The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature
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THE FEMINIST ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GERMAN LITERATURE Edited by FRIEDERIKE EIGLER and SUSANNE KORD
GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The feminist encyclopedia of German literature / edited by Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-313-29313-9 (alk. paper) 1. German literature—Women authors—Dictionaries. 2. German literature—Dictionaries. 3. Women authors—Germany—Biography— Dictionaries. 4. Feminism and literature—Dictionaries. I. Eigler, Friederike Ursula. II. Kord, Susanne. PT41.F46 1997 830.9'9287'03—dc20 96-18204 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 1997 by Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-18204 ISBN: 0-313-29313-9 First published in 1997 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS Preface
vii
Introduction
ix
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA
1
Appendix of Names
587
Index
637
Contributors
673
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PREFACE The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature is the result of a truly collaborative effort that involved 2 editors, 3 research assistants, and more than 100 contributors. Many scholars not only wrote entries for the volume but also helped to shape it by suggesting additional entries. We have benefited enormously from their expertise, and we feel privileged that we as editors were in a position to consolidate the wealth of existing feminist research in this volume. In conceptualizing the scope, content, and organization of The Feminist Encyclopedia, we sought to respond to the ongoing transition of the discipline Germanistik to the more broadly conceived field of German studies: in addition to entries that focus on aspects of literary history, literary practice, and theory, we have included many entries that draw on related disciplines such as film studies, history, music, fine arts, cultural anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science, as well as entries that either discuss or utilize interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., Cultural Studies, Postcolonialism, Trivial Literature, and Vampirism). In the process of selecting the actual list of entry headings, we also consulted existing reference works in the fields of literary studies and women's studies. Contributors were initially recruited at the 1993 Women in German convention and through the Women in German Newsletter (Fall 1993). We also wrote to a large number of experts in the fields of German literature, film, and women's studies and requested further recommendations for contributors and/or entry headings. The result was a vast group of contributing scholars who represent various approaches and methodologies. In the editing process, we have aimed at establishing a relative coherence that we deemed essential for a reference
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work of this nature, while keeping the individual style and character of each entry intact. We would like to thank our research assistants, Sara Colglazier and Astrid Weigert, whose indefatigable energy and considerable editorial talents were absolutely essential for the timely and successful completion of The Feminist Encyclopedia. Sara Colglazier helped us to coordinate our massive mailings and subsequent correspondence with contributors and was an invaluable assistant editor for the project. Astrid Weigert was responsible for assembling the entire volume on diskette, implemented editorial changes, and checked names, dates, and bibliographical references. During the course of this project, our appreciation for both of them as junior scholars and assistant editors has grown by leaps and bounds: both Sara Colglazier and Astrid Weigert represent the best of good research, which includes both intellectual acumen and a willingness to do the gritty background research. In the final phase of the editing process, we were fortunate to obtain the assistance of another gifted young scholar and research assistant, Eva Szalay, who helped us to organize the last mass mailing and assisted in proofreading the entire volume. Thanks are also due our husbands, James M. Harding and John F. Landau, for their continued patience and their interest in the project. We are grateful to the Department of German at Georgetown University, which supported this project by providing the funds for our research assistants and office resources.
INTRODUCTION Today, a multiplicity of feminist approaches has become an integral part of the fields of German literary and cultural studies. Yet, to date, no comprehensive reference work exists that records the results of a wealth of feminist scholarship conducted over the past 25 years. The Feminist Encyclopedia aims at filling that gap by providing concise information on more than 500 topics for both the newcomer to the field and the more experienced student or scholar. In contrast to many existing reference books that focus exclusively on women authors, The Feminist Encyclopedia adopts a topic-oriented approach similar to standard reference works such as Gero von Wilpert's Sachworterbuch der Literatur (seventh edition, 1989). Topics include literary periods, epochs and genres, critical approaches and theories, major authors and works, female stereotypes, laws and historical developments, literary concepts and themes, and organizations and archives relevant to women and women's studies. The creation of a feminist counterpart to standard reference works naturally raises the question of whether women's issues and feminist criticism are not, in so doing, relegated to a place separate from mainstream literary history and studies. While we acknowledge the risks involved in a "separatist" approach, we believe that the need for a feminist encyclopedia exists as long as standard literary histories and reference works continue to ignore or marginalize women's contributions to German literary history, and as long as gender is not considered an integral part of literary criticism. In other words, we need a feminist encyclopedia as long as, for example, von Wilpert's standard reference work lumps together all women authors from the Middle Ages to the present under the heading Frauenliteratur on one and a half short pages, and it does not include
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an entry on Feminismus but instead includes an entry entitled Femininus, which is translated as weiblich and includes a cross-reference to weiblicher Reim. Most entries in this book focus on women's contributions to literature, film, culture, and history and on the historical conditions that simultaneously enabled these contributions and marginalized them. References to important male authors, filmmakers, and historical figures or their works are made if they provide the necessary background for assessing women's contributions. We have included entries on film and film theories in general and on important feminist filmmakers in particular, since film studies have become an integral part of German studies. Furthermore, methodologies and theories that have been developed within film studies inform some approaches to literary criticism. Despite the fact that our current system of literary periodization is woefully inadequate when applied to women authors, we have retained many categorizations that have traditionally been used to describe the literary canon (Classicism, Naturalism, etc.) and added others that are of obvious relevance to women specifically (e.g., Salonism). Despite the inadequacy of the current system of periodization, we refer to these established categories as points of reference and departure. We need them as points of reference because in the absence of a woman-centered literary history, these categories enable us to discuss women's literature and culture in a differentiating manner—beyond the lump sum of "Frauen-" or "Trivialliteratur." We need them as points of departure because in many cases, the literature described under these headings does not fit the heading: Naturalism, Classicism or Expressionism for women may not be identical, in some cases not even similar, to male-centered traditions perpetuated under the same headings. These misnomers are a constant reminder of the need to redefine periodizations and the canonical criteria upon which they rest. We understand this process of rethinking the canon as the larger project of which this book is a small part. We have included relatively few separate entries on women authors (authors represented in separate entries appear in boldface in the Appendix of Names) and even fewer for specific works. Partly, we were motivated by the fact that most feminist handbooks on German literature are author-centered: examples are the excellent biobibliographical works by Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig and Angela Woffen (Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftstellerinnen 1800-1945, 1986), Elke Frederiksen (Women Writers of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 1989, and her recent Women Writers in German Speaking Countries, 1996, coedited with Elisabeth Ametsbichler), and Elisabeth Friedrichs (Die deutschsprachigen Schriftstellerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 1981). Many other anthologies of works by women, such as Brinker-Gabler's Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (1978), include biographical information on the authors. All of these works are indispensable predecessors of this one, and in most cases, this handbook would be most productively used in conjunction with a biobibliographical work.
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The Feminist Encyclopedia focuses less on the lives of the authors, filmmakers, and other major cultural figures and more on their works and their position within literary history. Authors are listed in the Appendix of Names with their dates and a reference to all entries in which they appear. Users who are interested in particular authors should refer to this Appendix of Names. The authors and filmmakers who appear in separate entries were selected because they either had made significant contributions to women's history or feminist thought and are sometimes not represented in other biobibliographical works (e.g., Libuse Monfkova and the relatively large number of filmmakers included in this volume) or had made significant contributions and were, in our opinion, not adequately represented in period-focused entries in this work (e.g., Anna Owena Hoyers). In some cases we have found it necessary, for the convenience of the user, to include separate entries on authors whom many would consider standard, great, or important women writers—authors who, because of their comparative prominence, are already included in most biobibliographical works on women. The reason why we included them here as well is that they appear in so many entries (e.g., Bettina von Arnim or Ingeborg Bachmann) that it seemed fairer to the user to provide a brief biography and general assessment of their works in this volume, rather than referring the user to biobibliographical works. No valuation of these authors over all others represented in this volume was intended or should be inferred. Nonetheless, we are aware that, as any selection process inevitably does, ours, too, has resulted in exclusions and marginalizations, which we hope will be amended in future editions of this work or in the works of others. To define our approach and this project as feminist is to raise, once again, the question of definitions. Increasingly, feminist scholarship is posited not in isolation but in conjunction with issues of race, ethnicity, class, religion, age, and sexuality, among others. In view of the ongoing debate about feminism in its various meanings and manifestations, we decided against providing a blanket definition of the term to our contributors when we conceptualized this volume. We believe that The Feminist Encyclopedia will be more valuable as a work that reflects the different feminisms that emerge from contributors' diverse approaches. That there is no single, definitive feminism is reflected in the entries both implicitly, in the way the various topics are approached, and explicitly, in the many entries on issues of literary theory and criticism. Beyond these diverse feminist approaches, common denominators of most, if not all, entries are their Frauenzentriertheit, the assumption that women have made tremendous contributions to our culture that have generally been overlooked or ignored, and their investigation of how women were affected by this exclusion and whether/how they participated in, or condoned, it. For instance, the Encyclopedia not only explores contributions by women authors but also reassesses traditional views of women and femininity in literary history. Entries on female stereotypes or literary themes, for example, generally concern themselves with constructions
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of women/Woman by male authors and the question of how they were rewritten, challenged, or embraced by women writers. We used English terms for entry headings (Inquisition instead of Hexenverfolgung) unless the German term is untranslatable (Schundliteratur, as opposed to Trivial Literature) or the German term is an established concept, but the English translation is not (Grofistadtroman instead of Urban Novel). Whenever the German term has been exported into English, we have used the English but cross-referenced the German in cases where misunderstandings could arise (Young Germany [main entry]; Junges Deutschland [cross-reference]). In the alphabetization of entries, we have followed the English-language custom of ignoring umlauts (e.g., Horspiel is alphabetized as Horspiel, as opposed to the German custom of treating umlauts as an added e in alphabetization). Each entry is followed by a brief bibliography of secondary works and cross-references pointing the user to related entries. Since The Feminist Encyclopedia covers the entire discipline of German Studies, we decided against the inclusion of a general bibliography which inevitably would have resulted in a small and arbitrary selection from a vast and diverse body of feminist research related to German studies. We advise the reader who is interested in some basic bibliographical information to consult the bibliographies following some of the more generally conceived entries. In addition to the entries on major literary periods (e.g., Classicism, Enlightenment, Medieval Literature, Romanticism), the following entries are some examples for contributions that contain general (bibliographical) information about the state of feminist criticism and feminist theories: Aesthetics, feminine/feminist; Authorship; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, British/French/German/U.S.; Film Theory; Gender Theories, History of; and Lesbian Theories. The Appendix of Names lists all entries which discuss or mention particular authors (e.g., Ozakin, Aysel, 1942-present: Body, Female; Hybridity; Turkish German Literature). The Appendix of Names thus serves as an overview of the subject matters within which a particular person is discussed and assists the reader in selecting the entries most pertinent to her/his interests. The Index lists page references only. In cases where the author's pseudonym could be mistaken for her actual name, we have included the author's pseudonym in the Appendix of Names. For instance, Elisabeth duck's pseudonym is included in the index (Betty Paoli), whereas Karoline von Gunderrode's (Tian) is not. In cases where the author has been canonized under her pseudonym to such an extent that she is less known under her given name, we have, for the user's convenience, created the main entry under that name (e.g., Anna Seghers) but also included the author's given name in the Appendix of Names (e.g., Reiling, Netty: See Anna Seghers). Dates for all persons listed are provided in this Appendix of Names. We have asked our contributors to avoid noninclusive language, including the infamous generic masculine ("the reader/he") and all generalizations that assume a masculine norm ("mankind"). Where the user encounters such gen-
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eralizations (e.g., "Englishmen"), she or he should assume that men only are indicated. To include women explicitly in our speech instead of implying their presence in the generic male is, in our opinion, an indication of our ability and willingness to acknowledge women's specific contributions to human history and culture. Friederike Eigler Susanne Kord
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A A b e n t e u e r r o m a n . This is a literary term for novels in which a suspenseful plot predominates. The protagonist lives through a series of adventures during the course of an imposed or self-imposed journey. The events do not describe a developmental process but seem to follow each other coincidentally. During the Middle Ages, the genre can mainly be found in translations of French Arthurian epics, for example, in Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken's Huge Scheppel (c.1450) and Eleonore von Osterreich's Pontus und Sidonia (c.1450). After the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), many characteristics of the Abenteuerroman were incorporated in the picaresque novel. These novels combined medieval ideals of court culture with adventurism, eroticism, and phantasmal elements. Many women coauthored such novels, usually anonymously. Sibylle Ursula von Braunschweig-Liineburg and her brother Anton Ulrich wrote the completely original fragment Aramena in five volumes (1669-1673). A genuine interest in ethnography and a passion for adventurism resulted from the discoveries of new continents and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1717). Travel literature and Robinsonaden became popular during the 18th century. Women authors contributed to this new genre, such as Sophie von La Roche's Tagebuch einer Reise durch die Schweiz (1787) and Johanna Schopenhauer's Reise durch England und Schottland (1800, printed in 1818). These travelogues characterize women's attempts to break out of their roles by educating themselves through traveling and by chronicling their experiences. Sophie von La Roche's famous novel Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771) became
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ABORTION
the forerunner of a female tradition of the novel during the late 18th and 19th centuries. During the 19th and 20th centuries, authors of travelogues frequently focused on social, political, and cultural issues. Examples of this kind of critical Abenteuerroman are Ida Pfeiffer's descriptions of her long and hazardous journeys around the world, among them Fine Frauenfahrt um die Welt (3 vols., 1850), Frieda von Billow's look at German colonial life in Reiseskizzen und Tagebuchblatter aus Deutsch-Ostafrika (1889), and Ida Hahn-Hahn's Orientalische Briefe (1844). Some authors combined their critique with futuristic or Utopian visions, as did La Roche at the end of Sternheim and Hahn-Hahn in her search for lost female places in Orientalische Briefe. This recurs in the 20th century in Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1983) and Irmtraud Morgner's Amanda: Ein Hexenroman (1983). Many 20th-century Abenteuerromane incorporate specific historical and political events, for example, Adrienne Thomas's famous anti-war novel Die Katrin wird Soldat (1930). See also: La Roche, Sophie von; Morgner, Irmtraud; Picaresque Novel; Robinsonade; Travelogues; Wolf, Christa. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800 (Munich: DTV, 1989); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988); Frederiksen, Elke, "Der Blick in die Feme." Frauen Literatur Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 104-22.
KATRINKOMM Abortion. After German unification in 1990, the radically differing abortion laws in the two former Germanies needed to be reconciled as part of the Einigungsvertrag (Treaty of Unification). When the East and West could not agree, the Bundestag hastily ordered that the final decision on a common abortion legislation be postponed until December 1992. In the meantime, the old laws continued to apply in the respective parts of the new Germany: whereas in the former East Germany women were entitled to abortions in the first three months of pregnancy, West German laws permitted abortions only under special circumstances and only in the first three months. After a five-year quarrel between the Bundestag and the Constitutional Court, in which the former's decisions were overruled on grounds of violating the constitutional provision to protect human life (May 1993), new abortion legislation was finally passed in July 1995. In effect, the new law declares that in cases of rape or threat to the mother's health, abortion is legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy provided the woman undergoes a psychological consultation with the goal of saving the unborn life. When women cannot afford to pay for abortions, health insurance plans cover them. This legislation was heavily criticized by leading women politicians of
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3
the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), who asserted that women from the East were the real losers of the unification. The latest amendment to section 218 of the Penal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany reflects the ongoing legal debate that started when a uniform law prohibiting abortion was first enacted with the founding of the German Reich in 1871. However, in addition to the legal debate, which dominates the discourse on abortion in Germany, medical, religious, and social factors also contribute to the debate. Scientific and technological progress in the development of new abortion practices, as well as the dissemination of these findings, has significantly shaped the discourse of abortion. Abortion has been condemned by Christianity for centuries. Under its influence, a general antiabortion law was first introduced in the Middle Ages and, later, strictly enforced under the new criminal law of Karl V (1532). However, women and men of all times have undermined these strict abortion laws. As early as the 12th century, German abbess Hildegard von Bingen included in her medical writings certain remedies and techniques for inducing abortion. Efforts to resist the legal prosecution of abortions directly became more organized and focused during the first women's movement (1848-1923) and after the uniform law of 1871. Women's organizations and groups, as well as individual women, began to use their increasing political power to raise the issue at public meetings. The first intellectual campaign against section 218 was launched toward the end of the Weimar Republic with articles and poems by Bertolt Brecht, Erich Kastner, and Kurt Tucholsky and with performances of the plays Frau Emma kampft im Hinterland (1928) by Use Langner, §218: Gequalte Menschen (1926) by Carl Crede, and Cyankali (1929) by Friedrich Wolf in Berlin. All three plays depict abortion mainly as a social-class problem affecting working-class women who lack the financial means to raise another child and thus see themselves forced to abort the fetus when they become pregnant. These three plays generated tremendous publicity and contributed to the widespread social support for legalizing abortion. Little became of this support, however, because the political climate after 1930 gave way to very conservative family politics in which childbearing was one of the central duties of women. In Nazi Germany, abortions of so-called Aryan babies were strictly forbidden, although abortion was often forced upon pregnant women of interracial relationships. Thus, abortion laws became not only a means to control women but also a powerful tool with which to manipulate racial and population politics. After the war and in the aftermath of the students' revolt in the late 1960s, another strong movement to legalize abortion culminated in 1971, when 374 well-known German women publicly announced they had had abortions. Modeled after a similar campaign in France, Alice Schwarzer arranged to have pictures of these women appear on the cover of the mainstream German magazine Stern. This maneuver reopened the public debate on abortion after World War II. The political influence of the late 1960s and early 1970s also shaped the literary climate in Germany; in accordance with the powerful proclamation
T that "the personal is the political," women writers thematized female identity and women's experiences in relationships, expressing their desire and sexuality. This move toward subjectivity and introspection also allowed women writers to represent their experiences with abortion, including its physical and psychological impact. Novels such as Ingeborg Bachmann's Der Fall Franza (1979) and Judith Jannberg's Ich bin ich (1982) depict abortion as male control over the female body. A very different kind of experience is represented by German writer Karin Struck in her novel Blaubarts Schatten (1991), in which she focuses on the psychological and moral impact of an abortion. Composed as an experiential text, the author describes a woman's devastating feelings of guilt after an abortion. One year later Struck published an essay anthology entitled Ich sehe mein Kind im Traum (1992), in which she explains her antiabortion attitude as a result of her own experiences and promotes antiabortion action. Arguing from a religious and conservative point of view, Karin Struck is one of the most outspoken female writers who openly oppose abortion. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Body, Female; National Socialism; Struck, Karin; Subjectivity; Unification, German; Weimar Republic; Wende, Die; Women's Movement. References: Clements, Elizabeth, "The Abortion Debate in Unified Germany." Women and the Wende: Social Effects and Cultural Reflections of the GermanT Unification Process. Ed. Elizabeth Boa and Janet Wharton (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994) 38-52. Grossman, Attina, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Jiitte, Robert, Geschichte der Abtreibung (Munich: Beck, 1993). FRIEDERIKE B. EMONDS A c t r e s s . The actress is a relatively recent phenomenon in Germany, where female roles were played by men into the 18th century. Nonetheless, the barriers blocking a woman's access to the theater professions were lowered much earlier because the low social standing of actors made patriarchal obstacles superfluous. The stage often held out the only promise of an intellectually rewarding career in which a woman could work beside men as their equal, but by strictly limiting the range of roles she could play, bourgeois sexual hypocrisy served to reinforce gender stereotypes. Even as actors began to gain in professional stature, freeing themselves from clerical and aristocratic control, female performers remained acutely vulnerable to associations between acting and prostitution. The artistic accomplishment and biography of real actors have had little influence on their literary portrayal. From Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795) to Theodor Fontane's GrafPetofy (1884), actors have served more as a projection of authors' personal or class ambitions and provided little insight into the real hardships of a stage career as documented in the autobiographies of actresses such as Karoline Schulze-Kummerfeld's Lebenserinnerungen (pub. 1915) or Karoline Bauer's Am Tage Ruhm, am Abend Thranen (n.d.). The cult surrounding, for example, Charlotte Wolter has taken the ex-
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ceptional diva to be the norm, eclipsing the often tedious, demoralizing lives that the vast majority of her sisters led. Until the theater reforms at the turn of this century, a female performer usually had to supply her own wardrobe, requiring a seamstress' improvisational talents and a lavish outlay that her typically meager wages could not provide. Treated by many as "fair game" (cf. Arthur Schnitzler's play Freiwild, 1898), she was employed to represent a bourgeois social ideal on stage and relegated to the demimonde offstage. Her performance was only half over when the curtain fell, for the actress was often obliged to join her director or reviewers for dinner in a chambre separee before retiring to her sewing. An actress' working life typically began in early adolescence and ended around the age of 40, usually in poverty, as her looks began to fade. Even the renowned theater proprietress and reformer Caroline Neuber lost the extended struggle to retain her troupe, living out her last three decades as a destitute nomad. Overworked and prone to illness, an actress could be fired if she married or became pregnant, for the box office appeal of a femme fatale depended on being able to preserve the illusion that she "belonged" not to a single lover but to an anonymous mass of (male) viewers. Whether describing Eleonora Duse or a lesser-known actress, reviewers favored attributes such as "submission, purity of feeling, bewitching allure," emphasizing the essentially "female" and physical stage presence of the actress, thereby glossing over any intellectual achievement. In the mid-19th century, the first generation of professional women writers broke new ground in literature by portraying an actress' real struggles. With the exception of Luise Muhlbach's Zogling der Natur (1842) and Marie von EbnerEschenbach's play Die Schauspielerin (1861), however, these works accommodate narrative conventions by having their protagonists renounce the stage for domestic security. At the turn of the century, the actress recurs with regularity in the writings of Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, and Heinrich Mann. Among her many functions, this figure becomes a metaphor for the artificial "performances" of a woman's life, for the rituals in which a woman seeks above all to fashion herself according to man's image of her. The contemporary feminist author Elfriede Jelinek radicalizes this presentation of women as performing many roles in her plays Clara S. (1981) and Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte, oder Stutzen der Gesellschaften (1979), among others. See also: Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Jelinek, Elfriede; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Prostitution; Wandertheater. References: Mohrmann, Renate, ed., Die Schauspielerin (Frankfurt/M: Insel, 1989); Wetzels, Walter D., "Schauspielerinnen im 18. Jahrhundert—Zwei Perspektiven: Wilhelm Meister und die Memoiren der Schulze-Kummerfeld." Die Frau von der Reformation zur Romantik. Ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Bonn: Bouvier, 1980) 195— 216. FERREL ROSE
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Adaptation/Translation. Adaptations and translations of others' works have a longer tradition in women's writing than publication of their own works. Translations provided aspiring women authors with an opportunity to school their style and to achieve some financial remuneration and an entryway into the world of publishing that could later be used for their own works. Translations required no formal training short of a knowledge of languages (which has traditionally been part of the education of bourgeois and upper-class girls) and no permission from the original's author (copyright was not instituted until about 1870). Since many renowned translators worked to benefit their husbands' research or to support them financially while they wrote original works (e.g., Luise Adelgunde Gottsched and Dorothea Veit-Schlegel), women's translations were not stigmatized to the same extent as their original works. Among the most important adaptations and translations by 18th- and 19th-century women are Luise Gottsched's adaptation Die Pietisterey im Fischbein-Rocke (1734; adapted from Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant's La Femme Docteur, 1730); Sophie Mereau's translations (the letters of the French feminist and courtesan Ninon de Lenclos, published in her translation in 1797, 1802, and 1805; Giovanni Boccaccio's novel Fiametta, 1806 [orig. published as Fiammetta, 1343]; Die Prinzessin von Cleves, 1799, a liberal adaptation of Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette's novel La Princesse de Cleves, 1678); and Dorothea Tieck's translations of at least six Shakespeare dramas (Die beiden Veroneser; Coriolanus; Cymbeline; Macbeth; Timon von Athen; and Das Wintermarchen), all of which appeared in the famous Shakespeare translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck without mention of the translator's name (1825-1840). One indication that female translators enjoyed greater social acceptance than did female authors is the frequent designation of works that may have been originals as editions, adaptations, or translations. Today, it is difficult to ascertain whether all "translations" are really translations and not original works, since the self-styled "translators" usually fail to give the original's author and title and instead content themselves with allusions like ' 'nach dem Franzosischen'' or "iibersetzt aus dem Englischen." These vague citations make a search for the alleged originals exceedingly difficult; even where an author is given ("nach Destouches"), the search frequently reveals no original to match the translation. That the label "adaptation" or "translation" could serve as a shield against social censure of women's writing is further indicated by the authors' frequently contradictory use of the term. One of many examples is Victoria von Rupp's drama Jenny oder die Uneigenniitzigkeit, published as an original in 1777, and her play Marianne, published the same year by "Mifi Jennys Ubersetzerinn." Many authors used the label "translator" as a means of removing themselves from the text, frequently in conjunction with other means of denying authorship. Particularly in cases where the author's full name appears on the frontispiece, the pretense of translatorship served as a replacement for anonymity or a pseudonym. Christiane Friederike Huber specified herself as the mere editor of a play whose author and translator were purportedly anonymous: Cleveland was
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published in 1756 as "Von einer unbekannten Hand in teutsche Verse gebracht, und heraus gegeben von Christiana Friderica Huberinn." Both author and translator of the play remain a mystery. Gottsched's Pietisterey is one of the rare cases in which the extent to which the "translator" borrowed from the author can be established. Gottsched's play, as well as her introductory letters between the fictitious author and editor of the play, differs markedly from Bougeant's, even when she merely translates his original: because she merely translates ("Most worthy, highly learned Sir"), she establishes the author's gender as masculine. What was a noncommittal form of address in the original becomes an effective tool to conceal gender identity in the translation. Gottsched's justification of her author-figure as the "innocent translator" of the play is not entirely truthful: she made substantial changes to the play and rewrote the entire fourth act, so that her work can hardly be considered a straightforward translation. But more important, her twofold removal from the text (her self-representation as male and as the "mere" translator) reveals what may have been at the bottom of many fake translations issued from women's pens in the course of the 18th century: like anonymity and pseudonymity, translatorship demonstrated feminine modesty, while enabling the authors to proceed with their literary activities. In a context in which the female author was pronounced guilty, the innocent translator became a way of resolving a unsolvable conflict: to write and publish while adhering to contemporary notions of femininity, to become known and remain unknown at the same time. See also: Authorship; Mereau-Brentano, Sophie. References: Kord, Susanne. ' 'The Innocent Translator: Translation as Pseudonymous Behavior in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing." The Jerome Quarterly 9.3 (1994): 11-13; Vulliod, A., Guillaume Hyacinthe Bougeant, La Femme Docteur. Mme. Gottsched et son modele frangais Bougeant: ou, Jansenisme et pietisme par A. Vulliod (Lyon: A. Rey, 1912).
SUSANNE KORD A e s t h e t i c s , Feminine/Feminist. The term dates from the women's movement in the 1970s and encompasses one aspect of feminist theory. Concepts of feminine/feminist aesthetics challenge the assumption that aesthetic perception is gender-neutral and argue for recognition that in a male-dominated culture, male perception is portrayed as generic, universally true, and thus valid for all human beings. In a broader sense, then, theories of feminine/feminist aesthetics criticize philosophy's claims to generality and universality and instead seek to uncover gender biases in cultural productions, perceptions, and resulting definitions of art. By analyzing the effects male-defined categories of art have on female productions in literature, theater, art, music, film, and dance, feminine/ feminist aesthetic criticism accounts for the notable absences of female artists in cultural canons. Different approaches postulate that aesthetic perception is gender-specific: whereas feminine aesthetics bases its theories on fundamental biological sex
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AESTHETICS, FEMININE/FEMINIST
differences, feminist aesthetics is grounded in socially learned gender-role behavior and thus offers the possibility of historic change. Combinations of these two approaches exist. In France, theoreticians such as Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and many others have deconstructed Western philosophical and literary traditions in an attempt to formulate theories that specifically account for women's significance in cultural history. Combining psychoanalytic, semiotic, and structuralist approaches in their critical readings of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and others, French feminists have developed aesthetic theories known as ecriture feminine. In Germany, Silvia Bovenschen launched a spirited debate with her controversial article "Uber die Frage: Gibt es eine weibliche Asthetik?" (1976). Arguing from a historical and sociocultural point of view that finds its origin in the Ideologiekritik of the Frankfurt School, Bovenschen analyzed the contrast between cultural representations of women (whore/saint; femme fatdldfemme fragile) and cultural productions by women in order to assess the ideological obstacles that prevented women from publicly engaging in cultural productions. In her essay, Bovenschen concluded that there is a feminine aesthetic ' 'if one is talking about aesthetic awareness and modes of sensory perception." However, she rejects any kind of "premeditated strategy which can predict what happens when female sensuality is freed." Combining French and German feminist theories, Sigrid Weigel questions the validity of ideological critical approaches for their assumed objective position outside discourse. Instead, Weigel attempts to refashion herself in discourse in order to investigate women's cultural space and exclusions. Following Irigaray's approach in Speculum (German: 1980), Weigel proposes to mimetically simulate dominant Western philosophical discourses in order to locate the spaces of exclusion and marginalization. However, this method, which Weigel calls "Der schielende Brick," requires a constant change in perspective in order both to trace the discourse in which women are already inscribed and, at the same time, to identify and critique the mechanisms of representation and exclusion. Another very different approach taken in theorizing feminine/feminist aesthetics is the concept of matriarchal aesthetics, formulated by Heide GottnerAbendroth in Die tanzende Gottin (1982). Gottner-Abendroth espouses a continuity of an ancient, specifically feminine culture, which can be traced back to a matriarchal origin. According to the author, indications of this specifically feminine aesthetic can be found in ancient myths, fairy tales, the magical, the fantastic, and dreams, all of which she considers as constituting a countersphere to the logical and rational world of Western civilization. As many theoreticians have pointed out, the inherent danger of feminine/ feminist aesthetics is its potentially normative implications, to the point of prescribing authentic women's cultural productions. However, critical approaches based on feminine/feminist aesthetics are fruitful in analyzing aesthetic percep-
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tion, as well as cultural productions and receptions of women in specific sociohistorical situations. See also: Canon, Literary; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/Constructionism; Fairy Tale; Fantastic Literature; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Femme Fatale; Femme Fragile; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories, History of; Ideologiekritik; Matriarchy; Participation and Exclusion; Psychoanalysis; Saint; Semiotics; Structuralism; Whore; Women's Movement. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, "Uber die Frage: Gibt es eine weibliche Asthetik?" Asthetik und Kommunikation 7 (1976): 60-75; Felski, Rita, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms (New York: Schocken, 1981); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa (Dulmen: tende, 1987). FRIEDERIKE B. EMONDS A g e n c y — s e e : Engagierte Literatur; Identity Theories; New Historicism; Participation/Exclusion; Positionality; Postfeminism; Victim; Victimization Theories A l l e g o r y . This means primarily "the other speech" and refers in its premodern conceptualization to a form of representation in which the image/pictura is the reverse of the idea/scriptura. In this sense, allegory appears in biblical interpretations, in medieval texts (Minneallegorie), or in Baroque court representations. Allegorical usage of woman in its various manifestations (e.g., the personification of arts, sciences, virtues, and vices as women, the allegorical map of Europe as a woman, and the Baroque allegory of Frau Welt) alludes to notions of the other sex and to ambivalences ascribed to woman, femaleness, and the feminine. In these allegories, the woman is dehistoricized and deindividualized, reduced to a mere signifier or representational function and constructed as an Other. Allegory thus mirrors gender dynamics, while the operation of woman in allegory evokes the question of whether allegory can also be ' 'the speech of the Other" (Weigel). Whereas Hildegard von Bingen's use of allegory (e.g., Ecclesia in Scivias, 1141-1152) is based on the desexualized image and purity of the Virgin Mary, numerous allegorical representations by men allude to bodily characteristics and fearful images of woman's nature. Frau Welt, for example, is a woman with a beautiful, seductive front and a demonically decaying backside, thus a figure promoting the idea of a two-sided female nature. The allegorical alignment of image and idea of woman shifts in modernity. In contrast to premodern allegories, in which an idea was personified as a woman, ideas associated with woman and female sexuality are transferred onto other images (e.g., the city in Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929). In modernity, the perception of the city resembles the perception of woman, of the female body and female sexuality as being at once seductive and dangerous, desirable and destructive. The city carries on the referential structure of the
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ALLGEMEINES PREU6ISCHES LANDRECHT
feminine without necessarily personifying it through the image of the female body. Likewise, images of woman (e.g., the prostitute and the female corpse in Expressionism) allude to a cultural and aesthetic idea of woman that is lost and thus represents the allegory of aesthetic history (e.g., Walter Benjamin's Das Passagenwerk, pub. 1982). The allegory inscribes the rupture of an aesthetic tradition and marks a way of reading that is open to newly generated meanings. Modern allegory then proceeds from a static representation, that is, the separation between image/pictura and idea/scriptura, to a process of signification. As such, it marks the "speech of the Other" (e.g., femininity). From this signifying potential, a feminine aesthetic emerges that undermines preconceived images of woman critically, a figuration that Elisabeth Lenk has called "Die sich selbst verdoppelnde Frau." A manifestation of allegorical links between woman and history can be traced in so-called national allegories. Attempts to trace national consciousness in literature, such as in the narratives of the Ankunftsliteratur in the early German Democratic Republic (GDR), employ allegorical strategies to raise private actions to public relevance and transcend gender issues in favor of national consciousness and historical-political projects. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Ankunftsliteratur; Baroque Literature; Body, Female; Eternal Feminine; Expressionism; GDR Literature; GroBstadtroman; Love, Courtly; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Mary. References: Benjamin, Walter, Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1930); Rauch, Angelika, "The Trauerspiel of the Prostituted Body: Or, Woman as Allegory of Modernity." Cultural Critique 10 (1988): 77-88; Weigel, Sigrid, Topographien der Geschlechter (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990), "Von der anderen Rede zur Rede des Anderen: Benjamin liest Freud oder Zur Vorgeschichte der Moderne im Barock." Rowohlt Literaturmagazin 29 (1992): 47-55.
BIRGIT TAUTZ A l l g e m e i n e s Preufiisches Landrecht (ALR). The ALR, or the Prussian Civil Code, was initiated during the reign of Friedrich II, enforced during the reign of his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, in 1794, and not replaced until the institution of the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) in 1900. A product of the Enlightenment, this civil code sought to create a uniform legal and administrative policy for all of Prussia. The reform-minded Friedrich II wanted the ALR to provide quick and impartial answers to all legal and administrative problems of his monarchy. In order to do so, the ALR intervened in the authority of pater familias, the male head of the household, and that of the church by granting legal rights to all individuals. But the promulgation of these laws showed that they were ambivalent toward improving women's legal status. A married woman had virtually no rights under this law. The ALR's several articles in Part II, title I and II, declared the husband the head of the conjugal society. A woman was not permitted to practice any trade without her husband's permission. The principal end of mar-
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riage was the procreation and upbringing of children. A healthy mother had to breast-feed her baby; the duration of the nursing period was determined by her husband. Since the ALR defined marriage as a legal contract between a man and a woman, divorce became a legal possibility for women for the first time. However, the relaxation of taboos on divorce primarily benefited men, who gained the right to easy and arbitrary divorces as well as sole custody of their sons, while custody of daughters could be granted to mothers. Although the ALR seemed to guarantee the rights of widows by protecting their property, such property laws were meaningless in instances where a husband had misappropriated his wife's property. By ignoring women servants, housemaids, and daily wage earners, the ALR proved inadequate in protecting women of lower social groups. Economically, sexually, and legally, the women of lower social classes remained powerless. Class distinctions were by no means reduced by the enforcement of the ALR. The criminal law within the ALR brought a far-reaching change by abolishing torture and the death penalty. Religious freedom was guaranteed under the ALR, but it was the state's prerogative to decide a region's religion. The ALR, as an all-encompassing judicial system of all estates, benefited men with its liberal measures, but women's legal status remained inferior to men's. See also: Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB); Enlightenment; Marriage. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Bell, Susan G, and Karen M. Offen, Women, the Family, and Freedom. Vol. 1:1750-1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983); Koselleck, Reinhart, Kritik und Krise (Freiburg: Alber, 1959); Weber-Will, Susanne, Die rechtliche Stellung der Frau im Privatrecht des Preussischen Allgemeinen Landrechts von 1794 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1983).
VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE A m a t e u r Theater* In addition to professional German theater, an active amateur theater scene existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Liebhabertheater, or amateur theater, was performed at court and by laypersons of various trades or occupations and also constituted a part of the salon culture of this period. Although courtiers hired theater troupes to perform for them, members of the court also engaged in theatrical productions themselves (and occasionally joined in the performances of a professional ensemble). Court officers and their wives often performed comedies, as did young nobility. In Vienna, for example, Maria Theresia's numerous children were active in amateur theater. Sometimes such plays were written by someone in the court circle; often they reflected the life and people at court and were performed in conjunction with weddings, seasonal festivities, anniversaries, birthdays, or coronations. The court circle of Weimar provides a representative instance of Liebhabertheater. The first staging of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) demonstrates the nature of amateur theater at the courts: the actress and
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composer Corona Schroter, Goethe, Prince Constantin, Duke Karl August, the Hofmeister, and Goethe's secretary all performed. A more unique staging of this play was performed by an all-female cast at the home of Charlotte von Stein. Von Stein regularly performed on the Weimar Liebhaberbuhne and occasionally wrote plays for it, for example, her matinee Rino (1776), which describes young Goethe's arrival at the Weimar Court. Another arena for private/amateur theater events was provided by the salon culture, which was, in part, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment. These lively forums included not only discussions on literary, political, and philosophical issues but a variety of activities, including concerts, social gatherings, scholarly circles, and amateur theater performances. Held in private homes, salons were often hosted by women who belonged to the upper and/or educated classes. Since amateur theater was often conducted in a more private sphere, women could participate more readily by performing and/or writing theater pieces for performance. It also encouraged and promoted collaboration among women. Both the literary salon and amateur theater provided forums for the accepted female role of conversationalist and artist of dialogue. Thus, this "private" form of theater afforded women freedoms they were rarely permitted in more public forums. See also: Amazonentheater; Enlightenment; Matinee; Salonism. References: Case, Sue-Ellen, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Methuen, 1988); Goodman, Katherine R., "The Sign Speaks: Charlotte von Stein's Matinees." In the Shadow of Olympus. German Women Writers around 1800. Ed. Katherine R. Goodman and Edith Waldstein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 71-93.
ELIZABETH G. AMETSBICHLER A m a z o n . The myth of a separate nation of maiden warriors, Amazons (possibly from the Greek, meaning women "without breast" or "without men," or the Scythian Airorpatai meaning "men killers"), dates back to Homer's Iliad (c. 850 B.C.). According to the myth and its many adaptations and elaborations— from Homer, Aeschylus, and Herodotus to Propertius and Diodorus Siculus, and from Jean de Mandeville and Walter Raleigh to Heinrich von Kleist and Stefan Zweig—these independently minded, armed women on horseback conquered men once a year, for procreation, only to discard them (and any male offspring) once their services had been rendered. While the myth may contain memories of prehistoric matriarchal societies and fertility cults, it seems, above all, a male fantasy based on the fear of female self-sufficiency, the powerful phallic mother, and the desire inspired by the resisting virago or the androgynous companion-at-arms. Elements of the Amazon myth appear in practically all cultures, which attests to its rootedness in universal psychic needs. Powerful warrior maidens populate the Persian, Germanic, Slavic, and Indian imaginations. As emblem of the Other living at the frontier between civilization and savagery, not only were Amazons "sighted"
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in the Middle East (Scythia) or in Africa (the legendary kingdom of Monomotapa), but the discoverers of the New World, from Christopher Columbus and Cortes to Orellana and Carvajal, located the Amazon state first on a Caribbean island and, eventually, in the jungles of South America, along the Amazon River. The amorous-military quests of the mythic Amazon queens Hippolyta, Antiope, Penthesilea, Camilla, Xenobia, Libussa, Thalestris, and others enjoyed considerable popularity among male writers in Germany, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Klein points out, the conflict between women's manhatred and heterosexual love not only inspired tragedies like Kleist's Penthesilea (1808). On the contrary, the idea of a separatist women's state and the need for the perpetuation of the state through intercourse with "the enemy" also held considerable comic potential (cf. Aristophanes and his influence on 18th-century Amazon texts). From the 18th century onward, the term "Amazon" was used as a metaphor to designate any transgressive, male-identified woman who, in one way or another, did not conform to conventional female roles (e.g., "amazons of the pen," or the "de-natured" women in August Kotzebue's comedy Der weibliche Jakobiner-Club, 1791) and who therefore needed to be domesticated into conformity. The connection between Amazons and women's emancipation was established in a series of comedies in the 19th century in which the foolishness and ultimate futility of a separate state of Amazons are "proven." The two principal motifs of the Amazon myth—the motif of the crossdressing maiden warrior (who falls in love with her male rival) or that of the separate, matriarchally structured society—also fascinated some women writers. Earlier adaptations of the myth tend to stress the heroic or tragic aspects of gender bending, for example, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken's Herpin (1430/1440) or Loher und Mailer (1405), or Maria Antonia Walpurgis' Talestris, Koniginn der Amazonen (1765) and Therese Huber's Die Familie Seldorf (\1951 1796), in which women in disguise fight for noble causes. In late 19th- and 20th-century adaptations, under the influence of J. J. Bachofen's speculations about matriarchal societies and the bourgeois women's movement, the Amazon myth is reappropriated for the battle between the sexes. Antifeminist writers such as Maria Janitschek (Die Amazonenschlacht, 1897) raid the myth for its potential to denounce the—supposed—excesses of women's emancipation. Feminists in search of images of powerful womanhood resort to the Amazon myth as a model for separate gynocracies (Bertha Eckstein-Diener's cultural history Mothers and Amazons, written in the 1930s, or Christa Wolf's Kassandra, 1983) or as metaphor for women's ongoing battle for equality in marriage and society (Use Langner's comedy Amazonen, written in 1933). See also: Androgyny; Gender Theories, History of; Gender Transformation; Hosenrolle; Matriarchy; Wolf, Christa. References: Klein, Hans, "Die antiken Amazonensagen in der deutschen Literatur." (Diss., Munich, 1919); Kleinbaum, Abby Wettan, The War against the Amazons (New
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York: McGraw-Hill, 1983); Tyrrell, William Blake, Amazons. A Study in Athenian Mythmaking (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
SUSANNE ZANTOP A m a z o n e n t h e a t e r . A historical precursor to cross-dressing on stage, this refers to a drama performed by an all-female cast. Such performances are known to have taken place in the 16th century in Tyrolian monasteries and during "women carnivals" (Weiberfastnacht). Also on record is an all-female folk theater performed in Biichsenhausen near Innsbruck. The early carnival plays, which were restricted to carnival itself, defined such practice as abnormal: at a time when female actors were still a rarity, the Amazonentheater performances occupied a position as a carnivalesque burlesque that did not meet the artistic aspirations of (male-acted) court drama or even of the entertainment plays performed by traveling troupes. When Amazonentheater evolved into cross-dressing (as of the 18th century), it retained some of these connotations: the recognition on the part of the women actors that they were, to a large extent, excluded from mainstream dramatic production—as actors, directors, or playwrights. This may have been part of the motivation for the all-female performance of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Iphigenie aufTauris (1787) at the home of Charlotte von Stein, who had ostentatiously refused to attend the premiere at the court of Weimar. See also: Hosenrolle; Matinee. References: Dorrer, A, "Amazonentheater in Tirol." Komodie 4.5 (1946); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 315. MARIA LUISE CAPUTO-MAYR
A n a g r a m . To find an anagram in an original word or phrase, its author must recombine all letters into new words without adding or dropping any characters. Literary historians credit the Greek poet Lycophron of Chalkis (3d century B.C.) with the invention of this rigid poetic technique. The Jewish Cabalists recognized the anagram as one method to probe the secrets of the Bible. The anagrammatic search for words within words enjoyed great popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries. Baroque poets used the procedure to derive pseudonyms (Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen/Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim) or to reveal what is in a name: "Margareten/gern am rate/mager raten/mager arten/er mag raten/er mag arten/arm geraten" (Phillip von Zesen). The surrealists celebrated the anagram as a form of pure language liberated from the domination of aesthetic criteria or the compulsion to create meaning. A popular technique for deriving pseudonyms, anagrams protect the identity of an author yet contain within them the key to its disclosure (Hedwig Courts-Mahler/ Hedwig Relham). In addition to establishing artistic identities with the help of anagrammatic pseudonyms, women writers have used anagrams as counterdiscourses. Poet, writer, and artist Unica Ziirn produced well over 100 anagrams, ranging in
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length between three lines and several stanzas. Inspired but not limited by Surrealism, Ziirn's anagrams are neither accessible to traditional methods of poetry interpretation nor devoid of meaning as the surrealist contention would have it. She took the linguistic material for her anagrams from her social environment: names of people and places, addresses, lines from poems, questions, or common proverbial phrases. Ziirn, who spent extended periods of time in mental institutions and committed suicide, found coded prophecies in her anagrams: "Ohne noch gelebt zu haben werde ich sterben/ohne Erben, weich zu Bett den Hals gebrochen/nach zehn gelben Herbstwochen-o die Truebe." In her autobiographical writings Ziirn analyzes her obsession with anagrams as a "dangerous fever" that severed communication between her and her environment. Ziirn became part of the hermetic world that she created through her art. Among the few publications to appear during Ziirn's lifetime, her collections of anagrammatic poems gained her the recognition of her contemporaries and an honored position among the practitioners of this poetic form. The anagrammatist Oskar Pastior remarked, for instance, ' 'Mit dem Himmel in Rom, wenn er blau ist, haben die Anagrammgedichte insoweit zu tun als AZUR IN NUCE/UNICA ZUERN ist." With its strict rules, the anagram both challenges and channels the creativity of its author. Elfriede Czurda, an Austrian-born writer of experimental prose and poems, employs the anagrammatic form to objectify the relationship between text and author in an effort to discourage any interpretive attempts to locate the (female) author in her (supposedly autobiographical) text. Czurda's anagrams "falsify" canonical authors ("Mein Busen pocht, mein Herz/ziept, bin Reuse, hemm noch/" [Tieck/Czurda]) and suggest alternative exegeses of male texts that are neither standard interpretations nor interpretable by standard methods. With her anagrammatic (re-)compositions of visual elements, painter and sculptor Barbara Schmidt Heins introduces the critical potential of the anagram into the fine arts. See also: Authorship; Baroque Literature; Reception; Surrealism. References: Braun, Luzia, and Klaus Ruch, "Das Wiirfeln mit den Wortern: Geschichte und Bedeutung des Anagramms." Merkur 3 (1988): 225-36; Czurda, Elfriede, Falschungen. Anagramme und Gedichte (Berlin: Rainer, 1987); Schmidt Heins, Barbara, Anagramm Werke 1988/89 (Kiel: Stadtgalerie, 1990); Ziirn, Unica, Gesamtausgabe: Anagramme, vol.1 (Berlin: Brinkmann and Bose, 1988). KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER
Androgyny/Hermaphrodism. Any discussion of a possible neutralization or merging of sexual polarities must distinguish between the obviously rare biological mixing usually referred to as hermaphrodism and a less concrete, often symbolic, blending referred to as androgyny. Androgyny has drawn the most interest from feminist critics because of what some (e.g., Heilbrun) have seen as its potential for helping in the struggle toward sexual equality by eliminating the gendered designations often applied to behavior. Others remain skeptical (e.g., Friedrichsmeyer), arguing that because androgyny relies for its
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sustenance on rigid sexual dichotomies, it cannot eliminate them and, in fact, ultimately reinvigorates them. The vision of an ideal androgynous oneness is present in many religions and creation stories and entered Western philosophy through Plato's Symposium (c. 385 B.C.). In succeeding ages, this myth was interpreted differently, playing a major role in certain forms of mysticism and alchemy, the works of Jakob Bohme, and the German Pietists, who, in turn, transmitted it to the Jena Romantics. Many of the male writers and philosophers associated with that movement (e.g., Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis) believed, on some level, in the idealized sexual oneness promised by an androgynous ideal. Accepting a rigid notion of sexual difference—with men representing the rational and women the nonrational spheres—they believed that individual wholeness could be restored through sexual union. A similar concept of wholeness is also evident, though in different ways, in the works of some late 19th-century writers and in the thinking of Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. The systems these writers and thinkers conceived were overwhelmingly male-oriented, devised by men for the benefit of their own sex. When women have expressed desires falling under the rubric of androgyny, it has most often been for the purpose of partaking in the social and political benefits unavailable to them as women. When Karoline von Giinderrode articulated a desire to be a man, it was because she wanted to escape the narrow limits of accepted female behavior. Similarly, when Louise Aston shocked the bourgeoisie by wearing men's clothing and smoking a cigar, she was laying claim to a freer mode of existence than that granted her as a woman. In Weimar Germany, this more concrete form of androgyny was discernible beyond the lifestyles of a few isolated individuals; it was, in fact, the model according to which the emancipated "New Woman" frequently defined herself. Her crossdressing had its origins in a desire to neutralize existing sexual roles, so that she could share the benefits of modernization so far reserved primarily for men (e.g., Else Lasker-Schuler). Although cross-dressing during this period was not limited to women, it was most usually practiced by them. Similarly, when contemporary women writers thematize cross-dressing and an exchange of gender roles, as Irmtraud Morgner did in Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974) and Christa Wolf did in "Selbstversuch" (1975), it is usually to challenge any essentialist notion of a gendered subject. See also: Aston, Louise; Essentialism/Constructionism; Gender Theories, History of; Gender Transformation; Geschlechtscharaktere; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Hosenrolle; Morgner, Irmtraud; Mysticism; New Woman; Pietism; Romanticism; Weimar Republic; Wolf, Christa. References: Benz, Ernst, Adam: Der Mythus vom Urmenschen (Munich: OttoWilhelm-Barth, 1955); Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, The Androgyne in Early German Romanticism: Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis and the Metaphysics of Love (Berne: Lang, 1983), "The Subversive Androgyne." Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 63-75; Heilbrun, Carolyn G, Towards a Recognition of Andogyny (New York: Harper and Row,
ANGESTELLTINNENROMAN
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1973); Petro, Patrice, Joyless Streets. Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER A n g e s t e l l t l n n e n r o m a n . This focuses on the male/female white-collar employee, who became a dominant member of the labor force in the 1920s. It constructs him or her as an urban working subject in a multiplicity of discourses and positions with respect to modernity. Recognized as a Zeitroman and related to the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit, this genre emphasizes authenticity and portrays—in accordance with sociological studies such as Siegfried Kracauer's Die Angestellten (1971)—the identity crisis of this new middle class and its impoverishment at the end of the Weimar period. The texts, which focus attention on the male white-collar worker, construed as the kleiner Mann, as in Hans Fallada's Kleiner Mann, was nun? (1932), have been mostly regarded as Angestelltenromane. Narratives concentrating on female Angestellte, in particular those by women writers, have been neglected, despite the fact that these novels often were best-sellers of the period. Irmgard Keun's Gilgi-eine von uns (1931), for instance, reached a printing of 30,000 within the first year of its publication. Emerging into professional and public spaces dominated formerly by men, the image of the white-collar employee also entered mass textual production. In Angestelltlnnenromane by male authors, the working woman tends to act as medium for articulation of political positions with respect to modernity. By presenting the experiences of the new typist at her workplace in Das Mddchen an der Orga Privat (1930), for instance, Rudolf Braune argues class issues such as economic exploitation and social struggle and ignores gender concerns related to the sexual politics of the workplace and the family sphere. Martin Kessel's Herrn Brechers Fiasko (1932) depicts male anxieties about the so-called feminization of the labor force that are projected onto the clerical employee. Texts by women writers (Christa Anita Brtick, Maria Gleit, Irmgard Keun, and Paula Schlier) who worked as professional typists voice women's desires and affirm female subjectivity. Keun's clerical employee in Gilgi embraces the new experience of work and urban life as a means of reinventing herself in a manner that sidesteps the conventional confines of patriarchally gendered relations. In Keun's Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932), the typist Doris strives to escape the monotony of her clerical work life by projecting her fantasies about independence and glamour onto the material world of urban culture. Here, the processes of modernization and urbanization constitute a discourse that not only defines modes of production and class dynamics but also determines gender identities and relations. Staging sexual politics in the public and private spheres, Keun's texts reveal the function of woman and the female body as commodities of patriarchal exchange. Brtick's and Schlier's autobiographical novels depict women's working lives and the many indignities, including paltry wages, absence of promotional opportunities, and sexual harassment. The typists in Briick's Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen (1930) are seen as enslaved, as
18
ANKUNFTSLITERATUR
''Mddchen im Fron," subjected both to the effects of modernization—represented in the image of the typewriter—and to the arbitrary rule of their male superiors. The text closes with the protagonist's return to the familiar countryside of East Prussia, seeking refuge in "geistige Mutterlichkeit." Briick's second novel, Fin Mddchen mit Prokura (1932), portrays an alternative ending: the female protagonist takes the challenge of a high-level management position in a bank and focuses on her career. Schlier's Petras Aufzeichnungen oder Konzept einer Jugend nach dem Diktat der Zeit (1926) recounts the travails of a typist who navigates her way through a series of newspaper office pools, including that of the Nazi press Volkischer Beobachter. After 1933, these Angestelltlnnen romane were banned as "Asphaltliteratur" by the Nazis and fell—as did most of their authors—into oblivion. See also: Autobiography; Body, Female; GroBstadtroman National Socialism; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Weimar Republic. References: Harrigan, Renny, ' 'Novelistic Representation of die Berufstatige during the Weimar Republic." Women in German Yearbook 4 (1988): 97-124; Jordan, Christa, Zwischen Zerstreuung und Berauschung: die Angestellten in der Erzdhlprosa am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1988); Kracauer, Siegfried, Die Angestellten (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1971), "Madchen im Beruf." Der Querschnitt 12.4 (1932): 238^3; Soltau, Heide, Trennungsspuren. Frauenliteratur der zwanziger Jahre (Frankfurt/M.: extra Buch, 1984); Von Soden, Kristine, and Maruta Schmidt, eds., Neue Frauen. Die zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1988). ANGELIKA FOHRICH Ankunftsliteratur. Literally, "literature of arrival," this refers to a corpus of prose literature that emerged in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the early 1960s. In contrast to their immediate predecessors, who had seen their task in the articulation of a postwar antifascist German culture, now a new generation of East German writers grappled with the formation of the individual in an already existing socialist society, with particular emphasis on the workplace. Two of the most prominent figures in this phase were women: Christa Wolf and Brigitte Reimann. Indeed, the term Ankunftsliteratur itself is taken from Reimann's novel Ankunft im Alltag (1961); Wolf's important text of this period is Der geteilte Himmel (1963). While both Reimann and Wolf are widely recognized for their contributions to the development of a specifically female, even feminist, East German sensibility in the 1970s, these early texts are seldom considered from the point of view of gender. However, gender issues are highly relevant to a discussion of Ankunftsliteratur on at least two levels: (1) the integration of women into the workplace and thus the relation of women to the realm of material production; and (2) the paradigmatic value of female protagonists in texts that are, to a large measure, concerned with discerning the relationship between individual and (socialist) society. Ankunftsliteratur is closely linked to the Bitterfelder Weg, a prescriptive cultural-political movement set in motion by a 1959 conference in the industrial
ANONYMITY
19
town of Bitterfeld. The two-pronged program exhorted workers to write about their experiences ("Greif zur Feder, Kumpel!"), while writers were urged to enter the factories and gain firsthand knowledge of the workers' world ("Schriftsteller in die Betriebe!"). Reimann and Wolf were two of a small number of writers to take this directive seriously: Reimann lived for several years with the workers at a brown-coal combine in Hoyerswerda; Wolf worked for a shorter period in a factory that produced train cars in Halle. Each of their texts describes the transformational experiences of a young woman who works in a factory for some months prior to, or as part of, her university education. The world these female protagonists enter is still dominated and defined by men, and at this level, the texts comment on the continuing integration of women into the workforce in the GDR, though their protagonists are no longer cast as working-class heroines and pioneers but rather as members of the intelligentsia. Equally significant is the ideological function of gender in Reimann's and Wolf's early novels. Ankunftsliteratur was more than simply the expression of a programmatic moment in GDR cultural politics; it also reflected the historical transition from a period of postwar rebuilding to a relatively developed, stable, and—with the building of the Wall—closed socialist environment in the 1960s. Moreover, the Bitterfelder Weg itself was embedded in a context of internal conflict following Stalin's death and the Hungarian uprising. While the resulting crisis of confidence in socialism was largely repressed, its traces can be found in the painful, conflict-ridden passage into adulthood depicted in these novels of development. Reimann and Wolf draw the contours of an emergent, moral, socialist individual in clearly gendered terms; as representative figures in the quest for socialist subjectivity, these women embody a unique mixture of an idealized collectivist morality and evolving individual desires. Despite the ostensible centrality of the workplace—the factory—to these texts, competing models of (heterosexual) sexuality and love form their dramatic core. See also: GDR Literature; Marxist Theories; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Wolf, Christa. References: Fehervary, Helen, "Die erzahlerische Kolonisierung des weiblichen Schweigens: Frau und Arbeit in der DDR-Literatur." Arbeit als Thema in der deutschen Literatur vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (K6nigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1979) 171-195; Herminghouse, Patricia, "Wunschbild, Vorbild oder Portrat? Zur Darstellung der Frau im Roman der DDR." Literatur und Literaturtheorie in der DDR. Ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1976) 281-334. Meyer-Goskau, Frauke, "Bildlose Zukunft— Verlorene Geschichte: Die "Ankunftsliteratur" zwischen 1961 und 1964 in exemplarischen Studien" (Diss., University of Bremen, 1980); Zimmermann, Peter, Industrieliteratur der DDR: Vom Helden der Arbeit zum Planer und Leiter (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984). ELIZABETH MITTMAN
Anonymity—see: Authorship
20
ANTAGONIST
Antagonist—see: Protagonist/Antagonist A n t h o l o g y . The evolution of German anthology publishing is a significant indicator of the gradual emergence of women's literary voices, the effective questioning and redefinition of genre and canonical boundaries by feminist scholars and editors, and the shifting landscape in the publishing industry itself toward greater gender balance in literary production. Traditionally, women were, at best, anthologized by prominent male Germanists as a group in collections of Romantic women's poetry or letters (Paul Landau, Frauenbriefe der Romantik, 1923); at worst, as lone females in collections of male writing, especially poetry (see Haass' study of poetry anthologies). Tokenism and genre restrictions have given way recently to a slightly greater proportion of women in genrebased collections (e.g., 6 of 20 in a 1989 Fischer volume of Austrian short prose), as well as new genres such as primary political texts by women (Fritz Bottger, Frauen im Aufbruch, 1977). Women editors and collaborators have produced anthologies of male and female writers (e.g., vol. 4 of Susanne Wolfram and Uwe Carsten's multivolume anthology of contemporary plays, Theater Theater, features two females—one of them anonymous—and seven males of various nationalities). By the late 1970s and early 1980s, mainstream German publishers had begun to introduce series of women's anthologies. Aside from recovering and making readily accessible centuries of unknown, suppressed, or forgotten belletristic literature by women (Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, 1978; Christine Herbst, Das Geschlecht der Engel, 1992), feminist scholars have also explored the genre of first-person narrative to the fullest, following the example of German Democratic Republic (GDR) pioneers in the genre of interview Protokolle in the late 1970s (Sarah Kirsch, Pantherfrau, 1973; Maxie Wander, Guten Morgen, Du Schone, 1974) with theme-based anthologies reflecting feminist scholarship on subjectivity, the emergence of oral history, and the women's movement in general. Fischer's Frauen in der Gesellschaft series, for example, includes women's writing on aging (Helena Klostermann, Alter als Herausforderung, 1990); separation and loss (Helga Hasing and Ingeborg Mues, Du gehst fort, und ich bleib da, 1989), midlife crisis, coping with AIDS and other illnesses; motherhood (Jutta Menschik, Fin Stuck von mir: Mutter erzdhlen, 1987); mother-daughter relationships, marriage, work and vocation (Brinker-Gabler, Frauenarbeit und Beruf 1979); women's experience in particular historical periods (Irmgard Weyrather, Ich bin noch aus dem vorigen Jahrhundert: Frauenleben zwischen Kaiserreich und Wirtschaftswunder; Gisela Dischner, Fine stumme Generation berichtet, 1982—women's voices from the 1930s and 1940s); and antiwar texts by women (Brinker-Gabler, Frauen gegen den Krieg, 1980). Since unification, there is a broad spate of anthologies of women's texts from the old and the new German states, for example, Christine Eifler's collection of nine women's "Ost-WestErfahrungen," Kreuz und Quer, 1994.
ANTICLIMAX
21
Not to be overlooked is the achievement of smaller and specifically women's publishers, such as Orlanda Frauenverlag, in documenting the experience of marginalized groups of women (Afro-Germans or lesbians, for example, Katherina Oguntoye et al., Farbe bekennen, 1986) and in expanding the bibliography of women's history (Susanne zur Nieden, Alltag im Ausnahmezustand, 1993— women's accounts of the destruction of Germany, 1943-1945; Petra Zwaka, Ich bin meine eigene Frauenbewegung, 1991—women's perspectives on the history of Berlin). See also: Black German Literature; Canon, Literary; FRG Literature (since 1990); GDR Literature; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Pacifism; Protokolle; Unification, German; Wander, Maxi: Guten Morgen, du Schone. References: Bark, Joachim, and Dieter Pforte, eds., Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 1969-1970); Haass, Sabine, Gedichtanthologien der viktorianischen Zeit: eine buchgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Wandel des literarischen Geschmacks (Nuremberg: H. Carl, 1986). NANCY LUKENS Anticlimax. Originally, the term designated a rhetorical device in which the intensity or meaning of a sequence of expressions declines, often for humorous purposes (e.g., Johann Wolfgang Goethe's "Doktoren, Magister, Schreiber und Pfaffen"). The humor is generated by replacing the expected increase or climax with a sudden decline of intensity or meaning. In literature, an anticlimax is frequently realized as an unexpected twist in the plot, generally used in the dramatic and narrative genres. Its purpose is usually to force the narrative or drama in an entirely unexpected direction, thereby deliberately disappointing the reader's or spectator's expectations. Like the Aristotelian peripeteia, which denotes a reversal of the protagonist's fortune in the middle of the play, the anticlimax often provides the impetus for a new and radically different direction in the plot. It replaces, eradicates, or seriously relativizes the climax, while peripeteia introduces a series of events that ultimately result in a different climax. The anticlimax differs from peripeteia mainly in that it occurs most frequently at the end of the play, that is, directly preceding the climax or catastrophe (although there are exceptions to this in post-Aristotelian drama) and that it constitutes an unexpected relativization of, or change in, the ending, in contrast to peripeteia: the events set in motion by peripeteia make the new climax inevitable and thus anticipated by the viewer. In women's literature, the technique was used predominantly to deconstruct traditional literary conventions by which closure was achieved. Frequently, the anticlimax occurs for no apparent reason and remains unexplained. One example is Friederike Sophie Hensel-Seyler's drama Die Familie aufdem Lande (1770), in which the Happy End is achieved in the conventional manner—via the marriage of the main protagonists—but is severely relativized by the insanity of the bride, which occurs in the fourth act and is not reversed. Karoline von Giinderrode employs a similar technique in her tragedy Magie und Schicksal (1805), in which the curtain opens at the beginning of the third act to reveal the male
22
APHORISM
lead dead on the stage—without explanation. Such blatant breaches of dramatic practice suggest that the anticlimax in women's literature was frequently more than just a means of criticizing established literary conventions. While upholding the mechanism of the Happy End or the tragic ending, the authors deprive the ending of its meaning or, rather, of its meaningfulness; they deny the bride the happiness promised by the Happy End and the tragic hero the glory of his death and the spectators' sympathies. In an ironic twist, the anticlimax enables the authors to follow dramatic convention to the letter and to stage the ending comme ilfaut, while rejecting the philosophy expressed by that ending (e.g., the happiness achieved through marriage or the glorification of "tragic" deaths). See also: Comedie Larmoyante; Comedy; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Tragedy. References: Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992), "Tugend im Rampenlicht: Friederike Sophie Hensel als Schauspielerin und Dramatikerin." The German Quarterly 66.1 (1993): 1-19; Schmidt, Henry J., How Dramas End: Essays on the German Sturm und Drang, Buchner, Hauptmann, and Fleisser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). SUSANNE KORD A p h o r i s m . As a literary term, "aphorism" refers to a terse, pithy statement expressing a thought or observation. Highly personal in nature, aphorisms present an original worldview either through their assertions or through their unusual point of view, from which they arrive at their conclusions. These new and often provoking ideas are formally expressed through stylistic elements such as antithesis, paradox, wordplay, and parallelism. Aphorisms are characterized by their autonomy, although they usually appear in a collection; they do not establish a thematic or formal unity but remain isolated from each other. A number of women writers have published aphorisms, but—with the exception of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and possibly Gertrud von Le Fort—they are hardly ever included in major anthologies, nor are their aphorisms the object of scholarly investigations. This disregard for female aphoristic writings finds its most blatant expression in Walter Wehe's claim that aphorisms are a pronounced male literary form. Furthermore, many aphorisms on the subject of women by male writers, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg to Elias Canetti, are often sexist in tone, emphasizing the intellectual and moral inferiority of women. Some of Rahel Varnhagen's diary entries are decidedly aphoristic, but the first and most successful female aphoristic writer is Marie von EbnerEschenbach. Her collection of aphorisms (1880) reached three expanded editions during her lifetime. The Insel publishing house published two new editions in 1982 (Leipzig) and 1986 (Frankfurt/M.). Ebner-Eschenbach's aphorisms are noted for their perfection of form, their perceptiveness about human nature, and their insistence on moral and social improvement of human conditions, as well as their feminist tendency. The female experience is also the focus of Phia Rilke. Her collection of aphorisms Ephemeriden (1900) reveals a profound disillusion-
ARCHIV UND DOKUMENTATIONSZENTRUM, FEMINISTISCHES
23
ment with the institution of marriage, the only avenue open to a woman of her class. In contrast, the aphorisms of Gertrud von Le Fort (1962) show the strong influence of Christianity on the author's work and worldview, including her view on the role of women. Since the late 1970s, the number of publications by female aphoristic writers has increased. Ruth Mayer's collection of aphorisms Ansichtsseiten (1976) saw a second edition in 1979; Use Tonnies published her collection In den Spiegel geworfen in 1978; Charlotte Bohler-Mueller's aphorisms (
HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER
Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches
(Co-
l o g n e ) . At the initiative of Alice Schwarzer, publisher of the feminist periodical Emma, and with a generous grant from the philanthropist Jan Philipp Reemtsma, the archive was founded in Frankfurt/M. in 1984 and then moved to Cologne a few years later. Since its relocation in 1994 to the Bayenturm, a traditional city emblem of Cologne, the archive has been called FrauenMediaTurm. Das Feministische Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum remains a subtitle. Just as the Bayen Tower—often simply called der Turm—has historically signified freedom and protection for the citizens of Cologne, FrauenMediaTurm is meant to symbolize the archive's role as sentinel for German feminism. Yet, the archive's objective is not only to document women's history but also to actively produce it. In terms of its documents and its technology, FrauenMediaTurm is today the most modern and best-equipped archive to specialize in women's issues in the German-speaking world. The archive's library focuses on two main subject areas. On one hand, it centers on the German women's movement of the 1960s
24
ARNIM,BETTINAVON
and 1970s and its outcomes. On the other hand, the archive also collects and houses substantial material regarding earlier German feminist movements dating from the middle of the 19th century. Within this latter area, the archive has specialized on the very active and creative, but until now poorly documented, work of those feminists who constituted the radical wing of the late 19th- and early 20th-century women's movement. In addition to its collection of works by prominent feminists ranging from Hedwig Dohm to Minna Cauer and Anita Augspurg, the archive also owns unpublished literary estates of lesser-known feminists. A small collection on the early history of women's self-assertion, ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to Christine de Pizan and Olympe de Gouges, also exists. Currently, the FrauenMediaTurm possesses over 22,000 documents in the form of books and essays. In addition, the archive has 304 press records, 557 titles of national and international women's periodicals, and 2,000 leaflets and posters. Each year it acquires roughly 2,000 new documents. As a media center, the institute selects documents from all forms of modern communication, including feminist presses, specialized publications, and the general press. The archive maintains up-to-date statistics in all of its collection areas, and all of its holdings are computer-processed; they can be retrieved with various search tools. A microreader is also available for the printing and viewing of all documents stored on microfilm and microfiche. As part of an association of independent feminist archives in the Germanspeaking area, FrauenMediaTurm exchanges information with the archives of women's organizations as well as with the most important general archives and libraries in Germany. It also maintains ties to international feminist archives. By 1996, the archive intends to issue a regular newsletter that will provide information concerning its latest acquisitions as well as specific reports regarding current social issues. Separate archives for photographs, film, and audioworks are also in the planning stages. See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Women's Journals; Women's Movement. References: Der FrauenMediaTurm (Prospectus) (Cologne: May 1995); Schwarzer, Alice, ed., Turm der Frauen (Cologne: Dumont, 1994).
TAMARA WANG Arnim, Bettina v o n ( 1 7 8 5 - 1 8 5 9 ) . Perhaps no other German woman writer has come to epitomize the idealized notion of a Romantic life of poetry and love more than Bettina von Arnim. Born in 1785 into the bourgeois Brentano family of Frankfurt/M. and with her death in 1859 in Berlin, Arnim's life and work cover a period of revolutionary and reactionary upheaval in German political history. Though her philosophical and aesthetic views are firmly grounded in early Romanticism, her writing expressing social engagement and critique of literary abstraction indicates an affinity with the younger, more radicalized writers of the mid-19th century. Initially known for her relationships to famous literary figures such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe, her brother Clemens
ARNIM, BETTINA VON
25
Brentano, her husband, Achim von Arnim, her grandmother Sophie von La Roche, and her friend Karoline von Giinderrode, she wrote out of a fascination with artistic genius, while assertively articulating her own brand of literary creativity. Arnim's epistolary novels, such as Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835) and Die Gunderode (1840), dedicated to the young students of the 1848 Revolution, and Clemens Brentanos Friihlingskranz (1844), are fictionalized renditions of the correspondences of her youth, in which she attempts to translate subjective experiences and her insights into nature, poetry, love, and language for the political and cultural transformation of her mid-19th-century contemporaries. She also made a mark through her active and passionate social engagement, recorded in her Armenbuch (first pub. 1869), which might arguably be considered a precursor to oral history. She suffered financially and intellectually under Prussian censorship because of her public support of the Grimm brothers in the "Gottinger-Sieben" free-speech scandal. In Dies Buch gehort dem Konig (1843) and Gesprache mit Ddmonen (1852), she documents her disillusionment with the notion of an enlightened monarchy. Besides her epistolary novels, Arnim also wrote fairy tales, for example, Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns (1843), coauthored with her daughter Gisela von Arnim, which challenges the traditional form and subject matter of the genre to explore female collectivity and heroic potential. As the center of a cultural salon in Berlin, she gained the respect and admiration of many intellectual and political figures, including Rahel Varnhagen, who had the most famous salon of the time. In addition to her own writing, Arnim worked as an editor, especially for the posthumous publication of Achim von Arnim's collected works. The dialogic quality of Arnim's writing, her insistence on the authenticity of subjective experience, and a radical belief in nature as the inspired source of her creative voice have contributed to her positive reception among feminist scholars of the past two decades. They have seen in her life and in her writing a model of feminine aesthetics and of a socially engaged female subjectivity. See also: Aesthetics; Epistolary Culture; Fairy Tale; Giinderrode, Karoline von; La Roche, Sophie von; Romanticism; Salonism. References: Drewitz, Ingeborg, Bettine von Arnim: Romantik, Revolution, Utopie: Eine Biographie (Diisseldorf: Claassen, 1984); Goodman, Katherine R., " 'The Butterfly and the Kiss': A Letter from Bettina von Arnim." Women in German Yearbook 7 (1991): 65-78; Jarvis, Shawn C, "Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child? Bettine's Das Leben der Hochgrafin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns.'" Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 7789; Ockenfuss, Solveig, Bettine von Arnims Briefromane: Literarische Erinnerungsarbeit zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992); Waldstein, Edith, Bettine von Arnim and the Politics of Romantic Conversation (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988); Wolf, Christa, " 'Nun ja! Das nachste Leben geht aber heute an.' Ein Brief iiber die Bettine." Sinn und Form 32 (1980): 392-418. KARIN OBERMEIER
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ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN FILMWORKERS
A s s o c i a t i o n of W o m e n Filmworkers—see: Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen A s t o n , Louise ( 1 8 1 8 - 1 8 7 1 ) . One of the most radical women associated with the Vormarz, Louise Aston equated the situation of women with that of the working class in a capitalist society and recognized that the emancipation of both depended on their complete rejection of the institutions of patriarchy: marriage, the church, and the king. Her provocative and uncompromising position, especially her challenge to accepted gender roles, separated her from other women activists of the time. After 13 years of marriage, during which she became radicalized by contact with the workers in her husband's factories and by her own growing awareness of the limited role her society allotted to women, she divorced her husband and left with her daughter for Berlin, determined to live there as a writer, working for political and social change. In Berlin she shocked the bourgeoisie with her opinions and by smoking cigars, wearing trousers, and practicing free love. In 1846, even before any of her writings had been published, she was exiled from Berlin on charges that included contact with extremist writers, founding a club for emancipated women, and atheism. With the changes of 1848, she was able to return and in March fought on the barricades; later that year she fought on the front in the war between Prussia and Denmark. From November to December, when the reaction set in, she published seven issues of what was intended as a weekly newspaper, Der Freischarler. Recognized today as the first newspaper of the German women's movement, its goal was to emancipate women and workers by uniting them with progressive thinkers from all the German states. When the 1848 Revolution failed, Aston was once again forced into exile. With her second husband she traveled from one European city to another, finally settling in southern Germany as Louise Meier until her death. Writing professionally, Aston was one of the few women in the early 19th century to compose political lyrics and to make women the central figures of all her novels. Critics have credited her with the introduction of a new literary type, namely, the politically engaged woman who acts on her own initiative. Her collections of poetry, Wilde Rosen (1846) and Freischdrler-Reminiscenzen (1850), challenged bourgeois values by favoring free love and emancipation for women. Her earliest prose work was the overtly political Meine Emanzipation, Verweisung und Rechtfertigung (1846), a leaflet published in Brussels and directed at the German people, protesting and explaining her expulsion from Berlin. Her three novels—Aus dem Leben einer Frau (1847), Lydia (1847), and Revolution und Contrerevolution (1849)—all combine elements of autobiography with fiction. All demonstrate the need for social and sexual equality and were denounced—at times fiercely—for advocating women's control of their own lives. See also: Autobiography; Revolution, German (1848); Women's Movement; Young Germany.
AUSLANDERGESETZ
27
References: Adler, Hans, "On a Feminist Controversy: Louise Otto vs. Louise Aston." German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 193-214; Goetzinger, Germaine, Fiir die Selbstverwirklichung der Frau. Louise Aston in Selbstzeugnissen und Dokumenten (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1983); Goodman, Katherine, Dis/ Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany Between 1790 and 1914 (New York: Lang, 1986); Secci, Lia, "German Women Writers and the Revolution of 1848." German Women in the Nineteenth Century. A Social History. Ed. John C. Fout (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984) 151-71.
SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER A u s l a n d e r g e s e t z . Of the approximately 5 million immigrants living in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), more than 60 percent have lived there for more than 10 years. Women constitute approximately 45 percent of all immigrants. Foreign labor immigration began in the 1950s and was first seen as a temporary phenomenon: only since the 1980s has it become evident that the situation has changed to permanent settlement of new ethnic minorities. The German Constitution defines citizenship in terms of German ethnicity. Only recently has this approach been contested and the process of naturalization made easier by a revision of the Auslandergesetz in 1991 (first passed in 1965 and amended several times since). However, this amended Auslandergesetz, currently the only law that governs the rights and lives of non-European and European immigrants, continues to deny residents of foreign origin a whole range of civil rights and political participation; it continues the trend of restrictive policies on migration and minority rights, and it hierarchizes the immigrant population in various groups (Europeans versus non-Europeans, members of the European Union versus nonmembers, asylum seekers versus migrant workers and others), isolating them from each other and from the rest of society. There is still no antidiscrimination law that protects minorities. Even though the Auslandergesetz is written in gender-neutral terms, it is particularly discriminatory with regard to female immigrants. Section 19 establishes different levels of possible legal residencies connected to marriage. After entry into the country, married immigrant women are not permitted an independent status for the first four years of marriage, a restriction that intensifies the wife's dependency on her husband. In case of abuse, a wife cannot divorce her husband during the first three years after immigration and retain her residency. If, conversely, her husband divorces her or leaves the country within the first four years, the wife has to leave Germany as well. Independent residency is granted only with a work permit, available to immigrant wives of German husbands immediately and to immigrant wives of immigrant husbands after a one-year waiting period. Because it is far more difficult for women to gain entry into the job market than it is for men, feminists have taken on the issue of independent residency for immigrant women, regardless of marital status. In addition to the legally upheld dependency of immigrant women on their husbands, immigrant women have virtually no right to seek political asylum.
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AUSTRIAN LITERATURE
Political violence against women, often expressed as sexual violence, is not recognized by German law despite a 1987 resolution by the European Parliament to grant asylum to such women, regardless of their marital status and the immigrant status of their husbands. See also: Minority Literature; Turkish-German Literature. References: Bade, Klaus, J., ed., Deutsche im Ausland—Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1993); Barwig, Klaus, ed., Das neue Auslanderrecht: Kommentierte Einfuhrung mit Gesetzestexten und Durchfuhrungsverordnungen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1991); Kang, Chong-Sook, "Institutioneller Rassismus und auslandische Frauen." Geteilter Feminismus: Rassismus, Antisemitismus, Fremdenhafi. beitrage zur feministischen theorie und praxis 27 (1990): 120-26; Uremovic, Olga, and Gundula Oerter, Frauen zwischen Grenzen: Rassismus und Nationalismus in der feministischen Diskussion (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1994). HILTRUDARENS Austrian Literature. Before Austria became a distinct political entity in 1806, after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, a literary tradition had emerged that reflected Austria's cultural and linguistic specificity. A Baroque Counter-Reformation culture shaped its art and literature, in contrast to Protestant northern Germany. Since there were few convents, a tradition of religious women's literature, comparable to that of Germany and Switzerland, did not develop. Nevertheless, women's literature in Austria can be traced to medieval times. The first recorded Austrian woman author, the hermit Frau Ava, wrote simple preliterary didactic poems. Women aristocrats in subsequent centuries sponsored literature and established salons, but their lack of formal education prevented them from becoming writers. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg was the first significant Austrian woman poet. Her finely chiseled sonnets blend religious, moral, and personal themes. Following the reign of Maria Theresia, women participated in cultural life in increasing numbers. Johanna Cranstown, countess of Purgstall; the poet and autobiographer Caroline Pichler; and the Berlin-born banker's wife Fanny von Arnstein opened salons as semipublic meeting places for politicians, artists, and authors, and the Austrian salonieres corresponded and cultivated contacts with German authors such as Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Bettina von Arnim, and Dorothea Schlegel. Women's literature evolved from letters, diaries, autobiographies, and epistolary novels. In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, Austrian women excelled in poetry and the prose genres. Although many of them wrote dramas, they did so with limited success. The conventional popular plays of Charlotte BirchPfeiffer were performed at the Burgtheater, but theater politics and production costs kept women's serious dramas off the stages. The plays of Franz Grillparzer and the didactic prose of Adalbert Stifter shaped Austria's post-1806 identity, combining the concept of the multination state with the Catholic heritage and Enlightenment ideals, rationalism and tol-
AUSTRIAN LITERATURE
29
erance. Both authors rejected German idealism and placed the individual above the collective. They portrayed unconventional women characters who became literary and social role models. Feminists such as Iduna Laube, the president of the Wiener Frauenerwerbsverein, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, and Auguste von Littrow-Bischoff admired Grillparzer; the latter two even wrote Grillparzer biographies. The bourgeois revolutionaries of 1848 dismissed the issue of women's emancipation. In defiance of this all-pervasive misogyny, Austrian feminists formed associations to promote women's education and job opportunities, including an association of women authors and artists that offered insurance and a pension fund. In order to protect their private sphere, numerous women used male or female pen names, for example, the author of subtly social-critical poetry and delicate short prose, Babette Elisabeth Gliick, pseudonym Betty Paoli; the prose writer and author of naturalist and neoclassical tragedies, Elsa Bernstein, pseudonym Ernst Rosmer; and the feuilletonist, poet, and novelist Emilie Mataja, pseudonym Emil Marriot. The latter is known for her psychological portrayal of women and her controversial topics. Their stylistic and philosophical diversity notwithstanding, most Austrian women writers displayed a great degree of political and social-critical awareness. The success of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, who first wrote poetry and dramas, was based on her realistic novels that examine the role and status of women. The proletarian poet and prose writer Christiane von Breden, an early naturalist, shocked her readership by advocating free love and articulating women's erotic desires. The winner of the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize, Bertha von Suttner, published, in addition to her world-famous pacifist novel Die Waff en nieder (1889), essays and prose fiction on ethical and social issues. The works of Bertha Pappenheim (Sigmund Freud's Anna 0.), consisting of travel accounts, didactic dramas, autobiographical prose, and translations of religious and secular texts, reflect the author's mission to help Jewish women, to fight white slavery, and to rehabilitate unwed Jewish mothers and homeless girls. In the 19th century, women played a significant role in journalism, for example, Adelheid Popp, the editor of the Arbeiterinnenzeitung (1892), the women's paper of the Social Democratic Party. Together, the prominent feminist Rosa Mayreder, Auguste Fickert, and Marie Lang founded the journal Dokumente der Frauen (1899) as a forum for women's concerns. Mayreder also belonged to the radical wing of the feminist movement and was a member of the Erster Allgemeiner Osterreichischer Frauenverein. Her essays in Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit (1905) and Geschlecht und Kultur (1923) examine the concept of femininity and decry women's marginal cultural and economic position. After World War I, she became involved with the peace movement. Her friend Bertha Zuckerkandl Szeps, a well-known journalist, was a maverick who not only discussed architecture, the arts, and international affairs but wrote gossip columns as well. Another major journalist was Alice Schalek.
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The first generation of politically emancipated women played an important role in the first Austrian Republic (1919-1938) and its thriving literary and political coffeehouse culture. Career opportunities for women writers and journalists were especially good in Austria's social democratic capital, "Red Vienna." Women were represented in all styles and genres, for example, in the avant-garde or, like the novelist, dramatist, and film author Vicki Baum, in popular literature. Conservative writers, such as the author of religious historical dramas and novels Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti, the novelist Imma von Bodmershof, the prose writer and poet Martina Wied, and the poet Erika Mitterer, adhered to traditional forms and contents. Their discomfort with modernity, bigcity culture, and ethnic diversity did not conflict with Nazi ideology, and their apparent political neutrality enabled them to publish during the Nazi era and beyond. Other writers took issue with phallocentric discourses including fascism—for example, Mela Hartwig, who denounced psychoanalysis and the assumption that women were defined by their biology (e.g., her novellas Ekstasen, 1928). She also criticized the persecution of Jews in Das Wunder von Ulm (1936). After 1938, progressive authors (such as Hartwig), dissenters, and Jews were forced into exile, imprisoned, or murdered, and their works were outlawed. The poetry of Paula von Preradovic, a member of the resistance, thematizes the anti-Nazi struggle. The avant-garde prose writer and dramatist Veza Calderon Canetti was in danger as a Jewish woman, a socialist, and a feminist. She emigrated, as did Paula Ludwig, a poet of dreamlike poems focusing on the experience of women and mothers. Alma Johanna Koenig, a critical historical novelist, was deported and murdered. Autobiographies of Austrian Jewish women that depict exile, death camps, or survival in hiding continue to appear, for example, Ruth Kliiger's weiter leben (1992). The Nazi terror is also addressed in novels, for example, in Alice Schwarz's Die Abrechnung (n.d.), which deals with the legacy of the Holocaust in an Israeli setting, and Hilde Spiel's Lisas Zimmer (1990), which thematizes an Austrian Jewish woman's exile experience and her attachment to Vienna. Rose Auslander wrote symbolic and mystical poetry about the Romanian Shoah. Among the authors who began publishing after 1945 were the Catholic poets Christine Lavant and Christine Busta, whose intensely religious texts on nature, love, and charity express a quest for spiritual freedom. Use Aichinger and Ingeborg Bachmann, the most distinguished postwar women authors, addressed Austria's Nazi legacy. Aichinger's novel Die grofiere Hoffnung (1948) and also her radio plays, short prose, and poetry examine the situation of Jews and other marginalized groups in search of alternatives to ethnocentric and authoritarian patterns. Bachmann thematized the oppression of women, genocide, and the suicidal path of Western civilization in her novel fragment Der Fall Franza (1979). Similar issues are also raised by Marlen Haushofer, whose novel Die Wand (1992) focuses on ecological and feminist concerns.
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A number of authors rooted in the 1968 student movement examined their parents' generation and the Nazi past in semi-autobiographical fiction, for example, Brigitte Schwaiger, Elisabeth Reichart, and Jutta (now Julian) Schutting. Christine Haidegger inquired into the Nazi euthanasia program in her native Linz. Friederike Mayrocker's experimental texts and concrete poetry inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Wiener Gruppe, Actionism, and avant-garde authors like Elfriede Gerstl examine the structures of language. Gerstl and other women authors departed from formalist language criticism and explored discursive and existential paradigms as a means for change. The experimental texts of Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer, for example, challenge genre definitions and the concept of the subject in the postnuclear world. Barbara Frischmuth blends women's experiences with folklore and fairy tales on which she superimposes a feminine perspective. The provocative novels and dramas of Elfriede Jelinek show the influence of Marxist and feminist theories. As the daughter of a Jewish father, Jelinek positions herself in the tradition of Viennese Jewish satirists. Her proclivity for Viennese interwar culture is shared by numerous writers who, like Anna Waltraud Mitgutsch, reclaim their Jewish heritage in the context of renewed awareness of Austria's multicultural history. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Baroque Literature; Drama; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Enlightenment; Exile Literature; Fairy Tale; Formalism; German-Jewish Literature; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Holocaust Literature; Jelinek, Elfriede; Marxist Theories; National Socialism; Pacifism; Revolution, German (1848); Salonism; Sonnet; Workers' Literature. References: Die Frau im Korsett. Wiener Frauenalltag zwischen Klischee und Wirklichkeit 1848-1920 (Vienna: Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1985); Keiber, Carine, and Erika Tunner, eds., Frauenliteratur in Osterreich von 1945 bis heute (Berne: Peter Lang, 1986); Modern Austrian Literature 12.3-^i (1979) (Special Issue on Austrian Women Writers); Schmidt-Bortenschlager, Sigrid, and Hanna Schmidt-Benicek, Osterreichische Schriftstellerinnen 1880-1938 (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1982); Das Schreiben der Frauen in Osterreich seit 1950. Ed. Walter Buchebner Literaturprojekt (Vienna: Bohlau, 1991).
DAGMAR C. G. LORENZ
Authorship. This has always been a problematic concept for women writers. From its inception, the term has been applied to male authors, with an occasional female "exception" admitted to the masculine canon. This is especially true for the development of the field of Literaturwissenschaft in 19th-century Germany. This process relied heavily on external classification (literary periodization, genre hierarchy, and a focus on "great authors") to determine a work's value, which was nonetheless viewed as an inherent/internal quality. But such efforts at canonization, that is, the creation of a definitive and exclusive body of works that are perceived as "high" art and to which only very few women are admitted, are much older. An example is an essay on literary dilettantism coauthored by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, which also contains
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AUTHORSHIP
a segment on the "Dilettantismus der Weiber." Goethe and Schiller distinguished the artist from the dilettante using six criteria: (1) professional practice of the art; (2) objectivity of the art; (3) systematic development and gradation; (4) writing as profession and vocation; (5) contact and exchange with other artists, and (6) schooling. For women, most of these demands presented insurmountable obstacles: women were barred from a classical education as well as clubs and coffeehouses, and most women writers were not in a position to make their writing their life's work and thus achieve the demanded development and gradation. In Goethe's case, the development of his literary achievements is easily discernible; literary criticism has often read it as paralleling the development of his male heroes: from Werther (1774) to Wilhelm Meister (1795— 1796), for example, or from Gotz (1773) to Faust (1808). Applying this model to women writers, for example, Sophie von La Roche, results in the assertion of either a reverse development or none at all: Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771), which, today, is her best-known work and the only one commonly regarded as "worth reading," was her first book; all others are seen as weak by comparison. As long as androcentric criteria are applied to women's authorship, the assumption of the inferiority of women's writing will remain inevitable. To some extent, the accusation of androcentrism can be levied at modern attempts to rethink authorship as a concept as well (Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes). Since unearthing historical women authors is an essential part of feminist literary scholarship, just as viewing women as agents/subjects is an essential component of feminist thought, Barthes' thesis of the "death of the author," in particular, is viewed as jeopardizing the newly emerging female subject. Feminist scholarship has answered this theory by pointing out differences between male and female authorship: because women writers did not historically have the same relationship as men to concepts like identity, origin, institution, and production, they are—as Nancy K. Miller assumes is the case for men—far from being overburdened with too much self, ego, and cogito. For most feminist critics, the postmodern declaration of the ' 'death of the author'' does not answer or preempt the question about, and the quest for, women's historical authorship. Another indicator for the status of women's authorship (as opposed to men's) is the author's name, that is, the usage of the author's name by male versus female authors and literary critics. Most male authors identify themselves and are canonized under a single name, either a family name (Goethe) or a pseudonym (Moliere). Whether or not the author designated by this name actually existed is beside the point: Shakespeare, for example, undeniably exists as an author, even if his existence as a person is still hotly debated—his works are read, taught, and canonized. Women, in contrast, either remain deprived of a name—anonymous—or use a multitude of names—pseudonyms. The single name, which is passed down to posterity as the author's name, does not exist for women whose names change depending on marital status (marriage, divorce) and social pressures (which may result in the use of one or more pseudonyms).
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Most literary histories profess considerable confusion, when the author is female, as to which name should be used as the author's name. Preliminary research on women's pseudonyms indicates that approximately 50 percent of all 18th- and 19th-century women authors in Germany used at least one pseudonym (most used more than one); the occurrence of anonymous publication must be presumed to have been much higher. The fact that usage of male pseudonyms tripled in the 19th century indicates that the higher de facto occurrence of women's authorship did nothing to modify the commonly held view of authorship as naturally male—on the contrary. Whereas most 18th-century authors used a female pseudonym—that is, they insisted on being recognized as female—most 19th-century authors seem to have assumed that their works had a higher chance of being taken seriously if they appeared under a male name. In contrast to the male author, whose authority and authorship are expressed by the single name, current literary scholarship frequently refuses to use a similar designation for women authors, even when their names are known. We use Goethe, but die Giinderrode; Schiller, but Bettine; Gottsched, but die Gottschedin, die Neuberin, die Karschin—Gottsched, Neuber, Karsch are men with the single name, the originals who hold the name and relegate the copy to the woman. More common than ascribing a single name to women authors is the usage of first names or of articled and feminized surnames (taking over the 18th-century suffix "-in" to describe female family members, which, in turn, was an adaptation of the biblical Mdnnin, has become a custom in modern scholarship on 18th-century women writers). Both imply the lower competence of women authors; usage of first names additionally cements the author's invisibility in literary discourse. What is essentially expressed in the refusal to assign a single name to a woman author is the sentiment that a woman cannot be an author—at most, she can be a "woman writer." The difference in status is considerable. Frequently, the lack of the single name for women results in enormous difficulties in researching women writers. Because so many women reacted to contemporary prejudice by camouflaging their literary activity under a male pseudonym, many of their works were initially attributed to men (as in the case of Dorothea Schlegel); in many other cases, this error has not been rectified until the late 20th century (as in the case of Therese Huber—the fact that she continued to use her husband's name for her own publications long after his death raised no suspicions until feminist reassessments in the 1980s); in some cases, credit for the author's work still goes to a male colleague (as in the case of Marianne von Willemer, whose poems are still published as part of Goethe's West-ostlicher Divan, 1819). Both anonymity, that is, the absence of an author's name, and the multitude of pseudonyms, that is, assumed author names, often resulted in the effective anonymity of the author. Unlike for male literati, there is often no authoritative bibliographical basis for research on women authors: as is the case with their names, a number of differing birth and death dates are usually available.
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AUTHORSHIP
Research on women's writings has also been obscured by canonical assumptions of what women (can or should) write. One example is the case of drama: the canonical hierarchization of literary genres has long held drama to be the "highest" literary genre (mainly because it was the predominant genre during the period of Classicism, which is commonly considered the apex of German literary creativity). Based on this hierarchy, the common assumption (until the first feminist research on women's drama was published in 1989) has been that women did not write dramas but instead concentrated on genres that were considered more "subjective" or "feminine" (diaries, epistolary novels, lyric poetry, occasional literature) and, of course, ranked lower in the canonical hierarchy. Despite the fact that several thousand dramas by women, written between 1700 and 1900, are available, and despite the fact that women's authorship of drama can be traced back to the Middle Ages, any woman dramatist whose work could not be overlooked has been viewed as an exception or even "the first" female playwright (that dubious honor has been assigned to the 10thcentury nun Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, the 18th-century dramatist Luise Gottsched, and the 20th-century playwright Gerlind Reinshagen, among others). While feminist scholarship is gradually overcoming assumptions based on genre, most research today concentrates on women's independent publications (e.g., novels, dramas, essays, and collections), that is, on the works of already established women authors or on the works of those who had the financial resources to publish a book. Few researchers have undertaken the enormous task of examining contemporary journals for women's works, but it is in these journals that, until the 20th century, the bulk of women's works appeared. Women's unpublished writings, as well, remain largely unresearched—letters and diaries but also fictional works. Before the institution of copyright in the late 19th century, published literary works became part of the public domain: anyone could translate, perform, or adapt the work without the author's permission and without financial remuneration to the author. Because most authors of published works were paid per written page (i.e., longer works, like novels, were better paid than shorter works, like dramas), most playwrights stood to gain less by publishing their dramas than by repeated performances. As a result, many dramas by women (and men) remained unpublished (Caroline Neuber published only 3 of at least 25 plays, all of which were performed). See also: Canon, Literary; Classicism; Creativity; Gelegenheitsdichtung; La Roche, Sophie von; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Reception; Reinshagen, Gerlind; Woman Writer. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, "Anonym, verschollen, trivial: Methodological Hindrances in Researching German Women's Literature." Women in German Yearbook 1 (1985): 39-59; DeJean, Joan, and Nancy K. Miller, eds., Displacements: Women, Tradition, Literatures in French (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Hahn, Barbara, Unter falschem Namen: Von der schwierigen Autorschaft der Frauen (Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1991); Kord, Susanne, Sich einen Namen machen: Anonymitat und weibliche Autorschaft 1700-1900 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996). SUSANNE KORD
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Autobiography. Traditionally viewed as one of the less worthy genres, most likely because of its long association with the allegedly confessional tone of much women's writing, autobiography has, until recently, nevertheless been defined by male critics according to male examples. Together they have contributed to an understanding of autobiography as the literary medium for establishing a cohesive self through time and a form in which each event of the past is somehow understood as providential for the development of the writer. The typical autobiographer (e.g., Johann Wolfgang Goethe in Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1833) looks back on what he sees as a successful life and attempts to record it, more intent on self-presentation than self-examination; usually he focuses on his own development and relegates all other people, events, and objects to the status of Other. The assessment of autobiography as a form for the distanced, and therefore presumably analyzed, linear account of a life is premised on the existence of a unified, cohesive self and on the possibility of knowing that self. Much of the recent theorizing about the genre has come from feminists, many of whom look to women's self-writing to understand the voices of women that have been eradicated by centuries of male-oriented literary studies. For these critics, autobiography is located somewhere in the controversy between the deconstruction of the self and the reconstitution of female subjectivity. Their theories of autobiography challenge the ideology of individualism inherent in standard definitions of the genre. Influenced by poststructuralism, they recognize the subjectivity, even the fictionality, of all autobiographical forms and challenge the male autobiographers' belief in the possibility of fixing a permanent identity in time. Formulating their definitions of autobiography on the evidence of women's writing, feminist critics have recently demonstrated other inadequacies of the genre as traditionally defined and have either explicitly or implicitly called for an expanded definition of autobiographical literature to encompass all the different ways in which women have told their life stories. In contrast to maleoriented critics who have, in general, viewed autobiography as a self-conscious form superior to, and thus separate from, memoirs, diaries, and journals, feminist critics have been more inclusive. Convinced by the evidence afforded by women's writing, they recognize that although many women have written autobiographical accounts based on male models, many more women have used autobiographical writing for different reasons, often to affirm a self that otherwise seems to go unnoticed, to explore their own subjectivity, and even to create multiple identities (e.g., Rahel Varnhagen, Bettina von Arnim, Louise Aston, Fanny Lewald, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Christa Wolf). Thus, feminist critics generally include both private and public letters, self-portraits, confessions, survival stories, travel accounts, and even fictional autobiographies in their definition of the genre. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Aston, Louise; Biography; Confessional Literature; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Lewald, Fanny; Postructuralism; Subjectivity; Travelogues; Wolf, Christa.
