim Sultan, 47-48,
56
Lohnes, Walter F. W., 295n
Louis XIV, king of France, 40
Lowe, Lisa, 246n
Lubich, Frederick A., 153
Liicke, Bairbel, 267n
Luise, queen of Prussia, 86-87
Lukics, Georg, 87
Luther, Martin, 3, 6, 38-39, 43, 46,
88, 199
Luttrell, Anthony, 268n
Liitzeler, Paul Michael, 275n
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 239
Maalouf, Amin, 248n
Macpherson, James, 67
Mahoney, Dennis F., 256n
Maier, Charles S., 268n
Malsch, Wilfried, 256n
Mandelkow, Karl Robert, 261n,
262n
Mann, Heinrich, 143
Mann, Thomas, I, 10o, 12, 13, 132,
138, 140-61, i188, 2Io; Betrach-
tungen eines Unpolitischen, 140-43,
162; Buddenbrooks, 151; Doktor
Faustus, 136, 16o-61, 167, 236;
"Gedanken im Krieg," 140;
Joseph, I4; Lotte in Weimar, 120,
263n; "Pariser Rechenschaft,"
133-34, 136, 138, 142; Der Tod
in Venedig, 148-49, 160; Tonio
Kroger, 148; "Von deutscher
Republik," 142-46; "Der Wille
zum Gliick," I148; Der Zauber-
berg, 14, 138, 146-61, 167
Marchand, Suzanne L., 264n
Marcus, Leah S., 253n
Margalit, Avishai, 247n
Marie Antoinette, 87
Martin, Henri-Jean, 250on
Martini, Fritz, 271n
Marx, Karl, 188, 230
May, Karl, 233
McCarthy, John A., 255n, 275n,
276n
McClintock, Anne, 156
McGetchin, Douglas T., 247n,
254n, 259n
McGowan, Moray, 267n
Meid, Volker, 251n
Meiners, Christoph, 4, 135, 137,
255n
Meister Eckhart, 176
Mendelssohn, Moses, 75
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 188
Metternich, Clemens, Prince von,
91
312 Index
Miiler, Adam, 13, 110, 120, 137,
138, 157, 265n; Vorlesungen fber
die deutsche Wissenschaft und Liter-
atur, 91-93, 98
Muiller, Christoph Heinrich, I I I
Muller, Heidy M., 267n
Muliler, Jan-Werner, 267n
Muliler, Max, lo9
Muller, Regula, 274n
Mustard, Helen M., 248n
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 239
Napoleon, emperor of France, 89,
101o, o102, 113, 122, 190, 199
Nationalism, German: and conser-
vatism, I0-II, 70, 87-88,
143-46, 162-67, 175-76, 190-91;
and cosmopolitanism, 62-63, 70,
90-93, 99-101, 107, 131,138,
145, 153,217; and critique of
imperialism, 65, 73-74, 79-80,
83, 89-93, 101o, 138; early mod-
ern, 32-39; eighteenth-century,
67-69; and gender roles, 81-83;
and hostility to France, 7-8, 65,
67-69, 71, 83, 99-100oo, 117-18,
121, 140-42; and hostility to
Rome, 35-39; and hostility to
the United States, 225-27; and
language, 100oo, o101-2, 105-8,
19o; and liberalism, 11-12, 110,
143-46, 186-88, 190-91, 207; vs.
patriotism, 99-1oo; and provin-
cialism, 84-85, 99-101o, 190,
203-5, 208,212-13; and rivalry
with England, 139, 155; seven-
teenth-century, 39-40, 43-44,
58. See also Orientalism
National literature, German, vi, I,
14, 40-41, 73, lo5, III-18, 121,
13 I, 188-89, 197-98, 209-10,
229-31, 238-44
Negri, Antonio, 6, 247n
Nerval, G6rard de, 2
Newman, Jane O., 48, 57-58, 59,
252-53n
Nibelungenlied, Das, I I 1-12, I 13,
114
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 135, 140, 142
Nollendorfs, Valters, 295n
Nolte, Ernst, 18o, 224
Noltze, Holger, 248n, 249n
Novalis (Friedrich von Harden-
berg), 9-10, 62-64, 83-101, 120,
131, 133, 137, 143-45, 157, 187,
193; Das allgemeine Brouillon, 98;
Blithenstaub, 84; "Die Christen-
heit oder Europa," 87-90, 98,
99, 130, 143; "Glauben und
Liebe," 86-87, 88, 96, 143; Hein-
rich von Ofterdingen, 93-99, 105,
167, 236; Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,
97-98 Mdrchen, 96, 167;
"Monolog," 97-98; "Politische
Aphorismen," 86; "Sehnsucht
nach dem Tode," 98
O'Brien, William Arctander, 98,