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AVANT-GARDE
References: Benstock, Shari, ed., The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Goodman, Katherine, Dis/Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany Between 1790 and 1914 (New York: Lang, 1986); Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women's Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Stanton, Domna C , ed., The Female Autograph (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER Avant-garde—see: Dadaism; Experimental Literature; Export, Valie; Expressionism; Futurism; Modernism; Montage; Weimar Republic
B B a c h m a n n , I n g e b o r g ( 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 7 3 ) . Bachmann, one of the most distinguished 20th-century German-speaking poets and prose writers, was born in Klagenfurth, Austria. After 1945 she studied philosophy, German literature, and psychology and received her Ph.D. in 1949 with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger from the University of Vienna. Existentialist philosophy and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico philosophicus (1921), particularly his concept of language as a self-referential system, influenced her critical concepts and literary work. In the early 1950s, Bachmann lived in Vienna and Munich. One of her role models was the Viennese postwar poet Use Aichinger, a poet fundamentally critical of postwar society. Bachmann read from her own works, collaborated with German and Austrian radio and television, and published her first texts in journals and series such as Junge Osterreichische Autoren. Bachmann was invited to present her work at the meeting of the Gruppe 47 and received the group's annual literary prize in 1953. Soon thereafter she moved to Italy. She traveled extensively and became a member of the literary and intellectual jet set. In 1955, she accepted an invitation to Harvard University; in 1957 she worked as a dramaturge in Munich; in 1959-1960 she lectured on poetics at the University of Frankfurt/M. From 1963 to 1965 she lived in Berlin, and then in Rome. The international settings of her works reflect her life as a world citizen. Her awards include the Bremen Prize (1957), the Buchner Prize (1964), and the Great Austrian State Prize (1968). Bachmann died in 1973 under unclear circumstances in Rome as a result of injuries she incurred in an apartment fire. Bachmann's first collections of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit (1953) and Anrufung des Grofien Bdren (1956), are written in an abstract, cerebral, highly
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BACHMANN, INGEBORG
symbolic poetic language. The alienation of postwar and post-Holocaust humanity, the barrenness of the technological world, and the struggle for integrity and freedom in societies threatened by a legacy of crime and guilt are her central topics. Bachmann also became known for her radio plays, a popular pretelevision genre. Zikaden (1954) and Der gute Gott von Manhattan (1958) thematize the futile attempts to use art and love, the ultimate bastions of individualism, as a shelter against reality and the claims of society. Subjectivism and intimacy offer no solutions to the problems of postwar humanity threatened by nuclear destruction. Bachmann portrays heterosexual love as part of the problem, as the war unto death between men and women. In the mid-1950s she began to write lyrical libretti for H. W. Henze, including Der Prinz von Homburg (1960) and Der junge Lord (1965). Bachmann struggled to find her voice in male-dominated, latently fascist postwar Austria and Germany. Most of her earlier texts are ostensibly gender-neutral or written from the point of view of a male protagonist, like the title story of the collection of short stories Das dreifiigste Jahr (1961). However, all of her works are clearly the product of feminine writing, as the sensitive, uninhibited portrayal of existential fear and the narrators' empathy with the persecuted and oppressed demonstrate. "Unter Mordern und Irren," "Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha," and "Undine geht" (Das dreifiigste Jahr) confront the oppression of women in misogynist societies. The novels Molina (1971) and Der Fall Franza (posthumous fragment 1979) and the short stories in Simultan (1972) reveal how women are destroyed with impunity by the men closest to them. In all of these texts, in particular in the story "Drei Wege zum See," a nostalgic work that echoes Joseph Roth's portrayal of Austria's pre-Nazi multination state, everyday fascism appears as the quintessence of patriarchy. Bachmann furthermore shows that the contemporary means of critical inquiry, such as journalism and documentary photography, bolster—rather than undermine—existing structures. Der Fall Franza, set in Austria and Egypt, suggests that nowhere in the world is there a refuge from racism and misogyny, because both are already present in the world's oldest civilizations. See also: Austrian Literature; Gruppe 47; Horspiel; Love; Mythical Figures; Prizes, Literary; Short Story. References: Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, ed., Ingeborg Bachmann (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1976); Bartsch, Kurt, Ingeborg Bachmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988); Beicken, Peter U., Ingeborg Bachmann (Munich: Beck, 1988); Ewering, Cacilia, Frauenliebe undliteratur: (un)gelebte (Vor)Bilder bei Ingeborg Bachmann, Johanna Moosdorf und Christa Reinig (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1992); Hapkemeyer, Andreas, Ingeborg Bachmann: Entwicklungslinien in Werk und Leben (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990); Holler, Hans, ed., Der dunkle Schatten, dem ich schon seit Anfang folge: Ingeborg Bachmann (Vienna: Locker, 1982); Koschel, Christine, and Inge von Weidenbaum, eds., Kein objektives Urteil, nur ein lebendiges: Texte zum Werk von Ingeborg Bachmann (Munich: Piper, 1989); Schuscheng, Dorothe, Arbeit am Mythos
BALLAD
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Frau: Weiblichkeit und Autonomie in der literarischen Mythenrezeption Ingeborg Bachmanns, Christa Wolfs und Gertrud Leuteneggers (Frankfurt/M: Lang, 1987). DAGMAR C. G. LORENZ B a l l a d . The ballad, one of the oldest lyric forms in the German language, is a narrative poem that can be of many different types: historical, magical, romantic, politically and socially critical, or patriotic. Although originally an anonymous song linked to the Moritat and Bankelsang traditions, it has remained a popular form until the present day among women poets since the 19th century. The most famous ballad from that period is "Der Knabe im M o o r " (1844) by Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, an example of the magical ballad that demonstrates the Romantics' strong connection to nature. "Der Knabe im Moor" contains elements of the traditional German Volkslied and Heimatdichtung, yet prefigures 19th-century Realism in its precise detail. The two female poets hailed primarily by male critics as the early 20thcentury perfecters of the form are Agnes Miegel and Lulu von Strauss und Torney. Besides being friends, both were tied to the Gottingen circle led by Borries von Miinchhausen; they often wrote ballads based on historical themes and strongly influenced by the Volkslied and Heimat traditions. This influence became ideologically problematic due to Miegel's support for the Nazi regime and the reprinting of Strauss und Torney's turn-of-the-century volumes during that time. Miegel's sympathies with Hitler may explain her exclusion from Gisela Brinker-Gabler's anthology Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (1978). Strauss und Torney and Miegel published their initial collections of ballads and songs in 1902 and 1907, respectively. Other writers of ballads or balladesque poetry before 1945 include the Jewish poets Else Lasker-Schiiler, Gertrud Kolmar, and Ricarda Huch, the author of mainly historical texts, both poetic and prose. The best-known and most discussed postwar ballad by a woman is most likely "Die Ballade vom blutigen B o m m e " (1960) by Christa Reinig, which has been seized upon by male critics as a recent example of a modern Moritat. In its humorous, grotesque, and anachronistic characteristics it has been compared to the tradition inspired by Frank Wedekind and furthered by Bertolt Brecht. Helga M. Novak, an expatriate of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) after 1966, is another contemporary German woman poet who has produced numerous ballads of a politically and socially critical sort from the mid-1960s to the mid1970s. The first volume of her poetry takes its name from a ballad about a World War II refugee to the Soviet Union ("Ballade von der reisenden Anna," 1965); many of the ballads from her Balladen vom kurzen Prozefi (1975) treat the fates of victims of political oppression, sexism, and racism. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Folk Song; Heimatdichtung; Realism; Reinig, Christa; Volksdichtung. References: Riha, Karl, Moritat, Bankelsang, Protestballade: Kabarett-Lyrik und engagiertes Lied in Deutschland, 3rd ed. (K6nigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1979),
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Moritat, Song, Bankelsang: Zur Geschichte der Modernen Ballade (Gbttingen: Sachse and Pohl, 1965).
AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER B a r o q u e Literature (c. 1 6 0 0 - 1 7 2 0 ) . The Age of the Baroque in Germany represented a turning point for female literary activity, following the great upheavals during the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Improved communication, greater circulation of printed materials, and the creation of an educated class of state officials provided opportunities for women to contribute to literary life. The traditional Baroque literature was characterized by a mixture of form and subject matter that was often based on non-German language models and to which groups of German nationalists reacted by forming linguistic societies in order to purify and invigorate German diction. This is typified by the 1617 foundation of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft and Martin Opitz's Buch von der deutschen Poeterei (1624), in which he attempted to convince German contemporary poets that German was a language suitable for poetic expression. Although, in accord with tradition, most male writers chose biblical subjects (e.g., Johann Scheffler, Geistliche Sinn- und Schlufireime, 1657), Baroque literature marked the transition to a secular style and worldly themes (Andreas Gryphius, Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squentz, 1658). The most widely known literary document of the period is Simplicissimus by Hans Jacob Christoff el von Grimmelshausen (1669), which, aside from telling the story of the physical and spiritual growth of its hero, can be seen as the author's criticism of the horrors of the Thirty Years' War. The "spaces" that enabled women's participation in Baroque literary life were, predominantly, regional courts, literary societies, and convents and religious sects. Aristocratic women and daughters of scholars received a better education and support for their literary output. Women's works of the era often thematize their daily lives but also describe religious visions, sometimes combined with a learned exegesis of the Scripture. The most common areas of literary expression for women were autobiographical confessions, hymns, and religious poems. One theme that reemerges in Baroque women's poetry is women's entitlement to participation in public and literary life. Three examples of didactic and eloquent defenses of women's authorship are Anna Owena Hoyers' "An den christlichen Leser" (c.1650), Susanna Elisabeth Zeidler's "Beglaubigung der Jungfer Poeterey" (1686), and Sibylla Schwarz's "Ein Gesang wider den Neidt" (1650). Many other successful women authors adapted more traditional (masculine) themes and styles in their writing. The most famous woman poet of the Baroque, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, authored religious sonnets, hymns, and poems, in addition to eight volumes (1672-1693) of reflections on the incarnation, life, and suffering of Jesus Christ. Other recognized women writers of the Baroque were Gertraud
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Moller, Susanna Elizabeth Zeidler, and Sybilla Ursula von BraunschweigWolf enbiittel. See also: Confessional Literature; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Hoyers, Anna Owena; Hymn; Language Societies; Reformation; Poetry, Spiritual. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, "Frauen in den Glaubenskampfen. Offentliche Briefe, Lieder und Gelegenheitsschriften." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 149-71; Blackwell, Jeannine, "Herzensgesprache mit Gott: Bekenntnisse deutscher Pietistinnen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 265-89; Brandes, Ute, "Studierstube—Dichterklub—Hofgesellschaft: Kreativitat und kultureller Rahmen weiblicher Erzahlkunst im Barock." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 222-47, "Baroque Women Writers and the Public Sphere." Women in German Yearbook 7 (1991): 43-65; Gossmann, Elizabeth, "Fur und wider die Frauengelehrsamkeit. Eine europaische Diskussion im 17. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 185-96; Liebertz-Grun, Ursula, "Autorinnen im Umkreis der Hofe." Frauen. Literatur. Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 16-34; Lorenz, Dagmar, "Vom Kloster zur Kiiche: die Frau vor und nach der Reformation Dr. Martin Luthers." Die Frau von der Reformation zur Romantik. Ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Bonn: Bouvier, 1980) 7-35. BARBARA FRANTZ B e a u t i f u l S o u l . The term "Schone Seele" became common in aesthetics and literature of the late 18th century (the concept of the beauty of the soul was already known in medieval literature). The term exemplifies the idea of harmony central to classicist aesthetics. Friedrich Schiller defined the beautiful soul as an ideal that reconciles morality and reason into an aesthetic harmony ("Uber Anmut und Wiirde," 1793). Each moral deed must show beauty and grace. In a beautiful soul, conflict is impossible since duty and inclination naturally harmonize with each other. The development of the concept of the beautiful soul was closely related to the religious movement of Pietism and its call for self-observation and autobiographical records. One of the formative experiences in the life of the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe was his relationship with the Pietist Susanne von Klettenberg, a friend of his mother, from 1768 to 1770. Part of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796), "Bekenntnisse einer schonen Seele," is an interpolation of her writings, the autobiography of a woman who devotes her life to God in serenity, and only one of several examples of Goethe's having incorporated writings by women in his works. "Bekenntnisse" contrasts a religious, introverted, ' 'feminine'' way of life with the active, secular life of the male protagonist, who achieves Bildung through interaction with various aspects of society. An early example of the beauty of the soul and the character of a female protagonist as an ideal for the (female) reader was the novel Geschichte des
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Frduleins von Sternheim (1771-1772) by Sophie von La Roche. Her beautiful soul is closely connected to her "ubenden Tugenden" (virtuous charity). The beautiful soul is one of the main concepts used for portraying women in men's literature around 1800. Contrary to early Enlightenment's claim of equality, women were defined as Other, as the opposite of men, denying subjectivity to women. Male writers and philosophers constructed images and models of femininity as stabilizing forces of society, particularly during times of social upheaval. The beautiful souls have little, if anything, in common with real women and their living conditions. The impact of this ideology on female creativity is an important topic of feminist research. Equating protagonists and authors, women writers of the 18th century such as La Roche were often confined to the image of the beautiful soul, the virtuous woman. The term was not only used in literature: Christoph Martin Wieland characterized the works of the painter Angelika Kauffmann as "Denkmahl [ihrer] schonen Seele'' in a letter to her, thus downplaying the aesthetic quality of her work. This and similar judgments of the person and the femininity of a woman artist or writer, rather than the work, determined women's reception well into the 20th century. Since the 1980s, the reevaluation of the works of beautiful souls has constituted an important aspect of feminist research. See also: Bildungsroman; Classicism; La Roche, Sophie von; Pietism; Reception. References: Bronfen, Elisabeth, ed., Die schone Seele. Erzahltexte von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffmann und anderen (Munich: Goldmann, 1992); Hirsch, Marianne, "Spiritual Bildung: The Beautiful Soul as Paradigm." The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Ed. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland (Hannover: University Press of New England, 1983) 2 3 ^ 8 ; Klettenberg, Susanne Katharina von, Die schone Seele. Bekenntnisse, Schriften und Briefe. Ed. H. Funck (Leipzig: Insel, 1911); Norton, Robert E., The Beautiful Soul. Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER
B e f r e i u n g s k r i e g e ( 1 8 1 3 - 1 8 1 5 ) — s e e : Wars of Liberation B e s s e r u n g s s t u c k . Flourishing in Vienna in the early 19th century, the Besserungsstuck evolved out of the Baroque Court Opera tradition, from which it borrowed fairy tale elements, music, song, and dance, along with fantastic stage effects. The plays are versions of the Viennese Volksstuck that were written in local dialect and intended for popular audiences and generally featured malcontents who suffer from serious character flaws. Through the intervention of fairies or spirits from the world of magic, who put the characters through trials, the human characters eventually realize that the real world with which they were previously dissatisfied was indeed the best alternative, and they are thus reintegrated into the existing social hierarchy. Popular authors of the genre include Josef Alois Gleich, Karl Meisl, and Adolf Bauerle, whose plays enjoyed more than 30,000 performances from 1804 to 1853. Ferdinand Raimund is said to
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have perfected the tradition in his play Das Mddchen aus der Feenwelt oder Der Bauer als Milliondr (1826). Contributions of women dramatists to the genre have not been extensively documented. Therese Krones, for example, is often mentioned as an outstanding actress in Raimund's plays but has received no attention for her own plays, such as Sylphide, das See-Frdulein (1828) and Der Nebelgeist und der Branntweinbrenner (1829). In these Besserungsstucke, Krones uses another popular genre, musikalische Zauberspiele, to juxtapose the fairy tale world with the world of humans. In Sylphide, order is restored in both worlds when the humans, under the energetic and humorous leadership of Nettchen, the main protagonist in the world of humans, successfully pass certain tests put to them by the sea fairy Sylphide, the main protagonist in the fairy realm. Sylphide, greatly praised by critics at the time, was performed 66 times in one year in Vienna alone and was also popular in other German and Austrian theaters. See also: Baroque Literature; Fairy Tale Drama; Singspiel; Volkssttick. References: Hein, Jiirgen, ed., Theater und Gesellschaft: Das Volksstuck im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Diisseldorf: Bertelsmann, 1973); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Rommel, Otto, Die Altwiener Volkskomodie: Ihre Geschichte vom barocken Welttheater bis zum Tode Nestroys (Vienna: Schroll, 1952). BELINDA CARSTENS-WICKHAM BGB—see: Biirgerliches Gesetzbuch Biedermeier ( 1 8 1 5 - 1 8 4 8 ) . The term characterizes some of the literature written during the period also called Vormdrz. The term Biedermeier has negative connotations: to have a Biedermeier mentality means to be unpolitical and interested primarily in the pursuit of domesticity. Large segments of the middle class in Germany and Austria preferred Erbauungsliteratur, ignoring the political writing of the Vormdrz inspired by the French Revolution. While the term itself and the classification of writers as Biedermeier authors remain disputed, nevertheless, a number of writers share a certain aesthetic orientation: they are less interested in political action and more concerned with a spiritual response to the complex times in which they lived. Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, commonly considered a Biedermeier author, published her first collection of religious poetry, Das geistliche Jahr (pub. 1851), infused with nature imagery, at age 41. The novella Die Judenbuche: Ein Sittengemdlde aus dem gebirgichten Westfalen was published in 1842. In the fragment Ledwina (1819-1826), an early prose narrative, she examines women's socially determined roles as wives and mothers; the heroine suffers because she does not adhere to contemporary role prescriptions. Droste-Hiilshoff s critical perspective in this text and in her dramas Bertha oder die Alpen (1817) and Perdu (1840) are incompatible with common definitions of Biedermeier literature.
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Alongside Droste-Hulshoff's lyric, that of Luise Hensel, a poet who was not published until she was 71 years old, represents the zenith of German religious poetry in the 19th century. Hensel, who led an independent and active life, was influenced by mysticism and Pietism. Droste-Hulshoff and Hensel remained quite consistent in their writings throughout their lives; this was not the case with Ida Hahn-Hahn, a writer who wrote openly feminist texts (e.g., Grdfin Faustine, 1840) before her conversion to Catholicism, at which point she became an avid writer of erbauliche Romane. These novels always had a female main character, were consciously directed at women readers, and were considered antidotes to popular contemporary Unterhaltungsliteratur. On the stage, the plays of the actress and dramatist Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer were among the most popular written during the 19th century. Birch-Pfeiffer wrote, and often produced, over 100 plays in 30 years, from 1830 to 1860. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Erbauungsliteratur; Mysticism; Pietism; Revolution, French; Young Germany. References: Friihwald, Wolfgang, "Anmerkungen Luise Hensels zu den gesammelten Schriften Clemens Brentanos." Aurora (1982): 178-87; Herminghouse, Patricia, "Seeing Double: Ida Hahn-Hahn and Her Challenge to Feminist Criticism." Out of Line/ Ausgef alien: The Paradox of Marginality in the Writings of Nineteenth-Century German Women. Ed. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989); 255-78; Sichelschmidt, Gustav, Allein mit meinem Zauberwort: Annette von Droste-Hulshoff (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1990); Van Stipriaan Pritchett, Rinske Renee, "The Art of Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer" (Diss., University of Maryland, 1990); Treder, Uta, "Das verschuttete Erbe: Lyrikerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 41-68. HELGA STIPA MADLAND B i l d u n g s r o m a n . The so-called Bildungsroman (novel of formation, novel of individual education and acculturation), a term coined by the literary historian Carl Morgenstern in the early 1800s, describes an individual's (usually a man's) life, his development from childhood to emotional, educational, and intellectual maturity in the form of a progressive process of self-perfection up to a point of personal contentment and harmony with society. The genre originated in the late 18th century, when the emphasis on the inner development of the character and the concept of Selbstbildung (self-formation, self-education) distinguished the Bildungsroman from the educational novel, which places emphasis on a pedagogical mentor (cf. Wilhelm Meister, vol. 3: "[M]ich selbst, ganz wie ich da bin, auszubilden, das war dunkel von Jugend auf mein Wunsch und meine Absicht"). The term "Bildungsroman" is often used synonymously with the "educational novel" and is considered a subdivision of the Entwicklungsroman, although there is a tendency to use the latter as the generic term instead of Bildungsroman. Whereas the term itself suggests a homogeneous and standardized type of novel and narrative pattern, recent scholarship has come to view
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the term as problematic. In canonical literary history, almost all Bildungsromane are said to have been authored by men. Generally, Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796) is considered the prototype; Meister's followers range from Ludwig Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), Gottfried Keller's Der griine Heinrich (1854), Gustav Freytag's Soil und Haben (1855), Adalbert Stifter's Der Nachsommer (1857), and Wilhelm Raabe's Der Hungerpastor (1864), to Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (1924) and Heinrich Mann's Die Jugend des Konigs Henri Quatre (1935) and Die Vollendung des Konigs Henri Quatre (1938). Thomas Mann's Joseph und seine Bruder (1933— 1942) has been interpreted as an ironic version of the form. In contemporary literary criticism, the term often appears as a heuristic term that usually stresses a distancing from the 19th-century concept of Bildung, the concept of integrating a mature person into a patriarchal society. The success of the term Bildungsroman lies in its compatibility with the goals of the 19th-century German bourgeoisie. Its search for a (national) identity and a positive self-image emphasized individual achievement and social integration. Nationalist appropriation made the Bildungsroman the "German national genre" (Kontje). In the 20th century, novels that emphasize similar values have, at times, been considered Bildungsromane, for example, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), socialist Bildungsromane like Christa Wolf's Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968) and her Kindheitsmuster (1976), or in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Peter Weiss' Asthetik des Widerstandes (1975-1981), which describes the Bildungsweg of a member of the working class. Similarly, traits indicating a modern Bildungsroman have been identified in Giinter Grass' Die Blechtrommel (1959), Peter Handke's Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (1972), and Botho StrauB's Derjunge Mann (1984). Feminist scholarship has begun to revise canonical interpretations of the genre and to appropriate the term for works by women. Some of these female Bildungsromane are Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim (1771), Friederike Helene Unger's Julchen Griinthal (1784), Wilhelmine Karoline von Wobeser's Elisa, oder das Weib, wie es seyn sollte (1795), Karoline von Wolzogen's Agnes von Lilien (1796), Dorothea Schlegel's Florentin (1801), Therese Huber's Hannah, der Herrnhuterin Deborah Findling (1821), Bettina von Arnim's Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835), Johanna Schopenhauer's Gabriele (1819-1820), Fanny Lewald's Jenny (1843), Eugenie Marlitt's Goldelse (1866), Wilhelmine von Hillern's Ein Arzt der Seele (1869), and Gabriele Reuter's Aus guter Familie (1895). Unlike the traditional Bildungsromane, which always focus on a male hero, many of these novels depict a heroine's process of education and acculturation, which seems in itself a radical step in an age when education for women was limited and one-sided. While some of these novels (Wobeser's Elisa) justify women's limited educational opportunities (since women's supposedly natural vocation is marriage and motherhood), others (Unger's Julchen Griinthal) portray a very sarcastic and critical picture of women's education (the education permitted them as well as that
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withheld from them). In these novels, the term "Bildungsroman" is often turned on its head, since—given the ideology of women's "place"—the traditional progressive self-perfection and the ultimate achievement of a harmonious relationship with the inner self and society are not possible for the female protagonist: Bildung in that sense is reserved for men. It may be this insight that is expressed in the fact that many Bildungsromane, focus on male protagonists: examples are Sophie Mereau's Das Bluthenalter der Empfindung (1794) and Dorothea Schlegel's Florentin (1801). Another focus of feminist scholarship concerns the depiction of women and gender roles in the male Bildungsroman, like "Bekenntnisse einer schonen Seele" in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796), Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde (1799), August Kotzebue's Luise oder die unseligen Folgen des Leichtsinns (1800, which has been attributed to his sister Caroline Amalie Ludecus), or Karl Gutzkow's Wally die Zweiflerin (1835). The exploration of women's Bildungsromane in recent scholarship has led to a debate in feminist scholarship to what extent the term is applicable to works by women at all. Some feminists identify distinctly female versions of the Bildungsroman', others have stressed that until the 20th century Bildung was limited to men and view female Bildung as a contradiction in terms (Smith). Consequently, not until the 20th century could women writers depict " a fictional heroine who goes through the process of developing an identity and a self" (Labovitz). Helga Meise distinguishes between male Bildungsromane and Frauenromane, emphasizing their "radical Otherness," thus avoiding comparison with male standards and placing previously ignored women's writing in an ideologically dubious tradition. For some feminists, only recent narratives or novels of "awakening" (Felski) that describe positive experiences of women finding themselves, for example, Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975) or Brigitte Schwaiger's novels, can be considered feminine appropriations of the Bildungsroman. See also: Beautiful Soul; Entwicklungsroman; La Roche, Sophie von; Novel, Educational; Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Wolf, Christa. References: Baumer, Konstanze Christine, "Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde—ein weiblicher Bildungsroman des 19. Jahrhunderts" (Diss., University of California, Davis, 1983); Blackwell, Jeannine, "Bildungsroman mit Dame: The Heroine in the German 'Bildungsroman' from 1770 to 1900" (Diss., Indiana University, 1982); Felski, Rita, "The Novel of Self-Disco very: A Necessary Fiction?" Southern Review 19 (1986): 131-48; Hardin, James, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the "Bildungsroman" (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991); Heuser, Magdalene, " 'Spuren trauriger Selbstvergessenheit': Moglichkeiten eines weiblichen 'Bildungsromans' um 1800: Friederike Helene Unger." Kontroversen, alte und neue: Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses, Gottingen 1985. Ed. Albrecht Schone, Inge Stephan, and Carl Pietzcker (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1986) 30-42; Kontje, Todd, The German "Bildungsroman": History of a National Genre (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993), Private Lives in the Public Sphere: The German "Bildungsro-
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man" as Metafiction (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1992); Labovitz, Esther Kleinbord, The Myth of the Heroine: The Female ' 'Bildungsroman'' in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (New York: Berne Lang, 1988); Meise, Helga, Die Unschuld und die Schrift: Deutsche Frauenromane im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Guttandin and Hoppe, 1983); Schweitzer, Antonie, and Simone Sitte, "Tugend-Opfer-Rebellion: Zum Bild der Frau im weiblichen Erziehungs- und Bildungsroman." Frauen Literatur Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 144-65. Smith, John, "Cultivating Gender: Sexual Difference, 'Bildung,' and the 'Bildungsroman.' " Michigan Germanic Studies 13.2 (1987): 206-25; Weissberg, Liliane, "The Master's Theme, and Some Variations: Dorothea Schlegel's 'Florentin' as 'Bildungsroman.' " Michigan Germanic Studies 13.2 (1987): 169-81.
WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER Biographical Fiction. In the hybrid form of biographical fiction, the life of a historical person serves as the basis for a fictitious narrative. Along with the poetic re-creation based on a literary text (Werkbearbeitung), biographical fiction, particularly that which deals with literary predecessors, is a form of productive reception (Sudau). For women authors, it often serves the need to establish a genealogy of female precursors while writing in their own voices and in literary forms not limited by paradigms inherited from the maledominated realm of "factual" or "objective" biography. The prototype for biographical fiction in the female literary canon is Bettina von Arnim's Die Giinderode (1839). Composed of letters and poems written in 1804-1806, and edited and supplemented by von Arnim more than 30 years later, it defies any attempt at presenting a coherent, chronological, and complete account of Karoline von Giinderrode's life, as a contemporary, positivist biography would have done. Instead of the supremacy of an authorial voice, von Arnim establishes a dialogic situation, which does not objectify Giinderrode. She celebrates reciprocity and close friendship between women, and she tries to capture what a detached, traditional biography could not grasp. Instead of hiding behind a screen of objectivity, she includes her own voice. The heterogeneity, intersubjectivity, and polyvocality of her narrative are often regarded as an example of ecriture feminine and have provided a model for other women authors. Christa Wolf has continued von Arnim's project in essays about her and Giinderrode, but most notably in her work of biographical fiction, Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979). In this novella, Wolf stages an imaginary meeting between Giinderrode and Heinrich von Kleist, in the setting of a tea party typical for the era of Romanticism (von Arnim and other well-known Romantics are also present). By establishing an intellectual elective affinity between Giinderrode and Kleist, Wolf inscribes Giinderrode's name into the male literary canon and strengthens her position as a female literary predecessor. By implementing a technique of weaving the narrative out of a multitude of voices, which cannot always be attributed to only one figure, she creates a narrative with a fluctuating subject position and ambiguous authorial voice—"Wer spricht?" Furthermore,
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she incorporates marked and unmarked quotes from Giinderrode's works and letters. Wolf thus re-creates aspects of a life not represented in male literary history; she revives a literary foremother who had been previously marginalized in the canon. But she also includes her own 20th-century perspective and merges her voice with that of Giinderrode or Kleist. Consequently, she writes a double biography—as did von Arnim—that contains the self and the other—something possible only in the realm of fiction. Other women writers have pursued the goal of reviving women marginalized by male-dominated historiography, each using a different mix of authenticity and fictionality. One area of attention in recent fiction has been the resurrection of women at the side of famous men. Examples are Sybille Knauss' Ach Elise oder Lieben ist ein einsames Geschdft (1981, about Elise Lensing, Hebbel's lover), Karin Reschke's Verfolgte des Gliicks. Findebuch der Henriette Vogel (1982, about Kleist's suicide companion), Ria Endres' Milena antwortet (1982, about Kafka's friend Milena Jesenska), Christine Bruckner's Wenn du geredet hattest, Desdemona. Ungehaltene Reden ungehaltener Frauen (1983, about 11 women from history, mythology, and fiction), Helga Konigsdorf's Respektloser Umgang (1986, about nuclear physicist Lise Meitner, in the shadow of Otto Hahn), and Brigitte Struzyk's Caroline unterm Freiheitsbaum: Ansichtssachen (1988, about Caroline Michaelis-Bohmer-Schlegel-Schelling). While freedom from the restraints of factual biography writing offers the possibility to re-create lives not well preserved in historical documents, it has, in some cases, led to a strong identification of the author with her subject-predecessor, a loss of critical distance, and self-thematization (Weigel). This can be avoided if the author uses distancing devices such as irony, satire, or playfulness, as does Elfriede Jelinek in her drama Clara S. Eine musikalische Tragodie (1981); Ginka Steinwachs, in George Sand. Eine Frau in Bewegung, die Frau von Stand (1980), finds new ways of relating a predecessor's life to her own experimental writing techniques (Weigel). In women's writing, biographical fiction has been successfully utilized in reviving marginalized female predecessors and writing them into the canon. The open, but other-focused, form of the genre fosters the use of some of the literary techniques preferred in ecriture feminine, such as open boundaries, dialogism, and inter subjective concepts of authorship. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Autobiography; Biographism; Biography; Canon, literary; Dialogics, Feminist; Ecriture Feminine; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Jelinek, Elfriede; Subjectivity; Wolf, Christa. References: Braunbeck, Helga, "Das weibliche Schreibmuster der Doppelbiographie: Bettine von Arnims und Christa Wolfs Gunderrode-Biographik." Frauen—Literatur—Revolution. Ed. Helga Grubitzsch, Maria Kublitz, Dorothea Mey, and Ingeborg Singendonk-Heublein (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1992) 231-44; Frieden, Sandra, " 'Falls es strafbar ist, die Grenzen zu verwischen': Autobiographic, Biographie und Christa Wolf." Vom Anderen und vom Selbst: Beitrage zu Fragen der Biographie und Autobiographic (Konigstein/Ts: Athenaum, 1982) 153-66; Herminghouse, Patricia, "Die Wie-
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derentdeckung der Romantik: Zur Funktion der Dichterfiguren in der neueren DDR-Literatur." Amsterdarner Beitrage zur Neueren Germanistik 11.12 (1981): 217-48; Hoffmeister, Donna, "Rewriting Literary History Through Fiction: Karin Reschke and Christa Wolf." South Atlantic Review 49 (1984): 3-17; Sudau, Ralf, Werkbearbeitung, Dichterfiguren: Traditionsaneignung am Beispiel der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1985); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989) 313-43. HELGA G. BRAUNBECK B i o g r a p h i s m . This generally denotes a disreputable method of literary criticism, in which the critic tries to establish an uncritical and emotional relationship between the author and his or her work. In seeking to uncover the authentic experience that informed the fictional or poetic account, biographism is considered a dilettante approach to literature and experience. Women's writing has been especially susceptible to this pseudoscientific method, as their work and their lives as authors have been scrutinized with normative expectations concerning gender roles. A comparison of the reception of literary works by male and female writers reveals a strong gender bias in literary criticism. While a man's objectification of personal experiences may be praised as insightful and perceptive, works by women have been frequently criticized as being too personal or too subjective to be literary. Many feminist critics, however, struggle with the issue of biographism as well. The attempt to keep the link between author and work intact frequently results in a methodological dilemma: how to take the author's gendered life into consideration without reducing the work to its autobiographical components? The reception of Sophie von La Roche's 1771 novel Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim is a case in point. Johann Wolfgang Goethe advised critics that they "err if they think they are judging a book—it is a human soul." A similar conflation of author and work can be detected in Caroline Flachsland's disappointment at discovering that Sophie von La Roche was so different from her fictional namesake Sophie von Sternheim, who was perceived as the embodiment of ideal womanhood. Thus, on one hand, the literary work is discredited as merely autobiographical, lacking artistic sophistication, and, on the other hand, the literary character is used against the author who created it. Even after many other publications, La Roche continued to be addressed as "Fraulein von Sternheim," whereas Goethe, for example, was able to reject the initial identification with the Werther character. A more recent example of biographism is the literary debate that ensued following the 1990 publication of Christa Wolf's narrative Was bleibt. While Wolf's literary praxis of "subjective authenticity" lends itself quite readily to a conflation of the author with her writing, the text is still a literary reworking of her experiences. Many critics, however, established a one-to-one relationship between the narrator of Was bleibt and the author Christa Wolf. They used her
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biography to judge her work and, vice versa, her literary texts to judge her life. This becomes even more obvious in later accusations of her alleged Stasiinvolvement, resulting in lamentations that Wolf damaged not only her biography but also her oeuvre. See also: Authorship; Autobiography; FRG Literature (1990-present); La Roche, Sophie von; Reception; Subjective Authenticity; Wolf, Christa. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Frieden, Sandra, "The Left-Handed Compliment: Perspectives and Stereotypes in Criticism." Beyond the Eternal Feminine. Ed. Susan Cocalis and Kay Goodman (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1982) 311-33; Haslinger, Adolf, "Biographismus" in der Gegenwartsliteratur? (Salzburg: Pustet, 1979); Kuhn, Anna, '' 'Eine Konigin kopfen ist effektiver als einen Konig kopfen': The Gender Politics of the Christa Wolf Controversy." German Monitor 31 (1994): 200-215. HEIKE HOFMANN Biography. A woman-centered reassessment of biography as a genre calls for revisions of methodology and epistemology. Since the early 1960s, the absence of women in recorded biographical history has invited sociologists, fiction writers, historians, and literary scholars to document the lives of individual women as well as groups of women. Traditional conventions of the writing of lives, such as claims to objectivity, accuracy, truth, accountability, validity, and worthiness of the subject, prove inadequate in view of feminist projects that question whether so-called scientific objectivity is possible or even desirable. Instead, the blurring of borders between history and fiction is acknowledged, and what used to pass for historical fact is regarded as the biographer's construct. An awareness of the biographer's personal involvement in the process of telling another's life story, be it as researcher or editor, reveals to the reader the unavoidability of bias in the process. Feminist methodology consequently alerts the researcher/author to the importance of examining her or his own position, that is, the author's own background, biases, involvement, and intentions. The challenge now consists of making visible the position of power the author has over her or his subject, the involvement of author and subject, and the dialogue that ensues between them. Acknowledging that the researcher is located on the same critical plane as her or his subject means that omitting the biographer's own biography would result in a distortion of reality. The challenge of taking the biographical project beyond restoring women to cultural, social, political, religious, or literary history also necessitates positioning the biographical subject in the contexts in which they lived and the contexts in which they were represented. Feminist methods in the writing of biographies include deconstructing patriarchal biases. Since women's lives have been marginalized and fictionalized by men for centuries, women's biographies can often
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be reconstructed only by revisiting sources that have already been filtered through the male gaze and that often reveal more about the authors than their subjects. The feminist praxis of collective authorship is reflected in an approach to biography that does not single out individuals but portrays groups of women who interacted and shaped each others' lives—an example is Ruth Ellen Joeres' Die Anfdnge der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters (1983). See also: Autobiography; Biographical Fiction; Biographism; Biography, Literary; Positionality. References: Ascher, Carol, Louise de Salvo, and Sara Ruddick, eds., Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about Their Work on Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); Heilbrun, Carolyn, Writing a Woman's Life (London: Women's Press, 1988); lies, Teresa, ed., All Sides of the Subject. Women and Biography (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992). ERIKA BERROTH Biography, Literary. Literary biography, the biography of an author, is generally considered a subset of biography. Like all biographies, literary biography oscillates between such poles as subjectivity and objectivity, the personal and the historical, art and life. Perhaps most important today, it provides the opportunity for affirming individual agency and personal identity. Women's movements have been dealing with these issues since their inception. The (re-) discovery of forgotten women writers, informed by the search for inspiration, role models, and women's literary tradition, continues to be one of the most important projects of feminist literary scholarship. In the course of their research and writing, many biographers develop a strong sense of identification with the chosen subject, which often results in a blurring of the biographical and the autobiographical realms. Today, literary biographies of almost every major author exist. One of the first biographies of a woman by a woman was Claire von Glumer's "Rahel" (a sketch in vol. 6 of her series Bibliothek fur die deutsche Frauenwelt, 1856). In contrast to the characterization of Rahel Levin-Varnhagen as an intelligent but placid woman perpetrated by male biographers, Gliimer saw her as an unhappy figure imprisoned by the social mores of her time. A similar image of Levin-Varnhagen informs Louise Otto's portrait, who in her 1868 and 1869 volumes, Merkwiirdige und geheimnisvolle Frauen and Einflussreiche Frauen aus dem Volke, directed her attention exclusively to women. Levin-Varnhagen attracted many more biographers, most notably Hannah Arendt. Due to many parallels between Arendt's and Varnhagen's situations, Arendt felt a deep political as well as personal empathy with her subject. She states in her preface to Rahel Varnhagen: Lebensgeschichte einer deutschen Judin aus der Romantik (written 1933/1938, pub. 1957 in English translation, 1958 in German) that her interest is to recount Varnhagen's life as she herself might have told it.
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Ingeborg Drewitz started her work on Bettine von Arnim: Romantik, Revolution, Utopie (1969) because she felt the Romantic poet was so embedded in prejudice and misunderstanding that she was famous, but unknown. While searching for the facts about the author's life, Drewitz, at the same time, acknowledges that nobody knows the boundaries between reality and imagination. Gisela Dischner's Bettina von Arnim: Eine weibliche Sozialbiographie aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (1978) includes many excerpts from Arnim's work as well as letters and documents. Dischner's portrait of Caroline Schelling-Schlegel, Caroline: Ein Leben zwischen biirgerlicher Vereinzelung und romantischer Geselligkeit (1979), follows a similar concept, though it is more chronological. Christa Wolf's biographical essay "Karoline von Giinderrode: Der Schatten eines Traumes" (1979), written as an introduction to a collection by the same name of Giinderrode's poems, prose, and letters, not only is a work of recuperation but serves to illustrate women's struggle for emancipation, then and now. It is poetic and subjective, similar to Carola Stern's biography of yet another romantic poet, Ich mochte mir FlUgel wunschen: das Leben der Dorothea Schlegel (1990), a work that could almost be considered biographical fiction. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Autobiography; Biographical Fiction; Biographism; Biography; Wolf, Christa. References: Ascher, Carol, Louise de Salvo, and Sara Ruddick, eds., Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about Their Work on Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); Bell, Susan Groag, and Marilyn Yalom, eds., Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); lies, Teresa, ed., All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992); Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher, "SelfConscious Histories: Biographies of German Women in the Nineteenth Century." German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History. Ed. John Fout (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984) 172-96.
HEIKE HOFMANN Black German Literature. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 German blacks currently live in Germany. Their highly complex history stretches back to before the Middle Ages, contrary to common assumptions that most or all black Germans are children of black GIs. Recent publications by black Germans analyze connections between ethnic and national identity and explore a new discourse on blackness. Many black German authors are concerned that the German literature is frequently implicitly or explicitly racist, putting blacks into an inferior position. Examples are Friedrich Schiller's Die Verschworung des Fiesco zu Genua (1783) and Johann Gottfried Herder's use of blackness as a metaphor for evil. In the 1940s, the poet Gottfried Benn used blackness as a metaphor for savagery and rape. German blacks are confronted with some of the same gender-related issues that have been discussed in the United States and other countries with more sizable black minorities: white society depicts black women as either aggressive
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and dominating—and/or attractive and sexually exciting. They may be applauded as superwomen who excel academically, but they are rarely noticed as individuals. There is also a lack of female black role models. Rosemarie Lester described in Trivialneger (1981) that many black boys (to a larger extent than black girls) are tracked to nonacademic high schools. Gisela Fremgen provides a forum for black women in Germany in . . . und wenn du dazu noch schwarz bist (1984). She also includes a brief historical overview of the history of blacks in Germany, focusing on the experiences of black immigrants in Germany. Since 1985, the bimonthly magazine Afro-look has appeared, currently edited by Ricky Reiser. Its first edition was titled Onkel Toms Faust in an attempt to "change the image of Uncle Tom and to symbolize the new opposition to oppression." The magazine includes a special section addressing women's issues, such as identity questions in terms of race and gender, solidarity among women, gender relations, and the potential of black women to serve as role models. Farbe bekennen (1992), edited by Katharina Oguntoye, May Opitz, and later, M. Ayim and Dagmar Schultz, records the oral histories of six black German women who thematize the meaning of race in their lives. These life histories are situated at the crossroads between racism and sexism. More recently, a collection of essays, Entfernte Verbindungen (1993), has addressed racism and antiSemitism in the women's movement. It includes contributions by Ika Hiigel and May Ayim on black German women. In 1995, May Ayim also published a volume of poetry called blues in schwarz weifi. gedichte. See also: Exotin; German Jewish Literature; Holocaust Literature; Identity Theories; Lesbian Literature; Minority Literature; Turkish-German Literature. References: afro look, eine zeitschrift von schwarzen deutschen (Berlin: Initiative Schwarze Deutsche and Schwarze in Deutschland ISD Berlin e.V. 1985); Ayim, May, et al., Entfernte Verbindungen. Rassismus, AntiSemitismus, Klassenunterdriickung (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1993), blues in schwarz weifi. gedichte (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1995); Blackshire-Belay, Carol, ed., The Afro-German Experience: Critical Essays (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995); Campt, Tina, "Afro-German Cultural Identity and the Politics of Personality: Contests and Contexts in the Formation of a German Ethnic Identity." New German Critique 58 (1993): 109-26; Fremgen, Gisela, . . . und wenn du dazu noch schwarz bist. Berichte schwarzer Frauen in der Bundesrepublik (Bremen: edition con, 1984); Hopkins, Leroy T., "Speak, So I Might See You! Afro-German Literature." World Literature Today 69.3 (Summer 1995): 533-38; Lester, Rosemarie K., "Trivialneger." Das Bild des Schwarzen im westdeutschen Illustriertenroman (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1982); Oguntoye, Katharina, et al., Farbe bekennen. Afro-Deutsche Frauen aufden Spuren ihrer Geschichte, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1992); Sephocle, Marilyn, Die Rezeption der Negritude in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1991).
FRANCINE JOBATEY
Blut u n d Boden—see: Dorfgeschichte; Earth Mother; Heimatdichtung; National Socialism
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BODY, FEMALE
B o d y , F e m a l e . The female body represents a paradox: on one hand, it is an object of fear; on the other hand, it is an object that is desired and a source of pleasure. This objectification has produced discourses on the female body as a sacred temple to be defended at all costs (exemplified by the Christian image of the Madonna) or as a source of temptation, destruction, and corruption to be controlled or destroyed (as in St. Paul's version of Eve or the myths of Delilah and Medusa). Feminist discourse strives to expose these manifestations of fear and envy, as well as the ways in which women are culturally encouraged to collaborate in their own degradation and repression. Dualist conceptions of the body have their roots in theological texts from all centuries, transforming the female body into an ideological battlefield. Emphasizing purity, the body as the seat of motherhood became the sacred vessel of creation but one that has always been threatened by pleasures of the flesh: thus, the mother of Christ vied for power with Magdalena the prostitute; the chastity of nuns clashed with the licentiousness of witches; Mary's Immaculate Conception was juxtaposed with liaisons with incubi. Predictably, the object of so much fear has been the target of violence. Rape was declared the ' 'right of the conqueror," and "witch trials" sanctioned murder and mutilation. Even female religious writers share this obsession with the body: their fascination with purifying self-punishment established an equally powerful tradition of feminine masochism. Such dualism still exists today and contributes to the conceptualization of the female body in literature and all media. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the inscription of cultural values upon the female body has been facilitated by new technologies of mass production, especially the mass media. Continuously, new diets, fashions, and exercise programs, designed to mold the female body to ever-changing cultural beauty ideals, are massmarketed. Feminist literature since 1968 affirms that the female body in contemporary society remains the focus of destructive desires and that female sexuality still provokes reactionary fears. The battles for reproductive freedom in the 1920s are captured in Irmgard Keun's Gilgi, eine von uns (1931) and Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932). After 1968, these battles had to be refought. Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975) provides a powerful indictment of the dehumanizing view of women in its portrayal of a hypocritical and predatory lover who does not care about the ultimate effects of a contraceptive pill on the protagonist's body. Margot Schroder's Ich stehe meine Frau (1975) portrays the body as raw material that is exploited and used up; and Anne Duden's Ubergang (1982) and Das Judasschaf (1985) view the body as a surface of injuries. The destructive effects of an exploitative, body-centered modernity are further explored in Elisabeth Opitz's Horch in das Dunkel. Ein Bericht iiber Depression (1979) and in Maria Erlenberger's novel of anorexia nervosa, Hunger nach Wahnsinn (1977). The theme of illness reappears in Christa Wolf's Nachdenken iiber Christa T. (1968), in which it is subtly linked to the emotional sterility of the protagonist's environment, and again in Maja Beutler's Fuss fassen (1980).
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The status of women and minorities as "Other" is examined in Katharina Oguntoye's Farbe bekennen (1986); Aysel Ozakin's Die Preisvergabe (1982) and Die Leidenschaft der anderen (1983); and Alev Tekinay's Der weinende Granatapfel (1990). In Das Geschlecht der Gedanken (1978), Jutta Heinrich argues that all thoughts are inextricably bound to previously constructed gender roles; therefore, men and women are trapped by their own destructive, self-fulfilling prophecies. Not surprisingly, Heinrich's protagonist distances herself from her own body and regards sexuality as "low" and "wrong." By demonstrating that the female body is a site of masochism, modern contributions to the tradition of feminine masochism incorporate substantial critiques of those societal institutions based on the exchange of the female body. Elfriede Jelinek has devoted much of her writing to the entanglement of masochism in the lives of women, suggesting that women are willing accomplices to their own destruction. In Die Klavierspielerin (1983) and Lust (1989), masochistic impulses are portrayed as the driving force behind both mother-daughter and husband-wife relationships. See also: Black German Literature; Inquisition; Jelinek, Elfriede; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Minority Literature; Mother Mary; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Participation/Exclusion; Revolution, Sexual; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Turkish-German Literature; Virgin; Witch; Wolf, Christa. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1989); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Frauen Literatur Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985). MAGDA MUELLER B o u r g e o i s Innocence—see: Bourgeois Tragedy B o u r g e o i s Tragedy ( 1 7 5 0 - 1 7 9 0 ) . In bourgeois tragedy, a genre that gained in popularity among predominantly bourgeois authors around 1750, the tragic events take place predominantly in the private sphere. The dramatic conflict is set within the family and is seen in contrast to the traditional heroic tragedy with its metaphysical cause for the hero's tragic fate, which is located in the realm of history or mythology. In heroic tragedy, the political/public hero or heroine (the king or queen) was a representative figure meant to exemplify the human condition. In bourgeois tragedy, characters are seen as private persons and portrayed within their social context. Fate as a determining factor is replaced by individual motivation, which, in turn, is determined by the character. The notion of mixed characters (i.e., characters who are neither wholly virtuous nor completely evil) allowed for easier identification with the characters on stage and thus strengthened the emotional impact of the genre. The negotiation of values of the private sphere assumed special significance for women, who were socialized primarily for the private sphere. In many bourgeois tragedies by women, the new bourgeois values celebrated in traditional
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dramas of the genre are implicitly questioned. We find examples with or without a tragic outcome. In Christiane Karoline Schlegel's DUval und Charmille. Ein biirgerliches Trauerspiel in 5 AufzUgen (1778), all characters are members of the nobility, although the main characters adhere to a bourgeois value system. The plot (Duval attempts to coerce his lover, Amalie, who is befriended by his wife, Marianne, into a double suicide) is not determined by the rivalry between wife and lover, as in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's bourgeois tragedies with their corresponding vice-virtue conflict. Duval initially envisions a menage a trois, but when this is prevented by pressure from the court (not the women), he stabs Amalie to death and then shoots himself. The tone of this bourgeois tragedy is not moralizing or didactic, a fact that was ridiculed as artistic inability in reviews. As in the other bourgeois tragedies by women, the central topic is the problematic new concept of sentimental or erotic love with its rules, conflicts, contradictions, and hopes. The illusory nature of free choice in selecting a partner for the sentimental love paradigm promised by the cultural discourse is at the center of Sophie Albrecht's bourgeois tragedy Theresgen. Ein Schauspiel mit Gesang, in funf AufzUgen (1781). Theresgen steadfastly refuses her father's orders to marry her middle-class suitor, because she is in love with Count Adolf, although there is no hope of marriage, due to class differences. Rather than being literally dragged to the altar against her will, she drowns herself. The conflict between honor and love and unrequited erotic desire is at the center of Eleonore Thon's Adelheit von Rastenberg. Ein Trauerspiel in fUnf AufzUgen (1788). This bourgeois tragedy falls into the category of Ritterschauspiel (chivalric play); all main characters are members of the nobility. But the conflict is a distinctly private one: Adelheit, who was forced by her father to forsake her true love and marry another man, is faced, after years of a loveless marriage, with the decision to remain in her marriage or to flee with her lover, Adelbert. He envisions a common-law marriage on his sister's estate, an arrangement that would define Adelheit exclusively through her relationship to her lover and leave her without any other social ties. Adelheit decides to remain in her marriage but is stabbed by her rival Bertha, who forestalls Adelbert's revenge by poisoning herself. While class conflicts play a role in those bourgeois tragedies that manage to avoid a tragic outcome—Marianne Ehrmann's Leichtsinn und gutes Herz (1786) and Victoria von Rupp's Jenny, oder die UneigennUtzigkeit (1777)—class conflicts are not at the center of the other bourgeois tragedies. Instead, the contradictions within the bourgeois value system, especially in the discourse on sentimental and erotic love and their relationship to the familial constellation, are foregrounded. In all plays, simple solutions and moralistic or didactic positions are avoided. For example, the notion of poetic justice is tentative at best. The genre became less popular with the onset of Classicism and Romanticism, during which aesthetic and philosophical concerns were emphasized over the
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bourgeois tragedy's assumed moralistic, didactic, and utilitarian tendencies, and eventually disappeared entirely in the 19th century. See also: Classicism; Comedie Larmoyante; Enlightenment; Love; Ritterliteratur; Romanticism; Tragedy; Tragedy, Historical. References: Daunicht, Richard, Die Entstehung des biirgerlichen Trauerspiels in Deutschland (Berlin: deGruyter, 1965); Guthke, Karl, Das deutsche burgerliche Trauerspiel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984); Kahl-Pantis, Brigitte, Bauformen des biirgerlichen Trauerspiels (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1977); Monch, Cornelia, Abschrecken oder Mitleiden: Das deutsche burgerliche Trauerspiel im 18. Jahrhundert: Versuch einer Typologie (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1993); Pikulik, Lothar, Burgerliches Trauerspiel und Empfindsamkeit (Cologne, Bohlau, 1981); Wierlacher, Alois, Die theoretische Begriindung des burgerlichen Dramas im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Fink, 1968). KARIN A. WURST Braun, Lily ( 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 1 6 ) . Though considered a political misfit by both feminist and socialist leaders of the late 19th century, Lily Braun has since been acknowledged for her provocative blend of radical feminism and unorthodox socialism. The daughter of a Prussian general and an aristocratic Christian mother, and granddaughter of a member of Goethe's household and lady-inwaiting at the ducal court of Weimar, Lily could have opted for the prescribed path of chaste and seductive wife and "parasite" (her own term) in a marriage of privilege. Instead, overcoming her parents' disapproval of her independence of mind and spirit, she renounced financial security and devoted her life to working for social justice and gender equality. In the 1890s, Braun became active in the radical women's movement, joining the Frauenwohl association and founding the journal Die Frauenbewegung with Minna Cauer. Braun's writings reflected her movement toward the Left. She and her first husband, Georg von Gizycki, owned and edited a weekly journal, Ethische Kultur, until his death in 1895. In 1896 she joined the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SDP) and married socialist leader Heinrich Braun. However, her insistence on the interconnectedness of capitalism and sexism in the oppression of women, children, and human beings in general went against prevailing party ideology. With the publication of Die Frauenfrage (1901), a historical study of the politics and economics of female labor that attempted to mediate between the bourgeois and socialist women's movements, Braun provoked the ire of Clara Zetkin, the SDP women's organization leader, whose journal Die Gleichheit often featured Braun's articles. At the 1903 SDP Congress in Dresden, Lily and Heinrich Braun and other revisionist leaders were targeted by August Bebel as heretics. When Zetkin excluded Lily Braun from further publication in Die Gleichheit, Braun distanced herself from the women's movement. Lily Braun wanted, as she states in her two-volume autobiography Memoiren einer Sozialistin (1909-1911), to feminize both Marxism and society in general, to inject the feminine spirit into masculinized civilization. In her relationship to
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her son Otto Braun, for example, she articulated the idea of children's liberation as revolutionary praxis that would overcome the alienation of industrial society. To be sure, Braun's view of the primacy of motherhood in women's selfrealization is controversial in terms of more recent feminist discourse. Braun was both an effective political organizer—though not in step with the prevailing Marxist and feminist movements of her time—and a principled housewife and mother. At the same time, she remained an active correspondent and a prolific author whose works were translated into several languages. While she always struggled financially, her royalties later provided her widower with a comfortable income. Among Braun's publications are numerous pamphlets on women's issues, several dozen journal articles, volumes of essays, two novels, and an opera libretto. Unpublished sources include personal correspondence, now in the archive of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Braun's letters to her cousin Mathilde von Colomb, for example, offer insight into her views of sexuality, marriage, motherhood and career. See also: Marxist Theories; Socialism; Workers' Literature; Zetkin, Clara. References: Braun, Lily, Die Frauenfrage. Ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung und ihre wirtschaftliche Seite (Leipzig, 1901; Berlin: Dietz, 1979), Memoiren einer Sozialistin, 2 vols., 1909-1911 (Munich: Piper, 1985), Selected Writings on Feminism and Socialism. Trans, and ed. Alfred G. Meyer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Meyer, Alfred G., The Feminism and Socialism of Lily Braun (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Quataert, Jean H., Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 18851917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
NANCY LUKENS Bruckner, J u t t a ( 1 9 4 1 - p r e s e n t ) . Filmmaker Jutta Bruckner's autobiographical film Hungerjahre (1979) has become a classic of feminist cinema. It depicts female socialization in 1950s West Germany within the context of the incipient cold war. Bruckner, a founder and professor of the Film School at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, articulates questions of cinematic and feminist aesthetics through her films and essays, pointedly disturbing and irritating her target audience—women—by confronting them with the "forgotten pictures" inside themselves. Her work aims at confronting "false generalizations." Born in Dusseldorf in 1941, Bruckner's earliest fascination was with words. She studied political science, philosophy, and history, writing a dissertation on the history of political science in Germany in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. On completion of her academic work, Bruckner found immediate employment as a scriptwriter, where she discovered the impact of the visual in her work with Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlondorff, and Ula Stockl. ZDF German Television Production accepted her first script, a photo documentary of her mother's life, Tue recht und scheue niemand (1975), and with no directorial experience or training, she agreed to direct the project. She has since won prizes both for individual films and for outstanding achievement in the art of film.
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Bruckner's films illuminate the relationship of the public and private spheres of women's lives, creating an autobiographical space for women as a social group through historical contexts for individual events. Tue recht und scheue niemand includes pictures not only of her mother but of others of her generation, so that viewers can imagine the stories of their own mothers. Ein ganz und gar verwahrlostes Mddchen (1977) is a fictional documentary based on Bruckner's friend, who portrays herself as a young single mother who dropped out of school and who, despite her best efforts, cannot improve her life. The adolescent heroine of Hungerjahre appears amid documentary footage from cold war skirmishes in Berlin and bathing beauty contests of the 1950s. Laufenlernen (1980) portrays a 40-year-old housewife and mother who seeks a way out of the confinement of her traditional roles. Kolossale Liebe (1983/1991) presents the life of the 19th-century author Rahel Varnhagen; Ein Blick und die Liebe bricht aus (1985) presents a series of dramatic performance pieces depicting female fantasies, desire, and aggression. Bruckner's aesthetic is collective, just as her work style is collaborative: the shared gestures she depicts aim at changing viewers' way of seeing their own gestures. For herself, her films are steps in a therapeutic, emancipatory process to help her discover women's broken relationship to their own bodies. Her use of documentary confronts and interrupts the fictions, to compel viewers to dig within themselves for (German) history. Bruckner portrays the deficits of women's lives, a portrayal she sees as both dangerous and necessary to develop realism and to "recuperate our capacity to look." See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Body, Female; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Trotta, Margarethe von. References: Frieden, Sandra, " 'Urn Gottes Willen, bloss das nicht!' Autobiographic, Gegenoffentlichkeit, und der kritische Frauenfilm." Erkundungen: Beitrage zu einem erweiterten Lite raturbegriff. Ed. J. M. Fischer, K. Priimm, and H. Scheuer (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987) 326-44; Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); Kosta, Barbara, "Representing Female Sexuality: On Jutta Bruckner's Film Years of Hunger." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II: 241-52; Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980); Silberman, Marc, "Interview with Jutta Bruckner: Recognizing Collective Gestures." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II: 253-58. SANDRA FRIEDEN B u r g e r l i c h e s G e s e t z b u c h ( 1 9 0 0 ) . Heralded by conservatives as a major advance in the protection of civil rights, the enactment of the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), or German Civil Code, had a strongly oppressive effect on German women in Wilhelmine society. Especially in the area of family law, the introduction of the first positive civil law on a national scale in Germany per-
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manently codified women's second-class status, legal remnants of which have continued until the present. Purporting in its general section to recognize all citizens, including women, as free and independent subjects before the law, the BGB, in fact, reinforced patriarchy as the legal and social norm. The code's fourth book, on family law, was perhaps the most blatantly discriminatory section of the BGB. It canonized the Hausfrauenehe, a system of marital inequality whereby a husband dominated his wife, her body, and her property. The code obligated a married woman to have sexual intercourse with her husband and to assume his surname and his choice of residence and lifestyle. The husband was legal guardian of their children and had the final say in their upbringing. He could annul any contract made by his wife, could forbid her from being employed, and had exclusive control over any financial resources she brought into the marriage. In contrast, women were to contribute to the marriage by running the household, reinforcing what the code defined as a woman's "natural" role as housewife and mother (sections 1356 and 1360). Despite the Weimar Constitution's declaration of equal rights for women, such discriminatory laws governing social relations remained in force. The rift between the constitutional rhetoric of equality and the BGB's legal inequalities continued well beyond the founding of the Federal Republic. The Hausfrauenehe was not legally eradicated until 1977, when married women were given an unconditional right to take paid employment and enter into business agreements. Husbands and wives became jointly obligated to support their family and run the household. Such rules had long been the law in East Germany, which officially abolished the BGB's fourth book in 1965. Even after 1977, East German family law was more progressive than that of the West with respect to such issues as children out of wedlock and the dissolution of property at divorce. Upon unification, however, the BGB became law for both parts of Germany. Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that any improvement in German women's legal status has, practically speaking, placed on them a double burden of employment and household—a sign of deeply rooted social inequalities that remain to be remedied. See also: Allgemeines Preufiisches Landrecht; Marriage; Weimar Republic; Wende, Die. References: Berghahn, Sabine, and Andrea Fritzsche, Frauenrecht in Ost- und Westdeutschland: Bilanz, Ausblick (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1991); Frevert, Ute, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), Kolinsky, Eva, Women in Contemporary Germany: Life, Work and Politics (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993). DOUGLAS NASH
c Cabaret ( 1 8 8 1 - p r e s e n t ) . The term "cabaret" refers to a form of theatrical entertainment usually consisting of a variety of disparate short acts unconnected by plotline, including literary parodies, political satire, caricature, songs, skits, or poems, usually with musical accompaniment. The first cabaret, the Parisian "Chat Noire" (founded 1881), aimed to expose social hypocrisy in all forms. The Chat Noire's famous cynical "diseuse," Yvette Gilbert, became the model for all future female cabaret singers. The first German cabaret, the Uberbrettl (founded 1901), employed several female performers, such as Bozena Brodsky, Elsa Seemann, Olga Destree, and Olga Wohlbruck, but no female text writers. Soon, however, women, for example, Margarethe Beutler, who performed with the dancer Mariette de Rigardo, were writing their own texts. The 1903 opening of the cabaret Bose Buben was followed one week later by the opening of the Bose Mddchen. Early women cabaret artists include Marya Delvard, the female performer associated with Munich's famous Elf Scharfrichter, and Claire Waldorf, whose many performances include a well-known all-female show at the Linden-Kabaret along with the singers Lucie Berber, Senta Soneland, and Elsa Ward. Waldorf and Gussy Holl, a cabaret artist who often played male roles, used their skits and songs to demonstrate openly that they favored women's emancipation. In contrast, many of the cabaret and revue performances written by men for women in the 1920s served only to glorify women as erotic objects. Women also founded cabarets. Kathi Kobus founded the Munich Simplicissimus in 1903, which was followed during the Weimar Republic by Rosa Valetti's cabaret Grbfienwahn in 1920 in Berlin, and Trude Hesterberg's Wilde
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Buhne in 1921 in Berlin. The Wilde Buhne, for which Kurt Tucholsky often wrote, was well known as a showcase for talented women cabaret artists, including Kate Kuhl, Margo Lion, and Annemarie Hase. Other famous female performers of the time included Valetti, who sang her first chanson at age 40, Gussy Holl, the Schall and Rauch performer Blandine Ebinger, and Liesl Karlstadt, best known for her performances with Karl Valentin. Many cabaret artists continued their work in exile during the Nazi period. The "grotesque" dancer and cabaret performer Valeska Gert opened the Beggar Bar in New York City. Erika and Klaus Mann's Pfeffermiihle moved from Munich to Zurich in 1933, where Erika Mann continued to write all of Therese Giehse's chansons herself. After being attacked by Swiss fascists, the Pfeffermiihle was eventually forced to go on an extended tour to Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Czechoslovakia. The first German cabaret performance after World War II in the Schaubude featured Ursula Herking. Other cabarets were soon reopened. The texts of authors like Mascha Kaleko, who had emigrated, were performed once again, and artists such as Marietta Kirndorfer, who wrote and sang at Simplicissimus, were back in business. The following women were also postwar cabaret artists: Lore and Kay Lorentz founded the Kom(m)odchen in Diisseldorf in 1947, Trude Kolman founded Die kleine Freiheit in Munich in 1951, Ursula Noack performed in the Munchener Lach- und Schiefigesellschaft, Therese Angeloff wrote for, and directed, Die kleinen Fische in Munich, and Hannelore Kaub not only wrote and performed for, but also operated, the Bugelbrett. Since the 1960s, Fasia Jansen, Eva Vargas, Anni Becker, Gabi Lodermeier, and Kristin Bauer-Horn have produced and performed their own songs, as have Ina Dieter and Jasmine Bonia, as well as bands like Schneewittchen and various teams such as Die Missfits. The cabaret continues to offer opportunities for female performers and lends itself to feminist social commentary. See also: Exile Literature; Parody/Pastiche; Poetry, Political; Satire; Weimar Republic. References: Gruel, Heinz, Bretter, die die Zeit bedeuten—die Kulturgeschichte des Kabaretts (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1967); Hippen, Reinhard, and Ursula Lucking, eds., "Sich fiigen—heifit lugen"—80 Jahre deutsches Kabarett (Mainz: Schmidt and Bodige, 1981).
STEFANA LEFKO C a n o n , Literary. The literary canon is a body of works commonly considered "good" literature and, as such, representative of "high" culture. It distinguishes itself from so-called trivial literature or Schundliteratur with its various subgroupings (Groschenhefte, etc.) by laying claim to an inherent quality that trivial literature does not possess. Although canonical literature is commonly viewed as a literature whose purpose transcends that of mere entertainment (one of the most frequently used contrasts to "good" literature is Unterhaltungsliteratur), one of its most distinguishing characteristics is to leave this higher
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purpose undefined. During the 18th century (and earlier), this purpose was expressed in didactic terms: prodesse et delectare—to teach and to delight. As of the 19th century, this direct didactic influence was disclaimed, and most didactic forms (e.g., children's literature, moralistic tales, and much political literature) were denied the status of canonization. Feminist scholars take issue with the literary canon for the following reasons: it includes only a minuscule number of works by women, and the criteria the canon is based on are entirely subjective and virtually undefinable (e.g., literary quality) but commonly assumed to be both objective and transcendentally valid, that is, eternal. The same impression of eternal validity is conveyed by the fact that the canon and canonical thinking—that is, the criteria used to advocate certain works as good literature and exclude others from that category—are perpetuated through reprints, reeditions, and academic curricula and reading lists. Two of the most important projects of feminist literary scholarship involve the relativization of the canon: one is the introduction and analysis of women's literature (which is usually not part of the canon); the other is the analysis of canon formation, which emphasizes the fact that the canon is neither objective nor eternal, but created—the result of literary interpretations that have been repeated for approximately 150 years and have finally assumed the guise of an eternal truth. Until about 25 years ago, this traditional/canonical mode of literary criticism reigned absolute; today, it still dominates academic discourse, although it is increasingly being challenged by feminist and other critics. The canonization of literature in Germany is at least partially a result of the establishment of Germanistik as a science in the 19th century (Literaturwissenschaft). Under the leadership of the brothers Grimm and Humboldt, literary criticism became historical (rather than aesthetic, moral, or philosophical). Whereas in the 18th century literary critics and philosophers were largely identical with the authors (e.g., Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe), the separation of the two professions created "a caste of university educated arbiters of taste who . . . categorized literature professionally" (Blackwell). Until Ricarda Huch joined academe in the early 20th century, this group consisted exclusively of men; today, it is approximately 75 percent male in the United States (with about 25 percent tenured women academics at U.S. universities) and 95 percent male in Germany, where less than 5 percent of women hold permanent positions (Lehrstiihle). The gender gap in literary scholarship is almost certainly linked to the status assigned to women's literature vis-a-vis the canon: most women's literature was not deemed worthy of serious investigation until the advent of feminist scholarship in the 1970s, which, in turn, was occasioned by an increasing number of women scholars. The literary canon and its exclusionary effects have become enormously influential, not only because they virtually dictate how literature is taught, but— more important—because they influence reading behavior. Canonization has produced certain frameworks for reading that aid in its interpretation: examples
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are periodization (Classicism, Naturalism, Expressionism, etc.), a genre hierarchy, and the myth of the genius or Great Author. Since this system is based on hierarchization, women's literature is usually denigrated automatically: periods based largely on men's works (e.g., Classicism) are valued over those to which women contributed substantially {Empfindsamkeit)', genres that women preferred (e.g., diaries) are ranked lower than those in which men dominated (drama); and the Great Author is always male. Because the work is frequently analyzed in one of these contexts, reader expectations are steered to look for certain traits in literature that men's literature usually provides and women's very often does not. It is much easier, and much more enjoyable, to read Goethe's Faust (1808), whose form and content conform to our expectations (crisis, denouement, moral, multiplicity of forms, decipherable philosophical content, etc.) than to read the frequently circular, apparently unmotivated, undeveloped, and irregular dramas by women. Those dramas by women that do adopt the forms and contents of male dramas are usually trivialized as weak copies (e.g., Christiane von Breden's female Fawsf-drama Faustina, 1871). Feminist scholarship has been very successful in uncovering part of the rich and long tradition of women's writing and in pointing out the biases inherent in the process of canonization. It thus questions one of the bases of canonical criticism, namely, the assumption that the critic is unbiased and objective and merely seeks to uncover something that is already there: the timeless message, the eternal quality of the work. The dilemma that remains unsolved is the question of the status of women's literature vis-a-vis the canon. While some critics attempt to add women's literature to the canon, thus essentially taking over canonical criteria (and inviting comparisons detrimental to much women's literature), most feminist analyses concentrate on the ways in which women authors refused to conform to literary conventions. This seems problematic for two reasons. First, there is a basic contradiction in denying the validity of the canon while using it as a point of reference. Second, it leads to a feminist predilection for feminist or progressive texts that may well result in the creation of a parallel, feminist canon while excluding works by "conservative" women authors (Caroline Pichler, Agnes Franz) or female antifeminists. It seems more productive to follow the lead of feminist critics informed by (while often critical of) approaches within cultural studies, new historicism, and deconstruction, who challenge the very notion of a canon, traditional, feminist, or otherwise. Instead they call for an exploration of the discursive mechanisms that result in the historically changing canonization or marginalization of particular texts and authors. See also: Authorship; Children's Literature; Classicism; Cultural Studies; Expressionism; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; Groschenroman; Naturalism; New Historicism; Political Literature; Reception; Schundliteratur; Sentimentality; Trivial Literature. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, "Anonym, verschollen, trivial: Methodological Hindrances in Researching German Women's Literature." Women in German Yearbook 1 (1985): 39-59; Wiltenburg, Joy, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street
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Literature of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992).
SUSANNE KORD Charakterdrama. The term refers to a type of drama that developed in the 18th century in which the portrayal of characters was more important than dramatic action (the opposite of a Handlungsdrama, in which character was subordinate to action or events). In Germany, the Charakterdrama (Charaktertragodie or Charakterkomodie) represented a departure from the Enlightenment's use of the Schicksalstragodie or Typenkomodie. The Storm and Stress period produced many well-known Charakterdramen written by men and based on Shakespearean models. There was often no sharp division between Charaktertragbdien and Schicksalstragodien; for example, Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea (1808), in which Penthesilea asserts her individuality and actively engages fate, contains aspects of both types. The 18th-century Charakterkomodie often portrayed more developed female characters than did the Typenkomodie; one of Luise Adelgunde Gottsched's plays, Herr Witzling (1745), can be considered a forerunner of the Charakterkomodie. Recent feminist scholarship has exposed the contribution of women to 18thcentury German drama, and critical work on these recovered and discovered dramas has begun. Dramas such as Sophie Eleonore von Titzenhofer's Lausus und Lydie (1776), Emilie von Berlepsch's Eginhard und Emma (1787), and Susanne von Bandemer's Sidney und Eduard, oder Was vermag die Liebe? (1792) represent female characters who voice their psychological tensions and feminist concerns. The female dramatists turn center stage over to their female protagonists and let them speak out publicly against social and familial norms that seek to restrict them to traditional and passive roles. An investigation of the dramatists' use of characterization as a technique for expressing feminist ideas in the public sphere might shed additional light on 18th-century feminist aesthetics and female literary creativity. See also: Enlightenment; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Storm and Stress. References: Dawson, Ruth P., "Frauen und Theater: Vom Stegreifspiel zum biirgerlichen Ruhrstuck." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 421-34; Hoff, Dagmar von, Dramen des Weiblichen: Deutsche Dramatikerinnen um 1800 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Wurst, Karin, ed., Frauen und Drama im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1991).
CAROL A. DEVORE Child-Woman. The construction of the child-woman has been worked out systematically and symptomatically in three different models within pertinent classical texts of the German tradition.
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The incompatibility of the sexes, seen from a male perspective, has been expressed as the pattern "Mignon," following the publication of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795/1796). The "enigma" Mignon is posed as the question of sexual difference, as that of the development from child to woman at about the age of 12. The ambivalent and undecidable sexual position of the child-woman crystallizes in the "enigma of femininity," which various authors have attempted to solve. Goethe fetishizes Mignon by endowing her with male clothes and an active passion. He thus conserves the girl's bisexuality before her passage into womanhood—but only in order to withdraw this phallic potency from her and punish her with hysteria and death. In Otto Fenichel's view, the child-woman Mignon represents not only the man loving her but, in fact, his penis ("Die symbolische Gleichung: Madchen=Phallus," 1936). Yet fetishization—that is, the denial of woman's "lack" and her simultaneous endowment with a phallic substitute—is not the only way to come to terms with the undecidability of a young woman's gender. In Eduard Morike's Maler Nolten (1832) another child-woman is similarly divided. Because Nolten cannot cope with his incestuous feelings that arise when he wants to marry Agnes, any sign of threatening sexuality is filtered out of the innocent child Agnes and transferred onto the passionate and demonically insane Elisabeth. This repression of libido, which leads to Nolten's self-betrayal, nevertheless surfaces as the question of Agnes' betrayal. Nolten does not succeed in "piecing together her distorted image"; thus, she is ultimately punished for his version of "imagined femininity" with a nervous illness and subsequent death. Aside from the alternatives "hysteric," "neurotic," or "insane," there are other pitfalls on the way to femininity: Frank Wedekind's Lulu/Mignon {Die Biichse der Pandora. Eine Monstertragodie, 1894) depicts a criminal monster whose name already combines a child's stammering with an identity as "courtisane innocente," a name that—like Mignon's—is no name at all. Lulu's nature is her artificiality; her sexuality meanders with her constant role changes and costumes. By playing the roles of child-woman, seductress, and murderess, Lulu acts out a whole spectrum of male fantasies and projections. What makes Lulu so irresistible is her narcissism that she, being a woman, shares—according to Sigmund Freud's "Zur Einfuhrung des NarziBmus" (1914)—with children, animals, and criminals. Because man envies woman for retaining what he himself has lost, that is, her unassailable libidinal position, he projects his own insufficiency, his own envy, onto woman (Sarah Kofman, Uenigma de la femme, 1985). Freud's early theorem of woman's self-sufficiency, which counteracts his theory of woman's penis envy, is no longer a factor in his later essay "Die Weiblichkeit" (1932). This self-sufficiency is the secret of her sex, a secret that woman as a character in literature written by male authors has to preserve under clothes, masks, or mascara: she has to hide the fact that she has nothing to hide. Neither the "taciturn" Mignon nor Agnes having "grown dumb" nor Lulu, whose body is petrified in the androgynous "pierrot" costume, reveals her secret; they are constructed as child-women and must die—as any phantom does.
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See also: Androgyny; Classicism; Feminist Theory, French; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; Hysteric; Narcissism, Female; Protagonist/Antagonist; Psychoanalysis. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit. Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Reprdsentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Hoffmeister, Gerhart, ed., Goethes Mignon und ihre Schwestern. Interpretationen und Rezeption (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). SIGRID BERKA
Children's Literature/Children's Theater. Until the late 20th century, children's literature in Germany, whether authored by women or men, defined as its goal to educate children while entertaining them. The didactic purpose frequently exceeded simple educational goals, such as instruction in reading, and aimed at a more distinct socialization. Whereas authors of 18th-century children's literature professed to attempt no more than to educate both girls and boys to a largely undefined "Menschlichkeit," 19th-century authors sought to instill specifically masculine qualities in boys and feminine virtues in girls. In 19th-century children's literature and plays—which were usually written to be performed by the children in their living rooms—boys are taught to emulate virtues perceived as masculine, such as bravery, military prowess, and intellectual achievements. Girls, by contrast, are taught to obey their parents (a value much less emphasized for boys) and are educated in crafts and needlework. Whereas boys are taught to emulate positive values, girls are usually educated ex negativo', that is, they are admonished to avoid vices perceived as typically female, such as laziness, vanity, curiosity, and talkativeness. Examples are Kitty Hofmann's Theater fiir Kinder (1824); Sophie von Baudissin's TheaterAlmanach fiir die Jugend (1849); Wilhelmine von Sydow's Eunomia (1830); Luise Holder's Neues Kinder-Theater (1821-1822); Agnes Franz's Vermachtnifi an die Jugend (1845); and Isabella Braun's Kleine TheaterstUcke fiir die Jugend (1865?). Today, German children's literature and children's theater, whether printed or performed, are widely acknowledged as a means of transmitting, as well as critiquing, a culture's socialization processes. They mirror universal issues confronting today's youth: dealing with intergenerational conflict, resisting parents and school and political authorities, overcoming stereotypes and honoring difference in human relationships, finding ways to understand reality, define one's own identity, combat violence and injustice, and save the planet. Certainly, there continues to be a great demand for children's classic fables and tales, moralizing nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and heroic adventure stories, and they are performed in countless community children's theaters and puppet theaters. There is also abundant cartoon, mystery, and science fiction literature. Since the 1980s, however, much German children's and young adult literature and theater emphasize empowerment, emancipation, and social change. German picture books and early readers, at least in the West, increasingly represent gender-role alternatives, interracial and intercultural interaction, and imaginative solutions to difficult
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issues. The Berlin children's theater, GRIPS, for example, whoseMutmachtheaterrepertoire is performed in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, recently collaborated with Bosnians Vernessa Berbo and Emir Joldic to produce Bosana (1995), about multiculturalism and overcoming ethnic conflict; a futuristic children's Utopia, Die Moskitos sind da (1994), envisions a political system in which children vote and exert leadership in imaginatively solving problems. On the other hand, in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), where censorship provoked the invention of highly imaginative forms of fantasy literature, children's publishing has been paralyzed by the economics and politics of unification. Scholarship on German children's and young adult literature and theater ranges widely in emphasis. The plethora of exhibitions, colloquia and conferences, journals, scholarly and publishers' working groups and institutes, and bookstores and collectives constitutes a thriving market. There are regional and national histories of children's book publishing and illustration; studies devoted to the rediscovery of women's contributions to, and the redefinition of, the canon of children's literature; pedagogical studies of the use of children's literature in teaching; studies of the reception of children's literature in autobiography; reexaminations of the representation of gender roles and socializing intention in the Grimms' fairy tales; historical studies and socioliterary analyses of the representation of youth culture itself, of the family, the elderly, foreigners, African culture, and "gypsies," among others; thematic studies of recent literature breaking taboos such as the discussion of disability, death, divorce, sexuality, and AIDS; studies of comics, humor, and the interaction of print and visual media for children. See also: Fairy Tale; Jugendliteratur; Madchenliteratur; Science Fiction. References: Grenz, Dagmar, ed., Kinderliteratur—Literatur fiir Erwachsene: Zum Verhdltnis von Kinderliteratur und Erwachsenenliteratur (Munich: Fink, 1990); Gross, Sabine, "Margarete Steffin's Children's Plays: Anti-Illusionism with a Difference." Brecht-Jahrbuch 19 (1994): 67-88; Keiner, Sabine, Emanzipatorische Madchenliteratur 1980-1990 (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1994); Klotz, Aiga, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur in Deutschland 1840-1950: Gesamtverzeichnis der Verojfentlichungen in deutscher Sprache, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992-1994); Koerner, Kati, and Fischer-Fels, Stefan, eds., GRIPS oder die Einfuhrung des Hochbetts in Indien. Documentation of the 25th anniversary International Children's Theater Colloquium "Die Erwachsenen bringen die Kinder urn" (Berlin: GRIPS Theater, 1994); Kord, Susanne, "Frauennatur und Kinderspiel: Zur geschlechtsspezifischen Sozialisation in Kinderdramen weiblicher Autoren, 1820 bis 1865." Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1994): 221-53; Pantos, Regine, "Kinderliteratur und Kindertheater: Vom Text zum Stuck, vom Stuck zum Text." Jugendliteratur 18.1 (1992): 10-18; Schaufelberger, Hildegard, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur heute: Themen, Trends und Perspektiven (Freiburg: Herder, 1990); SchulteBunert, Ellen, Ausldnder in der Bundesrepublik: Texte der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur als stellvertretende Erfahrung im Prozefi des interkulturellen Lernens (Frankfurt: IKO,
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Verlag fiir interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1993); Wild, Reiner, Geschichte der deutschen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990). NANCY LUKENS
C l a s s i c i s m ( 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 0 5 ) . German Classicism is most closely linked to Weimar and the writing of Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang Goethe. It is generally thought to begin with Goethe's journey to Italy in 1786 and end with Schiller's death in 1805. In a wider sense, the writers Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Holderlin, Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), and Johann Peter Hebel are also considered Classical authors. Without reference to gender, literary history acknowledges the existence of other classical writers but dismisses them as trivial. Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Gedanken iiber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755) and his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764/1767) provided the impetus for an aesthetic direction taking Greek literature and art as its models. Of the numerous influential works by Goethe and Schiller, Goethe's Iphigenie aufTauris (1787; first prose version, 1779) came to represent Classical ideals: self-determination, freedom, tolerance, humanity, and reason. Iphigenie's exemplary action—she refuses to lie, thereby risking her brother's and his friend's lives and her own ability to return home—becomes a model for "reine Menschlichkeit." But Iphigenie as the representative of Classical humanity has little connection to historical reality: women living during the period of Weimar Classicism were dependent on male members of their families; autonomous action was discouraged. Charlotte von Stein's Dido {Dido, 1794), a literary heroine who, like Iphigenie, attempts autonomy but whose life ends on the funeral pyre instead of being rewarded with harmony, familial reunion, and brotherly gratitude, might have seemed more familiar as a literary metaphor for late 18th-century women. Far from redeeming masculine culture through an idealized feminine image of ideal humanity, von Stein's play presents that culture as epitomizing violence and destruction. Von Stein is also the author of several other dramas, Rino (1776), Neues Freiheitssystem oder die Verschworung gegen die Liebe (1799), Die zwey Emilien (1803), and—possibly—Die Probe (1809). Sigrid Lange has argued that Goethe purposefully chose a female figure for his modern ideal representation of humanity because he considered traditional male heroes no longer appropriate. Contemporary women writers, however, consciously chose not to idealize female characters but searched for a poetics reflecting their experience and demand for self-determination. Aside from Charlotte von Stein, women writing in Goethe's Weimar include Karoline von Wolzogen, Amalie von Imhoff, Johanna Schopenhauer, and Sophie Mereau. Mereau earned her living as a writer, translator, and editor. Admired by her contemporaries primarily for her poetry, which appeared in various issues of the Musenalmanach and in the journals Thalia and Die Horen, she also wrote prose
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pieces, which did not conform to contemporary aesthetic and moral norms. In her two novels, Das Blutenalter der Empfindung, published anonymously in 1794, and Amanda und Eduard (1803), Mereau created active and autonomous heroines at odds with expected feminine behavior. The novel's heroines strive to achieve the Classical aesthetics of harmony. Their progress, however, is episodic, and the represented self is neither unified nor unproblematically fragmented; Mereau's prose positions itself between Classicism and Romanticism. Mereau was also the editor of Kalathiskos, a journal for women. Schopenhauer's salon became one of Weimar's most prominent literary centers and was unusual in the sense that it was open to social outcasts from Weimar society (such as Christiane Vulpius, who was shunned for her lower-class origins and her common-law marriage with Goethe). After her family's fortunes declined in 1819, Schopenhauer earned her living by writing. Her first publication (1810), a biography of the art historian Carl Ludwig Fernowin, was followed by two volumes of travelogues in 1813 and 1814. Novellen, fremd und eigen (1818) was her first fictional work. The heroine of her three-volume novel Gabriele (1819) echoes Goethe's Iphigenie in that she follows the dictates of her conscience rather than her own desires. Gabriele resigns herself to her father's wishes in the choice of a husband and finds refuge and solace in art. Like Dido, the heroine dies, but not without finding a language to express her suffering. Unlike Gabriele, the heroine of Schopenhauer's Bildungsroman Sidonia (1828) refuses to enter into the confines of an unhappy marriage. Schopenhauer continued to write until her death in 1838; her oeuvre comprises 24 volumes of novels and travel literature. Greek literature and history also influenced von Wolzogen and von Imhoff. Like Schopenhauer's salon, Wolzogen's house became an intellectual center, counting among its visitors well-known writers and members of the court. Wolzogen's novels portray a society whose entire identification—its conversations, thoughts, values, dress, and furniture—is with classicistic literature. Her most notable novel, Agnes von Lilien (1796), is a semiautobiographical novel describing a marriage of convenience. Published anonymously in Schiller's Horen in 1796 and reprinted three times until 1800, Agnes von Lilien became her most successful work; the brothers Schlegel initially believed Goethe to be the author. Among Wolzogen's other writings are the prose works "Die Zigeuner," (1826/1827), "Walther und Nanny" (1826/1827), and "Das neue Jahr" (1826/ 1827) and the novels Cordelia (1840) and Adele (n.d.). She also wrote a biography of Schiller and a fragment of a play, Der leukadische Eels (1792). As in Agnes von Lilien, the theme of this work is forced marriage: a father, injured in battle, promises his daughter, who loves another, to his savior. The daughter chooses suicide. As do many 18th-century dramas by women, Der leukadische Fels uses a subjective perspective more typical for novels, rather than the objective perspective contemporaries would have expected in drama. The play is conceived as "moving pictures," rather than as action, a mode of composition also used by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Unlike Wolzogen's
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plays, which break with many dramatic traditions, Imhoff s verse epos Die Schwestern von Lesbos (1818), written in hexameter, emulated Classical style so successfully that Schiller and Goethe commented on her "Naturtalent" and her ability to "unconsciously" produce antique verse. Classical literature by men and that by women has received unequal treatment in literary history; while men's Classical literature became virtually synonymous with " h i g h " art and, until well into the 19th century, representative of the literary canon, women's literature of the era has remained unexplored until recently. According to Christa Burger, the writing of Weimar women was relegated to a "middle sphere" where, existing between "trivial literature" and "Classical literature," their writing has been ignored by literary history. See also: Authorship; Bildungsroman; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; Merau, Sophie; Romanticism; Salonism; Travelogues. References: Bohm, Arnd, "Charlotte von Stein's Dido, Ein Trauerspiel." Colloquia Germanica 22.1 (1989): 38-52; Burger, Christa, " 'Die mittlere Sphare:' Sophie Mereau—Schriftstellerin im klassischen Weimar." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 366-88; Gallas, Helga, and Magdalene Heuser, eds., Untersuchungen zum Roman von Frauen um 1800 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990); Goodman, Katherine R., and Edith Waldstein, eds., In the Shadow of Olympus. German Women Writers around 1800 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Von Hoff, Dagmar, Dramen des Weiblichen. Deutsche Dramatikerinnen um 1800 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989); Lange, Sigrid, "Uber epische und dramatische Dichtung Weimarer Autorinnen. Uberlegungen zu Geschlechterspezifika in der Poetologie." Zeitschrift fur Germanistik 1.2 (1991): 341-51. HELGA STIPA MADLAND C o l o m b i n e . This is a female theatrical character that originated around 1530 in the Italian commedia dell'arte and was imported to the German stage in the 17th and 18th centuries, where she, together with her counterpart Harlequin, became one of the stock comic characters of the Wandertheater (traveling stages). More cunning and adroit than her male counterparts, Colombine is one of the many names given to the maidservants who appeared in Italian and French commedia dell'arte performances during the 16th and 17th centuries. Frequently matched with the elusive Harlequin in a romantic relationship, Colombine invariably proves herself smarter and more resourceful, well capable of outwitting and outmaneuvering the hapless male figure. While not confined to a standard costume and usually not presented with a mask, Colombine was most often portrayed as the attractive adolescent daughter of a lower-class man, usually himself a servant or an innkeeper. The wit and cunning of the colombine figure are already apparent in her precursors: the 16th-century Franceschina, a middle-aged woman who displays worldly experience and a rough language and was occasionally performed by a male actor, and the 17th-century youthful maidservant who merrily defeats the advances of older men.
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See also: Maidservant; Wandertheater. References: Hansen, Gunther, Formen der Commedia delVarte in Deutschland (Emsdetten: Verlag Lechte, 1984); Nicoll, Allardyce, The World of Harlequin: A Critical Study of the Commedia delVarte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); Oreglia, Giacomo, The Commedia delTArte. Trans. Lovett Edwards (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968).
DANIEL PURDY Colonial Literature. Germany's colonial period was belated, brief, and violent. Between 1883 and 1885, well after Spain, the Netherlands, England, and France had held (and sometimes lost) vast colonial empires, the German Empire acquired African territories (German East Africa; German Southwest Africa; Togo; Cameroon), islands in the Pacific (the Bismarck Archipelago; Samoa; northeastern New Guinea; Palau; the Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana Islands), and the Chinese Kiaochow. These were turned into mandates of the League of Nations and divided among the allies when Germany lost World War I. German colonial rule differed from that of its competitors insofar as strict miscegenation laws prevented intermarriages with "natives," the colonized did not enjoy German citizen rights, and there was little effort made to educate colonial elites. Colonial uprisings (the Abushiri uprising; the Chagga and Maji Maji revolts in East Africa in 1888, 1892, and 1905, respectively; the Herero and Nama wars in Southwest Africa in 1904-1907) were brutally put down. This did, however, not affect the colonial legend that the Germans were much more benign colonial masters than the British or French, a legend that was propagated by German colonial literature (Hans Grimm, Gustav Frenssen, Heinrich Schnee, et al.) and by film (Germanin), even after the colonies were lost. Women played an important role in the colonial enterprise—both as colonists and as colonial writers-propagandists. The colony provided them with an unconventional space where they could exercise independence, endurance, and leadership skills and engage in heroic adventures. At the same time, white settler women occupied an ambiguous position in the erotic power triangle between the white colonial masters and subordinated black or colored women or men. Liberating as well as racist/sexist elements mark the debates about women's cultural mission in the colonies and the Mischehenfrage carried out in the publications of both the middle-class women's movement (Die Frau, Die Frauenbewegung, Frauen-Rundschau, Die neue Generation) and the Women's League of the German Colonial Society (Kolonie und Heimat). The clash between personal emancipation and reactionary politics is also manifest in colonialist narratives. Among the many women who published autobiographical and fictional accounts of their exploits in German Southwest or East Africa (Helene von Borke, Clara Brockmann, Erika Busse-Lange, Ada Cramer, Luise Diel, Senta Dinglreiter, Emma Dorn, Margarete von Eckenbrecher, Helene von Falkenhausen, Helene Grunicke, Thea de Haas, Lydia Hopker, Hedwig Irle, Maria Karow, Alwine Kayser, Use Kreuzberg, Grete Kuhnhold, Adda Freifrau von
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Liliencron, Marion Grafin Matuschka, Else Morstatt, Leonore NieBen-Deiters, Magdalene von Prince, Ina Reck, Anna Rein-Wuhrmann, Gabriele Reuter, Emmy Richter, Ada Schnee, Ida Schuffenhauer, Else Steup, Marie Pauline Thorbecke, Sofie von Uhde, Marianne Westerlind, Johanna Wittum, and Grete Ziemann), the most prominent was Frieda von Biilow, hailed as the "creator of the colonial novel." Living in Zanzibar from 1887 to 1888 and again in 1893, von Biilow published a series of novels and novellas in which she celebrated the "pioneering spirit" of German colonizers like Carl Peters, whom she had met in Zanzibar, and extolled the German colonies as space for unfettered female self-realization—for white German women colonizers only. See also: Exotin; Orientalism; Postcolonialism; Reuter, Gabriele. References: Berman Nina, Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschen Literatur um 1900 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996). Glinga, W., "Life Story, Utendi, and Colonial Novel: Literature in 'German East Africa.' " Afrika und Ubersee 70 (1987): 257-77; Mamozai, Martha, Herrenmenschen. Frauen im deutschen Kolonialismus (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982) (2d ed. titled: Schwarze Frau, weifie Herrin. Frauenleben in den deutschen Kolonien, 1989), Komplizinnen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990); Warmbold, Joachim, Germania in Africa. Germany's Colonial Literature (New York: Lang, 1989); Zantop, Susanne, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Race, and Nation in Pre-Colonial Germany, 1770-1880 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). SUSANNE ZANTOP C o m e d i e Larmoyante. This originally French subgenre of the Enlightenment comedy was introduced to the German stage by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as weinerliches Lustspiel in 1754. The comedie larmoyante is a bourgeois drama with emphasis on feminine virtue. Plot elements such as remorse, renunciation, and reconciliation prevent an inherently tragic situation (abduction, seduction, innuendo) from ending in disaster. The audience watches how virtue-in-distress overcomes vice through steadfastness and is moved to laugh with relief at the obligatory Happy End (usually engagement or marriage). Under the influence of the English sentimental novel (Samuel Richardson) during the period of Empfindsamkeit (1740-1780), the sentimental elements in the comedie larmoyante became more prominent. Termed RUhrstUcke, these dramas, many by women, were condemned as trivial by the literary authorities of the time. RUhrstUcke such as Friederike Sophie Hensel's Die Familie auf dem Lande (1770), Victoria von Rupp's two plays Marianne, oder Der Sieg der Tugend (1777) and Jenny, oder Die UneigennUtzigkeit (1777), Sophie Mariane von Reitzenstein's Die seltene Bestandigkeit (1792), and Marie Antonie Teutscher's Fanny, oder Die glUckliche Wiedervereinigung (1773) all comply, at first glance, with the standard plot elements of a passive female virtue-in-distress character who is saved and married off or engaged. A closer look, however, reveals significant deviations from the male tradition, particularly with regard to the Happy End. While formally adhering to the Virtue Rewarded-topos, the
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dramatists expose its formulaic nature by consciously constructing far-fetched, unmotivated, and improbable engagements or marriages. This discrepancy allows them to expose the ambiguity of the Happy End and to question the notion of happiness through marriage. In Hensel's Die Familie aufdem Lande, for instance, the double engagement of Lady Danby's two daughters at the end of the play more than fulfills the formal plot requirement for a Happy End. However, Hensel relativizes this "happiness" by having the older daughter, Caroline, go insane as a result of her abduction by a lecherous lord. After her engagement, the now feebleminded Caroline needs her mother's assurance to know that she is, indeed, happy. Von Rupp develops a similarly ambiguous stance toward the Happy End in her drama Marianne, subtitled "Ein rUhrendes Lustspiel in drey AufzUgen." Despite the fact that the major part of the plot deals with Marianne's trials and tribulations in defending her virtue against the intrigues of her seducer, Lord d'Ambri, von Rupp forces an unmotivated Happy End in Marianne's sudden engagement to a young man who has barely been mentioned before. The ambiguous and unmotivated happy endings in women-authored comedies larmoyantes create moments of resistance for women's writing while formally complying with traditional literary rules and expectations. By relegating these plays to the realm of Trivialliteratur, traditional literary history has overlooked the oppositional potential in these plays. See also: Comedy; Enlightenment; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Sentimentality; Trivial Literature. References: Dawson, Ruth P., "Frauen und Theater: Vom Stegreifspiel zum biirgerlichen RUhrstiick." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 421-34; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 48-52, ' 'Tugend im Rampenlicht: Friederike Sophie Hensel als Schauspielerin und Dramatikerin." German Quarterly 66.1 (1993): 1-19.
ASTRID WEIGERT C o m e d y . The drama is broadly divided into tragedy and comedy, with the latter largely distinguished by its Happy End. Because German-speaking women were largely excluded from the public sphere until the 20th century, they achieved less recognition than men in drama generally and consequently in comedy specifically. As the result of feminist research and questioning of the male canon, that situation is changing. The history of comedy reflects women's social roles, both as characters and as authors. Long restricted to kitchen or cloister, women had lacked either the education or the public forum for comedy production; for example, Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim's Latin comedies were not publicly performed, being usurped by the concurrent development of the more popular form of the Easter pageant. With the German Enlightenment, two major developments opened the field of comedy to women dramatists: education was made accessible to a wider range
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of women, and comedy acquired a more respectable status, in part in imitation of French classicism, in part by supplanting the vulgar Harlequin. Two women are linked closely with both of these advances. Luise Adelgunde Gottsched adapted and wrote comedies (Die Pietisterey im Fischbeinrocke [adaptation, 1737], Die ungleiche Heirat [1744]). She has been called "the founder of Saxon comedy." Friederike Caroline Neuber dedicated her life to raising the standards of the German stage as actress, dramatist, and, after the death of her husband, theater-troupe director (Principalin). Feminist Germanists have rediscovered comedies by numerous other women from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including those of Johanna Franul von WeiBenthurn and Friederike Sophie Hensel. Yet traditional scholarship rarely mentions any women authors except occasionally "die Gottschedin." Women ostensibly cast their comedies in the prevailing masculine mold; their own perspectives appear most obviously in their approaches to the standard happy ending, which generally consisted of the heroine's marriage or engagement. Because marriage amounted to the passing of control over a woman from her father to her husband, women dramatists found ways to satirize the Happy End. The implied endings of their plays were more open, anticipating the 20thcentury mixtures of the comedy with the tragedy. The 19th century, with its censorship and general conservatism, limited not only German-speaking women's access to the comic stage but also many men's as well (with the exception of the Viennese folk-dramatists Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy). Michaela Giesing's analysis of turn-of-the-century women dramatists finds comedy and "satirical pointedness" in the works of various women playwrights such as Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's one-act play Am Ende (1897) and Emilie Mataja's drama. Comic dramas by Hedwig Dohm, who ridiculed modern men's love, and Juliane Dery's satirical Viennese folk plays (e.g., Die Schande, 1897) have yet to be staged. The humor in theatrical comedies by women in the late 20th century tends to be harsh. The work of Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian who has been recognized for her comedies since the early 1980s (Clara S., 1984), Elfriede Miiller's Damenbrise (1990), Eva Maria Martin's Wildpark (1994), and Esther Vilar's The Smile of the Barracuda (1994) exemplify this tendency. However, since the 1970s, film has offered German-speaking women a further forum for comedy, and here the range is considerable: from Helke Sander's strong feminist irony and satire (e.g., Der Beginn aller Schrecken ist Liebe, 1983), through Doris Dome's farcical comedies (e.g., Manner, 1985; Er und ich, 1988; and Geld, 1989), to Ulrike Ottinger's grotesque and exotic persiflages, tinged with black humor (e.g., Freak Orlando, 1981). See also: Adaption/Translation; Anticlimax; Dohm, Heding; Dorrie, Doris; EbnerEschenbach, Marie von; Enlightenment; Frauenfilm; Jelinek, Elfriede; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Ottinger, Ulrike; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Sander, Helke; Satire. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Schreibende Frauen
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vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985); Kord, Susanne T., Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Mohrmann, Renate, Theaterwissenschaft heute (Berlin: Reimer, 1990); Schlupmann, Heide, "Die Geburt des Kinos aus dem Geist des Lachens." Frauen und Film 53 (December 1992): 87-94.
SHEILA JOHNSON C o n c r e t e Poetry—see: Dadaism; Experimental Literature C o n f e s s i o n a l a n d Testimonial Literature. Positioned between autobiography and fictional prose, confessional literature defines a hybrid genre that mixes literary forms such as memoirs, diaries, documentary, and epistolary writings. The function and content of confessional writing have changed according to cultural and historical context, but an autobiographical or confessional impulse has remained thematically and structurally germane. Despite its identification with the Western male literary canon in works such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782-1789), confessional literature has a tradition of women authors as well, beginning with medieval women's visionary writing, continuing in the female epistolary culture of the 19th century, and extending into contemporary women's writing in the form of testimonial literature by Holocaust survivors, writers in exile, and foreign and immigrant authors. Confessions and related forms of writing, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies, have been central to women's writing in many languages from earliest times. From the 10th to the 13th centuries, confessional and visionary texts were written by medieval nuns who transcribed their personal religious and imaginary experiences into manuscripts that are comparable to modern psychological case histories. The visionary writing of the 11th-century abbess Hildegard von Bingen was known throughout Europe, and Mechthild von Magdeburg influenced a generation of younger mystics with her love songs and prose texts. Diaries, letters, and memoirs provided a means of self-expression for educated women toward the end of the 18th century and, in the 19th century, developed into a women's literary genre of the epistolary novel. Confessions, letters, and autobiograpical texts attest to women's experiences during various historical periods, such as Gliickel von Hameln's autobiographical memoir documenting Jewish life in 17th-century Hamburg. The tradition of confessional writing continued in Berlin salon culture at the turn of the 18th century with Jewish women such as Rahel Varnhagen, whose confessional letters are written as a form of purifying autobiography. In the years following World War II, more distanced, less personal lyric and fictional prose forms replaced autobiographical writings, reflecting Germany's difficulty in coming to terms with its Nazi past. More recently, authors have developed hybrid documentary and fictional forms such as the modern autobiography and testimonial. German-Jewish women writers of the Holocaust such
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as Use Aichinger, Nina Vylova, and Ruth Kliiger have written biographical and autobiographical memoirs as testimonials against forgetting. Other examples of writing as bearing witness to the Holocaust are Ilona Karmel's An Estate of Memory (1969) and Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster (1977). Unlike autobiography, testimonial writing is constitutively public and collective. Rather than the unfolding of an individual's consciousness, the purpose of this genre is to document and record a history of struggle in order to bring about social and political change. An act of literary witnessing, testimonial writing foregrounds experiences erased from dominant accounts of history. Testimonial fiction involves speaking for others who cannot tell their own stories and often takes up issues of racial, ethnic, and class oppression. In her autobiographical novel Klassenliebe (1973), Karin Struck uses a journal form with quotations to give an accurate account of her working-class background. Immigrant authors and guest workers write testimonials to the hardships minority women experience living in a foreign land; the Yugoslavian worker Vera Kamenko drafted an autobiography, Unter uns war Krieg (1978), from a German prison in the form of interviews, and Saliha Scheinhardt has written social reports on the experiences of Turkish women in Frauen, die sterben, ohne dafi sie gelebt hatten (1991). See also: Autobiography; Diaries; Documentary Literature; Epistolary Culture; Holocaust Literature; Medieval Literature; Minority Literature; Mysticism; Salonism; Struck, Karin; Turkish-German Literature; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Wolf, Christa. References: Brodzki, Bella, and Celeste Schenck, eds., Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Goodman, Katherine, Dis/Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany between 1790 and 1914 (Frankfurt/ M.: Peter Lang, 1986); Kosta, Barbara, Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Lixl-Purcell, Andreas, ed., Women of Exile: German Jewish Autobiographies since 1933 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Wilson, Katharina, ed., Medieval Women Writers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984).
LISA BERNSTEIN Copyright—see: Authorship Court Culture. From the late Middle Ages until the end of the 18th century, the courts were one of the primary locations where literature was produced in German-speaking countries. These extended households of rulers, including servants and advisers, also determined, to a large extent, the manners, customs, and language of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The influence of court culture upon the lives of women was often contradictory. European absolutism was traditionally a patriarchal and patrilineal system that nevertheless permitted female inheritance of property and allowed women to rule in the absence of a husband or male heir. However, marriage as defined by the court placed women
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in subjection to men and condoned the marrying off of women without their consent to protect the court's most important asset, land. Court culture flourished in the Middle Ages with the development of the etiquette of courtly love. The culture that grew around the knightly concept of service to a lady, Frauendienst, and the lyric poetry it produced, Minnesang, shaped images of women in Western culture for centuries. On one hand, the literature of this time shows the development of the contradictory doctrines of the desexualized Virgin and the sexualized Lady, both of which helped institutionalize the treatment of women as ornament. On the other hand, it has been argued that Frauendienst had the positive effect of allowing women the crucial role of patron to the arts. There is evidence that a significant number of women read and owned books in the Middle Ages and were patrons of Minnesang, knightly epics, and Christian texts. European courts and convents were the only spaces, in the physical as well as in the psychological sense, where medieval women could acquire the education, time, and privacy necessary to become writers. In German-speaking countries, convents were the primary sites of women's literary production from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Writing by women at German courts lagged behind that of French aristocratic women, who were active as troubadours in the 12th century and thematized in songs and poetry the oppression of women. In the 15th century, however, two German-speaking women, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken and Eleonore von Osterreich, wrote the first prose novels in the German language. Both women had ruled in the absence of their husbands and wrote works dealing with issues of inheritance and power struggles at court. Court culture continued to evolve in German-speaking countries but declined in influence in the mid-to-late 18th century, due to an increasing acceptance of middle-class values. At this time, women writers such as Sophie von La Roche in Die Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim (1771) criticized aristocratic definitions of femininity that viewed women primarily as objects. La Roche and other writers espousing middle-class values replaced what had come to be seen as the superficiality of aristocratic femininity, embodied in the coquette, with a definition of femininity that emphasized middle-class morality and a strong work ethic. See also: Epos; La Roche, Sophie von; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Patronage; Virgin. References: Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process (New York: Pantheon, 1982); Liebertz-Griin, Ursula, "Autorinnen im Umkreis der Hofe." Frauen, Literatur, Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 16-34; Power, Eileen, Medieval Women. Ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). LISA C. ROETZEL Court Theater. In the course of the 18th century, traveling theaters faced increasing competition by established town and court theaters. At court theaters,
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acting troupes were financially supported by, and hence dependent on, the ruling sovereign. Although the establishment of city and court stages resulted in an increased status of the theater as a vehicle that could produce art, women were initially more marginalized than they had been in the Wandertheater, which was sometimes under female direction. Since the German language had long been considered vulgar at court, French dramas and Italian operas were most widely performed. Opera, with its Baroque costumes and pompous decor, best represented court life and was thus in high demand. The Countess Wilhelmine of Bavaria (the favorite sister of Frederick the Great), for example, promoted Italian operas at her court and composed her first libretti in 1743. Since performances were put on by both professional and amateur singers, court stages offered the opportunity for nonprofessionals (but privileged personages) to become involved in theater. In Dresden, for example, Maria Antonia Walpurgis, princess of Saxony, sang the leading role in her own operas. In addition to her artistic achievements, she was the most important aristocratic patron of 18th-century theater. In other instances, the private court theaters served as a stepping-stone to national recognition: the plays of Amalie, princess of Saxony, were initially performed at the palais in Dresden but had conquered every professional stage in Germany by the 1840s. The prestige and stability of positions at court theaters (by comparison to the financial insecurity and social ostracism faced by members of the traveling stages) attracted many fine performers to court stages. Many of them paid for their elevated status with an absolute dependency on the patron ruler: the wellknown Weimar singer/actress Karoline Jagemann, for example, garnered financial security for herself and her children by virtue of her position as Duke Karl August's mistress. Dependencies on the patron ruler were also felt by dramatists who submitted their work for performance: even dramas by relatively conservative authors like Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer or royalist dramatists like Caroline Pichler were subject to a much more rigorous censorship than was customary at bourgeois city theaters and were frequently not performed at all. See also: Amateur Theater; Musical Theater; Patronage; Wandertheater. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Miindigkeit (Munich: DTV, 1989); Geitner, Ursula, ed., Schauspielerinnen. Der theatralische Eintritt der Frau in die Moderne (Bielefeld: Haux, 1988); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 22-41.
ELIZABETH G. AMETSBICHLER Creativity. A culture's myths of creation reflect, inform, and affect its conception of creativity (cf. Marta Weigle). The one-time, unified, ex nihilo creation of the Judeo-Christian tradition establishes an opposition between creation and procreation, with its infinite repeatability, and suggests an analogy between this opposition and the social roles of man and woman. Greek mythology features
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cultural heroes in the form of male gods. Thus, male-centered conceptions of creativity characterize Western culture, and yet until recently the importance of gender has been largely disregarded. The German literary tradition achieved the status of world literature concurrently with a paradigm shift in the conception of creativity: from the ability to follow the rules of artistic production to the ability to express original genius. Aesthetic theory shifted its emphasis from the work of art to the artist and the internal process out of which a work is presumably created. The analogy between the creator of the world and the artist became its central metaphor. The image of the artist implicit in this paradigm is male, and yet the theory purports to describe human creativity. Thus, it is not wholly surprising that two recent and extensive studies of the Geniebegriff in German literature should fail to address the works of women, with the exception of "der Dichter" Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg. Jeannine Blackwell offers a corrective to the assumption that women contributed nothing to this tradition in her ' 'Herzensgesprache mit Gott." The essays of In the Shadow of Olympus similarly challenge the implicit notion that women writers have no place in a history of aesthetics of 18th-century Germany. Psychoanalysis, with its fundamental questioning of the possibility of subjectivity—a prerequisite for original genius—and its focus on gender, raises issues that shift the context of the debate on creativity and provide an important impetus for feminist discussions. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Authorship; Canon, Literary; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Psychoanalysis; Reception; Subjectivity. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, "Herzensgesprache mit Gott: Bekenntnisse deutscher Pietistinnen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988) I: 265-89; Goodman, Katherine R., In the Shadow of Olympus: German Women Writers around 1800 (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1992); Peters, Gtinter, Der zerrissene Engel. Genieasthetik und literarische Selbstdarstellung im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982); Schmidt, Jochen, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophic und Politik 1750-1945, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985); Weigle, Marta, Creation and Procreation: Feminist Reflections on Mythologies of Cosmogeny and Parturition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
AMY HORNING MARSCHALL Critical Theory—see: Frankfurt School; Poststructuralism Cross-dressing—see: Hosenrolle Cultural S t u d i e s . This describes a wide range of intellectual projects spanning many continents, theoretical approaches, and political positions. It has
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emerged in the latter half of the 20th century as a counterdisciplinary area of critical inquiry in both the humanities and the social sciences; it is marked by the persistent engagement with, and reevaluation of, culture as an analytical category, intense theoretical and political concern with subjective agency, and an insistence upon the historical specificity of its own articulations. Cultural studies expands the traditional notion of culture from those products marked as possessing aesthetic value to embrace the many ways in which social and cultural meanings and values are produced, transmitted, and received and has been a site of pioneering work on popular culture. This broadening of categories has offered valuable tools to the intellectual work of feminism, and feminism, in turn, has offered important criticisms of cultural studies at specific points in its history. Because cultural studies is not limited to a single specific discipline, methodology, or theory, it can be defined only contextually, in its various incarnations. It is a constantly shifting practice that pushes its practitioners to include in their analyses an awareness of both the location from which their work emerges and their implication as participants in the production of knowledge, in the kinds of questions they attempt to pose under its label. Cultural studies resists the closure of encyclopedic definitions, and many of its most vigorous supporters voice concern about the increasing institutionalization, marketing, and academic profiteering that they witness in an endeavor that they perceive to be not just inter- or transdisciplinary, but even "post-disciplinary" (Balsamo) or "aggressively antidisciplinary" (Grossberg et al.). While the study of culture in this sense has proliferated into a highly diverse, international phenomenon, in Britain the term "cultural studies" was first articulated and mobilized as a conscious project, in the writings of Raymond Williams (Culture and Society, 1958) and Richard Hoggart (The Uses of Literacy 1958) and in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. The center was founded in 1964 with Hoggart as its first director, followed by Stuart Hall. Early British cultural studies struggled alternately to recover, critique, and embrace working-class culture in a period of rapid social change in postwar Britain. From the beginning, this work was marked by its opposition to traditions of scientific objectivity and positivism, foregrounding the connections between culture and processes of individual human agency. As British cultural studies worked to undo dichotomies such as low versus high culture, symbolic versus material realms, it also continuously struggled to integrate theory and practice, theorizing culture through myriad sources such as Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno and Karl Marx, Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. Feminism has had an increasingly significant impact on cultural studies since the 1970s, though their relationship has often been difficult. They share much common ground: strong links to radical politics outside the academic sphere, a focus on the analysis of the operations of power and forms of oppression within societies, and an interest in challenging the hierarchical and competitive struc-
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tures of institutional life. In the 1980s, both feminism and cultural studies drew on insights from poststructuralism, discourse analysis, and psychoanalysis. At the same time, however, feminism has criticized the exclusion of entire spheres of social life in Marxist analysis, questioning the primacy of class-based analysis in British cultural studies and the absence of gender from the theoretical frameworks of the center in the 1970s; it has pushed the question of the relationship between theory and practice in new directions as it has worked to articulate the relationship between feminist intellectual work and the social movement of women's liberation. Despite the expansion of the notion of culture through feminist work, feminist theories of patriarchy have been integrated unevenly into cultural studies' models of culture, and gay and lesbian issues are only beginning to receive serious attention within the field. Cultural studies has provided feminism with new impulses in the area of ethnography, the theories of racial, national, and ethnic identity, and the critique of science and technology. See also: Feminist Theory, British; Frankfurt School; Marxist Theories; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Technology. References: Balsamo, Anne, "Feminism and Cultural Studies." MMLA 24.1 (Spring 1991): 50-73; During, Simon, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1993); Franklin, Sarah, et al., eds., Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies (London: HarperCollinsAcadera/c, 1991); Grossberg, Lawrence, et al., eds., Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992); Probyn, Elspeth, Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1993); Schwarz, Bill, "Where Is Cultural Studies?" Cultural Studies 8.3 (1994): 377-93. ELIZABETH MITTMAN
D D a d a i s m ( 1 9 1 6 - 1 9 2 3 ) . More than an interlude between Expressionism and Surrealism, or a school of nihilism and chaos, the Dada movement's endeavor was to challenge the very institution of art. The movement of European artists and writers was born in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in the summer of 1916 as a reaction to World War I. The performances by Emmy Ball-Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, and others were provocations of the bourgeoisie, whom the Dadaists held responsible for war and the insanity of their time. Artistic form as well as intellectual order of the bourgeoisie were therefore considered worthless and void. Provocative "noise concerts," sound poetry (Lautgedichte), and coincidental word collages represented the Dadaistic anti-ideology. These new pictorial and verbal forms were based on the Dadaists' idea of universal destruction of positivistic knowledge and order. At its core, Dadaist thinking entailed a deliberate negation of theory. Between 1918 and 1920, Dada artists and writers formed Dada circles, clubs, and theaters in Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, and Paris. Dadaists such as Kurt Schwitters or Ball are well known, but not the women who appeared night after night in the Cabaret Voltaire, like Hennings (known only for her marriage to Hugo Ball), who recited her own poetry and prose. Until recently, Hennings has been excluded from Dadaism by publishers and art and literary historians, despite the fact that her poems (among others ' 'Madchen am Kai") were included in the volume Dada. Gedichte der Grunder (1957), edited by Arp. Her extensive literary contributions from the 1910s to the 1940s have been largely ignored; only her edition of Ball's later works as well as her memoirs of her life with Ball allowed her to survive in the margins of the literary
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canon. A small selection of Hennings' poems and prose written during the Dada period has recently been collected in the volume Betrunken taumeln alle Litfafisdulen (1990). Her works of this period, albeit not necessarily Dadaistic, include the novels Gefangnis (1919) and Das Brandmal (1920), both depicting the experiences of marginal (i.e., imprisoned and streetwalking) women. Other publications of the early 1920s include the collections of poems Helle Nacht (1922) and Das ewige Lied (1923). Female Dada artists include Hannah Hoch, who became most known for her innovative Dada collages; Sophie Tauber-Arp, who produced most of the masks and puppets used in the Cabaret Voltaire; and Sonia Delaunay-Terk, whose textile patterns and designs of clothes inspired her husband Robert Delaunay's paintings, among others. See also: Cabaret; Experimental Literature; Expressionism; Nihilism; Surrealism; World War I. References: Ball-Hennings, Emmy, DasfliichtigeSpiel. Wege und Umwege einer Frau (Einsiedeln, Cologne: Benzinger, 1940), Damals in Zurich. Briefe aus den Jahren 1915-1917 (Zurich: Arche, 1978); Dachy, Marc, The Dada Movement 1915-1923 (New York: Rizzoli, 1990); Melzer, Annabelle Henkin, Dada and Surrealist Performance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Riha, Karl, ed., Dada Zurich: Texte, Dokumente, Manifeste (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1992); Schuhmann, Klaus, ed., Sankt Zickzack springt aus dem Ei: Texte, Bilder und Dokumente zum Dadaismus in Zurich, Berlin, Hannover und Koln (Leipzig, Weimar: Kiepenheuer, 1991). CHRISTIANE SCHONFELD Dance—see: Tanztheater D a r m s t a d t e r Kreis ( 1 7 7 0 - 1 7 7 3 ) . Three women formed the core of this sentimentalist friendship circle: Caroline Flachsland, fiancee and, later, wife of Johann Gottfried Herder, and two ladies-in-waiting at the court of the Landgraf in Darmstadt, Luise von Ziegler and Henriette von Roussillon. The lack of the circle's official literary output contrasts with that of another sentimental circle, the Gottinger Hainbund, which was composed chiefly of males. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who was introduced to the circle by Johann Heinrich Merck and who traveled frequently to Darmstadt in the spring and summer of 1772, provides literary commemoration of the Darmstadter Kreis in three poems ("Elisium an Uranien," "Pilgers Morgenlied an Lila," and "Fels-Weihegesang an Psyche," dedicated to von Roussillon, von Ziegler, and Flachsland, respectively) and in his novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774). Werther's cultic practice of appropriating and consecrating certain natural locations is modeled after the activities of the Darmstadter Kreis. The novel's portrayal of the problematics of friendship and love between male and female and the union of souls in the afterlife are also influenced by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, the Darmstadters" favorite poet. The circle was instrumental in the publication of the first collection of his odes (1770-1771) in an edition of 34
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copies. Aside from their support for young male authors, the Darmstadter Kreis provides one of the first historical examples of women's citing other women as their poetic inspiration (e.g., Caroline Flachsland's letters, which were modeled after Meta Moller's letters to Klopstock). See also: Freundschaftskult; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress. References: Brauning-Oktavio, Hermann, "Goethe und Johann Heinrich Merck." Goethe 12 (1950): 177-217; Rahn-Bechmann, Lilli, "Der Darmstadter Freundeskreis" (Diss., Erlangen, 1934); Tornius, Valerian Hugo, Schone Seelen: Studien iiber Manner und Frauen aus der Wertherzeit (Leipzig: Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1920). ELIZABETH POWERS D a u g h t e r . Even though from its very beginnings, German literature is rife with father-son motifs and conflicts, daughters in pre-20th-century literature are usually viewed as future wives and mothers, educated and socialized toward sexual maturity, marriage, and self-sacrificing motherhood. Alternatives to this prescribed lifestyle are scarce: escape from marriage can be found only in a convent—which, in real life, offered women a certain measure of intellectual freedom but, in literature, is usually equated with a fate worse than death. If the daughter escapes marriage for the dubious privilege of becoming a "bad" woman, either as a kept mistress or a prostitute, she will be shunned by society. In each instance she is denied maternity, her perceived real function, since both the asexual and the overtly sexual woman cannot be a good mother and, most important, would serve as a bad example to a daughter of her own. In medieval texts, the disobedient or sexually uninhibited daughter serves as a bad example and also introduces a note of subversion into the texts: the former by emphasizing her lack of choice (as in Neidhart's mother-daughter dialogues), the latter by portraying her sexuality as a commodity for the financial exploitation of men, as in some of the late medieval Maren. With the gradual emergence of the middle class during the 18th century, the role of the daughter undergoes a significant change. In 18th-century texts like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti (1772) and Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (1784), the daughter is the most precious property of the father, the symbol of bourgeois honor, and the locus of class conflict. On her shoulders rests the family's claim to moral righteousness, pride of societal place, and, perhaps, advancement. Thus, her erotic and sexual powers serve as both a threat and boon. In the first instance she might choose the wrong object for her desire and become a fallen woman, even a child murderess (Heinrich L. Wagner, Die Kindermorderin, 1776; Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Die Soldaten, 1776; Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust I, 1808), and destroy the family; in the second case, she can be instrumental in improving the lot of her clan (Goethe, Egmont, 1788). The whole of the social fabric is invested in the daughter's obedience to her father and her chastity until marriage. With a few exceptions—the few insubordinate daughters, especially in fairy tales, who are not punished for their
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independence—this pattern of being given or sometimes even sold by a father to a husband varies little until the mid-19th century. In women's literature of the mid- to late 19th century, the major conflict is set not between father and daughter but rather between mother and daughter (Elise Levi, Der Erbonkel, 1887; Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, 1895; Franziska von Reventlow, Ellen Olestjerne, 1903). In these texts, the daughter sees in her mother the agent and enforcer of the oppressive patriarchal system, while the mother sees in her daughter a symbol of her own lack of power (Lena Christ, Erinnerungen einer Uberfliissigen, 1912). The rebellious daughter feels compelled to distance herself from her mother in order not to share her fate. During the 20th century, the critical evaluation of the daughter's role, be it as sacrifice for the mother (Cordelia Edvardson, Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer, 1986), the mother's feuding enemy (Helga Novak, Die Eisheiligen, 1979; Elfriede Jelinek, Die Klavierspielerin, 1983; Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch, Die ZUchtigung, 1985), or completely separated from the mother (Jutta Heinrich, Das Geschlecht der Gedanken, 1985), becomes a central theme in women's literature. See also: Fairy Tale; Father-Daughter Relationship; Infanticide; Jelinek, Elfriede; Maere; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Prostitution. References: Aulls, Katharina, Verbunden und gebunden. Mutter-Tochter Beziehung in sechs Romanen der siebziger und achtziger Jahre (Berne: Lang, 1993); Boose, Lynda E., and Betty S. Flowers, eds., Daughters and Fathers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Hirsch, Marianne, The Mother/Daughter Plot. Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds., Mutter-Tochter-Frauen. Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Miiller, Heidy Margrit, Tochter und Mutter in deutschsprachiger Erzdhlprosa von 1885-1935 (Munich: Iudicum, 1991); S0rensen, Bengt Algot, Herrschaft und Zdrtlichkeit. Der Patriarchalismus und das Drama im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1984).
ULRIKE RAINER
Deconstruction—see: Positionality; Poststructuralism; Subjectivity D e m o n . Much like devils, phantoms, vampires, and witches, the demon appears in literature where horror, magic, fantasy, mystery, and the supernatural abound. The demon often fulfills the role of the adversary to the heroine or hero and can appear in human or animal form or as a metaphysical entity, such as the demonic forces inhabiting dreams. Rather than representing pure evil, the demon in works by women authors sometimes embodies ambiguous characteristics and at times explores the emancipatory potential inherent in socially stigmatized female character types created by male authors, such as mermaids, old maids, domestic angels, witches, and fallen women. Women authors also utilize demonic images as a symbolic representation for social evils. The demon was first interpreted as an evil figure when the Christian church began to condemn pagan deities. One church theory on the origin of demons
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suggests they are rebellious angels who fell with Lucifer, a theory that proposes that the principle of evil was already present in the Garden of Eden. Antifeminine prejudices, however, continue to link the serpent's seduction of Eve to the introduction of evil into the world. The medieval playwright Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim challenges misogynist depictions of women in her day in Dulcitius (after 962), in which the pagan governor and would-be seducer Dulcitius is mistaken for a demon in a humorous scene. Hildegard von Bingen presents demonic images in much of her work. In her Ordo virtutum (1158) and Liber vitae meritorum (1163), various human vices are given demonic features in their ongoing battle with virtues for possession of the human soul. Despite such works by women authors, the association between the demonic and the feminine remained powerful and contributed to the witch trials of the 12th and 13th centuries. The works of the Storm and Stress period and the Gothic revival of the Romantiker popularized the figure of the demon once again, for example, in the Schauerliteratur and Gespenstergeschichten of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Christiane Benedikte Naubert's work was a source of inspiration for Hoffmann. She makes use of medieval themes of magic and witchcraft in the fairy tale Der kurze Mantel (1819) and presents the protagonist in Velleda, Ein Zauberroman (1795) as a magical woman who turns children into animals to protect them from danger. Annette von Droste-Hulshoff's well-known eerie tales are ahead of their time. She makes use of the demonic doppelganger motif in the figure of Johannes Niemand in her novella Die Judenbuche (1841). In Das Fraulein von Rodenschild (1840-1841), the author recalls a dream in which she observes her own doppelganger moving through the house. The demon in literature appears with increasing popularity as turn-of-the-century psychological studies reveal the unstable identity of the self. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the demon and the demonic have increasingly become a vehicle of social and political critique. In Gesprache mit Damonen (1852), the sequel to Dies Buch gehort dem Konig (1843), Bettina von Arnim uses the figure of the demon to represent those male heads of state she criticizes for failing to improve social conditions for the poor and politically persecuted of her time. Marie Luise Kaschnitz's work is haunted by the demons of Germany's fascist past as she explores the distress and disillusionment of postwar Germany. Irmtraud Morgner presents a feminist reinterpretation of figures associated with the demonic in Amanda, Ein Hexenroman (1983). Through the use of fantastic and mythological aspects, the story of the witch Amanda is narrated by a siren who moves freely through time and space. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Doubles, Female; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Drama; Fairy Tale Novella; Fantastic Literature; Inquisition; Medieval Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Mythical Female Figures; Romanticism; Storm and Stress; Vampirism; Witch. References: Auerbach, Nina, Woman and the Demon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Moers, Ellen, "Female Gothic." Literary Women: The Great Writers (New York: Doubleday, 1976) 90-110; Roebling, Irmgard, "Heraldikdes Unheimlichen:
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Annette von Droste-Hulshoff (1797-1848). Auch ein Portrait." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 41-68.
BETH MUELLNER
D e v o t i o n a l Literature—see: Erbauungsliteratur Dialektdichtung. Literature written in dialect, originating from local varieties of languages of German, Swiss, Austrian, or other German-speaking regions, is called Dialektdichtung or Mundartdichtung. Dialektdichtung includes traditional Heimat literature, Viennese plays and comedies, Naturalist plays, the volkische literature of national socialism, the modern critical Volksstiick, and a new poetic movement since the 1950s. Traditional Dialektdichtung or Heimat literature expresses a retrospective and affective affiliation with a region, a birthplace, cultural traditions, and regional customs. Typical for this genre is a modernist depiction of rural landscapes and unspoiled nature like Nanny Escher's Seefrorni (1918). Legends and folktales like Wilhelmine Siefke's Ostfriesische Sagen (1963) advocate the conservation of traditional customs. Prominent genres include love poems, religious stories like Martha Wild's Christmas stories Der alt Flirt (1977), adaptations of classic works like Anna Emilie Locher's De Landvogt vo Gryfesee (1914, based on a work by Gottfried Keller), farces like Philomene Hartl-Mitius' S'goldene Kalbel (1901), and radio plays like Hilda Kiihl's De Trepp (1974). The Naturalist writers at the end of the 19th century introduced dialects and the spoken language (Umgangssprache) as a vehicle for their social criticism, thereby rejecting any nostalgic notion of Heimat. Dialect expresses estrangement and social critique in Marieluise FleiBer's play Der starke Stamm (1945). Since the late 1950s under the influence of the Wiener Gruppe and Konkrete Poesie, a new dialect movement has turned Mundartdichtung into a popular literary form. Hanna Heinz-Erian's collection of poems Denkts amol dran or Christine Nostlinger's children's story Iba de ganz armen Kinda (1974) adapt a critical stance toward Western civilization and its economic progress. Modern dialect love poems like Traute Briigger's Spegelbild (1980) express a sense of alienation and a lack of communication rather than romantic themes. Contemporary examples of the critical Volksstiick genre, like Elfriede Jelinek's satire Burgtheater (1984) and Kerstin Specht's Amiwiesn (1991), deal with Austria's national socialist past and Germany's postwar years. See also: Dadaism; Dorfgeschichte; Experimental Literature; FleiBer, Marieluise; Heimatdichtung; Jelinek, Elfriede; National Socialism; Naturalism; Volksstiick. References: Berlinger, Josef, Das zeitgenossische deutsche Dialektgedicht: Zur Theorie und Praxis der deutschsprachigen Dialektlyrik 1950-1980 (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1983); Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik 19 (1987), 20 (1988); Wickham, Christopher J., Modern German Dialect Poetry as a Linguistic, Literary, and Social Phenomenon: The Case of Bavarian and Austrian (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1982). MARIATTE C. DENMAN
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D i a l o g i c s , Feminist. The term, coined by Dale Bauer, refers to feminist analyses in literary and cultural studies that appropriate and modify the theories of the Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. The wide attraction of his theories can be attributed, in part, to the fact that they account for notions of agency and social change, notions that are often marginalized in recent critical theory. Since the relatively recent translation into English of some of the most important studies attributed to Bakhtin (due to censorship in the Soviet Union, the question of authorship could not be resolved in all instances), scholars from very different critical schools have drawn on Bakhtinian concepts, most frequently on his notions of the "carnival" (developed in Rabelais and His World, written in the 1940s, pub. 1965, trans. 1968) and "dialogism" (developed in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, pub. 1929, trans. 1973, and in his essay "Dialogue in the Novel," written in the 1930s, pub. 1975, trans. 1981). Among them are scholars working on intertextuality, both from a hermeneutic and a poststructuralist perspective, as well as critics primarily concerned with the social and political dimensions of literature and culture. While feminist appropriations of Bakhtin fall, for the most part, into the latter category, feminist scholars have also contributed to a critical reassessment and expansion of Bakhtinian theories, most importantly by incorporating issues of gender (and, more recently, race and ethnicity) into his approach to language. Feminist studies in Germanistik that draw on Bakhtin include Anne Herrmann's book on Virginia Woolf and Christa Wolf (1989), Brigid Haines' analysis of Lou Andreas-Salome's story "Fenitschka" (1991), Friederike Eigler's study of Bachmann's Simultan (1991), and Sara Friedrichsmeyer's comprehensive article on Christa Wolf (1993). In his seminal essay "Dialogue in the Novel," Bakhtin develops the central notions of heteroglossia, voice, and the dialogic. Heteroglossia conceptualizes the historical and social nature of language as a multiplicity of discourses shaped by different social and ideological factors. The heteroglossia of a particular sociohistorical situation enters into the multivoiced narrative. Bakhtin's notion of voice is not identical with a literary character but represents a particular discursive aspect; thus, a character may be inhabited by multiple voices, and/or a particular voice may transgress the boundaries of one single protagonist and reappear in another. In Ingeborg Bachmann's novel Molina, for instance, the narrating " I " represents the voice of socially constructed femininity, that is, only one aspect of a more complex character that is ultimately suppressed and eliminated. While the novel Malina is shaped by the very tension between characters and voices, most narratives do not explicitly draw attention to the multiplicity of their voices. The notions of voice and multivoiced narrative reverberate with aspects of recent critical (feminist) theory including the concepts of positionality, hybrid identity, and multiple subject positions. Bakhtin employs the terms "dialogic" and "dialogization" to capture the specific modes in which voices are related to each other, including different degrees of tension and struggle. The dialogic principle is thus not restricted to
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dialogue but also accounts for those voices that either refuse to enter into any kind of dialogue or are excluded from it. This notion of the dialogic lends itself to feminist criticism that is concerned with the disruption of patriarchal language and the exploration of marginal voices within dominant discourses. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Essentialism/Constructionism; Hermeneutics; Hybridity; Identity Theories; Linguistics, Feminist; Positionality; Poststructuralism; Wolf, Christa. References: Bakhtin, Mikhail, "Discourse in the Novel." The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. M. Holquist. Trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) 259^422; Bauer, Dale M., and S. Jaret McKinstry, eds., Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic (New York: SUNY Press, 1991); Booth, Wayne, "Freedom of Interpretation: Bakhtin and the Challenge of Feminist Criticism." Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work. Ed. Gary S. Morson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) 14576; Diaz-Diocaretz, Myriam, "Bakhtin, Discourse, and Feminist Theories." Critical Studies 1.2 (1989): 121-39; Eigler, Friederike, "Feminist Criticism and Bakhtin's Dialogic Principle: Making the Transition from Theory to Textual Analysis." Women in German Yearbook 11 (1995): 189-203. FRIEDERIKE EIGLER D i a r i e s . Feminist critics usually understand diaries as a subgenre of autobiography. Despite the fact that many women have gravitated to this form for centuries, most studies until recently have been based almost exclusively on the works of male diarists. These studies have viewed diaries as the traditional form for recording an individual's daily activities and for recording his personal or professional development; when the diarists have been writers or other creative artists, diaries have been recognized as a vehicle for experimenting with themes or writing styles and planning future works. Feminist critics have been attracted to diaries because of the forum they have afforded women over the centuries for self-representation. Applying poststructuralist insights to this literary form, these theoreticians have argued that diarists are constantly engaged in creating a self or multiple selves and that the form is thus more complex than previously acknowledged. Rather than attempting to formulate encompassing theories of the diary or concentrating specifically on literary diaries, they have focused on the wealth of ways in which women have recorded their lives. In contrast to the diaries of many men, women frequently recorded their thoughts not in books bought for that purpose, but instead on scraps of paper or even in cookbooks; they also interspersed them on the pages of such documents as travel accounts, family chronicles, and religious confessions. More intriguing than those diarists who merely record their daily activities are those who use their diaries as confidantes in their struggles with existence, with justifying their lives to themselves and to others, and with defining their place in the world, that is, with finding a self (e.g., Fanny Lewald, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Adele Schopenhauer, Elisa von der Recke, Kathe Kollwitz). Thus, when dealing with diaries, feminist critics are as concerned with what a particular writer reveals as well as with what she conceals. The literary and
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cultural value of diaries is often enhanced when they can be compared to the writer's other forms of self-representation, for example, self-portraits, a published autobiography, or letters. Intricately interwoven with the issue of self-representation is that of audience. The idea of a diary as a forum for the inner life is actually a modern one. Until this century, diaries were only semiprivate and were, in fact, often written to be shared with friends or family; there is also a tradition of diarists who have recorded the events of their lives, intending them for publication. Many women have been attracted by the relative freedom and security diaries offer, but even for them diaries are not an entirely private form. If a diary seems to offer the opportunity for more private, unguarded, and candid expression than any other form of writing, that is primarily because the writer can maintain the illusion of writing without an audience. Because they are perhaps the most private form of writing, some feminist critics have turned to diaries as the most plausible medium for offering glimpses of authentic female voices and desires. See also: Autobiography; Confessional and Testimonial Literature; EbnerEschenbach, Marie von; Lewald, Fanny; Poststructuralism; Subjectivity; Travelogues. References: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, " 'Seeds for the Sowing': The Diary of Kathe Kollwitz." Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary Representation. Ed. Helen M. Cooper, Adrienne Auslander Munich, and Susan Merrill Squier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989) 205-24; Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women's Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Stanton, Domna C , ed., The Female Autograph (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1984).
SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER Didactic Literature—see: Lehrdichtung; Ratgeberliteratur D o c u m e n t a r y Literature. This refers to a reality beyond its aesthetic realm by demonstratively citing authentic material such as historical documents, Protokolle, speeches, newspaper reports, and so on. It aims to close the gap between life and art. Documentary literature comes in a great variety of forms and genres: documentary play, the report-style novel (Reportageroman), case studies, lyrical montage. Documentary literature's claim of authenticity and immediacy is challenged by the fact that by incorporating authentic material into a work of fiction, the material itself becomes part of the fiction. In addition, the material has been manipulated through the process of selection, editing, and montage. Documentary literature made its breakthrough during the time of the student movement in the late 1960s. This period was marked by the then-young generation's need to confront the past and by a strong interest in social causes, issues that were then also treated from a feminist point of view by the women authors of documentary literature.
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Social issues are at the center of Erika Runge's documentary works, which comprise taped interviews: Bottroper Protokolle (1968) is concerned with life in a small mining village, Reise nach Rostock, DDR (1971) aims to present a socioeconomic, political, and cultural portrait of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) via individual interviews. Runge widens her scope even more in Sudafrika—Rassendiktatur zwischen Elend und Widerstand. Potokolle und Dokumente zur Apartheid (1974), in which she targets the politics of apartheid. In this work, Runge not only presents her taped conversations but adds statistics as well as examples of journalistic and literary opposition to apartheid. But it is the strength of Runge's work that her social diagrams comprise the life stories of individuals instead of mere statistics. Despite her doubts about the originality of her work, Runge returned to documentary literature with her work Berliner Liebesgeschichten (1987), in which three couples and seven singles examine love. Unlike Runge, other authors of documentary literature found the indirectness inherent in the medium liberating rather than restrictive; examples are Ursula Trauberg, Anna Wimschneider, and Rosalie Rothers. Trauberg's Vorleben (1968), Wimschneider's Wolfsmilch: Lebenserinnerungen einer Bduerin (1968) and Rothers' Rosalka oder Wie es eben so ist (1969) are emancipatory stories of women's lives. Thus, documentary literature not only served as a forum for women's voices but could also provide women with examples of successful liberation, for example, Runge's Frauen. Versuche zur Emanzipation (1969), Sarah Kirsch's Die Pantherfrau. Fiinf unfrisierte Erzahlungen aus dem KassettenRecorder (1973), and Maxie Wander's Guten Morgen, du Schone (1977 GDR/ 1978 FRG). Wander's work consists of 17 personal statements by women of all ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and professions who address their daily lives, families, careers in the GDR, and their attitudes toward feminism, sexuality, friendship, and happiness. Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer's work Der weibliche Name des Widerstands. Sieben Berichte (1980) tells the stories of female victims of Nazi persecution. Kerschbaumer combines excerpts from historical documents (court reports, Gestapo notes, letters, interviews with friends and family or camp survivors) with her own thoughts and reflections, thus connecting past and present. The tension between the objective documents and the subjective comments, between the past and the present, underscores Kerschbaumer's goal to protest the exclusion of female resistance from the public realm and to prevent it from being forgotten. Der weibliche Name des Widerstands masterfully demonstrates the potential of documentary literature to promote political and social awareness. See also: Holocaust Literature; Montage; Protokolle; Student Movement (1968); Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen, Du Schone. References: Berghahn, Klaus L., "Operative Asthetik: Zur Theorie der dokumentarischen Literatur." Deutsche Literatur in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965. Untersuchungen und Berichte. Ed. P. Michael Liitzeler and Egon Schwarz (Konigstein/Ts: Athenaum,
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1980); Miller, Nikolaus, Prolegomena zu einer Poetik der Dokumentarliteratur (Munich: Fink, 1982). HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER D o h m , H e d w i g ( 1 8 3 1 - 1 9 1 9 ) . One of the central theorists of the early German women's movement, Hedwig Dohm authored political treatises, critical essays, short stories, plays, and novels. Like many other women reformers of her time, Dohm built her politics on personal experience. Born into the German bourgeoisie, Dohm's early life reflected imperial Germany's dictum that a middleclass woman's place was in the home. She was married at an early age to Ernst Dohm, editor of the satirical Berlin journal Kladderadatsch, and was the mother of five children. Dohm's lifelong goal to become a writer was possible only after years of self-education following a state school education that focused on cultivating "femininity" in women, as opposed to teaching independent thought. For Dohm, the pen became the vehicle for addressing the issues at the heart of the developing German women's movement. Dohm's earliest feminist publications date from the 1870s, in which she addressed such topics as the antifeminist arguments of the clergy, woman suffrage, and women's struggle to gain admission to German universities. Her early involvement in women's causes places her in the first generation of feminist activists in Germany. In addition to her writing, she was a member of the executive committee of the Frauenverein ' 'Reform,'' which was instrumental in the founding of the first state grammar school for girls in Karlsruhe. Dohm was also among the feminists who were early supporters of the Bund fiir Mutterschutz, a group that was organized to support unwed mothers and that later advocated the teaching of sex education in state schools. The articles and essays that Dohm wrote throughout the rest of her life identify her as one of the most radical voices of the German bourgeois women's movement. Her positions within contemporary debates concerning woman suffrage, women's education, and women's property rights rejected bourgeois feminism's advocacy of a doctrine of "separate but equal," urging instead equal opportunity for women. In a political climate where German liberalism had been dealt many blows, Dohm consistently advocated the importance of individual rights. Her views in the 1870s and 1880s anticipated the development of a liberal, individualist feminism that arose in Germany only in the 1890s. Dohm's polemics are known for their incisive argumentation, wit, and optimism. Her articles and essays exhibit a thorough knowledge of the issues of the day, keen analysis, and a sophisticated rhetorical style. Dohm's fiction focuses on many of the same themes as do her articles and essays but is often less optimistic about the success of feminist goals in imperial Germany. Her portrayals of women protagonists display the ambivalence of a writer who sees herself as part of a transitional generation that will fight for feminist goals and yet never be able to benefit from the reforms she is advocating. Fascinated by
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psychology, Dohm explored the implications of the structural limitations placed upon German women in terms of their inner lives. Her novels detail the consequences of these limitations, by which social, cultural, and economic constraints produce unhappy marriages, poverty, illness, insanity, and even death. Later in her life, Dohm addressed the taboo subject of old age in the novella Werde, die du bist (1894) and wrote her final treatise, in support of pacifism, in 1915. See also: Pacifism; Suffrage; University Education, Women's; Women's Movement. References: Frederiksen, Elke, ed., Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland 1865-1915 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981); Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B., "The Ambiguous World of Hedwig Dohm." Gestaltet und Gestaltend. Frauen in der deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 255-76; Reed, Philippa, "Alles, was ich schreibe, steht im Dienst der Frauen.y' Zum essayistischen und fiktionalen Werk Hedwig Dohms (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1987).
LISA C. ROETZEL Doppelganger—see: Demon; Doubles, Female D o r f g e s c h i c h t e . This emerged as a short narrative form in numerous European literatures during the 19th century, with the period between 1830 and 1890 being the most productive for the German-speaking area. The two most prominent male German-language authors of the genre are Jeremias Gotthelf, whose stories have a strong pedagogical bent, and Berthold Auerbach, who praises the virtues of rural life over the complexities of urban existence. In general, Dorfgeschichten depict the social, cultural, and economic aspects of 19th-century preindustrial village life in a positive light and as marked by simplicity, harmony, and order. The emphasis on traditional conservative values entails the unquestioning acceptance of social hierarchies, religion, and traditional gender roles. Accordingly, women characters who step beyond societal boundaries are ostracized and often vilified as witches (e.g., Christine in Gotthelf s Die schwarze Spinne, 1842, who negotiates the deal with the Devil). Women authors of 19th-century Dorfgeschichten accept and perpetuate traditional gender roles and boundaries in their own narratives. In Die Judenbuche (1842), Annette von Droste-Hulshoff marginalizes the character of Margreth Mergel, who broke with traditional gender roles by marrying late, choosing her own husband, and proudly assuming that she could tame his abusive character. This hubris resulted in her becoming a frightened, silenced, and battered wife like so many others in her village. Another untraditional woman who is silenced, this time by death, is the figure of Resel in Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's "Die Resel" (from Dorf- und Schlofigeschichten, 1883). Endowed with an independent mind, a willingness to take substantial risks, and "bewitching" powers over animals, Resel is too much an outsider for her story to end with marriage and integration into village life. Ebner-Eschenbach's Dorfgeschichten reveal that her social awareness focuses more on class issues (nobility versus villagers) than
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on gender issues; an example is her story "Er laBt die Hand kiissen" {Neue Dorf- und Schlofigeschichten, 1886). Other lesser-known authors of Dorfgeschichten include Marie Nathusius, Hermine Villinger, and Lulu von StrauB und Torney. Marie Nathusius, daughter of a pastor, composed her Dorfgeschichten in a religious-pedagogical vein comparable to Gotthelf's. Her women characters are either pious, saintlike figures who, through their example, positively influence others (e.g., Marie in "Marie," 1858) or lost souls who are beyond redemption (e.g., Mine in "Vater, Sohn und Enkel," 1858). Hermine Villinger portrays village life in the Black Forest, for example, in Schwarzwaldgeschichten (1892) and Unter Bauern und andere Geschichten (1894). Lulu von StrauB und Torney not only wrote Dorfgeschichten (e.g., her collection Bauernstolz, 1901) but also defended the genre and its subject matter in her essay Die Dorf geschichte in der modernen Literatur (1906) as a valuable contribution to maintaining the "Volkscharakter." She thus helped lay the ideological foundation for the Blut- und Boden literature of the national socialist regime. In socialist literature, Dorfgeschichten such as Minna Kautsky's "Die Einschichtige im Dorfe" (1889) and Stefan vom Grillenhof (1879) depict the economic needs of the rural population; and in the 20th century, Anna Seghers described village life in the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR) in "Friedensgeschichten" (1950). See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; GDR Literature; GroBstadtroman; Heimatdichtung; National Socialism; Socialism; Volksdichtung; Witch. References: Geerdts, H. J., "Zur neuesten Dorfliteratur in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik." Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universitat Greifswald 23 (1974): 11-15; Hein, Jtirgen, Dorfgeschichte (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977); Pickar, Gertrud Bauer, "The Battering and Meta-Battering of Droste's Margreth: Covert Misogyny in Die Judenbuche's Critical Reception." Women in German Yearbook 9 (1993): 71-90. ASTRID WEIGERT
Dorrie, D o r i s ( 1 9 5 5 - p r e s e n t ) . Dorrie is an internationally renowned German film director and the author of many books. Her work focuses on the changing conditions among people of different genders and their roles in European and American societies. Dorrie often produces films based on her literary themes. She is one of the few active women directors in Germany today, and although she produced the internationally most successful German film in decades {Manner, 1985), she has received little critical attention. She has also produced a film in the United States {Ich und Er, 1988), which is unusual for German film directors. Dorrie was born in Hannover, Germany, and studied in Munich and the United States. As a student, she consistently combined her theoretical knowledge with practical experience by showing films at the Goethe Institute in New York and working as a film critic and director's assistant at the radio station Bayer-
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ischer Rundfunk in Munich. During this time, Dorrie produced her first documentary {Ob's stiirmt oder schneit, 1976) and a short film {Ene, mene, mink, 1977). In 1978, Dorrie graduated from Munich with her first feature film with the title Der erste Walzer. From 1978 to 1981, Dorrie worked for various television companies and produced four documentaries {Alt werden in der Fremde, 1978; Flattest was Gscheits gelernt, 1978; Katharina Eiselt, 85, Arbeiterin, 1980; Von Romantik keine Spur, Martine (19) wird Schdferin, 1980-1981) and one film for children, Paula aus Portugal (1979). The latter was her first film commissioned by the ZDF, one of the two leading German television stations at the time. Since 1981, Dorrie has produced television films, feature films, and cinema films. Dazwischen (1981) is a teenage love story. Dome's next film production, Mitten ins Herz (1983), was Germany's contribution to the film festival in Venice. The film depicts the love between a teenager and a dentist. Subsequent films include Im Innern des Wals (1984), Paradies (1986), and her comedy Manner, which became the most popular film of the year. The film won international critical praise and awards for best screenplay and best film. After this period of celebrity, Dorrie produced her second comedy, Ich und Er, in the United States. Her films Geld (1989), Happy Birthday, Turke (1991, based on the novel by Turkish-German author Jakob Arjouni), and Keiner liebt mich (1994) were highly successful in German cinemas. In 1990 she also produced a video documentary titled Love in Germany, which was a great success. In her depiction of the two themes dominating the unmarried protagonist's life— independence and loneliness—Dorrie skillfully captures the apocalyptic mood of the 1990s. In this most symbolic and ritualistic of Dome's films, Fanny Fink, the protagonist, seeks out supernatural experiences as an antidote to her loneliness and anonymity. Like all of Dome's heroines, Fanny Fink stands for a new generation of independent women; above all, Dome's frequent depiction of intelligent, individualistic, liberated, and self-determining female characters makes her one of Germany's leading feminist filmmakers. Dome's books include Liebe, Schmerz und das ganze verdammte Zeug (1987, trans, into English by John E. Woods in 1989), Was wollen sie von mir? (1989, trans, into English by John E. Woods in 1991), Der Mann meiner Trdume (1991), Fiir immer undewig. Eine Art Reigen (1991), Love in Germany. Kuchen-, Wohn- und Schlafzimmergesprache mit deutschen Paaren (1992), and Bin ich schon? (1994), all of which appeared with the publisher Diogenes in Zurich, Switzerland. In her books, Dorrie thematizes everyday life, tragicomical episodes, parades of grotesque events, and missed opportunities for happiness. Her tone is disillusioned but realistic, she avoids sarcasm as well as naivete, and critics have often praised her for her wit and originality. Dome's literature describes the difficulties and indecision of people trying to live normal lives in a materialistic society and frequently focuses on luck, joy, and love as eminently worthy pursuits. With Robert Fischer, Dorrie also edited a reference book on German cinema, Kino 78. Bundesdeutsche Filme auf der Leinwand (1978).
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See also: Comedy; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Turkish-German Literature. References: Bock, Hans-Michael, ed., Cine Graph. Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film. Munich: edition text + kritik, 1984); Fischetti, Renate, Das neue Kino-Acht Portrats von deutschen Regisseurinnen (Dulmen: tende, 1992); Knight, Julia, Women in the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); Pflaum, Gtinther, and Hans Helmut Prinzler, eds., Film in der BRD (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1982); Raddatz, Fritz J., ed., Zeitmuseum der 100 Bilder. Autoren und Kunstler iiber ihr liebstes Kunstwerk (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1989).
DAGMAR SCHULZ D o u b l e s , F e m a l e . The Romantic writers' preoccupation with subjectivity and the power of the imagination to overcome spatial, temporal, and cognitive barriers informed their interest in the figure of the doppelganger. Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977) and the 1979 study by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), have shed much light on female doubling as an attempt at breaking loose from externally imposed constraints. Gilbert and Gubar see a distinctly female tradition in the novels by 19th-century British women writers, a tradition based on concealed and submerged subplots that provide a space for the female author to project repressed, subversive impulses into maddened or monstrous other women. The split female character offers many different possibilities for the female self engaged in the process of self-definition, as can be seen in the works of Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, the best-known 19th-century German female writer. Her ouevre is filled with Gothic encounters of a female divided self with disintegrated corpses, ghosts, demons, and maddened doubles (based on the Ophelia archetype) and displays a preoccupation with mirror images, bodies of water, and sisters. The docile half, the "angel in the house" (Virginia Woolf), satisfied with the traditional role of caring and nurturing, finds itself at war with the monstrous, rebellious half that longs for independence and defies boundaries. Increasingly rebellious, free-spirited female doubles have appeared in German literature as women writers began to focus on self-identity and inequality in patriarchal society. The Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann was the first 20thcentury female author in German-speaking countries to connect explicitly the literary double with female authorship and patriarchy in her 1971 novel Molina. The main protagonist, a writer, vacillating between the desire for submissiveness and striving for autonomy, can neither bring herself to imitate the rationality and superiority of her male alter ego as a way to emancipation nor find the voice of her own to complete her novel Exsultante Jubilante. Since the 1970s, a large number of works by women writers in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) have addressed problems of female identity and self-fulfillment in socialist society. Their doubles are no longer only mirror images or the maddened other halves of the female protagonists, as in 19th-century works, but function as facilitators for heroines and aid them on
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their journeys toward self-realization. Christa Wolf's novel Nachdenken iiber Christa T. (1968) is representative of women's quest to define themselves in the interaction with other women. Self-reflection becomes self-duplication as the author reproduces herself by having a first-person narrator reflect on the life and death of her friend Christa T. In Monika Maron's 1986 novel Die Uberlauferin, strange, rebellious female figures appear in surrealistic interludes to a female scientist as she takes a break from "lifelong responsibility to service" to become one within herself. Maron's female doubles unmask self-deceit and illusion behind female emancipation in the GDR. Brigitte Burmeister uses the female double in her 1988 novel Anders oder Vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde to explore female authorship and the problems of female identity within "real existing socialism." It is significant that women writers in the GDR expressed a need for Utopian thinking much earlier than West German women. Irmtraud Morgner's Trobadora Beatriz (1974) and the sequel, Amanda: Ein Hexenroman (1983), which are entirely structured around the notion of division and duplicity of two complementary female halves, demonstrate most poignantly the revolutionary impulse and radical vision of the late 20th-century female double. During their fanciful journeys, Amanda and Beatriz provide exemplary support for each other in their search for self-knowledge and a better humanity. See also: Authorship; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; GDR Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Protagonist/Antagonist; Romanticism; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Wolf, Christa. References: Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979); Hildenbrock, Aglaja, Das andere Ich: Kunstlerischer Mensch und Doppelganger in der deutsch- und englischprachigen Literatur (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1986); Lenk, Elisabeth, "The Self-Reflecting Woman." Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. Gisela Ecker (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985) 51-58; Lewis, Allison, " 'Foiling the Censor': Reading and Transference as Feminist Strategies in the Works of Christa Wolf, Irmtraud Morgner, and Christa Moog." German Quarterly 66.3 (1993): 372-86; Mabee, Barbara, "The Witch as Double: Feminist Doubles in German Literature and Irmtraud Morgner's Amanda." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 6.2-3 (1995): 166-90.
BARBARA MABEE
Drama—see: Amateur Theater; Amazonentheater; Besserungsstuck; Charakterdrama; Children's Literature; Court Theater; Drama, Biblical; Drama, Historical; Epic Theater; Fairy Tale Drama; Fastnachtsspiele; Frauen im Theater; Horspiel; Kunstlerdrama; Lesedrama; Martyrerdrama; Maskenspiel; Melodrama; Musical Theater; Nachspiel; Neuber, F. C ; Posse; Puppenspiel; Singspiel; Tanztheater; Volksstiick; Vorspiel; Wandertheater. D r a m a , Biblical/Mythological/Spiritual. Biblical dramas treat biblical themes and figures and are sometimes related to spiritual dramas, which stem
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from medieval dramas, such as the Easter and Passion plays. Mythological dramas incorporate myths or focus on figures from Classical or Germanic mythology. All three forms are rare in women's literature, compared to more dominant drama forms (e.g., comedy), but nevertheless form a tradition in women's works that has so far been unexplored. Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim composed the first German biblical/spiritual dramas, which were Lesedramen. Influenced by Terence and hagiographic legends, she used ornate, rhymed Latin prose. Female roles, the exaltation of virginity, and the conflicts between saintly purity and piety and women's sexuality are key in her dramas: Gallicanus I und II, Dulcitius, Calimachus, Abraham, Pafnutius, and Sapientia (all after 962). In the 18th and 19th centuries, the mythological drama appears in two types. Classical myths may be stylistically reconstructed (e.g., by Caroline von Wolzogen and Amalie von Imhoff), or the play retells the story of a mythological hero or heroine, for example Dido in plays by Charlotte von Stein and Johanna Holthausen; Odysseus in plays by Maria Anna Lohn-Siegel, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Elsa Porges-Bernstein; Oedipus (Gertrud Prellwitz, 1896) and Achilles (Bernstein, 1910). Germanic heroes or heroines like Kriemhild, Siegfried, and Gudrun are portrayed in undated works by Amalie von Liebhaber and in Wesendonck {Gudrun, 1868). A tendency in many mythological plays by women is to change the tragic ending of the original myth, to add a moral aspect, or to portray the characters of the drama as either independent of, or opposing divine control of, human life. In this respect, these characters provide a commentary on the mythological tradition—for example, von Stein's Dido (who commits suicide for political rather than personal reasons) or Prellwitz's Oedipus (who calls his subjects to armed rebellion against inexorable Fate), and can be viewed as leaders of a rebellion against the will of the gods who rule supreme in the ancient myths. Biblical dramas of the 19th century concentrate on biblical figures or the retelling of a particular story. Particularly popular characters were Moses (in plays by Henriette von Stolberg, 1788; Friederike Ellmenreich, 1828; and Henriette Reusch, 1867) and Saul (in plays by Marie Eugenie delle Grazie and Anna Kraft). While some biblical plays (e.g., Kraft's Saul, n.d.) adapt the biblical material virtually unchanged for the often stated purpose of preaching to the unconverted, other dramas (e.g., delle Grazie's Saul, 1885) continue the traditions begun in 19th-century mythological plays. Delle Grazie's Saul, for example, posits Saul's realm of love, portrayed in Saul's love story with Melitta, against the realm of hate, represented by Jehovah and his all-out war against the people of Amalek. While such blasphemous treatment of biblical themes is comparatively rare, biblical stories often served as the basis for modern and relatively controversial discussions of the material. This critical tradition continues into the 20th century, most prominently in the plays of Use Langner, who thematized war, exile, and women's issues in her mythological dramas {Klytamnestra, 1947-1949; Iphigenie kehrt heim, 1949; Iphigenie und Orest, manuscript 1977; Iphigenie Smith kehrt heim, manuscript
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1946; Dido, manuscript 1938-1941; and Orpheus findet Eurydike, manuscript 1941). Prominent modern spiritual dramas by women include Else Lasker-Schuler's three dramas, Die Wupper (1909), Arthur Aronymous und seine Water (1932), and Ichundlch (1940-1941); Marieluise FleiBer's Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt (1926); and Nelly Sachs' Eli (1943-1951), a modern mystery play. See also: Classicism; FleiBer, Marieluise; Lesedrama; Medieval Literature; Virgin. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 178-95. CHRISTINE KALLINGER D r a m a , Historical/National/Political. Whenever women playwrights treat national, historical, and political concerns from a gendered perspective, their texts record and effect discursive breaks. Women's plays on traditionally masculine issues either inscribe oppression and exclusion in the dramatic form or expand dramatic conventions. On one hand, these constraints have limited women's access to political theater; on the other, they have contributed to the invention of new forms and styles with which feminists articulate and contest nationalist, historiographical, and political issues. Susanne Kord dates the first dramas by women playwrights dealing with historical figures and events in the 19th century, contending that plays with female protagonists dramatize predominantly unknown, forgotten, or mythical heroines. These historical dramas (e.g., Engel Christine Westphalen's Charlotte Corday, 1804, and Auguste Gotze's Vittoria Accoramboni, 1890) work against the omission of women from historical records, while the tragic form records the effect of women's becoming the subjects of history. (Dramas by women that treat national and patriotic themes and intentions tend to have male protagonists, for example, Mathilde Wesendonck's Friedrich der Grofie, 1871; Elise Schmidt's Macchiavelli, n.d.; Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's Ulrich ZwingWs Tod, 1837.) During the Weimar Republic and after World War II, many women wrote Zeitstucke, which addressed contemporary issues. The Zeitstuck, exemplified by the work of Use Langner, and the socialist realist drama are the only form of political theater that continued to use predominantly realist elements. In the 1950s, women playwrights in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) propagated gender equality through women's integration in the workforce and the participation of men in domestic labor. Writing from a position within state ideology, these women were able to reconcile the contradiction between public and private by assigning the dramatic conflict—sexist discrimination—to the bourgeois past. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the persistence of patriarchal structures and behaviors in the GDR complicated such dramatic solutions. Playwrights coached their feminist critique of the state in the terms of stagnant and dysfunctional personal relationships, ridiculing the notion of socialist society as a happy family. The aesthetic duplication of patriarchal oppression led many
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women playwrights to search for dramatic forms less aligned with the bourgeois order and traditional gender roles. Women's political theater has often sought to align itself with alternative social agendas and counterhegemonic performance traditions and thus uses elements of agitprop, cabaret, popular theater, epic dramaturgy, and the critical Volksstiick. Women's plays adapt such elements, removing them from their misogynistic contexts. In the case of Else Lasker-Schiiler and Ginka Steinwachs, the scope and profundity of their interventions in national and ideological narratives result in a richly textured, fast-paced dramaturgy hinging on the principles of acceleration and excess. Their experimental plays analyze oppression and, at the same time, offer Utopian visions of social change, vacillating between low comedy, lyric contemplation, and the grotesque. Other playwrights, such as Marieluise FleiBer and Elfriede Jelinek, derive a feminist, political agency from the compression and ultimate implosion of closed systems, whether they are the Bavarian small towns and their patriarchal mechanisms of surveillance FleiBer portrays in her critical Volksstucke or the seamless ideologies of patriarchy and fascism Jelinek deconstructs in her postmodern plays. Dramas about history, particularly the Nazi past and divided Germany, raise questions as to women's implication in nationalist agendas. Gerlind Reinshagen's German trilogy examines the duplication of fascist and capitalist state ideologies in the domestic realm as well as the possibility of Utopian alternatives and futures. Similarly, Friederike Roth's dramatic approach to German division in Ritt auf die Wartburg (1981) emphasizes women's implication in national ideologies, which obviates gender solidarity across borders. Kerstin Specht's Das Gluhend Mdnnla (1990) aligns mechanisms of surveillance guarding the Iron Curtain with those controlling behavior within a small family. Elfriede Miiller's play Goldener Oktober (1990) deals with German reunification and examines East-West relations through gendered metaphors such as courtship, marriage, and rape. The plays characterize the love-hate relationship between antagonistic parties as constitutive of gender and national identities. See also: Cabaret; Epic Theater; FleiBer, Marieluise; GDR Literature; Jelinek, Elfriede; Reinshagen, Gerlind; Socialist Realism; Tragedy, Historical; Unification, German; Utopia; Volksstiick. References: Fuhrich, Angelika, Aufbriiche des Weiblichen im Drama der Weimarer Republik (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992); Hoff, Dagmar von, Dramen des Weiblichen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Sieg, Katrin, Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists: Women in Contemporary German Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Stiirzer, Anne, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstucke: Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Wurst, Karin, ed., Frauen und Drama im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1991). KATRIN SIEG Droste-Hulshoff, Annette v o n ( 1 7 9 7 - 1 8 4 8 ) . Anna Elisabeth (Annette) von Droste-Hulshoff was born into an aristocratic Catholic family near
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Miinster. As a single woman with fragile health from her premature birth on, Droste-Hulshoff remained closely bound to her family in rural Westphalia throughout her life. For extended periods between 1841 and 1848, she stayed with her married sister Jenny (the tame and domestic part of the female double in many of her texts) at Meersburg on Lake Constance, where she spent the last two years of her life in ill health. Droste-Hiilshoff s mother took personal charge of her daughters' early education, until the younger brothers' tutors were asked to take on Annette as well. Throughout her life, Droste-Hulshoff had contacts with writers and scholars, among them August Wilhelm Schlegel, the brothers Grimm, Adele Schopenhauer, Anton Sprickmann of Miinster, his niece the writer Katharina Busch, and her son Levin Schiicking. After Droste-Hulshoff s death, Schiicking, her closest collaborator and intimate friend from 1837 to 1843, edited her Gesammelte Schriften between 1878 and 1879 and built his career around promoting and publishing her work. Literary historians and critics have consistently acknowledged Droste-Hulshoff as the greatest German woman writer and have given her a distinct place in the German literary canon. However, she is most known for her lyric poetry and her least characteristic novella, Die Judenbuche (1842), originally intended as part of a much broader prose work depicting the customs and landscapes of Westphalia. Her autobiographical prose fragment Ledwina (1819-1826) and her dramatic fragment Bertha oder die Alpen (begun in 1813) were largely ignored until feminist scholars and critics began to focus on the symbolic self-dismemberment and intense self-confrontation, which are deeply embedded in Droste-Hulshoff s work, particularly in her early prose and poetry, her ballads, and the religious poems of the cycle Das geistliche Jahr (1820/ 1839-1840). The selective reception of Droste-Hiilshoff s work is largely due to the gender-specific criteria that have centered on attributes such as "masculine" intellect and "feminine" emotion. Schiicking set the tone with his first biography, in which he portrayed Droste-Hulshoff as submitting to the confines of her gender and as a dominant, overprotective mother. He assigned Biedermeier qualities to her and all women: joy in small things and the housewifely urge to preserve and to cherish. Traditional critics and scholars have frequently used conservatism, provincialism, and a limited range of contemporary philosophical, political, and social issues as criteria for judging her work and ignored or misunderstood her deep concern with the role of the female poet. Feminist scholars and authors have taken a new look at Droste-Hulshoff s work (the East German writers Sarah Kirsch and Elke Erb both published a collection of selected texts by Droste-Hulshoff with commentaries in the 1980s) and shifted the focus of scholarship to the tensions between Droste-Hulshoff s rebellion against the limitations imposed on the woman writer and her submissiveness to convention and decorum in social, familial, and religious contexts. Recent feminist studies have analyzed Droste-Hulshoff s use of the archetypical figure of Ophelia, her employment of female doubles that are reflected in mirrors and bodies of water,
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and other subversive strategies and innovative poetic techniques she developed in order to fight oppressive influences and to develop independence of spirit. See also: Biedermeier; Doubles, Female; Fragment. References: Frederiksen, Elke, and Monika Shan, "Annette von Droste Hulshoff (1797-1848): Konfliktstrukturen im Fruhwerk." Out of Line/Ausgef alien: The Paradox of Marginality in the Writings of Nineteenth Century German Women. Ed. Ruth Ellen Boetcher-Joeres and Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989) 115-37; Godden, Walter, Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff: Leben und Werk. Eine Dichterchronik (Berne: Peter Lang, 1994); Niethammer, Ortrun, and Claudia Belemann, eds., Ein Gitter aus Musik und Sprache. Feministische Analysen zu Annette von Droste Hulshoff(Paderborn: Schoningh, 1992); Peucker, Brigitte, Lyric Descent in the German Romantic Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Pickar, Gertrud B., "Annette von DrosteHiilshoff s Reich der goldnen Phantasie." Gestaltet und Gestaltend. Frauen in der deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 109-23. BARBARA MABEE
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E Earth Mother. The metaphor of the earth mother is related to the ancient identification of woman and nature. Western patriarchy takes this association to define women as being outside culture. In redefining their own cultural history, women attempt to overcome dualisms of nature and culture, reason and emotion, and so on. Containing religious, historical, cultural, and/or gendered relevance, the earth mother does not necessarily exist as a specific character in literature but may have characteristics that are associated with motherly, fertile, and nurturing women figures. Women's writing that thematizes the earth mother depicts women on either a spiritual and/or social quest of the self as woman and/or mother. The search for nonoppressive sexual relationships, new images of mothering, creative work, equality, and living in harmony with nature are common themes. Other figures loosely associated with the earth mother are Earth Goddess, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Universal Mother, Great Goddess, Great Mother, and the White Woman. The pregnancy and birthing aspect of motherhood and the constant birth-lifedeath cycle of the earth can be associated with artistic creativity and productivity of the artist. In the 19th century, women authors began to take issue with women's roles in patriarchy and the inherent conflict for women who considered themselves artists and writers. Karoline von Giinderrode's collected poems Gedichte und Phantasien (1806) reflect her fascination with matriarchal societies and Utopian visions of harmony among her creative femininity, man, and nature. Franziska zu Reventlow lived a bohemian lifestyle that was seen as incompatible with her aristocratic upbringing. Her autobiographical Ellen Olestjerne (1903) thematizes motherhood and the sexual freedom of women.
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Women's writing encompassing earth mother imagery reflects deep spiritual or mythic dimensions connecting womanhood, a unity with nature, and freedom from oppressive roles and relationships. The poetry of Else Lasker-Schuler is dominated by metaphors of nature and religion. In "Dem Barbaren" (n.d.) woman is represented in images of the ocean and trees (both are symbols for the origin of all life), whereas man is depicted as barren desert. Like LaskerSchiiler, the Jewish poet Rose Auslander was forced into exile. Mutterland (1982) and Ich zahl die Sterne meiner Worte (1983) contrast the darkness, death, and void of her lost homeland with poetic themes of nature, light, and faith. Elisabeth Langgasser's Proserpina (1949) retells the myth of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of harvest. The story describes the eternal cycle of life and fertility—represented by women—and death and destruction— represented by men. Nature in Langgasser's poetry assumes mythic proportions, often portrayed in relation to the feminine. Feminist authors resist the male literary fantasy of women and nature reflected in such figures as mermaids and nymphs through reinterpretations such as Ingeborg Bachmann's "Undine geht" (1961). Karin Struck's Die Mutter (1975) refers to literary and sociological presentations of motherhood and dreams of a primal, erotic mother. The earth mother reappears metaphorically in Nazi Blut- und Boden writing of the 1930s and 1940s, in which women authors often searched for a reconnection to Earth and the homeland, reacting to the alienation caused by urban life, unemployment, and the war. Heroic mother figures are found in Ina Seidel's Das Wunschkind (1930) and Josefa Berens-Totenohl's Der Femhof (1934) and Frau Magdlene (1935). See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Creativity; Goddess; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Mother Figures; Mythical Female Figures; Nature; Nature Poetry; Poetry, Spiritual; Struck, Karin; Utopia/Anti-Utopia. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988) vol. 2; Gbttner-Abendroth, Heide, The Dancing Goddess. Trans. Maureen Krause (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982); Mor, Barbara, and Monica Sjoo, The Great Cosmic Mother (San Francisco: Harper, 1987); Spretnak, Charlene, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality (New York: Anchor, 1982).
BETH MUELLNER East German Literature—see: GDR Literature (1949-1990) Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie v o n ( 1 8 3 0 - 1 9 1 6 ) . When she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1900, the Austrian Ebner-Eschenbach had achieved a literary stature unsurpassed by women authors in the German-speaking world, with the only exception being Annette von Droste-Hulshoff. Although Ebner-Eschenbach's publications span six decades, and although she devoted the better part of 30 years to dramatic works, her reputation today as a minor representative of Poetic Realism rests on her Aphorisms (1880) and narratives that appeared in the 1880s and 1890s.
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Diluting her corpus even further, early scholars singled out those works that confirmed their gender biases; over time, Ebner-Eschenbach's canonization as a paragon of compassion, charity, and reconciliation has eroded her reputation as a social critic and predisposed most readers to find in her writing a bland, lightly humorous didacticism, recalling the bygone era of Classicism. Yet in her irony and themes, Ebner-Eschenbach has more in common with her English contemporary George Eliot than she does with the 18th century. Belying her reputation as a descendant of Friedrich Schiller, early feminist concerns figure prominently in all periods of Ebner-Eschenbach's writing: the woman writer's struggle to find her own voice {Aus Franzensbad, 1858); female regents {Maria Stuart in Schottland: Historische Tragodie, 1860); rape ("Die Totenwacht," 1894); the exploitation of children by egotistical parents {Zwei Comtessen, 1885; Das Gemeindekind, 1887); and the abuse of wives by their husbands ("Der Vorzugsschiiler" and "Maslans Frau," both 1901). Whether depicting marital infidelity from the woman's perspective {Unsuhnbar, 1890) or a woman servant's oppression by her employers {Bozena, 1876), EbnerEschenbach evokes admiration for the downtrodden, who preserve their dignity if only by meeting their oppressor with an ironic silence. Thus, it comes as no surprise that at the turn of the century, women intellectuals of widely differing temperaments (e.g., the modernist writer and critic Lou Andreas-Salome; Helene Lange, publicist and a leader in the bourgeois women's movement; and the Naturalist novelist Helene Bohlau) looked to Ebner-Eschenbach for inspiration. Since the 1960s, Ebner-Eschenbach's socially critical narratives have received renewed attention, and increasingly, feminist scholars have questioned the emphasis on the Dorf- und Schlofigeschichten of her middle years to the exclusion of her dramas and late satires such as "Die Visite" (1901). Her texts reflect discomfort with grand gestures; her use of diminution and irony, for example, undercuts the surface placidity of a text and links Ebner-Eschenbach with the concerns of fin-de-siecle literature. Most recently, critics have suggested that her critique of the patriarchy extends well beyond the mere recurrence of characters and motifs; the plot structures and rhetorical strategy in her historical dramas and her autobiography may well reflect a radical rejection of (male) historiography and its totalizing impulse. Ebner-Eschenbach's works thus constitute the attempt, whether conscious or unwitting, to reinscribe a feminine subjectivity in the cultural record. See also: Aphorism; Austrian Literature; Canon, Literary; Dorf geschichte; DrosteHiilshoff, Annette von; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Realism; Reception. References: Bettelheim, Anton, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: Biographische Blatter (Berlin: Paetel, 1900); Bramkamp, Agatha C, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: The Author, Her Time and Her Critics (Bonn: Bouvier, 1990); Harriman, Helga H., "Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach in Feminist Perspective." Modern Austrian Literature 18 (1985); 27-38; Pfeiffer, Peter, "Geschichte, Leidenspathos, feminine Subjektivitat: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbachs Autobiographic Meine Kinderjahre" Monatshefte 87.1 (1995); 68-
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81; Rose, Ferrel V., The Guises of Modesty: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Female Artists (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994).
FERREL ROSE E c o l o g y see: Engagierte Literatur; Nature; Technology Ecriture Feminine. A practice of writing most often associated with the contemporary French feminist thinkers Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Helene Cixous, ecriture feminine proposes a style of writing that not only privileges metaphors of the female body but also marks a strategy for subverting fixed identities and meanings from within language or discourse. When referring to the concept of the "feminine" or, in the case of Kristeva, the "semiotic," proponents of ecriture feminine mean everything in language that is polysemic, unstable, and capable of disrupting univocal meaning, linear thought, and repressive representation. Informed by psychoanalysis and poststructuralism, they subscribe to the theoretical point of view that discourse, the linguistic activity that takes place in the oedipal or the symbolic domain, is considered phallic and masculine and necessarily involves the repression of the feminine. Language is solely understood as a system of social communication, instrumentalized and structured for the sake of producing intelligible meaning. In this discursive system, language as an aesthetic object, a source of archaic pleasure, and a nonrepresentational matter does not come into play; this side of language is repressed. Thus, for example, the "corporeality" of language and its erotic ties with the (fe)male body remain obscured. Predicated on, and sustained by, the concept of female sexuality, ecriture feminine attempts to undo this repression of the feminine and of desire by privileging other sensorial modes of apprehension over the unitary and freezing phallic look. It appeals to the oral and the aural, to the fluid and the tactile, to the multiple sensations and meanings that language can engender. The proposition of ecriture feminine as feminist aesthetics and politics has proven controversial and divisive to feminist literary critics. For some feminists, the practice of ecriture feminine as a political strategy possesses severe limitations. Operating only at the level of the text, it is said to give little credence to the historical and ideological conditions under which works by women were, and are, produced. Moreover, ecriture feminine—read by some as a style of writing that purports to flow naturally from a female body—has come under attack for uncritically embracing female difference and for being essentialist and biologistic. More recently, feminist critics have questioned the presumed essentialism often associated with ecriture feminine and have explored, instead, the employment of biologistic notions as a strategy that challenges patriarchal discourse. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Body, Female; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, French; Linguistics, Feminist; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Semiotics.
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References: Burke, Carolyn, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford, eds., Engaging with Irigaray (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Conley, Verena, Helene Cixous: Writing the Feminine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Fraser, Nancy, and Sandra Lee Bartky, Revaluing French Feminism: Critical Essays on Difference, Agency, and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Grosz, E.A., Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989); Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Methuen, 1985) Oliver, Kelly, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-Bind (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). TAMARA WANG
Ehrmann, Marianne n e e B r e n t a n o ( 1 7 5 5 - 1 7 9 5 ) . Ehrmann is best known for editing the journal Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790-1792). Ehrmann also wrote essays, epistolary novels, and a play. She was born in Rapperswyl/Switzerland in 1755 and was brought up in Frankfurt/M. Until her marriage at the age of 22, she worked as a governess. When her husband left her, she joined the theater in Vienna, using the stage name "Sternheim" after Sophie von La Roche's character. Four years later, she married the travel writer Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann and settled in StraBburg, where the couple unsuccessfully attempted to publish independently. Ehrmann's two essays "MiiBige Stunden eines Frauenzimmers" and "Philosophic eines Weibes" were published anonymously in 1784. They were followed by her play Leichtsinn und gutes Herz (1786), which was based on the theme of virtue versus vice. Unlike the rigors of morality found in other plays with the same theme, Ehrmann's play does not demand self-sacrifice for the sake of morals. Her heroines are outspoken and thus unconventional for their time. Ehrmann's other literary achievements include the epistolary novels Ninas Briefe an ihren Geliebten (1787), Amalie. Eine wahre Geschichte in Brief en (1788), and Antonie von Warnstein (1798) and the drama Graf Bilding, eine Geschichte aus dem mittleren Zeitalter (1788). Ehrmann assisted her husband with the publication of the journal Frauenzimmer-Zeitung: Ein historisch-moralisches Unterhaltungs- Journal fiir das schone Geschlecht (StraBburg, 1787). Although their journal did not survive for long, it did not deter Ehrmann from launching her independent journal Amaliens Erholungsstunden. This journal, supposedly a product of Amalie's "leisure hours," was meant for the Belehrung and Unterhaltung of women. Ehrmann vigorously defended the cause of women's education in her writings. She believed that if women learned how to become thinkers {Denkerinnen) instead of scholars {Gelehrte), they could improve their own status. Her writings are marked by a forceful language, attacking the notion of women's inherent intellectual inferiority. Her journal included, besides her own prose pieces, poems and articles on geography and travel by several well-known male writers and her husband. In 1792, Ehrmann's journal was renamed Flora and handed over to Ludwig Ferdinand Huber by her publisher, Cotta.
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Ehrmann started her second journal, Die Einsiedlerin aus den Alpen (1793), with the Swiss publishers Orell, Gessner, and Fuessli. Once again, she sought to educate women by introducing them to diverse topics but was unable to continue her work beyond two years. After a long period of ill health, Marianne Ehrmann died on August 15, 1795. She is the only woman editor in 18th-century Germany who sustained her journalistic enterprise by editing two journals over a period of five years. See also: Epistolary Culture; La Roche, Sophie von; Moral Weeklies; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Swiss German Literature; Women's Journals. References: Brandes, Helga, ' 'Das Frauenzimmer-Journal: Zur Herausbildung einer journalistischen Gattung im 18. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 452-68; Geiger, Ruth, and Sigrid Weigel, eds., Sind das noch Damen? Vom gelehrten Frauenzimmer-Journal zum feministischen Joumalismus (Munich: Frauenbuchverlag, 1981); Krull, Edith, Das Wirken der Frau imfriihen deutschen Zeitschriftenwesen (Charlottenburg: Lorentz, 1939); Madland, Helga, "An Introduction to the Works and Life of Marianne Ehrmann (1755-95): Writer, Editor, Journalist." Lessing Yearbook 21 (1989): 170-96; Wurst, Karin A., ed., Frauen und Drama im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1991). VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE E m a n z e . The German word Emanze gained currency during the height of the West German women's movement in the mid-1970s. Derived from Emanzipation, it was widely used—not unlike its American equivalent "women's libb e r " — i n mainstream media to help create an image of angry, strident, man-hating, physically unattractive and sexually frustrated feminists. Like other negative stereotypes, it brings together fears associated with difference and change, specifically the threat posed by feminism to structural inequalities between women and men and to institutionalized heterosexuality. A label used to denigrate feminist activists and trivialize feminist ideas in general, Emanze could also be applied to men interested in feminism. For example, a 1976 article in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel referred to participants in men's consciousness-raising groups as mannliche Emanzen. Unlike some pejorative terms (e.g., Hexe), it was not adopted for rehabilitation by feminists themselves. However, the name of the popular West German feminist magazine Emma, launched in 1977 by Alice Schwarzer, was chosen in part to counter the negative associations of Emanze. The work of cartoonist Franziska Becker, published regularly in Emma, provides a contemporary feminist's perspective on men's use of Emanze to express a range of reactions to feminism, from uncertainty (wondering whether it is acceptable to help an Emanze put on her coat), to outright hostility ("what those Emanzen need is to get laid"). The word has found its way into dictionaries as a pejorative term for an emancipated woman (Wahrig, Deutsches Worterbuch, 1986) or, more narrowly, a (young) woman who deliberately presents herself as emancipated or actively works toward emancipation {Duden Deutsches Universalworterbuch, 1983).
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See also: Amazon; Erudite Woman; Femme Fatale; Hysteric; Madwoman; Mannweib; New Woman; Whore; Witch; Woman Writer. References: Pusch, Luise F., Alle Menschen werden Schwestern (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1990), Das Deutsche als Mannersprache (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1984); Schmerl, Christiane, ed., In die Presse geraten: Darstellungen von Frauen in der Presse und Frauenarbeit in den Medien (Cologne: Bohlau, 1985).
JEANETTE CLAUSEN Empfindsamkeit—see: Sentimentality Empire, German—see: Griinderzeit Engagierte Literatur. The term was popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre, in Qu'est-ce que la litterature? (1948), to distinguish Vart pour Fart (art for art's sake, or from "the ivory tower") from "engaged" art, which addresses problems of real life by offering political, social, religious, or other such ideological perspectives. Alternative translations for "engagement" are "commitment" or "involvement." The author of Engagierte Literatur confronts present reality, modeling an individual's will to take an active part in forming that reality, thus expanding the reader's consciousness and aiding in solving day-to-day problems. In German, Engagierte Literatur is distinguished from Tendenzliteratur (e.g., propaganda) because it retains aesthetic qualities and is not merely a distinct ideological message. Engagierte Literatur does not necessarily suggest a solution but rather, through its characters, advocates an authenticity of activity (a metaphor derived from Existentialism). Readers are encouraged to act rather than to react and to find solutions for the dilemmas of humans in the world— in short, to become engagiert. In "Engagement" (1962), Theodor W. Adorno explicitly critiques Sartre's existentialist definition of the term. According to Adorno, Sartre's formulation of the willing self still falsely objectifies that self as somehow apart from, or prior to, reality, hence offering a representation of selfhood removed from the kind of dialectic relationship between self and reality that Adorno believes art should have. For Adorno, Sartre's Engagierte Literatur thus tends to be selfreferential, formalistic, and normative; it advocates a norm for authentic individuality that undervalues an individual's relationship with the facticity of reality and encourages the ego to exist for itself, as some kind of pure being rather than as a being-in-the-world. Instead, Adorno's concept of Engagierte Literatur aids readers in identifying the real conditions imposed on individuals, encouraging them to engage in a critical dialectic between representations and facts. Sartre had tried to realize a kind of Kantian categorical imperative in a vision of "engaged" action; in contrast, Adorno claims that Sartre's model grounds human existence in absolute being and so instead advocates an idea of Praxis left out of the original definition of Engagement.
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A feminist critique of this definition of engagement, such as that offered in Nancy Fraser's Unruly Practices (1989), takes Adorno to task for continuing to employ a normative idea of institutions and the public sphere (based on the Frankfurt school). Such an approach automatically separates context in general from the domestic sphere in particular (and tacitly undervalues the latter), while purportedly reevaluating both positively as part of a general Marxist critique of mass culture. While implicitly advocating a reevaluation of ideas such as female labor, Adorno does not address or redefine the agency of women whose access to the classically defined public sphere is restricted; he does not yet accommodate alternative definitions of institutional context, female agency, or engagement outside his narrow definition of the public sphere, one that includes principally mass media, official culture, and institutions. Adorno thus does not redefine the "social" when he redefines "engagement" and so does not see the alternate contexts of women's agency within mass culture, that is, family, community, and other social structures to which women in bourgeois cultures are conventionally confined. Many German women writers have redefined the notion of engagement from a feminist perspective in their works. Thus, Verena Stefan's Hautungen: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen, Gedichte, Trdume, Analysen (1975) and Christa Reinig's Entmannung: Die Geschichte Ottos und seiner vier Frauen (1976) both follow the emergence of women into engagement, after they recognize how their societies have limited their roles and agency. Representing what is termed ecofeminism, Christa Wolf's Storfall: Nachrichten eines Tages (1987) offers readers her experience of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to spur them to ecological action. See also: Existentialism; Frankfurt School; Gesinnungsasthetik; Marxist Theories; Reinig, Christa; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Wolf, Christa. References: Adorno, Theodor W., "Engagement oder kiinstlerische Autonomie." Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1974) 409-30; Fraser, Nancy, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Sartre, Jean-Paul, Qu'est-ce que la litterature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948). KATHERINE ARENS E n l i g h t e n m e n t ( 1 7 2 5 - 1 8 0 0 ) . Within traditional literary history—as fashioned mostly by men from the writings mostly of men—the Enlightenment is a period in which rationalist philosophy had broad impact on the educated classes and on literature. The philosophical prelude began late in the 17th century with John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, and Christian Thomasius. The literary movement itself, called the Aufklarung in Germany, began about 1725, when Johann Christoph Gottsched published an influential moral weekly for, and purportedly by, women, Die Vernunftigen Tadlerinnen. Upon meeting actress Caroline Neuber, who implemented some of Gottsched's ideas on the stage a few years later, Gottsched initiated an Enlightened reform of the German
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theater. In a feminist context, the early literary phase {Fruhaufklarung), 17251750, is notable for its pedagogical agenda and its tentative bent toward gender egalitarianism, exemplified in the (anonymous) publications of Luise Gottsched and the crowning of several women poets, including Christiana Mariana Ziegler and Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann, by German universities and literary societies; it culminates in 1751 with the publication of Johanna Charlotte Unzer's two encyclopedias of knowledge for women readers. The high period of the Enlightenment in Germany, approximately 1750-1770, is marked by the production of literary images of women, indicated, for example, by the titles of several of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's best-known plays, but almost no literary production by women. Only in the late phase {Spdtaufklarung), 1770-1800, when Enlightenment thought was being contested by newer movements (Storm and Stress, Classicism, and eventually Romanticism), did women's literary production increase. The uneven participation of women in the Enlightenment corresponds to the sexism of its canonical philosophical texts. Locke, who established the liberal tenet that "every man" has an "equal right... to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man'' seems to have thought that women, prevented by nature and custom from developing their reason or owning property, do not share this equal right to natural freedom. Johann Christoph Gottsched, in contrast, neither a philosopher nor an apologist for sexual discrimination, considered the oppression of women a vestige of past religious intolerance, feudalism, and ignorance and argued that women, too, could learn the rules for literary and hence cultural participation. Immanuel Kant, writing in the high Enlightenment, saw women as lacking in rational faculties and therefore necessarily deficient in the moral realm as he defined it; he assigned women intuitive understanding that required neither education nor reflection and thus excluded them from his notions of duty and morality. Even when women are not explicitly under discussion, the dichotomies that Kant invokes and that pervaded Enlightenment thought were subtly gendered, always in such a way as to preserve the favored realms of discourse for men. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, opponent of monarchy, advocate of civic equality among men and of private subordination of women, was undoubtedly the philosopher whom German women of the 18th century read and cited more than any other. His advocacy of breast-feeding, comments on women's dress, and adaptations of the epistolary novel were all received with admiration, as evident in the writings, for example, of Emilie von Berlepsch, Elisa von der Recke, and Sophie von La Roche. Addressing what Rousseau considered society's natural needs (such as reproduction, child bearing, and child rearing) and cultural needs, he attempted to minimize the conflict between the two by means of the sexual division of labor. That he was aware of his choice to anchor society in the patriarchal family is evident in his vigorous rejection of the best-known proposal for an alternative: Plato's equal opportunity notions and concomitant abolition
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of the family in The Republic. Silvia Bovenschen points out Rousseau's exclusion of women from the promise of perfectibility and his attribution to them of a set of immutable and debased character traits. Karin Hausen explores the notion of polarized personality characteristics attributable to sex difference— appearing in German texts in the last third of the 18th century and continuing into the 20th. Hausen connects this gender polarization to changes in the family and in the organization of work that required the shoring up of male privilege and authority; thus, sex differences popularized and naturalized the predestination of men for the outside world of money, publicity, and prestige and of women for the inside world of reproduction. (Ideas about sexual characteristics received further codifications in classicism and Romanticism.) The impact of the Enlightenment project on German women of the time was mixed: better education but greater immersion in androcentric values and revalidation, after an initial egalitarianist phase, of many misogynist ideas (men as rational, women as intuitive; man as self, woman as other; men as engaged in culture and the realm of justice, women in nature and the realm of the senses, etc.). But the Enlightenment also promoted ideas about human rights usable in the effort to improve the cultural, political, and economic status of women. Enlightenment notions provide the foundation for liberal feminism, which was first comprehensively articulated during that period by Mary Wollstonecraft in England and Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel in the German-speaking world. The depictions of women in Enlightenment literature by men writing in this shifting philosophical context are generally marked by one or more of three attributes: demonic, carried over from the pre-Enlightenment period; rational, as posed by Gottsched, among others; and sensitive and feeling, the representation increasingly proposed by the Enlightenment, in a move that shunted women into sentimentality. In much of the voluminous Enlightenment literature by men, however, women are most noticeable for their absence or their subordinate roles—for example, in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti (1772) and Nathan der Weise (1779). Contrasting with the textual productivity of the Aufklarung among men is the very limited writing done by the small number of women who were participants in the movement. The initial educational opportunities posed by the Aufklarung for women were replaced in the middle period by the consignment of women to intuition instead of rational thought. The antiauthoritarian intellectual autonomy that the Enlightenment posits was fundamentally denied to women. The posthumously published autobiography (1791) of Friderika Baldinger suggests the convoluted set of permissions and prohibitions she had negotiated in order to become learned. But she could then resemble only the kind of scholar much mocked in the late 18th century, one whose learning was gleaned entirely from books and who lacked the independent thinking that Kant had stipulated as "enlightened." Charlotte Hezel seemed to evade the prevailing strictures when she published her twice-weekly periodical Wochenblatt fiir das schone Geschlecht {1119) but was able to sustain the effort for only eight months before
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falling permanently silent. The one group of women whose writings, especially letters, show that they could effectively approach the goal of learning and autonomy was in the upper aristocracy and included, for example, Elisa von der Recke, Amalia Schmettau-Gallitzin, and Catherine II. Paradigmatic for privileged German women of the Enlightenment, Recke in her autobiographical account (1787) of the controversial spiritualist Count Cagliostro described her acceptance and later rejection of occultism as an intellectually and morally untenable sham; precisely because Cagliostro's case at the time was epistemologically, politically, and ethically important, Recke as a woman had to apologize for writing publicly about her intellectual development as a woman. The Enlightenment both promoted and quelled the education and aspirations of women. See also: Bourgeois Tragedy; Classicism; Demon; Gender Theories, History of; Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb: Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber; La Roche, Sophie von; Moral Weeklies; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Novel, Epistolary; Romanticism; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Wandertheater; Women's Journals; Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, "Patriarchy and German Enlightenment Discourse." Impure Reason: Dialectic of Enlightenment in Germany. Ed. Daniel Wilson and Robert C. Holub (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993) 48-64; Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Coole, Diana H., Women in Political Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988); Flax, Jane, "Is Enlightenment Emancipatory?" Disputed Subjects. Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1993) 75-91; Gatens, Moira, Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Hausen, Karin, "Family and Role-Division: The Polarization of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century—An Aspect of the Dissociation of Work and Family Life." The German Family. Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany. Ed. Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1981) 51-83; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992).
RUTHDAWSONN
Entwicklungsroman. The term was first introduced in 1926 by Melitta Gerhard for all novels following the young hero or heroine from innocence to maturity through a series of formative experiences. All novels trace the development of a young girl or boy into a woman or man against the backdrop of a specific cultural period. The Entwicklungsroman is not defined normatively; therefore, the description of the heroine's or hero's maturation process can differ dramatically according to the individual perspective of the author. Structural criteria are the novel's focus on the protagonist and a chronological narrative. The Entwicklungsroman shares traits with many other established literary forms. Traditions of women's writing about their own development or that of other women can be traced back to Bekenntnisliteratur and epistolary novels,
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the most outstanding example being Bettina von Arnim's "trilogy" Clemens Brentanos Fruhlingskranz (1844), Die Gunderode (1840), and Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835), in which she develops her fictional character. Variations on the theme include Entsagungsromane or Schicksalsromane, in which the heroine assimilates only through some form of self-sacrifice (e.g., Johanna Schopenhauer's novel Gabriele, 1819-1820). Two of the earliest examples of a female Entwicklungsroman are Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim (1771) and Karoline von Wolzogen's Agnes von Lilien (1796). The Sternheim novel was written in letter form and created a sensation in 18th-century Weimar. The 19th century saw a tremendous increase in the literary production of women. The most popular novels of the time, although progressive in thought, describe the struggle of wealthy, middle-class heroines to achieve personal emancipation, for example, Fanny Lewald's novels Clementine (1842) and Jenny (1843), Ida von Hahn-Hahn's Grdfin Faustine (1840), and Gabriele Reuter's Aus guter Familie (1895). All of these novels are important studies of women's social position, marriage, and divorce. The 20th-century Entwicklungsroman explores increasingly the psychological rather than the social-historic aspects of the heroine's maturation process. Examples are Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932) and Marlen Haushofer's Die Wand (1958). In Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina (1971) and Svende Merian's Der Tod des Mdrchenprinzen (1980), the heroines strive, often unsuccessfully, toward an ideal of sexual, emotional, and intellectual autonomy. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Bildungsroman; Confessional Literature; Epistolary Culture; La Roche, Sophie von; Lewald, Fanny; Reuter, Gabriele. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Frederiksen, Elke, Women Writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Gerhard, Melitta, Der deutsche Entwicklungsroman bis zu Goethes "Wilhelm Meister" (Halle, Saale: Niemeyer, 1968 [1926]); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Frauen Literatur Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985). KATRINKOMM Epic Poem—see: Epos Epic Theater. This is often taken as a synonym for "political" theater. In the historical context of Weimar and fascist Germany, it presented a critique of social and political relations under capitalism. More specifically, it is associated with Bertolt Brecht's particular brand of Marxist modernism and is variously identified with his theories, dramas, and theatrical practice. Brecht, generally viewed as the greatest 20th-century German dramatist, appropriated the term in the 1920s for his own radical break with Realist and Expressionist stage conventions. Marieluise FleiBer also developed a political theater that both incor-
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porated a critique of gender relations and conflicted with Brecht's views. In 1929, when Brecht staged FleiBer's Die Pioniere von Ingolstadt (1927) with overt sexual scenes, the ensuing scandal ruined her career. FleiBer exemplifies the struggle women faced if they wanted to participate as authors, even in the progressive theater of the 1920s. The only women to gain public recognition for contributing to the success of Brecht's theater were those who participated as actresses, the traditionally accepted role for women in the theater. They were catapulted into international fame by their performances in Brecht's plays, for example, Lotte Lenya in Die Dreigroschenoper (1928) and the later film of the same title (1931). The talent of the great actress Helene Weigel, who was also married to Brecht, strongly influenced him in his creation of female roles. Weigel became Mother Courage in the internationally acclaimed Berliner Ensemble production of Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939) and led the Berliner Ensemble as director after Brecht's death. The most controversial aspect of women's role in Brecht's epic theater is the extent to which his dramas were actually coauthored by women, without their receiving appropriate recognition. It has long been known that friends, lovers, and other theater people worked together in preparing Brecht's plays for the stage or for publication. The most prolific contributors within this group are women, who are, at times, acknowledged as collaborators {Mitarbeiter) in fine print but have otherwise been ignored. Elizabeth Hauptmann translated English sources for Brecht, among them John Gay's Beggars' Opera (as the basis for Die Dreigroschenoper) and Rudyard Kipling's poems, wrote most of Happy End (1928-1929), and worked on the Lehrstiicke. After World War II, she collaborated with Benno Besson on the adaptation Pauken und Trompeten (1956) and other works for the Berliner Ensemble. Margarete Steffin contributed considerably to Brecht's work from 1929 to her death, including Furcht und Elend des dritten Reichs (1935-1938), Das Verhor des Lukullus (1939), Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1939-1941), and Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1941). Ruth Berlau translated Danish sources for Brecht and collaborated on Die Tage der Kommune (1948-1949), Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (1944-1945). The controversy revolves around the questions (1) at what point does collaboration become so central to the works in question that public recognition of coauthorship should be accorded? and (2) to what extent have Hauptmann's, Berlau's, and Steffin's legitimate contributions been minimized by Brecht himself and by the male-centered understanding of authorship in the reception of his works by both East and West German critics during the postwar years? Filmmaker Jutta Bruckner allows Steffin to speak in her own words in Lieben Sie Brecht? (1993), a filmic attempt to break the silence that has enshrouded these creative women of the theater. Postwar feminist playwrights, filmmakers, and critics have debated how best to appropriate Brecht's epic strategies of theatrical practice for feminist work that would make visible the sexual oppression and construction of gender re-
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lations naturalized in conventional theater. His best-known epic techniques, the Verfremdungsejfekt and Gestus, have been employed variously by German women filmmakers such as Bruckner, Helke Sander, and Helma Sanders-Brahms and by the performance artist/dancer and director Pina Bausch. British feminist theater has been in the forefront in appropriating Brecht, while contemporary German women playwrights have looked to FleiBer's concept of political theater as well. See also: Actress; Authorship; Bruckner, Jutta; FleiBer, Marieluise; Marxist Theories; Neue Sachlichkeit; Reception; Sander, Helke; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Tanztheater; Volksstiick; Weimar Republic. References: Case, Sue-Ellen, ed., The Divided Home/Land. Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Fuegi, John, Brecht & Co.: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (New York: Grove Press, 1994); Laughlin, Karen, "Brechtian Theory and American Feminist Theater." Reinterpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film. Ed. Pia Kleber and Colin Visser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 147-60; Mohrmann, Renate, "The Influence of Brecht on Women's Cinema in West Germany." Reinterpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film. Ed. Pia Kleber and Colin Visser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 161-69; Rainelt, Janelle, "Beyond Brecht: Britain's New Feminist Drama." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theater. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) 150-59. HELEN CAFFERTY E p i s t o l a r y C u l t u r e . The 18th century, in particular the age of Enlightenment and the Romantic period, was the high point of epistolary culture. It was a phenomenon of documenting bourgeois morality and values, as well as a communicative exchange between citizens within the private sphere. For women, confined to the private sphere in their cultural activities, reading and letter writing became important means of analysis and expression. The gradual secularization of reading, combined with a shift to the vernacular German at the beginning of the century, enabled more women to participate in cultural activities. The new form of epistolary writing especially emphasized the primacy of inner cogency over external rules and rejected the learned mechanical organization of letter writing into traditional rhetorical categories, further empowering women to take part in cultural activities. Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert's treatise Briefe, nebst einer praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmack in Briefen (1751) considered women especially suited for this new epistolary form and regarded his exchange with Christiane Karoline Lucius exemplary. Private letters, autobiographical writing, essayistic writing, and published collections of letters in epistolary novels assumed a variety of pedagogical, social, and cultural functions. Experimental in nature, letter writing played an important role in the development of thought processes. As an educational activity, letter writing expressed new interest in reading and writing as a basis for the education of girls and women. As a social activity, letter writing participated in the formation of
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new social identities (Sozialcharaktere), for example, in the discursive formation of friendship and sentimental and romantic love. Letters were a form of written codification of intimacy (Margarete Klopstock) and a means to build and rearrange alliances. For many women, the epistolary exchange with distant friends was the most significant social connection in their lives. Fostering sustained intellectual and emotive exchange, the development of epistolary culture in the 18th century coincided with the development of interpretive skills associated with literary competence. In this sense, letters are related to epistolary novels (Sophie von La Roche's Die Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim, 111 I, Rosaliens Briefe an ihre Freundin Marianne von St**., 1780) and autobiographical writings (Elisa von der Recke's Aufzeichnungen und Briefe aus ihren Jugendtagen, pub. 1900), but also to theoretical reflection (Emilie von Berlepsch's "Ueber einige zum Gliick der Ehe nothwendige Eigenschaften und Grundsatze," 1791), diaries, and fiction inspired by autobiographical events. Especially during the Romantic period, writers like Bettina von Arnim foregrounded the literariness of their correspondence by altering original letters and inserting fictitious ones into the original correspondence. With the famous epistolary authors, Karoline von Giinderrode, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Sophie Mereau, and Rahel von Varnhagen, the complex epistolary culture drew to a close in the early 19th century. During the period of the Junges Deutschland, the letters began to take on a predominantly utilitarian purpose. The letters of Fanny Lewald, Louise Aston, Louise Otto-Peters, Klara Mundt (pseudonym Luise Miihlbach), and Ida HahnHahn advocate women's emancipation through educational opportunities for girls and women, which, it was hoped, would eventually improve their chances for gainful employment. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Aston, Louise; Autobiography; Diaries; Enlightenment; Essay; Freundschaftskult; Giinderrode, Karoline von; La Roche, Sophie von; Lewald, Fanny; Love; Otto-Peters, Luise; Romanticism; Young Germany. References: Bohrer, Karl Heinz, Der romantische Brief. Die Entstehung asthetischer Subjektivitat (Munich: Hanser, 1987); BUrgel, Peter, "Der Privatbrief. Entwurf eines heuristischen Models." Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 50 (1976): 281-97; Clauss, Elke, Liebeskunst: Untersuchungen zum Liebesbrief im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1993); Nickisch, Reinhard, Brief (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991), "Die Frau als Briefschreiberin im Zeitalter der deutschen Aufklarung." Wolfenbiitteler Studien zur Aufklarung 3 (1976): 29-65, Die Stilprinzipien in den deutschen Briefstellern des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Mit einer Bibliographic zur Briefschreiblehre (1474-1800) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1969). KARIN A. WURST
E p o s / P r o s e E p o s . An epos (epic) is a long narrative poem. It has its roots in oral tradition, relating the legends or history of a hero or heroine or people. The epic begins in medias res and unfolds both beginning and end. By carefully weaving together the protagonist's actions together with the history of her or his people, the epic presents a dramatic, well-rounded picture of the celebrated
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events. Traditionally, Homer's Iliad (c. 850 B.C.) and Odyssey (c. 700 B.C.) are considered the most influential models for the epos in Western literature. The first German woman author to write an epic was Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim. Her first epic, Carmen de Gestis Oddonis Imperatoris (967), sings of the deeds of the emperor Otto I, whom she lauds as the ideal Christian ruler and descendant of David. Primordia Coenobii Gandeshemensis (Origins of the Abbey of Gandersheim) relates the history of the abbey until the death of the abbess Christina in 918. It has been called one of the most successful attempts at a Christian epic. Because epic poems were generally considered one of the most unlikely genres for women (the other being drama), many of the epics or epic poems written by women were never printed, for example, Marie Therese von Artner's Die Schlacht von Aspern (1810-1812). By contrast, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie's epic poems Hermann, deutsches Helden-Gedicht in zwolf Gesdngen (1883) and Robespierre, ein modernes Epos (1894) were widely read and enthusiastically reviewed as long as the author was believed to be male. Perhaps for the same reason—that women were considered unlikely authors of the genre—the genre confusion with regard to women's epics has been greater, on the part of both authors and scholars, than in discussions of men's epics. Some women poets and playwrights such as Friederike Caroline Neuber labeled their poems or dramas "epic poems." By contrast, critics have referred to many of Annette von Droste-Hulshoff' s poetic works—works she herself called poems—as epics, for example, Das Hospiz aufdem Grofien Sankt Bernard (1829— 1834), Das Arztes Vermachtnis (1834), Die Schlacht im Loener Bruch (1838), and finally the posthumously published Walther: ein Gedicht in sechs Gesdngen (1878). Other famous epics by women include Louise von Plonnies' Maryken von Nymwegen, poetischer Epos (1853); Wilhelmine von Hillern's Der Skalde (1882); and Wilhelmine von Sydow's Der Krieg um Schleswig-Holstein, ein Epos (1864). In Der grofie Krieg in Deutschland (3 vols., 1912), Ricarda Huch wrote a historical epic that delineates the decline of the Holy Roman Empire between 1585 and 1650. A more radical example of a prose epic is Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1981). Her epic breaks with tradition in that she collapses the epic distance between the narrator and her tale by means of the first-person narrator, who is also the epic's heroine. Wolf explicitly criticizes the heroic tradition for its celebration of battle and valor. Her prose epic rewrites the life of the ancient seeress Kassandra from a feminist perspective. Just as Wolf adapts and criticizes Homer's Iliad, Gertrud Leutenegger recasts the epic Gilgamesh in Lebewohl, Gute Reise: Ein dramatisches Poem (1980) as a struggle between matriarchal and patriarchal powers. She juxtaposes the son/ destroyer Gilgamesh and his love of power with the mother/lifegiver Inanna and her power of love. Like Wolf, Leutenegger does not immortalize a warrior but rather salvages a human being (the daughter—Ich). Both writers create epics as a sociocultural critique of the power structures the epic has sought to maintain. At the same time, they indicate possible means of transforming the epic into a vehicle of feminist thought.