253n, 256n, 257n, 258n
Occidentalism, II
Oder-Neisse boundary, 178-79,
Index 313
96-97; and India (Asia), 4-5, 8,
12, 63-64, 76-80, 89-90, 92-93,
o105-o10, 117, 121, 123, 134-38,
148, 150-52; and irony, 124, 127,
130, 132; and matriarchy,
134-38, 153-54, 157-6o, 168,
170, 172; and the Old Testa-
ment, 70-71, 121; and the
Ottoman Empire, 9, 12, 34-35,
37-40, 46-49, 54, 56-58, 61,
139, 148-50; and the Rococo,
61-64, 67, 96, 124. See also
Nationalism, German
Ortmann, Christa, 249n
Ossian, 63, 66-68, 70-71
Ozdamar, Emine Sevgi, II, 227,
228-31, 234, 237; Die Brticke vom
goldenen Horn, 228-30, 231; Das
Leben ist eine Karawanserei,
228-29, 23 I1
Padfield, Peter, 269n
Panzer, Friedrich, I16
Pape, Maria Elisabeth, 253n
Parker, Andrew, 247n
Passage, Charles E., 248n
Peck, Jeffrey M., 275n, 276n
Pfeiffer-Belli, Wolfgang, 253n
Philip IV, king of France, 182
Picaresque novel (Schelmenroman),
40-41
Pinson, Koppel S., 258n
Platen, August Graf von, 186
Polenlieder, 186-88
Poliakov, Leon, 245n, 246n,
259n
Pollock, Sheldon, o109, 246n, 259n,
269n
Pratt, Mary Louise, 5S
Preece, Julian, 272n, 273n
PresterJohn, 29, 30, 140
Pretzel, Ulrich, 249n
Quinn, David B., 25on
Rabelais, Frangois, 215
Race (racism), 3-5, 8-9, 15, 17,
22-23, 25, 33, 74-75, o109-10o,
117, 134-35, 142, 162-63, 184,
199, 208, 218, 220, 239-40;
interracial romances, 12-13,
18-19, 22-23, 25, 54-56, 94-95,
172-74
Ranke, Leopold von, 46
Ranum, Orest, 251 n
Readings, Bill, 237-38
Redfield, Marc, 239, 258n
Reed, Terence J., 16o, 264n, 266n
Reformation, 34, 39, 87-88
Reunification (German, 1989-90),
12, 119, 164, 177-81I, 2o9-Io,
214-15, 220, 223-24
Richard, Jean, 248n
Richard I (the Lionhearted), king
of England, I16
Richardson, Samuel, 64
Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich
(Jean Paul), 123-24, 261n
Riemen, Alfred, 27on
Riencourt, Amaury de, 259n
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, 248n
Rindisbacher, Hans J., 271n,
314 Index
Sade, Marquis de, 59
Sahmland, Irmtraut, 253n, 257n
Said, Edward W., v, 2, 8, 95, 123,
139, 246n, 247n, 253n, 257n,
258n, 261n
Saladin, 17
Sammons, Jeffrey L., 242, 269n,
271n, 275n
Samuel, Richard, 63,253n
Sanct Oswald, 18, 19, 22, 30
San Marte (A. Schulz), 114, 115
Schacht, Ulrich, 267n
Schama, Simon, 25on
Schami, Rafik, Der geheime Bericht
hber den Dichter Goethe, 1I18-19,
132
Schelling, Friedrich, 87, 169
Schiller, Friedrich, 104, 114, 123,
133; Wilhelm Tell, 158
Schirok, Bernd, 259n
Schiwy, Giinther, 190, 259n, 27on
Schlaffer, Hannelore, 262n
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 84, oo100,
Io8, II2, II3, 137; Geschichte der
romantischen Literatur, 90-91I
Schlegel, Dorothea, 87
Schlegel, Friedrich, 84, 87, o109,
III, I112; Geschichte der alten und
neuen Literatur, 108; Gesprach hber
die Poesie, 106, 166; Uber die
Sprache und Weisheit der Indier,
105-8
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 87
Schlbzer, August Ludwig, 246n
Schmidt, Henry J., 274n, 275n
Schmitt, Carl, 138
Schneider, Katrin, 275n
Schneider, Peter, 9; Eduards
Heimkehr, 179; "Reise durch das
deutsche Nationalgeftihl,"
178-79
Schneider, Ulrich, 267n
Schbn, Theodor von, 184
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 135, 140
Schroder, Walter Johannes, 248n,
249n
Schroeder, Walter, 257n
Schulz, Gerhard, 256n, 257n, 261n
Schulze, Ingo, Simple Storys, 179
Schulze, Ursula, 26on
Schumann, Robert, 188
Schwab, Dieter, 256n
Schwab, Raymond, 2, 253n,
258-59n, 262n
Schwarz, Egon, 193, 27on
Second World War, 120, 16o,