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See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Legend; Novel, Historical; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Wolf, Christa. References: B artels, Hildegard, Epos, die Gattung in der Geschichte: Eine Be griffsbestimmung vor dem Hintergrund der Hegelschen "Asthetik" anhand von "Nibelungenlied" und "Chanson de Roland" (Heidelberg: Winter, 1982); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992). ROGER RUSSI
E r b a u u n g s l i t e r a t u r . The term "Erbauung" was first used in a religious context in the latter part of the 16th century. Erbauungsliteratur then came to mean literature contributing to spiritual uplifting and edification, primarily, but not exclusively, through private reading. The 18th century stressed the moral implications of reading devotional material (Immanuel Kant). Since the 19th century, the term has often been used in a general sense for works that evoke pious or uplifting thoughts (Grimm's Worterbuch). In its religious connotation Erbauungsliteratur comprises the Bible (or any excerpt thereof), prayer books or hymnals, catechisms, books of virtuous example including (auto)biographies and hagiographies, handbooks for a Christian life (praxis pietatis), and books on the art of dying (ars moriendi). Often these categories overlap, and works have contents of a varied devotional nature. Stalwarts of devotional literature throughout the ages have been the works of Thomas a Kempis, Martin von Cochem, Martin Luther, and Johann Arndt, and the songs of Benjamin Schmolck and many more. These were printed, reprinted, and revised to cater to ever-changing tastes, crossing confessional boundaries to find a more general readership. Their success is derived from their general distribution in German; they appeared in expensive as well as affordable editions, catering to a literate, although not necessarily a learned, reading public. They were mostly gender-neutral, although some included prayers especially for women, for example, Johann Habermann's Gebetbuch (1567). A few were written exclusively for women, for example, Johann Kaspar Lavater' s Taschenbuch fiir Dienstboten (1772) and the many varied editions of the Christliche Hausmagd. From the Middle Ages until well into the 19th century, devotional literature was considered the genre par excellence for women. Martin Luther had advocated schools for girls because literacy would enable them to read the Bible and thereby become better Christians. This encouraged literacy for women but tended to limit the preferred reading material to devotional works. Devotional literature was intended as usage literature (Gebrauchsliteratur), to be used as primers, to be learned by heart, to be read in the family circle, to be given as presents. Favorite passages were embroidered onto household linen. The large collection of funeral sermons gathered by Sophia Eleonore von Stolberg zu Stolberg is exemplary of the extensive libraries of devotional material of many noblewomen. This constant usage was intended to create a certain
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exclusivity. It should keep a woman's mind from being idle and would also leave little time for reading secular literature. Much of what women wrote themselves was of a devotional nature, beginning with the works of Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim and Hildegard von Bingen. For many women authors, their own works were an outgrowth of their devotional reading (Anna Owena Hoyers, Susanna von Kuntsch). However, despite all the emphasis on devotional literature's appropriateness for women, authorities often looked askance at the devotional products of women themselves. The editor of the works of Anna Elisabeth Schleebusch proclaimed that at least her works were free of the many drawbacks that occur when women raise their voices in religious matters. Beginning in the 18th century, secular literature, especially that with a strong moralistic tendency, became the primary reading staple for women. Nowadays, women of those ages past are often described as nonreaders because we no longer consider devotional literature as literature. But their own writings give testimony to the pleasure, consolation, and reading enjoyment they derived from this material, describing it as a companion in good times and bad. See also: Hoyers, Anna Owena; Hymn; Poetry, Spiritual. References: Engelsing, Rolf, "Dienstbotenlektiire im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert." Zur Sozialgeschichte deutscher Mittel- und Unterschichten (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1973); Moore, Cornelia Niekus, "Erbauungsliteratur als Gebrauchsliteratur fiir Frauen im 17. Jahrhundert." Der Umgang mit dem religiosen Buch. Ed. Hans E. Bodeker, Gerald Chaix, and Patrice Veit (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991) 291-315; Spamer, Adolf, Der Bilderbogen von der "Geistlichen Hausmagd." Ed. Mathilde Hain (Gottingen: Otto Schwarz, 1970); Woods, Jean, and Maria Fiirstenwald, Women of the German Speaking Lands (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984). CORNELIA NIEKUS MOORE
Erlebnisdichtung. This generally describes poetry and, to a lesser extent, fiction that expresses an author's personal experience in a supposedly authentic and unreflected way. While many literary critics in the early and mid-20th century used the term as the standard model and criterion of poetry, it is rarely applied to women's poetry. Today most researchers agree that the term has outlived its usefulness because it begs too many questions of authenticity and original poetic inspiration. Wilhelm Dilthey in his immensely popular treatise Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (1905) described Erlebnis as an experience intense enough to become the stimulus of creation. Ignoring the importance of mediation in the creation of authenticity, he represented Johann Wolfgang Goethe's mode of production as exemplary and universal. The original poetic creation is mirrored in its reception: the reader experiences the poem in intuitive and empathic understanding. Most literary critics used the term "Erlebnisdichtung" historically to contrast the new type of literary subjectivity first expressed around 1770 with older forms of poetry marked by the heavy use of rhetorical devices. From the beginning,
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the term has been characterized by an inherent positive value judgment. The term was rarely used to describe literature by women, despite the fact that women's literature was often assumed to be autobiographical. However, many women poets have, artistically and/or reflectively, reworked their personal experience. Anna Louisa Karsch was highly praised as Naturdichterin. The best of her poems, for example, "Das Harz-Moos" (1761), fused vivid descriptions of nature with her personal experience as a woman. In poems such as "Sehnsucht" (1778), Sophie Albrecht explored female sensuality and sexuality; this legacy was later continued by Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, who combined nature and sensuality ("Am Turme," 1844). A whole group of women writers who refused to separate life and art are the Romantic poets, among them Karoline von Giinderrode, Bettina von Arnim, Sophie Mereau, and Caroline Schlegel-Schelling. All of these authors' works are centered on, and inspired by, their experiences as women in society. Another group of poets who deal explicitly with personal experiences, including the trauma of the Jewish experience in our century, are Else Lasker-Schiiler, Gertrud Kolmar, Nelly Sachs, and Rose Auslander. These writers' poetry is generally considered too mystical, expressionist, and/or rich in imagery to be included into the category Erlebnisdichtung. If one chooses to use the term at all, this poetry warrants inclusion. In the 1970s, Erlebnis gained new importance in the wake of the new women's movement's focus on subjectivity, expressed in lyrical poetry as well as in autobiographical novels. However, contrary to the positive connotation of the term Erlebnisdichtung, this literature has often been criticized as not artistic, but "merely" autobiographical. Christa Wolf is probably the most important author to reflect on the term theoretically as well as in her literary work (Kindheitsmuster, 1976). See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Autobiography; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Expressionism; Gedankenlyrik; German Jewish Literature; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Hermeneutics; Mereau-Brentano, Sophie; Romanticism; Subjectivity; Wolf, Christa. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978); Sauerland, Karol, Diltheys Erlebnisbegriff: Entstehung, Glanzzeit und Verkiimmerung eines literaturhistorischen Begriffs (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972); S0rensen, Bengt Algot, " 'Erlebnis' in deutscher Literaturwissenschaft." Text und Kontext: Aufklarung als Problem und Aufgabe. Ed. Klaus Bohnen and Per 0hrgaard (Copenhagen: Fink, 1994) 340-^-6.
HEIKE HOFMANN Erotic Literature. This is commonly defined as literature in which physical and sensual aspects of love are dominant and designed for the pleasure and/or arousal of the reader. The female figure in erotic literature generally lacks identity and is represented solely as sexual object. In works by women, erotic elements appear mostly in works concerned with prostitutes or other marginal
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women, but of primary importance are critical observations of the social status of lower-class women (see works by Else Jerusalem, Emmy Ball-Hennings, Margarethe Bohme, Use Frapan, and others). Poetry or prose with erotic content by women authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was generally received as "unfeminine" infringements of the moral law. Christiane von Breden (pseudonym Ada Christen) was an important harbinger of German naturalism and proletarian literature. In her search for self-revealing truth in literature, she composed extremely unconventional poetry, which ranged from descriptions of physical passion to lamentations of the social and moral oppression of women (Lieder einer Verlorenen, 1868). Her accounts were considered obscene by contemporary critics. Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer (pseudonym Marie Madeleine) published several volumes of extravagant sensual poetry (e.g., Die drei Nachte, 1901, and An der Liebe Narrenseil, 1902). Although her work was severely criticized, most of her books were published in several editions, a testimony to her popularity, especially among female readers. Alma Johanna Koenig (pseudonym Johannes Herdan, deported from Vienna and presumably killed in the ghetto of Minsk) became a well-known author when she published her first novel, Der heilige Palast (1922). This novel's erotic content caused a stir and enhanced, rather than obstructed, Koenig's popularity. The author Elfriede Jelinek uses erotic as well as pornographic elements in her literary works to unveil their intrinsic violence (e.g., Wir sind Lockvogel, Baby, 1970, and Lust, 1991). See also: Jelinek, Elfriede; Lesbian Literature; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Naturalism; Pornography; Prostitution; Whore; Workers' Literature. References: Englisch, Paul, Geschichte der erotischen Literatur (Stuttgart: Piittmann, 1927); Hayn, Hugo, Bibliotheca Germanorum erotica et curiosa (Leipzig: Unflat, 1885ff); Kronhausen, Phyllis, and Eberhard Kronhausen, Erotic Fantasies: A Study of the Sexual Imagination. 1969 (New York: Grove Press, 1987). CHRISTIANE SCHONFELD Erudite Woman/Gelehrte. In the debate about women's education before the 20th century, when the term Gelehrsamkeit lost its predominance in the educational debate and was replaced with more differentiated terms like Bildung, Allgemeinwissen, or Frauenstudium, the term has been used to mean different things for men and women. When applied to men, Gelehrsamkeit implies a scholarly occupation—professional or academic—in any field, for which the Gelehrter is qualified by virtue of an academic degree. This occupation is usually performed as a paid occupation (Beruf) and as vocation (Berufung). When applied to women, however, the same term frequently means merely a high or unusual degree of education; it may imply knowledge in fields usually reserved for men, as in the case of Anna Maria von Schurmann, but it denotes neither professional nor paid scholarship. For men to be considered gelehrt, the scholarly activity must be their main field or occupation (e.g., Johann Christoph Gottsched). Men who produced literature as their primary occupation but who
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also possessed academic degrees and/or wrote philosophical or theoretical treatises are not generally considered gelehrt (Christoph Martin Wieland, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang Goethe). By contrast, women writers in similar occupations, such as Christiana Mariana Ziegler and Luise Gottsched, both predominantly authors of fiction, were considered the most erudite women of their age. Reading Gelehrsamkeit in a differentiated manner (as scholarly erudition when applied to men; as an unusual education when applied to women) leads to substantial modifications of the presumed advocacy of women's Gelehrsamkeit in 18th-century discourse. The moral weeklies, for example, known as the most ardent advocators of women's Gelehrsamkeit, were not concerned with opening avenues for women to contribute to the scholarly community or to be gainfully employed scholars and writers. Instead, these weeklies proposed a more thorough education (in the sense of 19th- or 20th-century Bildung) that would enable women to become better mothers, educators of their children, and more intellectually stimulating partners for their husbands. How seriously the advocacy of scholarly erudition for 18th-century women must be questioned is corroborated by the fact that there were only two doctorates awarded to German women during the entire century (Dorothea Leporin, M.D., University of Halle, 1755, and Dorothea Schlozer, Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Gottingen, 1787) and that both were severely criticized by their contemporaries for this transgression into the realm of masculine Gelehrsamkeit. (Women were not generally permitted to enroll at universities in Germany until the early 20th century.) In their own writings, fictional and otherwise, women have always made this implied distinction between the modified "Gelehrsamkeit'" permitted to women and the masculine Gelehrsamkeit as forbidden territory. Most 18th-century writers who were deemed gelehrt by their contemporaries hastened to reject the label and, with it, the suspicion that they might usurp masculine privileges. Luise Gottsched, for instance, critically commented on the first female Ph.D., Laura Bassi (in physics, Bologna, 1732); Christiana Mariana Ziegler argued in her ''Abhandlung, ob es dem Frauenzimmer erlaubet sey, sich nach Wissenschaften zu bestreben?" (1739) that women could make only private use of their erudition and could pursue it for neither professional acknowledgment nor financial gain—both of which she explicitly reserved for male scholars. In the 19th century, the term became even more problematic for women: whereas much 18th-century writing regarded gelehrte women with tolerance and even a modicum of respect, which can perhaps be attributed to their exceptional status, scholarly erudition for women is consistently and expressly tabooed in 19th-century discourse. In the wake of the establishment of gender characteristics at the turn of the 19th century that emphasized women's emotions over their intellect and defined women as "naturally" suited for motherhood and housewifery, numerous educational treatises defined female Gelehrsamkeit prohibitively, as "totes Buchwissen" (Betty Gleim) or "angestrengte Studien" (Caroline de la Motte-Fouque; Minna Pinoff). This "einseitige Verstandesbildung" (Gleim) is frequently contrasted with "Herzensbildung," which de-em-
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phasizes academic studies and emphasizes housework and ' 'feminine'' arts like crafts, needlework, music, and hobby-painting. Proponents of women's education subsequently became the most ardent opponents of feminine Gelehrsamkeit. Similarly, most writers of the age emphasize that they do not wish to be seen as gelehrt, as was the custom for 18th-century women writers, arguing that any "wissenschaftliche Gelehrsamkeit" would conflict with their "vocation" as housewives and mothers (Johanna Franul von WeiBenthurn in the foreword to her Schauspiele, 1810). In 19th-century literature by women, erudite women in the masculine sense (women who use their scholarly knowledge professionally or for financial gain) are invariably ridiculed as incompetent (e.g., Maria Gunther's helpless doctor Bianka and the rabidly "emancipated" philosophy student Irma in Die beiden Hausarzte, 1889) or are portrayed as problematic characters whose profession does not offer them a fulfillment that could compete with the happiness promised by traditional marriage (e.g., Elsa Bernstein's oculist Sabine Graef in Dammerung, 1893). This view of female erudition and professionalism as antithetical to private life continues to find expression in women's 20th-century accounts: since women continue to do most or all of the housework, their higher access to professional positions merely results in women's working two full-time jobs (e.g., Maxie Wander's Guten Morgen, Du Schone, 1977). See also: Gender; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Leporin, Dorothea: Grundliche Untersuchung; Moral Weeklies; University Education, Women's; Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen, Du Schone; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Blochmann, Elisabeth, Das "Frauenzimmer" und die "Gelehrsamkeit. '' Eine Studie iiber die Anfange des Madchenschulwesens in Deutschland (Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1966); Gossmann, Elisabeth, "Fiir und wider die Frauengelehrsamkeit. Eine europaische Diskussion im 17. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 185-97, ed. Das wohlgelahrte Frauenzimmer (Munich: iudicium, 1984).
SUSANNE KORD E s s a y . From the beginning, with the works of Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, the essay as a genre has been linked to a virtually exclusively male tradition. Though the form flourished first and most abundantly in the French and English traditions, and not in Germany—a fact that Theodor W. Adorno laconically ascribed to the essay's exhortation to "freedom of spirit [Geist]" (Adorno, "The Essay as Form")—a series of German men have perhaps most thoroughly theorized the genre. Despite the significant appropriation of this genre by women in the 20th century, attention is only now beginning to turn to this particular intersection of gender and genre. The postwar years in Germany proved fertile ground for extensive, systematic studies of the essay. In these encyclopedic attempts at definition and delineation of the genre, German literary critics (e.g., Ludwig Rohner, Max Bense) inscribed their own cultural tradition into its trajectory, emphasizing male essayists from Friedrich Schlegel to Adorno. All of these histories share in a virtually universal
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ignorance of women as essayists. Beyond the all-too-common sin of omission, such approaches, with their focus on strictly formal questions, long obscured critical political, social, and theoretical issues that could pave the way toward an understanding of the essay as a gendered genre. While the essay has long been described in terms that recall the notion of an ecriture feminine—for example, fragmentary, open-ended, playful, reflective— perhaps the question of authorial voice is most important to women as essayists. As a nonfictional genre marked by a high degree of self-containment and selfreferentiality, the essay is closely linked to the self-contained subject of European modernity that emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries: its authority rests solely on the voice of a speaking or writing self. Just as the conditions for subjecthood in that historical time and place excluded women's voices from public articulation, so, too, did the essay de facto exclude women from authorship. While other genres provided the veil of fiction or the strategy of pseudonym to create possible, if often hidden, spaces for women's voices, the essay allowed no such distance between the author's name (signature) and the voice of the text. It is not surprising, then, that the emergence of women as essayists roughly parallels their legal recognition as full citizens and hence their culturally sanctioned entrance into public discourse. Barbara Sichtermann and Marlis Gerhardt have underscored the difficulty of this process by discussing the riskiness involved for women who appropriate the categories of meaning and voice through essays. At the same time, both women affirm the positive potential of this takeover by women and by feminists in particular. In their own work, Sichtermann and Gerhardt (both active as journalists but academically trained in sociology and philosophy/literature, respectively) demonstrate the fertile space the essay offers between contemplation and activism, between the intertwining histories of women's writing and the feminist movement. Such a revised understanding of the genre, drawing on its tradition as a space for resistance, reflection, and the free play of mind, can be of great value to feminism. Indeed, the writing of numerous women from the late 19th century onward bears witness to this appropriation. From Hedwig Dohm to Ulrike Meinhof and Christina Thurmer-Rohr, from Marie Luise Kaschnitz to Ingeborg Bachmann and Christa Wolf, German women have transformed this contemplative literary form into a powerful tool for the simultaneous articulation of personal voice and political conviction. See also: Authorship; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Dohm, Hedwig; Ecriture Feminine; Wolf, Christa. References: Gerhardt, Marlis, ed., Essays von Frauen des 20. lahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1987); Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher, and Elizabeth Mittman, eds., The Politics of the Essay: Feminist Perspectives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Rohner, Ludwig, Der deutsche Essay: Materialien zur Geschichte und Asthetik einer literarischen Gattung (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1966). ELIZABETH MITTMAN
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E s s e n t i a l i s m / C o n s t r u c t i o n i s m . The essentialism/social constructionism debates are so intertwined that it is impossible to discuss one without reference to the other. Accusations of essentialist thinking are often used polemically to dismiss an argument as founded in biological determinism or racism, and social constructionism is often portrayed as the antiessentialist antidote to political incorrectness. Both terms have come to encompass a range of theoretical and political positions, and both are used in specific and idiosyncratic ways by individual theorists. At the heart of the controversy is feminism itself: feminist agendas for the advancement of women seem to require some understanding of women as distinct from men, yet those agendas cannot legitimately be called feminist if they do not also acknowledge that women may have more in common with men of their own race, class, and ethnicity than with women of different races, classes, and ethnicities; the picture is further complicated by questions of gender identity/sexual orientation. Essentialism, or "difference feminism," holds that there are qualities and characteristics specific to women and men, respectively; that female qualities have been devalued in patriarchal societies; and that a celebration and revaluation of those qualities is needed for positive change. The strong version of this position—that a female nature or essence is directly accessible to us rather than mediated, to a greater or lesser degree, by the culture we live in—is usually associated with lesbian-separatism and/or ecofeminism. While most feminists would acknowledge that it is impossible to demonstrate that female qualities are universal across cultures and time, nevertheless, differences among women are elided or minimized in most essentialist theorizing. Some theorists (e.g., Teresa de Lauretis, Diana Fuss) make a distinction between a "real" and a "nominal" essence; this allows the postulation of qualities specific to women (such as nurturing, empathy, intuitiveness, etc.) without claiming them as biologically given. Critiques of the notion that "woman" is, in any sense—whether nominally or in reality—a fixed category have been usefully distinguished by Naomi Schor (however, it should be noted that many feminists would dispute her analysis). Schor identifies four strands of antiessentialist theorizing: a liberationist critique, first articulated by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) ("One is not born, but rather becomes a woman"); a linguistic critique, based on the work of Jacques Lacan and his followers; a philosophical critique, which seeks to overcome the rigidity of binary thinking and is represented by the work of Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous; and a feminist critique, that is, a critique arising from within the feminist movement itself, articulated by those on the so-called margins (ethnic and racial minorities, working-class women, lesbians, and others) who do not find their experiences represented in the theories of white, middle-class, heterosexual feminists. Social constructionist positions hold that differences between women and men are neither innate/biological nor simply imposed by a socialization process but are constructed by the interaction of social institutions and processes, cultural expectations, and individual choices. A Foucauldian critique underlies much
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social constructionist theorizing. Judith Butler, for example, destabilizes notions of sex and gender by distinguishing three separate dimensions of corporeality— anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance—to account for a wider range of identities than male/female and heterosexual/homosexual. A different approach is reflected in the recent work of Linda Nicholson, who argues that all claims about women or men based on biological sex—even when the biological characteristics are seen as socially constructed—inevitably reflect the perspective of the person making the claim. She advocates thinking about the meaning of woman as a map of intersecting similarities and differences, a paradigm that could encompass, for example, the male daughters and female husbands of certain African societies, the berdache of some Native American societies, and other " O t h e r s " whose identities are not captured by essentialist or constructionist paradigms. See also: Aesthetics, Feminine/Feminist; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; Lesbian Theories. References: Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989); Nicholson, Linda, "Interpreting Gender." Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20.1 (1994): 79-105; Schor, Naomi, and Elizabeth Weed, The Essential Difference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Spelman, Elizabeth V., Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988). JEANETTE CLAUSEN
E t e r n a l F e m i n i n e . The Eternal Feminine is associated with the concluding lines of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust II (1832), "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan," by which Faust is saved through the intervention of ideal femininity. The image of a feminine ideal, or femininity employed as a Utopian space for men, can be found throughout Western literature. It generally attempts to create an alternative to men's lives in the public sphere by projecting cultural stereotypes of femininity. In Western Europe such cultural stereotypes arose in the 18th century, when changes in social structures increasingly divided roles along the lines of gender. As women were relegated to the private sphere, new definitions of femininity emphasized virtue, submissiveness, and long-suffering patience. These qualities soon acquired a compensatory function, as bourgeois men looked to the Eternal Feminine as a more humane alternative to their increasingly fragmented lives. The Eternal Feminine as an object of idolatry is always defined from a male point of view. It embodies traits that are culturally esteemed as positive feminine virtues but are often catalogs of limitations imposed upon women. Historical signs of oppression, such as women's confinement to specific roles, their lack
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of education, and restricted social and political power, are often reinterpreted as the "positive" qualities of domesticity, naturalness, and submissiveness. The difference between the historical position of 18th- and 19th-century women and the portrayal of femininity in the Eternal Feminine is significant. Simultaneously with the idolatry of the feminine in literary works, women were denied the legal, economic, and political rights granted to men in Germanspeaking countries. While women as diverse as the 19th-century writer Bettina von Arnim and the 20th-century German Democratic Republic (GDR) writer Irmtraud Morgner (Amanda. Ein Hexenroman, 1983) have critiqued the Eternal Feminine, the internalization of cultural norms of femininity has kept many women from defying them. The ahistorical quality of the Eternal Feminine, for example, made it difficult to oppose such stereotypes in the struggle for woman's rights in the 19th century. Under its influence the first German women's movement was fragmented along the lines of differing definitions of femininity. Some women like Gertrud Baumer argued in terms of an essentialist femininity, while others like Hedwig Dohm saw a careful rethinking of femininity to be the foundation for woman's rights. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Classicism; Dohm, Hedwig; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Morgner, Irmtraud. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit. Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Cocalis, Susan, and Kay Goodman, eds., Beyond the Eternal Feminine: Critical Essays on Women and German Literature (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1982); Weigel, Sigrid, "Die geopferte Heldin und das Opfer als Heldin. Zum Entwurf weiblicher Helden in der Literatur von Mannern und Frauen." Die verborgene Frau. Sechs Beitrage zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Inge Stefan and Sigrid Weigel (Berlin: Argument, 1983) 138-52.
LISA C. ROETZEL
Exile Literature. This is a collective term that describes all literature produced by writers during a period of voluntary or forced exile from their homeland. There is a long tradition of exile writing in Germany. Women were just as likely victims of expulsion as men. The banishment of German writers and intellectuals, always the result of repression and opposition, occurred in waves: after the failed attempt to establish the Mainz Republic (1792), thousands fled to Paris, where they tried to organize opposition to feudal absolutism; after the Karlsbader Beschlusse (1819), the press, publishing houses, and universities were strictly regulated; the revolutionary years (1830, 1840, 1848) caused the emigration of thousands; other waves took place after the approval of the Socialist Law (1878) and during World War I (1914-1918). The best-known wave of emigrants occurred during the national socialist regime (1933-1945). With the end of World War II (1945) and the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949), many socialist writers returned to this part of Germany. But because of the repressions many of them faced in the GDR,
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several writers opted—or were forced—to leave the GDR: Christa Reinig voluntarily emigrated to Munich in 1964, and Helga Novak was expatriated in 1966. More recently, several authors left the GDR following the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976, among them Sarah Kirsch, who moved to West Berlin in 1977. Of the women forced into exile in the 19th century, Mathilde Franziska Anneke became a major contributor to feminist thought. After participating in the 1848 uprising, she fled to America. Having already developed one of the first feminist newspapers in Germany, Anneke later produced one in the United States, Deutsche Frauenzeitung (1852), and also became active in the woman suffrage movement. Those writers exiled during national socialism were deeply concerned with the continuation of a German literary tradition. Because these writers tried to keep German traditions alive, it is viewed as the representative German literature for the period (1933-1945). A concern for humanity and demonstrated opposition to national socialism unify these works. Many texts were distributed in newspapers designed to propagate opposition to fascism. Among those women exiled were Else Lasker-Schuler and the Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sachs, whose lyric texts portrayed experiences of Holocaust survivors, and Anna Seghers (pseudonym for Netty Reiling), whose prose texts depicted German opposition (Das siebte Kreuz, 1942, English) and the experience of exile (Transit, 1944). Other important women exile writers include Irmgard Keun, Rose Auslander, and Hilde Domin. See also: GDR Literature; National Socialism; Reinig, Christa; Revolution, German (1848); Suffrage; Women's Movement; World War I; World War II; Young Germany. References: Gerlach, Antje, Deutsche Literatur im Schweizer Exit (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 1975); Koepke, Wulf, and Michael Winkler, eds., Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur: Studien zu ihrer Bestimmung im Kontext der Epoche 1930 bis 1960 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1984); Stephan, Alexander, and Hans Wagener, eds., Schreiben im Exit: Zur Asthetik der deutschen Exilliteratur 1933-1945 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985).
CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Existentialism. Construed broadly, the term refers to several strands of philosophical work dating back to Aristotle, employing a strategy to interpret existence based on defining human existence as a fundamental ontological category. Its modern source is S0ren Kierkegaard, who defined existence not as a property of human beings but as a precondition for all human knowledge. Works like Enten/Eller (1843) thus assume the position of an individual examining questions of choice, action, and morality. Existentialism's German roots reach back to Immanuel Kant, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, and Edmund Husserl, who redefine the human ontology of knowledge as a universal basis of knowledge through phenomenology. In Husserl's formulation, human consciousness and knowledge are intentional—relating to a representation of beingin-the-world.
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The first modern bloom of the tradition falls into the 1920s: German Existenzphilosophie, developed out of Lebensphilosophie, drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and Wilhelm Dilthey and culminating in Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927). Eradicated by national socialism, it rose again in France as existentialism under Heidegger's influence, stressing a strategy of analysis juxtaposing existential knowledge (referring to an essential human state of being) with existentiell knowledge (the observable correlate of that state of being, its being-in-the-world). Other strands of that analysis survive in existential psychiatry (e.g., Karl Jaspers and Ludwig Binswanger—and through him in Michel Foucault); in existential theology (e.g., Karl Barth, Paul Tillich); and in a kind of literary analysis (e.g., Romano Guardini). French existentialism extended beyond philosophy (e.g., Jean-Paul Sartre, in Vetre et le neant, 1943; Simone de Beauvoir, in Pour une morale de Vambiguite, 1947) into literature, film, and cultural studies. Literary existentialism stressed representations of individuals' moments of authentic being, and the juxtapositions of sense and senselessness, death and art that characterize individual life (e.g., Sartre, in La Nausee, 1938; Albert Camus, in UEtranger, 1942). French feminism may be seen as a new development of this tradition, combined with impulses from Marxism (e.g., Louis Althusser), poststructuralism (e.g., Michel Foucault), and the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan. Whereas Sartre stressed individual freedom and authenticity, de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous stress individuals' cognitive freedom as class/gender categories, as well as individual entities; they explore gendered being-inthe-world and its ramifications for knowledge (echoing the first line of the second part of de Beauvoir's Le deuxieme Sexe [1949]: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"). More contemporary feminists critique essentialist notions innate to French existentialism in two major ways: one stressing embodiment and physical beingin-the-world as an intentional influence on knowledge, the other stressing linguistics and Vecriture feminine presuming the authenticity of thought and self-representation. Irigaray's Speculum de Vautre femme (1974) reverses traditional readings of Plato's cave to delineate how identity (and hence even philosophical knowledge) is conditioned by sexual identity and gender coding. Feminist linguistic approaches (including Irigaray's edited volume, Sexes et genres a travers des languages, 1990; Cixous' "Le Rire de la meduse"; and Luise Pusch's Das Deutsche als Mannersprache, 1984) outline how a change in language can alter the fundamental ontology of women's being-in-the-world, and hence their knowledge and power. Monique Wittig's Les Guerillieres (1969) offers a "woman's writing" (I'ecriture feminine) that reinstates women's authentic being-in-the-world. Michele Le Doeuff, in U'Etude et le rouet (1989), and Toril Moi, in Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994), use modified existentialist analyses of de Beauvoir's position as an "authentic philosopher'' to show how her version of the existentialist dilemma was
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constrained more by her historical and gendered subject position, less by any necessary ontology of the subject. See also: Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, French; Linguistics, Feminist; Marxist Theories; Phenomenology; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Semiotics. References: Duchen, Claire, Feminism in France: From May '68 to Mitterand (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); Le Doeuff, Michele, Hipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Woman, Philosophy, etc. Trans. Trista Selous (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Moi, Toril, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Solomon, Robert C , From Hegel to Existentialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). KATHERINE ARENS E x o t i n . The search for the exotic has been explained as an escape from banal and prosaic reality. Of particular interest is the perceived differential treatment of the exotic heroine (the Exotin) in men's and women's writing within the German context. While the female body is the site of anxiety in all these works—that is, at risk of being invaded or as a threatening and impenetrable barrier to white European male desire—it obtains an almost obsessive power in men's writing. In such male-authored texts, the Exotin is usually killed off (commits suicide) or is assimilated into the dominant culture. The narrative structure in works figuring the Exotin is characterized by the tension between the dominant European (male) observer and the passive, silent (feminized) "other." The heterogeneous nature of the Exotin can take on various shapes, depending on historically changing tensions and contradictions. During the Middle Ages, the Exotin invariably took the form of a supernatural or fairytale-like being from the Orient who lured men into a dreamlike existence and then died or faded away before fully gratifying the men (Pfaffe Lamprecht, Alexanderlied, 12th century). The Exotin was also introduced for the purposes of political exigency when the sovereign power of the monarch was endangered (Johann Hartlieb, Alexanderdichtung, 1444). The Exotin's tantalizing sexuality could, at times, become dangerous, symbolizing a sign or commodity traditionally exchanged arbitrarily among men that now threatened to take on a will of its own (Medea in Franz Grillparzer's Das goldene Vlies, 1821). The Exotin as a manifestation of ethnophobia could also occur within the same cultural space. The identification of the "other" was an integral part of nationalism in the AustroHungarian Empire of the 19th century (Adalbert Stifter, Brigitta, 1843; Katzensilber, 1853; Der Waldbrunnen, 1866). Within the context of imperialism, the Exotin has served both male and female writers as the means by which the pain of imperial expansion is converted and aestheticized. The Exotin is distant, forbidden, and inaccessible and is objectified as the prize or bounty of war. She is a forbidden object of desire as well as a material object of exchange (Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1802; Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Der Heilige, 1879).
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German women travelers in the 19th century participated in perpetuating stereotypes about the ' 'other'' in non-European countries, especially about the Exotin. Although the search for independence was the underlying reason for traveling, most of these women shared the prevalent colonialist discourse about the inferiority of the colonized and were thus complicit with their male counterparts in feminizing the colonial lands and using the Exotin as the ultimate metaphor for suppression. Their female perspective enabled them to ' 'penetrate'' spaces forbidden to the male gaze (e.g., the harem). Ida Hahn-Hahn's description of a squalid harem peopled by ugly, lazy, stupid women is the other side to the sensual, beautiful Exotin of male writings because it perpetuates with equal force ethnocentric and racist depictions of the Orient (Hahn-Hahn, Orientalische Briefe, 1844; Ida Pfeiffer, Reise einer Wienerin in das heilige Land, 1856). Hahn-Hahn's emancipatory impulses extend only to the European world. German women who participated in German colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries portrayed the Exotin in their works either as the picturesquely dressed servant carrying out her orders like an automaton or the oversexed woman seducing the unwary white man. This oversexed woman had to be disciplined by the Herrin so that the Herr could pursue his colonial ideal of expansion (Frieda von Biilow, Deutsch-ostafrikanische Novellen, 1892; Clara Brockmann, Die deutsche Frau in Sudwestafrika, 1910). Sophie Worishoffer's Kreuz und quer durch Indien (1886) resembles Karl May's Orientzyklus (1881— 1886) in its eclectic mix of fact and fiction, research and fantasy. The subtitle Irrfahrten zweier deutscher Leichtmatrosen in der indischen Wunderwelt is consonant with the belief at that time that the Orient had to be defined and ultimately controlled. In the 20th century, the use of the topos Exotin by women more often reflects their desire for empowerment and subversion through cross-dressing (Else Lasker-Schiiler, Die Nachte Tino von Bagdas, 1907; Der Prinz von Theben, 1914). The Orient becomes a metaphor for religious desires and nostalgia. Male writers not only eroticize the Exotin but inscribe her within the quest for the forbidden female (goddess, priestess, courtesan) (Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, 1922; Giinter Grass, Zunge zeigen, 1991). The continued use of the Exotin into the late 20th century manifests itself in a mixture of travel and escapist literature (Hanan Al-Shaykh, Im Bann der High-Tech-Harems, 1991; Andre Kaminsky, Die Garten des Mulay Abdallah, 1983). See also: Body, Female; Colonial Literature; Goddess; Orientalism; Postcolonialism; Travelogues; Whore. References: Arac, Jonathan, and Harriet Ritvo, eds., Macropolitics of NineteenthCentury Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Douthwaite, Julia V., Exotic Women: Literary Heroines and Cultural Strategies in Ancien Regime France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); Lange, Thomas, Idyllische und exotische Sehnsucht—Formen burgerlicher Nostalgie in der deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor, 1976);
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Mamozai, Martha, Herrenmenschen-Frauen im deutschen Kolonialismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982).
KAMAKSHIP. MURTI Experimental Literature. This is an international literary movement of the 1960s (e.g., the Grazer Gruppe and the Wiener Gruppe) that has its roots in the avant-garde art of the Dadaists, the Surrealists, and Futurists of the 1920s. The focus of experimental literature is on language rather than meaning; language and form become the object of experimentation. Experimental texts are characterized by fragmentation, text montage, and imitation of stereotyped language. In poetry, experiments with forms and language take place on the visual or acoustic level. Isolated words or letters form patterns that are often highly visual and can be appreciated without being read; other poems derive their effect from their sound patterns (Konkrete Poesie', Lautgedichte). None of the female artists discussed here define themselves as experimental artists; nevertheless, their early works are highly experimental. Although Friederike Mayrocker's most radically experimental work was written in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Minimonsters Traumlexikon, 1968; Fantom Fan, 1971; Arie auf tonernen Fiifien. Metaphysisches Theater, 1972), her later work can also be characterized by a continuous exploration of language, a testing of the limits of form, a recognition of the contradictions of (female) existence, and open-endedness. Barbara Frischmuth's first narrative text, Die Klosterschule (1968), is indicative of a critical stance toward language as a means of control and oppression. Frischmuth investigates the relationship between lost self and indoctrination by language. The language of the convent students is devoid of any individualism and reduced to an unconscious repetition of empty phrases. The text suggests the impossibility for women to develop a self beyond traditional notions of femaleness as a result of this type of indoctrination. While Frischmuth's focus shifted from criticism of language to a more conventional literary exploration of women's issues, Elfriede Jelinek has remained highly sensitive and critical toward everyday use of language. Nevertheless, Jelinek's early prose is more radically experimental than her later work. Her work wir sind lockvogel, baby (1970) combines elements from formulaic literature (detective and horror stories and comic books) and excerpts from pop music and gossip columns in a highly satirical manner. In accordance with experimental literature's aim to activate the reader, Jelinek offers the reader the opportunity to assemble her or his own story. In her next work, Michael. Ein Jugendbuch fiir die Infantilgesellschaft (1972), Jelinek's criticism of the brainwashing effects of the media culture has lost its playfulness. Jelinek bitterly satirizes the artificial harmony of television series like ' 'Flipper'' and ' Tda Rogalski" by having them end in brutal violence. While Jelinek denies the capacity of language to express authentic meaning, trained linguist and social activist Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer has maintained
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her belief in language as a means to capture reality. However, she rejects neorealistic use of language and pushes the boundaries of realism to new extremes with her complicated aesthetic forms. This is especially true in her first novel, Der Schwimmer (1976). But also her later works Der weibliche Name des Widerstands (1980), Schwestern (1983), Die Versuchung (1990), and Die Fremde (1992) combine aesthetic innovation and social criticism. The works of Mayrocker, Kerschbaumer, Frischmuth, and Jelinek convincingly demonstrate that experimental literature and social criticism are not mutually exclusive. All of their experimental works employ innovative forms and language to critique social perceptions and attitudes, especially with regard to gender. See also: Dadaism; Futurism; Jelinek, Elfriede; Montage; Surrealism. References: Drews, Jorg, and Peter Laemmle, eds., Wie die Grazer auszogen, die Literatur zu erobern: Texte, Portrats, Analysen und Dokumente junger steirischer Autoren (Munich: Edition Text+Kritik, 1975); Heimann, Bodo, Experimentelle Prosa der Gegenwart (Munich: Oldenburg, 1978); Nagele, Rainer, "Die Arbeit des Textes: Notizen zur experimentellen Literatur." Deutsche Literatur in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965: Untersuchungen und Berichte. Ed. P. Michael Lutzeler and Egon Schwarz (Konigstein/Ts: Athenaum, 1980) 30^5. HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER Export, Valie ( 1 9 4 0 - p r e s e n t ) . Austrian filmmaker Valie Export's bestknown work, Unsichtbare Gegner (1976), is a prizewinning critical collage attacking conventional gender roles in relationships and society, historical artistic images of women, and Viennese culture, religious institutions, and politics, all set within a science fiction film parody. Export, an avant-garde video- and filmmaker, photographer, performance artist, critic, theorist, and essayist, has been a professor at the Academy of the Arts (Hochschule der Kiinste) in Berlin since 1991. Her work aims to make the uses of images and language as instruments of domination visible, to reveal the oppressiveness of female socialization, and to affirm women's ability to create themselves. Born in Linz, Austria, in 1940 as Waltraut Lehner, Export studied art and textiles. She became part of the avant-garde Viennese art scene known as Viennese actionism, a movement that used the body as material. An avowed feminist since the 1960s, Export's politicized stance included performance art in which, for example, she rolled naked in crushed glass to emphasize the tactile aspect of the female body rather than its femaleness; or "Touch Cinema," in which she presented passersby in the street the opportunity to put their hands into a box ("movie theater") to touch her breasts—but unlike the closed, darkened pornographic movie theaters, the viewers were themselves in full view of the public as they pursued their objectification of the female body. Export was attacked and jailed at various times for her feminist actionism. She is a founding member of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative (1968) and of the Graz Authors' Organization; she is a cofounder of Film Women International. Since the
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1980s, she has taught film in alternate years at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Export has made over 50 films, including experimental, documentary, and narrative films and videos. Her first feature film, Unsichtbare Gegner (1976), emphasizes the oppression of women in all aspects of their lives and includes video work. Menschenfrauen (1979) brings together the experiences of four women of different backgrounds and expands the use of media within the film. Syntagma (1983) is a nonnarrative short film examining women's position as objects of desire in mediated images. Die Praxis der Liebe (1984), a narrative film set within, and revealing, the corrupt politics of contemporary Europe, presents a professional journalist who is torn in her relationships with two emotionally abusive men. Ein perfektes Paar (1985) is Export's contribution to the multinational feminist video project of revisioning the seven deadly sins: Export portrays loss of virginity in a contemporary context of selling one's body for advertising. See also: Body, Female; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm. References: Curry, Ramona, ' 'The Female Image as Critique in the Films of Valie Export (Syntagma)." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 255-66; Eifler, Margret, "Valie Export's Invisible Adversaries: Film as Text." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 241-54; Eifler, Margret, and Sandra Frieden, "Interview with Valie Export." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 267-78; Export, Valie, "Aspects of Feminist Actionism." New German Critique 47 (1989): 69-92. SANDRA FRIEDEN E x p r e s s i o n i s m ( 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 2 3 ) . Originally employed to define the art of Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cezanne, the term ' 'Expressionism'' was soon used to describe the literature and art of young women and men that appeared in Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Vienna, and Prague between approximately 1907 and 1923. In open conflict with the bourgeoisie and the hierarchical society of the Wilhelmian era, these bohemian women and men set out to break social as well as aesthetic norms by moving marginalized figures into the center of their stages or canvases. Prostitutes, beggars, and the mentally ill populate Expressionist plays and poems, but provocation of the bourgeoisie, not social criticism, seems to have been the driving factor. Friedrich Nietzsche's vision of the Ubermensch was converted into poems, prose, plays, sculptures, and paintings. The vision and representation of the "New Man," which appears in works by Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller, were exclusively male. Women were included in the Wandlung only for their ability to give birth to the New Man. Despite voyeuristic tendencies and negative portrayals of women in some examples of Expressionist literature, others (often by the same authors) address the problems
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and injustice, the violence and danger modern women—especially female members of the proletariat—faced. The best-known female Expressionist, Else Lasker-Schiiler, published several volumes of poetry, including Der siebente Tag (1905), Hebraische Balladen (1913), and Mein blaues Klavier (1943), and the drama Die Wupper (1909) and wrote Der Prinz von Theben (1913). Lasker-Schiiler frequently used male names when referring to herself, and self-portraits hardly ever show her as a female. In her works, women often appear in traditional female roles. Although LaskerSchiiler is today canonized as the only female Expressionist, Expressionist journals, such as Der Sturm and Die Aktion, published numerous poems and novellas by female authors, including Emmy Ball-Hennings, Henriette Hardenberg, Sylvia von Harden, Claire Studer, Elisabeth Janstein, Berta Lask, Ite Liebenthal, Mechthilde Lichnowsky, and Paula Ludwig. Adele Gerhard, who sympathized with the socialist women's movement, wrote numerous works that can also be considered Expressionist. See also: Dadaism; Women's Movement. References: Adams, Marion, "Der Expressionismus und die Krise der deutschen Frauenbewegung." Expressionismus und Kulturkrise. Ed. Bernd Hiippauf (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983) 105-30; Behr, Sulamith, Women Expressionists (Oxford: Phaidon, 1988); Kuckart, Judith, Im Spiegel der Bache finde ich mein Bild nicht mehr. Gratwanderungen einer anderen Asthetik der Dichterin Else Lasker-Schiiler (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1985); Pollock, Delia, "New Man to New Woman: Women in Brecht and Expressionism." Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 3 (1989): 85-107; Raabe, Paul, Die Autoren und BUcher des literarischen Expressionismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985). CHRISTIANE SCHONFELD
F Fable. The fable's (Latin fabula=story) primary meaning refers to the theme, content, or plan of action—to the story of a short piece of epic or dramatic fiction. This story may be passed down by tradition, invented, or be an account of personal experience. The secondary and more specific meaning refers to the Aesopian fable, a short didactic story in verse or prose. It presents a commonly known truth, a practical wisdom, or a moral precept in the guise of a tale in which human characteristics are transferred to animals or inanimate objects. The result is a pointed tale satirical or didactic in nature. In antiquity, the fable was considered evidence of oratory (Aristotle) or as a tool for moral education (Phaedrus). Martin Luther and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing followed the earlier model, using the form for their ideological ends. In his Abhandlung vom Wesen der Fabel (1759), Lessing rejected the elaborate lyrical (Baroque) fable in favor of the precise, serious fable already found in the Aristotelian Rhetorik. Two aspects of the fable have often attracted scholarly attention: the fable's potential for critique, which has led some to read it as a form of concealed writing, and the use of animal characters in the fable, which is sometimes viewed as a protective measure by authors who could not otherwise safely criticize authority. However, the fable has been used less frequently for subversive social commentary than to maintain the status quo by revealing behaviors that diverged from the accepted norms. Whereas traditional fables point to human aspects in animals, contemporary fables highlight animal aspects in humans. One effect of this shift surfaces in the intensified satirical element of contemporary fables.
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Among the many virtually unexamined fables by women writers are, for example, Luise Hedwig von Pernet's Fabeln und Erzahlungen (1770); Caroline Pierson's Goldene Fibel oder kurzweilige Mdhrlein, belehrende Fabeln und Geschichten (1843); and Lisa Wegner's Amoralische Fabeln (1920). Like Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach in Parabeln, Mdrchen und Gedichte (1892) and Vixen und andere Tiergeschichten (1913), the novelist Hermynia zur Miihlen interspersed fables in her fairy tale collections (Was Peterchens Freunde erzdhlen, 1921; Mdrchen, 1922; and Es war einmal. . . es wird sein, 1930). Similar to parables, zur Miihlen's stories use fairy tale motifs and fables to illustrate to young readers the goals and ideals of the workers' movement. Some women writers, for example, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff or Marie Luise Kaschnitz, wrote fables in verse form. Droste-Mulshoff' s poem "Der kranke Aar" (1844) offers a traditional animal fable. By contrast, Kaschnitz's poem "Die Katze" (1957) can be read as a feminist fable. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Fairy Tale; Parable. References: Briegel-Florig, Waltraud. "Geschichte der Fabelforschung in Deutschland" (Diss., Freiburg, 1965); Hasubek, Peter, ed., Die Fabel. Theorie und Rezeption einer Gattung (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1982); Kosewa, Ewa, "Die Funktion der Gattung Fabel in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des Spatmittelalters: am Beispiel des Strickers und Hugo von Trimberg" (Diplom-Arbeit, Vienna, 1994); Leibfried, Erwin, Fabel (Bamberg: C. C. Buchners, 1984). ROGER RUSSI Fairy Tale. The didactic and moralizing character of the literary fairy tale coincides with the establishment of the middle class, the advent of the age of literacy, the bourgeois emphasis on strong family ties, and a concept of innocent and educable children. In the process of recording folktales that had been born out of the folklore of a community of another time, males ' 'fractured'' (Jeannine Blackwell) the tales by revising them, according to the prevailing conventions, political aspirations, and moral values of the time. Like most of the major classical fairy tales that have achieved popularity, the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmdrchen (1812) can be considered works that reinforce the patriarchal and middle-class social code and moral teachings. Only recently have feminist scholars begun to analyze fairy tales by women, which have traditionally been ignored or forgotten. Benedikte Naubert, one of the first and most influential woman fairy tale authors from whose fairy tales (Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen, 1789-1792) the Grimms copied liberally, and Bettina von Arnim illustrated in their fairy tales women's challenge of inherited value judgments through bold juxtapositions of the marvelous with real problems they encountered in their everyday world. At the crux of fairy tale research on the Grimms' tales has been the rewriting of the source tales from oral or published sources. This has been a major focus in feminist research on codes, mores, and role models represented in the
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Grimms' 210 published and 32 unpublished tales—a collective project to which more than 25 women contributed. A correlation exists between the personal and social circumstances of the source/informant and the tales/story line passed on to the Grimms. Tales contributed by young, unmarried, and educated women (Marie Hassenpflug and Dortchen Wild) from the upper middle class reflected to a great extent prevailing stereotypes: boys meet the challenges of adventure and heroic actions, while girls (passive, obedient, and beautiful) wait for a prince to come to their rescue and to offer them marriage. In contrast, tales by Dorothea Viehmann, an older market woman who supplied 37 tales of the first collection, portray women with survival skills and inner resources, as indicated in her tale "Die kluge Bauerstochter," in which the farmer's daughter shows initiative and intelligence. Wilhelm Grimm, however, added biased notes in the 1857 edition to the effect that the farmer's daughter was wise beyond her social standing, illustrating the editorial liberty the Grimms took with tales contributed by women. The Kunstmarchen or literary fairy tale, in which the author incorporates fairy tale motifs into an original work, is a genre that appealed as much to Romantic writers of the 19th century as, more recently, to writers in the former German Democratic Republic after the reappropriation of Romanticism in the 1970s (Die Verbesserung des Menschen, 1982, and Der Holzwurm und der Konig. Mdrchenhaftes fur Erwachsene, 1985). The genre offers unlimited possibilities for the imagination to construct new role models and alternative social structures. For example, Bettina and Gisela von Arnim's fairy tale novel Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns (first typeset in 1845, pub. with a missing section in 1926) uses the framework of the traditional bourgeois fairy tale but ultimately breaks with its tradition: the prince is rescued by Gritta, who assumes the power to make her own decisions. In the construction of alternative realities, writers of Kunstmarchen have combined the critical or subversive power of parody, satire, and the grotesque with the magic and enchanting dimensions of the Grimm tales. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Fairy Tale Drama; Fairy Tale Novella; GDR Literature; Romanticism. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, "Fractured Fairy Tales: German Women Authors and the Grimm Tradition." The Germanic Review 63.4 (1987): 162-74; Bottigheimer, Ruth, Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Jarvis, Shawn C, "Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child? Bettine's Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns." Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 77-89, "The Vanished Woman of Great Influence: Benedikte Naubert's Legacy and German Women's Fairy Tales." In the Shadow of Olympus: German Women Writers around 1800. Ed. Katherine Goodman and Edith Waldstein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 189-209; Thum, Maureen, "Feminist or Anti-Feminist? Gender-Coded Role Models in the Tales Contributed by Dorothea Viehmann to the Grimm Brothers' Kinder- und Hausmarchen" The
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Germanic Review 68.1 (1993): 11-23; Zipes, Jack, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (New York: Wildman, 1983).
BARBARA MABEE Fairy Tale Drama/Marchendrama. This is a theatrical work that employs the motifs, images, characters and genre markers (e.g., avoidance of specific time and place references) of the fairy tale. Like fairy tales, these plays have variously served as entertainment, socializing tools, pedagogical and didactic instruments, and critiques of the social order. In their early incarnation, fairy tale plays were written and performed for adult audiences. Women like Luise Gottsched were instrumental in their introduction to the German stage in the 18th century with translations of popular French Lustspiele and dramatized contes de fees. In ensuing German fairy tale plays, females figured prominently not as the playwrights but as the title characters: Magera, die forchterliche Hexe (1763); Das Donauweibchen (1798); and Hulda, das schone Wasserfrdulein (1799). Also popular during this period were operatic versions of such plays; the actress and playwright Friederike Sophie Hensel Seyler is known to have produced such a work: Oberon oder Konig der Elf en: Ein romantisches Singspiel in drei AufzUgen nach Wieland (1789). These early works were important for the development of the tradition because they helped cement the popular image of fairy tale figures (just as, today, children are influenced by the fairy tale films of Walt Disney). Despite contemporary theories that drama was unsuited to the female disposition, many women were involved in their production by the 19th century. Whereas public opinion continued to exclude women from "serious" theater, they were free to produce works for juvenile audiences. Many German women therefore penned fairy tale plays to be performed at home and in school, like Anna Ausfeld's Fiir die Kinderwelt: Geschichten und dramatisierte Mdrchen zum Deklamieren und Auffiihren in Schule und Haus (1888) or Helene Binder's Zeitvertreib: Bilderbuch mit Geschichten, Mdrchen, Reimen und kleinen Auffiihrungenfur Kinder (1895). Theatrical versions of well-known tales, often with female title characters, came into print and appeared on stage, such as Ida Blum's Goldmarie und Pechmarie: Dramatisierte Mdrchen (1889); Elisabeth Ebeling and Berta Filhes' Dornrbschen: Dramatisches Mdrchen (1864); Adelheid Wette's Hansel und Gretel: Marchenspiel (1894); and Emilie Ringseis' Schneewittchen (1873). Musical theater also continued with works like Johanna Siedler's Die Bremer Stadt-Musikanten (music by A. Kugler, 1898) and Adelheid Wette's Die sieben Geislein: Marchenspiel fiir die Kleinen (music by E. Humperdinck, 1895). By the early 20th century, the fairy tale play had become clearly established as a genre for children's theater. Works such as Lou Andreas-Salome's Die Tarnkappe (1903) used the fairy tale play as a way to instill in children a better understanding of, and respect for, reality. In the later 20th century, the staging of fairy tale plays for children waxes and wanes according to the prevailing
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theoretical debates (like those in the 19th century) about proper reading and viewing material for children and juveniles. Fairy tale plays seem to enjoy popularity when society as a whole appears more fragmented since they provide a defined and familiar structure. See also: Children's Literature; Comedy; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; Jugendliteratur; Musical Theater. References: Cincura, Andrew, "Marchendrama: A Paradox in Progress" (Diss., University of California, Riverside, 1973); Ende, Amalie von, "Neunhundert Jahre Frauendrama." Biihne und Welt: Zeitschrift fur Theaterwesen, Litteratur und Kunst 1 (1899): 1105-11; Gratz, Manfred, Das Mdrchen in der deutschen Aufklarung: Vom Feenmarchen zum Volksmarchen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988) 252-57; Jahnke, Manfred, "Die Verdrangung des 'Sozialen' auf dem Weg zur 'Kunst': Marchentheater zwischen Bettelheim und 'Poesie.' " TheaterZeitSchrift 17-18 (1986): 8-18. SHAWN C. JARVIS Fairy Tale Novella/Marchennovelle. The terms "Marchennovelle" and "Novellenmarchen" have traditionally assumed a narrow definition, referring to works in the form of the novella that include fantastic elements. Ludwig Tieck is generally regarded as the creator of the Mdrchennovelle, and most studies concentrate on works by well-known male Romantic authors or distinguish carefully between these works and other examples of literary fairy tales. This perspective ignores the 18th-century tales modeled on Italian and Oriental novellas that were written literally by the thousands in France—almost exclusively by women—and widely read and imitated in Germany. William W. Anthony, one of the few critics to assess the precursors of the Romantic fairy tale, investigates Benedikte Naubert's narrative style and maintains, contrary to common perception, that there is some continuity between her work and the Romantic tradition. Tieck, for instance, uses themes and imagery from Naubert's "Der Mantel" (Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen, 1789-1792) in his "Der blonde Eckbert" (1797). Naubert's "Der Mantel" is a Cinderella-story that frames another tale based on the legend of Frau Holle. As in the tradition of the novella, the framed narrative and the frame itself eventually prove to be intertwined, and a central symbol—in this case the coat—ties these two worlds together and conveys the essence of the story. Although an affirmation of the protagonist's virtue, industry, and piety, the story is more complex than a simple valorization of middleclass virtues and the image of the ideal girl that they construct: interesting conflicts between romance and female friendships, and the dangers of revealing secrets are intertwined with magical elements and countless allusions to common fairy tale motifs. Gisela and Bettina von Arnim's Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns (1843) similarly adheres to the marriage plot while transcending its limitations. Drawing on the genre of the Robinsonade and yet establishing a Utopia in the form of a cloister, it implicitly critiques patriarchal culture on two levels, now commonly understood as being interrelated: the treatment of
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women and domination of other cultures. Bettina von Arnim's "Der Konigssohn" (1808, appropriately translated by Jeannine Blackwell as "The Queen's Son") reverses the structure of the Kaspar story as the queen's firstborn son returns from nature to rule without language. Like Gritta, the work offers an implicit challenge to prevailing cultural norms and assumptions. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Drama; Novella; Robinsonade; Romanticism; Utopia. References: Anthony, William Wilton, "The Narration of the Marvelous in Late Eighteenth Century German 'Marchen' " (Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1982); Hammer, Klaus, ed., Franzbsische Feenmarchen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Riitten and Loening, 1969); Konrad, Gustav, ed., Marchen der Bettine, Armgart und Gisela von Arnim (Frechen: Bartmann, 1965). AMY HORNING MARSCHALL Family, S o c i a l History of t h e German. The family is one of the oldest forms of social organization, and as such it is a dynamic form of human coexistence. Its many functions, within labor and the economy, law and culture, education and socialization, change according to cultural understanding and values as well as according to the social and economic situation of society. The social history of the family is shaped by the shift from a society based primarily on a familial, domestic economy to an industrial and postindustrial society in which the family no longer forms the basis of labor organization. Social history also shows that events and processes in the family (or the domestic field of social relations) are simultaneously events and processes in the public domain of political, religious, and economic institutions. Unlike the Romans, with their system of lineage and a definite idea of state, German tribes of the same period were organized by kinship groups. Kinships were formed by blood-related adult males, who enjoyed equal rights, and their wives and children. It was a community based on mutual support. Each married son formed his own nuclear household within the kinship. Marriage was seen as a legal contract between two kinship groups based on economic gain. Loyalties did not transcend kinship. German tribes also practiced familial ancestral adoration, a practice that strengthened the idea of patriarchy. After the Christianization of the German regions, the church attempted to change the economic emphasis of marriage to a religious one. Instead of owning a wife like property, the husband was now expected to protect wife and children. During the Middle Ages and early modernity, the family was the predominant form of labor organization. The productive function of the family was of decisive importance. The house was both the place of work and living quarters for all family members. The household included, in addition to the master and mistress of the house, all children, apprentices, journeymen, and servants. The master of the house was responsible for the general ' 'peace in the household'' (haus frieden). He exercised authority over all its members and had the right to punish them, but he also provided them legal protection. In these strict and
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Christian households, the central position of the master and the mistress of the house was respected and had to be filled in case of death: widows or widowers were seldom found as heads of a household, hence the significant number of second and third marriages. The organization of the family unit was an economic one in peasant, artisan, and bourgeois families, with only minor importance accorded the emotional life. The concept of Familie, in the modern sense of the word, was introduced in Germany via France and came into general use only in the 18th century. It designated the nuclear family that was already clearly in evidence in Western Europe. Familie replaced the original meaning of the Latin familia, which had been applied, from the Middle Ages on, to various forms of large households that included vassals and serfs, or servants and workers. In the familia, pater familias referred to the master's position of authority over wife, children, servants, and slaves. Social historians have found that the multigenerational, preindustrial family was mostly a myth rather than reality. Large families were not characteristic of the lower classes in the countryside. They had neither the available room nor the material resources for more than a two-generation family. In urban areas, extended families were to be found only among a small section of nobles, patricians, and rich merchants. German industrialization changed the structure of the family as well as the meaning of the term "family." The separation of work and living spaces resulted in the separation of the professional from the private sphere. This change affected factory workers, their wives, and their children as well as civil and commercial employees of all kinds. Families without economically productive functions became a mass phenomenon. The household as both the place of production and domicile became the exception. Servants were no longer part of the family but worked for the family under negotiated contracts. This led to the meaning of Familie as a place of privacy and sentimentality. This development strengthened the relationships between parents and children and was encouraged even more through religious influence, particularly during the Age of Enlightenment. Starting with the 19th century, the idyll of the perfect and moral bourgeois family greatly influenced societal life. But women paid a price. As wives and mothers, they were now excluded from the economic and political lives of their husbands. Never before had women been in a position of so much dependency as during the second half of the 19th century. In the bourgeois family, mothers now were exclusively devoted to their children and to their husbands and dependent on their husbands for economic survival. Emotions and love became important factors in marriage and family life, and children were acknowledged as important and separate human beings. However, the working family's lot during the 19th century was quite different. Women and children worked in the factories along with their husbands. It was a life of extreme hardship. After 1871, it was no longer profitable to employ children due to technological ad-
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vances, and new laws prohibited the employment of young children. In the cottage industry, children worked well into the 20th century. Rural family life changed in varying degrees, according to the different agrarian and economic reforms. In general, the rural population retained older forms of family structure longer than workers and bourgeois families. During the 1890s, women of the first feminist movement fought for women's right to higher education and for the right of unmarried women and childless wives to gainful employment in professions beyond the designated female professions of nurse, governess, and teacher. They also demanded the right to vote. After World War I, women in the new democratic Germany began to participate in political life. Yet, after 1933, the national socialists created a new family ideology to suit their political purposes. While glorifying and protecting the role of the mother, the national socialists reduced women once again to their functions as keepers of the hearth and suppliers of future soldiers. After World War II, the different political and social structures of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) created different family structures. The GDR's newly created special family law guaranteed equal rights for women through their participation in the process of production, in the governing of the state, and in the economy outside marriage and family. Since almost all women were part of the labor force, the state provided for child care. For women, family life became only one area of life among others. The FRG, in turn, revised the democratic civil law of 1919 and dealt with family relations in terms of responsibilities and property relationships. Although the husband legally remained the head of the household, the familial structure underwent drastic changes. Women, who had acquired a degree of independence during the war when they had managed without their husbands, were hesitant to give up this newly gained independence, and as a consequence, the patriarchal structure started to crumble. But not until 1975 did the reform of the marriage law legally grant women the status of an equal partner with their husbands. From the 1960s on, many societal changes took place that have influenced German family life: rapid economic development, general availability of contraceptives, the student revolts of the late 1960s, and the new feminist movement of the early 1970s. For some feminists, the family represented the primary source of discontent, rather than the basis for a just society. They criticized that family structures enshrined and perpetuated sex-role stereotypes and the oppression of women. Seeking alternatives to the model of patriarchal family, many new forms of family life based on partnership of individuals have since been explored. See also: Enlightenment; Frauenfrage; Geschlechtscharaktere; Governess; History, Women's; National Socialism; Revolution, Industrial; Student Movement; Women's Movement; World War I; World War II. References: Bundesministerium fiir Familie und Senioren, ed., Familien und Familienpolitik im geeinten Deutschland. Zukunft des Humanvermogens. Funfter Familienbericht (Bonn: Bundesministerium fiir Familie und Senioren, 1994); Hubbard, William,
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Familiengeschichte. Materialien zur deutschen Familie seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck, 1983); Mitterauer, Michael, and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family. From Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982); Platt, Wolfgang, Die Familie in der DDR (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1972); Weber-Kellermann, Ingeborg, Die deutsche Familie (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1974).
KATHARINA AULLS Fantastic Literature. This type of literature creates a break in reality and is characterized by the intrusion of the supernatural or marvelous into an otherwise well-ordered world. In his influential 1970 study of the fantastic as a genre, Tzvetan Todorov asserts that in fantastic literature an element of uncertainty is necessary: uncertainty as to whether the impossible events may really be occurring or be rationally explained. For Todorov, writers must compel the reader to view the world of the characters as real and to vacillate between a natural and a supernatural explanation of the events described. The genre focuses on disrupting cultural order and stereotypes and depicts protagonists who question and reconstruct themselves. Thus, women writers have increasingly seen the fantastic as a mode for expressing sociopolitical concerns and destroying old models of femininity by employing mythical images, ideologies, real experiences, and Utopian visions. Comparable to Sigmund Freud's concept of the "uncanny," fantastic texts uncover anxieties and unconscious desire or repressed anger and envy; they move toward the dissolution and transformation of structures as the interpenetration of objective reality and dreamlike (oneiric) zones occurs. Rosemary Jackson contends in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (1981) that such literature has a subversive and self-alienating power that is conducive to dismantling the real and to destroying ideological assumptions through mockery and parody. Literary fantasy or high fantasy (as it is often referred to in German literature) and fantastic romance are related genres and are defined as autonomous narratives, depicting supernatural and/or sociocultural marvels as objectively real and therefore lacking, according to some critics, the subversive bite of fantastic literature. Science fiction, often regarded as a subset of the fantastic, includes scientific aspects, theories, or concepts of technologically oriented societies. Its image has undergone a major change from its earlier reception, which linked the genre more with trivial literature and children's literature. During the 1970s, women writers in East and West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, discontented with simply mirroring women's social reality and depicting positive role models through narrative realism, began to explore the Utopian dimension of literature through the mode of the fantastic and various other forms that challenge realist conventions. By imaginatively traversing patriarchal myths in narratives that alternate between the actual and nonactual, women writers uncover acts of violence against women in their political and symbolic implications (e.g., the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann in the un-
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completed Todesarten trilogy [1971 and 1978]; the East German writer Irmtraud Morgner in her novels Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura [1974] and Amanda: Ein Hexenroman [1985]). Barbara Frischmuth's fantastic trilogy (Die Mystifikation der Sophie Silber [1976]; Amy oder die Metamorphose [1978]; Kai und die Liebe zu den Modellen [1979]) traces women's history through mythical and marvelous realms. Particularly writers in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) used the fantastic to oppose repressive aspects within socialism and the prescribed aesthetic of socialist realism. By unsettling traditional textual authority, they challenged the dictate of the partisan writer in the GDR. Anna Seghers' use of Utopian and fantastic elements in her three stories in Merkwurdige Begegnungen (1973) opened the way for the official endorsement of the fantastic. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Children's Literature; GDR Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Science Fiction; Socialist Realism; Trivial Literature; Utopia. References: Heidtmann, Horst, Utopisch-phantastische Literatur in der DDR (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1982); Herminghouse, Patricia, "Die Frau und das Phantastische in der neueren DDR-Literatur. Der Fall Irmtraud Morgner." Die Frau als Heldin und Autorin. Ed. Wolfgang Paulsen (Berne: Francke, 1979) 248-66; Mabee, Barbara, 'Astronauts, Angels, and Time Machines: The Fantastic in Recent German Democratic Republic Literature." The Celebration of the Fantastic. Selected Papers from the Tenth Anniversary International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Ed. Donald Morse, Marshall Tyman, and Csilla Bertha (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992) 222-35; Nagele, Rainer, "Trauer, Tropen und Phantasmen: Ver-riickte Geschichten aus der DDR." Literatur der DDR in den siebziger Jahren. Ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Patricia Herminghouse (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1983) 193-223. BARBARA MABEE F a s c i s t A e s t h e t i c s . Fascist aesthetics may refer to the actual aesthetic practices of the German national socialists and other explicitly fascist movements or to descriptive theories created by critics. The term is most familiar to American audiences from Susan Sontag's essay "Fascinating Fascism" (1974), which critiqued the work of Germany's first major woman film director, Leni Riefenstahl. The concept is thus intimately connected to questions of women's artistic creativity; but an examination of Nazi representational art shows that gender was a central issue for the Nazis as well as for their critics. Riefenstahl gained artistic acclaim and political notoriety as the leading film propagandist of Hitler's Third Reich; her film Triumph des Widens (1935), commissioned as a documentary of the 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally, was orchestrated and edited to glorify Hitler, his party, and his ideals. Sontag draws aesthetic connections between Riefenstahl's early film of self-aggrandizing "Aryans" and her more recent photographic essay on a physically impressive tribe of Africans. According to Sontag, the two subjects are similar in their glorification of the body and of physical struggle (also evident in Riefenstahl's Olympia, 1938).
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Critic Linda Schulte-Sasse proceeds from the Benjaminian view (that fascism coincides with an aestheticization of politics) and argues that Riefenstahl's first feature film, Das blaue Licht (1932), is, in fact, a modern text, not a fascist one. In modernity, the aesthetic and the feminine as "other" offer an escape from the compartmentalization of real life; "fascism, on the other hand,. . . attempts to dissolve the boundary between the institutionally separated spheres of modern reality and to provide a space of. . . illusory reconciliation, within reality. The space of reconciliation otherwise offered by the aesthetic is expanded to penetrate all aspects of life" (129). In Das blaue Licht, the mountain-woman Junta (played by Riefenstahl), as a radically "other" symbol of the feminine, is a modern element; the film does not attempt to erase boundaries between real and ideal, individual and community, as a fascist text would. One contribution of Schulte-Sasse's critique is to defuse the lightning-rod status Leni Riefenstahl has occupied in the postwar debate over fascist aesthetics. As exasperating and culpable as Riefenstahl may be, feminist scholarship must ask whether it is an accident that a female film pioneer has become the popular personification of the term "fascist aesthetics," when many male artists who actively and knowingly collaborated with the Third Reich have not been similarly targeted. The earliest German masterminds of fascist aesthetics—propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; Adolf Hitler himself; Hitler's architect, Albert Speer—were mostly male, as were their earliest critics (Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukacs, Siegfried Kracauer). The Nazis concentrated their efforts on popular, visual media (painting, sculpture, film, theater, architecture), especially on the manipulation of the masses and of gender images within those media. The 1936 exhibit on "Degenerate Art" (Entartete Kunst) in Munich discredited modernist and expressionist painters and elevated a derivative, strictly representational art with "wholesome, German" subjects such as men working in the fields and mothers with children on their knees. Gender was a crucial constitutive element in the practice of fascist aesthetics and continues to be so in contemporary analysis of the subject. Klaus Theweleit's Mdnnerphantasien (1977), a veritable bible for many German and American critics in the 1980s, examines gender as a central category for understanding the social psychology that led to fascism. His study of popular literature of the Freikorps might be considered a critique of fascist aesthetics. See also: Body, Female; Expressionism; Fascist Theory; Film Theory, Feminist; Modernism; National Socialism; World War II. References: Frauen und Faschismus in Europa: der faschistische Korper (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1990); Lukacs, Gyorgy, "Nietzsche als Vorlaufer der faschistischen Asthetik." 1934. Reprinted in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Asthetik (Berlin: AufbauVerlag, 1954) 286-317; Mueller, Ray, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Film, 1993); Schulte-Sasse, Linda, "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic." Cultural Critique (Spring 1991): 123^48; Sontag, Susan, "Fascinating Fascism." The New York Review of Books, 22.1 (1975): n.p. Reprinted as Under
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the Sign of Saturn (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980) 73-105; Theweleit, Klaus, Male Fantasies, 2 vols. Trans. Stephen Conway et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Wiggershans, Renate, Frauen unterm National sozialismus (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1984).
KRISTIE A. FOELL F a s c i s t Theory. As it relates to women, fascist theory is informed by two traditions: the Pauline Christian tradition, which, in the 18th and 19th centuries, turned into the bourgeois model of complementary gender roles and separate social spheres; and the misogynist military/colonial traditions, which associated the female with the dangerous, decadent, impure ' 'other'' in need of suppression and containment. These two traditions became interrelated in 20th-century German racist-sexist doctrines and myths and figure in concepts such as "racial hygiene" or "racial purity" versus disease, "racial degeneration," or "miscegenation." Adolf Hitler summed up the Nazi position on women—a vulgarized Rousseauism—when he stressed the "natural" division between the sexes in pseudobiblical terms: "To the one belongs the strength of feeling, the strength of soul. To the other belongs the strength of vision, of toughness, of decision, and of the willingness to act." In response to declining birthrates, growing social emancipation of women, and general unemployment during the Weimar years, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels propagated women's retreat into domesticity and "breeding," provided they were racially "pure Aryans." Nazi women leaders such as Gertrud Scholtz-Klink or Auguste Reber-Gruber actively supported these policies, although they themselves, paradoxically, neither accepted motherhood as a calling nor withdrew from political life. The focus on "Aryan" motherhood as women's sole profession, however, had a phobic undercurrent, as is evident in the theories of femininity proposed by the main ideologue of the German brand of fascism, Alfred Rosenberg. In his influential Der My thus des 20. Jahrhunderts (43d/44th edition by 1934), Rosenberg polemicizes against the mixing of races and nationalities, which he equates with the mixing of sexual characteristics: "In times of exterior catastrophes and interior degeneration, the feminist man and the emancipated woman become symbols of cultural decadence and national decline" (483). Creativity is the prerogative of the superior male. The state was founded by martial Mdnnerbiinde, exclusive male warrior associations that fended off racially and culturally threatening "foreign elements." The family is important for the state only as long as it is organized and controlled by patriarchal forces; the same applies to women. Rosenberg associates femininity with Jews, blacks, Marxism, big cities, parliamentarism, democracy, individualism, modernity, sexual libertinage, anarchy, contamination, and disease—all of which need to be eliminated or kept at bay by the Nordic man/"Aryan" male (507), the creator of a pure Germanic Kultur. Woman as the bearer of the "lyrical," as the keeper of the "unconscious" (510), of youth, purity, and beauty, is made to preserve racial
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purity (511). Hence, the first task of the "real woman" is to emancipate herself from woman's emancipation in order to save "people and race, the eternalunconscious, the basis of all culture, from decline" (512). Rosenberg's designation of emancipated women as "amazons" and his ravings against "bastardization," "nigger art," and "sexual excesses" reveal their proximity to the male fantasies of the Freikorps-men identified by Klaus Theweleit or to the mysogynist state theories developed by conservatives such as Carl Schmitt. They indicate to what extent his gender theories are the product of the desires and anxieties developed in the 19th century, as Germans attempted to create an exclusive, male national identity in opposition to other nations and, particularly, colonized peoples. See also: Amazon; Colonial Literature; Fascist Aesthetics; Gender Theories, History of; National Socialism; Orientalism. References: Bock, Gisela, "Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State." Different Voices. Ed. Carol Rittner and John Roth (New York: Paragon, 1993) 162-86; Feig, Konnilyn G, "Nazi Theory and Practice: A Woman's Future." Hitler's Death Camps (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1981) 15790; Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland. Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Rosenberg, Alfred, Der My thus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkampfe unserer Zeit, 43^-4 ed. (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1934); Sombart, Nikolaus, Die deutschen Manner und ihre Feinde. Carl Schmitt—ein deutsches Schicksal zwischen Mannerbiinden und Matriarchatsmythen (Hamburg: Hanser, 1981). SUSANNE ZANTOP F a s h i o n . In a strict sense, fashion refers to a particular style of dress that undergoes frequent changes. In the second half of the 18th century, the term expanded to include all traits of behavior, for example, reading habits that are connected to taste. As such, the term preserves the ambivalent connotations of a la mode: of being simultaneously scorned and desired (Modebuch, Modedichter, etc.). As a discursive object, fashion displays the gendered characteristics of modernity: through the dichotomization of art, for example, in which low art (Modeliteratur, cinema) is contrasted with high art, or through the inscription of sexualized objects. In each of these different discursive spheres, fashion is associated with femininity. Historically, the functional aspect of clothing refers to the body as sexual: on one hand, clothes emphasize sexual modesty, and, on the other hand, they render the body sexually attractive. In the 18th century, fashion enters a new phase: the transition from stratification to functional differentiation, including genderization. While the inscription of social differences through clothing allegedly disappeared with the abolition of dress codes, fashion increasingly came to express sexual difference. Men's tendency toward uniformity culminated in "the Great Masculine Renunciation" (J. C. Fliigel); women's clothing, in contrast, became the signifier of their husbands' or fathers' wealth and social status and
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thus complementary to the public uniform. This functional dichotomy is replicated in the gendered view of reading and the reading public: male readers contemplate high art and politics, whereas female readers are regarded as emotionally and irrationally engaged in both Modeliteratur and the discourse of fashion. This connection among a female reading public, literary fashion, and fashion as a phenomenon of clothing is in its institutionalized form probably best exemplified by the Journal des Luxus und der Moden. Fashion as a signifier of sexual difference perpetuates socially defined gender identities and assigns corresponding representations: men represent money, power, and rationality, and women represent excess and consumption, illusion, and eroticism. Fashion in modernity incorporates and relies on Woman as an image; in doing so, it reiterates previous characteristics of art (Benjamin). While the discourse of fashion generally prescribes and reinforces genderspecific stereotypes, it may also challenge these stereotypes by projecting ambivalent images: examples are the representational instability (masculinization of women, feminization of men) in cinema and the fashion industry of the 1920s, the motif of the trousers in literature (Willibald Alexis' Die Ho sen des Herrn von Bredow, 1846; Carl Sternheim's Die Hose, 1911), or the image versus the real lives of women models as depicted in mass publications. The latter aspect is ambivalent to the extent that the image displays a self-confident, (sexually) powerful woman as a possible object of identification. The voyeurism inherent in her display, however, unveils the male/masculine subject position and a sense of fashion's dictate. It is precisely this configuration from which antifashion impulses and movements result. See also: Body, Female; Gender Theories, History of; Hosenrolle; Identity Theories. References: Benjamin, Walter, Das Passagenwerk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1972); Benstock, Shari, and Suzanne Ferris, eds., On Fashion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Bovenschen, Silvia, ed., Die Listen der Mode (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986); Loschek, Ingrid, Reclams Mode- und Kostiimlexikon (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1987). BIRGIT TAUTZ F a s t n a c h t s s p i e l e . These Shrovetide plays were short, farcical, dramatic scenes in verse performed each year by artisans during the period of revelry preceding Ash Wednesday in late January and February. The vast majority of surviving Shrovetide plays come from south German cities, especially Nuremberg, and Switzerland and were composed between 1450 and 1550. Many of the plays were anonymous theatrical improvisations performed by masked male actors for a male audience, but several texts were preserved and printed. The main writers of Shrovetide plays were artisans or town officials from Nuremberg: Hans Rosenpliit, Hans Folz, Hans Sachs, and Jakob Ayrer, but other memorable works with a strong Protestant slant were produced by the Berne artist Niklas Manuel and the defrocked Franciscan Burkhard Waldis from Riga. Shrovetide plays occasionally represented contemporary political or religious
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issues, such as the injustices of a local prince, the abuses of the Catholic Church, or the Turkish menace, but the majority portrayed sexual relations between man and woman, especially concerning adultery, prostitution, premarital sex and pregnancy, and the dangers of a disharmonious marriage, in obscene language rife with sexual and scatological puns. Shrovetide plays were written from a uniquely male perspective that served to denigrate women, both sexually and socially, and to project an ideal vision of a male-dominated socioeconomic order. A typical scenario represented a court dispute between husband and wife in which one partner complains of the sexual impotency, promiscuity, brutality, or unfaithfulness of the other. In these settings, female complainants received the punishment requested, but men were rarely punished for their offenses. Women complainants, regardless of the righteousness of their action, were also portrayed as frivolous, for example, Die Frauenschender (c.1450), in which several rape victims offer sexual favors to the judge after he has ruled on their behalf. Conversely, women defendants were harshly punished for the slightest reason, blamed for their husband's infidelity or sexual impotency, and enjoined to submit to his rule. Single women were also scorned for their appearance and accused of lasciviousness and sexual deviance (Das Eggenziehen, c.1450). Changing political, social, and economic conditions after 1450 nurtured this misogyny. In Nuremberg, the guilds were subjected increasingly to political pressure from the city council, which sought to regulate their activities; they were also threatened economically by the growing number of women artisans/masters and competition from the merchants. The Shrovetide plays compensated for these challenges by portraying a misogynist social order with clever, powerful men and submissive wives, whose interests and duties are confined to the household. The control of sexual instincts and the ostracization of disorderly social elements (e.g., lascivious unmarried women; shrews; whores) were represented repeatedly by all major writers as the best ways to maintain the male artisans' competitiveness in the face of their eroding economic and political authority. See also: Renaissance Humanism; Whore. References: Bastian, Hagen, Mummenschanz: Sinneslust und GefUhlsbeherrschung im Fastnachts spiel des 15. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M.: Syndikat, 1983); Brauner, Sigrid, "The Demonization of the Shrew: Witchcraft and Gender Relations in the Shrovetide Plays of Hans Sachs." Daphnis 20 (1991): 131-45; Keller, Elisabeth, Die Darstellung der Frau in Fastnachts spiel und Spruchdichtung von Hans Rosenplut und Hans Folz (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1992); Miiller, Johannes, Schwert und Scheide: Der sexuelle und skatalogische Wortschatz im Numberger Fastnachts spiel des 15. Jahrhunderts (Berne: Peter Lang, 1988). JAMES A. PARENTE F a t h e r - D a u g h t e r Relationship. German literature has, for the most part, depicted daughters as passive, expendable objects existing solely to satisfy the needs of patriarchy, in supporting roles in the great (male) drama of life. A
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discussion of the daughter's presence would have challenged the mythology of the family and exposed strategies to train daughters for a social order in which women were assigned marginal positions and inferior status. According to the prevalent mores, the daughter's relationship with her father defined her (sexual) identity and determined to a large extent the nature of all subsequent relationships to other men and women. As the representative of patriarchy, the father prepared his daughter for integration into the male-dominated society and thus was responsible for conditioning his daughter for submission and conformity ("ich bin die Tochter meines Vaters,.. . nur als Tochter des alten Mannes, der mir das Leben gab, stehe ich hier!" [Friedrich Hebbel, Maria Magdalena, 1844]). The theater was the ideal platform for reinforcing such behavior. Audiences were lured to the German-speaking theater of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries with the promise of a titillating account of their daughters' forbidden sexuality. These seduction tragedies shared the structure of the archetypal seduction plot with earlier virgin-martyr legends portraying a trial of the virgin by sexual ordeal. The innocent, obedient, and beautiful daughter was enticed into the arms of a seducer, who then discarded and betrayed her (Andreas Gryphius, Catharina von Georgien oder Bewehrete Bestdndigkeit, 1649-1650; Gottfried Ephraim Lessing, Mifi Sara Sampson, 1755, and Emilia Galotti, 1772; Friedrich Hebbel, Maria Magdalena, 1844). Since the daughter dared to experience her sensuality without her father's approval, she forfeited all rights to his and society's protection. The onus was always on the female to prove her integrity and purity. Novels such as Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest (1895) and Marie von EbnerEschenbach's Unsuhnbar (1889) also thematized the daughter's sexuality. But whereas Fontane's work, despite its inherent criticism of social mores, ultimately leads to the death of the transgressive daughter, Ebner-Eschenbach attempted to endow the daughter with agency—an attempt that brought her only patronizing, obliterating criticism. (Unsuhnbar was not even mentioned in literary histories until the 1980s.) In the first half of the 20th century, the daughter's loss of virginity was finally forced to surrender its dramatic potential as she gradually became emancipated from her father. But renewed soul-searching in the 1970s by the post-World War II generation culminated in what became known as Vaterliteratur. These documents of defiance and resistance investigate the father's role in the Third Reich. The daughters' memoirs represented even greater critical potential as they challenged paternal authority on several fronts (Elisabeth Plessen, Mitteilung an den Adel, 1976; Ruth Rehmann, Der Mann auf der Kanzel. Fragen an einen Vater, 1979; Brigitte Schwaiger, Lange Abwesenheit, 1980; Jutta Schutting, Der Water, 1980; and Barbara Bronnen, Die Tochter, 1980.) These Tochtergraphien explore the daughter's struggle for liberation from the constraints of gendered role behavior and the continued suffering from the bondage of paternal definition within the family and society.
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See also: Bourgeois Tragedy; Daughter; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Martyrerdrama; Realism; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Virgin. References: Boose, Lynda E., and Betty S. Flowers, eds., Daughters and Fathers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Moffit, Gisela, Bonds and Bondage— Daughter-Father Relationships in the Father Memoirs of German-Speaking Women Writers of the 1970s (New York: Lang, 1993); Walsoe-Engel, Ingrid, Fathers and Daughters: Patterns of Seduction in Tragedies by Gryphius, Lessing, Hebbel and Kroetz (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993).
KAMAKSHIP. MURTI F e m i n i s m s , German. In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, the focus on theory has been less relevant to the development of feminism than in the United States and France; that is, feminism in Germany—which has had strong political and social roots—was strongly marked by the political struggles of the 1960s and the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s, women's groups across Germany bore the traces of these political agendas. The topics debated followed changes in domestic and foreign policy, while the very distinction between the political and the personal was challenged. Three steps distinguish the recent history of the movement in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), also reflected in the literature and literary texts of the time. The first phase could be marked by the struggles against the abortionparagraph 218, which saw women, for the first time, unite to fight for a common cause. In the second phase, circa 1975 until 1978-1979, women turned toward more theoretical and individual positions, focusing on reflection and selfexperience. These years saw American feminist literature circulate in Germany and women getting involved in various projects, both social and cultural. On the cultural side, they set up and ran libraries, bookstores, coffeeshops, and workshops, modeled on the consciousness-raising groups in the United States, and also founded publishing houses (Frauenoffensive in Munich, 1976) as well as various leftist women's book series and magazines, such as Courage and Emma. Women during this phase were equally involved in many social projects, creating houses for battered women and children as well as for victims of rape. Their discussions in women's groups focused on women's sexuality, sexual difference, and separatism. Most important, theories that could be regarded as essentialist began to question one of the major and early tasks of feminism stemming from socialist tradition, namely women's emancipation as being tantamount to equality or equal rights. It is asked whether equality is not, in most cases, confused with mere integration into the capitalist and patriarchal system and with the effacement of sexual difference. Thus, following the publication of relevant works dealing with women's everyday experiences, such as Erika Runge's Frauen: Versuche zur Emanzipation (1968) and Sarah Kirsch's Die Pantherfrau (1973), the second half of the 1970s witnessed a new kind of literature more concerned with the controversial issue of neue Weiblichkeit, for instance, Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975) and Silvia Bovenschen's article "Is There a Feminine Aesthetic?" (1977).
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Whereas during the 1980s, first in France and then in the United States and Italy as well, discussions on difference and later, in the plural, differences gained in centrality, the concepts of difference and especially of representation were viewed with suspicion in Germany, despite the fact that its feminism had been heavily influenced by the American school up to this point. Exceptions were academic workshops and/or seminars dedicated to literature by women, taking place at universities at which women's studies had been established. Within this academic framework, attention was being directed toward questions of female aesthetics, ecriture feminine, and the concept of difference, as well as theories by French theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. Nevertheless, these theories and concepts seemed to have found little appropriation: one searches in vain for names linked to more recent trends in feminist theory in bibliographies or, for example, in the Frauenkalender (in print since 1975), which makes references only to Alice Schwarzer, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Kate Millett, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter. Most of the books cited are studies on single women authors or artists, Frauenfilm, and reprints of literature by women. In contemporary German feminist research or Frauenforschung, the prevailing trend seems to be the reconstruction of a female genealogy and a not-yet-acquired female symbolism. This tendency, however, does not exclude an interest in recent scholarly undertakings by feminists in English-speaking countries. Nevertheless, a rich and wide range of works has been produced in the arts by women that implicitly make theoretical claims. In Germany, where the production of culture is not limited to academe, but has historically been at the very center of its society, primary works hold a special and important position. Although feminism in Germany has had less of an influence on academe than in, for example, the United States, it has been successful in entering the intellectual and cultural realm of society at large. Because of the reemergence of public debate on different social issues such as abortion, following unification, politics and the political continue to predominate feminism in Germany. Given the very different status of women's issues and feminism in GDR society—women's issues were subsumed under socialist goals while the state provided considerable social support for women and children—interaction between feminists in East and West Germany continues to be fraught with problems and tensions. See also: Abortion; Aesthetics, Feminine; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; GDR Literature; Positionality; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Unification, German; Women's Journals; Women's Movement. References: Altbach, Hoshino, et al., eds., German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Beyer, Johanna, Franziska Lamott, and Birgit Meyer, eds., Frauenhandlexikon: Stichworte zur Selbstbestimmung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1983); Buse, Gunhild, Macht, Moral, Weiblichkeit (Mainz: Matthias Gruenewald, 1993); Krull, Marianne, ed., Wege aus der mannlichen Wissenschaft: Perspektiven feministischer Erkenntnistheorie (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus,
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1990); Schenk, Herrad, Die feministische Herausforderung: 150 Jahre Frauenbewegung in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 1988); Schubert, Helga, and Rita Siissmuth, Gehen die Frauen in die Knie? (Zurich: Pendo, 1990); Schwarzer, Alice, ed., Das neue Emma-Buch (Munich: DTV, 1986); Stephan, Inge, and Sigrid Weigel, Die verborgene Frau: Sechs Beitrdge zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin: Argument, 1988); Thurmer-Rohr, Christina, Mittdterschaft und Entdeckungslust (Berlin: TU Institut fiir Sozial-Padagogik, 1990).
CECILIA NOVERO Feminist Theory, British. British feminist theory is often linked with U.S.American theory and referred to as Anglo-American criticism or theory, distinct from French feminist theory. The difference between British and American theory is the early, somewhat greater emphasis in England on Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches and the effort to link the two modes of literary and/or cultural critique and combine them with feminist theory. During the 1960s and 1970s, British feminists challenged the male-dominated Left because of its failure to take seriously issues raised by women. Michele Barrett's Women's Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis (1980) examines the problematic relationship between feminism and Marxism and emphasizes the political urgency of a feminist analysis of culture. Louis Althusser's concept of ideology is central to Barrett's theory and distinguishes her from theorists who explain women's oppression in terms of discourse theory associated with Michel Foucault. Chief among the latter are Paarveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie and the journal m/f Barrett opposed their approach because she feared "interminable analysis" with no connection to politics. By 1991, Barrett's position had changed: in The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault, she suggests that Foucault's theory may provide an alternative to failed attempts to adapt Althusser's theory of ideology for feminism. Juliet Mitchell has analyzed women's situation by paying attention to the psychic as well as social dimensions of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan and addressing questions of ideology, literary representation, and the unconscious. Her Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974) has influenced critics in England and the United States, notably Jane Gallop, who took Mitchell's text as her point of departure for The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1982), and the British feminist Jacqueline Rose (Sexuality in the Field of Vision, 1986). Mitchell's work has been important in challenging traditional perspectives in history, psychoanalysis, and the sociology of knowledge. More recently, Mitchell is associated more closely with psychoanalysis, leaving out social dimensions, a direction criticized by Julia Swindells and Lisa Jardine (What's Left? Women and the Labour Movement, 1990). British feminists have long pursued the analysis of popular culture by studying the media, romance texts, and so on. Many of these studies are associated with the Birmingham Center for Cultural Studies. A feminist pioneer is Germaine Greer, whose The Female Eunuch (1971) is a good example of early British
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popular culture criticism. In 1984 an early article pointing to white feminist chauvinism in British feminist theory by Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar was published in the journal Feminist Review. By 1971, English (also French and North American) feminist writings had begun to appear in German editions. These writings have influenced the German women's movement. A German feminist who has tried to integrate cultural Marxist perspectives into an analysis of women is Ulrike Prokop (Weiblicher Lebenszusammenhang: Von der Beschranktheit der Strategien und der Unangemessenheit der Wunsche, 1976). See also: Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Marxist Theories; Psychoanalysis. References: Humm, Maggie, Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics (Brighton/Sussex: Harvester, 1986); Landry, Donna, and Gerald MacLean, Materialist Feminisms (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993); McRobbie, A., ed., Feminism for Girls: An Adventure Story (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Rowbotham, Sheila, Hidden from History (London: Pluto, 1973). HELGA STIPA MADLAND Feminist Theory, French. Feminism in France encompasses a wide variety of critical perspectives. Originally, the term referred to a socialist/materialist group, emphasizing the role of society and history in the formation of women, including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Plaza, Christine Delphy, Anne Tristan, and Annie de Pisan. Most recently, the term has become nearly synonymous with the group Psychoanalyse et Politique, led by the psychoanalyst Antoinette Fouque, as well as with the work of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, some of whom have been associated with Fouque's group. Psych et Po assumed that psychology could both analyze women's subjugation and pave the way to a Utopian society in which currently existing power relations would be fundamentally altered. Influenced by Jacques Lacan's rereading of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction as well as by de Beauvoir's description of woman as man's "Other," these feminists developed varying approaches. Cixous, best known for The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), focuses on the artificially created masculine/feminine dichotomy: the masculine is privileged and given meaning at the expense of the feminine, which is negative and powerless. Rather than emphasizing the binary opposition, Cixous stresses "difference" in the Derridean tradition; that is, theoretical interrogation is posited as masculine, part of the male ' 'realm of the proper'' based upon classification and domination, while the female ' 'realm of the gift'' allows for the simultaneous existence of many truths. Instead of "masculine writing," which classifies and can only allow one truth, she calls for "feminine writing" (ecriture feminine), which has a multiplicity of meanings and cannot be defined or encoded. For Cixous, men as well as women can take advantage of their fundamental bi- or poly sexuality and create feminine writing.
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Irigaray's most important works, Speculum of the Other Woman (1974) and This Sex Which Is Not One (1977), argue that the "logic of the same" makes woman unrepresentable within patriarchy. The male gaze perceives woman only as the negative of the male. The term ' 'woman'' is essential for the construction of the symbolic order within the Western philosophical tradition, but women are perceived within that order as a lack. Outside the symbolic order, women can choose only to remain silent, babble, or act out their role as "inferior men." Yet, through the mimicry of male discourse, spaces and gaps open up in which a feminine discourse might be heard. Irigaray believes in the existence of woman's speech ("parler femme"), a language as fluid, simultaneous, decentered, and multiple as woman's sexuality, as undefinable as woman's essence, and possible only between women. She hopes for the creation of a new philosophy and new symbolic order, which would include a feminine subjectivity. In works like Revolution and Poetic Language (1974) and About Chinese Women (1977), Kristeva adapts Lacan's theories to posit the semiotic (rather than the imaginary) as the first stage of development. In the bisexual semiotic state, impulses originating in the mother's womb reach the individual. After passing through Lacan's mirror phase and Kristeva's thetic stage, the individual enters the symbolic order, and the semiotic impulses are broken up into signifiers and fixed in meaning. Girls and boys choose between the Body-of-the-Mother, where they would remain marginalized, mostly outside the symbolic order, or the Name-of-the-Father, where they would derive meaning from the symbolic order. The feminine is defined only in terms of marginalization, allowing male avant-garde writers like James Joyce or Comte de Lautreamont to hold the feminine position. Artists find access to the semiotic realm—albeit always mediated by the symbolic realm—through the creation of a second thetic stage, which allows for the possibility of a new combination of signifiers and new meaning and thus the creation of a new social order. French feminism was first popularized in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) when selections from Irigaray, Cixous, and Kristeva were published in the journal alternative (108/109) in 1976. Although the theory on which much of the work of the French feminists is based (Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida) was relatively little known in the FRG at the time, the articles quickly became the object of much discussion in journals such as Die Schwarze Botin (cf. articles by Rita Bischof, Sibylle Klefinghaus, Eva Meyer, and Annette Runte in Die Schwarze Botin 2, 5, 10, and 14/15) and Notizbuch (cf. articles by Friederike Hassauer in Notizbuch 2). While some theorists such as Eva Meyer then continued their own work in the theoretical tradition of Cixous and Irigaray, criticism of the French feminists within the FRG focused on the perceived ahistoricism of the new theories, their reliance on the traditional view of women as more sensual and closer to nature than men, and their privileging the linguistic over the social realm. See also: Ecriture Feminine; Feminist Theory, German; Gender Theories, History of; Psychoanalysis.
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References: Duchen, Claire, Feminism in France—From May '68 to Mitterand (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms: An Anthology (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980); Moi, Toril, ed., French Feminist Thought—A Reader (New York: Blackwell, 1987), Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985); Schmidt, Ricarda, Westdeutsche Frauenliteratur in den 70er Jahren (Frankfurt/M: Rita G. Fischer, 1982). STEFAN A LEFKO Feminist Theory, German. For the last 20 years, feminist theories have— in Germany as in many other countries in the world—evolved significantly with regard to contents, goals, and positions. A single feminist theory does not exist; instead, scholars are working with a variety of theoretical approaches, which have become increasingly complex and sophisticated. From the early 1970s, feminist theories in Germany adopted as their main common premise the criticism of gender-specific oppression that victimizes women. In a wider sense, these theories encompassed then, and still concern now, aspects as well as criticism of the formation of gender relations. The wide-ranging discussions and the changes regarding contents, goals, and positions within theoretical debates in Germany during the last 15 years are documented particularly well in the two main feminist journals, beitrdge zur feministischen theorie und praxis and Feministische Studien. Whereas in the 1980s the focus was on questions of war or inequality, topics in the 1990s, in both journals, have shifted to issues of a "divided feminism" (racism, antiSemitism, and xenophobia) or cultural and sexual differences with reflections on a multicultural society, including aspects of race, class, and gender. Other recent discussions have focused on problems of nation and nationhood generated by the reunification of the two Germanies in 1990. Most recently, feminist theoretical debates in Germany—in literary and cultural studies, philosophy, history, and political science as well as the social sciences—have emphasized questions of gender identities and gender differences, which are also at the center of global gender studies debates. The concept of gender studies, which originated in the United States, has influenced various German feminist theorists such as Barbara Vinken, Christina ThurmerRohr, and Katharina Piihl. Since the publication of Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and the significant impact of its German translation (Das Unbehagen der Geschlechter, 1991), an oppositional dichotomy between sex and gender has become impossible (Neue Rundschau, 1993, 5). Gender studies, as defined by Butler, questions the notion of fixed gender "identities" and proposes the denaturalization and resignification of bodily categories (body, sex, gender, and sexuality) and a dissolution of binary oppositions such as male/female, nature/culture. By critically engaging the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mo-
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nique Wittig, and others, Butler develops her new ' 'performative theory of gender," which is based on "a political convergence of feminism, gay and lesbian perspectives on gender, and poststructural theory" (Gender Trouble, ix). Butler acknowledges the complexity of gender, which needs to break open disciplinary boundaries and requires interdisciplinary discourses. However, the reception of Butler's concept of gender studies in Germany has also generated criticism and skepticism, which have largely focused on the potential loss of feminist political concerns. Katharina Piihl, for instance, in her introduction to the volume Geschlechterverhdltnisse und Politik (1994), emphasizes that decidedly feminist research on gender is based on a very specific social "construction" of women and men, which has to examine context and intention of discussions on gender. Referring to present debates, Christina Thiirmer-Rohr—in her essay "Denken der Differenz: Feminismus und Postmoderne" (1995)—outlines three basic feminist theoretical positions in Germany today. The first position still centers around early demands of the West German women's movement in the 1970s, namely, equality of women and men, which focused on equal rights, equal opportunities, equal education, and the acknowledgment of equal capabilities (88). In contrast, the second position, termed gynocentric feminism, emphasizes the fundamental difference between women and men. In its view, gender difference is an essential originary situation, and femaleness acquires an almost ontological status that all women share to some extent. Discovery and revaluation of femaleness are the primary goals, which aim at reconstruction and reevaluation of the dichotomy of gender rather than its disruption or dissolution. A third position, which Thiirmer-Rohr identifies as deconstructivist or postmodern, disputes the preceding positions by questioning a unified category of gender and the ability to create gender identity. This position recognizes gender as a construct, which is produced by hierarchical acts of power that need to be deconstructed and shifts the focus to differences among women, postulating that there are as many identities as there are women. The idea of multigenderedness rather than a binary opposition connects this view with Butler's concept of gender as previously outlined. Thiirmer-Rohr's own thinking seems to be closest to the third position, although she is always very much aware of her own positionality within a German and European context. She recognizes the immense possibilities that a "Denken der Differenz" (thinking of/in differences) generates for women, but she is always cognizant of hierarchical power structures and points to the fact that women (in particular white European women) were, and are, not only victims but also participants and accomplices. Thiirmer-Rohr's theoretical views represent productive possibilities of recent gender studies debates within the German context. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; Identity Theories; Participation/Exclusion; Positionality; Poststructuralism. References: Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, Der Streit um Differenz: Feminismus und Postmoderne in der Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fi-
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scher, 1993); Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). German translation: Das Unbehagen der Geschlechter (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1991); Ecker, Gisela, ed., Feminist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); Lindhoff, Lena, Einfuhrung in die feministische Literaturtheorie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995); Puhl, Katharina, ed., Geschlechterverhdltnisse und Politik (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1994); Thiirmer-Rohr, Christina, "Denken der Differenz: Feminismus und Postmoderne." Beitrdge zur feministischen theorie und praxis 18.39 (1995): 87-92.
ELKE FREDERIKSEN Feminist Theory, U.S.-American. Attempts to define U.S.-American feminist theory have sparked numerous, often contentious, debates over the past three decades. Literary and cultural theories concerning women and gender issues in the United States vary so widely that it would be misleading to posit a single U.S.-American feminist theory. The term has also provoked discussion about the separatist division between feminist theory and feminist practice, and it has drawn criticism for its evocation of a discernible "national identity" and the camouflaging of ethnic differences and theoretical origins (specifically the influence of French and continental theories) within U.S.-American feminism. Among the subjects, methodologies, and convictions of U.S.-American feminist critics, questions regarding sexual politics and activism, theories and practices of difference, subjectivity and identity, sex and gender, race and class, sexual orientation, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory, multiculturalism, and postcolonialism have sustained the most interest. In the 1980s, these differences within U.S.-American feminism helped to define unresolved conflicts within feminist thought. At the 1982 Barnard Conference on the politics of sexuality, for example, feminists divided sharply over the issue of pornography (is pornography exploitative per se, or can feminists employ it for their own purposes?). In hindsight, the most crucial debates within U.S.-American feminist theory, including the controversies over compulsory heterosexuality and inherent race biases in the colonialist understanding of a universally valid feminism, revolve around two methodological camps: those who rally around what has come to be known as "identity politics" or "gynocriticism'' (the thesis that there are essentially different and discernible gender identities) and those who emphasize the discursively determined aspects of gender and subjectivity. The former tend to view feminism and feminist criticism as an activist political movement, whereas the latter are prone to accentuate the theoretical exploration of feminist concerns in an attempt to deconstruct silenced or seductively packaged structures in literature, politics, and society. Feminist criticism and scholarship in the United States are largely institutionalized in the interdisciplinary women's studies programs at colleges and universities, but they have also gained a strong foothold in conventional academic disciplines (i.e. in English literature, foreign languages, history, psychology). Recently, U.S. feminist theorists have been grappling with a conservative backlash, which is often referred to as the "P(olitical) C(orrectness)" debate, and
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postfeminist ideas, like those in Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae (1990). Due to the ever-increasing conglomeration of U.S. mass media, feminist critics have pressed for intensified cross-disciplinary research in the areas of anthropology, psychology, technology, sociology, history, law, and communication (e.g., Donna Haraway, Catherine A. MacKinnon, Teresa de Lauretis, Trinh T. MinhHa, Rey Chow, and Paula Treichler). U.S.-American feminist theory has played a large role in German feminist theory since Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's Madwoman in the Attic (1979). The influence of U.S. theory on German feminists continued with Alice Walker's "womanist prose" and Elaine Showalter's anthology The New Feminist Criticism (1985). Feminists within U.S. Germanistik have through their own research introduced U.S. feminist theory to feminist scholars in Germany. The importance of U.S. theorists' interpretations and applications of French poststructuralism for German feminist theory is demonstrated by the use Sigrid Weigel, Renate Lachmann, and Eva Meyer have made of, for example, Shari Benstock's, Sarah Kofmann's, and Judith Butler's investigations of the discursivity of gender and sex. U.S. theorists dealing with German life and letters include feminists from all camps, some of whom have professionally organized in Women in German (WIG), which also produces its own yearbook. See also: Essentialism; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Identity Theories; Pornography; Postcolonialism; Postfeminism; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Sisterhood; Subjectivity; Women in German (U.S.). References: Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Caraway, Nancie, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991); Kauffman, Linda S., ed., American Feminist Thought at Century's End: A Reader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993); Lennox, Sara, ed., Auf der Suche nach den Garten unserer Mutter: Feministische Kulturkritik in Amerika 1970-1980 (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1982); Showaiter, Elaine, ed., The New Feminist Criticism (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).
SUNKA SIMON F e m m e F a t a l e . The femme fatale, though often associated with mythological figures, is a decadence phenomenon closely linked to the discourse on women and modernity. As a cultural construct, the figure foregrounds the threat of female sexuality and contains its alluring and destructive aspects in highly codified images. The following elements reveal the femme fatale as a male fantasy: her identification with the destructive and devouring aspects of sexuality; her demonization as a creature beyond morality, civility, and law; her characterization as primitive and artificial, innocent and depraved, passionate and cold; and the staging of these contradictions in scenarios that juxtapose female cruelty and lust with male humiliation and impotence. Yet, her opposition to marriage and motherhood and her association with power, freedom, and revenge hardly
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make the femme fatale a symbol of female emancipation; she remains a cipher and a chimera, the underside of socially determined constructions of gender. Images of the femme fatale often take inspiration from religious or mythological figures (e.g., Lilith, Judith, Delilah, Medusa, Salome) and rely heavily on the Orientalist and racist imagination. The aestheticizing of seduction and fate, the theatricality of female beauty and sexuality, and the eroticism of violence and death are constitutive elements. Beginning in Romanticism and reaching its zenith in Symbolism and turn-of-the-century decadence, the fascination with this mysterious figure cuts across art forms, cultural contexts, and national literatures. The visual representation of the femme fatale finds the clearest articulation in Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite painting. The presence of the femme fatale in modern German and Austrian literature extends from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's evocation of the cruel woman in Venus im Pelz (1870) and Frank Wedekind's famous Lulu plays, Erdgeist (1895) and Die Biichse der Pandora (1904), to the diverse writings on erotic obsession by Heinrich and Thomas Mann. Her association with eros and thanatos informs the misogynist reflections of Otto Weininger in Geschlecht und Charakter (1903) as well as the Jugendstil omamentalism of Gustav Klimt's Judith and Holofernes I and II (1901, 1909) and the neo-Romantic style of Richard Strauss' opera Salome (1905). Given the link to male castration anxiety and the undercurrent of sadomasochism, it is no coincidence that the femme fatale inspired the most compelling representations in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Just as Sigmund Freud challenged bourgeois notions of subjectivity through his studies on human sexuality, the transition from traditional to modern societies produced anxieties about class, race, gender, and nationhood that found expression in this powerful icon of ambivalence. The continuous appeal of the femme fatale— more recent manifestations include the film vamp and the career woman—must be linked to her ability to conflate two seemingly opposite concepts of femininity, woman as nature and woman as artifice. The identification of woman with nature makes female sexuality the last enclave of untamed, primordial nature in an increasingly alienated and rationalized world. In the association of the femme fatale with soulless artificiality and immoral decadence, nature stages the return of the repressed, hence the many fantasies of incorporation, death, and destruction. See also: Androgyny; Exotin; Fin-de-siecle Vienna; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Jugendstil; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Orientalism; Psychoanalysis; Romanticism; Symbolism. References: Bork, Claudia, Femme Fatale und Don Juan: Ein Beitrag zur Motivgeschichte der literarischen Verfuhrergestalt (Hamburg: von Bockel, 1992); Doane, Mary Ann, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991); Hilmes, Carola, Die Femme fatale: Ein Weiblichkeitstypus in der nachromantischen Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990); Schickedanz, Hans-Joachim, Femme Fatale: Ein Mythos wird entblattert (Dortmund: Nowotny, 1983); Stein, Gerhard, ed.,
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Femme fatale, Vamp, Blaustrumpf: Sexualitdt und Herrschaft (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1985). SABINE HAKE F e m m e Fragile. Conceptualized by Ariane Thomalla in her monograph Die 'femme fragile": Ein literarischer Frauentypus der Jahrhundertwende (1972), the term ''femme fragile" denotes a specific representation of women complementary to the femme fatale that was especially widespread during the fin-desiecle. Embodying morbid fragility and sickliness, on one hand, and decorative artificiality and sterile beauty, on the other, the ethereal image of the femme fragile is symptomatic of the decadence and the aestheticism of its time. The cultural construction of the femme fragile as a favorite image in Western fin-de-siecle literature was made possible by the much earlier broadening of aesthetic definitions of beauty to include notions of the unusual ("das Interessante") during early Romanticism. During the 19th century, the representation of delicate female figures changed from a static portrayal of beauty to a more dynamic image focusing on the slow decay of the woman's health leading to her "beautiful" death. Prefigured by 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri's depiction of Beatrice in La Divina Commedia (1472), this motif was revived and popularized in the visual arts by the English Pre-Raphaelites in the mid-19th century. At roughly the same time, American writer Edgar Allan Poe expressed his fascination with the death of ethereal female characters such as Ligeia and Eleonora in his narratives by the same name (1838 and 1842, respectively). The delicate female figures portrayed as ideal lovers in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as the somber destiny Poe had designed for such figures, influenced Belgian Symbolist author Maurice Maeterlinck in his fairy tale drama (Marchendrama) La princesse Maleine (1889)—a work that introduced the cultural construction of the femme fragile into the literature of decadence. In Germany and Austria, as a result of the enthusiastic reception of Maeterlinck's work, fragile female figures appeared in most lyrical dramas and short narratives such as novellas, portraits, pastels, fairy tales, and sketches in some variation as femme enfant and demi-vierge, and as das siifie Mddel in Arthur Schnitzler's works. Notably, Hugo von Hofmannsthal in his short narrative "Die Frau im Fenster" (1897), Rainer Maria Rilke in "Heiliger Friihling" (1897), and Heinrich Mann in his novellas Das Wunderbare (1894) and Contessina (1894) fully indulged in the cult of a delicate, ethereal "apparition celeste." Gerhart Hauptmann, too, interrupted his writing of Naturalist plays with two fairy tale plays, Die versunkene Glocke (1896) and Und Pippa tanzt (1906), both greatly influenced by the stylization of female protagonists. Slightly later, Peter Altenberg epitomized the artificiality and overrefinement of female figures in his Marchen des Lebens (1908), while already in 1903 Thomas Mann's novella Tristan ridiculed the mannered cult of the femme fragile in literature.
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In these literary representations, the femme fragile is typically portrayed as young and of strikingly sensitive build. Her large, dark eyes and mass of long hair mark a striking contrast to the otherwise small and pale face. Overall, her frail and underdeveloped body resembles a child's, an image corresponding to her disdain of anything sensual or physical. However, this asexuality is compensated by her cerebral spirituality, refined sensitivity, and grace. Her ill condition typically leads to an early, beautiful death in which she finds her fulfillment. Thomalla interprets this type of representation as a phantasmagoria of sexual repression typical of the erotic atmosphere during the fin-de-siecle. At a time when women were rapidly gaining a public voice, economic autonomy, and political strength, male authors constructed the morbid cultural representation of a weak, helpless, and sickly femme fragile. The clash between the literary representation of female figures and the lives of women at the time reveals the neurotic relationship of these aesthetes to social reality; the strength of women is perceived as a threat to a male ego that can constitute itself only in sharp contrast to, and in domination of, the female. After 1910, the cultural construction of female weakness and delicacy in the form of the femme fragile lived on in popular literature such as Agnes Gtinther's novel Die Heilige und ihr Narr (1913). Concurrently, women authors subverted and heavily criticized the cultural constraints of the femme fragile as female representation through texts such as The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Der Fall Franza (1978) by Ingeborg Bachmann. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Fairy Tale Drama; Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; SiiBes Madel. References: Thomalla, Ariane, Die femme fragile: Ein literarischer Frauentypus der Jahrhundertwende (Dusseldorf: Bertelsmann, 1972); Wagner, Nike, Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981). FRIEDERIKE B. EMONDS F i g u r e n g e d i c h t . This is a type of Baroque poetry in which the poetic texts were written in the shape of various symbols or objects, such as hearts, trees, flowers, crosses, and triangles. These poems are most often secular rather than religious in content, unlike most lyric works of the era. Although figure poems were not uncommon throughout the Baroque with male authors such as Sigmund von Birken, Johann Klaj, and Philipp von Zesen, they remain a minor poetic genre in contemporary literature. Figurengedichte were not popular with women authors, who characteristically wrote devotional verse, as exemplified in the works of two well-known female poets of the Baroque: Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg and Sibylla Schwarz. One factor that may partially explain why women poets avoided this experimental lyric form is the exclusion of women from universities and the Sprachgesellschaften, of which there were only a few exceptions. Thus, writing as a
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profession was rare for women in the 17th century. When they did write, they availed themselves of more traditional lyric forms and themes, rather than enter into the realm of poetic experimentation. See also: Baroque Literature; Erbauungsliteratur; Experimental Literature; Greiffenberg, Catharina von; Language Societies. References: Fischetti, Renate, ed., Barock (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975); Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von, Gedichte. Ed. Hubert Gersch (Berlin: Henssel, 1964); Schwarz, Sibylle, Deutsche Poetische Gedichte: Faksimiledruck nach der Ausgabe von 1650. Ed. Helmut W. Ziefle (Berne: Lang, 1980). AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER Film, Autobiographical. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several women film directors made full-length feature films based on their own childhood: Jutta Bruckner (Hungerjahre, 1979), Helma Sanders-Brahms (Deutschland, bleiche Mutter, 1979), Jeannine Meerapfel (Malou, 1980), Marianne Rosenbaum (Peppermint Frieden, 1982), and Recha Jungmann (Etwas tut weh, 1980). These women shared the experience of growing up as children of German parents during the postwar years. Their childhood was, to a large degree, determined by the war experiences of their parents. Similarly, the Prague-born Viennese filmmaker Nadja Seelich wrote the script for Kieselsteine (1982), a film about her childhood and present life as a Jew in Vienna among children of Nazis. The films differ greatly in style and language due to the directors' different backgrounds. Helma Sanders-Brahms turned to film directing after working for television and under the Italian director Pasolini. Marianne Rosenbaum started as a painter and graduated from the Prague Film Academy. Jutta Bruckner started out as a scriptwriter, initially for television and radio and later for film. Often these autobiographical films were directorial debuts in feature films, following experiments with short documentary films. Typically, these film projects grew out of dramatic changes in the director's life, such as having a daughter of her own (Sanders-Brahms and Marianne Rosenbaum), coping with a crisis (Bruckner), or making a major move (such as Meerapfel's decision not to return to South America but to live in Berlin). These films depict key childhood experiences, sometimes continuing into adolescence, and are marked by idiosyncratic feminist aesthetic strategies and formal experimentation with different techniques. They include or focus on women-specific topics such as a girl's first period, encounters with men, a girl's relationship with her mother and father, and rape. The representation of formative experiences that are not genderspecific, such as the interpretation of political events, differs visually from the representation films by male directors. These women filmmakers not only included feminine and feminist subject matters that male directors have traditionally excluded but also sought new ways of expressing familiar subjects through their personal feminist aesthetic. The films merge personal memory and historical discourse and mix autobiographic-
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fictional narrative and documentary footage. Numerous other films by women directors include autobiographical elements. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Autobiography; Bruckner, Jutta; Father-Daughter Relationship; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Mother-Daughter Relationship; SandersBrahms, Helma. References: Bammer, Angelika, "Through a Daughter's Eyes: Helma SandersBrahms' Germany, Pale Mother." New German Critique 36 (1989): 91-109; Bruckner, Jutta, "Women's Films Are Searches for Traces." West German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices. Ed. Eric Rentschler (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988) 85-89; McCormick, Richard, Politics of the Self. Feminism and the Postmodern in West German Literature and Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Mouton, Jan, ' 'The Absent Mothers Make an Appearance in the Films of West German Women Directors." Women in German Yearbook 4 (1988): 69-81; Weinberger, Gabriele, Nazi Germany and Its Aftermath in Women Directors' Autobiographical Films of the Late 1970s (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992). GABRIELE WEINBERGER
Film, D o c u m e n t a r y . From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, the majority of films made by women directors in West Germany were documentary films. There were more opportunities for women in film to gather experience in making shorter documentary films than big feature film productions. The FrauenFilmHandbuch of 1984 documents the work of hundreds of women directors, many of whom made only one or two films for television. Feminist directors like Helke Sander made films both about political issues (e.g., the control of big conglomerates over the German media) and about gender-specific issues of women's politics. True to the feminist motto that the personal is political, women directors made films about various aspects of women's lives and women's bodies, which had never been focused on to this extent or discussed in these ways, for example, Sander's Macht die Pille frei? (1972). Many of these films were made by one woman or by a small collective of women. In the 1970s, while "objective" documentary filmmaking took a backseat, the documentary approach shifted its emphasis toward the "authentic" reality of women in representing their subjective reality. In formal experiments they often mixed personal elements with traditional documentary footage in montage techniques, as did Sander, for example. This montage form was meant to draw attention to the filmmaker's role in mediating and thereby constructing reality. The documentary films by women filmmakers in the 1970s often combined fiction and documentary in order to relativize the claims of each. Feminist filmmakers reevaluated subjectivity against the dominant male leftist cult of reason and abstraction. One of the goals was to break down the dichotomy between art and life as well as "high" art and "low" art. Some of the most important women filmmakers and examples of their documentary films include Claudia von Alemann (Das ist nur der Anfang—der Kampf geht welter, 1969), Ruth
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Beckermann (Die papierene Briicke, 1985), Heide Breitel (Der letzte Kufi, 1977), Christine Hett (Wir haben lange geschwiegen, 1974), Utta C. Hoffmann (. . . um ein Haar. . . , 1983), Ebba Jahn (Schattennacht, 1981), Elke Jonigkeit (Stumme Schreie, 1982), Marion Kellner (Technik ist unsere Lust, 1980), Charlotte Kerr-Sokal (Fassade, 1973-1974), Barbara Lipinska-Leidinger (Zeit einer Mutter—Czas Matki, 1980), Mehrangis Montazami-Dabui (Mdnnerrecht— Frauenleid, 1981), Elfi Mikesch (Was solVn wir denn machen ohne den Tod, 1980), Ingrid Oppermann (Kinder fiir dieses System—Paragraph 218, 1973), Cristina Perincioli (Die Macht der Manner ist die Geduld der Frauen, 1978), Helga Reidemeister (Drehort Berlin, 1989), Helke Sander (Kinder sind keine Kinder, 1968-1969; Der Subjektive Faktor, 1985; Befreier-Befreite, 1993), Helke Misselwitz (Winter Ade, 1988), and Sybille Schonemann (Verriegelte Zeit, 1990). See also: Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Sander, Helke. References: Kaltenbach, Christiane, Dagmar Schuricht, Yvonne Spielmann, and Ellen Wietstock, eds., FrauenFilmHandbuch (Berlin: Filmarbeiterinnen Verband, 1983). GABRIELE WEINBERGER Film, Lesbian. German cinema has played a leading, emancipatory role in the annals of lesbian film, for the most part eschewing the stereotypes prevalent in Hollywood cinema of the lesbian as vampire, femme fatale, or spinster. The first German film about homosexuality, Anders als die Andern (1919), starring Conrad Veidt and illustrating the views of the psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld, compassionately tells the story of a gay man who, fearing scandal, commits suicide. This sympathetic portrayal carries over into Weimar films depicting lesbians. One of the first on-screen lesbians appeared in Die Biichse der Pandora (1928), although the director, G. W. Pabst, did not accord the Countess Geschwitz the same dominant role as in Frank Wedekind's play, in which, according to the author, she is "die tragische Hauptfigur." Leontine Sagan's Mddchen in Uniform (1931, remade 1957) has garnered attention as the most important pre-war lesbian film. It depicts the infatuation of a boarding-school girl, Manuela, for her teacher, Fraulein von Bernburg, a love that almost leads to her suicide when she is punished for innocently declaring it. The two leading actresses, Hertha Thiele and Dorothea Wieck, starred in a subsequent film on same-sex love, Anna und Elisabeth (1933). Weimar cinema, leaving its traces even in Nazi cinema, explored the erotic potential of androgyny through the sexually ambivalent "Hosenrolle" (in addition to scenes from Die Biichse der Pandora and Mddchen in Uniform, see Der Geiger von Florenz, 1927; Dona Juana, 1927; Victor und Victoria, 1933; Schwarzer Jager Johanna, 1935; and Capriccio, 1938). Like Mddchen in Uniform, Acht Madels im Boot (1932) and Ich fiir Dich, Du fiir Mich (1934) deal with passionate group bonding between girls. With the exception of Cristina Perincioli's Anna und Edith (1975), Ula Stockl's Erikas Leidenschaften (1976), and Ulrike Ottinger's innovative Ma-
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dame X (1977) and Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979), the growth in the West German women's film industry in the 1970s did not witness an upsurge in attention to the lesbian theme, conceivably because of funding problems for such a controversial topic. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, lesbians have become increasingly visible on screen. Andrea van Straeten and Birgit Durbahn's Unter Rock (1980) is a documentary video about a lesbian rock band. Ingemo Engstrom's Flucht in den Norden (1985) shows a lesbian affair, though only as a prelude to heterosexual intercourse. Alexandra von Grote directed Weggehen um anzukommen (1981) and Novembermond (1985), a film on a same-sex relationship in Nazi-occupied France. Cleo Ubelmann's short Mano Destra (1985) depicts lesbian bondage. After the female homosociality of most of her films, Margarethe von Trotta directly broached lesbianism in Die Riickkehr/UAfricana (1990). Flaming Ears (by Angela Hans Scheirl, Ursula Piirrer, and Dietmar Schipek [1991]) is a sci-fi lesbian fantasy. Lesbian video artists include Katrin Barben (Bar Jeder Frau, 1991, on the lesbian bar scene) and Elisabeth Adowowa-Abraham (Interview at Club Rosa, 1993, on lesbian prostitutes in Berlin, and Celebration of Life, 1993, on the black German community's commemoration of Audre Lorde), Heidi Krull (Geliebte Morderin: Ein Film Noir, 1992), and Nathalie Percillier (Bloody Well Done, 1993). Most significant, however, is the work of Monika Treut and Ottinger. In Verfiihrung: die grausame Frau (codirector Elfi Mikesch, 1984-1985), Die Jungfrauen Maschine (1988), and My Father Is Coming (1991), Treut daringly explores various expression of lesbian sexuality—sadomasochism, striptease, and prostitution—not hesitating to show lesbian lovemaking. Ottinger (see also Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia [1988-1989]) similarly exoticizes female passion and explores the visual registers of female desire (masquerade, fetishism), but with more interest in homoeroticism and homosociality than in sexual adventures. The gay directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Die bitteren Tranen der Petra von Kant, 1972) and Rosa von Praunheim (Uberleben in New York, 1989) have also depicted lesbians. Percy Adlon's Salmonberries (1990), with its explicit lesbian content and casting of the out country singer k. d. lang, calls for a camp, if not lesbian, reading of his earlier Zuckerbaby (1985) and Bagdad Cafe (1988), which likewise play on gender stereotypes. Given the social taboos, lesbianism may be covertly encoded in crossdressing, sexual ambiguity or deviancy, female friendship, or revealing glances. Although the sexual relationship between characters may not be explicit, their emotional closeness or rejection of men can be seen as lesbian. A study of lesbian film also involves the story of its reception, including the lesbian cult status awarded such stars as Marlene Dietrich. See also: Femme Fatale; Frauenfilm; Freundschaftskult; Homosexuality; Hosenrolle; Lesbian Theories; Ottinger, Ulrike; Trotta, Margarethe von; Vampirism. References: Bolle, Michael, ed., Eldorado: Homosexuelle Frauen und Manner in Berlin 1850-1950 (Berlin: Frolich and Kaufmann, 1984); Dyer, Richard, Now You See
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It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (New York: Routledge, 1990); Fischetti, Renate, Das neue Kino: Acht Portrdts von deutschen Regisseurinnen (Frankfurt/M.: tende, 1992); Frieden, Sandra, Richard McCormick, Vibeke Petersen, and Laurie Melissa Vogelsang, eds., Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions, 2 vols. (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993); Gramann, Karola, and Heide Schliipmann, "Unnatiirliche Akte: Die Inszenierung des Lesbischen im Film." Lust und Elend: Das erotische Kino (Munich: Bucher, 1981); Hetze, Stefanie, Happy-End fur wen? Kino und lesbische Frauen (Frankfurt/M.: tende, 1986); Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992).
ALICE KUZNIAR Film Politics. Since the passing of the Filmforderungsgesetz in 1968, direct and indirect government subsidies have made German independent cinema an enclave protected from open competition with international film and media imports. While the Oberhausen manifesto and the founding of the Ulm Hochschule fiir Gestaltung were male initiatives, the energy and success of West German women film workers in the late 1960s through the 1970s were based on the establishment of close-knit feminist collectives in different areas of film work. The feminist film community, which developed in Berlin, played a central role in film politics and film theory. In 1979, the Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen (Association of Women Film Workers) was founded as a professional collective representing all West German women working in film. In its manifesto it demanded equal representation, including 50 percent of all funding and 50 percent of committee seats (the denial of these demands was upheld in court). The Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen and the women's film distribution company Chaos Film, organized and run by Hildegard Westbeld, played a crucial role in German film politics despite the setbacks and obstacles these organizations faced. They changed working conditions within the film industry and provided a network for women film workers. Through publicity about their fight for the equal representation of women on committees, in film academies, and in the director's chair with top-funding opportunities, the work of the Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen was influential in changing the German film industry. With the relocation of filmmaking centers into different areas of Germany such as North-Rhine Westphalia and Hamburg in the late 1980s and the restructuring of the media-city Babelsberg since 1993, the women's collective, rather than forming one united front, has organized itself into regional groups and coalitions. Due to the political and theoretical struggle of the women filmmakers in the last two decades, women are represented in larger numbers in many different areas of the profession, including filmmaking, film criticism, and film academies. Questions of feminist aesthetics are being raised in different arenas. Whereas the successful women directors of the 1960s and 1970s came to film from very diverse backgrounds in theater, dance, painting, or journalism, in the 1980s most of the new successful women directors were graduates of the German film academies in Berlin (DFFB) and Munich (HFF). The journal Frauen und Film, published in Berlin until 1983, reflected
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many of the political struggles of individual West German women film directors and of the Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen as a political collective. Since its relocation to Frankfurt, Frauen und Film has shifted its focus to film theory and theoretically oriented historiography. See also: Frauen und Film; Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen. GABRIELE WEINBERGER Film Theory, Feminist. Like feminist approaches to literature, feminist film theory developed out of a desire to theorize the sexism of mainstream cinema and to create a conceptual space for alternative practices and new visions. Since the earliest studies on the representation of women in Hollywood movies, feminist film criticism and theory have evolved into a large academic field, dominated by Anglo-American critics and psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theories of subjectivity. The study of female stereotypes and the analysis of narrative as a mirror of society have been replaced by a greater emphasis on the production of meaning and visual pleasure in the cinema. Over the last two decades, there has been a marked shift from the scandal of woman's structural exclusion, formulated by Laura Mulvey in her influential 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in the equations of man=camera=subject of the gaze, and woman=object of the gaze, to the search for moments of resistance even in mainstream cinema and the study of gender in the larger semiotic field of difference and Otherness. At the same time, growing attention has been directed toward the historical determinants that give rise to specific models of femininity and define female spectatorship, whether in the context of early cinema, in the woman's film of the 1940s, or in the changing relations among cinema, urbanism, and consumer culture. The following areas of research can be identified: (1) psychoanalytic theories of cinema and sexual difference that focus on patterns of identification and narrative structures; (2) theories of spectatorship that combine psychoanalytic theories of voyeurism and fetishism with sociohistorical studies on women audiences; (3) the rediscovery of forgotten women filmmakers and the rewriting of film history from a feminist perspective; (4) the reevaluation of particular genres (e.g., melodrama), directors (e.g., Leni Riefenstahl), and stars (e.g., Marlene Dietrich) for their openness to subversive readings; (5) the work of women filmmakers in nonnarrative forms (documentary, experimental film) and in Third World cinemas; and (6) the importance of television (e.g., soap opera) and other electronic media for rethinking the relationship between gender and popular culture. In Germany, feminist film theory is inextricably linked to the feminist journal Frauen und Film, founded in 1974 by Helke Sander and others to promote women filmmakers and feminist initiatives. Under the editorship of Heide Schliipmann and Gertrud Koch since 1983, the biannual journal has taken a more scholarly direction, serving as a forum for feminist film theory and his-
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toriography and functioning as a mediator between German and American debates. Despite the lack of institutional support for film studies at German universities, the editors have become the country's leading feminist film scholars: Schlupmann through her work on early German cinema and Koch through her studies on eroticism in and of the cinema. The political impact of feminist film theory has been most pronounced in the ongoing debates on pornography; its relevance for German studies remains strongest in the reevaluation of trivial literature and the conceptualization of the visual within literary constructions of femininity. See also: Film Politics; Frauen und Film; Frauenfilm; Pornography; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Sander, Helke; Subjectivity; Trivial Literature; Women's Journals. References: De Lauretis, Teresa, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Doane, Mary Ann, ed., Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (Los Angeles: American Film Institute, 1984); Kaplan, E. Ann, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983); Koch, Gertrud, "Was ich erbeute, sind Bilder": Zum Diskurs der Geschlechter im Film (Frankfurt/M.: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1989); Kuhn, Annette, Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (London: Routledge, 1982); Mayne, Judith, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Penley, Constance, Feminism and Film Theory (New York: Routledge, 1988); Schlupmann, Heide, Unheimlichkeit des Blicks: Das Drama des friihen deutschen Kinos (Frankfurt/ M.: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1990); Silverman, Kaja, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). SABINE HAKE F i n - d e - S i e c l e V i e n n a . The concept of fin-de-siecle Vienna has largely been determined by the pathbreaking interdisciplinary work of Carl Schorske, which posits certain underlying political and psychological currents that manifest themselves in related ways in various cultural arenas (art, music, literature, politics, psychology). In his paradigm, Schorske is primarily concerned with male achievement and its productive dysfunctionality in terms of a collective oedipal revolt, so that there is little room within his conceptual framework for a discussion of gender in a critical context. Men like Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Karl Kraus, Oskar Kokoschka, Arnold Schoenberg, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, Theodor Herzl, and Gustav Mahler have remained the focus of much of the literary and cultural criticism of this period. The space allotted for women in the critical discourse on fin-de-siecle Vienna has tended to be in terms of female sexuality, as it was posited by Sigmund Freud (theories and case histories) or by Otto Weininger and represented as a projection of male fantasies and anxieties in the works of men. Recurrent female stereotypes of this period include das siifie Mddel (especially Schnitzler), the femme fatale (especially Klimt), the castrating female (Freud, Klimt, Schiele), the hysteric (Freud), and the society woman (Klimt). The female
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sexuality "unleashed" in such stereotypes provoked a backlash in representations of violent aggression directed at women (e.g., in Viennese expressionism, especially in operas). Through the efforts of Sigrid Schmid-Bortenschlager, Hanna SchnedlBubenicek, Helga Harriman, Dagmar Lorenz, and others, feminist scholars now have the material to challenge the prevailing view of fin-de-siecle Vienna as an almost exclusively male domain. According to records of the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Kunstlerinnen in Wien (VSKW), which was founded in 1885, many more women were engaged in cultural production in Vienna than is generally known. In addition to the known writers Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Bertha von Suttner, one finds Veza Canetti, Bertha Zuckerkandl, Elsa Bienenfeld, Barbara Elisabeth Gluck (pseudonym Betty Paoli), Minna Kautsky, Rosa Mayreder, Marie Herzfeld, Emilie Mataja (pseudonym Emil Marriot), Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Lula Kirschner (pseudonym Ossip Schubin), Marie von Najmajer, and Marie Pappenheim-Frischauf. The relative obscurity of most of these Austrian women writers in the late 20th century may be due to the conservative or socially engaged nature of many of their works. The artists Olga Wisinger-Florian and Minna Hoegel and the musicians Alma Mahler-Werfel, Mathilde von Kralik, and Karoline Pruckner have also been mentioned as meriting further investigation. Although these women are often marginalized, their texts, music, and art offer us sites of resistance to the flood of disturbing images of women we encounter in this period, and their existence dispels the myth of a homogeneous cultural identity. This resistance can take different forms. There are the realistic, complex, and positive images of women, as in the prose narratives of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach; there are avant-garde works like Marie Pappenheim's libretto for Arnold Schoenberg's Die Erwartung (1909), in which traditional gender roles for women in heterosexual relationships are questioned; there are allegorical texts like Marie Eugenie delle Grazie's Utopian drama Moralische Walpurgisnacht (1896); or there are new models of female agency, as in Gluck's poetry. See also: Austrian Literature; Body, Female; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Expressionism; Femme Fatale; Gender Theories, History of; Hysteric; SuBes Madel; Utopia. References: Fischer, Jens Malte, Fin de siecle: Kommentar zu einer Epoche (Munich: Winkler, 1978); Harriman, Helga H., "Women Writers and Artists in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna." Modern Austrian Literature 26.1 (1993): 1-17; Schmid-Bortenschlager, Sigrid, and Hanna Schnedl-Bubenicek, Osterreichische Schriftstellerinnen 1880-1938: Eine BioBibliographie (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1982); Schorske, Carl E., Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981); Wunberg, Gotthart, Die Wiener Moderne: Literatur, Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und 1910 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981). SUSAN L. COCALIS
FleiBer, Marieluise ( 1 9 0 1 - 1 9 7 4 ) . FleiBer is one of the most recognized women dramatists in Germany, primarily owing to Bertolt Brecht's early patronage and to her rediscovery in the late 1960s by Rainer Werner FaBbinder,
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Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Martin Sperr. She is most often associated with the dramatic genre of the "critical folk-play" (kritisches Volksstiick), a theatrical tradition indigenous to Bavaria and Austria, and her first two plays, Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt (1926) and Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1928), have been acknowledged as models by German and Austrian practitioners of this genre after 1968. Both of these dramas were originally produced by Brecht and were decried as scandalous in the national media; they were reworked by FleiBer between 1968 and 1972 in order to reclaim them from Brecht's influence. FleiBer also wrote a lesser-known, but recently rediscovered, drama, Der Tiefseefisch (1930), which is of interest to feminist scholars on two levels: it provides a satirical account of Brecht's "collaborations" with women during the Weimar Republic, and it depicts a relationship between two artists as a Strindbergian battle between the sexes from a woman's perspective. In her lifetime, FleiBer published five dramas, one novel, and 31 stories in addition to her non-literary prose. Of these works, the dramas already mentioned, her novel, Mehlreisende Friede Geier (1931, reprinted as Eine Zierde fiir den Verein, 1975), a few of her stories, and the autobiographical essays concerning Brecht have been the focus of critical attention. In these works, FleiBer depicts an antagonistic relationship between the sexes; the different ways in which the inhabitants of a small town identify and react to alterity; the failure of traditionally held values in the modern world; the individual's need for protection in a hostile world; and entrapment in a provincial milieu. Although FleiBer did not identify herself as a feminist and probably would have disputed that label if applied to her works, she distinctly wrote from a woman's perspective and exposed social structures contributing to the oppression of women. All of her works are "iiber Manner und Frauen," their conflicting expectations, and their inability to communicate. Usually, the women she portrays are exploited by men, and FleiBer allows them to say or feel things about what they are experiencing that are never articulated so bluntly in the works of her male peers. In some of her works, she creates strong, educated heroines whose desire for independence clashes with the more limited provincial roles for women, for example, Olga in Fegefeuer, Friede Geier in the novel, and Ebba/Gesine in Der Tiefseefisch. In these cases, FleiBer addresses the issues of economic and psychological dependencies, physical brutality, mental cruelty, and the myth of redemption through an Eternal Feminine. Her prose works have been described as the "Typus der unbarmherzigen Idylle" (Materialien, 143-44), a designation that could apply equally to most of her works. See also: Eternal Feminine; Neue Sachlichkeit; Volksstiick; Weimar Republic. References: Arnold, Heinz-Ludwig, ed., Text + Kritik 64: Marieluise Fleifier (Munich: text + kritik, 1979); McGowan, Moray, Marieluise Fleifier (Munich: Beck, 1987); Riihle, Gunther, ed., Materialien zum Leben und Schreiben der Marieluise Fleifier (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1973); Tax, Sissi, Marieluise Fleifier: Schreiben, Uberleben. Ein biographischer Versuch (Frankfurt/M.: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1984). SUSAN L. COCALIS
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Flugblatt—see: Pamphlet/Flugblatter Folk S o n g / V o l k s l i e d . The term "Volkslied" coined by Johann Gottfried Herder in 1773, refers to a lyrically and melodically simple song, often a ballad or love song. It is the earliest art form focusing on feelings and religious and worldly experiences. The melody probably preceded the text, as indicated by religious and pamphlet songs between 1500 and 1900. Folk songs were written for community singing and passed on from generation to generation by oral tradition. Thus, true folk songs exist in variations, the text often made up of free-style rhymes, which, in contrast to the melody, change frequently. One type of folk song is the Totenklage, which originally was carried out by women kin to the deceased and later by hired "wailing women." Research on the genre in Estonia, Lithuania, Rumania, Galicia, Wales, Germany, and Austria reveals that women were the leading force in creating and presenting folk songs. The earliest recorded folk songs, Klara Hatzlerin's songbook, date back to 1470-1471. Das Liederbuch der Anna von Koln is another recorded early songbook. Whereas early compilers of folk songs could feasibly be seen as the authors of the songs, later women writers were active mostly as collectors and editors. Examples are Caroline Flachsland, who copublished Stimmen der Volker in Liedern with Johannes Miiller in 1807, and Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, who aided Ludwig Uhland with his handwritten collection by contributing 30 Westphalian folk songs. In her essays "Bei uns zu Lande" (1841-1842) and "Bilder aus Westfalen" (1845) she describes how much the older folk songs of Westphalia characterize the cultural background of its people and elaborates on the melancholy folk ballads of the Munsterland. From the Lochheimer Liederbuch collection dating back to the 1600s, Droste-Hulshoff selected a number of folk songs. She put the text of some of these into more modern form and wrote a melody for others. Ever since the Romantics started collecting folk art, there has been a continued debate over whether or not collectors have the right to edit or modernize the songs and thus change their original structure, possibly diminishing their intrinsic value. Since 1925, tape-recording and now computer classification methods have simplified the collection of folk songs, and in many regions, a shift has taken place from folk songs to popular songs and folkloristic songs to hits (Doris Stockmann). Despite these shifts, the traditional folk song survives into the present, as in Freia Hoffmann and Ursula Bartholl-Miiri's women's folk song book Die Frau die wolW ins Wirtshaus gehn (1981), a collection of songs depicting women's daily lives and experiences. The collection and classification of folk tunes continue on a grander scale than ever: by 1965, up to 70,000 folk melodies were cataloged—a number that includes only folk songs dated after 1750. Those collected before 1750 have yet to be cataloged. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Romanticism. References: Danckert, Werner, Das Volkslied imAbendland (Berne: Francke, 1966); Hoffmann, Freia, and Ursula Bartholl-Muri, eds., Die Frau, die wollf ins Wirtshaus
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gehn. Frauenvolksliederbuch (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1981); Meier, John, and E. Seemann, "Volksliedaufzeichnungen der Dichterin Annette von Droste-Hulshoff." Jahrbuch fur Volksliedforschung 1 (1970): 79-118; Suppan, Wolfgang, Volkslied (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965). INGRID DINTER F o r m a l i s m ( 1 9 1 5 - 1 9 3 0 ) . Russian formalism was a theory of literature that understood and examined the literary work as a linguistic form, and literature as a form of language. Formalism developed in opposition to symbolism and in close alliance with futurism. The formalists refused to analyze the literary work through biographical, sociological, or psychological approaches. Formalism was the first critical movement in Russia that attacked the problems of rhythm, meter, style, and composition in a systematic fashion. According to the formalists, all forms of expression, including language, ought to be treated not as by-products or sensory symptoms of psychological processes, but as realities in their own right, as objects sui generis, which call for structural description. Formalism developed simultaneously in Moscow and in St. Petersburg as small groups of young linguists met outside the restrictive academic curricula. The Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915), with such members as Roman Jakobson and Boris Tomasevskij, focused mainly on Russian dialectology and folklore, but eventually shifted its focus from gathering linguistic data to methodological discussions on poetic as well as common speech. The members (Viktor Sklovskij, Boris Ejxenbaum, and Osip Brik) of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (Opojaz) in St. Petersburg (1916) focused more closely on the literary devices of poetic language. The concept of the poet as genius was discarded. The psychological makeup of an author was no longer considered of importance; rather, literary values depended entirely on preexisting forms of literary devices. Sklovskij maintained that new forms did not develop to express new content but replaced older forms that had lost their character as literary devices. By the end of the 1920s, Formalism increasingly came under attack by the Soviet government for its "irresponsible escape from social issues" (Formalism-Marxism debate). By 1930, Formalism was suppressed in Russia. It survived as the Prague Linguistic Circle (Roman Jakobson, B. Havranek, J. Rypka, B. Trnka, and R. Wellek)—a precursor of Structuralism—and as the Polish "integral" approach to literature (R. Ingarden, M. Kridl). The influence of Formalism on New Criticism in the West has, however, been minimal. Women were only marginally involved in the theoretical movement of Formalism as wives and coauthors (Lily Brik) or poets (Anna Axmatova). The poetry of Axmatova challenged Symbolism along the same lines as Futurism and Formalism in that it focused on the sensory texture of the language. Lily Brik never published any theoretical formalist work herself but contributed both to Osip Brik's and to Vladimir Majakovsij's work. She later described the beginnings of Opojaz in her article "Reminiscences of Majakovskij." In 1969, Kate Hamburger's Logik der Dichtung was criticized in the German Democratic
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Republic (GDR) as formalist (Formalism-Marxism debate). Overall, the formalist method with its emphasis on an objective, but nonhistorical, analysis of literary devices has not been conducive to feminist research. Formalist influence on feminist research, if any, has been through the theories of Structuralism. See also: Futurism; New Criticism; Structuralism; Symbolism. References: Ehrlich, Viktor, Russian Formalism. History-Doctrine (London: Moton, 1955); Jefferson, Ann, "Russian Formalism." Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. Ed. Ann Jefferson and David Robey (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982) 16-37; Kaminski, Karin, "Formalismus in der Literaturtheorie: Kritische Betrachtung zu Kate Hamburger's 'Logik der Dichtung.' " Weimarer Beitrdge 15 (1969): 103-22; Striedter, Jurij, ed., Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allgemeinen Literaturtheorie und zur Theorie der Prosa (Munich: Fink, 1969). KARIN BAUMGARTNER
Fragment/Fragmentary Writing. The term "fragment" describes an unfinished literary or musical work, some of which may originally have been completed but parts of which were lost over time, or, more commonly, the term is applied to works that were never finished to begin with (because the author died before completion, as was the case with German Democratic Republic (GDR) writer Brigitte Reimann's prose text Franziska Linkerhand, 191 A, or because completion became impossible or undesirable in the course of production, as may have been the case for Annette von Droste-Hulshoff). Given the necessity for women authors to accept literary models developed within the male tradition, it may be no coincidence that Droste-Hiilshoff s drama Bertha oder die Alpen (1814) and her novel Ledwina (1819-1826), both female-centered works, remained unfinished while her novella Die Judenbuche (1842), focusing mainly on male characters, helped found her reputation as a serious writer. Fragmentary writing also designates a mode of expression that was clearly intended by the author, a style of writing that rejects totality, coherence, and linear narrativity and instead derives its strength from its ruptures, its gaps, its manifold origins and endings. Semantic nonclosure and a concomitant multiplicity of possible contradictory meanings are set off against the finite and definite. Whereas valorization of the fragment in this respect evolved with Romanticism, traditional literary history has tended to view the fragment as a mishap or accident rather than as a genre in its own right. In both modernism and postmodernism, the fragmentary has become a privileged mode of writing—for many, the only form deemed adequate to express the (post)modern experience of a shattered reality and a fragmented subject. Poststructuralists and deconstructionists have recognized the subject as a subjectin-process, which is endlessly decentered by the mechanisms of its language. This has led many feminists, notably the French critics Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous, to view fragmentary writing as the female/feminist challenge to the position held by the male subject as phallic master of its own discourse. Ingeborg Bachmann's strategy of Dekomposition, which she employs
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throughout her Todesarten project, particularly in the uncompleted novel Der Fall Franza (posthumous, 1979), can be seen both in light of ecriture feminine and a feminist theory of the fragment. Many male writers, such as Friedrich Holderlin, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, have won esteem not in spite of, but because of, the fragmentary nature of their work. Paradoxically, women's texts are often devalued for the very same reason. The long-standing prejudice against the writings of women as mere scraps and scribbles has not been reversed outside feminist criticism. Arno Schmidt's Zettels Traum (1986), to give but one example, has been lauded as a masterpiece of a modern aesthetics of the fragment, while Christa Wolf s fictional autobiography Kindheitsmuster (1979) has received polemical treatment as a "trauriger Zettelkasten" due to its alleged lack of form, to quote critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Reception of the Romantic fragment has likewise been centered almost exclusively around the theoretical writings and fragmentary works of the male Romantics. Karoline von Giinderrode's Poetische Fragmente (1806) has yet to be read within the context of a theory of the fragment; Dorothea Schlegel's fragmentary novel Florentin (1801) still awaits recognition beyond being read as a mere counterpart to Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde (1799). See also: Allegory; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Ecriture Feminine; Feminist Theory, French; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Modernism; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Romanticism; Wolf, Christa. References: Dallenbach, Lucien, and Christiaan L. Hart Nibbrig, eds., Fragment und Totalitdt (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1984); Ostermann, Eberhard, Das Fragment. Geschichte einer asthetischen Idee (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1991). ALMUTFINCK Frankfurt S c h o o l . This refers to the group of scholars associated with the Institute for Social Research, which Felix Weil founded in Frankfurt in 1923. The institute's membership included such major figures of Western Marxism as Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm. Walter Benjamin was also loosely associated with the Frankfurt School. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the institute was forced into exile and eventually became associated with Columbia University in New York, where its director Horkheimer remained until he and Adorno moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s. When the institute returned to Frankfurt in 1950, Marcuse, Lowenthal, and Fromm remained in the United States at American universities. Back in Frankfurt, Adorno became codirector in 1955 and together with Horkheimer presided over the emergence of a second generation of theorists, which includes, among others, Jiirgen Habermas, Oskar Negt, and Albrecht Wellmer. The theoretical arguments of the Frankfurt School, commonly referred to as "critical theory," are both anticapitalistic and anti-Soviet. Drawing upon not only the writings of Karl Marx but also those of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, and Georg Lukacs, the early
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members of the Frankfurt School employed a dialectical methodology that worked within a general Marxist paradigm. Their interdisciplinary approach led to a significant reassessment of Enlightenment rationality and also to one of the first concerted efforts to reconcile the theories of Marx and Freud. The FrankfuSchool is best known for its inquiries into the repressive side of the Enlightenment, into the dynamics of the authoritarian personality, and into the workings of the culture industry. The reception of Frankfurt School theories among feminist critics has varied according to the predilections of the individual critic and according to which member or concept of the Frankfurt School is the center of focus. Shortly after Marcuse's death in 1979, for example, Margaret Cerullo noted in a tribute to him that despite coming out of a patriarchal and authoritarian culture, Marcuse consistently turned to the subject of feminism in his late writings and considered the women's movement to be potentially the most important political movement of the 1970s. Such personal tributes to Marcuse were possible, in part, because of his general embrace of the student movements, an embrace that was in marked contrast to members of the Frankfurt School like Adorno, whose general skepticism with regard to the student movements was often perceived by feminists as a form of opposition to their goals. As far as feminist scholarship is concerned, the representation of the ' 'feminine" in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialektik der Aufklarung (1947) has attracted the most attention. Andrew Hewitt, for instance, argues that while Horkheimer and Adorno "problematize man's discursive domination of woman" by denying "woman the honor of individualization," they, too, finally succumb to repeating "the generalizing gesture they condemn." Brigitte Rossbacher has used the relation of women, nature, and culture in Dialektik der Aufklarung as the context for a study of positionality and feminine subjective agency in the writings of Christa Wolf. Critics like Eva Geulen and Nancy Fraser have examined gender in the works of Benjamin and Habermas. While not the first to approach Benjamin from a feminist perspective, Geulen is the first to forward a comprehensive reassessment of his writings based on an argument that gender is an integral part of Benjamin's more general theories of production and that, consequently, his work can contribute to the ongoing debates on gender and discourse. Fraser has pointed out the androcentric and ideological dimensions of Habermas' social theories but has also drawn on his work for her own "socialist-feminist critical theory" of the welfare state. See also: Enlightenment; Hermeneutics; Marxist Theories; Postmodernism; Socialism; Student Movement (1968); Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement. References: Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente (1947) (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1969); Buck-Morss, Susan, The Origins of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School (New York: Free Press, 1977); Fraser, Nancy, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Min-
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nesota Press, 1989); Hewitt, Andrew, "A Feminine Dialectic of Enlightenment? Horkheimer and Adorno Revisited." New German Critique 56 (1992): 143-70; Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little Brown, 1973); Marcuse, Herbert, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). JAMES M. HARDING Frauen im Theater (FiT). This organization, founded in West Berlin in 1983, aims at creating a network and clearinghouse for women working in the theater, facilitating the exchange of experiences among them and improving their public visibility and professional status. It also provides public forums for theoretical debates about feminist aesthetics and dramaturgies. FiT is affiliated with the Dramaturgische Gesellschaft (DG), an association of professional dramaturges that provides an institutional home as well as minor funding. In its first annual report (1984) on the status of women in the profession, FiT compiled a statistic on the gender division in theater work, showing that the majority of women were employed in subordinate positions. For instance, 97.5 percent of the prompters in West German, Austrian, and Swiss theaters were women, while only 8.7 percent were artistic directors. Within each profession men tend to occupy leading positions; women, assisting positions. The statistic illustrated the systematic discrimination against women in the theater and aided women in their respective institutions to argue for changes. In its founding document, FiT also emphasized its theoretical endeavor to explore feminist aesthetics and histories. Although the organization was never formally integrated into an academic program or theater institute, FiT initiated and aided the academic study of feminist theory and theater at the three universities that offer degrees in Theaterwissenschaft. It established an archive of women's plays and criticism and publishes annual reports to facilitate the exchange of information among women theater scholars, artists, and critics. FiT hosts panel discussions at theater festivals, as well as independent symposia and festivals, bringing together female practitioners, playwrights, and scholars. The first conference FiT sponsored in 1984 took place under the auspices of the prestigious Theatertrejfen in Berlin and was located in the so-called Spiegelzelt that usually houses the fringe program. The location, as well as the performers and companies invited, situated feminist theater in the margins and countercultural spaces of the theatrical institution. The performers and companies exhibited discursive styles that were informed by performance art and women's spaces. At the conferences in the 1980s, discussions continued to hinge on the question of whether feminists should confront and challenge sexism within mainstream theater, or whether the alternative fringe afforded more congenial working conditions despite the perpetual lack of funds. These debates echoed strategy debates around autonomy versus "reform from within" in the women's movement. Though during its founding phase, FiT set out to identify the specific barriers and vicissitudes German theater presented to women, it now endeavors to place
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German women's theater and feminist scholarship in an international context. It regularly publishes bibliographies on women and theater that include French, Dutch, and Anglo-Saxon scholarship. It has established and maintained ties with related organizations in other European countries and invited scholars and artists to speak at their symposia. In 1991, the symposium entitled Die Sprachen des Theaters und die Frauen in Berlin first brought together West and East German theater women. Most recently, FiT has compiled a handbook about women in European theater, surveying individual playwrights and troupes and sketching feminist perspectives on national traditions. The organization has been publishing feminist research and commentary in the form of papers and bibliographies. The annual reports contain transcripts of discussions and interviews that provide insights into topical debates on gender-related issues and document artistic and organizational changes in German theater. See also: Women's Movement. Reference: Ahrens, Ursula, "FiT (Frauen im Theater): Women in Theater." The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992) 346^-8. KATRINSIEG Frauen u n d Film. Founded in 1974 by filmmaker Helke Sander, Frauen und Film (Women and Film) is the first and only European feminist film journal and is now the oldest existing feminist film journal in the world. The journal covers the entire 20th century, with a focus on feminist countercinema and aesthetics, and serves as a platform for issues, strategies, politics, criticism, theory, and exchange of information. The journal's objectives are the analysis of the workings of patriarchal culture within cinema and the exploration of feminist cinematic expression. Each issue has a general theme plus additional topics or reviews. Topics covered have included images of old women in cinema, sexuality in film, film politics, documentary film, women cinematographers, psychoanalytic interpretation of films, translations of English- or French-language articles on film, women viewers, and women and fascist cinema. Even though films by women have not been exempt from negative criticism, the journal has generally brought greater visibility to women working in different areas of film. Helke Sander started the first issue of Frauen und Film with a polemic attack on sexism in the media, describing discrimination against women within socialization, employment, and images in both film and television. German television, for example, prohibited programs that attacked or questioned marriage and family, promoted/supported abortion, or dealt with issues of female sexuality. Until the end of 1980, the journal did not adhere to the convention of using capital letters for nouns in German (frauen und film) as a resistance to patriarchal culture and "man-made language." In 1983, Helke Sander left the journal, and publication moved from Rotbuch Verlag in Berlin to Verlag Stroemfeld/Roter Stern in Frankfurt. The new editors,
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Karola Gramann, Gertrud Koch, and Heide Schlupmann, have given the journal a more critical and theoretical format. See also: Film Politics; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Linguistics, Feminist; Sander, Helke. References: Curry, Ramona, "Frauen und Film: Then and Now." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II 299-308; Elsaesser, Thomas, New German Cinema: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Hansen, Miriam, "Frauen und Film and Feminist Film Culture in West Germany." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II 293-98; Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992).
SANDRA FRIEDEN Frauenfilm. The term "Frauenfilm" (women's film) has two meanings: (1) it refers to a particular genre, developed by 1940s and 1950s Hollywood cinema, that focuses on the emotional lives of women and relies on melodramatic elements to further audience identification with narratives of female suffering and endurance; (2) it describes a loosely defined group of films made by women directors since the late 1960s that explore women's issues through specific thematic and formal strategies, often with a feminist agenda. While the term remains problematic—rejected by some because of its negative overtones and by others for its essentialist connotations—it continues to challenge mainstream cinema through the insistence on female authorship and alternative notions of femininity. The emergence of Frauenfilm is inextricably linked to the women's movement and its quest for equal pay, reproductive rights, child care, sexual emancipation, and female self-determination. These themes characterized the early documentaries of Helke Sander, Erika Runge, and Ulla Stockl and aligned the Frauenfilm with a realist aesthetic. But as the example of Sander's Die allseitig reduzierte Personlichkeit (Redupers) (1977) suggests, the critical reflection on the meaning of images, for instance, through montage and voice-over, also align the Frauenfilm with countercinema. With the critical success of the New German Cinema, women established their place in feature filmmaking during the late 1970s. From Margarethe von Trotta's exploration of sisterhood in Schwestern (1979) and the tension between the private and the political in Die bleierne Zeit (1981), to the linking of autobiography and German history in the films by Jutta Bruckner (e.g., Hungerjahre, 1979) and Helma Sanders-Brahms (e.g., Deutschland—bleiche Mutter, 1980), the late 1970s saw an explosion of creativity and productivity. Both found expression in new visual and narrative strategies and in heated debates on feminist cinema and a female aesthetic. Since the first wave of political activism has given way to the politics of different feminisms, women filmmakers have begun not only to reinvent popular formulas and traditional genres but also to explore the contradictions and com-
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plexities in the definition of sexual identity and female subjectivity. The influence of experimental film, video, and performance art can be seen in the body-centered work of Valie Export (e.g., Menschenfrauen, 1979), while Ulrike Ottinger (e.g., Bildnis einer Trinkerin, 1979) provokes with a mixture of surrealism and theatricality. Lesbianism and sadomasochism have been a recurrent theme for Monika Treut since Die Jungfrauenmaschine (1988). The commercial success of Doris D o m e ' s Manner (1985) has also initiated a return of genre cinema that comes at a time of general reassessment. While films in the 1990s continue to deal with mother-daughter relationships, the exclusion of women from the public sphere, and the problems of heterosexual love, there is a marked trend toward more conventional and less critical forms—an indication of the deep crisis of German cinema since unification. See also: Bruckner, Jutta; Dorrie, Doris; Essentialism/Constructionism; Export, Valie; Film, Lesbian; Film Politics; Frauen und Film; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Montage; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Ottinger, Ulrike; Sander, Helke; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Trotta, Margarethe von; Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen; Women's Movement. References: Fischetti, Renate, Das neue Kino: Acht Portrats von deutschen Regisseurinnen (Frankfurt/M.: tende, 1992); Frieden, Sandra, et al., eds., Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions, 2 vols. (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993); Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (New York: Verso, 1992); Kosta, Barbara, Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Lukasz-Aden, Gudrun, and Christel Strobel, Der Frauenfilm: Filme von und fiir Frauen (Munich: Heyne, 1985); Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980); Weinberger, Gabriele, Nazi Germany and Its Aftermath in Women Directors' Autobiographical Films of the Late 1970s (San Francisco: Mellen University Press, 1992). SABINE HAKE F r a u e n f r a g e . Since the Enlightenment, the "woman question" or "woman problem" in Germany and Austria has referred to women's legal, economic, social, and moral rights and responsibilities. The term encompasses public and private writing and discussions by women and men as well as emancipatory women's movements and their countermovements. Both sexes have argued based on one of two antithetical premises: either a standpoint of fundamental equality between genders or that of fundamental difference. The major topics of discussion have been girls' and women's education, women's sexuality, women's position in marriage and the family, women's right to work and women's working conditions, and women's political and economic rights. Although women today have full civil rights in Austria and unified Germany, the Frauenfrage persists concerning unresolved issues such as abortion rights, child care, career opportunities, full recognition of women in the arts and sciences, and representation at the highest levels of industry and government. A serious public discussion of women's emancipation in Germany began toward the end of the 1830s in the Vormdrz era, although an organized movement
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did not ensue until the 1860s. Although many middle-class women concerned themselves with the plight of proletarian women, women's emancipation in Germany and Austria split over class interests in the late i9th century: while some focused on employment opportunities and access to higher education for bourgeois women, others propagated the revolutionary restructuring of the means of production and employment safeguards for proletarian women. Early activists include Mathilde Franziska Anneke, Louise Aston, Ida Hahn-Hahn, Fanny Lewald, Malvida von Meysenbug, Klara Miiller-Mundt, and the "mother of the German women's movement," Louise Otto-Peters. Otto-Peters and Helene Lange represented the moderate wing of bourgeois emancipationists. The radical wing included Minna Schelle Cauer and Helene Stocker. Adelheid Popp in Austria and Clara Zetkin and Ottilie Baader in Germany were the leaders of the proletarian women's movement. German and Austrian women gained voting rights in 1919. While the 1920s saw further reforms for women, national socialism, first in Germany, then in Austria, put an end to public efforts to improve woman's rights. Some recent scholarship has focused on the interplay between women's emancipation and Jewish emancipation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Assimilated Jewish women tended to participate in the moderate wing of the bourgeois movement, with notable exceptions such as the more radical Hedwig Dohm, Anita Augspurg, and Lida Gustava Heymann, but were unable to attain widespread solidarity among non-Jewish women against anti-Semitism. The postwar era enhanced women's legal status in the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Austria, but social norms imposed a double burden for working women and channeled women into specific professions or part-time jobs. Since unification in 1990, noticeably more women than men have suffered from unemployment, domestic violence, and a lowered standard of living. Some of the more recent emancipatory writings by German women such as Eva Quistorp, member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1994, address European dimensions of female unemployment and poverty and champion activist initiatives in the European Community. See also: Aston, Louise; Dohm, Hedwig; Lewald, Fanny; Meysenburg, Malvida von; Otto-Peters, Louise; Unification, German; Wende Die; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature; Young Germany; Zetkin, Clara. References: Fassmann, Maya, "Judinnen in der deutschen Frauenbewegung 1865— 1919." Zur Geschichte der jiidischen Frau in Deutschland (Berlin: Metropol, 1993) 147-65; Frederiksen, Elke, ed., Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland 1865-1915: Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981); Frevert, Ute, Frauen-Geschichte zwischen BUrgerlicher Verbesserung und Neuer Weiblichkeit (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986). Trans, as Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. Trans. Stuart McKinnon-Evans, Terry Bond, and Barbara Norden (Oxford: Berg, 1988); Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Mohrmann, Renate, ed., Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormdrz: Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978). BARBARA HYAMS
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Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung. The term "Frauendichtung" is dated and appears in some older literary histories and reference works, for instance, in the 1959 edition of Gero von Wilpert's Sachworterbuch der Literatur. The entry on Frauendichtung (unchanged through the sixth revised edition of 1979) lumps together a selection of women authors from the Middle Ages to the present and is based on the assumption that "woman" and the "feminine" are fixed and "natural" categories throughout (literary) history. The conflation of gender stereotypes with specific genres and literary periods results in assertions that include women's predisposition for emotion-filled poetry (as opposed to the powerful [male] dramatic form), women's proximity to the period of Sentimentality (as opposed to Classicism), and the inappropriateness of "vulgar" Naturalism for women authors. In the 1989 revised edition of von Wilpert's Sachworterbuch, the slightly changed entry appears under the heading Frauenliteratur and questions the existence of fixed gender characteristics. The fact that these comments frame the otherwise unchanged entry may be read as symptomatic for the state of the discipline Germanistik (in the Federal Republic of Germany [FRG] more so than in the United States): feminist reappraisals can no longer be entirely ignored, but the literary canon and androcentric assumptions and approaches in mainstream Germanistik remain largely unchanged. The term Frauenliteratur gained larger currency in the context of the 1970s women's movement, which saw a proliferation of mostly autobiographical or confessional works by women writers asserting their own voices, often for the first time. Examples are Karin Struck's Klassenliebe (1973), Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975), and Christa Reinig's Entmannung (1976). Most of these texts rest on relatively unreflected notions of emancipation, female identity, and language, which, in the meantime, have been refined and/or questioned by women authors and feminist critics alike. While it is easy to dismiss these early examples of Frauenliteratur in light of critical/feminist theories problematizing the notions of the (gendered) subject, history, and representation, these critiques tend to ignore the sociohistorical circumstances and the important political role these texts played for the women's movement. In part due to the marketing strategies of many publishing houses, the term "Frauenliteratur" has been increasingly applied as a descriptive term for all literature by women authors. The term continues to be widely used in literary criticism today, but some women authors and some critics avoid the term because of its ambiguous connotations. The ambiguity of the German term "Frauenliteratur" (as opposed to the English expression "women's literature") can be attributed, on one hand, to the media's identification of Frauenliteratur with women's confessional literature of the 1970s. This selective reception has confirmed ingrained stereotypes about the autobiographical (and aesthetically inferior) nature of women's writings in general. On the other hand, this ambiguity harks back to an earlier use of the term denoting trivial literature for women.
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Informed by poststructuralist critiques of hierarchies implicit in binary concepts, some theorists argue that the gender-specific marker Frauenliteratur has the effect of separating literature by women from mainstream canonical literature and of reinforcing the androcentrism of the unmarked dominant term "literature." This may explain why some feminist scholars—who initially used the term "Frauenliteratur"—employ alternative terms such as "Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen" (Weigel, 1987) or "Deutsche Literatur von Frauen" (BrinkerGabler, 1988). See also: Autobiography; Biographism; Classicism; Confessional Literature; Feminist Theory, German; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gender Theories, History of; Naturalism; Poststructuralism; Reinig, Christa; Sentimentality; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen', Struck, Karin; Trivial Literature; Women's Movement. References: Briigmann, Margret, "Das glaserne Ich. Uberlegungen zum Verhaltnis von Frauenliteratur und Postmoderne am Beispiel von Anne Dudens Das Judasschaf." Amsterdamer Beitrdge zur neueren Germanistik: Frauen-Fragen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. Ed. Mona Knapp and Gerd Labroisse (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989) 253-72; Jurgensen, Manfred, "Was ist Frauenliteratur?" Frauenliteratur: Autorinnen—Perspektiven—Konzepte. Ed. M. Jurgensen (Berne: Lang, 1983) 13-^43; SchmidBortenschlager, Sigrid, "Frauenliteratur—Singular oder Plural?" Amsterdamer Beitrdge zur neueren Germanistik: Frauen-Fragen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. Ed. Mona Knapp and Gerd Labroisse (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989) 37-52; Szepe, Helena, "The Term Frauendichtung." Unterrichtspraxis 9.1 (1976): 11-15; Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987) 108-11. FRIEDERIKE EIGLER F r a u e n s t u d i u m — s e e : University Education, Women's F r e u n d s c h a f t s k u l t . The Cult of Friendship arose in Germany during the mid- to late 18th century, at a time when the Bildungsbiirgertum, or educated middle class, was beginning to define itself both culturally and socially. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, proponent and theoretician of this movement, defined friendship as the place where one could truly be oneself and as a decidedly nonaristocratic relationship. Instead of being constrained by the social conventions and stilted language of the nobility, friends could express themselves directly and emotionally. The privileging of originality, emotionality, a sharing of the true inner self goes hand in hand with the rise of subjectivity at this time and the development of literary styles that evoke the subjective. The Storm and Stress poets, for example, used highly emotional and even agrammatical language, because it was felt that they could express themselves truly by breaking rules. For Klopstock, friendship appeared to be a relationship that could access the essence of the human being outside all social codes and conventions, but it is now clear that the development of the Cult of Friendship was simply another
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behavioral norm attached to a specific class and gender. Although men of the middle classes believed friendship to be their exclusive domain and even declared women incapable of friendship, many women participated in this trend; in fact, their conception of friendship often echoes—or perhaps prefigures—that of their male counterparts. Luise Adelgunde Gottsched, for example, defiantly pronounced that women were, in fact, better qualified for friendship than men. Gottsched's long-standing epistolary relationship with Dorothea Henriette von Runckel gave her the emotional support and egalitarian setting needed in order to develop an identity independent of her husband. Yet, even while developing a specifically female form of interaction, these women contributed to the Cult of Friendship by describing their relationship as something that was above the vicissitudes of life and consisted of sharing an intimate, emotional, and true knowledge of one another. Rahel Varnhagen's Berlin salons provided a forum for gatherings of male and female friends, but in her letters she most clearly expresses her attachment to other women, to Pauline Wiesel in particular. Varnhagen's emphasis on a complete and intimate knowledge of the friend supports the notion that friendship is based on emotion and that friends are, on a spiritual level, a perfect match for one another. This belief is combined—as in male literary manifestations of the Cult of Friendship—with an affinity for passionate and lawless prose. This trend reaches its height in Bettina von Arnim's retrospective novel on her friendship with Karoline von Giinderrode, Die Gunderode (1840), in which she envisions an entire female culture—not just female identity—emanating from a friendship that is not only emotional but also pedagogical. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Epistolary Culture; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Storm and Stress; Subjectivity. References: Kord, Susanne, "Eternal Love or Sentimental Discourse? Women's Passionate 'Friendships.' " Outing Goethe and His Age. Ed. Alice Kuzniar, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996) 228^49; Mauser, Wolfram, and Barbara Becker-Cantarino, eds., Frauenfreundschaft—Mdnnerfreundschaft. Literarische Diskurse im 18. Jahrhundert (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1991); Rasch, Wolfdietrich, Freundschaftskult und Freundschaftdichtung im Deutschen Schrifttum des 18. Jahrhunderts (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer, 1936); Schmid, Pia, "Freundschaftskult." Zeit des Lesens—Zeit des Fuhlens. Anfdnge des deutschen Bildungsbiirgertums (Berlin: Quadriga, 1985) 133-62. RACHEL FREUDENBURG FRG Literature ( 1 9 4 9 - 1 9 9 0 ) . There are several focal points in West German literature after 1945: the horrors of fascism, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, a critique of the Wirtschaftswunder, gender and social emancipation projects, subjectivity and language, and an expansion of the notion of German writers to include those of different ethnic backgrounds. After the end of World War II, writers attempted to align themselves with the intellectual tradition from before 1933, which included diverse aspects such as solidarity with the women's movement and the workers' movement, avantgarde aesthetics, and a conservative, religiously oriented mode of writing. The
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most prominent women writers after the war, Luise Rinser, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Elisabeth Langgasser, and Gertrud von Le Fort, continued this tradition. They focused on human misery during the Third Reich, the role of women in family and society, Christian values, and human existence. The newer, less conservative generation of women writers regarded themselves as without tradition and wrote in response to immediate postwar problems, as can be seen, for example, in Use Langner's play Cornelia Kungstrom (1955) and her novel Die Zyklopen (1960), which addressed the dangers of irresponsible science and atomic power. Langner also portrayed the struggle for survival in a concentration camp in her earlier drama Angst (1949). The most prominent literary group of the postwar era, Gruppe 47, aimed at establishing a new literary tradition to effect a more humane society and was openly critical of the policies of the Adenauer administration, including the "economic miracle" and its distractions from coming to terms with the Nazi past. Among the few women members were Ingeborg Bachmann, Use Aichinger, and Gabriele Wohmann. Wohmann's early novels and radio plays stressed the daily horrors of routine family life and marriage. There was, however, no women's literature as such until the social emancipation movements of the late 1960s. The speech entitled "Das besondere der Frauendichtung" given by Kaschnitz, Langner, and Ode Schaefer at the Deutsche Akademie fiir Sprache und Dichtung in 1957 was still based on traditional notions of femininity. Gisela Eisner's novel Die Riesenzwerge (1964) and Renate Rasp's novel Ein ungeratener Sohn (1967) introduced a new, "unfeminine" way of writing that was based on a functional, cool prose style. Wohmann's harsh style, as, for instance, in Ein unwiderstehlicher Mann (1966), also differed from conventional expectations of women's writing. In the wake of the student protests of 19661969 and influenced by American feminism, German women activists began to focus on the disadvantages of women in society. Their themes (lack of communication, lack of voice, alienation, the representation of women in the media) required new modes of expression. Women writers attempted to define a new reality in order to bring about social change. Eisner, Rasp, Angelika Mechtel, and Erika Runge explored the notion of schwarzer Realismus. At the same time, there was a general questioning of the suitability of narrative to depict such a reality. Runge's Bottroper Protokolle (1968), tape recordings of interviews with workers in Bottrop, was one attempt to rework the literary impulse to represent more accurately the real world and protest against the exploitation of women and the working class. This socially didactic group of texts also includes Alice Schwarzer's Frauen gegen den $218 and Ulrike Meinhof's television documentary about a home for teenage girls, Bambule: Fiirsorge—Sorgefiir wen? (1969/ 1971). This form of documentary writing soon gave way to a more personal style, which was used to oppose the impersonality of social and political institutions. The self either rejects the world or withdraws from it, as in, for example, Erica Pedretti's works. The conscious use of emotion and fantasy was recognized as potentials for individual opposition. Unica Ziirn addressed the problems
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of mental illness in Der Mann im Jasmin: Eindrucke aus einer Geisteskrankheit (1966). The 1970s saw an increasing move to separate women's concerns from those of the student movement. Women's writing came into its own, and the term Frauenliteratur came to refer to a way of writing that focused on women's problems in a patriarchal society and offered possibilities for change. This younger generation of women writers reacted against the lack of feminist engagement in contemporary texts by more established women writers. Karin Struck's novel Klassenliebe (1973) helped usher in this new phase of women's literature, as did Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975) and Christa Reinig's Entmannung (1976). Women's cafes, publishing houses, and journals began to proliferate. The feminist journals Emma, Die Schwarze Botin, Frauen und Film, and Courage, among others, were founded in the 1970s. Archives, such as the Frauenforschungs- Bildungs- und Informationszentrum (FFBIZ) in Berlin and the Feministisches Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum (FAD) in Frankfurt am Main were also founded to assist feminist research. Feminist writers and critics viewed themselves as writing women rather than conventional women writers. Texts from this period foregrounded the search for a feminine subjectivity, for a new language, for new forms of writing and criticism. The idea of writing from/with the body took hold and has continued to inform feminist writing. By the end of the decade, many writers no longer focused on contemporary social and political debates, although Rinser, Mechtel, Eisner, Ursula Krechel, and Birgit Pausch still advocated social reforms. The narrative stance began to move from an undifferentiated social " w e " to an " I , " that of the active feminine subject. Feminist criticism included investigations into the traditions of women writers and the presentation of unknown writers. One literary area in which women are still unrepresented is theater and drama. The initiative Frauen im Theater (FiT) was founded in 1983 to promote women's interests in the theater, which was largely funded by government agencies favoring male dramatists. Anna Konda, the first women's theater group, performed in Berlin from 1980 to 1984, when financial constraints forced it to disband. Since the 1980s, the work of women dramatists who focus on women's concerns has reached more of an audience. Plays such as Friederike Roth's Klavierspiele (1980) and Das Ganze ein Stuck (1986); Gerlind Reinshagen's trilogy Sonntagskinder (1976), Fruhlingsfest (1980), and Tanz, Marie! (1987); Elfriede Jelinek's Clara S. (1983); Ria Endres' Acht "Weltmeister (1987); Gisela von Wysocki's Abendlandleben oder Apollinaire's Gedachtnis: Spiele aus Neu Gluck (1987); Ginka Steinwachs' George Sand (1988); Elfriede Miiller's Die Bergarbeiterinnen (1988); and Heidi von Plato's Hasenjagd (1989) have achieved critical attention. In the wake of poststructuralism, feminist writing shifted away from an oppositional stance to one of subversion from within. The problems of writing and of finding one's own language continue to be of major concern for some German women writers. In addition to issues of language, German women writers of
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different ethnic backgrounds have brought problems of racial and ethnic discrimination to the fore and contributed to debates on multiculturalism with such anthologies as Farbe bekennen (1986). See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Black-German Literature; Documentary Literature; Fantastic Literature; Frauen im Theater, Frauen und Film', Frauenliteratur; Gruppe 47; Horspiel; Jelinek, Elfriede; Poststructuralism; Protokolle; Reinig, Christa; Reinshagen, Gerlind; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Struck, Karin; Student Movement (1968); Turkish German Literature; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature. References: Bock, Ulla, and Barbara Witych, Thema: Frau. Bibliographic der deutschsprachigen Literatur zur Frauenfrage 1949-1979 (Bielefeld: AJZ Druck und Verlag, 1980); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, vol. 2 (Munich: Beck, 1988); Brugmann, Margret, Amazonen der Literatur: Studien zur deutschsprachigen Frauenliteratur der 70er Jahre (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986); Case, Sue-Ellen, The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Durzak, Manfred, Deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur: Ausgangspositionen und aktuelle Entwicklungen (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981); Liitzeler, Paul Michael, and Egon Schwarz, eds., Deutsche Literatur in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965 (K6nigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1980); Oguntoye, Katharina, May Opitz, and Dagmar Schultz, eds., Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1986); Puknus, Heinz, ed., Neue Literatur der Frauen: Deutschsprachige Autorinnen der Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 1980); Schmidt, Ricarda, Westdeutsche Frauenliteratur in den 70er Jahren (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1982); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa. Schreibweisen von Frauen in der Gegenwartsliteratur (Dulmen: tende, 1987). SUSAN C. ANDERSON F R G L i t e r a t u r e ( s i n c e 1 9 9 0 ) . The public discourse about literature and the role of the intellectual has become highly politicized since the unification of Germany. The first example was the "Christa Wolf debate" following her publication of Was bleibt in 1990; the most recent example is the "Giinter Grass debate" following the publication of his novel Ein weites Feld (1995). Ironically, often the same Feuilleton critics whose dismissal of GDR literature and of "engaged" literature in the West under the banner of "Gesinnungsasthetik" rested on a concept of art detached from "extraliterary" concerns continue to focus on the life and political attitudes of authors at the expense of a serious engagement with these authors' literary works. Wolf's retreat from public debates and Grass' defiant insistence on the evils of German unification are different responses to this combative atmosphere; but both reactions signify the general state of confusion and paralysis regarding the role of the intellectual in a post-cold war Europe marked by serious ethnic, social, and national conflicts. Another symptom of this state of paralysis is the ongoing bickering between the two German PEN groups (PEN-East and PENWest). The inability to find a common ground for dialogue (let alone for a PEN unification) results from personal resentments and ideological disagreements:
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former dissidents—many of whom left or were pressured into leaving the GDR in the 1970s—are joined by conservative writers from the West; supporters of socialism—some of whom collaborated with the secret state police—are joined by liberal writers from the West. Academic debates within Germanistik and German studies since 1990 have addressed the neglect of aesthetic criteria in the discussion of GDR literature and the privileging of some major GDR authors (in the pre-1989 era) at the expense of mostly younger authors, who were unable or unwilling to publish through official channels in the GDR. These are examples of how GDR studies in the West were, in many ways, a direct response to cultural politics in the East. The scholar Ursula Heulenkamp, among others, has thus called for a reconceptualization of German literary history since 1945, focusing on interdependencies between GDR literature and FRG literature and their academic and popular reception instead of assuming their relative autonomy. Amid these ongoing debates about recent literary history and amid the scrutiny of many authors' past lives, literary output has not ceased. After unification, many authors have initially published autobiographical texts and documents, essays, letters, and speeches (e.g., Helga Konigsdorf's Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, 1991, and Wolf's Auf dem Weg nach Tabou, 1994). Many of the mostly younger women writers who had contributed to unofficial art journals produced by male-dominated alternative groups in the GDR of the 1980s (ironically, these women authors were even less represented in the anthologies published after 1989) have been successful in publishing independently since 1990 despite new economic hurdles. Among them are Kerstin Hensel, Barbara Kohler, Katja Lange-Muller, Cornelia Schleime, and Gabriele Stotzer-Kachold. These and other writers from the GDR (and, in Herta Muller's case, from Romania) adopt a variety of genres and styles, but many recent works blend in a playful or ironic manner fictional with autobiographical aspects and address the social and psychological ramifications of German unification (e.g., Barbara Kohler, Deutsches Roulette, 1991; Konigsdorf, Im Schatten des Regenbogens, 1993; Brigitte Burmeister, Unter dem Namen Norma, 1994) or explore life stories within socialist society (e.g., Hensel's Tanz am Kanal, 1994; Monika Maron's Stille Zeile Sechs, 1991; Muller's Herztier, 1994). The publishing industry has responded to this trend by using the notion of GDR authenticity as marketing strategy, in particular for books by women writers (e.g., Marion Titze's Unbekannter Verlust, 1993). Intertextual elements in Elke Erb's most recent volume of poetry, Unschuld, du Licht meiner Augen (1994), initiate a dialogue with the poetry of Friederike Mayrocker. In Unterwegs in fremden Traumen: Begegnungen mit dem anderen Deutschland (1993) Ruth Rehmann enacts a dialogue with the East during the Wende era and traces divisive ideological differences among intellectuals back to the 1947 writer's congress—prior to the creation of two German states. Other topics addressed in recent publications include GermanJewish relations in contemporary Germany (Katja Behrens' Salomo und die
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anderen. Judische Geschichten, 1993), the relationship between daughter and ailing mother (Gabriele Wohmann's Bitte nicht sterben, 1993), the exploration of multiple ethnic identities (Emine Segvi Ozdamar's Mutterzunge, 1990) and European women within a (post)colonial situation (Jeannette Lander's Jahrhundert der Herren, 1993). See also: Autobiography; Biographism; Colonial Literature; Engagierte Literatur; FRG Literature (1949-1990); GDR Literature; German-Jewish Literature; German Studies; Gesinnungsasthetik; Monikova, Libuse; Postcolonialism; Struck, Karin; TurkishGerman Literature; Unification, German; Wende, die; Wolf, Christa. References: Consentino, Christine, "Die Gegensatze Ubergange: ostdeutsche Autoren Anfang der neunziger Jahre." The Germanic Review 4 (1994): 146-55; Eigler, Friederike and Peter C. Pfeiffer, eds., Cultural Transformations in the New Germany: American and German Perspectives (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993); Heukenkamp, Ursula, "Eine Geschichte oder viele Geschichten der deutschen Literatur seit 1945? Griinde und Gegengriinde." Zeitschrift fur Germanistik 1 (1995): 22-37; Mittmann, Elizabeth, "Locating a Public Sphere: Some Reflections on Writers and Offentlichkeit in the GDR." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1995): 19-38; Vogt, Jochen, ' 'Have the Intellectuals Failed? On the Sociopolitical Claims and the Influence of Literary Intellectuals in West Germany." New German Critique 58 (1993): 3-25. FRIEDERIKE EIGLER F r i e n d s h i p — s e e : Freundschaftskult F u t u r i s m ( 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 4 4 ) . This was an artistic and literary movement centered in Italy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto," which sparked the movement, was published in Le Figaro in 1909 with international repercussions. Futurism dismissed romantic notions of art, women, and society: it condemned museums as "graveyards" and called for a total ban for 10 years on representations of nudes because they were "boring." Instead, Futurists hoped to create a new, masculinized form of art based on modernity, technology, speed, struggle, and conquest. Two points from the original manifesto summarize the movement's ideas about women: " W e will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedombringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman" and " W e will fight moralism, feminism, [and] every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice." Futurism did have progressive aspects, although these are also somewhat problematic in relation to feminism. Through their brand of modernism, the Futurists hoped to liberate both men and women from bourgeois morality and the family structure and to eliminate the "ownership of women" and other property. " L ' a m o r e , " the collection of romantic lies between the sexes, was to be replaced by lust, or free expression of sexual desires. One of the few woman Futurists, Valentine de Saint-Point, wrote the 1913 "Futurist Manifesto of Lust." Although she claims that men and women are equal in lust, she emphasizes the importance of a strong man attaining his carnal potential and claims:
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"The satisfaction of their lust is the conqueror's due. After a battle in which men have died, it is normal for the victors, proven in war, to turn to rape in the conquered land, so that life may be re-created." The Futurists considered prostitution a preferable state to marriage, as could be seen in the oft-quoted assertion of Roderich Hellman that the married woman could be compared to a slave bonded forever, the prostitute to a free working woman with an open contract. The first manifesto's "scorn for woman" was perpetuated on a different level by Marinetti, who in "War, Sole Hygiene of the World" (1911-1915) supports giving women the vote because, being inferior in character and intelligence, they would lead the country into a "slough of pacifism, cowardice, clerical and moral hypocrisy," which would provoke an enormous Futurist revolution. Although there were very few female futurist artists outside of Saint-Point and the important Russian futurist artist Natalia Goncharova, certain women such as Madame Rachilde, the Parisian editor of Mercure, and Loie Fuller, a well-known dancer, were admired by Futurists. In addition, the "simultaneous dresses" of designer Sonia Delaunay directly influenced futurist notions of design. In Germany, Futurism found its greatest champion in Herwarth Walden, who exhibited Italian Futurist paintings in his gallery, sent a Futurist exhibition on tour through Germany, arranged for the sale of paintings, and published the most important manifestos and texts in translation. Access to Futurism in Germany was widespread, and both Georg Grosz's early paintings and the work of Franz Marc were influenced by Italian Futurism. Marc even wrote a brief article defending the Futurists published in Der Sturm. Not surprisingly, Futurism found as few female proponents in Germany as it had within Italy and France. See also: Prostitution; Technology. References: Apollonio, Umbro, ed., Futurist Manifestos (New York: Viking Press, 1970); d'Harnancourt, Anne, Futurism and the International Avant-Garde (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1980); Tisdall, Caroline, and Angelo Bozzolla, Futurism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). STEFANA LEFKO
G Galante D i c h t u n g . In the late 17th century "galant" described whatever was in vogue, but when the collective term "galante Dichtung" came to be used in 1724, this style of poetry had already lost much of its attraction. The contribution of women to this poetic style is likewise marked by belatedness. Christiana Mariana von Ziegler's last collection of writings (1739) shows galante forms: odes, madrigals, poetic letters (including heroides), and cantatas. Ziegler's work, while formally indebted to the galante tradition, is also informed by Enlightenment values, such as usefulness and lack of affectation, in contrast to the deliberate artificiality and fabricated content of traditional galante Dichtung. The extremely complex and formal nature of galante Dichtung, which was itself a sign of the poet's erudition and limited its production to the most educated class, precluded women from composing this kind of poetry in its heyday, the late 17th century. Though women were ostensibly the theme, the real subject was poetry itself: poets vied with each other to demonstrate their rhetorical dexterity, their literary connoisseurship, and their professed appreciation of sensuality and women's bodies (e.g., long catalogs enumerating the physical charms of the beloved; or a catalog of similes praising one body part). Familiarity with foreign models was essential, with many poems containing direct translations from French, Italian, Greek, or Latin poetry. Galante Dichtung was predominantly poetry produced within, and for, a group of initiates; much of it was not published during the poets' lifetimes. The late 17th-century attitude toward poetry is reflected here: it was not considered an occupation, but rather a pursuit for one's idle hours, composed with the sole
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purpose of amusing oneself, displaying one's connoisseurship, passing time in a witty manner—Gracian's ideal of the man of leisure. This traditional literary posture of otium was a stance that women never had full opportunity to appropriate, although Ziegler bows to this convention in her prefaces by speaking of her poetry as "Zeitvertreib." A female poet with requisite education and formal training might have transformed galante Dichtung into a vehicle for female expression, turning the objectification of women that is at the heart of the genre on its head. However, from the 1720s on, the change in literary expression toward a "natural" style, mediated by men who were conversant with ideas that stemmed from French and English writers, would have obviated such a transformation. Although women have been prolific poets since the Middle Ages, galante Dichtung highlights possible reasons for their difficulties in participating in highly stylized literary forms: their exclusion from the dialogue of literary history. See also: Enlightenment; Ode; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. Reference: Waldberg, Max Freiherr von, Die galante Lyrik (Strassburg: Trubner, 1885). ELIZABETH POWERS GDR Literature ( 1 9 4 9 - 1 9 9 0 ) . This is the literature produced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the eastern, socialist part of divided Germany, from 1949 to 1990. The underlying principle in the foundation of socialist society is equality. Women in the GDR had a legal position of equality in the workplace. In the private sphere, however, more traditional gender roles were upheld. In keeping with socialist ideology, women were a vital part of workers' as well as intellectual circles, and they were very active in literary organizations. The 1970s characterized a boom for women writers and the proliferation of feminist ideas. The GDR was founded on October 7, 1949, as an antifascist state. As the basis for its legitimation, the GDR intended to establish new social conditions in an effort to prevent a recurrence of fascism. After the end of World War II the majority of the writers returning from exile emigrated to the Soviet-occupied zone. During their exile, these writers began a literary program of resistance to fascism. Upon emigrating to the GDR they formed the Kulturbund (July 4, 1945), an organization that represented the union between political ideology and cultural policy. Since the unification of Germany in 1990 the term "antifascist" has become problematic. The GDR itself employed repressive measures in both political and cultural arenas, causing suspicions that the state increasingly used its antifascist stance to justify its own repressive tactics. Anna Seghers (pseudonym for Netty Reiling) returned to the GDR in 1947. Her fame and her commitment to socialism resulted in her obtaining powerful positions within the GDR's cultural politics (until 1978, she served as president of the Writers' Union).
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In 1950, GDR writers organized and formed the Writer's Union (Schriftstellerverband). In March 1951 the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) stipulated the cultural development of the new society as one of its main goals. Throughout the 1950s, GDR literature rigorously followed the Soviet aesthetic dogma of socialist realism. Among writing women, Seghers was prolific; Brigitte Reimann and Irmtraud Morgner published their first prose texts. The first Bitterfeld Conference (1959) shifted the focus of literature to the working class. The main impetus for the conference was the desire to achieve a socialist cultural revolution, producing a literature that would find resonance in the working class. The conference promoted a two-step process, with writers entering factories (in order to better represent working and social conditions in their texts) and workers writing about their own experiences. Reimann's Ankunft im Alltag (1961) is a direct result of her work experiences in Hoyerswerda and provided the name, Ankunftsliteratur, for this period, signaling the arrival of socialism. During this initial phase, GDR literature emphasized the positive aspects of socialism, depicting a model society. Women's equality was described only in the productive, work-related sphere. This trend continued into the 1960s. Political events throughout the 1960s, particularly the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the participation of GDR officers in the invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, increased the writers' disillusionment with the socialist state. This same period saw a tightening of government control over writers, while the literature embraced political themes more critically. Christa Wolf entered the literary scene with Der geteilte Himmel (1963). As the 1960s progressed, writers became increasingly dissatisfied with the apparent contradictions in their society, and many texts clearly expressed the writers' desire for change. Beginning with Wolf's Nachdenken iiber Christa T. (1968), women writers focused repeatedly on the inconsistencies in the construction of gender relationships in GDR society. Changing literary traditions ushered in a new era in the 1970s. In 1971, Erich Honecker succeeded Walter Ulbricht as general secretary of the SED. Honecker proclaimed that aesthetic taboos would no longer exist. This liberalization of cultural policy spurred a new interpretation of heritage (Erbedebatte). During this "thaw" (Tauwetter), many women writers began to gain recognition in cultural circles. The year 1974 witnessed the publication of important prose works by women, all of which examined the question of women's emancipation: Morgner's Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz', Gerti Tetzner's Karen W.\ Reimann's Franziska Linkerhand. These texts, similar to Wolf's Nachdenken iiber Christa T, questioned not only the role of women in society but also the role of women in literature. The contradictions between women's legal rights and the actual state of emancipation in the private sphere were widely thematized. Documentary work was also begun at this time. One of the most important volumes is Maxie Wander's Guten Morgen, du Schone (1977), a collection of 17 interviews with GDR women who describe their everyday lives. In the 1980s,
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women writers expanded their topics to include issues of marginality. In addition to portraying women and women's experience, their literature began to focus on the elderly, on physical and mental illness, and on different sexual orientations. The expatriation of the oppositional GDR songwriter and poet Wolf Biermann in 1976 produced a crisis for GDR writers; 12 signed an original letter of protest that Neues Deutschland, the official party newspaper, refused to print. The letter subsequently appeared in the West and resulted in the tightening of publication policies. This led to the (often forced) exile of many of the GDR's best writers, among them Sarah Kirsch, who left in 1977. Throughout the 1980s, literary production clashed with the socialist state's vision for literature. The decade witnessed periods of openness, controlled censorship, and the demise of the GDR. Critical topics included technology and environmental concerns (Wolf's Storfall, 1987; Monika Maron's Flugasche, 1981); and patriarchal versus matriarchal society (Wolf's Kassandra, 1983). At the 10th Writers' Congress (1987) writers expressed their mounting concerns about contradictions within society, and the first public remarks about censorship were voiced. Shortly following the congress, a relaxation of censorship occurred (1988). Despite the critical nature of their literature, GDR writers did not play a significant role in the events of the fall of 1989, with one notable exception: the speech of November 4, 1989, in which Christa Wolf and others advocated democratic socialism. GDR literature as a category is controversial. The GDR no longer exists, but its writers continue to write. The final year of the GDR was marred by controversy after the publication of Wolf's Was bleibt (1990), a debate that began in the West German feuilleton and continued as an intellectual debate about the complicitous role of intellectuals and authors in the GDR regime. See also: Ankunftsliteratur; Documentary Literature; Exile Literature; FRG Literature (since 1990); Marxist Theories; Morgner, Irmtraud; Protokolle; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Technology; Unification, German; Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen, du Schone', Wolf, Christa. References: Bammer, Angelika, "The American Feminist Reception of GDR Literature (with a Glance at West Germany)." GDR Bulletin 16.2 (1990): 18-24; Eigler, Friederike, and Peter C. Pfeiffer, eds., Cultural Transformations in the New Germany: American and German Perspectives (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993); Emmerich, Wolfgang, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR: 1945-1988, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1989); Fox, Thomas C, Border Crossings: An Introduction to East German Prose (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); Goodbody, Axel, and Dennis Tate, eds., Geist und Macht: Writers and the State in the GDR (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992); Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Patricia Herminghouse, eds., Literatur und Literaturtheorie in der DDR (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981); Rosenberg, Dorothy, "Introduction: Women, Social Policy, and Literature in the German Democratic Republic." Daughters of Eve: Women's Writing from the German Democratic Republic. Ed. Nancy Lukens and Dorothy Rosenberg (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993) 1-22. CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING
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Gebrauchsliteratur—see: Erbauungsliteratur; Gelegenheitsdichtung Gedankenlyrik. This subgenre of German poetry (also Ideenlyrik) consists of philosophical, intellectualized poems that have an underlying idea as their unifying focus or theme. The poems of Friedrich Schiller are considered the epitome of this type of poetry; however, predecessors as well as later poets have written pieces that can be classified as Gedankenlyrik. The term itself is controversial and has been the subject of debate among literary scholars. Problematic is the standard notion of lyric poetry as the expression of the author's inner feelings and subjective experiences, a definition that excludes the exploration of complex thought processes from the genre. Also debatable is the differentiation of Gedankenlyrik, didactic poetry, and Erlebnislyrik. In German intellectual and literary history, the demarcation between thinking and feeling is more pronounced than in Anglo-American spheres, where there is no exact equivalent of, or translation for, this concept. Women authors have not often been associated with the category of Gedankenlyrik since women and their writings have traditionally been linked to the emotional and corporeal spheres of existence, while men and their works inhabit the realm of the intellectual. During the 18th and 19th centuries, when the major male poets of Gedankenlyrik were producing their texts, women authors concentrated on other, less acknowledged genres, including letters, journals, and novels. Their poetry appeared frequently interspersed amid prose texts (as with the Romantic writers), rather than as a genre chosen exclusively for itself. Female poets whose work has been connected to Gedankenlyrik include Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg and Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, in previous centuries, and the 20th-century postwar writers Nelly Sachs, Marie-Luise Kaschnitz, and Ingeborg Bachmann. But others, like Sibylla Schwarz, Sophie Mereau, Louise Brachmann, and Karoline von Giinderrode, should be added to the earlier poets who wrote examples of Gedankenlyrik. In the 20th century, the poetry of both Gertrud Kolmar and Ursula Krechel exhibits characteristics that can arguably be likened to Gedankenlyrik. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Erlebnisdichtung Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Mereau, Sophie; Sonnet. References: Asmuth, Bernhard, "Das gedankliche Gedicht." Neun Kapitel Lyrik. Ed. Gerhard Kopf (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1984) 7-34; Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart: Gedichte und Lebensldufe (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978), ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen: Vom Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1988). AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER
G e l e g e n h e i t s d i c h t u n g . This genre (occasional poetry) honors occasions such as battles, victories, and coronations but also baptisms, birthdays, weddings, deaths, and exchanges of presents. Defined by its purpose rather than by its form, the genre was practiced primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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Although recent scholarship fails to mention the contributions of women to this genre, much of what women wrote in the 17th and 18th centuries can be considered occasional poetry. In fact, it was one of the more sanctioned genres for women, based on an appreciation for those poetic products that did not lay claim to superior quality but added luster to an occasion by honoring it in verse, and that were usually complimentary to their recipients. In the early 17th century, occasional poetry by women consisted primarily of rhymed verses with an often devotional content commemorating the death of a family member, to be included as appendixes to printed funeral sermons. Rarely did women write poetry honoring political events or the actions of ruling nobility, as did male poets; Anna Owena Hoyers' enthusiastic poem about the Swedish king Gustav Adolph (1632) is an exception. The latter half of the 17th century saw an increased participation by women in this genre as the result of several concurrent trends. From a literature that primarily honored events in the life of the ruling aristocracy, occasional poetry developed into a genre in which burgher events were also found worthy of commemoration, bringing occasional poetry into a sphere with which women were acknowledged to be familiar: birthdays, weddings, funerals, the exchange of gifts, and so on, a sort of poetic emancipation of burgher women, albeit in a genre that was increasingly considered trivial. This "burgherization" of occasional poetry coincided with an advocacy by some male authors that women should be granted a measure of learnedness (Georg Philip Harsdorffer, Johann Christoph Gottsched, and others), although the opinions as to the degree and nature of learnedness differed widely. The writing of poetry was considered evidence of such learnedness. The growing acceptance of women as conversation partners prompted the admission of women to some of the Sprachgesellschaften, primarily the Pegnesischer Blumenorden in Niirnberg. In the confined sphere of family and Sprachgesellschaften, women found a forum for their poetic endeavors dealing with familial and social occurrences. Although much of it remained anonymous and unpublished, it was largely on the basis of religious and occasional poetry that some women attained the rank of kaiserlich gekronte Poetinnen, for instance, Anna M. Specht Pfeffer. For much of the 18th century, women continued to write verse in this mode. Most of the women poets of the 18th century, for example, Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann, and Anna Luisa Karsch, achieved their fame largely through occasional poetry. Karsch in particular personifies occasional poetry, although, simultaneously, her contemporary reception signifies the end of the development. From humble beginnings (her parents were small farmers), she became the darling of Berlin society with her ability to produce rhymed, impromptu verses for any occasion. This allowed her to make a—albeit sparse—living. She is, therefore, the first poetess to make a living from her art by writing for a market. However, it was precisely her ability to produce immediate poetry honoring time-bound occurrences, a panegyric journalism, that made a lasting appreciation of her poetry difficult. The changing
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mood toward occasional poetry and the increasing conviction of the time, favoring a basic education for women but looking askance at what it considered learned women, also worked against the spokeswoman role, which occasional poetry had afforded its poetesses. See also: Erudite Woman; Hoyers, Anna Owena; Language Societies; Ode; Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Heuser, Magdalena, " 'Das Musenchor mit neuer Ehre zieren.' Schriftstellerinnen zur Zeit der Fruhaufklarung." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 293-313; Ketelsen, Uwe, "Poesie und burgerlicher Kulturanspruch. Die Kritik an der rhetorischen Gelegenheitspoesie in der fruhburgerlichen Literaturtradition." Lessing Yearbook 8 (1976): 89-107; Schlaffer, Hannelore, "Naturpoesie im Zeitalter der Aufklarung, Anna Luisa Karsch (1722-1791)." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 313-24; Woods, Jean, and Maria Furstenwald, Women of the German Speaking Lands (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984). CORNELIA NIEKUS MOORE G e l e h r t e — s e e : Erudite Woman G e n d e r . From a feminist perspective, gender is generally understood to be a social construct, a culturally shaped group of acquired attributes and behaviors, mental and emotional characteristics, and roles distributed unequally between the female and the male. Most feminists question presumed natural gender characteristics and demand recognition of the arbitrariness of superimposed gender roles and full access to the production of cultural narratives. By contrast, traditional gender assumptions are based on a two-sex model of biological differences used to classify animals and humans as female or male. The term " s e x " refers to the particular physiology of a person. In German, the term Geschlecht is used to refer to both sex and gender, without differentiation between the biological and the social. In 1952, Simone de Beauvoir argued that "one is not born, but becomes a woman" in the process of socialization, highlighting the fact that gender roles are a learned quality, an assigned status, and part of an ideology that attributes to women a status different from men's. " W o m a n " was, and continues to be, identified as "different from," "Other," or "not man." The body is a carrier and register of culture. It is a historically, culturally, and politically inscribed entity, a focal point for social discipline, containment, and, in the case of women, disempowerment. When seen as an inscribed body, ideologies about women's bodies such as "maternal instincts" and "natural heterosexuality" can be questioned and placed in relation to the dominant narratives. The relation between sex and gender is a central question for contemporary feminism. Initially, the distinction between anatomical sex and sociocultural gender was employed to identify and question the performance of femininity and masculinity. Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble (1990) that sex itself
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is produced. Not only is gender created in cultural performance, but sex, too, exists only as a result of social practices. According to Butler, the sex/gender distinction collapses. Some approaches within German Frauen- and Geschlechterstudien also focus on the particular performance of gender. Further, the gay and bisexual communities complicate bipolar conceptualizations. A new view of multiple gender identities is replacing narratives of heterosexuality and the traditional perception of gender roles. Donna Haraway has developed the notion of woman as cyborg, a being who is fully capable of reading the metanarratives of a given culture, who functions without innocence, and who is completely artificial. Even without being a cyborg, women—and men—can question the assumptions of Western patriarchies by analyzing gender-specific socialization and the history of gender roles, patriarchal language structures, maternity, dominance, intellectual capabilities, and sexuality. See also: Essentialism; Gender Theories, History of; Gender Transformation; Geschlechtscharaktere; Homosexuality; Identity Theories; Lesbian Theories. References: Adler, Doris, Die Wurzel der Polaritaten. Geschlechtertheorie zwischen Naturrecht und Natur der Frau (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1992); Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1953); Beer, Ursula, Geschlecht, Struktur, Geschichte: Soziale Konstituierung des Geschlechterverhaltnisses (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1990); Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Geller, Thomas, ed., Bisexuality: A Reader and Sourcebook (Ojai, CA: Times Change Press, 1990); Honegger, Claudia, Die Ordnung der Geschlechter: Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen und das Weib. 17501850 (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1991); Lindemann, Gesa, Dasparadoxe Geschlecht. Transsexualitat im Spannungsfeld von Korper, Leib und GefUhl (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1993); Loeb Adler, Leonore, ed., International Handbook on Gender Roles (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).