177-78, 181, 219, 221, 223
Sedgwick, Eve, 155
Sedlar, Jean W., 247n
Seeba, Hinrich C., 26on, 275n
Seidlin, Oskar, 266n
Selbstbewusste Nation, Die, 163
Semper, Max, 117
Senocak, Zafer, 119, 227, 237; War
Hitler Araber? 119, 132
Seward, Desmond, 268n
Seyhan, Azade, 273n, 274n,
275n
Shafi, Monika, 273n
Index 315
Song of Roland, 17-18, 20, 22, 28,
30, 32
Southern, R. W., 248n
Sparnaay, H., 26on
Spartacus, 49
Spectator, The, 99
Spellerberg, Gerhard, 25 1in, 252n
Spengler, Oswald, Untergang des
Abendlandes, 162
Spielmannsepik, 18-19, 22, 24, 30,
95
Spies, Otto, 247n
Spinoza, Baruch, 72
Spittler, Ludwig, 255n
Stahl, Ernst Ludwig, 254n
Steinecke, Hartmut, 271n
Stern, Fritz, 264n
Stoiber, Edmund, 220
Stone, Lawrence, 256n
Straul3, Botho, o10, 162-76;
"Anschwellender Bocksgesang,"
162-64, 166, 175-76; Die Fehler
des Kopisten, 164; Derjunge
Mann, 13, 165-76; Paare, Passan-
ten, 164-65; Rumor, 165
Strohschneider-Kohrs, Ingrid, 257n
Strue-Oppenberg, Ursula, 258n
Sturm und Drang, 62, 66-70, 78,
124
Swift, Jonathan, 215
Syndram, Karl Ulrich, 253n
Szarota, Elida Maria, 252n
Tacitus, 33, 36, 37, 38, 48; Annals,
35; Germania, 35, 81-82
Tatler, The, 99
Tatlock, Lynne, 203, 271-72n
Tax, Petrus W., 248n
Tekinay, Alev, 247n
Teutonic Knights, 3, II, 182-85,
191-94, 196, 200, 203, 209, 212
Teutschen Volksbhcher, Die, I I I
Theweleit, Klaus, 138, 247n, 265n
Thomasius, Christian, 103
Thousand and One Nights, 61, 174
Tieck, Ludwig, 90, 93, III, 112,
163,257n
Tobin, Robert, 262n, 265n, 266n,
274n
Tolstoy, Leo, 144
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 197, 212;
Das deutsche Ordensland Preuflen,
184
Trommler, Frank, 275n
Trumpener, Katie, 67, 254n, 263n,
264n
Uerlings, Herbert, 253n, 256n,
257n, 264n
University, 102-5, 237-40
Urban II, Pope, 16, 34
Vilmar, August Friedrich, Vorles-
ungen hber die Geschichte der
deutschen National-Literatur, 115
Virgil, Aeneid, 22, 80
Vogel, Joachim, 267n
Voigt, Johannes, Geschichte
Preuflens, 184
Voltaire (Frangois-Marie Arouet),
5, 76; Candide, 3; Essai sur les
moeurs et l'sprit des Nations, 4;
316 Index
Weiner, Marc, 1 I6, 242, 26on
Weisinger, Kenneth, 154-55
Wellbery, David E., 26In, 262n
Wellek, Ren6, 254n
Weltliteratur, 10, 131-32
Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Friedrich-
Wilhelm, 248n
Whitman, Walt, 143-46, 158
Wieland, Christoph Martin, 62-64,
69-70, 99-100oo, 110o, 124, 131,
193; Oberon, 62; Der Teutsche
Merkur, 62
Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia, 195
Wilkins, Charles, 63
Willemer, Marianne von, 127
Willer, Stefan, 267n
Williams, Arthur, 268n
Willson, A. Leslie, 253n, 258n,
262n
Wilson, W. Daniel, 253n, 261n
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim,
135,263n
Wippermann, Wolfgang, 269n,
27on
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 9, 42,
43, 44, 231; Parzival, 10, 13,
15-16, 21-32, 41, 45, 56, 59,
o105, 112-18, 140, 146, 236, 244;
Willehalm, 20-21, 32, I112
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 5 I
World War I. See First World War
World War II. See Second World
War
Wiinsch, Christian Ernst, 5
Wiist, Walter, lo9
Wyss, Ulrich, 26on
Xenophobia, 9, 11-12, II6, 119,
162-63, 216, 220, 223-24
Zagari, Luciano, 262n
Zammito, John H., 245n, 254n,
256n
Zantop, Susanne, 9, 245n, 246n,
250on, 255n, 256n, 263n
Zigler und Kliphausen, Heinrich
Anshelm von, Die Asiatische
Banise, 61-62
Zitelmann, Rainer, 267n
Zivilisation [civilization], and impe-
rialism, 7-8, 71, 79, o102, 140-42,
159