MARITA ROM ANN Gender Studies—see: Feminist Theory, German; Lesbian Theories; Postfeminism; Subjectivity Gender T h e o r i e s , History of. Along with the rise of the middle class, the focus on the individual, and the decline of the feudal system, theories emerged that sought to delimit and define "feminine" and "masculine" in a philosophical, scientific, and political context. Modern notions of sexuality and the ' 'opposite" sex originated in 18th-century Europe. The increasing specialization and demands of work outside the home led to a greater differentiation between professional and family roles. Furthermore, there was an increasing contrast between bourgeois promises of equality for all human beings and laws that sanctioned the inequality of women. Ostensibly advocating family stability and harmony, the writings connecting gender roles to sexual difference helped le-
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gitimate male social, economic, and political privileges by defining women as beings unfit for life outside the home. The women's emancipation movements of the 19th and 20th centuries have revealed the ideological bases for viewing gender characteristics as natural, but the idea of innate character differences still persists and has helped prevent the real emancipation of all humans. Several early 18th-century writings advocated women's education as a means for attaining autonomy and developing morals. Gender differences were at first linked to social class and household duties. The theologian Georg Christian Lehms called for women's education in the preface to his Teutschlands galante Poetinnen mit ihren sinnreichen und netten Proben (1715). Other supporters of women's education were Johann Caspar Eberti with Eroffnetes Cabinet defi gelehrten Frauen-Zimmers (1706) and Christian Franz Paullini in Das Hochund Wohlgelahrte Teutsche Frauenzimmer (1715). In the novel Das Leben der Schwedischen Grdfin von G. (1747-1748), Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert advocates promoting the intellect and the emotions as a means for bringing both sexes closer together. Christian Wolff, in contrast, calls for more education for men, whom he regards as superior to women, in Verniinftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen und insonderheit dem gemeinen Wesen (1712). His views parallel the ensuing predominant notions of "natural" male superiority, which were heavily influenced by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Emile (1762), for example, Rousseau's assertion that women's main tasks were easing men's lives and providing them with sexual pleasure helped to solidify the restrictions against women in public life. His warnings that women must be restrained from deviating from their proper role helped establish heterosexual marriage as the site for developing one's "natural" gender traits. Other arguments for women's remaining at home included Immanuel Kant's reasoning that marriage and men's dominance in the home were necessary for containing women's sexuality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte contended in Grundlagen des Naturrechts (1796) that women cannot be full citizens, since their gender traits of love and submission prevent them from attaining individuality. Further, Adam Muller saw marriage as an opportunity for merging gender differences, while keeping distinctions intact. In contrast, Friedrich Schlegel's support of women's leaving the household to develop their poetic nature more fully harks back to the earlier calls for women's education. Schlegel, however, saw women as typifying poetry, as symbols of a harmonic existence. Eighteenth-century notions of the feminine as passive, poetic, and nurturing were projections of men's wishes. Women were regarded as a means of becoming whole, as complements to men. Among the women rejecting such ideas were Dorothea Christiane Leporin-Erxleben, in Grundliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das Weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren abhalten (1742), and Rahel Varnhagen, who emphasized the importance of human rights and autonomy in her letters. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel's strong defense of women's equal rights, in Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1793), was not taken seriously by other male theorists. As marriage came to be viewed as a
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bond of romantic love rather than a contract, more women attempted to break out of their prescribed role. This explains, to some extent, the continued justifications of gender differences on the part of threatened male intellectuals. In "Katechismus der Vernunft fiir edle Frauen" (1798), Friedrich Schleiermacher portrayed women's so-called greater capacity to love as evidence that they should continue in their role as caretakers for men. Georg Friedrich Hegel opined that women were whole by nature and therefore must remain within the family in order to assist men in overcoming their divided natures. Otherwise, social chaos would ensue. For similar reasons, Wilhelm von Humboldt felt that women should not receive the same education as men. Not surprisingly, traditional methods of educating men and women as well as their differing work assignments contributed to the development of just those skills praised in the various treatises on gender and character. However, the image of woman represented in those texts corresponded more to male fantasies of the nonmale "other" than to empirical observations of women. In the 1860s women, especially those who had been involved in the 1848 Revolution, agitated more openly against these repressing philosophies, rejected gender constructs, and focused on women's rights to work. Louise Otto-Peters, for example, attacked the hypocrisy of the idyllic image of family in Das Recht der Frauen aufErwerb (1866) and Frauenleben im Deutschen Reich (1876). However, in the 1870s, as the social climate became more conservative, the women's movement temporarily retreated from its revolutionary fervor. Influenced by the pedagogical theories of Friedrich Frobel, bourgeois feminists developed the theory of ' 'geistige Mutterschaft," according to which women have a social nurturing role analogous to their supposed familial one. By expanding on the female stereotype, they were able to argue successfully in favor of women's entering the workforce in certain fields, such as education. Early 20th-century male intellectuals also embraced the idea of woman's role as that of civilizer. Both Karl Kraus and Sigmund Freud, in different manners, undergirded dualistic gender roles by explaining culture as dependent on the "feminine." Increasing calls for woman suffrage aroused a male anxiety that expressed itself as the fear of losing the feminine aspects of society, since women who voted would be like men. At the same time, advances in science enabled many gender theorists to strengthen their cases for continued discrimination against women by relying on scientific "proof." Richard Krafft-Ebing claimed, in Psychopathia Sexualis (1893), that there were masculine and feminine brain centers and that women had a weaker libido than men. Otto Weininger in his notorious Geschlecht und Charakter (1903) used pseudoscientific formulas to demonstrate his theory of cellular bisexuality. He identified sexuality with the feminine principle and rationality and morality with the masculine, claiming that too much of the feminine element made a person immoral and weak and that the most feminine people were women, Jews, and homosexuals. Hence he called for the eradication of the feminine principle in favor of a chaste maleness.
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Ernst Mobius, who saw an inverse relationship between sexuality and intellect, proclaimed in Uber den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (1900) that women who studied would have weak and sickly children. Ricarda Huch spoke out against the illogic of his reasoning in her advocation of a woman's right to study and work, but her own essay on gender, ' 'Natur und Geist als die Wurzel des Lebens und der Kunst" (1914) continues the German idealistic tradition of gender stereotypes by stating that gender polarity is analogous to the dualism of nature (woman) and spirit (man). Her ambiguous feelings about women's emancipation were similar to those of her male colleagues who feared social degeneration with the masculinization of woman. Max Horkheimer, in the 1930s, also postulated that the family, centered around a nurturing woman, was a refuge from the social ills of capitalism. Not until the 1970s was there a widespread questioning of gender constructs. The feminist movement rejected previous connections between sex and gender as well as heterosexual marriage as the foundation of society. Since then, feminist research in the humanities and in the social sciences, as well as feminist literary texts, has continued to critically explore the long tradition of misogynist and asymmetrical gender theories. See also: Erudite Woman; Essentialism/Constructionism; Gender; Geschlechtscharaktere; Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von: Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung; Leporin, Dorothea: Griindliche Untersuchung; Marriage; Otto-Peters, Louise; Revolution, German (1848); University Education, Women's; Women's Movement. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchung en zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Fischer-Homburger, Esther, "Herr und Weib." Krankheit Frau und andere Arbeiten zur Medizingeschichte der Frau (Berne: Huber, 1979); Frevert, Ute, ed., Burgerinnen und Burger: Geschlechterverhaltnisse im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988); Hausen, Karin, "Die Polarisierung der 'Geschlechtscharaktere'—Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben." Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Ed. Werner Conze (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976) 363-393; Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Scholz, Hannelore, Widerspriiche im biirgerlichen Frauenbild (Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag, 1992); van Dulmen, Andrea, ed., Frauen: Ein historisches Lesebuch (Munich: Beck, 1989). SUSAN C. ANDERSON
Gender Transformation/Geschlechtertausch. This is a literary theme in texts that focus on the sexual change (from man to woman or from woman to man) of a main character. Rooted in both Greek and Oriental mythology, gender transformation literature seeks to overcome the historical, physical, and psychological gaps between the sexes. The transposed gender role enables the transformed protagonist to perceive society from the point of view of the opposite sex. Despite outward appearances, however, these transformed characters retain their gender experience as the root of their identity.
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German male authors have treated the subject on numerous occasions, including Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde (1799), Bertolt Brecht's Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1942), and Peter Hacks' Omphale (1970). One of the better-known modern adaptations of the theme is Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928). The theme rose to prominence in GDR literature in the 1970s with the publication of Blitz aus heiterem Himmel (1975), which included four short stories by men (Giinter de Bruyn, Gotthold Gloger, Karl-Heinz Jakobs, Rolf Schneider), three by women (Edith Anderson, Sarah Kirsch, Christa Wolf), and one essay (Annemarie Auer). These texts criticized patriarchal society and the dehumanization of society through technology and science. The use of the fantastic depicts social problems in a whimsical light and disturbs or distorts the expected development of social evolution. Publication of gender transformation stories by three East German women writers, Kirsch, Wolf, and Irmtraud Morgner (Geschlechtertausch. Drei Erzahlungen, 1980) in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) further emphasized the importance of emancipation for women in socialist countries. Sarah Kirsch's story "Blitz aus heiterem Himmel" demonstrates the inability of men and women to bond: the protagonist establishes a solid, equal relationship with her male friend only after transformation. In Christa Wolf's "Selbstversuch" the female protagonist interrupts her gender transformation experiment because she notices the tendency to develop male thought patterns. The text reveals linguistic problems, namely, the struggle between men and women to express themselves within a single language system. This narrative represents Wolf's first attempt at grappling explicitly with the questions of female identity. Irmtraud Morgner's "Gute Botschaft der Valeska in 73 Strophen," which initially remained unpublished in the GDR, depicts emotions from the "other" male side—the transformed protagonist is able to form relationships with women, which she experiences through the underlying female identity. See also: GDR Literature; Gender; Morgner, Irmtraud; Wolf, Christa. References: Anderson, Edith, ed., Blitz aus heiterem Himmel (Rostock: Hinstorff, 1975); Hurrelmann, Bettina, ed., Man mufite ein Mann sein. . . ? Interpretationen und Kontroversen zu Geschlechtertauschgeschichten in der Frauenliteratur (Diisseldorf: Schwann, 1987).
CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Genre, Literary—see: Authorship; Canon, Literary; Reception Germanistik—see: Canon, Literary; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; German Studies; Reception; Sentimentality; Volksdichtung; Volkskunde German-Jewish Literature. between any writer's identity and definition pertaining to a body of Jewish women have contributed,
The complexities that govern the relationship her work forbid the formulation of a narrow texts as diverse as German-Jewish literature. and continue to contribute to, all forms of
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literary expression. Reflecting the tremendous changes in the psychosocial meanings of female Jewish identity within German-speaking Europe from the preEnlightenment era to the caesura of the Shoah and beyond, the texts of Jewish women writers often take issue with their marginalization as Jews, as women, and as intellectuals. Written in Jewish-German, the autobiographical account of Hamburg-born merchant Gluckel von Hameln marks the beginnings of modern Jewish writing in Germany. The chronological narrative, addressed to the author's children, shows the writer as a resourceful businesswoman and a devout Jew who traded in textiles and jewels throughout Northern Europe. The late 18th-century salon, where leading intellectuals gathered to discuss literary matters, originated with Jewish women like Rahel Levin-Varnhagen, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz. Part of a small economic elite and members of the first generation of Jews to assimilate into Christian-German society, these women are the authors of an extensive body of highly expressive letters, in which they reflect on their complex positions between emancipation and the social exclusions they faced as women and as Jews. Rebecca Friedlander' s controversial roman a clef Schmerz der Liebe (1810) gives an insider's description of the Berlin salon culture. Schlegel's novel Florentin (1801), though narrated from a male perspective, is considered a female counterpart to Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde (1799). In her autobiography, Fanny Lewald, a prolific writer who took an interest in questions of woman's rights, narrates the difficult story of female and Jewish emancipation. Many of these writers, translators, and critics, the majority of whom converted to Christianity, published their works under pseudonyms or their Christian husbands' names, a telling indication of the limitations imposed on public (female and) Jewish expression. Under the impact of the great social movements of the 19th century, increased Jewish assimilation, and the emergence of political anti-Semitism, a number of Jewish writers such as the feminist Hedwig Dohm, the social activist and founder of the Judischer Frauenbund (1904); Bertha Pappenheim; the socialist Emma Adler; and the poet Hedwig Lachmann combined political activity with artistic creativity. In their works, these writers demand equal access to civil rights such as education, health care, and the political arena for women, Jews, and workers. By contrast, Paula Winkler-Buber, a Zionist and convert to Judaism, interwove themes of religiosity, mysticism, and female sexuality into stories of women's suffering and perseverance. An outstanding expressionist poet, Eke Lasker-Schiiler created powerful visions of alternative realities in texts reverberating with religious-mythological motifs. Persecution, exile, death, and survival are the recurring themes in the works of Jewish writers who became victims of the Nazis. Images of death, the contamination of the German language by Nazi phraseology, and the writer's relationship to the Jewish people and the Jewish religion are key issues in the works of poets Gertrud Kolmar, Nelly Sachs, and Rose Auslander. Novelist Elisabeth Langgasser explored both Jewish and Christian religious motives in a
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mythological vein. Hilde Domin, whose poems thematize the experience of exile, and Use Aichinger both work toward a German language beyond Nazi usage. For postwar German-Jewish writers, the relationship to the generation of Holocaust survivors ties in with their situation in a society that treats Jews as an invisible minority. In her fragmented novels, Esther Dischereit explores the complexities of female Jewish identity in Germany. Born in East Germany, Barbara Honigmann, who lives and works in Strasbourg, uses geographical distance also in her work to reassess the possibility of Jewish life in Germany; Katja Behrens addresses the stigma attached to the survivor. In her autobiography welter leben (1992), Ruth Kliiger narrates the story of her youth in Vienna, survival of several camps including Auschwitz, and her adult life in the United States. Many contemporary Jewish women authors produce structurally and linguistically innovative texts to explore new locations and meanings of female Jewish identity. See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Exile Literature; Expressionism; Holocaust Literature; Lewald, Fanny; Mysticism; National Socialism; Salonism. References: Dick, Jutta, and Barbara Hahn, eds., Von einer Welt in die andere. Judinnen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna: L.C. Brandstetter, 1993); Dick, Jutta, and Marina Sassenberg, eds., Judische Frauen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Lexikon zu Leben und Werk (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993); Lappin, Elena, Jewish Voices, German Words. Growing Up Jewish in Postwar Germany and Austria (North Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1994); Lixl-Purcell, Andreas, ed., Women of Exile. German-Jewish Autobiographies since 1933 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Stephan, Inge, Sabine Schilling, and Sigrid Weigel, ed., Judische Kultur und Weiblichkeit in der Moderne (Cologne: Bohlau, 1993). KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER
German S t u d i e s . In its most general sense, the term "German studies" circumscribes the academic study of things German—from Germanistik to Landeskunde in North America; more recently, it has been used to describe developments within the field from the 1970s onward that fall under the broad rubric of interdisciplinarity. At one level of denotation, German studies refers to a move within American Germanistik away from the earlier exclusive focus on "high" culture and reliance on German paradigms (preservation of culture; concept of Bildung)', at another, related level, it refers to a variety of new, emerging models of organization within academic institutions. Both developments reflect a shifting function in the study of German language, literature, and culture in the United States and Canada and thus address pragmatic concerns. A third level of development can be found in the growing attempts since the late 1980s to analyze and theorize these changes and to incorporate new insights into research as well. It is widely acknowledged that feminism has played a central role in these developments and offers a potentially fruitful paradigm for the future of German studies. Several different impulses have contributed to these changes. In contrast to cultural studies, German studies was initially driven, in large part, by institu-
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tional interests and pedagogical exigencies. The abolition of language requirements at many North American colleges and universities in the 1970s forced departments to revise course offerings in order to attract students; the traditional monocultural, literature-oriented model was increasingly recognized as an inadequate framework for an Auslandsgermanistik that would be relevant to the North American context. Curricular changes have emerged in great variety: German departments have become German studies departments; traditional literature tracks of study are supplemented by interdisciplinary German studies tracks within existing German departments; new interdisciplinary programs are created alongside and between departments of German, history, political science, and others. In 1976 a significant step toward a model for interdisciplinary research was taken with the founding of the German Studies Association, comprising predominantly Germanists and historians, with smaller numbers of political scientists, philosophers, and others. These shifts in the North American academic landscape are reinforced by financial incentives from both inside and out: increasingly, American universities and foundations reward interdisciplinarity in research proposals; German government agencies (most notable among them the DAAD [Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst]), which have a clear interest in the promotion of Germany's profile in a unified Europe, offer significant financial support of projects that link cultural and other spheres. Since the late 1980s, scholars have begun to research these changes—and to strengthen their conceptual grounding—within the context of intellectual developments in the humanities and social sciences as a whole. This reorientation coincides roughly with the embracing of other inter- or cross-disciplinary efforts in the United States and Canada, such as cultural studies and New Historicism; particularly attractive is the attention these approaches give to ethnography, cultural anthropology, and discourse theory, which are seen as potentially relevant for the cross-cultural tasks facing those engaged in work on Germany from abroad and thus from the perspective of a different culture(s). Similar to cultural studies, German studies in this sense of the term partakes of a healthy dose of critique; integral to the working out of its theoretical framework is the (self-) examination of Germanistik/Germm studies as it has unfolded in North America and the role it has played in the affirmation and/or critique of its object of study. Such an approach includes reflection upon the situation within which the work is carried out. In this context, the emergence of feminism within the academic sphere is significant. With the founding of the Coalition of Women in German in 1975, the influence of the women's movement and the subsequent growth of feminist work within Germanistik became institutionally visible. Feminism has contributed greatly to models of interdisciplinary German studies, with its persistent focus on inclusiveness and on breaking down institutional and other boundaries. See also: Canon, Literary; Cultural Studies; New Historicism; Women in German (U.S.).
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References: Germanistik as German Studies: Interdisciplinary Theories and Methods. Theme issue of German Quarterly 62.2 (Spring 1989); Suhr, Heidrun, "German Studies in North America: Contexts and Perspectives." Praludien: kanadisch-deutsche Dialoge. Ed. Burkhardt Krause (Munich: Iudicium-Verlag, 1992) 105-19; Trommler, Frank, ed., Germanistik in den USA: Neue Entwicklungen und Methoden (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989).
ELIZABETH MITTMAN Geschlechterkampf. This term, meaning "battle of the sexes," can refer to a generalized, existential discord between the two sexes or to a personal struggle between one man and woman, often with an element of sexual desire (love/hate relationship) and involving life-or-death questions. The battle of the sexes may be seen as an enduring part of the natural order, as a necessary phase in women's quest for liberation, or as a perversion of the natural harmony between the sexes. The presence of Geschlechterkampf in various mythologies suggests its archetypal nature (Carl Gustav Jung). Classical myths and legends adapted in German literature include Penthesilea and Achilles (Heinrich von Kleist, 1808) and Medea and Jason (Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, 1786; Franz Grillparzer, 1821; Hans Henny Jahnn, 1920; Franz Theodor Csokor, 1947). Elfriede Jelinek's Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1987) reworks the child-murder motif as woman's last recourse for revenge against the distortions of male domination. The biblical understanding of Geschlechterkampf focuses almost exclusively on woman's role as temptress; however, some modern secular writers used Adam and Eve as a vehicle for portraying a battle of the sexes (Thurber). German adaptations of biblical subjects that fit the Geschlechterkampf rubric include Friedrich Hebbel's drama Judith (1840) and Elias Canetti's Die Blendung (1935), a reworking of the Samson and Delilah legend. A non-Western motif frequently adapted in Europe is Turandot, the man-killing virgin princess (Schiller, 1802). In most works by men, the representation of the battle of the sexes borders on other areas of male anxiety and often ends in the male figure's death (or the death of his children). By contrast, in recent writing by women, the reverse is true; the battle of the sexes is usually represented as the life-or-death struggle of the female protagonist for self-realization within patriarchy (often unsuccessful). In Ingeborg Bachmann's Molina (1971), the female protagonist combats a male figure who is part of herself. In the end she loses; she disappears or is murdered. A wordplay on "Malina-animus" indicates the possibility of a Jungian reading of the work. In Jung's psychology, the animus is both a woman's projection of the ideal man and the masculine part of herself. While Bachmann portrays a destructive struggle of the female protagonist against the masculine, a positive outcome would be a personality that integrates masculine and feminine aspects.
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Marriage and love relationships are often the sites of the most bitter conflicts between the sexes. Elfriede Czurda's Die Giftmorderinnen (1991) illustrates how the man sweet-talks the woman into living under the unacceptable conditions of patriarchy; the ensuing violent marital conflict ends with the husband's gruesome death. See also: Amazon; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Frauenfrage; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Jelinek, Elfriede; Love; Marriage; Patriarchy; Whore. Reference: Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa. Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987).
KRISTIE A. FOELL G e s c h l e c h t s c h a r a k t e r e . The theory of Geschlechtscharaktere or gender characteristics originated in the literary and philosophical discourses of 18thcentury Germany. It claimed that women were, "by nature," passive and emotional, and men were active and rational. According to this notion, women were supposed to be dedicated, loving, tender, and patient housewives, whereas men were supposed to have the authoritative and active role of women's representatives and guardians. The propagation of such "natural" roles for women was achieved via Madchenliteratur. A wife's caring role for her husband and children was given paramount importance in this literature. For the man, his family became a refuge from the mundane workplace. At home, his wife was expected to look after his physical comforts and emotional well-being. German feminist scholar Karin Hausen asserts that while the concept of femininity and masculinity was supposed to form the ideal basis of humanity in early Enlightenment discourse, in reality the idea of complementary spheres became repressive, because the gender differences bound women to domesticity. In 18th-century Germany the new bourgeoisie comprised civil servants, university professors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and industrialists, who were often required to work outside the home. Since the early Enlightenment proclaimed women to be as rational or vernunftig as men, women, too, could have left their homes like men to practice professions, at least in theory. Introducing the concept of gender roles that tied women to the household had the effect of combating such a possibility. By glorifying the bourgeois family and women's domestic roles in it, the middle class set itself apart from the nobility as well as the lower classes. The concept of separate duties and responsibilities for men and women was supported by late 18th-century philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte upheld their arguments concerning gender roles based on their perception of the sexual act, in which women were supposed to be passive and weak and men active and strong. Popular philosophy took it upon itself to educate women for their future roles of wives and mothers. Joachim Heinrich
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Campe's Vaterlicher Rath fiir meine Tochter (1789) and Sophie von La Roche's Briefe an Lina (1785), among others, explicitly discuss women's domestic duties. Gender roles were legally sanctioned when the Allgemeines Preufiisches Landrecht, the Prussian Civil Code (1794), introduced laws that defined married women as procreators and men as their protectors. See also: Allgemeines PreuBisches Landrecht; Enlightenment; Family, Social History of the German; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; La Roche, Sophie von; Madchenliteratur; Ratgeberliteratur. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prdsentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Frevert, Ute, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989); Grenz, Dagmar, Madchenliteratur. Von den moralisch belehrenden Schriften im 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Herausbildung der Backfischliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981); Hausen, Karin, "Die Polarisierung der Geschlechtscharaktere. Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und FamiUenleben." Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Ed. Werner Conze (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1976) 36393; Okin, Susan Moller, "Women and the Making of the Sentimental Family." Philosophy and Public Affairs 11.1 (1982): 248-69. VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE G e s e l l s c h a f t s r o m a n . The term describes a type of European novel written during 19th- and early 20th-century Realism. Realist authors shifted the focus of literature from the hero to the victim and attempted to demonstrate how social and historical incidents are correlated and how individual fates are tied to political, economic, or social conditions. Rather than creating prototypes, the Gesellschaftsroman aims at creating reality. The narrator claims objectivity through detailed milieu descriptions, by avoiding comments and by giving literary figures psychological depth. Social critique is expressed only indirectly, mainly by the selection of topics and descriptive means. Unlike later naturalistic and experimental novels, the Gesellschaftsroman does not offer explicit critiques or Utopian alternatives but rather depicts a disillusioned, antibourgeois attitude. The narrative technique of the Gesellschaftsroman is synchronic, following a tradition that was first introduced by the authors of Young Germany. The 19th century saw a tremendous increase in women's literature, especially in the novelistic genres. Many of these novels focus on a female protagonist and her struggle in society and reveal a complex cultural analysis through the use of a synchronic technique. Examples include Hedwig Dohm's trilogy Sibilla Dalmar (1896-1899), an analysis of women's oppression, and Clara Viebig's novels Das Weiberdorf (1900) and Die vor den Toren (1910), which describe the problems of people affected by the urban expansion of Berlin. Many female authors of the Gesellschaftsroman uncovered more social injustices and voiced a sharper social critique than their male colleagues, who often exhibited a con-
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ciliatory tone (e.g., Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, 1894-1895, and Thomas Mann's Die Buddenbrooks, 1901). With an increased focus on the protagonist, the Gesellschaftsroman approaches the Entwicklungsroman or even the psychological novel. Examples are Fanny Lewald's novels Clementine (1842), Jenny (1843), and Eine Lebensfrage (1845) and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's famous story Das Gemeindekind (1887), in which she describes the struggle of a murderer's son against social ostracism. Due to Germany's unique history with regard to national unity and a longsuppressed democratization process, an understanding and critical analysis of society was significantly delayed. This in combination with recurring censorship consistently undermined a strong development of the genre Gesellschaftsroman, as opposed to its history in England, France, and Russia. See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Entwicklungsroman; Lewald, Fanny; Novel, Psychological; Realism; Young Germany. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988); Gallas, Helga, and Magdalene Heuser, eds., Untersuchungen zum Roman von Frauen um 1800 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990); Wille, Kathe, Bilanz am Wochenende: Gesellschaftsroman der Gegenwart (Cologne: Ellenberg, 1976). KATRINKOMM G e s i n n u n g s a s t h e t i k . During the German literature debate in the fall of 1992, the term "Gesinnungsasthetik" was employed as a derogatory reference to the sociopolitical claims and influence of postwar literary intellectuals. More specifically, certain critics in the West German media accused East German writers of displacing literary and artistic values as well as political activism through an "aesthetics of belief," embodied in moralistic and politicized literature. Christa Wolf, as a representative literary figure in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the 20th-century German woman writer most recognized and celebrated in the West, became the focus of this German-German literature debate, known as the deutsch-deutscher Literaturstreit, which criticized the relationship between the repressive East German government and prominent GDR writers. The connection Wolf makes in her writing of personal experience to social and historical processes is interesting in light of her own political situation; the fact that she, as one of the major 20th-century German woman writers, has been singled out and criticized as morally deficient and a state collaborationist indicates that women, especially publicly high-profile women, are still being held to higher moral standards and are judged more harshly by the public than their male colleagues. After the Wende, or "turning" of East Germany away from real socialism toward the West, a group of West German male newspaper reporters began critically reappraising GDR literature and authors, concluding that the East German population, as well as West German literary critics, had been deluded into an uncritical, laudatory stance toward GDR literature and its writers' col-
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laboration in the social production of meaning. Ulrich Greiner of the West German newspaper Die Zeit introduced the label Gesinnungsasthetik to disparage Wolf's work as falsely moralizing and the author as a political opportunist. Critics have used the pejorative term Gesinnungsasthetik to denounce Engagierte Literatur and raise questions about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. In addition to West German criticism of GDR writers, Gesinnungsasthetik refers to a manifestation of the global problem of the role of the intellectual in modern and postmodern Western societies specific to the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). After World War II, literature was expected to do the work of remembering and mourning for society in general. Through political and moral engagement, the author became a substitute conscience for a society plagued by collective guilt. Nonconformist literature of East and West Germany played a similar role in the two societies; during the 1950s and 1960s, intellectuals adopted an oppositional stance, performing a moralistic and critical function without challenging the sociopolitical system. The literary circle Gruppe 47 functioned as moral proxies for West German society in the 1960s, while GDR literature modeled the social-pedagogical function of antifascist exile authors. See also: Engagierte Literatur; FRG Literature (1949-1990); FRG Literature (since 1990); GDR Literature; Gruppe 47; Wende, Die; Wolf, Christa. References: Anz, Thomas, ed., 'Es geht nicht um Christa Wolf": DerLiteraturstreit im vereinten Deutschland (Munich: Spangenberg, 1991); Deiritz, Karl, and Hannes Krauss, eds., Der deutsch-deutsche Literaturstreit oder "Freunde, es spricht sich schlecht mit gebundener Zunge" (Hamburg: Luchterhand, 1991); Gerber, Margy, ed., The End of the GDR and the Problems of Integration (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993).
LISA BERNSTEIN G o d d e s s . A goddess is a female deity. Contemporary understanding of the goddess' origins is based on feminist matriarchy research and feminist archaeology in the Middle East and Eurasia. Excavations have revealed that many of these pre-historic cultures may have been matriarchal, egalitarian societies; the anthropomorphic female deities they revered, for example, the Mother Goddess (35,000-10,000 B.C.) or the Mistress of Animals (9000-7001 B.C.), were connected with fertility and life-bearing, sexuality, and reproductive powers. These goddess-worshiping societies are credited with the development of agriculture, writing, medicine, and mathematics. Many pre-Christian goddesses in the Germanic tradition share characteristics of the earliest female deities. Depending on local customs, these figures are still thought to influence daily and seasonal events. Freyja (who lends her name to Freitag/Fvidzy) is a fertility goddess in the Germanic pantheon. The winter goddesses Percht and Holle have feast days celebrated in areas of Germany, and their names have entered German speech (Perchtennacht in Styria, the night
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before Epiphany; Frauhollenabend for Saturday in the Rhon mountains). Visuna, a goddess of healing, is believed to inhabit the springs at Baden-Baden; Aeracura, an Earth goddess, and Nemetona, a goddess of war, inhabit the Rhineland. Veleda, a goddess of war and fate, was revered during Tacitus' time as the warrior queen of the continental Celts. Of interest to feminist theologians and archaeologists is the transformation of polytheistic, goddess-worshiping societies to monotheistic, god-revering cultures with the onslaught of barbarian hordes from the north, 4500-2500 B.C. Following the credo that man makes God in his own image, the new social and political order created its own pantheon of male gods; as the existing social order was replaced, the formerly autonomous female deities became secondary or tertiary in the new cosmology as the wives, mistresses, daughters, and sisters of the male gods. Later, Christianity and Judaism also succeeded in overthrowing the goddesses in favor of a single male god. The goddess was demonized: female powers of sexuality and reproduction became the forces of evil, destruction, and chaos. The reclamation of the goddess is an important component of late 20thcentury feminism. The goddess symbol stands for the merger of the divine and the cosmic, for the unity of goddess and world. The desire to re-create this unity leads feminists to examine the interrelatedness of all life, to honor the dignity of the female, to discover the power of creating ritual, and to perceive work for ecological and social justice, not just as a civic, but also as a spiritual, responsibility. Various German-language writers have made the goddess the subject of their works. Benedikte Naubert, for example, valorized the Germanic goddess Veleda in her protofeminist novel Velleda, ein Zauberroman (1795). Barbara Frischmuth's work Die Frau im Mond (1982), a matriarchal mythology of the moon goddess, recalls some of the most primary goddess images. Other literary critics (e.g., Gottner-Abendroth) work to uncover the hidden goddesses in Germanic folk and fairy tales. See also: Fairy Tale; Matriarchy; Wisewoman. References: Ann, Martha, and Dorothy Imel Myers, Goddesses in World Myth (Denver: ABC-CLIO, 1993); Carson, Anne, Goddesses and Wise Women: The Literature of Feminist Spirituality 1890-1992. An Annotated Bibliography (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1992); Gottner-Abendroth, Heide, Die Gottin und ihr Hews: Die matriarchalen Religionen in Mythos, Marchen und Dichtung, 8th ed. (Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1988); Monaghan, Patricia, The Book of Goddesses and Heroines (New York: Dutton, 1981); Wacker, Marie-Theres, "Feminist Theology and Anti-Judaism: The Status of the Discussion and the Context of the Problem in the Federal Republic of Germany." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (1991): 109-16.
SHAWN C. JARVIS G o v e r n e s s . The relative absence of the governess in German literature stands in inverse proportion to the key importance these educators played in the social
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history of women. In the 18th and 19th centuries, being a governess was the only sanctioned path open to an educated woman wishing to gain a measure of professional independence as well as a greater knowledge of the world. The governess occupied a unique social position in that she straddled spheres that were socially separated by insurmountable distances. She was a woman, yet had a public, therefore "male," profession; she was a member of the middle class or nobility but was employed as were domestic servants. These tensions proved fruitful for fueling the literary imagination in England but surprisingly did not do so in Germany. Very few fictional works do more than sketch stock characters wherein the governess is drawn either as a bland, pitiful victim of injustice or as a humorless, prim pedant. Although largely absent from German literary texts, the voice of the governess can be heard in numerous autobiographies. The French governess, coded in German texts as vain and duplicitous, is unmasked in Luise Adelgunde Gottsched's comedy Die Hausfranzosinn (1745) as a criminal. Christiane Benedicte Naubert describes the French governess in the novel Die Amtmannin von Hohenweiler (1791) as an aggressive coquette and frivolous teacher. To distance themselves from this older French stereotype, real-life German women preferred using the terms ''Erzieherin" or "Hauslehrerin" to match their increasing professionalization. Theories of female-centered education entered into fiction when Caroline Rudolphi posited a pedagogical method tailored to the individual needs of pupils in Gemdlde weiblicher Erziehung (1807). Whether the governess is viewed as threat or as salvation, her entry into a nuclear family changes the dynamics of the intimate relationships. Marie Nathusius' strong-willed, first-person narrator brings order and religion into a chaotic family life in Tagebuch eines armen Frduleins (1854). Although Nathusius presents these changes as leading to the family's salvation, the governess, by proving herself to be the better mother, displaces the biological mother and orders the home according to her plan. Several authors concentrate on the tension between ethical behavior and desire. Cornelie Wille, the governess in Louise von Francois' eponymous story (1859), recognizes that the "manly" professional characteristics she has developed make her unfit to be the soft, "feminine" wife her former employer needed. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's heroine in "Ein kleiner Roman" (1889) also renounces marriage to a widower whose beloved daughter she dislikes. Acute social criticism of romantic love as well as of class underscore Ebner's "Wieder die Alte" (1889). By 1904, the repressed sexuality of the governess surfaces titillatingly in Tagebuch einer Erzieherin by Dolorosa (pseudonym for Maria Eichhorn). See also: Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Maidservant; Novel, Educational. References: Allen, Ann Taylor, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991); Hardach-Pinke, Irene, Die Gouvernante. Geschichte eines Frauenberufs (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1993). LINDA KRAUS WORLEY
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Grandmother. The grandmother is the oldest of three generations of female family members. She is perhaps the most ignored family member in German literary scholarship and one of the most invisible characters in German literature. When she does appear, she is often the repository of female frustrations, aspirations, dreams, and disappointments. In women's literature, the grandmother often plays a mediating role, helping the granddaughter to resolve conflicts with her mother. The Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens lists the most famous grandmother figure as the Devil's grandmother, a strong figure who possesses powers antithetical to patriarchal control. Folk beliefs also conceived of the Earth as the spiritual grandmother who, inseminated by rain, gave birth to the seed of humankind. In the Germanic tradition, the grandmother, in her role as the natural protectress of her grandchildren, must sleep eight nights in front of the newborn's crib. The grandmother is important to familial continuity, but, as the Handworterbuch notes, this role is less significant in keeping with the limited social and genealogical position of the female in the Germanic patriarchal family. In popular myth, the grandmother is the repository of female wisdom and stories of female initiation. Nineteenth-century collections such as Christiane Thun-Hohenstein's Was die Grofimutter erzdhlte: Mdrchen und Erzdhlungen (1884) and Lilly von Vietinghoff' s Was die Grofimutter erzdhlte: Bilder und Marchen fiir die Frauenwelt (1885) pay homage to that belief. This image played a role in the iconography of tale-telling in the 19th century in which frontispieces to fairy tale and story collections frequently featured old women/ grandmothers telling tales to rapt children. In male-authored/edited fairy tales, the grandmother is a highly stereotyped figure. Grandmothers and old women almost always bear the epithet "wra/r" or "hafilich." They also appear with snakes, toads, or exceptionally hideous cats as amplifications of their evil natures. Grandmothers and old women typically are dispatched of in cruel and often unjust fashion, simply because of their age and gender. Many literary historians see in these depictions a transference of the witch craze in the literary realm. In women's literature, sensitive and sympathetic treatments of old women exist, but they have also been relatively rare until the later 20th century. Hedwig Dohm's novella Werde, die Du bist (1894), as well as her polemic pieces "Fliege meine Seele, fliege! Ein Gesprach zwischen Alt und Jung" (1911) and "Mutter und GroBmutter" (1912) look at a woman as mother of grown children, as mother-in-law, and as old woman/widow. Hedwig Courths-Mahler often used the situation of aging women as her topic; her novels suggest that intergenerational female relationships can lead to harmony among all classes and ages of women. Authors from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of the 1970s and 1980s used the figure of the grandmother as part of a larger political agenda; in their fiction, writers like Elfriede Briining (Altweiberspiele, 1986), began to focus on the importance of work and women's right to employment, even in
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old age, as a vehicle to social integration and self-respect. Late 20th-century authors like Gisela Steineckert also offer a ray of hope for reconciliation between the generations. In her book Aus der Reihe tanzen. Ach Mama, Ach Tochter (1992), she reflects on her relationship to the different female generations in her family and suggests women must reconcile with mother and daughter, "mit der gedachten und der wirklichen." Older women have been denied an identity in society at large, and this marginalization is reflected in literature as a whole as well as in the lack of scholarship on these issues. The reasons for the marginalization of older women are to be sought in their precarious social and economic position, the vestiges of the belief in witches, and the fear of women's knowledge and power. See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Earth Mother; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; GDR Literature; Narration; Witch. References: Hermann, Christine, Grofimutter—grofie Mutter: Stereotype uber die altere Frau in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Frankfurt/M.: dipa Verlag, 1992); Jokiniemi, Miriam, "Beyond Hags and Old Bags? Portrayals of Women's Old Age in Recent GDR Prose Fiction." Studies in GDR Culture and Society 9 (1989): 145-62; Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds, Mutter—Tochter—Frauen: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1993); Seiler, Christine, "Gegenuberstellung vom Bild des alten Mannes und dem der alten Frau an ausgewahlten Beispielen Grimmscher und Bechsteinscher Marchen." Germanic Notes 17 (1986): 24-27. SHAWN C. JARVIS Greiffenberg, Catherine Regina v o n ( 1 6 3 3 - 1 6 9 4 ) . Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, by many accounts the greatest female poet of the Baroque period, was born into the Protestant lower nobility in Austria during the Counter Reformation. She enjoyed a rigorous private education, including literature in modern European and classical languages, poetics, theology, history, philosophy, and science. Her uncle and guardian, who recognized her literary talents, arranged with Sigmund von Birken to publish her Geistliche Sonnette/ Lieder und Gedichte in 1662. The volume included cycles of several hundred sonnets, songs, and reflections and was introduced by a prefatory apologia written by Birken, in which he excused the unseemly appearance of a female author in print by virtue of Greiffenberg's extraordinary talent. His claim to have published Greiffenberg's work without her knowledge was a necessary convention for a reading public hostile to female authorship. Greiffenberg's talent was considered anomalous, as certainly was her invitation to join two almost exclusively male poetic societies, the Sprachgesellschaften of Birken and Phillip von Zesen. Greiffenberg's responses to the religious, political, and social concerns of her age are informed by her own experiences as a Protestant woman in Catholic Austria. In addition to suffering periods of religious exile, which ended with permanent settlement in Nuremberg, her personal life was fraught with the painful consequences of pressures from her uncle, 30 years her elder, to marry him.
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Her resistance was broken by his threat to convert to Catholicism, and she married him out of a sense of religious duty in 1664. Greiffenberg's poetry contains discernible traces of the unique difficulties faced by female writers of the period. Her work combines an unusually introspective tone with a prodigious talent for wielding Baroque verse forms and rhetorical conventions. The highly gendered stylization of Baroque poetics demanded particular agility of female writers who had ambitions to be taken seriously by literary peers, and Greiffenberg's writing contains playful and ironic allusions to the artificial and inequitable construction of gender found both in poetry and in the world. Critics have focused attention upon the religious aspect of her work. At the age of 18, Greiffenberg reacted to the death of her sister with a vow to devote her life to the "Deoglori," or the praise of God. Employing a common Baroque metaphor, she compared her writing to a mirror by which she would reflect back to God the gift that she had received. Her celebratory poetry also reflects a sensuality that critics have linked to the Brautmystik tradition. While the religious faith that breathes through her work is profound, and while the celebration of the interconnection between the physical world and the divine does bear echoes of mysticism, Greiffenberg's literary accomplishments range well beyond what might be considered mystic. Her personal and introspective poetry is often pointedly political. She used her writings to advocate her Protestant faith and, with the support of Zesen's literary circle, conceived an ambition to convert the emperor. At the same time, she called for a political unity transcending confessional differences among Christians in "Teutschland" with her lengthy alexandrine epic of 1657, the Sieges-Seule der Bufie und des Glaubens, a history of Islam written in response to Turkish attacks. On a more personal note, various sonnets also allude to, and occasionally directly address, such complex issues as female identity, literary ambition, and social expectation. See also: Baroque Literature; Language Societies; Mysticism; Sonnet. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987) 253-59; Cerny, Heimo, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, geb. Freiherrin von Seisenegg (1633-1694). Herkunft, Leben und Werk der grofiten deutschen Barockdichterin (Armstetten: Stadtgemeinde Armstetten, 1983); Frank, Horst-Joachim, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg. Leben und Welt der barocken Dichterin (Gottingen: Sachse und Pohl, 1967); Gnadinger, Louise, "Ister-Clio, Teutsche Uranie, Coris die Tapfere. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-1994). Ein Portrait." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 248-64; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina, Samtliche Werke in zehn Banden. Ed. Martin Bircher and Friedhelm Kamp (New York: Kraus, 1983).
SARA PAULSON Groschenroman. The German Groschenroman is a descendant of the American dime novel, which appeared in the United States in the mid-19th century. These cheap, popular novels in magazine format reached Germany around the
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turn of the century and regained enormous popularity after 1945. The early Groschenroman told the adventures of legendary heroes of the Wild West but soon branched out into the areas of detective stories, science fiction, war adventures, and, especially after 1945, romance. In Germany, around 300 million copies are sold yearly in tobacco stores or train station bookstores. These novels are produced by a few big publishing houses like Cora, Bastei, Kelter, Marken, Moewig, and Pabel. They are predominantly, but not exclusively, read by members of the lower socioeconomic class. Romance novels make up 50 percent of the entire Groschenroman publications. Their readership is almost entirely female and includes women of all ages. The German Groschenheft romances are characterized by their fixed plot formula (Cinderella story), their highly stereotyped stock figures (strong, mature, competent heroes, innocent, delicate, childlike heroines), the idealization of romantic love, and the repression or sublimation of female sexuality. A happy end for the heroines of these novels means marriage to a rich man, but it can be achieved only through ''true love." In the 1970s and 1980s the German Groschenheft romances received competition in the form of imports from Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Although these romance novels also adhere to the fixed plot formula and the stereotyping of its characters, they reflect the social changes brought about by the women's movement in the 1970s. They portray women who are professionally highly successful and who stand on a more equal footing with men. Although the heroines are granted sexual gratification as part of the relationship, the active role in the sexual relationship is still accorded to the man. These modern romances attract a different readership than the old German novels. For the most part, they are read by the generation of women who were born after 1945, many of whom are pursuing a professional career. Analysts of popular romances have pointed out the compensatory function of the fantasies embodied in this type of fiction. Some of these fantasies are regressive (the longing to be taken care of); others can be seen as attempts to idealize traditional gender and power relations (the reinterpretation of the hostile and aggressive behavior of men as a manifestation of love). Thus, while these romances are concerned with real problems of women, they do not point to ways of overcoming them but channel their efforts into neutralizing women's anger and making existing conditions seem acceptable. See also: Love; Marriage; Romance; Science Fiction; Schundliteratur; Trivial Literature. References: Galle, Heinz J., Groschenhefte: Die Geschichte der deutschen Trivialliteratur (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1988); Modleski, Tania, "The Disappearing Act: Harlequin Romances." Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden: Archon, 1982) 35-58; Nusser, Peter, Romane fiir die Unterschicht: Groschenhefte und ihre Leser (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973); Thiel, Christoph, Liebe, Sex, Karriere: die Modernisierung des trivialen Liebesromans (Hamburg: Argument, 1991). HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER
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Grofistadtroman. The metropolitan novel or urban novel stands in contrast to the village novel (Dorfroman or Dorf geschichte). Usually romanticized or idealized, the latter represents a place where people live near, or in, nature with clear choices and destinies. Their individuality is seemingly whole and distinct. By contrast, in the urban novel, which has its roots in the Realist novel, every gaze identifies another possibility. Unlike the supposedly wholesome village novel, the urban novel is characterized by an overwhelming multitude of opportunities, an alienating pace, and loneliness. Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932) tells the story of the stenotypist Doris and sketches her disillusionment with a profit-oriented society during the depression era in Berlin. Her novel Das Mddchen, mit dem die Kinder nicht verkehren durften (1936) is told by a spirited preadolescent girl through whom the readers see petit-bourgeois Cologne at the end of World War I. Similarly, Ingeborg Drewitz unfolds in Gestern war Heute (1978) the multigenerational story of a bourgeois family in Berlin. The story is centered around the daughter Gabriele, born in 1923, who tells her story up to 1978. Drewitz has been lauded repeatedly for her impressive representation of the Berlin milieu. Ingeborg Bachmann's complex novel Molina (1971) takes place in the Ungargasse in Vienna. The physical distance between Ivan's apartment and that of the narrator and Malina—as well as Malina's insistence on separate rooms— reflects the emotional distance among the three people. Thus, the physical layout of the city mirrors the inner life of the narrating subject. Finally, Gertrud Leutenegger's Vorabend (1975) relates the narrator's walk through the streets of Zurich on the eve of the city's last demonstration protesting the Vietnam War. Her walk through the streets where the demonstration will take place serves as a catalyst for retrospection. The city map becomes a grid for her memories. See also: Angestelltlnnenroman; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Dorfgeschichte; Realism. References: Becker, Sabina, Urbanitat und Moderne: Studien zur Grofistadtwahrnehmung in der deutschen Literatur (1900-1930) (St. Ingbert: Rohrig, 1993); Briiggemann, Heinz, Das andere Fenster: Einblicke in Hauser und Menschen: Zur Literaturgeschichte einer urbanen Wahrnehmungsform (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1989); Gotzmann, Werner, Literarische Erfahrung von Grofistadt (1922-1988) (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1990); Hauser, Susanne, Der Blick auf die Stadt: semiotische Untersuchungen zur literarischen Wahrnehmung bis 1910 (Berlin: Reimer, 1990); Prinzjakowitsch, Sylvia, "Stadtebilder in der Literatur: raumliche Wahrnehmung und GroBstadtwirklichkeit am Beispiel von Wien in den Romanen Malina von Ingeborg Bachmann und Die Ausgesperrten von Elfriede Jelinek" (Diplom-Arbeit, Vienna, 1989); Weigel, Sigrid, Topographien der Geschlechter. Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Literatur (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990).
ROGER RUSSI G r o t e s q u e . The grotesque in art is characterized by an irresolvable and paradoxical double determination between frame/center, fantastic/sensual, mimetic/ amimetic, and illusion/delusion. Grotesque images heterogeneously and hyper-
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bolically combine distorted animal, human, plant, and fable elements. Both in art and in literature, the grotesque is frequently expressed via representations of the female body. In the first German text employing the term "grotesque," Johann Fischart's Geschichtklitterung (1575), Gargamelle's voracious eating causes her to give birth to Gargantua in an upward movement through the ear. Standard critical definitions of the grotesque include Wolfgang Kayser's existentialist metaphysical depiction of the terrifying defamiliarized world, Mikhail Bakhtin's definition of the grotesque as a carnivalesque inverse Utopia inducing laughter, and Wolfgang Preisendanz's focus on aesthetic rhetorical forms of the unrepresentable. Christoph Martin Wieland's admonition in his Unterredungen zwischen W** und dem Pfarrer zu *** (1775) might explain the social censure that contributed to the avoidance of the grotesque by 18th-century women writers. According to him, delicate souls like women are pained by representations of the grotesque, and creators of the grotesque are themselves grotesque. Enlightened and classical devaluations of the imagination relegated the grotesque to the realm of the comic, particularly caricature. The subsequent positive reevaluation of the grotesque during the Romantic period led, on one hand, to powerful Satanic and eroticized demonizations of women (such as the character Vasthi in Achim von Arnim's Majoratsherren [1820]). On the other hand, Friedrich Schlegel's characterization of the French Revolution as grotesque in the "Athenaums Fragment' ' 424 resulted in a broader view of the external world as grotesque, and women began to experiment with the grotesque in satires and caricatures. Gisela and Bettina von Arnim developed a grotesque-comical liberation machine (Rettungsmaschine) in Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns (1845). Generally, however, 19th-century women authors tended toward more subtle forms: the (graceful) arabesque or the (subtly) uncanny or bizarre. In the first half of the 20th century, Thea von Harbou's film collaborations with Fritz Lang, for example, Dr. Mabuse (1922), and lyric experiments after 1945 began to explore the grotesque. Yet, only after the women's movement of the 1970s thematized silence, identity, and the boundaries of representation did women authors approach the grotesque in various genres. Jutta Heinrich's prose text Das Geschlecht der Gedanken (1978) depicts the parents as copulating horse and ant. Irena Liebmann's drama Berliner Kindl (1989) presents the Quatschfresser son devouring his father. Concern with physical and psychological violence against women informs Christa Reinig's presentation of tearing and torn beings in Entmannung (1976). The poetry of Elke Erb explored the linguistic boundaries of grotesque reality in Vexierbild (1983), while Karin Kiwus' poems in Das Chinesische Examen (1992) focus on an endangered female identity and body. Commencing with Liebhaberinnen (1975), the work of Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek seems singularly informed by grotesque collage, body destruction, language deformation, and metamorphoses of nature in un-nature. Her Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1987) stages monstrous transformations of the female body in the battle of women vampires with men.
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The grotesque is proliferating as women embark on challenging and subversive representations of femininity. Among others, the grotesque is employed in feminist re-visions of gender configurations and constructions, expressed in various forms such as transvestism, masquerade, and gender performativity. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Body, Female; Classicism; Enlightenment; Jelinek, Elfriede; Reinig, Christa; Romanticism; Vampirism. References: Feldman, Linda Ellen, ' 'The Rape of Frau Welt: Transgression, Allegory and the Grotesque Body in Grimmelshausen's 'Courasche.' " Daphnis 20 (1991): 61-80; Harpham, Geoffrey Gait, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Kayser, Wolfgang, Das Groteske. Seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1957); Russo, Mary, "Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory." Feminist Studies/Critical Studies. Ed. Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 126— 41. ANGELA BORCHERT Griinderzeit/German Empire ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 8 ) . Following the FrancoPrussian War and the unification of Germany under Bismarck, Germany quickly grew into a modern industrial nation. Since the aristocracy was still influential in public life, the political and cultural course was a more conservative one. To counter the politically very active liberal Left, Bismarck reintroduced censorship and other measures (Sozialistengesetz, 1878-1890). With massive industrialization and an increasingly powerful middle class, the role of women had changed drastically. Proletarian women and children had to work up to 13-20 hours, often facing sexual harassment, in order to contribute to their family's income and to keep up with the rising cost of living. Bourgeois women, on the other hand, were excluded from the production process, turned into "objects of luxury," and entirely dependent on their fathers and husbands. The condition of unmarried women, especially among the public servants, became a growing social problem. Since the formation of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein in 1865, issues surrounding problems of bourgeois and proletarian women had gained more publicity. The women's movements consisted of proletarian women who were fighting for better pay and work conditions, and bourgeois and aristocratic women who were focusing on women's education. Pamphlets and essays on women's position in marriage, family, work, education, and professional training appeared in increasing numbers. They ranged from moderate bourgeois arguments of writers like Louise Otto-Peters, Gertrud Baumer, and Helene Lange, to Lily Braun's and Clara Zetkin's more pronounced demands for equal rights. Other examples are the Germans Fanny Lewald in Fiir und wider die Frauen (1870), in which she argues for women's equal education, Hedwig Dohm's Wir Frauen werdenWerde die Du bist (1894) and a number of essays in which Dohm speaks out for the economic, political, and spiritual independence of women, and Lily Braun's autobiography, Memoiren einer Sozialistin (1909-1911). Feminist
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authors and activists in Austria were Minna Kautsky and Rosa Mayreder, who in 1893 founded the Osterreichischer Frauenverein\ and Meta Salis-Marschlins in Switzerland. In 1908 the Preufiische Madchenschulreform opened grammar schools and universities to female students. The same year, a bill was passed that granted at least de jure equality between men and women. Women's literature during this time often depicted the struggle of wealthy middle-class women to achieve emancipation, as do Gabriele Reuter's novel Aus guter Familie (1895) and Helene Bohlau's novel Halbtier (1899). Two accounts that portray the lives of women workers are the anonymously published autobiographies of the factory worker Adelheid Popp (Jugendgeschichte einer Arbeiterin, 1909) and Lu Marten's Torso. Das Buch eines Kindes (1909). See also: Braun, Lily; Dohm, Hedwig; Lewald, Fanny; Otto-Peters, Louise; Realism; Reuter, Gabrielei; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature; Young Germany; Zetkin, Clara. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, Frauenarbeit und Beruf (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1979); Bussemer, Herrad-Ulrike, Frauenemanzipation und Bildungsburgertum: Sozialgeschichte der Frauenbewegung in der Reichsgrilnderzeit (Weinheim: Beltz, 1985); Frederiksen, Elke, Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland 1865-1915. Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981). KATRIN KOMM Gruppe 4 7 ( 1 9 4 7 - 1 9 6 7 ) . Receiving its name from its founding year, Gruppe 47 came into existence—almost accidentally—at the personal initiative of its founder Hans-Werner Richter, a German writer and publisher. Many of the writers and publishers who came together for its now-famous first meeting at the house of Use Schneider-Lengyel in September 1947 already knew each other from their joint work on the postwar journal Der Ruf. At Hans Werner Richter's bidding, the authors met either biannually (1947-1955) or annually (1956-1967) for three days over a period of 20 years. The group consisted of writers whose works had begun to appear after the war and who shared the quest for a language that was untainted by the pathos of Nazi Germany. Their concern was to develop a language and literature that would be conscious of its responsibility in regard to political and social development. The group's spirit of renewal and its vision of a new democratic Germany are captured by the term Kahlschlagliteratur, coined by Wolfgang Weyrauch in 1949 for the group's attempt to eradicate any remnants of Nazi language. On 10 different occasions in the 20 years of the group's existence, a writer was bestowed a prize after reading from her or his unpublished work, while receiving criticism by colleagues without the right of rebuttal in self-defense. Only two women writers, both Austrian, were among the recipients: Use Aichinger for "Spiegelgeschichte" in 1952 and Ingeborg Bachmann for her poetry from Die gestundete Zeit in 1953 (with Walter Jens as final competitor). This supports the image of Gruppe 47 as a. male-centered establishment that mostly
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opted to encourage young male writers. Much has been written about the critics' gender-biased comments on Bachmann's "feminine" appearance and demeanor at her readings, which, according to some critics, led to an anonymous feature on Bachmann in Der Spiegel. After having appeared in 1951 for the first time before the group with her short story "Der Gefesselte," in 1952, Use Aichinger received not only the coveted prize of Gruppe 47 but also the Austrian Forderungs-Staatspreis. The many prizes that soon followed for Aichinger and Bachmann after receiving recognition by Gruppe 47 indicate the importance of the group's prize for launching a writer's literary career. Over time, Gruppe 47 lost its influence because the financial aspect of the prize and the market value of the writer became a problem inside and outside the group. The expanding publishing houses—as sponsors of the awards—used the writers as a display window to increase the marketability of their younger upcoming authors. The marginal position that women held throughout the 20 years of the group's existence reflects women's limited role in public discourse, policy making, and the literary marketplace during the Adenauer era and the power of the male-dominated publishing monopolies. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gesinnungsasthetik; Prizes, Literary. References: Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, ed., Die Gruppe 47. Ein kritischer Grundrifi (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1980); Bohn, Volker, Deutsche Literatur seit 1945 (Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1993); Durzak, Manfred, Deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981); Kroll, Friedhelm, Die Gruppe 47. Soziale Lage und gesellschaftliches Bewufitsein literarischer Intelligenz in der Bundesrepublik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977); Lettau, Reinhard, ed., "Die Gruppe 47." Bericht-Kritik-Polemik. Ein Handbuch (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1967); Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, "Das Ende der Gruppe 47." Nichts als Literatur (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990) 110-16. BARBARA MABEE Gruppe 6 1 . Modeled after Gruppe 47, this working-class circle of authors, critics, journalists, and lecturers was occupied with social problems of the industrial working world. They attempted to revive and renew the worker and industrial literature prior to 1933 and hoped to receive the endorsement of the union's press as well as encourage young people's interest in the literary process of problematizing the industrial working world. Apart from experimenting with different writing styles, the female members were especially concerned with improving the situation of women. Since the group's first meeting on June 17, 1961, in Dortmund, its members met on a regular basis, at least twice a year. A crisis in the mid-1960s culminated in the splintering of the circle, which some of them took as an occasion for the founding of the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt in 1970. The uncritical usage of the term "literary" led to a tendency within the group to be exactly what it did not want to be: a literary circle, joined by an exotic theme. Of the 23 members in 1962, only 13 remained in
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1966/1967. The three female members of the group were Angelika Mechtel, Gisela Eisner, and Erika Runge. Mechtel was introduced to the group in 1965 by Max von der Griin. She sympathized with the disfranchised and was especially concerned with the plight of women. Her socially critical writings continually return to the problems of the working class and are concerned with the definition of "realism." Since the mid-1960s, she has published stories in newspapers and magazines sympathetic to the labor movement. During the 1970s, she experimented with the separation of style and content in hopes of reaching a nonliterary audience. But her experiment of a didactic-emancipatory trivial literature failed, and in the late 1970s, she returned to the intellectually more demanding texts that she had been known for originally. Like Mechtel, Runge explored the possibilities of realistic writing. Her bestknown book, Bottroper Protokolle (1968), is a documentary that refuses any affiliation with bourgeois literature. In an attempt to reproduce the milieu of the working class realistically, Runge allows workers to speak freely, employing colloquialisms and dialect. Thus, she offers a collection of statements organized according to themes but free of commentary. Her Bottroper Protokolle is an attempt to locate class consciousness and to show possibilities for a class struggle by individual examples. In some of her later texts, Runge shows more interest in the emancipation of women. Her Protokolle are an overview of approximately 70 years of German history, viewed from the angle of development and the possibilities for women's emancipation. Runge soon abandoned her documentary style of writing, which she viewed as the result of speechlessness. Eisner had already belonged to the Gruppe 47, the predecessor of the Gruppe 61. In her many texts, Eisner is concerned with the bourgeois lifestyles of Germans who, early on, experienced the Wirtschaftswunder or who, in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, settled too quickly into a consumer lifestyle. In minute detail, she describes the social and linguistic ritual of the petit-bourgeois without introducing individual characters. Instead, her nameless figures are reduced to their sociological characteristics. Hierarchies in the working world, the repressive upbringing of children, and the degradation of women to status symbols of their husbands are her major themes. Her satirical and grotesque writing style is devoid of any poetic, flowery, or individual markers. Instead she uses trite phrases from daily speech and newspapers that mirror the everyday monotony and banality of existence. See also: Documentary Literature; Gruppe 47; Protokolle; Workers' Literature. References: Arbeiter'dichtung, Ed. Osterreichische Gesellschaft fiir Kulturpolitik (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1973); Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, ed., Handbuch zur Deutschen Arbeiterliteratur, 2 vols. (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1977); Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, and Isabel Dagmar Arnold-Dielewicz, eds., Arbeiterliteratur in der Bundesrepublik
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Deutschland (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1975); Hensel, Horst, Werkkreis oder die Organisierung politischer Literaturarbeit (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1980). GESA ZINN Giinderrode, Karoline Friederike Louise Maximiliane v o n ( 1 7 8 0 - 1 8 0 6 ) . The interest in Karoline von Giinderrode has traditionally focused on her dramatic suicide. She deserves, however, to be acknowledged not only for her lyrical talent as a poet of myth, love, and death but also for the "unfeminine" struggle to educate herself that is depicted in her works. Unlike most women writers around 1800, she reached beyond expressing her personal experiences, explored traditionally male areas of interest such as philosophy and ancient history, and dared to experiment with the "male" genres of drama and philosophical prose. Several of her protagonists undertake a Faustian search for knowledge of the essence of being, which they cannot achieve through religion, science, or magic but only through self-introspection and harmony with nature. Like Friedrich Holderlin, Jean Paul, or Heinrich von Kleist, Giinderrode resists categorization into Classicism or Romanticism. Enthusiastic about the ideals of the French Revolution, she tried through radically idealistic writing to compensate for the deficiencies of conservative Germany and the restrictions on her personal life in a convent. Lacking the opportunity to help change society through heroic action, she filled her volumes Gedichte und Phantasien (1804), Poetische Fragmente (1805), and Melete (1806), published under the pseudonyms Tian and Ion, with courageous protagonists. Even when faced by death, they do not sacrifice their moral code but fight for a political order that allows individuals to shape their own destiny. She considered self-determination a woman's right, as demonstrated in the dramatic fragment Hildgund (1805). Giinderrode herself clearly suffered from the limitations imposed on her by the conventional women's role: "ich . . . habe Begierden wie ein Mann, ohne Mannerkraft. Darum bin ich so wechselnd, und so uneins mit mir" (1801). Striving for intellectual and poetic excellence as a writer in addition to emotional fulfillment as a woman, she had to witness the lack of response to her writings and come to terms with the fact that the men she loved considered her too ambitious to be fit for marriage. Condemned "was mich todtet zu gebahren," she created her own unhappiness; as she ventured ever further into the counterreality of imagination, everyday life became increasingly intolerable. Thanks to Bettina von Arnim's biography Die Gunderode (1840), Christa Wolf's novel Kein Ort. Nirgends, and Wolf's essay "Der Schatten eines Traumes" (both 1979), Gunderrode's legacy has not been lost. Her works, however, still await thorough research. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Classicism; Drama, Historical; Fragment; Revolution, French; Romanticism; Wolf, Christa.
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References: Arnim, Bettina von, Die Giinderode (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1983); Giinderrode, Karoline von, Samtliche Werke und ausgewahlte Studien, 3 vols. Ed. Walter Morgenthaler. Historical-critical edition (Basel: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1990-1991), Der Schatten eines Traumes. Gedichte, Prosa, Briefe, Zeugnisse von Zeitgenossen. Ed. Christa Wolf (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1979); Kastinger-Riley, Helene M., "Zwischen den Welten: Ambivalenz und Existentialismusproblematik im Werk Caroline von Giinderrodes." Die weibliche Muse: Sechs Essays iiber kunstlerisch schaffende Frauen der Goethezeit (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1986) 90-119; Lazrowicz, Margarete, Karoline von Giinderrode: Portrait einer Fremden (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1986). KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN
H Haupt- u n d S t a a t s a k t i o n . The term is a conflation of the two related but distinct terms ''Hauptaktion" and "Staatsaktion." The term has assumed the meaning Johann Christoph Gottsched gave it in his famous polemic against the state of theater in 18th-century Germany: theater produced by traveling troupes, consisting of slapstick intrigues with interspersed comic scenes of the basest humor. More accurately, Hauptaktion refers to the centerpiece of theatrical performances that included all crowd-pleasing forms of entertainment but was itself a play, most often an adaptation of English, Dutch, Italian, French, or Spanish literary dramas. Staatsaktion refers to plays based on current political events. The adaptations tended to reduce characters to types and to streamline the plot, while comic interruptions by the Hanswurst, or clown, were common. Authorship of these plays is difficult to ascertain since the scripts were rarely published for fear of making the material available to competing troupes. Jollifous was the first principal under whose leadership, in 1654, women participated in the performances, playing the roles of both men and women. During the 17th and 18th centuries, some women assumed the leadership of their troupes, the most famous of whom were Catherina Elisabeth Velten and Friederike Caroline Neuber. Neuber, along with Gottsched, sought to transform the largely improvised Haupt- und Staatsaktion performances into a German national theater, advocating rehearsed and memorized performances of the courtly Alexandrinerdrama, which was then in vogue in France. Because performances of Haupt- und Staatsaktionen were always considered substandard artistically, the performers' social isolation afforded them a measure
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of freedom, which they exercised, sometimes quite cleverly, in order to poke fun at the authority of church and state. See also: Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Wandertheater. References: Devrient, Eduard, Geschichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst. Rev. ed. Willy Stuhlfeld (Berlin: Eigenbrodler-Verlag, 1929); Flemming, Willi, Das Schauspiel der Wanderbuhne (Leipzig: Reclam, 1931); Mohrmann, Renate, "Von der Schandbiihne zur Schaubiihne: Friedericke Caroline Neuber als Wegbereiterin des deutschen Theaters." The Enlightenment and Its Legacy: Studies in German Literature in Honor of Helga Slessarev. Ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer and Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Bonn: Bouvier, 1990) 61-71. AMY HORNING MARSCHALL Hausvaterliteratur. Written by men, this term comprises German domestic economies of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that offered practical suggestions on running a household. The origins of Hausvaterliteratur can be traced back to sermons in the New Testament that preach ways of conducting a Christian household. The basic tenet shaping the Hausvaterliteratur was that the Hausvater was the head of household just as God dominated the church. The Hausmutter was supposed to assist him with the management of the household. Initially, much of the Hausvaterliteratur consisted of agronomic suggestions for landowners. Farmers obtained information on topics related to farming. The Hausmutter, besides being instructed on cooking, baking, brewing, distillation, and drying and pickling techniques, also learned how to manage work outside the home, aiding the Hausvater in matters of animal husbandry, poultry care, or fieldwork. Instructions on personal hygiene, nursing, delivering babies, and caring for infants were also directed at women. As the domestic economy began to disintegrate, Hausvaterliteratur also began to alter its tone. While Johann Coler's housebooks Calendarium Oeconomicum et Perpetuum (1604) and the five-part Oeconomia oder Haufibook (1604) advised the Hausvater and the Hausmutter on all pertinent issues concerning the entire house, including religion and children's upbringing, Otto von Miinchhausen's Der Hausvater (1764-1773) portrayed the Hausvater as a patriot and a politician, thereby indicating his increasingly important role as a public person outside the household. Christian Friedrich Germershausen's Die Hausmutter in all ihren Geschdfften (1778) and Der Hausvater in systematischer Ordnung (1783-1786) were symptomatic of women's exclusion from the production process of the household and their increasing involvement within the family. Gremershausen's books offered specific instructions regarding the different spheres of the Hausmutter's activities. They indicated a trend toward the specialization of household activities and women's growing identification with work that took place within the household. Until the separation of work from the household, the Hausmutter and Hausvater were supposed to manage the household together, albeit under the Hausvater's instructions. The Hausvaterliteratur valued the Hausmutter for her
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ability to fulfill her social role in the production process of the household efficiently, for which her physical strength and intellectual and moral maturity were considered the most important assets. Although the Hausvaterliteratur lost its readership by the end of the 18th century, the domestic virtues it propagated for women continued to be influential in the ideology of Geschlechtscharaktere. See also: Family, Social History of the German; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Patriarchy; Ratgeberliteratur. References: Cocalis, Susan, "Der Vormund will Vormund sein. Zur Problematik der weiblichen Unmundigkeit im 18. Jahrhundert." Gestaltet und Gestaltend: Frauen in der deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 33-55; Friihsorge, Gotthardt, "Die Einheit aller Geschafte. Tradition und Veranderung des 'Hausmutter'-Bildes in der deutschen Okonomieliteratur des 18. Jahrhunderts." Wolfenbiittler Studien zur Aufklarung III (Wolfenbuttel: Jacobi, 1976) 137-57; Hoffmann, Julius, Die "Hausvaterliteratur" und die "Predigten uber den christlichen Hausstand" (Berlin: Betz, 1959); Moore, Cornelia Niekus, The Maiden's Mirror: Reading Material for German Girls in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987). VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE Heimatdichtung. The novels, plays, poetry, short stories, and autobiographies that are subsumed under the heading Heimatdichtung draw their energy from a sense of geographic, regional, or linguistic identity and outlook on the world. The genre is as mutable as the term "Heimat" itself. It includes canonized classics set in German landscapes, sentimentalized local histories, Nazi Blut und Boden ideology, trivial literature, satires revealing the stereotypes associated with Heimat, and myths that re-create local legends. The genre's vitality emerges from its thematic and ideological tensions, as its agendas range from idealizing a landscape and its society to exposing its social ills. Women's voices often rekindle forms of the genres that were about to expire, while feminist research explores both the portrayal of women in the genre's tradition and the political, social, and economic conditions of its production. The quest for Heimat in literature is often set in motion by a loss of the home or homeland, historically situated in the wars of liberation and, for the 20th century, in World War II. Authors like Nelly Sachs and Rose Auslander document how the use of a language can suspend Heimat in exile. Several of Leonie Ossowski's, Christine Bruckner's, Helga Schutz's, and Christa Wolf's novels focus on the loss of home and loss of identity when borders are redrawn, and Germany is divided. The search for Heimat often parallels the search for identity that is marked by stereotypical gender differences. Males find Heimat by invading a territory and its women or returning to a territory where women maintain Heimat for them. For women, home is defined in terms of the absence or presence of male protection. How Heimat has to be earned and defended with a woman's body is illustrated in Elfriede Jelinek's Die Liebhaberinnen (1975), a parody of the
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genre. Women in town and in the country resort to the same strategies of exploiting themselves and prostituting their bodies to find a place in society through marriage. Cultural cliches, idioms, and phrases of everyday language expose the mechanisms of oppression. In Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979), Christa Wolf shows how her character Giinderrode cannot find Heimat in this world, since society deprived her of establishing her identity. When Heimat comes to mean provincial origin, certain values change with time. The tension played out in Romanticism is one of naturalness, simplicity, morality, and a harmonious society located in the country, against the corruption, industrialization, and isolation in the city. The 20th century portrays the provincial Heimat as backward, while a contemporary Heimat movement returns to idealizing the province in a protest against technology and increased globalization. Authors such as Marlen Haushofer in Die Wand (1968) show how life in the city makes people unfit for living in harmony with nature. Her female protagonist's survival story plays out the harmony and hardship of living in nature against the corrupting, weakening effects of city life. Women in their traditional roles as tellers of tales preserve the local history and their own stories. Anita Pichler's Die Frauen aus Fanis (1992) follows the fragments of local legends into the Dolomites and re-creates matriarchal creation myths. A rebirth of Bauernroman is documented by women's unsentimental telling of their life stories, as in Anna Wimschneider's Herbstmilch (1985). Defending Heimat against the Other also involves the use of dialect and sociolect to ascertain identity, marking difference in language by using minority discourse. Where Heimat is defined by a region's idiosyncrasies or dialect, we find women's voices asserting their presence and tradition, as in Margarete Hannsmann's poetry or Martha Arnold-Zinsler's stories and poems about South German regions, which observe the landscape and its people with unsentimental irony. Restoring dialects to a literary tradition fosters a sense of belonging but, at the same time, gives rise to accusations of provincialism and inaccessibility. Each transformation of the genre Heimatdichtung has to be regarded in its own context, since Heimat signifies more than mere geography. The challenge for feminist scholarship is to explore and expose the political, social, and economic implications of a genre that is capable of constant mutation and renewal in the wake of cultural change. See also: Dialektdichtung; Dorfgeschichte; Exile Literature; GroBstadtroman; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Jelinek, Elfriede; Matriarchy; Nature; Nobel Prize Recipients; Romanticism; Technology; Wars of Liberation; Wolf, Christa; World War II. References: Beil, Claudia, Sprache als Heimat: judische Tradition und Exilerfahrung in der Lyrik von Nelly Sachs und Rose Auslander (Munich: Tuduv, 1991); Kaes, Anton, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Kunne, Andrea, Heimat im Roman: Last oder Lust? Transformationen eines Genres in der osterreichischen Nachkriegsliteratur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991); Pott, Hans Georg, ed., Literatur und Provinz. Das Konzept "Heimat" in der neueren Literatur (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1986); Schmidt-Bortenschlager, Sigrid, "Be-
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sinnung auf Traditionen: Heimat und Geschichte im Roman des friihen 20. Jahrhunderts." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 235^9; Selinger, Helfried W., ed., Der Begriff "Heimat" in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur (Munich: iudicium, 1987). ERIKA BERROTH
H e i m k e h r e r l i t e r a t u r . The Heimkehr motif and the figure of the Heimkehrer have had a long tradition (Ulysses being the archetype) but are especially prominent in 20th-century German literature because of the fundamental impact of the two world wars. The themes of exile and return are prominent in Ina Seidel's Lennacker: Das Buch einer Heimkehr (1938) and in the work of the Jewish writer Hilde Domin, who decided to return to Germany in 1954. Her volumes of poetry Nur eine Rose als Stiitze (1959) and Ruckkehr der Schiffe (1962) and her novel Das zweite Paradies: Roman in Segmenten (1968) attest to her homecoming experience, which is remarkable for her predominantly positive attitude toward her former and present homeland. Even though she forgot nothing of the past horrors, her writing displays a conciliatory attitude, free of resentment, toward Germany. Two other Jewish poets who did not return to Germany, Else Lasker-Schiiler and Nelly Sachs, have replaced the Heimkehrmotif with mourning for the lost places of childhood and longing for an eternal homeland: Lasker-Schiiler in Mein blaues Klavier (1943) and Sachs in "Sternenverdunkelung" (1949), a part of Fahrt ins Staublose. Rose Auslander's poetry, influenced by Sachs and Paul Celan, is marked by her exile, a sense of rootlessness, and the longing for a lost geographical and spiritual homeland. Luise Rinser's short story "Jan Lobel aus Warschau" (1948) gives a vivid account of how the peaceful atmosphere three women created is destroyed by the returning father/husband, who represents patriarchal thinking and converts the nursery into a profit-making organization. Anna Seghers' (pseudonym for Netty Reiling) story "Die Ruckkehr" (1953) links the motif of the search for a home with the question regarding the two German states the protagonist should reside. Use Langner's Frau Emma kdmpft im Hinterland (1930), the first antiwar play written by a woman, depicts women's struggle for independence at the home front, occasioned by the men's absence during the four years of World War I. Emma's husband returns home to confront his wife's new selfsufficiency, which manifests itself in her earning a living as a streetcar driver. Finally, Langner's Heimkehr: Ein Berliner Trummerstuck (1949) addresses the situation of women's returning from the war. See also: Exile Literature; German Jewish Literature; Nobel Prize Recipients; World War I; World War II. Reference: Olschner, Leonhard, "Verhinderte Heimkehr: Das Heimkehrmotiv in der deutschen Philologie." Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie 108 (1989): 221-44. PETRA S. FIERO
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H e r m e n e u t i c s . A term etymologically related to Hermes, the messenger between humans and gods in Greek mythology, this was—until the early 19th century—a method of reconstructing a text's original meaning as confined to specific disciplines (biblical exegesis and law). It assumed its modern transdisciplinary significance with the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who described the hermeneutic challenge as "die Kunst die Rede eines anderen angemessen zu verstehen." The Schleiermacher reception has been shaped by Wilhelm Dilthey, whose emphasis on the psychological dimension of understanding through empathy (Einfuhlung) is a more accurate reflection of his own approach and obscures the far-reaching implications of Schleiermacher's work (cf. Manfred Frank's discussion of hermeneutics and poststructuralism). Hans-Georg Gadamer, the main proponent of 20th-century hermeneutics, challenged Dilthey's focus on the subjective realm as distorting and limiting the hermeneutic task. Instead, in Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (1960) Gadamer draws on Martin Heidegger's notion of Verstehen as an ontological category, that is, as describing the fundamental structure of human existence. Central to the historical grounding of Gadamer's hermeneutics is his reevaluation of the term "Vorurteil": prejudices signify our place within tradition and constitute the Verstehenshorizont, a necessary precondition for every act of understanding. Feminist critics have drawn on Gadamer's notion of Verstehen—posited as open-ended dialogue and resulting in Horizontverschmelzung—but they have also challenged the universalism underlying his concepts of subjectivity and human experience. Julie Ellison provides a sustained analysis of mostly unacknowledged convergences between feminism and hermeneutics and cautions against an uncritical use of the hermeneutic ideal of (feminine-coded) conversation, for it obscures its own exclusionary and authoritarian practices. Literary criticism in Germany generally has been informed by a hermeneutic tradition that explores the ways meaning is produced (rather than destabilized) in language. Gadamer's insistence on the historicity of every act of understanding had the most direct impact on Rezeptionsdsthetik (the German version of reader-response theory), developed in different ways by Wolfgang Iser and Hans-Robert Jauss. Feminist approaches that draw on the hermeneutic tradition usually do so in the context of a critical revision of reader-response theories, insisting on the gender-specificity of reading and reception practices and challenging androcentric biases in established reader-centered approaches. Some critics have argued for a historical hermeneutics that would probe our own positionality, including our assumptions as (feminist) literary critics vis-a-vis a careful consideration of previous reading codes. The critical exchange between Gadamer and Jiirgen Habermas is of interest to feminist critics regarding the larger social implications of hermeneutics. This exchange exemplifies major philosophical and ideological differences between the phenomenological tradition (Gadamer) and the post-Hegelian Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt School (Habermas). Habermas challenges the universal
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claims of Gadamer's hermeneutics as well as Gadamer's affirmative view of tradition—which precludes, Habermas argues, Ideologiekritik, the theoretical recognition of, and practical intervention in, "systematically distorted" social relations. Gadamer, in turn, points to the authoritarian implications of assuming an enlightened position outside tradition—a critique that Habermas addresses in his subsequently developed discourse theory. Although the androcentric assumption in his ideal of domination-free discourse has provoked its own set of feminist responses, Habermas' critique of Gadamer resonates with feminist perspectives that—calling for revisions of (literary) history and for radical social change—seem equally incompatible with Gadamer's embrace of tradition and the status quo. See also: Frankfurt School; Ideologiekritik; Phenomenology; Positionality; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Reader-Response Theories; Reception. References: Ellison, Julie, Delicate Subjects: Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Frank, Manfred, Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare. Studien zur neuesten franzbsischen Hermeneutik und Texttheorie (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1980); Machor, James, "Historical Hermeneutics and Antebellum Fiction: Gender, Response Theory, and Interpretative Contexts." Readers in History. Ed. J. Machor (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) 54-84; Mendelson, Jack, "The Habermas-Gadamer Debate." New German Critique 18 (1979): 44-73; Muller-Vollmer, Kurt, ed., The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present (New York: Continuum, 1985); Templeton, Alice, "The Dream and the Dialogue: Rich's Feminist Poetics and Gadamer's Hermeneutics." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 7.2 (1988): 283-96; Theriot, Nancy, "The Politics of 'Meaning Making': Feminist Hermeneutics, Language, and Culture." Sexual Politics and Popular Culture. Ed. Diane Raymond (Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1990) 3-14.
FRIEDERIKE EIGLER Hermetic Poetry. This is a term used to describe a trend toward incomprehensibility and esotericism in modern poetry. Two major strains of hermetic poetry developed during the 20th century in German literature. Around the turn of the century, the recondite and mystical poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal were influenced by the French symbolist poets Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme. Beginning in the 1950s, the poetry of writers such as Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan showed similar characteristics. Of the earlier grouping, no women writers were substantially influenced by this trend. This absence may be attributed, in part, to the close-knit fraternity of the George circle, which excluded female members. Another possible factor that contributed to the lack of hermetic poetry by women in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a prevalent concern for social and political issues among women at that time and their consequent involvement in the labor and women's movements. The poetic projects of aestheticism and hermeticism, in which Fart pour
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Fart and the inner experiences of the male poet as priest or prophet played an important role, are at odds with the problems of workingwomen and economically disadvantaged mothers, whose lives were often the subject matter of female poets at that time. Influenced by the linguistic studies of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the existentialism of Martin Heidegger, the work of Bachmann, the most celebrated and the most frequently read and studied postwar female poet, remains exemplary of poetry whose tone is pessimistic, apocalyptic, yet not without traces of an elusive Utopianism. Her poems often demonstrate a profound, but abstract, uneasiness with the Zeitgeist and economic conditions of the 1950s: political conservatism, material prosperity under the Marshall Plan, cultural optimism, and the promotion of the virtues of domesticity for women. Bachmann's later poetry became increasingly concerned with the problems of artistic representation and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of using the lyric form for expressing her increased concern with social issues. After the late 1960s she wrote only prose texts. In the immediate postwar period, works by women poets that also show elements of skepticism about language (Sprachskepsis) and lyrical abstruseness in image and metaphor include the early poems of Marie Luise Kaschnitz, as well as the poetry of Nelly Sachs, Rose Auslander, and Hilde Domin. The poetic language of these writers often demonstrates a terseness in expression and veiled or obscure allusions. The recent work of two younger poets contains characteristics of hermeticism: Ursula Krechel and Elke Erb, who began publishing in the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), respectively. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Existentialism; Gruppe 47; Nobel Prize Recipients; Poetry, Political; Symbolism; Utopia; Women's Movement. References: Bachmann, Ingeborg, Samtliche Gedichte (Munich: Piper, 1978); Erb, Elke, Der Faden der Geduld (Berlin: Aufbau, 1978); Korte, Hermann, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989); Krechel, Ursula, Vom Feuer lernen: Gedichte (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1985).
AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER
Heroine. In classical mythology, the term refers to a female person of supernatural powers, a demigoddess, or a figure trying to attain immortality. German differentiates between Heldin (the female counterpart to the male hero) and Hauptdarstellerin (dramatic heroine). Despite the common epistemology, "heroine" and "hero" frequently denote radically different concepts in literature and criticism. Aristotle, for example, considered the heroine inferior to the hero, though ranked above the slave (Poetics). As critics have observed, the suffix "ine" defines the heroine as a mere derivative of the hero. Because heroism itself is a gendered concept, most heroines described in classical antiquity differ from heroes in that their heroism involves loss of control and aspects of insanity (e.g., Penthesilea, Medea).
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Because the heroine has been demonized in this fashion, texts by women that glorify a heroine in a manner comparable to the glorification of male heroes are comparatively rare, although they do exist. Examples are Engel Christine Westphalen's tragedy Charlotte Corday (1804) and Karoline von Giinderrode's dramatic fragment Hildgund (1805). For much of women's literary tradition, however, female heroism has taken the form of renunciation and self-sacrifice, emulating the male literary model. Portrayals of heroines in 19th- and 20thcentury women's literature became increasingly critical (e.g., Marie von EbnerEschenbach's Marie Roland, 1867). Particularly 20th-century texts (Christa Wolf's Kassandra, 1983) have questioned not the female capacity for heroic action but the traditional (male) model of heroism, involving brutality, subjugation, and emotional detachment, and redefined heroism as the female ability to resist and subvert this model. Many women authors and critics no longer view masculine heroism as a model to be emulated; for this reason, the term "heroine" is often used with caution. In Voraussetzungen einer Erzdhlung: Kassandra (1983), Christa Wolf calls the cult of heroes a cult of the dead and rejects it as a form of necrophilia (124). In recent feminist criticism, the term "heroine" has, for the most part, been used synonymously with "female protagonist." ' 'Heroine'' in the larger sense can thus be used to refer to female characters who exhibit traditional qualities and values, from "beautiful souls" (Sophie von La Roche's Sophie von Sternheim in Die Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim, 1771), to more defiant heroines (Friederike Helene Unger's protagonist in Bekenntnisse einer schbnen Seele: Von ihr selbst geschrieben, 1806), to independent female characters (Ida von Hahn-Hahn's Grdfin Faustine, 1841). See also: Beautiful Soul; Drama, Historical; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Goddess; Giinderrode, Karoline von; La Roche, Sophie von; Legend; Novel, Historical; Saga; Tragedy, Historical; Wolf, Christa. References: Brugmann, Margret, Amazonen der Literatur. Studien zur deutschsprachigen Frauenliteratur der 70er Jahre (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986); Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds, Mutter-Tochter-Frauen: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Paulsen, Wolfgang, ed., Die Frau als Heldin und Autorin: Neue kritische Ansatze zur deutschen Literatur (Berne: Francke, 1979). ROGER RUSSI Hexenverfolgung—see: Inquisition Hippel, T h e o d o r Gottlieb v o n : Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792). This first full-length, feminist analysis of women's situation written in German extends Enlightenment ideas of freedom, equality, independence, rights, perfectibility, and citizenship to (implicitly middle-class) women. The author, Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, a high-ranking civil servant in Konigsberg, employs strategies of humor, satire, and meandering argumentation in the task of cajoling, reasoning, teasing, and haranguing men to rethink the sit-
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uation of women in Enlightenment terms. Suspicious of reason and logic because of their susceptibility to manipulation, Hippel frequently disrupts standard arguments by pointing to the interestedness of their advocates (mostly men) and the psychological motives and effects of their acts. Thus, he suggests that the fundamental cause of men's discrimination against women is psychological: they fear women and therefore bribe them to remain submissive. Elsewhere he ridicules arrogant and tyrannical men for thinking that half the world was created solely for their pleasure, comparing the treatment of women with slavery (another Enlightenment theme) and suggesting that ' 'the oppression of women is the cause of all the rest of the oppression in the world." To address the question of whether men and women are different in ways other than their reproductive roles, Hippel draws on the Adam and Eve story, reinterpreting the theological myth of female depravity as an Enlightenment fable of a female search for knowledge, of Eve leading Adam out of his state of immaturity by means of her reason and her interest in knowledge. Nature, Hippel argues, could not have wanted women to be inferior in either body or soul, and evidence across classes and cultures would not support the idea of their inferiority. Hippel's refusal to view women's oppression as an inevitable result of their physiology means that their situation is not an effect of unchallengeable nature. For an alternative explanation, Hippel invokes the notion of origin and therefore turns to the past, a series of events that he represents as logically connected but contingent. Women's oppression is the result of a long process that started not with physical weakness on the part of women or intellectual superiority on that of men, but in a period postulated before the social contract. Later, when society's rules were institutionalized in the legal system, women, already confined to the home by a gendered division of labor, did not become citizens of the state but its wards, and were granted only privileges instead of rights. Hippel, familiar with other emancipatory texts of his time (though not with Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman, also 1792) and aware of women's struggles in the French Revolution, proposed that "if the state... felt the important obligation to treat those equally and according to their rights whom nature herself had created equal and to restore their rights along with personal freedom and independence, as well as with the merit and honor of citizenship, the wealth and welfare of the state will everywhere begin to increase." Furthermore, the state should "open to women its council chambers, its courts, lecture halls, commercial establishments, and its places of employment," especially in regard to teaching, law, medicine, finance, and government. Persuasive at explaining the crippling effects of discouragement and exclusion on women's self-esteem and on their creative and productive lives, Hippel argues for educating girls and boys together in most subjects and insists that it is men's responsibility to take the first step in the long-overdue revolution he prescribes.
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See also: Enlightenment; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; New Humanism; Revolution, French. References: Dawson, Ruth P., "The Feminist Manifesto of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-96)." Gestaltet und Gestaltend: Frauen in der deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 13-32; Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von, Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (Berlin: Reimer, 1828), Sammtliche Werke, 14 vols., 1827-1839. Vol. 6, On Improving the Status of Women. Trans, and ed. Timothy F. Sellner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979); Rasch, William, "Mensch, Burger, Weib: Gender and the Limitations of Late 18th-Century Neohumanist Discourse." German Quarterly 66.1 (1993): 20-33. RUTH DAWSON H i s t o r i c a l R o m a n c e — s e e : Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; Novel, Historical; Romance. H i s t o r y , W o m e n ' s . For centuries history meant men's history. While early researchers of women's history concentrated on the social history of women, such as the history of housework, the fight for birth control, and early women's movements, more recent scholarship has begun to analyze women's history in conjunction with the history of men and, furthermore, to include other disciplines, for example, literary history, art history, theology, and philosophy. In literary history especially, much research has been done on women writers and the image of women in literature written by women and men. Systematic scholarship on women's history is a comparatively recent development: as Gerda Lerner has pointed out, one of the most consequential factors in women's history is the fact that early women scholars, no matter what their field, were generally unfamiliar with women's history because it did not yet exist as a field and because history concentrated on men's achievements. The fact that women's history has only very recently become a field with a tradition accounts for substantial differences in men's and women's history: advancement of knowledge for men, who continued the work of others, and repetition for women, who, unaware of the work of women scholars before them, had to reinvent the wheel at each turn. The most apt demonstration of this process to date is Lerner's analysis of "One Thousand Years of Feminist Bible Criticism" (Feminist Consciousness), in which 19th-century feminist Bible scholars essentially repeat arguments made by 10th-century Bible scholars—completely unaware of the earlier scholars' work. See also: Canon, Literary; Family, Social History of the German; Reception; Women's Movement. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, "(Sozial)Geschichte der Frau in Deutschland, 1500-1800: Ein Forschungsbericht." Die Frau von der Reformation zur Romantik: Die Situation der Frau vor dem Hintergrund der Literatur- und Sozialgeschichte. Ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Bonn: Bouvier, 1980) 243-81; Frevert, Ute, FrauenGeschichte: Zwischen Burgerlicher Verbesserung und Neuer Weiblichkeit (Frankfurt/M.:
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Suhrkamp, 1986); Hausen, Karin, and Heide Wunder, eds., Frauengeschichte— Geschlechtergeschichte (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1992); Janssen-Jurreit, Marielouise, Sexism: The Male Monopoly on History and Thought. Trans. Verne Moberg (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1982); Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
BRENDA L. BETHMAN H o l o c a u s t Literature. This is a recollection of the attempted extinction of the Jewish people, a fusion of individual memory and history. As such, it serves as a testimony to the immeasurable importance of cultural activities in the historical context of survival, in maintaining self-esteem and a sense of individuality during times of extreme oppression. Holocaust literature written by women survivors includes published works by Else Dormitzer, Use Blumenthal-Weiss, Gerty Spies, Jana Sedova, and Inge Auerbach. The memoirs of these writers and those by Margareta Glas-Larsson, Ulrike Migdal, and Vera Laska, all published after liberation, have added to our understanding of women survivors' art in camps, as have the critical analyses of Holocaust literature by, for instance, Esther Katz and Joan Miriam Ringelheim, Susan Cernyak-Spatz, Ruth Schwertfeger, and Dagmar Lorenz. Marlene Heinemann and Ruth Kliiger, survivors and critics, have added the perspective of gender criticism. In their depiction of camp situations they point out that the sexes were physically separated and that therefore even the most impartial and sensitive male survivor can relate to women' s experiences only from an outsider's viewpoint. Both Ringelheim and Spies point out that women's traditional roles as nurturers, providers of comfort, and preparers of food seem to have aided them in times of extreme stress, increased their chances for survival, and benefited their artistic activities. For the past 50 years, the artistic quality and the function of Holocaust literature and art have been hotly debated. These accounts challenge the assumption that suffering obliterates gender distinctions and accounts for the similarity of experience among men and women. Feminist critics blame misogyny in Western culture, including Judaism, for discrimination against women. They see the Holocaust not as an isolated event but as part of a long history of patriarchal oppression and accuse prominent male writers of omission and/or misrepresentation of women's experiences in death camps. On one hand, critics question the theoretical, moral, or aesthetic purpose of writing about the Holocaust, asserting that language is incapable of expressing the actual horror experienced. On the other hand, women's Holocaust poetry is often faulted for its lack of objectivity and inner distance frequently associated with great art. Other critics assert that readers of Holocaust literature respond not solely to aesthetics or to related historical facts, but rather to the victims' perception and representation of their own experience. While most critics would deny that special critical
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standards should be applied to Holocaust literature, some assert that even aesthetically imperfect texts, in their attempt to articulate the unspeakable, can convey moral meaning worth communicating. Many of the aesthetic and moral judgments have lately come under serious attack, primarily from women artists and/or critics who survived the Holocaust. They unambiguously deny the right of those born after 1945 or exiled writers to pass judgment, claiming that they lack the crucial immediacy of experience. The recent trend to portray the horrors inflicted by Germans on Jews as a universal evil is extremely controversial. Secondary literature or exhibits may focus on the Holocaust but frequently compare it with other incidents of genocide in an attempt to convey the lessons of the Holocaust to future generations. Implicit in this trend is the idea that the crimes of the Holocaust could be repeated anywhere and anytime, an implicit denial of the uniqueness of the Holocaust as a historical occurrence. See also: Exile Literature; German Jewish Literature; Hermetic Poetry; National Socialism; World War II. References: Heinemann, Marlene, Gender and Destiny: Women Writers and the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986); Katz, Esther, and Joan Miriam Ringelheim, eds., Women Surviving the Holocaust (New York: Institute for Research in History, 1983); Kluger, Ruth, weiter leben: eine Jugend (Gottingen: Wallstein, 1992); Lorenz, Dagmar C. G, Verfolgung bis zum Massenmord: Holocaust-Diskurse in deutscher Sprache aus der Sicht der Verfolgten (New York: Lang, 1992); Schwertfeger, Ruth, Women of Theresienstadt. Voices from a Concentration Camp (Oxford: Berg, 1989); Spies, Gerty, Drei Jahre There sienstadt (Munich: Kaiser, 1984). JUTTA TRAGNITZ H o m o s e x u a l i t y / H o m o e r o t i c i s m / H o m o s o c i a l i t y . The term "homosexuality' ' was coined in 1869 by the physician and writer Karoly Maria Kertbeny-Benkert, popularized by the German sexologists Karl Westphal, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Johann Ludwig Casper, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, and Magnus Hirschfeld, and not imported into the English language until the translation in the 1890s of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1893). Only after the word "homosexuality" was formulated did the expression "heterosexuality" also enter psychological/psychoanalytic discourse. Like the late 19th-century labels "autoeroticism" and "nymphomania," the concept of homosexuality arose to signify a pathology, a medical association that explains the gay community's resistance to the term for self-designation. Female homosexuality was discussed as well, from Havelock Ellis' work on the female invert or lesbian, as he called her (1897), to Sigmund Freud on the "Dora" case (1905). The "masculinity complex" theory was developed by Freud (1915 and 1920), J.H.W. van Ophusijsen (1924), Ernest Jones (1927), Jeanne Lamplde Groot (1928), and Helene Deutsch (1932) (cf. de Lauretis). That the homosexual subject was discursively constructed in the legal-medical field does not suggest that heterosexuality is the transhistorical norm and homosexuality is the
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deviant but that all sexualities are culturally defined. Judith Butler, in fact, refuses to see homosexuality conceptually contrasted to heterosexuality; she argues that heterosexuality itself is a kind of compulsory drag—an acting out of social dictates and their fantasized ideals. Opening up the term ' 'female homosexuality'' to encompass other forms of intimacy and eroticism between women besides genital sexual encounter, Adrienne Rich speaks of the lesbian continuum—a range of woman-identified experiences. The notions of homoeroticism and arduous female friendship are instrumental in identifying lesbianism where it might have been censored or before the label "homosexuality" was coined. Just as sodomy laws were directed primarily at men (with the notable exception of Catharina Linck, executed for sodomy in 1721), there is much less literary evidence of sexually explicit lesbianism prior to 1900, although a large body of German literature after Winckelmann is devoted to male homosexuality (see Derks, Kuzniar). Innovative ways of reading for female homosexuality before 1900 need to be developed. The concept "homosociality" leads in this direction, for it permits an examination of how and where homosexual pleasure originates. Eve Sedgwick, influenced by Rich's lesbian continuum and consciously playing off the term "homosexuality," has brought into currency the term "homosociality" to designate same-sex social bonding (friendship, mentorship, rivalry, etc.) as providing situations for close, erotic contact. Homosociality can operate on various levels from the institutional to the personal. Like Rich, Sedgwick wants to open up what counts as sexuality and sees a continuum of desire stretching between homosociality and homosexuality, even though (yet suspiciously because) intense male bonding is often accompanied by homophobia. Sedgwick notes that the opposition between the homosexual and the homosocial is more porous and less dichotomous for women than for men in Western society. An investigation of male homosociality nonetheless can be productive for feminist studies, because solidarity among men can exclude women. Especially when the sexual dimension to homosociality is suppressed, the bond between men can be embodied in the form of a woman who is used solely as a substitutive object for sexual release or for the trade or traffic between men. Although homosociality is not synonymous with homosexuality or homoeroticism, it, too, points to the various inflections and modulations of human desire. Unfortunately, unlike Rich and Butler, Sedgwick has not yet been translated into German. See also: Film, Lesbian; Lesbian Literature; Lesbian Theories; Psychoanalysis. References: Abelove, Henry, Michele Aina Barale, and David Halperin, eds., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993); Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993); De Lauretis, Teresa, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Derks, Paul, Die Schande der heiligen Paderastie: Homosexualitat und Offentlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur 1750-1850 (Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1990); Kuzniar, Alice, ed., Outing Goethe and His Age (Stanford, CA:
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Stanford University Press, 1996); Marti, Madeleine, Hinterlegte Botschaften: Die Darstellung lesbischer Frauen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Rich, Adrienne, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs 5 (1980): 631-60; Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
ALICE KUZNIAR Hdrspiel. Radio plays flourished in Germany from the 1920s to the 1970s. Written for listeners, not readers, they utilize voices, sounds, and/or music to dramatize the story and to engage the listener. The length and form of the radio play vary and are independent of the genre classifications. As writers, directors, and actors, women have played a significant role in the artistic development of the genre. Early radio plays frequently chose science fiction as their genre. Alice Fliegel's science fiction-like radio play Der tote Gast (1924), the earliest recorded radio play by a female radio dramatist, is traditional in its form and content, employing sounds and music but emphasizing words. The rise of the Third Reich forced many writers into exile, where they continued producing and broadcasting Horspiele. Anna Seghers' Prozefi der Jeanne d'Arc zu Rouen 1431 (1937) differs from other contemporary radio plays in its use of authentic materials and its attempt to motivate the listener to think critically about the impact of war. Like many women authors, Helene Schmoll, in her radio play Alle Wege flihren nach Korsika (1948), maintained the traditional lyrical form of the early radio plays, employing closed scenes, sounds, dialogue, and music. The production of radio plays increased dramatically in the 1950s in competition with television. These tended to be socially critical radio plays, reflecting the reality of early postwar Europe, for example, Marie Luise Kaschnitz's Was sind denn sieben Jahre (1953), Nelly Sachs' Eli, Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels (1951), and Ingeborg Drewitz's Das labyrinth (1962). Other radio plays thematized attempts to escape from an oppressive capitalistic system such as Use Aichinger's optimistic Knopfe (1953) and Ingeborg Bachmann's more pessimistic Die Zikaden (1955). While these Horspiele differ from earlier ones in their critique of modern society and its impact on the individual, they adhere to earlier forms, employing words, sounds, and/or music in traditional ways, for example, as part of the plot. The dramaturgical use of music and sounds to signal scenic breaks is exemplified in Bachmann's love story Der gute Gott von Manhattan (1958), for which she received the prestigious award Hdrspielpreis der Kriegsblinden. In the 1960s, radio plays began to shift from traditional to avant-garde forms. These plays place emphasis on experimentation with voices and sounds to reflect reality (e.g., the O-Ton radio play, which employs only authentic sounds) or involve acoustic poetics. In these plays, voices, words, and noises constitute the entire play, and the spatiotemporal narrative becomes blurred. Friedrike Mayrocker also received the Hdrspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for her radio play Funf
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Mann Menschen (1968), in which a montage of five voices produces a musical effect. Aichinger's Besuch im Pfarrhaus (1961), in contrast, employs word games and paradoxes in variation and repetition, defamiliarizing language and social conventions. Radio play broadcasting boomed through the mid-1970s; many women's radio plays, such as Gabriele Wohmann's Weinen (1972), centered on women's issues. After the 1970s, Horspiel production faded due to the genre's inability to compete with other media. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Exile Literature; Prizes, Literary; Science Fiction. References: Frank, Arnim, "Das Horspiel." (Diss., Frankfurt/M., 1963); Heger, Roland, Das osterreichische Horspiel (Vienna: Braumiiller, 1977); Wurffel, Stefan Bodo, Das deutsche Horspiel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978). RHONDA DUFFAUT H o s e n r o l l e . Otherwise referred to as "breeches part," "trouser-role," or "travesti" and primarily deployed in a performative context (e.g., theater, opera, operetta, performance art), the Hosenrolle can refer either to a man's role intended by the author/composer to be played/sung by a woman or to crossdressed roles, in which a female character disguises herself as a male by appearing in breeches for at least part of a performance. The meaning of the Hosenrolle changed after the mid-17th century, when women began appearing publicly on stage. Prior to that, for example, in William Shakespeare's theater, the gender issue was compounded by having men playing women playing men. Famous Hosenrollen include Juana in Tirso de Molina's Don Gil de las colzas verdes (1635), Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It (1599), Viola in the Twelfth Night (1600), Portia in the Merchant of Venice (1597), and Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594). In the German-speaking countries, Hosenrollen are more apt to occur on the musical stage, as in the operatic roles of Cherubino in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Leonore in Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio (1805), and Octavian in Richard StrauB's Der Rosenkavalier (1911). Having a mezzo-soprano sing a man's role was especially popular in the Viennese operetta and became a staple of that form of musical theater in the 19th century. (Although Hosenrollen were en vogue in Paris and Vienna, such parts were rewritten for the male voice and played by men when these operettas came to Prussia, London, or the United States.) Inspired by Jacques Offenbach's La Belle Helene (1864) with its travesti role of Oreste, Viennese composers of the golden age of operetta created breeches parts for the lead performers in Franz von Suppe's Fatinitza (1876), Boccaccio oder der Prinz von Palermo (1878), and Donna Juanita (1880) and for supporting roles such as Prince Orlofsky in Johann StrauB Jr.'s Die Fledermaus (1874). Although the use of cross-dressed roles in which a woman disguises herself as a man is fairly straightforward in staged performances of male-authored texts, the deployment of women in male roles on the musical stage acquires a broader
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cultural signification in the 19th century. Originally, such Hosenrollen were used to suggest the youth of the male character (e.g., Cherubino) but later in the century, especially in Vienna, the male parts sung by sopranos represent foreign males (Eastern = Russian, Turkish; Southern = Italian, Spanish), often of the high nobility. This effeminization of the Other can be located in Austria's particular constitution of national identity at that time. The travesti role of Count Octavian Roffrano (southern lineage) in Der Rosenkavalier locates the effeminization of the aristocracy directly in the Austrian social hierarchy. The newly emerging dramatic tradition of German women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries presents us with a different context for discussing the Hosenrolle on the nonmusical stage. While disguises are used in traditional ways in comedies such as Charlotte von Stein's Die zwey Emilien (1800), crossdressing affords the heroine an opportunity to transgress traditional gender roles, to move more freely in society, and to assume a position of (historical) agency in dramas like von Stein's Neues Freiheitssystem oder die Verschworungen gegen die Liebe (1798) or Karoline von Giinderrode's Mora (1804). Since many of the dramas written by women still have not been fully evaluated in this context, our understanding of the significance of cross-dressing for women dramatists remains incomplete. Hosenrollen also play a defining role in late 20th-century feminist performance, especially in butch-femme-based lesbian performance in the 1980s and 1990s, in which gender is staged as a social construction. See also: Giinderrode, Karoline von; Musical Theater; Operetta; Orientalism; Tanztheater. References: Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992); Traubner, Richard, Operetta: A Theatrical History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Zerzawy, K., "Entwicklung, Wesen und Moglichkeiten der Hosenrolle" (Diss., University of Vienna, 1951). SUSAN L. COCALIS H o y e r s , Anna O w e n a ( 1 5 8 4 - 1 6 5 5 ) . "Dies Buch von einer Fraw beschribn/ Wird man gwiB darumb mehr beliebn / Weiln dergleichen nie gesehen." Thus wrote Johann Werdenhagen in his foreword to Anna Owena Hoyers' Gesprach eines Kindes mit seiner Mutter vom wahren Christenthumb (1628), and the same foreword proved just as fitting for Hoyers' collected works, Geistliche und Weltliche Poemata (1650). Hoyers' poetry can be largely defined as devotional literature (Erbauungsliteratur), a genre for which women had been both authors and readers. However, before her, women had rarely used it for the religious-educational and sociopolitical purposes pursued by Hoyers. The orphan of a wealthy Schleswig-Holstein farmer, Hans Owen's daughter Anna brought a substantial dowry into her marriage with Hermann Hoyer, an influential government functionary (called Staller) in her native SchleswigHolstein. (The s that is added to her name is actually a possessive.) When her husband died 20 years later, Hoyers was made the guardian of those five of her
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eight children who were still under age. She also inherited a heavily encumbered estate. To find consolation in her widowhood, she read the works of Caspar Schwenkfeld, Valentin Weigel, and others—best-sellers of devotional literature but also considered sectarian—and this reading shaped her views regarding the ideal conduct of a Christian. Her own works not only are an expression of her innermost religiosity but also were intended to educate others about what she considered a Christian viewpoint and lifestyle and to defend those whose religious convictions resembled hers. Her wickedly funny invectives against the Lutheran clergy and the entangled inheritance saw her embroiled in several controversies, and eventually she had to leave Schleswig-Holstein for Sweden (1632). Gustav Adolph of Sweden, the subject of one of Hoyers' panegyric poems, had just been killed in battle, and his widow, Maria Eleonora (to whom Hoyers had dedicated her adaptation of the Book of Ruth), and daughter Christina could not yet bestow the largesse on which Hoyers now depended. But eventually she was granted a little farm near Stockholm and lived there until her death in 1655. In 1650, a collection of her works was published by the renowned publishing house Elzevier in Amsterdam. The first selection, Gesprach, is a catechism in which Hoyers uses the authority of a mother to teach her children that true Christians can be recognized by their lifestyle and to show how to prepare for a religious reawakening. These same convictions are also put forward in "Einfaltige Warheit," "Deutsche Warheit," and "Christi Gulden Cron." The low German invectives against the clergy appear in "De Danische Dorp-Pape." Her hope for better times is expressed in her chiliastically tinted "Posaunenschall" and "Bedencken vom Schenkfelds Buch vom Wort Gottes." Purely political is her furious invective against the English Parliament upon the death of Charles I (1649), and intensely personal are her genre pieces against older women who want to marry younger men. However, such a specified list obscures the fact that her educational, religious, and political views form a unified whole in which individuals carry out their religious convictions in daily life and have the duty to share their views of what constitutes true Christianity. Her insistence that she has a voice worthy of being heard, her effective use of literature to express opinions, her frank mingling in affairs where her opinions were not wanted, and the sociopolitical angle of her devotional literature make her virtually unique in her time. See also: Baroque Literature; Erbauungsliteratur. References: Moore, Cornelia Niekus, "Anna Hoyers' 'Posaunenschall': Hymns of an Empire at War and a Kingdom Come." Daphnis 13 (1984): 343-62, " 'Mein Kindt nimm diB in acht' . . . " Pietismus und Neuzeit 6 (1980): 164-85; Roe, Ada Blanche, "Anna Owena Hoyers. A Poetess of the Seventeenth Century" (Diss., Bryn Mawr, 1915); Warren, Marianne, "Anna Owena Hoyers, schriftstellerische Tatigkeit und weibliches BewuBtsein im 17. Jahrhundert." AUGIAS 37 (1990): 20^5. CORNELIA NIEKUS MOORE
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Hybridity. Twentieth-century postcolonial theories and the emerging disciplines of cultural and ethnic studies have called attention to the ethnically and nationally mixed, or hybrid, composition of cultural identities formed under conditions of colonialism and immigration throughout history. The hybrid subjectivities of minority women challenge traditional cultural categories and necessitate a revisioning of dominant national and ethnic identities. Minority and foreign women writers in Germany have explored ways in which the dominant ideologies construct individual and collective identity. Because of their dual positioning as members of racial, ethnic, national, and religious groups and as marginalized as "other" by virtue of their status as the "second sex," women participate in multiple personal and social identifications, resulting in compound, hybrid subjectivities. Women belonging to minority cultural groups occupy especially complex and varied positions in their societies. Minority writers have pointed out how members of oppressed groups develop a double consciousness, combining perspectives of the oppressed with an understanding of the dominant social group; women and members of ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural minorities develop subjectivities that incorporate victim and oppressor sensibilities. In Germany, literature by foreign and minority women has a long historical tradition, as evidenced by Gliickel von Hameln's 17th-century Yiddish memoirs. However, this literary heritage and the hybrid subjectivities of foreign and minority women writing in Germany have been largely ignored within traditional historical and literary German studies. The recognition of exile and immigration literature and of Jewish-German, Afro-German, and Turkish-German literature as important categories of German literary tradition is a recent phenomenon, having grown along with the women's movement of the 1970s, as ethnic and minority studies have developed in conjunction with feminist theories. Both as an outgrowth of the civil rights and women's movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s and in protest against their exclusion from these respectively male- and white-dominated movements, Afro-German, Jewish-German, and Turkish-German women have initiated individual and collective theorizations of their experiences and subjectivities. The literature and theories of these women, who define themselves according to multiple, contradictory, and shifting subject positions, have influenced German literary and cultural studies, destabilizing dominant notions of identity. Minority women are being recognized by the fields of German feminism and German cultural studies as a significant presence in German literature. Texts such as Torkan's Tufan: Brief an einen islamischen Bruder (1983) and Aysel Ozakin's memoir, Die Leidenschaft der Anderen (1992), which address the crossing of cultural borders and intermingling of cultural identities, have entered into classroom canons and theoretical discourse. See also: Black German Literature; Cultural Studies; Exile Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Identity Theories; Minority Literature; Positionality; Postcolonialism; Postmodernism; Turkish-German Literature; Women's Movement.
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References: Living in Two Cultures: The Socio-Cultural Situation of Migrant Workers and Their Families (Aldershot, England: Gower, 1982); Lixl-Purcell, Andreas, ed., Women of Exile: German-Jewish Autobiographies since 1933 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Opitz, May, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz, eds., Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out. Trans. Anne V. Adams (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992). LISA BERNSTEIN H y m n . The hymn is a song of praise. As a literary genre, it can be traced to ancient Greece and Rome, where it was used to praise both gods and heroes; Homer, Horace, Pindar, and Kallimachos were some of the most prolific and renowned writers of the genre. The only known female hymn writer of ancient times is Sappho, who also wrote hymns in praise of abstract ideas such as beauty. The hymn also has biblical roots in the Psalms and the Song of Songs, which is the model for the frequent use of the lover's dialogue between Christ and the church (or the Soul) by Christian hymnists. There is no single, set form for the hymn, but it is usually lyrical and often rhymes. The hymn is generally intended to be sung, and the tradition of chanted psalmody has been preserved by both Jewish and Christian practitioners. Saint Ambrose first adapted the hymn for Christian liturgical use in the Middle Ages; this period also saw the first great female hymnodist, the German abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Church writing in the Middle Ages was in Latin; Hildegard's training in the order of St. Benedict gave her access to this language of the educated. Hildegard composed the lyrics and music to 77 liturgical songs, published in two different manuscripts as "Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations" (Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum [11 S i l l 58]). While Hildegard's thought remains firmly within the patriarchal vision of the church she served—Eve as the sinner who must be balanced out by Mary—her liturgical songs reveal her strong identification with female figures: 15 of the songs are in praise of the Virgin Mary, 13 praise Saint Ursula, and others are addressed to virgin martyrs or to the virtue of Wisdom (Sapientia), a feminine deity. Hildegard's hymns often seem to assume women's equality, as when she declares that God saw himself in the faces of virgins (in the antiphon " O pulchrae f a d e s " ) , or when she calls the Virgin Mary "savior" (Salvatrix). Feminist criticism of Hildegard has asked whether her views of women, in fact, go beyond the boundaries of accepted theology of the time. While most scholars are not of this opinion—how could a renegade feminist thinker have maintained a position of authority in the medieval church?—critics of every persuasion praise Hildegard's inventiveness in her lyrics and music. What most readers will recognize as hymns are really Protestant chorales. In accordance with the church reformer Martin Luther's popularizing views, Protestant hymns were often set to already familiar tunes, while the words (in the German vernacular) spoke directly to the populace. The first German woman to write a Protestant hymn was Elisabeth von Meseritz Creutziger (also Cruziger).
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Her hymn "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn" (1524) is still in use in the German Protestant hymnal (Evangelisches Kirchen-Gesangbuch). While the contents of the hymn will strike the modern reader as formulaic, it exhibits a tension between sensuality and negation of the body that seems to be a particularly common characteristic of women's spirituality. It is typical of many female Christian hymnodists that they simultaneously ask Christ for help in controlling or suppressing their physical desires and yet express their love for him in very physical terms. Creutziger is also prototypical regarding the difficulties faced by creative women within the patriarchal church. Luther included "Herr Christ" in his first hymnal (1524), but without attribution. Other German women whose hymns are included in the current German Protestant hymnal include Elisabeth-Eleonore von Sachsen-Meiningen, Amilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt nee Barby (who wrote no less than 587 hymns), Henriette Luise von Hayn, Julie Hausmann, Eleonore ReuB, and Hedwig von Redern. Several female composers also contributed melodies to the hymnal: Minna Koch, Anna Amalia von Preussen, and Luise Reichardt are among the best known. The Baroque poet Catherina Regina von Greiffenberg wrote literary hymns (not suitable for congregational singing) that were remarkable for their outpouring of passion for the Savior. It is worth noting that almost all of these women were of the nobility; composing religious texts was considered an acceptable occupation for women even when "serious" literary activity was not. In the 19th century, a large proportion of hymn texts in English-language Protestant hymnals was penned by women, some of whom even received professional standing and recognition for their work (among the best known are the poets Christina Rossetti and Catherine Winkworth, who translated a number of German hymns). In comparison, relatively few German women were as prolific or received church sanction. Since most scholarly work on German hymns is done by traditionalists, and Christian feminists are more interested in current social problems than in artistic traditions, the field is wide open for feminist research on German female hymnodists in particular (the one exception is Hildegard, on whom there is a substantial body of feminist work). In the 20th century, the church hymn as a lively and popular art form has nearly died out in Europe; in Germany, first the Wandervogel movement, with its songs for the Hitler Youth, and later the British-American pop song successively assumed the importance hymns once had in popular culture. Instead, the hymn genre has continued in literature; among hymns by 20th-century German women writers, Gertrud von Le Fort's collection of Hymnen an die Kirche (1924) stands out. It was written to celebrate her conversion to Catholicism at age 48. The irregular, nonstrophic form of her hymns recalls the classical song of praise (influenced by Friedrich Holderlin). See also: Baroque Literature; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Mariendichtung; Martyrerdrama; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Ode; Poetry, Spiritual; Reformation; Saints; Virgin.
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References: Michaelis, Otto, Lebensbilder der Liederdichter und Melodisten. Handbuch zum evangelischen Kirchengesangbuch (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1957); Newman, Barbara, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Sauer-Geppert, Waldtraut Ingeborg, Sprache und Frommigkeit im deutschen Kirchenlied: Voruberlegungen zu einer Darstellung seiner Geschichte (Kassel: J. Stauda, 1984); Schirks, Wilhelm, ed., Geistliche Sanger der christlichen Kirche deutscher Nation (Halle: J. Fricke, 1855).
KRISTIE A. FOELL Hysteric. The figure of the hysteric in women's literature often masks a rebellion against women's oppression, through a conscious or an unconscious pathological identity. From the feminist psycholinguistic perspective, the hysteric's specific mode of communication—that of a nonverbal body condition— reveals that she avoids the language of patriarchy and therefore its symbolic order. Manifestations of hysteria as literary motifs include illnesses, depression, and physical or mental imprisonment. The etymology of the word ' 'hysteria'' provides the basis for the historical interpretation of hysteria as a female disease. Taken from Greek, the word ' 'hyster" means womb. The ancients believed that the womb could travel to other parts of the body, which was referred to as hystericus globus (wandering womb), and inflict certain bodily and mental ailments. From the Middle Ages up to the 17th century, women afflicted with hysterical symptoms were believed to be either spiritually gifted or in league with the Devil. The figure of the hysteric gained special attention during the period of the fin-de-siecle with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and his talking cure. The study of hysteria consists mainly of the female theatrical display of physical symptoms and the male doctor's recordings of them, which presents the paradigms male/female, analyst/analysand, spectator/performer. The tradition of the hysteric in patriarchal literature and drama comprises the male author's depicting, describing, and prescribing the female character. The first examples of a hysterical theme in women's works are the psychosomatic and ecstatic experiences documented in writings of the medieval nuns. The visions of Hildegard von Bingen in Scivias (1141-1147) and of Mechthild von Magdeburg in Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250-1281) greatly influenced the works of mystics known as Visionsliteratur, which recorded real and imaginary illnesses and hysterical pregnancies. In the 19th century, Wilhelmine von Hillern's Arzt der Seele (1869) and Lou Andreas-Salome's works Eine Ausschweifung (1898) and Das Haus (1921) depict heroines torn between emancipatory and conventional womanhood. In the later 20th century, Ingeborg Bachmann displays her protagonists' lack of voice through hysterical symptoms in Malina (1971) and Der Fall Franza (1979). Carolina Muhr's Depressionen: Tagebuch einer Krankheit (1979) is concerned with schizophrenic contradictions of being a woman. Communication breaks down between a psychiatrist-husband and his wife in Maja Beutler's Die Wortfalle (1983).
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Feminist linguistics and psychoanalytic theorists have constructed theories on female expression in reference to the "spectacle" of hysterical afflictions. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Body, Female; Demon; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Linguistics, Feminist; Mysticism; Psychoanalysis. References: Cixous, Helene, The Newly Born Woman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Gilman, Sander L., et al., eds., Hysteria. Beyond Freud (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Irigaray, Luce, This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Kristeva, Julia, Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); Showalter, Elaine, The Female Malady (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Treder, Ute, Von der Hexe zur Hysterikerin: Die Verfestigungsgeschichte des i(Ewigen Weiblichens" (Bonn: Bouvier, 1984). BETHMUELLNER
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I Identity T h e o r i e s . These are premised on the notion that every individual occupies a particular political and historical location and that this location informs her or his cultural practices and ways of seeing the world. Beginning with feminist movements of the 1970s and continuing into the more recent fields of gender and postcolonial studies, women have developed and revised theories of a writer's subjectivity based on sociohistorical positioning with relation to categories of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. In the 1980s, French feminist theories focused on women's difference and writing, or ecriture feminine. Women literary critics debated the existence of a feminine aesthetic and discussed whether women's cultural experiences translated into a unique subjectivity and literary sensibility. The idea that a woman's gender affords her immediate and direct access to all women's experience risks slipping into biological essentialism. Women's bodies and sexuality become the basis of female creativity through an ideology that reinforces dichotomous gender categories. Identity theories arose in contrast and in connection to historically based Marxist and critical theories prevalent in the leftist student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In opposition to the patriarchal and hierarchical organization and ideology of the student movement, early feminists declared that "the personal is political" and organized around a theory of social change through personal transformation. A variation on the identity politics and radical subjectivity of West German feminist literature is the East German writer Christa Wolf's notion of subjective authenticity, a literary stance that, in contrast to socialist realism, links inner
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experience and the individual's coming to consciousness with wider cultural and historical processes. As identity theories have given way to a more culturally based politics of location, the problematic notion of a privileged standpoint is replaced by the discourse of partial perspectives. Recent trends in feminist literary theory recognize that no simple or direct relationship between women's experience and women's consciousness exists and that an identity as a woman does not provide access to some authentic truth about women and women's lives. Postcolonial and literary critics theorize a more complicated relationship between cultural identity and consciousness in exile and immigrant literature, minority literature, and lesbian literature. Nontraditional literary works have given rise to theories of race, class, and sexuality that emphasize the identity of the writer and reader as part of the social conditions under which texts are produced. See also: Aesthetics, Feminine/Feminist; Creativity; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/ Constructionism; Exile Literature; Feminist Theory, French; Frankfurt School; Gender; Lesbian Literature; Marxist Theories; Minority Literature; Postcolonialism; Socialist Realism; Student Movement (1968); Subjective Authenticity; Subjectivity; Wolf, Christa. References: Adelson, Leslie A., Making Bodies, Making History: Feminism and German Identity (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993); Ecker, Gisela, ed., Feminist Aesthetics. Trans. Harriet Anderson (Boston: Beacon, 1985); Richter-Schroder, Karin, Frauenliteratur und weibliche Identitat: theoretische Ansatze zu einer weiblichen Asthetik und zur Entwicklung der neuen deutschen Frauenliteratur (Frankfurt/M.: A. Hain, 1986). LISA BERNSTEIN
Ideologiekritik. This is the critique of the social and political interests that underlie systems of ideas. Traditional Ideologiekritik refers to a Marxist analysis of how texts and other cultural artifacts and institutions advance ideologies and viewpoints of the ruling class. During the last two centuries, women have expanded and complicated class-based ideological critique through analysis of the relationship between political power and sexuality, some of them drawing on neo-Marxist approaches developed by the Frankfurt School. Feminist critiques of ideology identify and criticize socially constructed notions of gender, denaturalizing and demystifying categories such as "man" and "woman," "masculine" and "feminine." In addition, women writers and feminist literary critics have examined the relationship between the social and ideological constructs of "the feminine" and the real conditions under which women live. Nineteenth-century Germany is marked by the Vormdrz period and women's emancipation movement, during which politically active women writers organized journals and wrote essays criticizing the status of women and the living conditions of the proletariat. Vormdrz women's literature includes the political autobiography and novels of emancipation by Louise Aston, essays advocating women's access to education and financial independence by Fanny Lewald, and
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arguments for the education of proletarian women by Louise Otto-Peters. Hedwig Dohm wrote essays analyzing the situation of women in 19th-century German society, criticizing traditional attitudes toward women, and arguing for woman's rights. The second wave of the women's movement in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) during the early 1970s involves feminist critiques of patriarchy. Alice Schwarzer wrote about the ideological consequences of biological differences between women and men, viewing gender categories as determined by relations of power and powerlessness. This period was marked by texts such as Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975), Jutta Heinrich's Das Geschlecht der Gedanken (1977), and Christa Reinig's Entmannung (1976). Feminist ideology criticism took various forms throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Ingeborg Bachmann compared sexual politics to fascism; Ingeborg Drewitz's texts reflected her social engagement with the political situations of women, prisoners, and foreigners in the FRG. Christa Wolf in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Elfriede Jelinek in Austria both analyzed the conditions of women's lives in their respective societies from Marxist-feminist viewpoints. During the 1980s and 1990s, women have taken up specific social issues in their texts. Monika Maron and Helga Konigsdorf, both East German writers, address issues of pollution and nuclear technology. Recent developments in feminist Ideologiekritik involve a move toward postcolonial and cultural studies. Contemporary women writers and literary critics examine how differences in class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, and sexuality intersect and interact with gender to shape women's lives. See also: Aston, Louise; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Colonial Literature; Cultural Studies; Dohm, Hedwig; Frankfurt School; Jelinek, Elfriede; Lewald, Fanny; Marxist Theories; Otto-Peters, Louise; Postcolonialism; Realism; Reinig, Christa; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Wolf, Christa; Workers' Literature; Young Germany. References: Altbach, Edith Hoshino, et al., German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1978).
LISA BERNSTEIN Idyll. The idyll in German literature is a short literary form, usually in prose, evoking a place, often out-of-doors or on the threshold of a simple dwelling, inhabited by people who live and work in a preindustrial, usually rural style (often as herders). The idyll's characters, whose emotions are treated as representative of the human condition, are happy in their limitations and in their role in the cycles of life (youth to old age, seasons, etc.); their labor is rarefied into almost pure pleasure and satisfaction. The dominance of the cyclic separates the world of the idyll from the notion of unfolding history and reinforces essentialized notions, especially of women. The idyll's notion of the authenticity of universalized human emotions is reinforced by allusions to biblical and classical
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texts (especially by Theocritus and Vergil) from which the genre derives. The characters in idylls usually have Greek or biblical names or, in a move that simultaneously emulates classical models and relocates the text into the Germanspeaking world, German first names without surnames. In German literature the high point in idyll production and reception occurred in the 18th century, especially with the work of Salomon Gessner, who published several enormously successful, widely read and translated collections. His characters, mostly men, are typically shepherd poets and musicians, pausing in their labor to sing to each other. Within the patriarchal world of Gessner's idylls, women are represented primarily as objects of men's love, although, occasionally, also as shepherds and poets themselves. Other idyll writers, such as Johann Heinrich Voss in "Luise" (1783) and Johann Wolfgang Goethe in "Hermann und Dorothea" (1796), more explicitly use the techniques of the genre to propagate an archaic position for women that links them to nature and removes them from culture and history. Idylls, often published in collections, were frequently directed at women readers. Gessner's first collection (1756) is addressed to both men and women but in different ways, as indicated by his two introductions, one that analyzes the literary status of the genre ("An den Leser," for men) and another that poses an intimate relation of author to reader ("An Daphnen," for women). Women writers in the 18th and 19th centuries, including Dorothea LoberLilien, Philippine Gatterer-Engelhard, Emilie von Berlepsch, Juliana von Mudersbach-Giovane, Amalie von Helvig, Caroline Pichler, and Louise Brachmann, also composed idylls. Sophie Albrecht, for example, included three in her first collection of verse; the two that use German rural settings depict peasant girls who long for urban finery instead of rural flowers to wear to a celebration but who relinquish their wishes when it might entail pain for other living creatures (in one case by stringing fireflies to make a necklace, and in the other, selling a baby rabbit for stew in order to buy a ribbon). On the other hand, Anna Luisa Karsch, who had herself been a peasant cowherd, and who was the protegee of one of the theoreticians of the idyll, wrote no idylls. In addition to particular works that can be categorized as idylls, there are many instances of idyllic scenes or episodes within other genres. The opening scene, for example, of Albrecht's drama Therese (1781) has the pastoral accoutrements and tone of the idyll; more explicitly, a prose piece subtitled "eine deutsche Idylle" occurs in one of the chapters (I: 227-40) of the novel Amalie von Nordheim (1783) by Amalia Becker-Froriep. Boschenstein points out the idyllic portions of travel writings and landscape poems, evident in the writings of Friederike Brun. Less common than the insertion of idylls into other forms are integrated sets of idylls constituting larger works; Pichler, author of several idyll collections in the early 19th century, produced one such composition, Ruth, ein biblisches Gemdlde in drei Idyllen (1805). See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Gender Theories, History of; Nature; Pastoral Literature.
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Reference: Boschenstein-Schafer, Renate, Idylle (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967). RUTHDAWSON Immigration—see: Auslandergesetz Impersonator, Male—see: Hosenrolle; Lesbian Literature; Mannweib; Operetta I m p r e s s i o n i s m ( 1 8 8 5 - 1 9 0 0 ) . In standard literary criticism, various definitions of impressionism have been developed over the years. Impressionism in literature is often seen as a countermovement to Naturalism and has been described as "a secularized symbolism" or, alternatively, as "symbolistic impressionism" (citing the impact of French Symbolism on the new style). The lack of a consensus for a definition of impressionism results in a spectrum of literary art that may be considered impressionistic. Impressionist painters portray what they see as it is reflected on their retina. If an object appears blurred due to a shadow, the artist will try to paint this momentary appearance. Impressionistic writing entails exact perception, employing the finest nuances possible in an artistic setting. The writer chooses precise words, describing each moment in time, leaving little room for fantasy. With this style, adjectives and the present tense assume a new importance; favored genres are poems, novellas, and short prose. Ricarda Huch, Isolde Kurz, Agnes Miegel, Lulu von StrauB und Torney, and Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti are considered impressionist writers. Huch, whose first works are Die Goldinsel (1888) and a number of poems (1891), became instantly famous for her novel Erinnerungen von Ludlof Ursleu dem Jungeren (1893), in which she describes the disintegration of a German merchant family. Huch was prominent both for her literary work and for her achievements in the fields of history and philosophy. In her work, she created an antithesis to Otto Weininger's misogynist gender theories, which were extremely influential at the turn of the century. Kurz based her Florentiner Novellen (1890) on a scientific study of the Italian Renaissance. StrauB und Torney's earliest work is Balladen und Lieder (1902), which frequently employs historical themes. Miegel's similarly titled Balladen und Lieder (1907) is a collection of melancholic poems, rich in rhythmic expressions. Handel-Mazzetti became known for her historical novels (e.g., Jesse und Maria, 1906). One of the most representative examples of impressionistic style is Clara Viebig's novella Kinder der Eifel (1897). Viebig chisels in words the hardship experienced by children in the Eifel, and her short sentences paint the bizarre, gray landscape of these mountains. See also: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Naturalism; Renaissance Humanism; Symbolism. References: Best, Otto F., and Hans-Jiirgen Schmitts, eds., Impressionismus, Symbolismus und Jugendstil (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977); Frank, Miriam, "Ricarda Huch und
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die deutsche Frauenbewegung." Ricarda Huch, Studien zu ihrem Leben und Werk 2 (1988): 65-74; Marhold, Hartmut, "Literarischer Impressionismus in der Sekundarstufe II." Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 19 (1986): 257-83; Martini, Fritz, Deutsche Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1968).
INGRID DINTER Infanticide. In the age of Enlightenment, the subject of infanticide became a major focus in theoretical writings by "enlightened" educators, lawyers, theologians, and scholars. The public outcry was directed against the brutality of the church and the legal system in terms of their severity of punishment. Susanna Margarethe Brandt's execution in 1772 heightened the call for reform of the criminal code, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, which had not been changed since 1532. The subject was also of interest to the generally reform-minded writers of the Storm and Stress movement (1767-1785/1790), seen in works such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Urfaust (1773-1775), Heinrich Leopold Wagner's Die Kindermorderin (1776), and Friedrich Schiller's poem "Die Kindsmorderin" (1782). Traditionally, German scholarship has accounted for the frequency of the theme of infanticide in Storm and Stress literature as another aspect of the movement's tendency toward social reform. As feminist critics have asserted, however, literary representations of infanticide could not offer solutions to social ills as long as male authors made female virtue (i.e., sexual purity) the foundation of their works and continued the polarization of the feminine in idealized and demonized representations. The literary figure of the child murderess is related to the character of the seduced and abandoned woman in the bourgeois tragedy (burgerliches Trauerspiel), a genre that reflects the bourgeoisie's lack of status and political action in the public sphere and political confrontation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. For the rising middle class, female virtue became a commodity or weapon. This reality is reflected in the treatment of middle-class women as property in many 18th-century literary representations. Through the eroticization of the bourgeois woman's giving in to desire, infanticide texts frequently create a titillating atmosphere and erotic pleasure and downplay the subsequent torture and execution of the child murderess. Psychological warfare against women, motivated largely by male anxiety of the "demonic" female psyche (in some ways comparable to the witch-hunts between the 15th and 17th centuries), and an eagerness for control and subjugation shape much of infanticide literature. Feminist studies indicate that infanticide fiction by Storm and Stress authors is more about intimidation, sexual control, and patriarchal violence (physical and psychological) than the reform of the criminal law and sexual emancipation. Any practical reformatory purpose and potential deterrent had to be limited in scope since the readers of their texts included middle-class women reading mostly women's journals. The endings of Goethe's and Wagner's plays reflect a compromise with the expectations of their readers and audiences: Wagner's sentimental tableau in Die Kindermorderin with the emotional rejoining of
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daughter, father, and seducer-lover is as ineffectual as Goethe's theology of the "eternal feminine," which projects onto woman a willingness for self-sacrifice in order to save her man. As static female protagonists, the young women remain exposed to pity and its cathartic function for the audience and/or readership. See also: Bourgeois Tragedy; Enlightenment; Eternal Feminine; Protagonist/Antagonist; Storm and Stress; Women's Journals. References: Kord, Susanne, "Women as Children/Women as Childkillers: Poetic Images of Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Germany." Eighteenth-Century Studies 26.3 (1993): 449-66; Mabee, Barbara, "Die Kindesmorderin in den Fesseln der biirgerlichen Moral: Wagners Evchen und Goethes Gretchen." Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 29^4-5; Madland, Helga Stipa, "Infanticide as Fiction: Goethe's Urfaust and Schiller's 'Kindsmorderin' as Models." German Quarterly 62.1 (1989): 27-38; Weber, Beate, Die Kindsmorderin im deutschen Schrifttum von 1770-1795 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974). BARBARA MABEE I n n e r E m i g r a t i o n . This expression, coined by Frank ThieB in 1933, describes the attitude of those writers who chose to stay in Germany during the period of national socialism, but who did not support the national socialist agenda. The term itself is controversial, however, because of the difficulties involved in distinguishing between complicity and resistance. Most writers stayed silent during the period, as it was impossible to find publishing houses in Germany willing to print any texts considered antiregime. Most of the works written during this period found a home in the desk drawers of the authors (Schubladenliteratuf). Women writers were under the same constraints as men. Ricarda Huch resigned from the Prussian Academy of Arts (1933) in order to prevent her ideas from supporting the Third Reich. Because of her support of Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis, few of her works were printed. Other women such as Elisabeth Langgasser and Use Langner had their works banned during the Nazi regime. Luise Rinser refused to join the National Socialist Party. Consequently, all of her works after the publication of Die glasernen Ringe (1941) were banned. Recent research, based in part on feminist historiography that explores women's multiple and often contradictory subject positions in the Nazi era (Koonz), has challenged the image of Rinser as antifascist. The fact that Rinser published poems sympathizing with Nazi ideology in the mid-1930s—a part of her life that she does not address in her autobiography Den Wolf umarmen (1981)—complicates the readings of her explicitly antifascist writings which date since the early 1940s. Typical characteristics of literature produced under the conditions of inner exile included the necessity to encode criticism in the texts, forcing the reader to read between the lines. This coded language, Sklavensprache, was intended to fool those in power. Historical novels were particularly popular as a means to portray contemporary problems symbolically. Essays, biographies, and book reviews became a means to couch criticism. Many authors turned to more sub-
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jective means of expression such as diaries, short prose, and poetry. The mere fact that these works took on a form different from that which was typical for the propaganda literature of the national socialists made them stand out. Poetry, in particular nature poetry (Naturlyrik), offered a safe haven because its imagery lies outside the realm of society, and it often emphasized the isolation of the individual authors. In addition to the coded form of literature, illegal underground organizations produced newspapers and pamphlets exhorting the German citizenry to resist. These illegal outlets became a forum for antisystem thought. Although inner emigration is generally considered to express resistance, some authors who were forced into exile (e.g., Thomas Mann) maintained that the inner emigration literature could not be considered a literature of resistance, because the writers chose to remain in Nazi-Germany. See also: Diaries; Exile Literature; National Socialism; Nature Poetry; Novel, Historical; Resistance. References: Best, Otto F., " 'Widerspruch' oder 'Entsprechen': Uberlegungen zu gemeinsamen Randmotiven, Nebenziigen und Klischees in der Literatur von Nationalsozialismus, 'Innere Emigration' und Exil." Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur: Studien zu ihrer Bestimmung im Kontext der Epoche 1930 bis 1960. Ed. Wulf Koepke and Michael Winkler (Bonn: Bouvier, 1984) 215-27; Frederiksen, Elke, "Luise Rinser: Im Dialog mit der Vergangenheit? Zur Schwierigkeit der 'Vergangenheitsbewaltigung.' " Amsterdamer Beitrdge zur Neueren Germanistik: Literatur und politische Aktualitdt. Ed. Elrud Ibsch and Ferdinand van Ingen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993) 225-38; Grimm, Reinhold, and Jost Hermand, eds., Exil und Innere Emigration I (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1972); Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Egon Schwarz, eds., Exil und Innere Emigration II (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1973); Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Schell, Rudiger. Literarische Innere Emigration 1933 bis 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976).
CAROL ANNE COSTAB1LE-HEMING Inquisition. The witch persecution (Hexenverfolgung) was the systematic arrest, prosecution, torture, and execution of over 300,000 individuals in Europe, mostly women, between 1484 and 1650. The witch persecution was based on misogynist attitudes of the church and society at large: it was a combined effort of the patriarchal establishment to intimidate women, restrict their interaction with one another, and substantiate their inferior social standing. Significantly, the first published life stories of secular women are trial confessions. The main persecution began in Germany approximately in 1550 in the Catholic territories and spread to Saxony and other Protestant areas by 1572, where burning at the stake was introduced as the preferred method of execution. The theological and legal groundwork for the witch-hunts was laid in 1487 by the German inquisitors Heinrich Institoris and Jakob Sprenger with the Malleus maleficarum {The Witches Hammer, one of the most frequently published books in the early period of publishing). The Malleus maleficarum established guidelines for the identification of witches and their prosecution; it remained the prevailing document governing the witch trials for the next 200 years.
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The Witches Hammer and other treatises at the time were misogynist documents codifying the moral, legal, and social inferiority of women. Women were defined as the weaker sex with no intellectual abilities or self-discipline, but with insatiable sexual appetites. Their sexual excesses made them more susceptible to the Devil's temptation, who seduced them and then forced them to commit evil deeds like conjuring up storms, poisoning food, rendering men impotent, or causing infertility, illness, and birth defects. Any woman was potentially suspect, but those whose professions brought them into contact with sexuality and reproduction (midwives, herbalists, concubines, prostitutes) were especially vulnerable. Many physical characteristics (crossed eyes, red hair, facial wrinkles, birthmarks, or general ugliness) and activities (like preparation of love potions and fertility salves) were considered cause for suspicion. In 1537, Paracelsus' De sagis et earum operibus (Of Witches and Their Doings) further added to the list of indicators: women were suspected of witchcraft if they avoided men, refused their husbands sex, failed to wash their face or hair, did not keep good house and seldom cooked, or liked to be alone. Religious and civil authorities worked hand in hand to force women to participate in their own oppression. Execution by the civil authorities was allowed only on the basis of a "confession" (Bekenntnis), thus paving the way for ghastly forms of torture that increased in intensity until a confession was extracted. A legal confession required that women both admitted their guilt and implicated their teacher of the black arts. Various socioeconomic reasons have been suggested for the persecution. Some suggest it was an attempt of the male-dominated medical profession to combat practices of folk magic and medicine and to keep women, midwives, and purveyors of herbal medicines in check. Others argue that economic disasters (bad harvests, drought, etc.) were major contributing factors. Still others suggest that preservation of the social order and women's subordinate role and religious and sexual attitudes played a role. What is clear is that the state and the courts stood to benefit: the family of the accused was required to pay all court expenses and the banquet for the judges after each round of torture. In some areas the entire estate could be confiscated, with one-third of the proceeds going to the city and two-thirds to the local sovereign. The witch craze and witch-hunts have been the subject of ongoing study since the mid-19th century, with many researchers pursuing their own personal agenda. Researchers have explored the theological underpinnings of the belief in witches, the legal practices and the documentation of the trials, and the social milieu of the victims and their persecutors, as well as geographical differences. There have even been studies conducted for propagandistic purposes, like Heinrich Himmler's H-Sonderkommando in 1935, which hoped both to uncover the heritage of Germanic wise women and to use trial records against the church. Vestiges of the witch craze surface in German literature in fairy tales of the 19th century, where old women in male-authored stories appear as cannibals and evil temptresses who destroy their consorts. Their cruel and ghastly destruc-
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tion at the end of most tales is reminiscent of the fates of countless innocent women a few centuries earlier. Contemporary feminist authors like Irmtraud Morgner (Amanda: Ein Hexenroman, 1983), have looked to the witch myth as a rich source of pro-feminist solidarity. See also: Confessional Literature; Fairy Tale; Geschlechterkampf; Grandmother; Morgner, Irmtraud; Sexuality, Female; Wisewoman; Witch. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, '' Auswahlbibliographie zur Sozialgeschichte der Frau in Deutschland 1500-1800." Die Frau von der Reformation zur Romantik: Die Situation der Frau vor dem Hintergrund der Literatur- und Sozialgeschichte (Bonn: Bouvier 1980) 282-93; Blackwell, Jeannine, " 'Die Zunge, der Geistliche und das Weib': Uberlegungen zur strukturellen Bedeutung der Hexenbekenntnisse von 1500 bis 1700." Der Widerspenstigen Zdhmung: Studien zur bezwungenen Weiblichkeit in der Literatur vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Sylvia Wallinger and Monika Jonas (Innsbruck: Institut fiir Germanistik, 1986) 95-115; Honegger, Claudia, ed., Die Hexen der Neuzeit: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte eines kulturellen Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1978); Labouvie, Eva, Zauberei und Hexenwerk: Ldndlicher Hexenglaube in der friihen Neuzeit (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1991). SHAWN C. JARVIS I n t e r t e x t u a l i t y — s e e : Dialogics; Phenomenology; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Reader-Response Theories; Semiotics.
J Jelinek, Elfriede ( 1 9 4 6 - p r e s e n t ) . Jelinek, author of highly innovative and provocative texts, is probably the best-known and most controversial woman writer in Austria today. Her early writings are grounded in the politically oriented faction of the Grazer Gruppe, a loose association of Austrian avant-garde writers of the 1960s and 1970s (influenced by the better-known Wiener Gruppe). The combination of experimental forms—aimed at defamiliarizing language— and radical social critique continues to mark Jelinek's otherwise highly diverse works until today. Since her first publication in 1967 (the poetry volume Lisas Schatten), Jelinek has written in many different genres (poetry, prose, drama, radio play, screenplay, libretto, translation, and essays on political and aesthetic issues), but she is primarily known for her prose works (especially for the novels Die Klavierspielerin, 1983, and Lust, 1989). By comparison, her dramatic works have received less public attention. This is, in part, due to the fact that, until recently, established theaters (particularly in her home country, Austria) have been reluctant to stage her plays. Continuing and radicalizing the satirical tradition of Austrian Jewish writers (e.g., Karl Kraus and Elias Canetti), Jelinek's social critique has three main and interrelated targets. First, as a declared Marxist—she continues to identify with Marxism even after having left the Communist Party of Austria in the aftermath of the political events in 1989—she relentlessly attacks capitalist consumer society, its reinforcement in popular culture, and the ensuing commodification of all human beings and relationships (e.g., her earlier works wir sind lockvdgel baby!, 1968; Michael, ein Jugendbuch, 1972; Die Liebhaberinnen, 1975). Second, Jelinek attacks the remnants of Austria's fascist past, which she portrays
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as pervading the private and public realms of Austrian society and which she attributes to the general amnesia regarding Austria's active participation in fascism and anti-Semitism (e.g., the plays Burgtheater, 1984, and Totenauberg, 1991, and the novels Die Ausgesperrten, 1980, and Die Kinder der Toten, 1995). Finally, as a feminist, Jelinek attacks the systematic exploitation and oppression of women in a capitalist-patriarchal society, often focusing on the heterosexual sex act as exemplifying "Geschlechterkampf," the battle of the sexes (e.g., the novels Lust and Die Kinder der Toten and the dramas Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stutzen der Gesellschaften, 1979, and Clara S., 1982). At the same time, she demystifies women's victim status by refusing to project any positive image of female identity and by portraying women figures who have internalized their inferior status (e.g., Die Liebhaberinnen) or whose own deformations play out in an oppressive motherdaughter relationship (e.g., Die Klavierspielerin). The only glimpse of hope lies in the very process of quoting, rewriting, and displacing patriarchal language and literary tradition. Jelinek's activity as "Schriftverstellerin" (Erdle) is mirrored in the subversive linguistic activities of the female vampire in the drama Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1987). While most of Jelinek's literary works are decidedly antipsychological, that is, avoiding both introspection and the inner development of characters, Jelinek has adopted a confessional mode in the numerous interviews. Thus, paradoxically, Jelinek's self-sty lization has contributed to the media attention on her appearance and on the biographical encoding (and thus taming) of her texts, that is, to a reception typical for many women authors. In contrast to the highly mixed reactions to Jelinek and her works in the media, the rapidly growing body of secondary literature is marked by an embrace of Jelinek as a feminist social critic and explores the highly sophisticated array of postmodern styles and techniques in her texts. See also: Austrian Literature; Experimental Literature; Geschlechterkampf; Geschlechtscharaktere; Horspiel; Marxist Theories; Masochism/Sadomasochism; MotherDaughter Relationship; Postmodernism; Satire; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Vampirism; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victimization Theories. References: Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, ed., Text + Kritik. Elfriede Jelinek (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1993); Bartsch, Kurt, and Gunther Hofler, eds., Elfriede Jelinek (Graz, Vienna: Droschl, 1991); Erdle, Birgit R., " 'Die Kunst ist ein schwarzes glitschiges Sekret.' Zur feministischen Kunst-Kritik in neueren Texten Elfriede Jelineks." Amsterdamer Beitrdge zur Germanistik 29 (1989): 323-41; Giirtler, Christa, ed., Gegen den schonen Schein. Texte zu Elfriede Jelinek (Frankfurt/M.: neue kritik, 1990); Johns, Jorun, and Katherine Arens, eds., elfriede jelinek: framed by language (Riverside CA: Ariadne, 1994). FRIEDERIKE EIGLER J e w i s h W o m a n , B e a u t i f u L Jewish women figures belong to the literary inventory of Western serious and trivial literature. By the middle of the 19th
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century, the stereotype of the beautiful Jewess with unambiguous anti-Semitic connotations was firmly established. The term "the beautiful so-and-so" stigmatized the women it referred to as ostentatious and pretentious parvenues, be they converts or assimilated Jewish women. Already the Jewish characters in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1598) reveal different attitudes toward Jewish men and Jewish women, despite the fact that both were considered aliens and members of a foreign, mysterious culture. While Jewish men were portrayed as greedy and repulsive, that is, as Shylocks, young Jewish women appealed to the desire of Gentile men to make sexual conquests, and their portrayal was apt to give rise to fantasies about casual erotic adventures and exotic beauty. In numerous literary works, Jewish women figures become the lovers and wives of Gentile men, provided they meet the implicit demands of the Christian mainstream, abandon their native culture, and accept baptism and acculturation. This is the case with Shakespeare's Jessica, who steals her father's treasure and abandons him and her people to follow Lorenzo into his world. There is a hint of tragedy about ' 'fair'' or ' 'beautiful'' Jessica, since the melancholy ending of Shakespeare's dark comedy suggests that the gap between the new Christian woman and the established Venetians remains unbridgeable. The beautiful Jewish woman who has forsaken her home forever is lost between the cultures. She may be idealized like the Rebecca figure of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1820) or be portrayed as a shady and dangerous character as with Theodor Fontane's Ebba Rosenberg in Unwiederbringlich (1891-1892); either way, she remains the "other." As such she was associated with the processes of conversion, emancipation, and assimilation, all of which ultimately proved ineffective in overcoming her marginalized position. She was cast as an outsider, at risk from human and natural forces, as in Franz Grillparzer's Die Judin von Toledo (1872) and Adalbert Stifter's Abdias (1842). As long as Jewishness was primarily defined in religious terms, Gentile authors depicted the woman apostate who followed her heart in positive terms. It is interesting to note that the majority of converts were portrayed as childless. When, in the 19th century, ethnocentric and racist categories replaced religion as the dominant identifier, baptism no longer sufficed to rid the beautiful Jewish woman of the stigma of Jewishness. Numerous autobiographies, correspondences, and works of literature were written by women who themselves were regarded as beautiful Jewish women. Hannah Arendt discussed the identity problems these women faced during the age of emancipation in her study Rahel Varnhagen (1959). In the 20th century the character of the beautiful Jewish woman continued to carry erotic associations, which were also used by Jewish women writers such as Sarah Levy in her popular novel O mon goye (1929) or satirically played upon by Esther Dische in The Jewess (1992). Even Holocaust literature, particularly works by Jewish writers, retains the traditional sexual connotations, for example, Fania Fenelon's Auschwitz novel Playing for Time (1977), the House of Dolls (1957)
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by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, and Mira Lobe's short story "Die Luge." These works thematize the prostitution of Jewish women in Nazi concentration camps. The childlike femme fragile in Stifter's Abdias (1844), Lion Feuchtwanger's Jud Suss (1925), Isaac Bashevis Singer's Shosha (1978), and Peter Edel's Holocaust novels constitutes a variant of the stereotype with equally powerful sexual overtones. The image of the innocent and helpless beautiful Jewish woman who is victimized appeals to sadism and compassion alike. This figure often serves as a symbol of oppression and as a cipher for the Jewish people in general, representing the ultimate "other" within Western discourse. See also: Exotin; Femme Fragile; German Jewish Literature; Holocaust Literature. References: Denkler, Horst, and Hans-Otto Horch, eds., Conditio Judaica: Judentum, Antisemitismus und deutschsprachige Literatur vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988); Gilman, Sander, Inscribing the Other (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Heinemann, Marlene, Gender and Destiny. Women Writers and the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986); Die Juden: Vorurteil und Verfolgung im Spiegel literarischer Texte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986); Krobb, Florian, Die schone JUdin. Judische Frauengestalten in der deutschsprachigen Erzdhlliteratur vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1993); Lea, Charlene A., Emancipation, Assimilation and Stereotype: The Image of the Jew in German and Austrian Drama (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978); Miiller, Heidy, Die Judendarstellung in der deutschsprachigen Erzdhlprosa (Konigstein: Athenaum, 1984). DAGMAR C. G. LORENZ J o u r n a l s , Literary—see: Moral Weeklies; Women's Journals Jugendliteratur. This denotes works preferred by, and written for, adolescent readers. The genre became popular during the Enlightenment and was then dominated by male authors. After the introduction of compulsory school attendance in Germany, Jugendliteratur began to play an important role in 19thcentury literature. For the first time, girls were especially addressed in Madchenliteratur, and women writers, for example Thekla von Gumpert, Rosalie Koch, Clementine Helm, and Emmy von Rhoden, began to participate in the production of Jugendliteratur. During the 19th century, the genre's predominant goal seemed to be to impart bourgeois behavioral cliches, which were advocated in moral tales for adolescents and in the extremely popular yearbooks, such as Tochter-Album and Herzblattchens Zeitvertreib. With the increasing adolescent literature after World War II, the number of female authors writing in the genre increased as well. Besides reinforcing traditional gender concepts, they developed new role expectations for girls and boys. In Jugendliteratur written for both genders, topics such as dealing with the Nazi past (Vergangenheitsbewaltigung) were common until the late 1960s but were then replaced with a variety of subjects—drugs, alcohol, illness, death, minorities, pollution, Gastarbeiter (immigrant workers), sexuality (including homosexuality), anger, and anxiety—in the 1970s. This comparatively recent ten-
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dency to tackle controversial themes in Jugendliteratur appears in the work of many women authors of the genre, for example, the Austrian author Christine Nostlinger, whose themes are contemporary problems with social roles and questions of authority. Nostlinger is one of the most popular Jugendbuch-authors in Germany and the recipient of many awards. Since the 1970s, Jugendliteratur has been viewed as a form of literature preparing adolescents to read "high," or "world," literature. More recently, Jugendliteratur has become the subject of scholarly research focusing on adolescent indoctrination, political independence, and emancipation from the family and school. Today Jugendliteratur is sponsored by many national foundations like the Internationale Jugendbibliothek, the Arbeitskreis "Das gute Jugendbuch," and the Arbeitskreis fiir Jugendliteratur (all in Munich). Every year the foundations jointly award the Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis. See also: Children's Literature; Enlightenment; Madchenliteratur; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. References: Doderer, Klaus, ed., Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Weinheim: Beltz, 1977), Literarische Jugendliteratur: kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Aspekte der Kinderund Jugendliteratur in Deutschland (Weinheim: Juventa, 1992), Neue Helden in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Ergebnisse einer Tagung (Weinheim: Juventa, 1986); Doderer, Klaus, and Cornelia Riedel, Der deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis: eine Wirkungsanalyse (Weinheim: Juventa, 1988); Eckhardt, Juliane, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987); Grenz, Dagmar, Madchenliteratur: von den moralisch belehrenden Schriften im 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Backfischliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981); Maier, Karl E., Jugendliteratur: Formen, Inhalte, padagogische Bedeutung (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 1987); Maier, Karl E., and Arbeitskreis fiir Jugendliteratur, Phantasie und Realitdt in der Jugendliteratur (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 1976). DAGMAR SCHULZ
J u g e n d s t i l (c. 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 1 4 ) . This is an aesthetic style of writing, painting, architecture, design, and sculpture that was influential at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Linearity, ornamentation, and integration with other art forms characterize Jugendstil. In literature it is most often associated with poetry. Reacting against Naturalism, Jugendstil artists sought to escape the problems of urbanization and industrialism in a world of cosmic wholeness. Eternal human nature was emphasized over individual lives. The search for unity within signs and symbols centered on the image of the woman or the Eternal Feminine. By backing away from the ties between Naturalism and proletarian and women's movements, Jugendstil undermined sociopolitical advances and focused instead on the unchanging, "natural" qualities of woman's Urwesen. Jugendstil literature reveals a longing for a preindustrial era freed from the evils of modern technology and civilization. The movement also exhibited a tension between the will to life and a fascination with death, between renewal
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and a focus on the end of the world. Fictional (usually male) characters are depicted as supremely lonely and unable to connect to reality. Jugendstil art attempts to give a feeling of individual liberty within a constrictive society without changing real conditions. It aims to unite life and art. Also typical are highly stylized elements, irrationalism, inner revelation, blood as a binding element, floral elements, anything originary, such as the Urmutter or the pagan, and a rejection of optimism and bourgeois conventions. The world of the sea populated by water sprites, nymphs, or mermaids and the imagery of waves and water are central to Jugendstil art. "Woman" appears as unarticulated nature, a being who needs the love of a man to gain a soul. Life is often equated with love and woman. On one hand, woman is represented as something demonic and satanic, a femme fatale, or Hetdre, like Gustav Klimt's Judith holding the head of Holofernes. On the other hand, she is made harmless by the mythic, otherworldly aura of Jugendstil's representation of woman. She also frequently appears as child-woman or femme fragile. She represents the unfulfilled erotic desires of an inhibited male imagination. At the same time, the emphasis on the sensual and erotic fostered alternative expressions of sexuality in art circles. Free love and Freikorperkultur served as protests against prudery and celebrated the body as elemental form. Women artists such as Franziska zu Reventlow penned erotic texts and lived independently of middle-class conventions. Reventlow gained attention with her Von Paul zu Pedro (1912), an epistolary novel in which a woman discusses men as types, as well as for her earlier tract Viragines oder Hetaren? (1899). Her autobiographical novel Ellen Olestjerna (1903) reveals her rejection of marriage and other social and moral conventions for women of her time. Poets such as Ricarda Huch and Else Lasker-Schiiler use Jugendstil aspects, such as elemental, mythic, and water imagery, in their early poetry. Some women accepted the polarized view of woman's nature. Agnes Giinther's best-selling novel Die Heilige und ihr Narr (1913) is an example. Other women writers parodied the Jugendstil notion of woman. Frieda von Billow's novella Die stilisierte Frau (1899) reveals the child-woman as a projection of male desire. Lou AndreasSalome's story "Fenitschka" (1898) represents a sexually, professionally, and intellectually liberated New Woman. Hedwig Dohm's tale "Ihr Schwanenlied" (1900) and her novel Christa Ruland (1902) foreground ideological debates on woman's nature. See also: Child-Woman; Dohm, Hedwig; Eternal Feminine; Femme Fatale; Femme Fragile; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Mythical Female Figures; Naturalism; New Woman; Technology; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature. References: Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Finde-Siecle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Hermand, Jost, DerSchein des schonen Lebens: Studien zur Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt/M.: Athenaum, 1972); Meisel-Hess, Grete, Die sexuelle Krise (Jena: Biederichs, 1909); Ptischel, Ursula, "Jugendstil Erotik: Franziska Reventlow." Mit alien Sinnen: Frauen in der Literatur (Halleg: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1980) 85-111; Scheible, Hartmut, Literarischer
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Jugendstil in Wien: Eine Einfuhrung (Munich: Artemis, 1984); Wagner, Nike, Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981); Wittmann, Livia Z., "Zwischen 'femme fatale' und 'femme fragile'—die Neue Frau? Kritische Bemerkungen zum Frauenbild des literarischen Jugendstils." Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik 17.2 (1985): 74-110.
SUSAN C. ANDERSON J u n g e s Deutschland—see: Young Germany
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K Kreis v o n Miinster ( 1 7 7 0 - 1 8 0 6 ) . This refers to a group of writers, theologians, and pedagogues in predominantly Catholic Miinster who took part in the discussion of philosophical ideas, literary trends, and educational reform between c.1770 and 1806 (although the Kreis is often mentioned as a group until c.1826). The leading members of the group included its founder, Minister Franz Freiherr von Furstenberg, Adelheid Amalia von Schmettau von Gallitzin, Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, Bernard Heinrich Overberg, and Anton Matthias Sprickmann. The history of the Kreis falls into two main periods. The first, extending from 1770 to 1788, centers around Furstenberg; the second centers around Gallitzin from 1779 until her death in 1806. The later period was marked by a strong Catholic orientation, since Gallitzin dedicated herself to the Roman Catholic faith in 1786, and Stolberg converted to Catholicism in 1800. After Gallitzin joined the circle, the group was often known as the Gallitzin-Kreis. Gallitzin was well educated in several branches of philosophy and was known for her outstanding ability as a mathematician. Through her correspondence and her many personal acquaintances, she greatly facilitated the exchange of ideas between this circle and various other centers of critical and creative literary and philosophical activity in Germany {Weimarer Kreis; Gottinger Hainbund). She corresponded extensively with her former teacher, the Dutch philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis, and collaborated with him on at least one of his major literary essays. She also corresponded with, among others, Matthias Claudius, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
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Several other women had ties to the group, before and after Gallitzin's death, but a scholarly assessment of their literary or cultural contributions to the group is still lacking. They include Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, associated with the group mainly through her acquaintance with Sprickmann; Katharina zu StolbergStolberg, dramatist and writer and the sister of Friedrich zu Stolberg-Stolberg; Friederike Juliane (Julia) Schimmelmann von Reventlow, author of several unpublished prose parables and an acquaintance of Gallitzin; and Luise Hensel, author of many religious songs. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Ode; Poetry, Spiritual. References: Katerkamp, Theodor, Denkwiirdigkeiten aus dem Leben der Fiirstin Amalia von Gallitzin (Berne: Herbert Lang, 1971); Sudhof, Siegfried, "Fiirstin Gallitzin und Claudius." Euphorion 53 (1959): 75-91; Trunz, Erich, comp., Fiirstin Gallitzin und ihr Kreis: Quellen und Forschungen (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1955), ed., in collaboration with Waltraud Loos, Goethe und der Kreis von Miinster: Zeitgenossische Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1971).
CAROL A. DEVORE Kriminalroman. This detective novel or murder mystery, which in Germany has long been a vehicle for social criticism, became a lucrative and intellectually challenging niche for women and feminist writers straddling agitation and entertainment. The genre most poignantly illustrates women's changing relationship to power, justice, and violence. The Krimis satisfy a need for tough and competent role models and cater to the ethnographic impulse to investigate and chart the fringes of German society along the axis of gender, often driven by wrath. The investigation of crimes serves as occasion for weighing law against justice and for raising questions as to the nature and use of knowledge. Two of the most innovative and influential of German murder mystery writers are Pieke Biermann and Doris Gehrke. Gehrke's first murder mystery, Weinschroter, du mufit hangen (1988), introduces the single, middle-aged police detective Bella Block, a granddaughter and avid reader of the Russian poet Alexander Block who shares her forebear's compassionate and lyrical sensibility and spices her investigations with wry observations and social commentary. In her subsequent novels, Gehrke has explored various milieux and their impact on women's lives, from international prostitution rings (Nachsaison, 1989) and drug gangs (Der Krieg, der Tod, die Pest, 1990) to religious sects (Die Insel, 1990) and inner-city projects (Kinderkorn, 1991). In Moskau, meine Liebe (1989) Block travels to glasnost-em Moscow and delves into the sexual underbelly of the Soviet capital on the eve of capitalism. Gehrke aptly weaves sexual desire, commodification, and archaic mores into a complex story that explores the possibility of action and resistance in the face of vast social changes. For Biermann, author of Potsdamer Ableben (1987), the end of the cold war also became the driving force of her fiction. While her first murder mystery introduces the cast of her characters and the setting of the Berlin neighborhood
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around the Potsdamer Platz, Violetta (1990) captures the dense atmosphere of the summer of 1989, when the Iron Curtain had already become permeable, and addresses various modes of feminist activism and terrorist violence. Herzrasen (1993) directly deals with forms of criminality and exploitation created by reunification, such as the East German organ market, pimp-dominated sex work, and right-wing extremism. Biermann's murder mysteries, with their queer troupes of police detectives and valiant gangs of organized whores, chart the city's sexual subcultures through these turbulent times. Her murder mysteries eschew the opposition between an oppressive police apparatus and victimized or isolated women combating it. Biermann's innovative novels have received several awards. They deploy a kaleidoscopic mode of perception and description in the tradition of urban literature; the jump-cut style with its rapid switches between multiple narrative perspectives captures the complex milieux that make up a multicultural, fast-changing society. In addition to her novels, Biermann has begun to edit anthologies of murder mysteries by women authors, fostering a rapidly growing and thriving genre in German literature. Like Biermann's Krimis, the books by Corinna Kawaters and Uta Maria Heim are noteworthy for their outrageous settings, underdog characters, and innovative writing style. Heim's artful, imaginative language suggests her marginalized milieux through distinctive, raplike rhythms and hip idioms. In contrast, the style and composition of the Krimis by Christine Grahn and Milena Moser closely follow literary conventions. Moser draws perhaps the most unapologetically vengeful characters and plots, legitimated by the recognition that for women, justice is rarely obtainable through official, bureaucratic channels and that satisfaction can be achieved only through revenge. See also: GroBstadtroman; Prostitution; Wende, Die. References: Berens, Cornelia, "Verwischte Spuren. Die Detektivin als literarische Wunschfigur in Kriminalromanen von Frauen." Weiblichkeit und Tod in der Literatur. Ed. Renate Berger and Inge Stephan (Cologne: Bohlau, 1987) 177-98; Ermert, Karl, and W. Gast, eds., Der Neue Deutsche Kriminalroman: Beitrdge zur Darstellung, Interpretation und Kritik eines popularen Genres (Rehburg-Loccum: Loccumer Kolloquien, 1985). KATRIN SIEG K i i n s t l e r d r a m a . In general, Kiinstlerdrama can be understood as a work that dramatizes the problematic of the artistic existence. Such plays portray an artist's life and often deal with the conflicts and tensions that arise between her or his inner life and societal pressure. Many plays have been written about fictional artists, even some female artists, for example, the actress Fanny in Arthur Schnitzler's Das Marchen (1891). Usually, however, KUnstlerdramen depict the lives of historical artists, often liberally adapted and retold (e.g., Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Torquato Tasso, 1790). Not surprisingly, most KUnstlerdramen depict the lives of male artists, although a few exceptions exist (examples are Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz's Sappho, 1815; Franz Grillparzer's
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Sappho, 1818; Otto Miiller's Charlotte Ackermann, 1854; Johann Ludwig Schlosser's Die Komodianten, written in 1758, pub. in 1767, and based on the life of the actress Charlotte Ackermann; and Richard Heinersdorf's Frau von Stein, 1859). The theater director and dramatist Karoline Neuber is the subject of a single play written by a female dramatist, Emilie Binzer's (pseudonym Ernst Ritter) Die Neuberin (1847). With the exception of Binzer's play, 19th-century women authors of Kiinstlerdramen focused on male artists but frequently undermined this focus on the male by concentrating on the bond between the artist and his muse. Examples of such plays are Engel Christine Westphalen's Petrarca (1806); Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's Era Bartolomeo der Maier, oder Das Stift zu Worms (1829), Johannes Guttenberg (1834), and Rubens in Madrid (1836); Caroline Bernstein's Rembrandts MeisterstUck (1834); Caroline Pierson's Meister Albrecht DUrer (1840); Gisela Grimm's Trost in Thranen (1857), a play about Michelangelo; Elise Schmidt's Der Genius und die Gesellschaft (n.d.), a drama about Lord Byron; Auguste Cornelius' Platen in Venedig (1865) and Konig und Dichter (1865), a play about Moliere; Maria Arndts' Mozart als Ehestifter (1869); Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Doctor Ritter (1869), a comedy about Schiller; Elise Levi's Aus Goethes lustigen Tagen (1876); and Elisabeth von Rumanien's Meister Manole (1892). In many of these plays, the artist's muse and her relationship to the artist— as the source of artistic inspiration and as such, as an idealized image, removed from reality—come into focus. Because the muse must remain unattainable, a mere image, to ensure the artist's continued inspiration, the real woman behind this representation is sacrificed, either literally or figuratively. In contrast, a 20th-century Kiinstlerdrama by Ginka Steinwachs, George Sand (1980), is a postmodern work focused on the female, rather than male, artist. In another play, Clara S. (1984), Elfriede Jelinek has the female protagonist, modeled after the pianist and composer Clara Schumann, undermine the artistry of her famous husband, Robert Schumann. See also: Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Jelinek, Elfriede; Neuber, Friederike Caroline. References: Case, Sue-Ellen, ed., The Divided Home/Land. Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Richel, Veronica C, The German Stage, 1767-1890. A Directory of Playwrights and Plays (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). ELIZABETH G. AMETSBICHLER
L La R o c h e , S o p h i e v o n ( 1 7 3 0 - 1 8 0 7 ) . The publishing career of Sophie von La Roche, which spanned more than 30 years, began with her first, extremely successful novel, Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim (1771), and ended with the autobiographical Melusinens Sommerabende (1806), published shortly before her death. Her literary career began in earnest after she had raised five children (and subsequently, a few of her grandchildren, including Bettina von Arnim) and helped to develop the social and political career of her husband, a privy councilor. Her first novel, Sternheim, was published by her editor, cousin, and onetime fiance Christoph Martin Wieland. The novel was an international success, and La Roche became a prolific author of 28 books, including novels, stories, travel accounts, and the moral weekly Pomona fUr Teutschlands Tochter (1783-1784). La Roche's works combine pietistic introspection with prevailing sentimental bourgeois morality, while introducing social and political themes of education for the poor, respect for female intellect, and the problem of women's powerlessness in urban society. Many of her works contain alternative visions of a rural lifestyle in which women are able to develop their lives along principles of compassion, nurturing domesticity, and equality. Sternheim was initially published under Wieland's authority, with the disclaimer that La Roche herself had not intended the manuscript for publication. Both author and editor considered this necessary due to fears about the negative reception of literary works written by women. After the novel's far-reaching success, however, La Roche openly claimed authorship of her works and published Pomona under her own name. The journal, designed to challenge male hegemony over female Bildung, generated widespread interest across Europe.
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La Roche maintained that the concerns of women ought to be discussed by women; and, with the exceptions of translations and poetry, all original submissions published in the magazine were by female authors. La Roche's efforts introduced modern Unterhaltungsliteratur to Germany, broadened discussions of the education of women, and opened the genre of travel literature to women writers. She also published and supported the work of Karoline von Giinderrode, Caroline von Wolzogen, Philippine Gatterer Engelhard, Sophie Albrecht, Luise von Gochhausen, and Wilhelmine von Gersdorf and edited the autobiography of her friend Friderica Baldinger. As the first recognized and acclaimed woman novelist in Germany, La Roche is considered instrumental in establishing a women's literary sphere. This has proven a double-edged sword, effectively celebrating her importance in literary history, while also marginalizing her works as distinct from a broader male public engaged with its own "serious" literature. Revealingly, her reception on the German intellectual front was considerably guarded: Wieland, to a great extent, marketed Sternheim explicitly to a female audience, and he continued to underscore her reputation as the educator of "Teutschlands Tochter." As her fame spread, the response of early admirers like Wieland and Johann Wolfgang Goethe became noticeably cooler, and their praise of her work was carefully contained within the context of its exclusively female quality and appeal. La Roche was thus dismissed as a second-rate or trivial author. Such normative aesthetic rules continue to influence assessments of her work and exclude her from many studies of serious literature. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Authorship; Bildungsroman; Erudite Woman; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Moral Weeklies; Novel, Educational; Pietism; Reception; Sentimentality; Travelogues; Trivial Literature. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987) 278-301; Heidenreich, Bernd, Sophie von La Roche—eine Werkbiographie (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1986); La Roche, Sophie von, The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim. Trans. Christa Baguss Britt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Pelz, Annegret, " ' . .. von einer Fremde in die andre?' Reiseliteratur von Frauen." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 143-52.
SARA PAULSON L a n g u a g e S o c i e t i e s . These societies (Sprachgesellschaften) were a phenomenon of 17th-century German literary culture. Based on an Italian model, the first and most prestigious society, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, was established in 1617. It and the other groups it spawned propagated linguistic purity in German and encouraged decorous behavior among the membership. In an era of political absolutism and a patriarchal societal order, language societies were institutions defined by privileged males—the nobility, patricians, and the intellectual elite—leaving little room for women. Recent research has revealed the identity and achievements of 17th-century German women as writers, composers, and scholars as well as readers. Yet,
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Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg was one of the few women poets to gain membership in a language society. She was accepted into two, most importantly into the Pegnitz Order in Nuremberg. This group pursued a program of ' 'refining" literary life through the integration of women. Anna Maria Niitzel and some 12 other women joined Greiffenberg, remaining but a small percentage of the 207 Nuremberg members admitted between 1642 and 1705. A small women's order in support of French linguistic and cultural values, a countergroup to the all-male Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, existed only briefly. More important was the Tugendliche Gesellschaft. From 1619 until 1653, it was under the leadership of its founder, Anna Sophia von Anhalt. Its membership was restricted to 73, mostly Protestant noblewomen, at any one time, which resulted in a total of 103 persons over its term of existence. The members focused their attention on writing devotional prose and poetry, on establishing schools, and on theological issues, as well as on astronomy and mathematics. Especially noteworthy was the translation of a collection of 100 short tales from the Italian by eight princesses of Anhalt (Erzehlungen aus den mittlern Zeiten, 1624). Significantly, each signed her work in the manuscript; the collection, however, was first printed in 1985. The text mirrors its translators' proficiency in both German and Italian and their refined sense of literariness. While patriarchal absolutism was hardly conducive to women's involvement in language societies, their role will become more clearly defined if researchers continue to explore these women's accomplishments. See also: Baroque Literature; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Idyll; Pastoral Literature. References: Adolphi-Gralke, Beatrix, "Der Pegnesische Blumenorden—eine Sprachgesellschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts. Studien zur Geschichte, zur Spracharbeit und zur Rolle der Frau" (M.A. thesis, Bonn, 1988); Battafarano, Italo M., "Harsdorffers italianisierender Versuch, durch die Integration der Frau das literarische Leben zu verfeinern." Georg Philipp Harsdorffer, ein deutscher Dichter und europaischer Gelehrter. Ed. I. M. Battafarano (Berne: Lang, 1991) 267-86; Conermann, Klaus, "Die Tugendliche Gesellschaft und ihr Verhaltnis zur Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft." Sprachgesellschaften—Galante Poetinnen. Ed. Erika Metzger and Richard Schade (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989) 95-208; Otto, Karl F , "Die Frauen der Sprachgesellschaften." Europaische Hofkultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Ed. August Buck (Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1981) 497503, Die Sprachgesellschaften des 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1972), " 'Die zehnte Muse' im Pegnesischen Blumenorden: Anna Maria Niitzel." 'der Franken Rom' Nurnbergs BlUtezeit in der zweiten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ed. John R. Paas (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995) 331-41; Seelbach, Ulrich, ed., Die Erzehlungen aus den mittlern Zeiten (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1985).
RICHARD E. SCHADE Legend. This is a short, simple, religious text, frequently, like Heiligenlegende, describing the life of a saint and his or her faith in God. Women, mainly nuns and aristocrats, contributed to the production of legends, reinforcing contemporary images of femininity and Christian doctrines.
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Legend writing developed from the oral tradition of the Middle Ages. Because the convents were virtually the only space where female erudition could develop, most medieval legends were penned by nuns (and monks). The best-known female legend writer is the nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. Of her 962 legends written in Latin, only 2 are based on biblical material: her Marienlegende, a depiction of the life of Mary and the ascension of Christ, and her Passion of Saint Agnes. Her other legends depict the martyrdom of, for example, Gangolf, Pelagius, and Theophilus, to name just a few. Rather than focusing on the life of the saint or martyr, as a Martyrerlegende does, Hrotsvitha portrays situations in which the concept of virginitas is problematized and in which the legendary becomes a model for Christian behavior. Other women such as Frau Ava, the first female German-writing poet, wrote a legendlike vita of Jesus. Women often provided the impetus and inspiration for male legend writing. The Duchess Agnes von Loon requested Heinrich von Veldeke to pen Servatius (1170), a Mirakellegende, which describes the life of Saint Servatius and the miracle at his grave. Sant Margreten Marterbuch (1235), written by Wetzel von Bernau for the Duchess Clementia von Zahringen, is the legend of a 12-yearold martyr whose faith withstood torture and the appearance of the Devil. This legend served the double function of entertainment for the duchess and praise for her virtues. Hugo von Langenstein's dogmatic Legendenroman Martina (1293), written at the request of a Dominican nun, was similarly inspired. Legends written by men about female saints, such as Heilige Elisabeth (1297), frequently portray aristocratic women caring for their people. Legend writing decreased by the end of the Middle Ages due to the weakening influence of the Catholic Church during the Reformation and regained some of its popularity with the revival of folk culture during the Storm and Stress movement. Luise Brachmann's Legendengedichte adapted legend material to lyrical forms. Helmina von Chezy thematized chastity in her Heiligenlegenden, and Agnes Miegel's Christuslegenden attempted to revive the Christian faith. In the 20th century, legends moved away from the predominantly religious material and took on metaphysical themes. An example is Anna Seghers' Agathe Schweigert (1966), which interprets motherhood on a metaphysical level. See also: Mariendichtung; Martyrerdrama; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Reformation; Saints; Storm and Stress; Virgin. References: Ecker, Hans-Peter, Die Legende, kulturanthropologische Annaherung an eine literarische Gattung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Giinter, Heinrich, Psychologie der Legende, Studien zu einer wissenschaftlichen Heiligen-Geschichte (Freiburg: Herder, 1949); Ringler, Siegfried, Viten- und Ojfenbarungsliteratur in Frauenklostern des Mittelaltersy Quellen und Studien (Munich: Artemis, 1980); Rosenfeld, Hellmut, Legende (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1961). RHONDA DUFFAUT Lehrdichtung. The closest English equivalent to Lehrdichtung is didactic literature. In the broadest meaning of the term, didactic literature designates
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works that instruct, teach a lesson, or provide guidance. While the English term carries a derogatory connotation, this is not necessarily true in the German language. From the earliest extant texts until the Middle Ages, when the bulk of didactic literature was produced, no attempts were made to distinguish between didactic and nondidactic literature. More or less all literary writing was assumed to be didactic, in line with Horace's dual functions of literature of prodesse (to instruct) and delectare (to delight, to entertain). Since the 15th century, more so since Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's strong argument in defense of art for art's sake in LMokoon: Oder iiber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766), there has been an ongoing debate as to whether Lehrdichtung should be considered separate from the three established literary genres because of its focus on didactic aspects. However, this would require a subjective judgment of the author's intentions on the part of the reader. Nonetheless, some texts are considered more obviously didactic than others, for example, gnomes, some types of epigram, Spruchdichtung, epic theater, didactic plays, fables, parables, and legends. Most of what is considered Lehrdichtung in the strict sense was written in the Middle Ages; much of it penned by nuns, whose convent lives enabled them to obtain an education amid other women. As a result, some Lehrdichtung by erudite medieval nuns assumed a decidedly textbook character. Frau Ava's Das Leben Jesu (1120), the first known text to be written in German by a woman, is a didactic account of the history of salvation in dramatic form. Hildegard von Bingen, whose interests include theology, science, and medicine, wrote the first medical handbook, Causae et Curae (1150-1160), in which she discusses diseases, their causes, and possible cures. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Beguines produced mostly Lehrdichtung, for example, Hadewijch of Antwerp and Mechthild von Magdeburg, who wrote the most important text on mysticism, Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250-1281). Part of didactic literature, Anstandsliteratur, was primarily devoted to the conduct of girls and women, namely, courtesy books, conduct books, and books of etiquette. The courtesy books (13th to 18th centuries) were exclusively aimed at the aristocracy, encouraging courtly behavior, chivalry, and good manners. Toward the end of the 18th century, Anstandsliteratur addressed members of all social classes with a special emphasis on female members of the bourgeoisie. Since conduct books for women, in trying to codify and restrict female behavior, frequently refer to female experience, women's authorship in this genre was less restricted than in others. One representative example of the wealth of conduct books by and for women is Sophie von Scherer's tellingly titled Erfahrungen aus dem Frauenleben. Gedanken uber weibliche Bestimmung und Bildung, iiber Mutterpflicht und Erziehung. In einer Sammlung von Briefen mitgetheilt und alien Frauen, Muttern und erwachsenen Tochtern zum Selbststudium uebergeben (1848). Anstandsliteratur is of special interest for feminist research because it helped define sex and gender roles. In the 18th and 19th centuries, conduct books helped to establish the "nature" of woman {Geschlechtscharakter) by reducing women to obedient housewives and mothers. After the 1950s the eti-
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quette books died out, but Frau Barbara (the German version of Dear Abby), and Erika Berger, the younger and more stylish Ruth Westheimer, have taken their place. See also: Epic Theater; Essentialism/Constructionism; Fable; Geschlechtscharaktere; Legend; Medieval Literature; Mysticism; Parable; Ratgeberliteratur; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen. References: Boesch, Bruno, Lehrhafte Literatur: Lehre in der Dichtung und Lehrdichtung im deutschen Mittelalter (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1977); van Dulmen, Andrea, ed., Frauenleben im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1992); Mixa, Elisabeth, Erroten Sie, Madame! Anstandsdiskurse der Moderne (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1994); Sturzer, Anne, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstiicke: Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1993). HEIDI ESSLINGER
Leporin, Dorothea: Grundliche Untersuchung der die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren
Ursachen, abhalten
( 1 7 4 2 ) . Dorothea Christiane Leporin was able to study medicine with special permission from King Frederick the Great and was the first woman to be awarded a medical degree by a German university (Halle, 1754). Responding to many requests, especially from women, she translated her dissertation from Latin into German as Academische Abhandlung von der gar zu geschwinden und angenehmen aber deswegen ofters unsichern Heilung der Krankheiten (1755). Leporin practiced medicine to support her family until she died of breast cancer in 1762. If Leporin deserves a special place in the history of medicine (the University of Halle did not award another woman a medical degree until 1901), she should be remembered even more as the author of her educational-philosophical treatise Grundliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren abhalten. Published in 1742 at the urging of her father, but not reprinted until 1977, the work includes nine chapters and is divided into 410 paragraphs. At the beginning of each chapter, Leporin gives a short sketch of the deeply entrenched prejudices against the intellectual capabilities of women in order to subsequently expose them as untrue and ridiculous. With acerbic wit and inexorable logic, she argues that the ability for philosophical and scientific inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge are distributed equally among the genders, but half of humankind is deprived by lack of proper education to develop it. Still having to address the question "whether women are human beings," she uses her enormous philosophical, theological, and scientific learning to expose systematically two millennia of the misogyny of church fathers, philosophers, and lawgivers. For Leporin housework is hard labor, detrimental to female health, women's intellectual development, and of no use to the advancement of humankind. Finally, she demands the admittance of women to the professions and thus their financial independence. Evoking the spirits of learned women of the past to legitimate her own quest, she expresses the hope that her work will open the door to future generations of women dedicated to learning and to women's
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fully realized human status, but some 50 years later, even her stepson could not find a copy of Grundliche Untersuchung. See also: Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Gender Theories, History of; University Education, Women's. References: Bohm, Heinz, Zum 250. Geburtstag von Frau Dr. Dorothea Christiane Erxleben: Ihr Leben und Wirken (Halle: Martin-Luther-Universitat, 1965); Fischer-Defoy, Werner, ' 'Die Promotion der ersten deutschen Arztin, Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, und ihre Vorgeschichte." Archiv fiir Geschichte der Medizin 4 (1911): 440-61; Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell, A History of Women in Medicine: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Haddom, CT: Haddom Press, 1938); Kraetke-Rumpf, Emmy, Die Quedlinburger Doktorin. Lebensroman der ersten deutschen Arztin (Leipzig: v. Hase und Koehler, 1939); Leporin, Dorothea Christiane, Grundliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren abhalten (1742) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1977). UERIKE RAINER 4
' L e s b i a n " — s e e : Mannweib
L e s b i a n F i l m — s e e : Film, Lesbian L e s b i a n L i t e r a t u r e . Literature by and about lesbians illuminates the social, political, and emotional consequences of deviant desire, as well as the strategies lesbians have devised to challenge patriarchal, heterosexist presumptions. Lesbian writing, navigating between oppression and pleasure, highlights the contradictions of feminist sexual politics, which is played out in the often strained coalitions between feminists and lesbians. One of the earliest literary texts in German about lesbian life and love is Aimee Due's short novel Sind es Frauen? Ein Roman iiber das Dritte Geschlecht (1901). Due's novel is a thinly plotted series of debates and confrontations around the needs and rights of the "third sex": her lesbians are women who demand to be exempted from the heterosexual mandate to marry and procreate. The burgeoning lesbian subculture in Berlin from the turn of the century to the end of the Weimar Republic produced an abundance of lesbian pulp fiction. Popular lesbian magazines like Die Freundin and Gargonne published short stories and novellas. Christa Winsloe is now the best-known lesbian writer of the period since the film Mddchen in Uniform (1931), based on her play Gestern und Heute (1930), has become a lesbian classic. A teacher-student love story is set against the authoritarian, militaristic backdrop of a girls' boarding school in which Winsloe historicizes and politicizes lesbian sexuality. In contrast to the male homosexual model of teacher-student relationship, literary representations of intergenerational lesbian desire and relationships (by Winsloe as well as more recent lesbian and/or feminist writers) threaten patriarchal society and open up investigations of oppositional, resistant identity formations characterized by un-
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learning, mislearning, or counterlearning. Among these are Ulrike Meinhof's play Bambule (1970), set in a West German home for delinquent girls, and Christa Reinig's novella Mddchen ohne Uniform, also published as Die ewige Schule (1982). Unlike Winsloe's heroic couple, Reinig's 1980s coeds have all been inculcated with brutally patriarchal, misogynist, and heterosexist values. Reinig's materialist critique of heterosexism was at odds with both the lesbian-feminist literature of the 1970s, perhaps best represented by Verena Stefan's well-known Hautungen (1975), and the less programmatic, "sex-positive" literature of the 1980s. Stefan, as well as Margot Schroeder, wrote about the joys and problems of women-loving heroines and communities from a cultural feminist sensibility. Schroeder's novel Der Schlachter empfiehlt noch immer Herz (1976) contrasts such a lesbian-feminist identity with traditional lesbian subcultural codes and locales and exposes feminist homophobia. The 1980s have brought wider audiences for lesbian fiction. Coming-out stories or lesbian romance novels are no longer necessarily tied to a critique of oppression, a vision of sexual politics, a feminist agenda, or even a small press. Johanna Moosdorf's Die Freundinnen (1980) and Monika Sperr's novels (Die Freundin, 1980; Der Tag beginnt mit der Ddmmerung, 1983; Reise zu Cathleen McCoy, 1985) suggest lesbianism as an individual choice and lifestyle dictated by a desire that is detached from hegemonic pressures or countercultural imperatives. In contrast, the Berlin authors Traude Buhrmann, Annette Berr, and Claudia Piitz, writing at the same time, sketch entirely queer worlds of sexual militancy and ecstasy. ' 'Lesbian'' here opens up into a multiplicity of practices and styles that no longer cohere around a single agenda or identity. Postmodern lesbian fiction devotes itself to seeking pleasure by exploring previously taboo subjects such as dildos, drugs, and interracial sex, exhibiting a playfulness and sensuality rare in German lesbian writing. The Protokoll has been an important genre in lesbian literary history. Compilations of lesbians' oral histories by Use Kokula, Claudia Schoppmann, and Kerstin Gutsche document the everyday life of German lesbians, going back to the early part of the century. Schoppmann illuminates the vicissitudes of lesbian life in the Third Reich. Gutsche's collection Ich ahnungsloser Engel (1991) provides insights into the lives of lesbians in East Germany, while Kokula focuses on lesbians in Weimar and West Germany. Literature involving lesbian characters, sexuality, or political issues in the GDR emerged only in the 1980s, such as Helga Konigsdorf's Meine ungehorigen Trdume (1989) and Gleich neben Afrika (1992) and Gabriele Eckart's novel Der Seidelstein (1989), the latter a teacher-student love story. It is noteworthy that the sex-change motif in several well-known short stories by GDR feminists (Geschlechtertausch, 1980), in contesting socialist gender ideology, also raised the possibility of homosexual relationships and desire. However, lesbian sex and feminist politics are brought into conflict and resolved at the expense of the former.
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See also: Film, Lesbian; GDR Literature; Gender Transformation; Lesbian Theories; Postmodernism; Protokolle; Reinig, Christa; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Weimar Republic. References: Ewering, Cacilia, Frauenliebe und -literatur: (Un)gelebte (Vor)Bilder bei Ingeborg Bachmann, Johanna Moosdorf und Christa Reinig (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1992); Schoppmann, Claudia, Der Skorpion: Frauenliebe in der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg: Fruhlings-Erwachen, 1985).
KATRINSIEG Lesbian T h e o r i e s . The essentialist versus constructionist controversy informs various aspects of the debate about what constitutes lesbianism. Is lesbianism biologically governed and hence to some degree transhistorical, or is it solely culturally and historically determined? Are there a lesbian essence and perhaps even a lesbian critical aesthetic? If one argues that there are not, as in the contructionist position, what is at risk when we abandon the essentialist category of the lesbian? Until recently, most critical discussion focused on how to define the lesbian. Breaking away from the pathologizing and psychologizing theories of homosexuality as gender inversion—the lesbian as virile woman—Adrienne Rich defined "lesbian" as woman-identified woman, in other words, together with Luce Irigaray, Audre Lorde, and Monique Wittig, "dyke-constructing" (I borrow the term from Sally Munt) the notion that women can be seen only in oppositional or complementary relation to men. For these writers, lesbians can be seen, if not to step totally outside male-dominated spheres, then to envisage the implications of such a utopic move. In addition, according to Rich, physical attraction and emotional bonding between women can express themselves in various ways, a gamut she calls a lesbian continuum. With this term, she opens up the possibility of lesbianism to otherwise self-designated heterosexual women. The definition of "lesbian" as a woman who has sexual experiences with another woman has been seen by many to be restrictive: what about women who identify themselves as lesbian but have not had this experience, women who have had this experience but who do not call themselves lesbian, or women who are attracted to other women but do not necessarily act on this attraction? The question also arises as to how to locate and name women-loving women of previous centuries. If the term "lesbian" is reserved for those who identify themselves as such or who are sexually involved with women, then it becomes very difficult to recover a lesbian history. The passionate dimension to women's friendships in earlier periods threatens to be overlooked. That the term "lesbian" was not used for self-designation until after the women's movement in Germany does not mean, as Marti observes, that standard works on German women's literary history can afford, as they do, to ignore lesbianism. Following Rich, critics have discussed lesbian identity largely in terms of a strong identification with other women and, until recently, de-emphasized lesbian desire or misleadingly conflated identification and desire. In current lesbian
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theorizing, by contrast, the focus has shifted away from naming lesbian desire as the desire to be like other women—as manifested in the ideals of sisterhood, female friendship, or the mother-daughter bond as paradigms for lesbian relationships—to exploring the multiplicity of lesbian desires and sexualities. To take an extreme example, lesbian sadomasochistic practices as well as lesbian pornography, with their problematic linkage of domination and desire, explore the horizons of erotic fantasy and expression (see films by German director Monika Treut). "Phallic" sexual preferences are seen not to be exclusively or imitatively male but are legitimated as valid manifestations of lesbian desire. Imitation, performance, and parody of different sexualities are elements of one's malleable gendered identity. The definition of lesbian as woman-identified woman has the additional drawback of presenting lesbians as a homogeneous community that is conflict-free. The polyvocality of lesbianism manifests itself in narratives of difference not only in sexual preferences but in nation, race, class, age, history, and physical abilities as well (see Marti on the shifts between the decades after 1945 in German lesbian writing). In these various her-stories, the lesbian subject is personalized and grounded in the particularity of her life and choices. In this pluralization, the bisexual woman further destabilizes fixed gender positions, including a uniformly, monolithically conceived category of the lesbian. The notion of a lesbian identity is strongly tied, however, to an activist politics of affirmative naming. Self-definition, separatism, and hence visibility are necessary so that lesbians are not assumed to be somehow similar to gay men or shunned as nonwomen. Many lesbians are thus politically reluctant to abandon either noninclusive, specific definitions of "lesbian" or the claim to a lesbian essence. See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; Film, Lesbian; Homosexuality; Identity Theories; Lesbian Literature; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Pornography; Sister; Sisterhood. References: Frank, Miriam, "Lesbian Life and Literature: A Survey of Recent German-Language Publications." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1994): 219-37; Fuss, Diana, ed., Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (New York: Routledge, 1991); Marti, Madeleine, Hinterlegte Botschaften: Die Darstellung lesbischer Frauen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Martin, Biddy, "Sexual Practice and Changing Lesbian Identities." Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates. Ed. Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992) 93-119; Munt, Sally, ed., New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Rich, Adrienne, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs 5 (1980): 631-60. Trans, in Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, Macht und Sinnlichkeit (Berlin: sub rosa/Orlanda, 1983); Wolfe, Susan and Julia Penelope, eds., Sexual Practice, Textual Theory: Lesbian Cultural Criticism (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993). AEICE KUZNIAR L e s e d r a m a . This is a comparatively rare genre; most Lesedramen were written during the Middle Ages and in the humanistic, Storm and Stress, and Ro-
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mantic periods. In the late 20th century, Lesedrama has been redefined as a play that focuses on debate, theory, or ideas and is sometimes accompanied by documentation or other reading materials. Although these dramas can be performed, the emphasis is on reflection rather than action—demonstrated in, for example, frequent long monologues or the inclusion of written documents in the play or by supplying the audience with documentation (examples are Rolf Hochhuth's plays, Die Soldaten, 1967, and Sommer 14. Ein Totentanz, 1989). The Lesedrama is especially relevant for feminist research because the genre was viewed as less prestigious than dramas meant for performance, thus encouraging women's contributions as well as (presumably) a lower predilection for self-censorship. Furthermore, since the genre tends to debate theories and ideas, it can feasibly be viewed as a repository for some feminist, but certainly women's, thought. Since the Middle Ages, women have been writing Lesedramen: none of the plays by Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, whose central characters are often women (e.g., Abraham, 960, and Sapientia, after 962), were intended for performance. In the early 19th century, Lesedramen by Karoline von Giinderrode (Magie und Schicksal, 1805) and Annette von Droste-Hulshoff (Bertha oder die Alpen, 1814) raised the question of the possibility of women's autonomy, using nonclosure to indicate the lack of resolution of the issue under patriarchy. Gertrud Fauth's Agammemnon des Aschylos (1920) and Anna Schieber's Das Hemd des Glucklichen (1924) are two examples of Lesedramen during the Weimar Republic, a time when women writers became heavily involved in drama writing because it was the least prestigious literary genre and was therefore more open to women's contributions. Elfriede Jelinek's play Wolken. Heim (1988) was successfully performed on stage in Bonn (1988) but assumes a deeper dimension if treated as a Lesedrama: her quoting technique and her language games are more likely to be absorbed when reading and musing over the written text. Jelinek's Totenauberg (1991), a play about the philosopher Martin Heidegger, was reviewed as a Lesedrama in Die Presse (April 1991), perhaps because of the frequency of long, speechlike commentary in the play. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Jelinek, Elfriede; Renaissance Humanism; Romanticism; Storm and Stress; Weimar Republic. References: Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Sturzer, Anne, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstucke: Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1993). HEIDI ESSLINGER Lewald, Fanny ( 1 8 1 1 - 1 8 8 9 ) . Fanny Lewald's writings undoubtedly deserve merit as early calls for woman's rights in Germany, but they also reveal some conceptual contradictions in the 19th-century middle-class women's liberation movement.
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Lewald, who began to publish anonymously at the age of 32, wrote travelogues and essays on women's issues and became one of the most popular woman novelists of her time. Applying the social criticism of Young Germany/ Vormdrz to women's literature, her tendentious early novels focus on contemporary religious, social, political, and gender issues. Jenny (1843), for example, concentrates on the double marginalization of a Jewish woman, Eine Lebensfrage (1845) argues against marriages of convenience and defends divorce, and Auf Rother Erde (1850) provides insights into the political and social events around the March Revolution of 1848. Most critics agree, however, that Lewald's nonfictional writings are her strongest and are significant as documents of social history: Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848 (1850) illuminates her democratic views; in Osterbriefe fiir die Frauen (1863), Lewald calls attention to the desolate situation of female servants and industrial workers; and in FUr und wider die Frauen (1870), she—with Louise Otto-Peters—forcefully advocates education and professional opportunities for women as ways to obviate humiliating marriages of convenience. Love marriages, on the other hand, Lewald considered ideal for women's fulfillment, but she strongly rejected free love a la Louise Aston. Lewald's didactic autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte (1863), following Johann Wolfgang Goethe's model, depicts bourgeois patriarchal Biedermeier family life in Konigsberg/Prussia and Lewald's painful, ambivalent self-liberation as she developed from an inquisitive, yet obedient, Jewish girl into an intellectually and financially independent writer. See also: Aston, Louise; Love; Maidservant; Otto-Peters, Louise; Revolution, German (1848); Travelogues; Women's Movement; Young Germany. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, "Fanny Lewald." Frauen: Portrats aus zwei Jahrhunderten. Ed. Hans Jiirgen Schultz (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1981) 72-86; Lewald, Fanny, Meine Lebensgeschichte, 3 vols. Ed. Ulrike Helmer (Frankfurt/M.: Helmer, 1988-1989); Rheinberg, Brigitta van, Fanny Lewald: Geschichte einer Emanzipation (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1990); Schneider, Gabriele, Vom Zeitroman zum "stylisierten" Roman: Die Erzahlerin Fanny Lewald (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1993); Venske, Regula, " Tchhatte ein Mann sein mussen oder eines groBen Mannes Weib!'—Widerspriiche im Emanzipationsverstandnis der Fanny Lewald." Frauen in der Geschichte, vol. 4. Ed. Use Brehmer et al. (Dusseldorf: Schwann-Bagel, 1983) 368-96.
KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN Linguistics, Feminist. Also known in Germany as linguistische Frauenforschung, this denotes a discipline that takes as its organizing principle the connections between gender and power and the ways in which those relationships are manifested in and through language. This principle is based on a strong interpretation of Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis that language shapes thought and thus determines reality. In line with the notion that language reflects and molds the reality of the traditional status of women as objects of male power, some feminist linguists such as Luise Pusch and Marlis Hellinger aim to change, as well as describe, the patriarchal nature of language. This is in direct opposition
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to the stated objective of traditional linguistics, which is merely to describe language. Two main trends exist within feminist linguistics: in the first, language is treated as a system (langue or Sprache), whereas in the second, language is approached as a social phenomenon (parole or Sprechen). Linguists such as Pusch study language as a system. Gertrude Postl names three areas of concentration within this approach: referential expressions for women, which also include pronominal reference (e.g., "man" as a universal pronoun); terms for sexuality and for sexual intercourse; and titles and forms of address. Feminist linguists have achieved limited progress in changing these conventions within legal and academic discourse (e.g., plural nominal endings such as Kolleglnnen). The second trend, sociolinguistic research, is much more prevalent, with a number of women and some men concentrating in this area (e.g., Karsta Frank; Susanne Gunthner; Michael Hausherr-Malzer; Helga Kotthoff; Elisabeth Kuhn; Miorita Ulrich; Fritjof Werner). Issues here are the differences between women's and men's nonverbal and verbal communication in varying contexts. Speech acts (Sprechakte; Sprechhandlungen), such as the ways in which women apologize, are common topics. Sociolinguistic research into gender-based communication differences has suggested that the relationship among gender, power, and language is a much more complex phenomenon than originally thought, with such variables as economic and social status also playing a role. Because differences in language use by women and men are now viewed as not merely attributable to gender (Schoenthal), feministische Linguistik is gaining somewhat in academic stature, achieving a status it has traditionally not been accorded due to its perceived radical nature. Feminist linguistics in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has clearly changed since its inception in 1978. A late arrival in Germany as compared to other Western countries, it was influenced by the praxis-oriented feminist movement in the United States and the theoretical, psychoanalytic approaches to feminism in France in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first published work within feminist linguistics, Senta Tromel-Plotz's Frauensprache—Sprache der Verdnderung, did not appear in the FRG until 1982, followed by Pusch's Das Deutsche als Mannersprache (1984). The academic study of women and language in Germany reflects this historical split between U.S. and French methodologies: feminist linguistics is modeled after the work of such American linguists as Robin Lakoff (language and Woman's Place, 1975) and her student, Deborah Tannen. On the other hand, the French feminist theorists Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray have influenced feminist literary theory in Germany. Although both disciplines share gender and language as the object of study, scholars have only recently remarked upon the chasm between the two, advocating a more interdisciplinary approach. See also: Ecriture Feminine; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Semiotics.
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References: Gunthner, Susanne, and Helga Kotthoff, eds., Die Geschlechter im Gesprach. Kommunikation in Institutionen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Postl, Gertrude, Weibliches Sprechen. Feministische Entwiirfe zu Sprache & Geschlecht (Vienna: Passagen, 1991); Pusch, Luise F., Das Deutsche als Mannersprache (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1984); Schoenthal, Gisela, "Sprache, Geschlecht und Macht. Zum Diskussionsstand feministischer Thesen in der Linguistik." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 39 (1992): 5-11; Tromel-Plotz, Senta, Frauensprache: Sprache der Veranderung (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1982). ANN PENNINGROTH Literary Societies—see: Darmstadter Kreis; Gruppe 47; Gruppe 61; Kreis von Miinster; Language Societies. Love. As numerous as love's forms are—spiritual, emotional, and physical or homo-, bi-, or heterosexual, just to name a few—and as multitudinous as its objects can be—including God, country, ruler, friends, family, or partner(s)— these combinations have had many different cultural representations. It has been a central theme of world literature—by men and by women, usually exemplifying broader power constellations and gender conflicts. Although there are extensive sociological, sociohistorical, and psychological studies of love, and Peter von Matt's Der Liebesverrat (1989) and Niklas Luhmann's Liebe als Passion (1982) analyze the theme in canonized German literature, no such project exists on German women's literature yet. Writers such as Mechthild von Magdeburg, Gertrud von Helfta, and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg described and partly eroticized visions of an unio mystica with God or Christ. In the 18th century, at the time when women's writing increasingly appeared in print, the Enlightenment's call for individual happiness and freedom engendered the idea of the love match, but also the bourgeois code of the demure female. The domestic role, thought to befit women's "natural" talent for love, was separated from men's public world. Women's writings concentrated, therefore, on the limitations and advantages arising from this concept of marriage and on its incompatibility with marriages of convenience, then still common. Karoline von Wobeser' s depiction of female self-denial and renunciation of true love contrasts, for example, with Sophie Mereau's portrayal of selfconfident heroines in search of equal partnerships with men they choose. The Romantic ideal of an intellectual, emotional, sensual, and voluntary symbiosis reflecting a universality supersedes the traditional mind/body dualism and such moral standards as marital fidelity. All through the 19th century, criticism of prearranged marriages as meretricious (Fanny Lewald; Louise Aston) and detrimental to women's self-development (Ida Hahn-Hahn) strongly appealed to advocates of women's liberation. Most popular, however, were Eugenie Marlitt's trivial and nonemancipatory serial love stories. Aston's provocative glorification of free love broke ground for other writers of female sensuality (Gabriele Reuter; Franziska von Reventlow).
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While in many mid-19th-century novels, women pursue careers to escape unwanted marriages, Lou Andreas-Salome thematized women's pain in choosing intellectual and professional self-realization rather than fulfillment in love. The conflicting claims of love, motherhood, and profession remained a central theme in 20th-century women's literature. Lesbian relationships, however, were first openly described in the Weimar Republic and again after 1945. Verena Stefan's efforts to create a gender-specific language for women's experience and sexuality in Hautungen (1975) greatly affected women's and particularly lesbians' writing. Unfulfilling or even abusive marriages and thus the quest for autonomy have been prevailing themes in many novels and autobiographical pieces since 1945 (e.g., Marlen Haushofer, Christa Reinig, Irmtraud Morgner). Ingeborg Bachmann related love to language and Utopian visions, abandoning the hope of perfect understanding in contemporary society. The new Frauenliteratur since 1970 (e.g., Margot Schroeder, Elfriede Jelinek, Karin Struck, Brigitte Schwaiger) has concentrated on debunking love myths, criticizing female/male power relations, and exploring women's sexuality. Emancipatory efforts, however, have tended to drown out any positive assessment of love. As foreshadowed in Karoline von Giinderrode's poetry of love and death in the early 19th century, women's literature demonstrates the painful tension between seeing love as the path to universal understanding and individual growth and happiness, on one hand, and deep disillusionment, on the other. See also: Aston, Louise; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Enlightenment; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Homosexuality; Jelinek, Elfriede; Lesbian Literature; Lewald, Fanny; Marriage; Medieval Literature; Mereau, Sophie; Morgner, Irmtraud; Reinig, Christa; Reuter, Gabriele; Romance; Romanticism; Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Struck, Karin; Utopia; Young Germany. References: Gniig, Hiltrud, "Erotisch-emanzipatorische Entwiirfe: Schriftstellerinnen um die Jahrhundertwende." Frauen—Literatur—Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1989) 260-80; Kristeva, Julia, Tales of Love (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Marti, Madeleine, Hinterlegte Botschaften: Die Darstellung lesbischer Frauen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Weigel, Sigrid, "Liebe—nichts als ein Mythos?" Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987) 214-65. KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN Love, Courtly/Platonic. The famed 14th-century Heidelberger Liederhandschrift, otherwise known as the Manesse manuscript in honor of the noble Swiss family that commissioned it, contains 137 illuminations of German courtly love poets or Minnesanger, each accompanied by representative poems. One illumination is of a woman poet, "die Winsbekin." The poem that accompanies her portrait (in which a mother advises her daughter about love or Minne) parallels the preceding poem in the manuscript, attributed to "der Winsbeke" (in which father advises son), and has been attributed to him or another male poet
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who imitates him. Despite the fact that few poems from the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the height of Minnesang, are attributed to women in Germany, women were influential in both its early stages and later development. In the late 11th century a group of educated young women in Regensburg composed Latin love verses that proposed cultivated and refined behavior from their male companions; their verses are similar in theme to those of the later provencal troubadours and German Minnesanger (Dronke, 92). Due, in part, to greater social and legal rights of women in 12th- and 13th-century southern France, a number of women troubadours, the trobairitz, composed and performed or had performed, alone or with their male counterparts, courtly love songs. Although the music for only one song, a chanson by the countess of Dia, traditionally known as Beatritz, has survived, Angelika Rieger (81) has identified 46 trobairitz texts in the manuscript tradition. The songs, whether in one voice or as dialogue, are composed in the first person, and each artist has a distinct style. Many poems are characterized by parody and irony, and in general the poems express, both in style and content, a desire to break out of the platonic or idealized relationship to one of mutual respect in which the woman has a right to demand certain behaviors from her lover. Not all songs are about heterosexual love: one song is to another woman, and one song encourages cloistered life over marriage. The German Minnesanger were influenced by the trobairitz of France as well as by the male trouveres and troubadours of northern and southern France. Because the attested German Minnesanger are male, and male composers have been assumed for anonymous poems written in the voice of women, it remains impossible to know to what extent women composed in the genre in 12thcentury Germany. The language of courtly love reaches its 13th-century height in the mystical writings of Mechthild of Magdeburg, who interprets anew the themes of ecstatic or suffering love and love sickness to describe the relationship of the soul to Christ. That Mechthild's erotically charged language was interpreted in a platonic sense is at the core of the correspondence between Margaretha Ebner and Heinrich of Nordlingen, who shared a close spiritual friendship for over 20 years. In the same century, Hadewijch of Brabant utilizes the language and techniques of courtly love poetry to create a new genre, the mystical love lyric, for her younger Beguine sisters. The female troubadour, historically unattested to in Germany, comes to life in 20th-century German literature in Irmtraud Morgner's fantastic novel Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974), in which Beatriz, the countess of Dia mentioned before, awakens from an 810-year sleep and leaves France to seek a country where women are emancipated. She parodies both bawdy and platonic love songs. Medieval notions of courtly love are recalled in both her profession and her name. Beatrice was also the name of Dante's love in the Vita nuova (1293-1294), and in the Paradiso (c. 1321) she symbolized and enabled the pilgrim's advancement to spiritual love through celebrating and transcending earthly love. Her name alludes as well to the beatific vision, or vision of God,
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and her role as object of love recalls the search for the beloved in the Song of Songs (3d century B.C.), the Old Testament book of often erotic wedding songs that were interpreted to refer to the ultimate platonic love in medieval Christendom—that between the soul and Christ the bridegroom—and constituted, in addition to Arabic, Hispano-Arabic, and Ovidian traditions, a major influence on courtly love poetry. Morgner's Beatriz, like the trobairitz, calls into question social and historical notions of gender and authority, including subjectivity and objectification. See also: Love; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Morgner, Irmtraud; Mysticism. References: Bogin, Meg, The Women Troubadours (New York: Paddington, 1976); Cohen, Ilka Y., "Das Liebesverhaltnis bei Mechthild von Magdeburg im Vergleich zu ausgewahlten Beispielen des Minnesangs" (Master's thesis, University of Oregon, 1993); Dronke, Peter, "Personal Poetry by Women: The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries." Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (f 203) to Marguerite Porete (f 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 84-106; Rasmussen, Ann Marie, "Die Winsbekin." Mutter—Tochter—Frauen: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur. Ed. Helga Kraft and Elke Liebs (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993) 9-15; Rieger, Angelika, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen hofischen Lyrik. Edition des Gesamtkorpus (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1991); Schmidt, Margot, "An Example of Spiritual Friendship: The Correspondence between Heinrich of Nordlingen and Margaretha Ebner." Trans. Susan Johnson. Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women. Ed. Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993) 74-92; von der Emde, Silke, "Irmtraud Morgner's Postmodern Feminism: A Question of Politics." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1994): Wl-M. JANS. EMERSON
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M Madchenliteratur. In its broadest definition, girls' literature comprises those works that are written for and/or read by girls, that is, female readers under the age of 20. Girls' literature, therefore, is intimately bound to the expectations of the adult authors about the young female. Although some scholars have maintained that there was no girls' literature before the 18th century—based on the mistaken notion that the concept of childhood emerged in the Enlightenment—examples of German girls' literature from before 1700 abound, the first being a translation of Geoffrey de Latour Landry's Spiegel der Tugenden und Ersamkeit (1513). For the next two centuries, works primarily of a devotional nature (Erbauungsliteratur) were written to provide reading material for young females in the convents, the courts, and the homes of the higher bourgeoisie, that is, literacy clusters in what remained a largely illiterate population. Some of these works aim exclusively at a young female audience (Conrad Porta's Jungfrawenspiegel, 1580, reprinted 1990); in others, girls are identified as one of several intended reading groups: "Frawen und Jungfrawen," "Knaben und Meidlein." This body of literature was intended to aid in a girl's upbringing at the most propitious time, namely, before puberty, and to help her become a good Christian and a good wife and mother. The preference for Erbauungsliteratur persisted until well into the 18th century, gradually moving away from explicitly religious advice toward moral lessons reflecting preferred burgher virtues, for example, Johann Heinrich Campe's Vdterlicher Rath an meine Tochter (1789). Although recommended for "matrons and maidens" by their authors, novels were not considered appropriate reading material for female readers in the 17th
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century. Yet, it was precisely the novel that came to the fore as girls' literature in the 18th century, not the bawdy or courtly remnants of earlier eras, but rather the translations and adaptations of the novels of Samuel Richardson: Wege der Tugend oder die Geschichte der beruhmten Pamela, der Klarissa Harlowe und des Ritters Karl Grandison im Kleinen entworfen (1767). Two genres developed of this secular fiction with an explicitly burgher morality and mostly burgher heroines: (1) collections of short stories, for example, Thekla von Gumpert's Tochteralbum (since 1855/1856) and (2) the Backfischroman (teenager novel), for example, Emmy von Rhoden's Der Trotzkopf (1885) and Clementine Helm's Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden (1863). From the outset, the immensely popular Backfischroman showed a preference for a chronological story line situated in a small town, with first-person narration heightening its subjective viewpoint. The girl protagonist is open and friendly, learns to act as the harmonizer, to sacrifice, and to care. The often-stated desire for self-realization eventually leads to a "free" decision to conform. A suitable man appears, and the heroine takes her place in society, mostly as a caregiver (wife, mother, nurse, etc.). Male and female stereotypes are basic to the genre and its story line; males are dominant, rational, secure; females, the opposite. Some new developments, for example, higher education for women (Else Ury, Studierte Mddel, 1906), and features from other genres like adventure stories find their way into the genre. But the basic underlying tenet remains largely the same: the advocated socialization of the conforming young female into a specific (increasingly antiquated) society as a way to true happiness for her and those around her. Only the past few decades have seen the publication of new emancipatory girls' books, which examine the relationships between the girl protagonist and others and explore themes such as sexuality, cohabitation, politics, drugs, and professions. Because of its schematic, black-and-white depiction and its catering to the demands of a consumer market, girls' literature has often been considered trivial literature. Critics have chided the genre for catering to a separation of the sexes, for failing to educate its readers toward the belles lettres, and more recently for presenting heroines conforming to a traditional social model that no longer reflects the reality for most of its reading public. See also: Children's Literature; Enlightenment; Erbauungsliteratur; Geschlechtscharaktere; Jugendliteratur; Ratgeberliteratur; Trivial Literature. References: Dahrendorf, Malte, Das Madchenbuch und seine Leserin (Weinheim: Beltz, 1978); Jakob, Franziska, "Zur Wertung des Madchenbuches. Untersuchungen an Texten aus der Zeit von 1945 bis 1980" (Diss., Universitat Zurich, 1985); Keiner, Sabine, Emanzipatorische Madchenliteratur 1980-1990 (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1994); Moore, Cornelia Niekus, The Maiden's Mirror, Reading Material for German Girls in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987). CORNELIA NIEKUS MOORE M a d w o m a n . Representing the mad or monstrous female protagonist in women's literature, the madwoman often serves as the author's double. Particularly
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in the 19th and early 20th centuries, women who stepped outside their socially defined boundaries, especially women authors, were frequently labeled mad. Enforced confinement within social roles compelled gifted literary women into anxiety and rage. Women writers often used the madwoman as a literary figure to express their own nonconformity to social norms. Common themes surrounding these figures in fictional works include imprisonment, illness, escape, doubles, reflections, and a closeness to nature and death. Since Aristotle, madness as an illness has been considered a sign of either genius or the Devil. Madness manifests itself in melancholia, euphoria, or rage. The tempered madness of the self-deprecatory woman writer is intertwined with the identity of the madwoman who gives in to wild bouts of insanity. The psychic split between submissive woman and rebellious lunatic has been described by women writers since Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim. Elements of madness are present in the unhealthy female self-sacrifice and suffering of the 18th-century Entsagungsroman. Wilhelmine Wobeser's Elisa, oder das Weib wie es sein sollte (1795) and Johanna Henriette Schopenhauer's Gabriele. Ein Roman (1819-1820) serve as examples. Madness emerges as a theme in Karoline von Woltmann's "Wahnsinn und Liebe" (1806) and in Karoline Auguste de la Motte-Fouque's Die blinde Fuhrerin (1821) and Frauenliebe (1818). Particularly in the 19th century, madness fascinated the simultaneously progressive and regressive Romantic poets. A proliferation of works by women writers who express themselves with the help of a mad double emerges, such as Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff s highly autobiographical novel fragment Ledwina (1819-1824) and the ballad "Die Schwestern" (1841-1842). Hedwig Dohm's aging protagonist in Werde, die Du bist (1894) reflects on her life of oppression from the bed of a sanatorium. Gabriele Reuter's novel Aus guter Familie (1895) describes a young woman's descent into temporary madness. In the 20th century, metaphors of madness continue to emerge in connection with various dysfunctional resistances, such as self-starvation in Maria Erlenberger's Hunger nach Wahnsinn (1977) and schizophrenia in Gabriele Wohmann's Ach wie gut, dafi niemand weifi (1980). See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Doubles, Female; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Reuter, Gabriele; Romanticism; Woman Writer. References: Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979); Showalter, Elaine, The Female Malady (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Weigel, Sigrid, "Der schielende Blick." Die verborgene Frau. Sechs Beitrdge zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Inge Stephan and Sigrid Weigel (Berlin: Argument, 1983) 83-137. BETHMUELLNER Maidservant. A maidservant is a woman who is employed in a household and who takes care of household-related tasks and the upbringing of children. Around 1900, women employed as maidservants wrote and published their life experiences. They retrospectively described the specific work conditions of do-
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mestic labor in autobiographical testimonies. The sociohistoric significance of maidservant literature is connected to Naturalism, to the formation of the bourgeois/aristocratic family, and to the definition of housework around the turn of the century. The maidservant develops a multiperspective vision, analyzing the female proletarian gender concept. She demystifies the stereotyped and humiliating rituals within the still-feudal relationship between maidservant and mistress. To escape from this relationship into an established domestic housewife existence, maidservants had to acquire a bourgeois education. Maidservant literature describes mostly the maid's childhood followed by the time of employment, frequently omitting personal experiences and eventual marriages. Central aspects of these reports are humiliation and sexual harassment, but they also show a process of self-determination through writing. Since books were far too expensive for maidservants, most maidservants' autobiographies address a bourgeois audience. By educating the bourgeoisie about the suffering and personal abuse domestic servants experienced and by portraying their miserable working conditions, maidservants' literature strives for a democratization of their profession. Other sources include novellas, novels, short stories, and poems about maidservants, which frequently portray them as invisible, nameless, and voiceless domestic spirits. Where the maidservant is presented as a protagonist, she remains stereotyped as bitchy, lazy, and sexually promiscuous. The profession of maidservant was not considered of special relevance to the sociohistorical context until feminist scholars began to redefine housework and related professions in the 1980s. A feminist re-evaluation of the (self-) representation of maidservants began in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, inquiry into the historical, sociological, and cultural importance of maidservants forms an important part of feminist research into the lives of nonbourgeois women. See also: Autobiography; Governess; Naturalism; Workers' Literature. Reference: Pauleweit, Karin, Dienstmiidchen um die Jahrhundertwende: im Selbstbildnis und Spiegel der zeitgenossischen Literatur (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1993).
CARMEN JANSSEN Manifesto. This is a short, usually public statement of basic principles or a programmatic summary of the goals of a philosophical, political, or literary movement. It usually includes a critique of current conditions and at times Utopian ideas. Manifestos were imperative in ushering in almost every avant-garde movement (Naturalism, Surrealism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism). The manifesto as a literary genre appeared first at the turn of the century in the avant-garde subcultural context of Naturalism, Expressionism, and fin-de-siecle. As a medium for political and revolutionary feminist agendas, it became a tool of incitement and resistance (against patriarchy, capitalism, anti-Semitism, racism) in music, art, architecture, and literature. It is critical of dominant traditions and the literary canon, because these define and restrict forms of expression.
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The women of the Revolution of 1848, for example, Fanny Lewald, Louise Aston, and Louise Otto-Peters, among others, were the first to create and document the political language of women's rights in Germany, using the literary form of the manifesto. Inspired by the first women's mass movement in 1890, manifestos appeared in women's newspapers, for example Helene Lange's "Was wir wollen" (1893) and Minna Cauer and Lily Braun's "Programm" (1895). These documents reflect the conflicts within the female public sphere of the fin-de-siecle as well as differences between the proletarian and bourgeois women's movements. They address issues ranging from women's right to vote and questions of education to judicial reforms and World War I, and challenge the patriarchal concept of humanity. In the field of literature, the critics Frieda von Biilow in ' 'Mannerurtheil iiber Frauendichtung" (1898-1899) and Lou Andreas-Salome in "Ketzereien gegen die moderne Frau" (1898-1899) present very different positions of bourgeois women regarding the male critics' disregard of Frauenzimmerliteratur and the cultural status assigned to women writers. Participating in the Dada movement in the fine arts in Berlin, Zurich, and Vienna, Hannah Hoch deconstructed concepts of the "New Woman" of the Weimar period in her photo collages. Her mixed media manifestos, a collage of "dolls," technology, race, and childhood, question assumptions of the construction of reality. Using scissors, paper, lace, and needlework, Hoch developed her own style, despite frequent criticism by the men of the Dada movement. With the new feminist movement in Germany since 1968, political and aesthetic manifestos proliferated. The women of the Green Party created the ' 'Muttermanifest" (1986) following the nuclear accident of Chernobyl. Works by Afro-German women such as Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (1986) added issues of racism and diversity in Germany and a sociopolitical awareness to the debate. Women's manifestos are a significant form of feminist criticism, yet their history still needs to be written, historically traced, and located within an international network. See also: Aston, Louise; Black German Literature; Braun, Lily; Canon, Literary; Dadaism; Expressionism; Fin-de-Siecle-Vienna; Futurism; Leurald, Fanny; Naturalism; New Woman; Otto-Peters, Louise; Pamphlet/Flugblatter; Patriarchy; Revolution, German; Surrealism; Women's Movement; World War I. References: Frederiksen, Elke, Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland 1865-1915. Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981); Noun, Louise R., Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Hoch, Kathe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen (Des Moines: Des Moines Art Center, 1994). CARMEN JANSSEN M a n n e r b i l d e r . While the Frauenbild in works by male authors has been the object of countless studies, literary scholarship has only recently begun to ask how women authors portray men and masculinity in their works. For contemporary German-language literature by women, Regula Venske's MannsbilderMdnnerbilder: Konstruktion und Kritik des Mdnnlichen in zeitgendssischer
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deutschsprachiger Literatur von Frauen (1988) and Das Verschwinden des Mannes in der weiblichen Schreibmaschine (1991) are the pathbreaking and most influential works on the subject. Venske argues that woman's object status in patriarchal society conditions her writing about men and masculinity, that is, about the subject, in such a way that woman's view of men is always connected to her own view of herself. Consequently, women's writing about masculinity becomes—in the final analysis—writing about women's own femininity. Women's difficulties at exerting authorial power over men result in a dialectical image of men: on one hand, women authors critique masculinity through concepts such as distance, separation, or revenge; on the other hand, they express pleasure in the male and project a Utopian "New man." In her analysis of texts by such authors as Ingeborg Drewitz, Christa Wolf, Marlen Haushofer, Karin Struck, Brigitte Kronauer, Elfriede Jelinek, and others, Venske found the most frequent Mannerbild-motif to be that of men's inability to love. This inability is rooted in the bourgeois-patriarchal construction of masculinity, which sees women either as property or as projections of male imagination. A second, more forceful motif of critique is that of deadly revenge, of Entmannung (demanning), as in Libuse Monikova's Eine Schadigung (1981), in which the victim slays her rapist. A third motif, prevalent in the Vaterbiicher of the second half of the 1970s by authors such as Barbara Bronnen, Jutta Schutting, and Brigitte Schwaiger, is that of the absent and inaccessible father or father figure. For Venske, this absence—a basic element of bourgeoispatriarchal masculinity—creates and maintains authority through distance. The paradox of the presence of the father's absence in these texts results in the paradox of simultaneous omnipresence and inaccessibility/unapproachability and of hatred for, and worship of, the father. In their longing for closeness, the authors create "symbiotic texts" in which a present female figure conjures up the absent figure of father or lover. Women authors in search of a "postphallic masculinity" attempt to smooth gender differences and create images of gentle men who do not equate masculinity with violence. A popular Mannerbild-motif in this context is that of the (twin) brother. This motif not only allows for an alternative—if sometimes incestuous—model for love between the sexes but also provides an alter ego for women's restricted potential. However, apart from the familial relationship to a brother or son, positive Utopias of the "new" or "exceptional" man are rare in woman's writing. According to Venske, this deficit reflects women's difficulty in developing independent concepts of desire and happiness. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Father-Daughter Relationship; Jelinek, Elfriede; Monikova, Libuse; Reinig, Christa; Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?; Struck, Karin; Utopia; Wolf, Christa. References: Todd, Janet, ed., Men by Women (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981); Vormweg, Heinrich, ' 'Eine sanfte Art von Mord? Uber die neueren literarischen Vaterbilder." Loccumer Protokolle 6 (1981): 4-22; Weigel, Sigrid, "Mit Siebenmeilenstiefeln
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zur weiblichen All-Macht oder die kleinen Schritte aus der mannlichen Ordnung. Eine Kritik literarischer Utopien von Frauen." Feministische Studien 1 (1985): 138-52; Weingant, Liselotte, "Das Bild des Mannes im Frauenroman der siebziger Jahre" (Diss., University of Illinois, 1981).
ASTRID WEIGERT Mannerism. Most dictionaries define mannerism either with a negative undertone as a lack of style (anticlassical, antinaturalist, artificial, with excessive ornamentation, with distortion, a form of representation irrespective of the matter, eccentric) or as a specific style, Individualstil—a problematic term if one also takes into account the notions of artificiality and simulation. In a restricted sense, mannerism designates a movement that began around 1520 in Italy, then spread north of the Alps, and was influential until the 17th century. Nevertheless, the term continues to play interesting roles even today, not only in the context of the visual arts but also in the written text. It has been associated, for example, with concettism, cubism, constructivism, anthropomorphism, pansexualism, pararealism, and other movements, which cannot be restricted historically to the transition between Renaissance and Baroque. Ursula Link-Heer raises the question why maniera (mannerism) seems to have lost its long-term competition against stilus (style) in the history of art and literary theory. She points out that maniera used to be applied in the context of architecture and visual arts, whereas stilus referred to written text. When maniera entered the literary debate, its connotations became more complex. Mannerism was a style different from the commonly accepted or generally established style. As the irregular it was most often despised and criticized but considered particularly creative and imaginative in other, perhaps more marginalized contexts. In all meanings of the term, it connoted the anticlassical. Dictionaries that were published in the 18th century offer conflicting uses of the term. This has to do, among other things, with cultural differences in Europe at the time. In French, the plural form manieres implied a concept of good, aristocratic behavior. With the rise of the bourgeoisie and with the emancipation of new art forms, this implication could be taken to the extreme with a twist of meaning: what used to be considered superior was then ironically changed to a style of affected, unnatural manners, a meaning that was also attached to the German adjective manieriert. In Italian, the term maniera had no direct reference to high or low social class. It was often used to designate what Link-Heer calls Individualstil. It can have positive connotations, for example, creative imagination, originality, and opposition to the status quo. By investigating the interrelated contributions by Giorgio Vasari, Denis Diderot, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Link-Heer analyzes changes and differences among the multiple meanings of these terms in their various cultural and historical contexts. She shows how they are interrelated and culturally codependent. Her article offers new vistas for interdisciplinary and feminist studies. Mannerism no longer has to be used in pejorative terms
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but instead offers a critical potential: by shifting attention to the marginal, the repressed, and the extremes, mannerism highlights the importance of aspects that used to be considered merely ornamental, marginal, or superfluous and draws attention to metaphoricity and to cultural codes. Mannerism challenges logocentricity and dominant forms of representation, as well as reasoning in the Western tradition. It is now possible to trace links between the culturally critical perspectives of mannerist art and recent feminist art theory and film studies. Among the issues to be explored are the implications of artificiality, multiple frames, instrumentality, and simulation for feminist approaches of critics such as Teresa de Lauretis, Katherine Hayles, and Barbara Stafford. Generally speaking, mannerism seems to anticipate features that have gained new currency in postmodern debates. See also: Baroque Literature; Film Theory, Feminist; Postmodernism; Renaissance Humanism. References: De Lauretis, Teresa, Alice Doesn't. Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Hayles, Katherine, "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers." October 66 (Fall 1993): 69-92; Hocke, Rene, Manierismus in der Literatur: Sprach-Alchemie und esoterische Kombinationskunst (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), Die Welt als Labyrinth: Manier und Manie in der europaischen Kunst (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957); Link-Heer, Ursula, "Maniera: Uberlegungen zur Konkurrenz von Manier und Stil." Stil. Geschichten und Funktionen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselements. Ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986) 93-114; Shearman, John, Manierismus in der Kunst (Frankfurt/M.: Athenaum, 1988); Suleiman, Susan Rubin, Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). BEATEALLERT M a n n w e i b . A pejorative term applied to any woman who appeared to transgress the conventional boundaries of gender and/or sexuality existing in late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany, this negative stereotype of the "masculine woman" was especially associated with the female representatives of both the women's and sexual reform movements of that period. Its roots, however, originate not from these political movements, but rather from an earlier medical discourse on female homosexuality. In the latter half of the 19th century, the figure of the Mannweib first surfaced as a sexual category when psychiatrist Karl Westphal published a report in a medical journal that not only established presumed distinguishing characteristics of lesbians but also unequivocally defined female homosexuality as a pathological condition. Asserting that women-loving women showed symptoms of an inverted sexuality, Westphal, Havelock Ellis, and other sexologists constructed an order of lesbians based on views of a masculine heterosexuality. According to these male scientists, the "mannish lesbian" or "masculine woman" constituted a new sexual type, since she possessed in a woman's body the mind of a man and thus could not be considered a true member of the female sex. This
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"unnatural" presence of masculinity served to explain the Mannweib's sexual desire for other women. However, this heterosexist and gendered framework proved problematic since it could not account for lesbian women who displayed singularly feminine characteristics. Ellis and other sexologists were not only compelled to create a pendant category to the Mannweib, the "femme" or the "pseudohomosexual," but also forced to conclude that female sexuality was more closely related to homosexuality than heterosexuality, for any woman was now thought susceptible to lesbian seduction. Although the medical and psychiatric professions determined the discursive terms in which same-sex desire was posited as perverse and abnormal, they also established the condition by which self-identified homosexuals could claim and redefine their sexual identities for themselves. Contemporaneously appearing with the sexological literature, then, were writings by lesbian and nonlesbian women that both reaffirmed and challenged these masculine and heterosexist paradigms. Conscious of its original identification with the Mannweib stereotype, the process of redefining and reclaiming lesbian representation in women's literature and feminism has vibrantly continued. See also: Body, Female; Film, Lesbian; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Homosexuality; Hosenrolle; Lesbian Literature; Lesbian Theories; Psychoanalysis; Wild Woman; Witch; Women's Movement. References: Ewering, Cacilia, Frauenliebe und literatur. (Un)gelebte (Vor)Bilder bei Ingeborg Bachmann, Johanna Moosdorf und Christa Reinig (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1992); Faderman, Lillian, and Brigitte Eriksson, eds., Lesbians in Germany: 1890's1920's, 2nd ed. (Tallahassee: Naiad, 1990); Jones, James W., "We of the Third Sex": Literary Representations of Homosexuality in Wilhelmine Germany (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); Kokula, Use, Weibliche Homosexualitat um 1900 in zeitgenossischen Dokumenten (Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1981); Lesbianism and Feminism in Germany, 1895-1910 (New York: Arno, 1975); Marti, Madeleine, Hinterlegte Botschaften. Die Darstellung lesbischer Frauen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler and Poeschel, 1991). TAMARA WANG
Mare (c. 1 2 5 0 - 1 5 0 0 ) . Storytelling in the later Middle Ages took varied forms. Beast fables, exemplary tales, and stories of miracles of the Virgin Mary and saints' lives are among the narratives that survive today in manuscripts. All were composed in German couplets and intended for oral recitation. Maren, or comic tales with human actors and a predominantly secular outlook, belong to this complex. The plot material of the Maren is varied, but their main significance for a feminist understanding of medieval literature and society is their representation of gender relations in marriage. Marriage in the Middle Ages was thought to be a hierarchy in which the husband ruled the household and had exclusive rights to the body of his wife. But in the Maren housewives are defiant. Many Maren depict women's pursuit of sexual experience beyond wedlock. Intellectual acu-
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men and shrewd use of words are the independent wife's most effective weapons, as in the story of a wife who protects her lover by telling her returning husband where he is hiding, secure in the knowledge that she will not be believed ("Der Ritter mit den Ntissen," 14th century). Neighbors, kinswomen, and workers such as housemaids and washerwomen belong to the household settings. Some tales tell of women's solidarity in achieving a goal, whether it be the disruption or the reestablishment of the order of marriage. Breaches of marriage norms are often condemned in the Maren, but the readers' sympathy and the stories' power to entertain usually rest with characters who maintain the upper hand through wit, gumption, and sexual ambition. Maren explore the conflict in medieval culture between medical and scientific views of woman's uncontrollable sexuality and the moral demand that she be held to a stricter standard of conduct. Some stories punish unruly characters in ways that are cruel or bizarre, mixing comedy with violence and abuse. Battering is commonplace. Although the majority of Maren are anonymous, all known authors are male. Women were doubtlessly in the audiences who enjoyed Maren as a form of convivial entertainment. These audiences were elite in the earlier period of the genre's popularity and widened to include the upper and middle strata of urban populations. Maren were not popular in the sense of belonging to the common people. One manuscript containing Maren, "Das Liederbuch der Clara Hatzlerin" (Praha, Knihovna Narodnfho musea, MS X A 12), is named for the professional woman scribe who produced it in Augsburg in 1470-1471. Since this was a commissioned work, however, there is no indication that Hatzlerin herself was interested in the genre, only that its popularity gave her employment. Two other manuscripts containing Maren were owned by wealthy women book collectors in the 15th century: Margarete von Savoy en possessed "Der gestohlene Schinken," the story of a peasant who is duped by bad advice (Cpg 314 dated 1443-1447); and Elsbeth von Volkensdorf, who lived in Tyrol, had a book in her library that was probably Schondoch's Die Konigin von Frankreich. Although little has been written about Margarete's life and nothing about Elsbeth's, one may assume that for both, library building signified the social and political prominence of their families. It is likely that they valued their Maren in two ways, as texts and as luxurious book objects. See also: Fable; Family, Social History of the German; Legend; Mariendichtung; Medieval Literature; Marriage; Saint. References: Fischer, Hanns, Studien zur deutschen Mdrendichtung, 2nd ed. (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1983); Ketsch, Peter, Frauenbild und Frauenrechte in Kirche und Gesellschaft. Ed. Annette Kuhn (Schwann: Dlisseldorf, 1984); Niewohner, Heinrich, Neues Gesamtabenteuer, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Weidmann, 1967). SARAH WESTPHAL
Mariendichtung ( 1 1 4 0 - 1 2 2 5 ) . This poetry, written in honor of the Virgin Mary, reached its apex during the Middle Ages but derives from a much
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older tradition of honoring female deities (Isis, Mother Earth, Eleusis, etc.) in song and poetry. In Mariendichtung, Mary is frequently contrasted with Eve, who is blamed for the fall from divine Grace. In her role as indirect savior of humanity (by giving birth to Jesus Christ), Mary embodies the "proper" role for women, that of a selfless mother. Mariendichtung often thematizes Mary's unique status as mother, which enables her to fulfill woman's "natural" calling of motherhood while remaining "pure." In its emphasis on sexual purity, Mariendichtung can, to some extent, be read as the religious equivalent to the idealization of hohe Minne in the poetry of the Minnesanger. Mariendichtung by women generally took over both the juxtaposition with Eve and the idealization of Mary as an essentially passive figure. One example is Hildegard von Bingen's song "De Sancta Maria" (In Praise of Mary), which thematizes Mary as an antithesis to Eve, and the sanctity of Mary's virginity: ' 'You have destroyed the serpent which . . . raised its outstretched neck to Eve. . . . You have given forth into this world your Son, sent from heaven and breathed into you by the Spirit of God." As is customary in Mariendichtung, the Virgin Mary here is a passive figure who affects the world around her only by giving birth—although the frequently made connection with ancient goddesses sometimes hints at a heathen female power that has not yet been domesticated by Christian doctrine. See also: Earth Mother; Goddess; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Mary; Virgin. References: Bindschedler, Maria, "Gedanken zur Marienlyrik des Mittelalters und der Romantik." Geschichte, Deutung, Kritik: Literaturwissenschaftliche Beitrdge dargebracht zum 65. Geburtstag Werner Kohlschmidts. Ed. Maria Bindschedler and Paul Zinsli (Berne: Francke, 1969) 79-90; Cocalis, Susan, ed., The Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology (New York: Feminist Press, 1986); Edelmann-Ginkel, Alwine, Das Loblied auf Maria im Meistersang: Versuch einer Typendifferenzierung auf der Basis spdtmittelalterlicher Bedingtheiten und Wandlungsprozesse (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1978); Warner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage, 1983). BRENDA L. BETHMAN
Marriage/Common-Law Marriage. Before its regulation by the church at the end of the Carolingian period, marriage was an irregular, unreliable, and frequently polygamous affair occasioned by theft of the bride, purchase, or family arrangement. Under the Christian influence of the Middle Ages, marriage was elevated to a sacrament and thus became a monogamous and binding arrangement. In the process, however, a woman's status was relegated to a subordinate position, the property of first her father, then her husband. Martin Luther accepted the medieval view of marriage, but he understood it to be a social institution, not a sacrament, thus paving the way for the state-regulated Zivilehe of the 18th century and for a more relaxed attitude toward divorce.
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During the Enlightenment, marriage came to be viewed as a contractual arrangement between private individuals. What could be contracted could also be dissolved; therefore, divorce by mutual consent became permissible in 1749, and shortly thereafter insurmountable dislike ("unuberwindliche Abneigung") was recognized as a legitimate ground for divorce. This progressive view of divorce was codified in to the Allgemeines Landrecht in 1794, a Prussian legal code that became the standard, with some variation, in other German states. In matters other than divorce, however, the status of women did not improve under the Allgemeines Landrecht. The Burgerliches Gesetzbuch, or Civil Code, adopted in 1900, was the first attempt at establishing a legal code for all of Germany and eroded married women's rights even further. The Civil Code remained in effect until the Grundgesetz was enacted in 1949, which included in Article 3 the Gleichheitsprinzip guaranteeing equal rights to men and women. The legislation to reform the marital law according to Article 3 was not completed until 1958, and even then the changes were disappointing. While women achieved joint rights with their husbands over property and children, a woman's role in marriage was understood to be first and foremost that of homemaker and mother. Only after the obligation to home and family was met could she consider employment outside the home. The housewife marriage remained in force until 1977, when the law concerning marriage was again reformed, this time based on the notion of a full partnership between husband and wife in all matters, including household responsibilities, employment, and child care. Common-law marriage, or marriage in practice if not in law, has no legal standing under marital law in the Federal Republic. Because the constitution promotes and protects marriage, the law does not address itself to alternative lifestyles that might discourage marriage. However, couples living together have recourse through contractual law, and there is also legal provision for their children. See also: Allgemeines PreuBisches Landrecht; Burgerliches Gesetzbuch; Family, Social History of the German. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Bergerfurth, Bruno, Das Eherecht: Eingehen und Auflosen der Ehe: Guterstand, Schliisselgewalt (Freiburg/Br.: Rudolf Hauf, 1993); Evens, Richard J., The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894-1933 (London: Sage, 1976); Kolinsky, Eva, Women in West Germany: Life, Work and Politics (New York: Berg, 1989).
JANE CHEW Martyrerdrama. The term "Martyrerdrama" has generally been applied to dramas, usually tragedies, of the early modern period (1500-1750) in which the protagonists are persecuted, tortured, and executed for their religious and/or political beliefs. The earliest martyr plays were written by the 10th-century nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (Dulcitius and Sapientia, both after 962) as Latin
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prose exercises in the style of Terence. But martyr plays became especially popular during the religious wars of the late Reformation (c.1550), for they were used to bolster the convictions of beleaguered Protestants and Catholics. In the 17th century, martyr dramas increasingly represented political persecution (e.g., Andreas Gryphius, Papinianus, 1659; Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Ibrahim Bassa, 1650; Johann Christian Hallmann, Mariamne, 1670; August Adolph von Haugwitz, Maria Stuarda, 1683), but by the mid-1700s, the martyr play degenerated into a didactic exemplum for schoolboy audiences, trivialized melodramas (Johann Friedrich von Cronegk, Olint und Sophronia, 1760), or a showplace for the bourgeoisie's exploitation by the absolutist court (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti, 1772). Martyr heroes were drawn from the Bible, medieval hagiography, classical antiquity, or recent history (e.g., Mary Stuart). Although some protagonists were male (e.g., St. John the Baptist, St. Stephen Protomartyr; Charles I of England), many martyr plays depicted the bloody persecution and torture of women. Female martyrs displayed the same virtues as their male counterparts, constancy (Bestandigkeii) and fortitude in the face of death, but their persecution arose not so much from their beliefs but from their resistance to the amorous advances of their male opponents. Female martyrs were almost invariably depicted as objects of male desire because of their beauty, virginity, racy sexual past, or prudish rejection of lustful advances. The prototypical conflict involved a rapacious pagan ruler's pursuit of a chaste Christian woman (e.g., 16th-century Jesuit plays on St. Catherine of Alexandria; Andreas Gryphius, Felicitas, c.1645; Catharina von Georgien, 1647), but later this configuration evolved into a secularized confrontation between a tyrant and a political enemy (Lohenstein, Epicharis, 1665). Although the heroines were gifted in eloquence, their wise apologia for their faith and politics served not to dissuade but to intensify the lust of their suitors. Because of their continued resistance, these women were subjected to physical and psychological torture, often accompanied by rape (Lohenstein, Ibrahim Sultan, 1673) and the mutilation of breasts and genitalia, an event that further heightened the sexual frenzy of their persecutors. Such torments are especially striking since these works were exclusively written by men (pastors, priests, scholars, lawyers) for performance by male Gymnasium students for mostly male audiences. Early modern martyr dramas with female protagonists thus served to reduce virtuous and intelligent women to sexual objects whose destruction elicited an erotic frisson in the male audiences and reinforced the exclusion of women from the public sphere. See also: Bourgeois Tragedy; Drama, Biblical; Medieval Literature; Reformation. References: Neuss, Raimund, Tugend und Toleranz: Die Krise der Gattung Martyrerdrama im 18. Jahrhundert (Bonn: Bouvier, 1989); Parente, James A., Jr., Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and the Netherlands, 1500-1680 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987); Szarota, Elida Maria, Kunstler, Grubler und Rebellen: Studien zum europaischen Martyrerdrama des 17. Jahrhunderts
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(Berne: Francke, 1967), Starke, dein Name sei Weibl Buhnenfiguren des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987).
JAMES A. PARENTE Marxist T h e o r i e s . The encounter between Marxist theories and feminism produces and reproduces a history of cooperation and contention. Crucial to an understanding of this relationship is the Marxist assumption that Marxism constitutes an economic and therefore universally applicable project, while feminism qualifies as a particularism, ancillary to the larger issues of human emancipation. In its various incarnations, Marxist theory defines difference according to class, economy, and the means of production, while feminism foregrounds gender difference as irreducible. There are significant similarities: both Marxism and feminism combine theory with practice, critique dominant ideologies, and participate in a Utopian discourse about the relationship between the individual and the collective subject. Both valorize personal experience as a legitimate means to interpret and change the world. Marxist attention to women's issues has focused historically on work and the family, production and reproduction. In some of their writings, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attend to the condition of women in their analysis of the bourgeois family in capitalist society. Other figures, among them Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and—problematically enough—Josef Stalin, recognized gender-based inequality but persistently subsumed the "woman question" into the larger issue of class difference and political imperatives and exigencies. Feminist critique of Marxism reconsiders the plight of women under the conditions of bourgeois capitalism. This scholarship takes numerous forms, for example, reconsiderations of historical movements and figures or attention to Marxist practice as expressed in efforts to ground socialism through, for example, the founding of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD, 1875) and the Second International (1899). Important in this context is the German social democrat August Bebel, who, in his Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1883), subsumes the question of women's equality into the issue of worker's rights, though he attends to economic and educational status. Recent work on women such as Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, and Clara Zetkin reveals that each in her own way inflected the terms of emancipatory discourse through her writings and work—explicitly feminist or not. However, contributions made by women to theory tend to be elided, since theory, if separated from political practice, is suspect in Marxist discourse; and the exclusion of women from abstract thought in general persists. The Frankfurt school (Institute for Social Research) (1923-1950) provided impulses for the development of Marxist thought in the context of, among other things, critique of totalitarianism and a theory of mass culture, as well as analyses of the family and marriage. Related circumstantially and personally, though not institutionally, Hannah Arendt, in her philosophy, social theory, and expe-
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rience, connects with the concerns of the Frankfurt school and some of its figures (especially Walter Benjamin). Arendt taught at the New School for Social Research, an institutional reincarnation in New York. Although Arendt is an unaffiliated philosopher—neither existentialist nor Marxist nor feminist—her attention to storytelling and narrative, as well as her theory of natality (as a human principle of regeneration), provides points of departure for feminist thought. In the late 1960s, the student movement and its exclusionary male practices precipitated the rise of German feminism, which turned attention to reproductive rights. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Marxism and feminism were decreed synonymous, though in practice, GDR women did not consider the ' 'woman question'' answered, as evidenced by the founding of an independent women's organization after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). On the cultural front, some writers addressed the issue of self-fulfillment within a socialist collective. Along this line, Christa Wolf forced a dialogue between state socialism and feminism in the novel Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968). Recent developments bring Marxist and feminist theory into productive dialogue. Common points include the foregrounding of work, the elevation of personal experience, and the need to historicize. These are reflected in recent approaches: New Historicism, for example, considers material conditions of production. A feminist assessment of New Historicism, articulated by Sara Friedrichsmeyer and Jeanette Clausen, among others, cautions against collapsing the category of "woman" or the feminine with the experiences of women. Cultural studies provides a revised understanding of the articulation between Marxism and feminism and considers a variety of approaches, including Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, cyberpunk, and science fiction, to the questions, such as the need to rethink reason, technology, and sexuality. See also: Cultural Studies; Existentialism; Frankfurt School; Frauenfrage; GDR Literature; New Historicism; Psychoanalysis; Science Fiction; Socialism; Stalinism; Student Movement (1968); Utopia; Wolf, Christa; Workers' Literature; Zetkin, Clara. References: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, and Jeanette Clausen, "What's Missing in New Historicism or the 'Poetics' of Feminist Literary Criticism." Women in German Yearbook 9 (1993): 253-57; Gottlieb, Roger S., ed., An Anthology of Western Marxism. From Lukacs and Gramsci to Socialist-Feminism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination. A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); Nye, Andrea, Philosophia. The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt (New York: Routledge, 1994); Reutershan, Joan, Clara Zetkin und Brot und Rosen. Literaturpolitische Konflikte zwischen Partei und Frauenbewegung in der deutschen Vorkriegssozialdemokratie (New York: Lang, 1985); Sargent, Lydia, ed., Women and Revolution. A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981); Wiggershaus, Rolf, The Frankfurt School. Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994). PATRICIA ANNE SIMPSON
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M a s k e n s p i e l . This term originally denoted a literary form that uses masks to portray aesthetic, religious, or social motifs symbolically in a theatrical performance or dance, usually performed at court or in aristocratic circles. More recently, the term has come to describe a problematic within feminist theory. Literary Maskenspiele were already being written by women in the 17th century. Some of the earliest published Maskenspiele were composed by Countess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Wolfenbiittel as courtly spectacles celebrating her husband, Count August. In keeping with her representative function as a member of the ruling aristocratic family, Sophie Elisabeth choreographed the dance and designed the allegorical masks and costumes of court members paying homage to the monarch's absolute authority. She represented her own central position within these performances in the figures of either the goddess Athena or as Earth, mother of the nation. Such courtly masquerades were widely criticized by Enlightenment women writers, such as Sophie von La Roche {Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim, 1771), who characterized them as extravagant and potentially damaging to the sexual mores of the participants and spectators. Feminist scholars of 18th-century literature have explored masquerades as carnivalesque upheavals (Mikhail Bakhtin) that allowed momentary liberation from the moral strictures within which women's behavior was constrained. While public masquerades in London did allow for promiscuity, which shocked the dominant symbolic order, more recent scholarship has suggested that women authors depicted 18th-century masquerades as ambivalent arenas in which patriarchal relations were very often exaggerated and intensified. Within German Romantic literature, Maskenspiele highlighted the instability of subjective identity rather than the reversal of social relations. Some Bildungsromane, such as Caroline de La Motte-Fouque's Edmunds Wege und Irrwege (1815), portray masquerade scenes often as mise-en-abymes of the protagonist's search for self-identity through the figure of the beloved feminine other. Underlying contemporary feminist evaluations of masquerades is a much broader debate about the construction of gender identity. Most theorists who consider gender a category derived from social performance refer to Joan Riviere's psychoanalytic essay "Womanliness as Masquerade" (1929), which postulates femininity as a compensatory reaction by women who fear they have assumed an overly masculine stance. Within itself, womanliness lacks substance; rather, it operates as a "disguise to conceal the woman's appropriation of masculinity and as a deception designed to placate a potentially vengeful father figure" (Doane, 1989). As a critique of essentialist gender ideology, the femininity-as-masquerade position allows feminists to theorize identity as a social construct derived from masculine spectatorship of the female body. The critical political component of this argument depends, however, on the disruptive potential of the feminine masquerade: does the feminine performance of identity mock and disrupt the logic of male spectatorship or does it actually affirm its assumptions?
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See also: Bildungsroman; Dialogics, Feminist; Earth Mother; Enlightenment; Essentialism/Constructionism; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; La Roche, Sophie von; Romanticism. References: Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Castle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); Craft-Fairchild, Catherine, Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); Doane, Mary Ann, "Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator." Discourse 11 (1988-1989): 4254; Riviere, Joan, "Womanliness as a Masquerade." International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1929). Reprinted in Formations of Fantasy. Ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (London: Routledge, 1986) 3 5 ^ 4 ; Roloff, Hans-Gert, "Die literarische Tatigkeit der Herzogin Sophie Elisabeth von Braunschweig und Liineburg." Europaische Hofkultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, vol. 3 (Hamburg: Ernst Hauswedell, 1981) 489-96.
DANIEE PURDY M a s o c h i s m / S a d o m a s o c h i s m . Female masochism is traditionally viewed as a psychic consequence of the anatomical difference of the sexes, a genetic factor, and the most elementary force in woman's psyche (Helene Deutsch's "Der feminine Masochismus und seine Beziehung zur Frigiditat," 1930). In "Zur Frage des weiblichen Masochismus" (1933), Karen Horney challenges this view by considering the social and cultural causes that support the development of masochistic fantasies (i.e., woman's economical dependency on man, chauvinistic attitudes in a culture in which women are considered inferior to men). The idea of the social determination of woman's masochism introduced by Horney is taken further by Margarete Mitscherlich in Die friedfertige Frau (1985): the more dependent on her mother a girl grows up, and the more she therefore hates her mother, denies this hatred, and feels guilty for it, the more likely she will be to engage in sadomasochistic forms of relationships. From a Marxist perspective, Frigga Haug uses masochism as a metaphor for woman's collaboration in upholding her own victim status (Beyond Female Masochism. Memory-Work and Politics, 1992). Jeanne Lampl-de Groot's essay "Masochismus und NarziBmus" (1937) brings the mother's role to the forefront and draws attention to the close relationship between masochism and narcissism. Lampl-de Groot establishes this fantasy in little girls: "I once had a penis, but it was taken away from me as punishment for masturbation." In order to prevent the pain of a narcissistic wound, and because the girl cannot openly turn her aggression against her mother, she finds masochistic pleasure in her punishment. In contradistinction to Sigmund Freud's thesis on the girl's beating fantasy, which figures as the regressive substitute for libidinal wishes against the father ("Ein Kind wird geschlagen," 1919), the fantasy Lampl-de Groot investigates stems from the pre-oedipal phase—so does a similar one in boys. In contrast, Freud's scenario
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for the boy's unconscious beating fantasy is a reversed oedipal situation, the passive homosexual love for his father. A more theoretical approach to the nature of the masochistic fantasy, exemplified in the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, is undertaken by Gertrud Lenzer's extensive study "On Masochism: A Contribution to the History of a Fantasy and Its Theory" (1975). The rigidity and stereotyping of SacherMasoch's oedipal fantasy world affirms an undifferentiated, phallic organization of all human beings. In contrast, Monika Treut claims in Die grausame Frau. Zum Frauenbild bei de Sade und Sacher-Masoch (1984) that Sacher-Masoch tries to free the woman figure from societal repression, endowing her with power through fetishization (fur, boots, cap, and whip). Treut draws from Gilles Deleuze's influential study "Le Froid et le Cruel" (1967), where he rejects the Freudian concept of the sadomasochistic couple, developing instead a model of the humorous reversal of power: the one being beaten in the masochistic fantasy is the father, that is, the representative of a law that is subverted with the help of the mother-son union. A literary example of woman's phantasmatic (not real) empowerment in which the protagonist ends her complete dependence on her mother through the masochistic contract with her lover is Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin (1983). Similarly, Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch's Die Zuchtigung (1985) traces the regressive pattern of a mother-daughter symbiosis through three generations. In Mitgutsch's text, women's abuse by their husbands and society and their consecutive self-hatred are passed on to their daughters as a form of mothering: in violent beating sessions that resemble sadomasochistic scenarios, the mother is beating, in her daughter, an extension of herself. See also: Homosexuality; Jelinek, Elfriede; Marxist Theories; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Participation/Exclusion; Psychoanalysis; Victim. References: Benjamin, Jessica, "Women's Masochism and Ideal Love." Psychoanalysis and Women. Contemporary Reappraisals. Ed. Judith Alpert (Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1986) 113-38; Caplan, Paula J., The Myth of Women's Masochism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Le Soldat, Judith, Freiwillige Knechtschaft. Masochismus und Moral (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1989).
SIGRID BERKA Masquerade—see: Hosenrolle; Maskenspiel Matinee. This term, which has come to mean any performance taking place in the late morning or early afternoon, historically refers to an amateur theatrical performance given at court by the courtiers themselves. Since the matinee was considered pure entertainment rather than a forum for artistic expression, it was thought to be an acceptable literary form for ladies of the court. At many 18thcentury courts, most notably at the court of Weimar, women like Charlotte von Stein, Luise von Gochhausen, and Corona Schroter were instrumental in the production and performance of such pieces.
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The matinee can be seen as one of many cultural imports from the influential French courts. Although many plays were not explicitly labeled as such, many Schauspiele, Lustspiele, Festspiele, or Trauerspiele were performed as matinees. These plays may have been written by anyone in the court circle, regardless of his or her status as a writer, and were often the product of collaboration. The matinee occasionally thematized the lives and characters of people at court, sometimes quite critically, and were usually performed on special occasions like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, or coronations. Although both its status as "occasional" literature and the fact that its authors were not always professional writers have resulted in the exclusion of matinees from ' 'high'' art, contemporaries seem to have attributed a higher status to matinees and other amateur art forms. Duchess Anna Amalia 's court of Weimar, the best-known Musenhof of its time, became Germany's most renowned cultural center during the last half of the 18th century, largely based on the quality and reputation of its amateur theater. Von Stein, a regular participant in the duchess' Liebhabertheater, wrote two matinees. Her first play, Rino (1776), a portrayal of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's arrival at court, is a satire of Goethe's womanizing and the fawning behavior of the court ladies, von Stein herself included. Von Stein's tragedy Dido (1794) is a critical response to Goethe's portrayal of his heroine in Iphigenie aufTauris (1787), who was inspired by von Stein. Matinees have only rarely been the subject of literary scholarship—a fact that further obscures women's contributions to the genre—because many matinees remained unpublished, authorship cannot be clearly established, and the genre description is somewhat vague. See also: Amateur Theater; Amazonentheater; Authorship; Gelegenheitsdichtung. References: Bauer, Volker, Die hofische Gesellschaft in Deutschland von der Mitte des 17. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1993); Goodman, Katherine R., "The Sign Speaks: Charlotte von Stein's Matinees." In the Shadow of Olympus, German Women Writers around 1800 (New York: SUNY Press, 1992) 71-93; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992).
RHONDA DUFFAUT Matriarchy. Generally, the term refers to a hypothetical social system in which women hold political as well as familial power. The term "matriarchy" was introduced toward the end of the 19th century to designate what in ancient Greece was called gynecocracy (the rule of women). However, to some feminist scholars, matriarchy refers to any social order created and shaped by women in which they dominated but did not necessarily rule. In 1861, Johann Jakob Bachofen, a Swiss historical philosopher and professor of Roman law, published his theory of a matriarchal culture (Mutterrecht). His theory was derived not from empirical anthropology but from his philosophy of history as an evolutionary development of human society. First, Bachofen con-
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sidered the formation of patriarchal laws and rights to have been a reaction to some previously existing social order. Second, based on his interpretation of Greek mythology and religion, Bachofen believed this previous social order to have been a matriarchal one. In his view of evolutionary development, matriarchy succeeded the primitive stage of general promiscuity and preceded the formation of patriarchy. When patriarchal culture superseded matriarchal cultures, it erased all evidence of their former existence. Bachofen considered matriarchy to be the embodiment of the female-material principle of darkness that yielded to patriarchy's masculine-spiritual principle of light. Bachofen's theory found uncritical acceptance by the American ethnologue Lewis Henry Morgan. Bachofen's Mutterrecht confirmed his own ethnological studies of Native American cultures, some of which were based on a matrilineal social structure (Ancient Society, 1877). In a matrilineal order, the mother is head of the family, and descent, kinship, and succession are established through the mother only, but mothers do not rule their society. Morgan's work, in turn, inspired Karl Marx, whose copious notes on the subject formed the basis of Friedrich Engels' Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats (1884). New archaeological evidence has disclaimed Bachofen's theory. But while early 20th-century ethnologues disproved the existence of matriarchies or social structures under female rule, they did confirm Bachofen's hypothesis of nonpatriarchal societies (e.g., egalitarian and matrilineal societies in Lycia and Crete). Bachofen also uncovered existing matriarchal myths, but his Mutterrecht created the myth of matriarchy. For early feminists of the 1890s, the myth of a matriarchy represented a Utopian vision of their own goals. In early psychology and psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich), the myth was reduced to a level of symbolism. It was revived in the 1950s, when Wilhelm Schmidt (Das Mutterrecht, 1955) made an attempt to vindicate Bachofen's theory, and again during the 1970s, when feminists used it to evoke visions of female rule and a rejection of power in the hands of men. It also served as an impetus to further the creation of feminist theory and action. The strongest support of the idea of matriarchy as a means to regain women's history and female tradition is found in Heide Gottner-Abendroth's theory and research. She rejects distinctions like "matrilineal," "matrifocal," "matristic," or "egalitarian" when describing societies in which women play a significant role and calls them all matriarchy, because, as she claims, matriarchy never was a mere mirror image of patriarchy and, thus, cannot be compared in that way. When and where women dominated, they did not rule and subordinate the opposite sex. Gottner-Abendroth interprets the term "matriarchy," drawing on the dual meaning of the Greek "arche," which means both domination and beginning: in the beginning there was the mother, the female principle. Her work strongly criticizes patriarchal theories that deny the existence of matriarchies and women's achievements.
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In German literature, matriarchal cultures that nurture and support life are being rediscovered and re-created in answer to the perceived self-destructive developments of patriarchy. This (self-)destructive mechanism is poignantly portrayed in Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1983), a work that retells the Trojan War from Kassandra's point of view and depicts the rise of patriarchy in Troy along with the stifling of women's voices. A matriarchal counterculture upholds female rites, traditions, and human values, before it succumbs to the destruction of the conquerors. Likewise, Irmtraud Morgner's imaginative and satirical work Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (1983) upholds the vision of matriarchy in a playful way. The novel explores and creates female history through the eyes of a siren and a witch, creatures that represent original female values and a threat to the patriarchal order. See also: Family, Social History of the German; History, Women's; Marxist Theories; Morgner, Irmtraud; Patriarchy; Psychoanalysis; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Witch; Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement. References: Bachofen, J. J., Mutterrecht und Urreligion (Stuttgart: Kosel, 1861); Gottner-Abendroth, Heide, Das Matriarchat (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1988); Webster, Paula, "Matriarchy. A Vision of Power." Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975) 141-56; Wesel, Uwe, Der Mythos vom Matriarchat (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1980). KATHARINA AULLS Medieval Literature ( 5 0 0 - 1 5 0 0 ) . The plethora of literary genres, styles, languages, objectives, and audiences in premodern Europe spans a time of limited access to the means of literacy. During the Early Middle Ages, Latin was the only language of writing, and literary education occurred almost exclusively in convents. With increasing literacy among the laity, the vernacular came to be used in correspondence and for the documentation of oral narratives. Within the framework of extant texts, epistolarity was a predominant mode of expression among literate women throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest extant writings of women in German-speaking regions are letters written by noblewomen in Latin. Queen Radegunde's surviving works are three verse epistles (6th century). Content and form show familiarity with works by Virgil, Propertius, Ausonius, and Ovid; she combines the varying classical genres with the Germanic poetic tradition of the lament. Dhuoda' s moral treatise to her son William (9th century) is a mixture of family history, prayer, moral admonitions, and biblical exegesis. Charlemagne's sister Gisela and his daughter Rotrud corresponded with Alcuin of York and other clergymen around 800. Learned theological writings come to us from cloistered women scholars: the 10th-century Saxon canoness Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim received extensive training in classical literature and contemporary theological writings under the tutelage of her abbess. Her oeuvre consists of eight saints' legends, six plays in rhymed prose, two verse chronicles, and a short poem. The self-deprecating, subservient tone of Hrotsvitha's prologues and dedications is at variance with
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the firm convictions she expresses in her literature. Hrotsvitha is the first known dramatist of Christian Europe as well as the first Saxon poet and female historian in Germany. She is also the first woman documented in the German tradition who consciously protested and counteracted the negative portrayal of women in popular classical literature. The writings of the 12th-century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen include three visionary-prophetic works of profound Christological interpretation—Scivias (1151), Liber Vitae Meritorum (1163), and Liber divinorum operum (1174)—as well as medicoscientific treatises, musical compositions, and a vast correspondence. Hildegard, a child oblate, was tutored by the anchoress Jutta von Sponheim. The provost at Rupertsberg was Hildegard's personal secretary for 30 years and responsible for the polished Latin of her texts. Hildegard was a prophet in the style of the Old Testament and claimed moral authority as God's mouthpiece. The authenticity of her visions was publicly recognized by the pope, and she was one of the few medieval women who overcame the church's prohibition of women teaching or preaching, undertaking extensive journeys to do so. The nun Elisabeth von Schonau corresponded with Hildegard concerning her own mystical experiences; Elisabeth, who was frequently attacked for her role as a visionary, had to be coaxed into dictating her visions. The learned abbess Herrad von Landsberg authored the most innovative compendium of her time: the Hortus Deliciarum (1175), a pictorial encyclopedia of biblical world history, philosophy, and current events. Increasingly, ecclesiastic interest in secular affairs became the subject of criticism and led to reform attempts from within and without the church's ranks: monastic reform movements, antinomian sects, and the strivings of the mendicant friars and Beguine communities attest to a dissatisfaction with traditional roles and ideologies of the institutional church and to the search for a Christian life based on the vita apostolica. The desire to identify and suffer with a loving, human Christ engendered a wave of mystical writings throughout Europe—at once pious, devotional, and erotic. The vernacular oeuvre of Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250-1270), stands as a monument to the human search for union with the deity. A Beguine in Magdeburg, Mechthild began dictating the first six books of Das fliefiende Licht to her Dominican confessor Heinrich von Halle around 1250. Increasing clerical and public intolerance toward the Beguines forced Mechthild to seek refuge in the cloister at Helfta in 1270, where she dictated the seventh book to the nuns. Das fliefiende Licht consists of a myriad of genres—autobiography, dialogue, hymn, admonition, aphorism, vision, folk song—influenced by Scripture, Psalms, the Song of Songs, and the Minnesang tradition. Mechthild's narrative is intensely personal, reflective, and dramatic, and her style is rich in metaphors, allegories, and analogies. Under the abbess Gertrud von Hackeborn, the Helfta monastery had already fostered a climate of learning, music, and mystical experience prior to Mechthild's arrival. The Brautmystik tradition was embedded in the everyday life of
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the cloister; the visions are intertwining, episodic collective experiences. Mechthild von Hackeborn's Liber specialis gratiae (1291) became popular in devotional literature, especially in England. The younger Gertrude, an outstanding scholar who was later named Gertrude the Great, authored the work Legatus divinae pietatis (1289)—a compilation of prayers, visions, and meditations— the Spiritual Exercises (original lost, date unknown), and probably part of Mechthild's Liber specialis. Gertrude's and Mechthild's works reveal the conscious effort of the Helfta cloister to establish and pass on spiritual teaching and a collective reputation to its sisters and the public. Letters in the vernacular flourished between religious women and their spiritual friends in the later Middle Ages and often related mystical experiences. Christine von Stommeln, a 13th-century Beguine known for her visions, corresponded for 10 years with the Swedish Dominican Petrus Dacus, who wrote her vita and collected their correspondence. Christine Ebner, a nun in Engeltal, authored the Buchlein von der Gnaden Uberlast (1345), a collection of edifying stories of sisters past and present; a letter to Konrad von Ftissen has also been preserved. Margareta Ebner, a nun in the convent Maria Medingen, sent Heinrich von Nordlingen part of her Offenbarungen (1345); only fragments of their extensive correspondence remain. Margareta's work is noteworthy not only for its spiritual content but also for her pronouncements on social and political events. Elsbeth Stagel, a nun at the Toss convent in the 14th century and correspondent with Heinrich Seuse, began his biography and edited his letters until he himself took over this task. Elsbeth made use of a wide spectrum of literary forms, as evidenced in the Toss Schwesternbuch, in which Elsbeth recorded 39 vitae of her sisters and their mystical experiences. The three extant letters of Adelhaid Langmann to her prior Ulrich are woven into her Offenbarungen (1347), a compilation of diary entries on her visions. Ursula Haider, a Franciscan tertiary known for miraculous fasting and stigmata, was asked by the town of Villingen to take up residence in the convent Bickenkloster for reform purposes; the chronicle of the cloister contains Ursula's visions as well as some letters. Magdalena Beutler, whose mother was active in monastic reform, sought to edify her sisters through paramystical experiences and didactic writings. Her letters form part of the biography written by Johannes Nider. Over the course of the Middle Ages, increasing numbers of people sought to lead a religious life. Unlike the orders, lay movements had no class restrictions and thus offered an opportunity for non-noblewomen to participate in a collective life that emphasized the imitatio christi: poverty, chastity, and service to others. The new forms of piety and community were fueled by the shift in focus from the divinity to the humanity of Christ. The emphasis on Christ's love and physical suffering—as opposed to the earlier concept of Christ the King of Heaven—engendered emotional responses not previously known. Admonitions of divine judgment and prophetic messages were replaced by a domesticated concept of the divinity that is evident in Brautmystik and Marian piety. Spiritual
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friendships and public interest in devotional experiences flourished, lending increasing significance to the personal relationship to God within a spiritual community. See also: Aphorism; Autobiography; Epistolary Culture; Erudite Woman; Folk Song; Hymn; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Mariendichtung; Martyrerdrama; Minnesang; Mother Mary; Mysticism; Saints. References: Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast, Holy Fast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Cherewatuk, Karen, and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds., Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); Dronke, Peter, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Finnegan, Mary Jeremy, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991); Oehl, Wilhelm, ed., Deutsche Mystikerbriefe des Mittelalters (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972); Petroff, Elizabeth, Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Schipperges, Heinrich, Hildegard von Bingen: ein Zeichen fiir unsere Zeit (Frankfurt/M.: Knecht, 1981). KATHLEEN ROSE NO£ M e l o d r a m a . This type of drama exists as a cross-cultural form with a complex, 200-year history. As a genre (theater, film) or as an element of drama or film, it is characterized by an attention to, and a recognition of, the human passions. Because of its emphasis on the domestic sphere and its resistance to rationalism, feminists have become interested in its subversive tendencies. In its desire to tell all, melodrama is drawn to the "dark forces," the alienated reality beneath and beyond rational consciousness, the reality of a world beyond representation. In that it shows emotive forces of personal predicaments and often exhibits dichotomies (e.g., the virtuous heroine against the evil villain or the evil world, truth against falsehood, etc.), it has been widely identified with populism. Many left-wing modernists see melodrama only as an element of a depoliticized mass culture, opposing mass culture's emotionalism to the rationalism of modernist distanciation techniques. A consequence of this high/low logic is the conflation of melodrama with realism, since both melodrama and realism are placed on the " l o w " side of this dichotomy. For those in favor of a politically committed realism this becomes especially problematic since to them melodrama is anything but realistic. On the other hand, those opposed to realism, describing it as bourgeois and depoliticized, have often been supportive of melodrama, viewing its emotional excesses as a welcome repudiation of realism. Feminists, too, value melodrama for its resistance to "highbrow" literary standards as well as its foregrounding of women's issues. Especially in the family melodrama, generational and gender conflicts and issues of sexual difference and identity are presented. This opens up a large space to the domestic sphere and for female protagonists. Moreover, melodrama's narratives are frequently motivated by female desire. In cinematic texts and primarily in "women's film," processes of spectator identification are governed by a female
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point of view. Weimar melodrama specifically addressed a female audience in its representation of the economic, the social, and the sexual mobility of women, the erotic representation of passive men, and the filmic expressions of the female desire for emancipation. At the beginning of the 1970s, with the discovery of the filmmaker Douglas Sirk, melodrama was viewed positively by many who had formerly seen it as the antivalue for a critical field in which tragedy and realism had become cornerstones of high cultural value. With Rainer Werner Fassbinder's rediscovery of Sirk, melodrama's subversive potential was discovered. Sirk was able to sympathize with his characters while turning the mise-en-scene into social commentary. Filmmakers of the New German Cinema commonly associated with melodrama—like Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, and Helma SandersBrahms—employ melodramatic codes continuously, adding to the debate about melodrama as a genre, a style, a mode, or an ideology. They are of interest to many feminist researchers and critics, along with other primarily female filmmakers of German-speaking countries like Doris Dorrie, Ulrike Ottinger, and Helke Sander. Like the melodramatic films from the Weimar period, their cinematic texts are subversive in that they imply a critique of rationality and patriarchy and question the status quo. See also: Dorrie, Doris; Frauenfilm; Ottinger, Ulrike; Protagonist/Antagonist; Sander, Helke; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Trotta, Margarethe von. References: Brooks, Peter, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976); Elsaesser, Thomas, "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama." Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Women's Film. Ed. Christine Gledhill (London: BFI, 1987) 43-69; Gledhill, Christine, "The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation." Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Women's Film. Ed. Christine Gledhill (London: BFI, 1987) 5-39; Morse, William R., "Desire and the Limits of Melodrama." Themes in Drama 14 (1992): 17-30; Petro, Patrice, Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). GESA ZINN
Mereau-Brentano, S o p h i e Friederike ( 1 7 7 0 - 1 8 0 6 ) . During the Classical-Romantic period, Sophie Mereau became one of the first professional woman writers in Germany and was even celebrated as a modern Sappho. Her poetry, essays, novellas, and the novels Das Bluthenalter der Empfindung (1794) and Amanda und Eduard (1803) express closeness to nature, yearning for fulfillment in love, and—inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution—rebellion against any restriction of individual freedom, especially women's. Most of Mereau's protagonists are, like the author herself, women in search of selfdetermination in the public and private spheres. Many of both her female and male characters are love-centered, sensitive, generous, and tolerant; Mereau thus designs fictional alternatives to the gender dichotomy prevailing around 1800. However, her subversion of conventional norms alternates with conformity to
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them. Ambivalence in Mereau's emancipatory message reflects contradictions inherent in Enlightenment thinking: while all men were to gain liberty and social equality, women were to keep their "natural" role in the home. Mereau herself was unusually well educated. Her marriage to Friedrich Karl Mereau in 1793 brought her to Jena, where she started her literary career as a disciple of Friedrich Schiller. Liberating herself from his well-intentioned but patronizing support, she later published her own journal, Kalathiskos (18011802), one of the first written by women for women. In spite of her success and like some female contemporaries such as Karoline von Giinderrode, Rahel Levin-Varnhagen, and Bettina Brentano (later von Arnim), Mereau struggled with the conflicting demands posed by the reigning social norms and her own quest for independence as a woman and a writer. In 1801 she was the first woman to obtain a divorce in the dukedom of Saxony-Weimar and managed to support herself and her daughter Hulda solely by her ability in writing, editing, and translating. During her second, turbulent marriage (1803-1806) with Clemens Brentano, she virtually stopped writing. At age 36, she died in childbirth in Heidelberg. Mereau's works and life document her passion for women's individual and social freedom. She shared but surpassed the Romantics' liberal views of love, complementing them with a woman's perspective. See also: Adaptation/Translation; Arnim, Bettina von; Classicism; Geschlechtscharaktere; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Revolution, French; Romanticism; Women's Journals. References: Fleischmann, Uta, Zwischen Aufbruch und Anpassung: Untersuchungen zu Werk und Leben der Sophie Mereau (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1989); Gersdorff, Dagmar von, ' 'Dich zu lieben kann ich nicht verlernen.'' Das Leben der Sophie Brentano-Mereau (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1984); Hammerstein, Katharina von, Sophie MereauBrentano: Freiheit—Liebe—Weiblichkeit. Trikolore sozialer und individueller Selbstbestimmung um 1800 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1994); Schwarz, Gisela, Literarisches Leben und Sozialstrukturen um 1800: Zur Situation von Schriftstellerinnen am Beispiel von Sophie Brentano-Mereau, geb. Schubart (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1991).
KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN Mermaid—see: Mythical Female Figures
Meysenbug, Amalie Malvida Wilhelmina Tamina von ( 1 8 1 6 1 9 0 3 ) . Meysenbug was born on October 28, 1816, as the ninth child of 10 in Kassel. Her parents were Carl Phillip Rivalier, prime minister in the electorate of Hesse, and Ernestine Hansel, an educated woman who instructed Malvida and her younger sister Laura in literature, music, painting, and drawing. As a young woman Malvida became increasingly dissatisfied with her family's political conservatism. Inspired by the reformist fervor of the young theologian Theodor Althaus, she actively supported the aims of the 1848 Revolution, though she came to the painful realization that as a woman the extent to which she could be active was severely limited. The counterrevolution's victory and
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the family's sabotage of her marriage to Althaus made Meysenbug's position at home and in her social circle intolerable. In 1850, she entered the Women's University in Hamburg, a private institution founded by Emilie Wustenfeld and Bertha Traun, in order to study education. The continuing political repressions reinforced her quest for social reform, especially the emancipation of women, their right to intellectual development, economic independence, and full participatory citizenship. When in 1852 her papers were confiscated by the police, she escaped to London. In 1853, she became the governess of the two daughters of Alexander Herzen, the Russian democrat and socialist. From 1859 on, Meysenbug lived and traveled in France, Germany, and Italy, supporting herself with her writings, which included essays, short stories, poetry, the novel Phaedra (1885), and her memoirs. Her last years were spent in Rome, where she died on April 16, 1903. Already in London, Meysenbug had met many of the immigrants and refugees of Europe's social upheavals. The Hungarian Lajos Kossuth, Italy's Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and the German Ferdinand Freiligrath, among many others, belonged to her circle of friends. In Paris she met and associated with Hector Berlioz, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Dore, and the young Richard Wagner, whose devoted friend she was to remain, even though it meant breaking with Friedrich Nietzsche, who, like the young Romain Rolland, adored her as a maternal friend. Her significance rests on her own work, especially Memoiren einer Idealistin (first published anonymously in French in 1869, then under her name in German in 1876) and Lebensabend einer Idealistin (1898). Her Memoiren show us the young girl's thirst for education and the young woman's quest for emancipation against the political and social background of the second half of 19th-century Europe. A keen observer and lively writer, she describes her own, often difficult, attempts and failures at emancipation as exemplary for women at the time. More resigned in tone and given over to philosophical and moralizing ruminations, Lebensabend lacks the earlier work's sharp political analyses of societal conventions. Although the young Meysenbug was a rebel in her own right, in her later years she confined herself to nurturing and supporting the rebellious spirits of others, among them the young Lou AndreasSalome. See also: Realism; Revolution, German (1848); Young Germany. References: Jahrbuch. Malvida von Meysenbug Gesellschaft (Kassel: Die Gesellschaft, 1986-; Tietz, Guntwer, ed., Malvida von Meysenbug, ein Portrait (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1985); Tomaschewsky, Michaela, "Malvida von Meysenbug and the Cult of Humanism" (Diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1993); Wegele, Dora, Theodor Althaus und Malvida von Meysenbug. Zwei Gestalten des Vormdrz (Marburg/Lahn: N. G. Elwert, 1927); Wiggershaus, Renate, ed., Malvida von Meysenbug. Memoiren einer Idealistin (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1985). ULRIKE RAINER Midwife—see: Wise woman
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M i n n e s a n g . The feudal system of the 12th and 13th centuries provides the backdrop for the emergence of both epic and lyric portraits of the ideals of courtly love. Forerunners and models of Minnesang were the poems and songs of French troubadours, who provided the poetic language of courtly love, styles for melodies and verses, and a tradition of courtly virtues. "Minne" originally meant loving memory, yet form and content of Minnelieder have changed over time. The early stages were marked by a strong influence of popular songs about mutual desire and fulfillment in love, while the songs of Hohe Minne celebrated and reflected stylized ideals of courtly love: the knight praises the virtue of his lady, usually a woman in a socially higher position, serving her without hope of fulfillment. The genre comes full circle in the songs of Niedere Minne, which again celebrate the mutuality of love (the prime advocate of Niedere Minne, mutual affection, and sensual love was Walther von der Vogelweide). In the songs of Niedere Minne, the wip (woman) replaced the stylized frouwe (lady of the court). The poetic game of Hohe Minne assigned the central position in courtly culture to women, at a time when women held socially, legally, politically, and economically inferior positions. Conceptually, Minne remains a Utopian counterpart to the reality of power distribution in feudal society: for long periods of time, women were legally barred from writing Minnelieder, the few songs that are today believed to have been authored by a woman have come down to us under a male name. Although women, the most disfranchised members of the social hierarchy, apparently assumed a dominant role in the literary love game of Hohe Minne, this role remained superficial: the adored Lady of the Minnelied is a passive (most of these songs are a monologue by the knight) and asexual being. Her power comes at the price of her sexual desire. Female sexuality, the source of all evil in the medieval Christian framework, had no place in the canon of medieval courtly virtues. For the poetry of unrequited love to educate and test the knights in chivalrous virtues, the court's leading lady, as the source and inspiration for chivalrous perfection of the men in her service, had to remain chaste. In Germany, the literary influence of women was relatively minor in comparison to women's role in Provencal love poetry. None of the forms of women's protest against the sexual repression of noblewomen modeled in French epic and poetic works, for example, by Marie de France or the comtesse de Die, were received in Germany. While women at court promoted and refined the idea of courtly love, traveling women troubadours were viewed as social outcasts. We know little about contemporary German women poets' biographies; their rare traces have been erased or obscured by copiers and editors of manuscripts, who took the liberty to change female names into male names. The Heidelberger Liederhandschrift A, for example, assigns 30 verses to the troubadoura Gedrut. Most of these verses are attributed to male authors in other manuscript copies. See also: Court Culture; Love; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Medieval Literature.
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References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1988); Kelly-Gadol, Joan, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) 176-201; Liebertz-Griin, Ursula, "Autorinnen im Umkreis der Hofe." Frauen Literatur Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrug Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989) 1634; Wilson, Katharina M., ed., Medieval Women Writers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). ERIKA BERROTH
M i n o r i t y L i t e r a t u r e . The term can be seen specifically as an attempt to recognize the existence and writings of ethnic and other minorities. The influx of "guest workers" in the mid-1950s in Germany led to a first, albeit unwilling, acceptance of the existence and identity of ethnic minorities. Those minorities who were citizens (e.g., Afro-Germans) either remained invisible or were lumped together with foreign nationals. In the 1960s, there were a few attempts to present guest workers in a sympathetic light. But such portraits resulted in framing them even more in stereotypical forms (Max von der Grim, Leben im gelobten Land. Gastarbeiterportrdts, 1975). The term ''Gastarbeiter" was used as a linguistic leverage against foreigners, for it stressed their guest, that is, transitory, status in Germany and also their positionality as workers subject to the will of their employer. Attempts to find more sensitive terms for minority literature resulted in the title Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur, coined at the 1985 Bad Homburg conference on German literature by nonnative authors. Minority literature gained recognition through two anthologies in the early 1980s as well as through special issues of cultural and academic journals (Kurbiskern, 1979; Zeitschrift fiir Kulturaustausch, 1985). Franco Biondi, Rafik Schami, Jusuf Naoum, and Suleman Taufiq, editors of the series Sudwind Gastarbeiterdeutsch, coined the term ' 'Literatur der Betroffenheit" {Zu Hause in der Fremde, 1984), aiming their texts at fostering political unity and solidarity among workers. In 1980, they created a multinational association of foreign authors and artists for literature and the arts (Polynationaler Literatur- und Kunstverein, or Polikunst). In 1987, the PolyKunstverein was dissolved, and the name Sudwind Gastarbeiterdeutsch was changed to Sudwind Literatur—indicating a shift from political to more literary concerns. Although these writers claimed that cultural resistance was still their agenda, it was not apparent in their publications. The accent seemed to be more on social integration, as in the case of Yiiksel Pazarkaya, whose writings represented a position of cultural exchange and was less adversarial. The writings of minority women authors have earned recognition only in the last two decades. The first women guest workers who came to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) had no educational background within their cultures. They accompanied either their husbands or fathers or came alone with the in-
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tention of supporting their families, who either followed them or remained at home. These women's life experiences became a reality for the general reading public when in 1978, Marianne Herzog edited and revised a tapescript about the Yugoslav Vera Kamenko, who was jailed for having beaten and killed her son. The Turkish writer Saliha Scheinhardt uses a similar approach (Frauen, die sterben, ohne dafi sie gelebt hdtten, 1983, and Drei Zypressen, 1983) in documenting the miserable lives of immigrant women. Although such writings were thought-provoking and sought insights into the situation of Turkish girls and women, the depiction of the women as being regularly and incessantly victimized by Turkish men served to increase prejudice. There were also several volumes of case studies of women of different nationalities (Hanne Straube and Karin Konig, eds., Zuhause bin ich "die aus Deutschland": Ausldnderinnen erzahlen, 1982). Examples of more differentiated ways of describing experiences are Alev Tekinay's text in Eine Fremde wie ich, in which she warns against the danger of assimilation and simultaneously stresses the impossibility of going back. Melek Baklan discusses the difficulties in leaving a traditional family situation in Turkey that has become oppressive, while viewing it as a lost support system when one is on one's own in Germany. The Portuguese Luisa Holzl discusses issues of different moral standards with which foreign women are confronted (Als Fremder in Deutschland, 1982). All these writers have in common their criticism of German society and prevailing prejudices. The second and third generations of texts by women of different color and ethnicity are characterized by a different sense of self-esteem, although there still seems to be no alternative to conformity (Zehra £irak, Yasmin Eronii, Hiilya S. Ozkan, Alev Tekinay). But their texts are invaluable for their diversity and the manner in which they complicate simplistic notions of "we" and "they." Issues like xenophobia, integration, and problems of identity formation are crucial for these writers. In 1994, the yearly Bericht der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung fur die Belange der Auslander iiber die Lage der Auslander in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland published statistics about minorities updated to 1991. Conspicuously missing from this list were Afro-Germans and Southeast Asians. The assumption that being German means "white" makes Afro-Germans virtually invisible. Their fight for survival has been documented only recently by May Ayim and Dagmar Schultz in their pathbreaking work Farbe bekennen: Afrodeutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (1992). Afreta and afro look, journals written and edited by Afro-Germans, cannot be found on the shelves of bookstores in Germany. The concept "Afro-German" has, however, forced a reevaluation of the otherwise unquestioningly accepted national category "German" and the equally uncomplicated category "black." Since the unification of Germany, the rhetoric of "We Germans" has become more insidious since it does not reflect upon the category "we" and its consequences. Minorities have become an incessant target for violence because they
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signify an element that can potentially disrupt and destabilize the search for a homogeneous "German" identity. See also: Auslandergesetz; Black German Literature; Cultural Studies; German Studies; Identity Theories; Turkish-German Literature; Unification, German. References: Ackermann, Irmgard, and Harald Weinrich, eds., Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur. Zur Standortbestimmung der Auslanderliteratur (Munich: Piper, 1986); Boehnke, Heiner, and Harald Wittich, eds., Buntesdeutschland. Ansichten zu einer multikulturellen Gesellschaft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991); Donhoff, Marion, et al., Weil das Land sich andern mufi-ein Manifest (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1992); Schmalz-Jacobsen, Cornelia, and Georg Jansen, Ethnische Minoritaten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Ein Lexikon (Munich: Beck, 1995) New German Critique 46 (1989). KAMAKSHI P. MURTI
Modernism ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 4 5 ) . For both women's and men's writing, modernism is an umbrella term covering many contesting fin-de-siecle and 20thcentury movements including Impressionism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit, and exile literature. Modernism encompasses a range of literary experiments expressing women's views on art, sexuality, the family, religion, technology, urban life, socialist revolution, war, the rise of national socialism, and exile. Particularly in its greater affinity to Naturalism (against which many male modernists rebelled), women's writing parallels women's efforts to gain employment opportunities and adequate safeguards, access to higher education, and comprehensive civil rights including suffrage and, in some later cases, to resist or flee from national socialist terror. Although modernist women writers wrote in all genres, some predominantly chose genres such as autobiography, essays, treatises, or journalism. Modernism is traditionally portrayed as a crisis of culture in which men realize that communal reality and the wholeness of the individual are illusions. Feminist scholars explain that many men in crisis blamed women's movements or ' 'the feminization of culture'' in part for the destruction of traditional norms and thus intensified male cultural stereotypes of ' 'Woman'' as a vamp or femme fatale at the turn of the century and as an equally vexing New Woman during the Weimar Republic. Modernist women varied widely in their respective interpretations of the root causes of cultural problems, but they tended to gain a more complex sense of self, rather than a paralyzing sensation of void, from their endeavors. Rosa Mayreder defined the modern women's movement as a social reformation. She was particularly concerned with ending the widely held prejudice that women of outstanding intellect were freaks of history. By avowing the notion that every society contains a majority that upholds the status quo as well as a minority of individuals who introduce intellectual innovation, she sought to include women in a reformulation of the jealously guarded male concept of genius, as well as to gain acceptance for variations in female behavior. Her essays exposed mi-
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sogynist preconceptions and sought nothing short of a redefinition of the norms of womanhood. Irma von Troll-Borostyani and Emilie Mataja (pseudonym Emil Marriott) railed against anachronistic poetic ideals of womanhood and the family. Grete Meisel-Hess interpreted the hidden potential of the unconscious. Emmy Ball and Else Lasker-Schiiler probed the limits of language. Bertha von Suttner wrote about human anxiety concerning the industrial age and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 for her leading role as a pacifist (cf. Die Waffen niederl, 1891). Lily Braun, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Anna Seghers (pseudonym for Netty Reiling) sought Marxist solutions to the political problems of their time. Marieluise FleiBer's plays offered a biting critique of provincial social norms in Bavaria. Lou Andreas-Salome, whose works include Die Erotik (1910), was long known in traditional scholarship as a "muse" who influenced the lives of Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud. Recent feminist readings locate her in the context of modernism and women's emancipation. See also: Autobiography; Braun, Lily; Dadaism; Essay; Exile Literature; Expressionism; Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; FleiBer, Marieluise; Frauenfrage; Impressionism; Marxist Theories; National Socialism; Naturalism; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Nobel Prize Recipients; Surrealism; Symbolism; Volksstiick; Zetkin, Clara. References: Anderson, Harriet, Utopian Feminism: Women's Movements in fin-desiecle Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Harrowitz, Nancy A., and Barbara Hyams, eds., Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); Le Rider, Jacques, Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. Trans. Rosemary Morris (New York: Continuum, 1993); Martin, Biddy, Woman and Modernity: The (Life)styles of Lou Andre asSalome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Wagner, Nike, Geist und Geschlecht: Karl Kraus und die Erotik der Wiener Moderne (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981). BARBARA HYAMS Monikova, Libuse ( 1 9 4 5 - p r e s e n t ) . Monikova continues the tradition of Prague German literature, of which Franz Kafka is the most renowned exponent. Though her native country, former Czechoslovakia, is at the center of most of her texts, she writes in German—a foreign language to her—for a German and Western audience. Monikova incorporates texts from all fields of human knowledge into her postmodern prose and comments on the work of her literary predecessors and contemporaries—including Franz Kafka, Arno Schmidt, Jorge Borges, James Joyce, and Thomas Pynchon. Forms of discrimination and domination based on gender and ethnicity are the central themes of her first two novels; problems of historiography and discourse across the gender and generation gap play an important role in her more recent fiction; fictional and historical texts transformed through pastiche are the focus of four short dramas; literary, philosophical, and political issues are explored in her essays. After teaching German literature at the university, Monikova turned to fulltime writing in 1981 and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, among
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them the Alfred-Doblin-Preis (founded by Giinter Grass) for her novel Die Fassade (1987), the Franz-Kafka-Preis (1989), the Adalbert-von-Chamisso-Preis (1991), the Berliner Literaturpreis, and the Johannes-Bobrowski-Medaille (1992). In 1994, Monikova was named Stadtschreiberin of Mainz. Monikova's first novel, Eine Schadigung (1981), is written from the female protagonist's point of view and describes the physical and emotional lacerations incurred by a woman who is raped and kills the perpetrator. Underneath the personal account of post-rape trauma, we find a political substratum to the novel: Eine Schadigung is also an allegorical representation of the rape of her home country. In her second novel, Pavane fiir eine verstorbene Infantin (1983), Monikova again takes up the problem of power as it manifests itself in the numerous daily incidents of oppression, exclusion, and marginalization in the life of Francine, a female foreign national in predominantly male academe. Francine acts out the imposed restrictions by using a wheelchair even though she can walk. Eventually, the wheelchair becomes a place of her own power and a fetish invested with both personally and socially imposed restrictions and dependencies. As such, it can then be destroyed in effigy. In this way, Francine, as well as Olga, a character from Kafka's Das Schlofi (1926), which Francine has been "rewriting," can walk away from their displacements and come into their own. Monikova herself takes a new direction in her third novel, Die Fassade (1987), which stands in the picaresque tradition, but it is also a postmodern collage composed of humorous dialogues, slapstick and drama scenes, satire, intellectual discussions of aesthetic, political, and personal issues, and innumerable literary, cultural, and historical allusions and quotations. The narrative composition of the novel mirrors the structure of the castle facade being restored by the protagonists—its serial images function as an allegory of history. Monikova's focus on the process of the restoration of these images uncovers the narrative constructedness of history whereby the novel becomes an allegory of historiography. In Treibeis (1992), history remains central, as two exiled Czech lovers try to recapture their homeland only to find that their images do not match up. Metaphors of displacement, of the world as a theater, and of border crossings between fiction and reality show political as well as personal history as a series of masquerades and simulations. But the injuries sustained in the struggles are real and fuel the search for a better place in still-divided 20th-century Europe. The work of her literary precursors is also the focus of the essays in her first collection, Schlofi, Aleph, Wunschtorte (1990), in which Monikova analyzes totalitarian power structures in the works of Kafka and Frank Wedekind. In her second essay collection, Prager Fenster (1994), she mostly observes recent European political developments up to the Velvet Revolution and its aftereffects, tracing their roots in historical contexts, reaching back to 1968, 1938, and 1918. In the context of German literature, Monikova has evolved into a major voice speaking simultaneously from within and without, most often from the perspec-
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tive of those who have been disfranchised by historical, political, and social developments: women, outsiders, artists, victims of political oppression, and exiles. The combination of this social agenda with her critical distance, the love for concrete knowledge, and the use of innovative and complex literary forms make her texts unique in European postmodern literature. See also: Minority Literature; Parody/Pastiche; Picaresque Novel; Postcolonialism; Postmodernism; Prizes, Literary. References: Kublitz-Kramer, Maria, " 'Was man nicht erfliegen kann, muB man erhinken': Auf den 'StraBen des weiblichen Begehrens'—Libuse Monikovas Erzahlung 'Pavane fiir eine verstorbene Infantin.' " Textdifferenzen und Engagement: Feminismus— Ideologiekritik—Poststrukturalismus. Ed. Margret Brugmann and Maria Kublitz-Kramer (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1993) 101-13; Modzelewski, Jozef A., "Libuse's Success and Francine's Bitterness: Libuse Monikova and Her Protagonist in 'Pavane fiir eine verstorbene Infantin.' " The German Mosaic: Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Society. Ed. Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994) 21-31; Vedder, Ulrike, "Die Intensitat des Polarsommers: Zu Libuse Monikovas Roman 'Treibeis.' " Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft Rundbrief 41 (April 1994): 15-17; Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987). HELGA G. BRAUNBECK M o n t a g e . This is a process where disparate elements are combined to create new meaning. It can be used to construct, deconstruct, or perpetuate hierarchical power in narrative structures. Feminist artists and authors have most often used montage forms to comment upon, or give new meaning to, existing nonfeminist works, thereby constructing their own meanings out of previously used material. The term "montage" is often used to describe artistic practices as varied as collage, assemblage, photomontage, and editing. In film, montage can be used to refer to a sequence of quickly cut shots that might unify several plotlines or elapse time within the context of narrative film. In addition, Sergei Eisenstein's theory of dialectical montage involved linking two disparate shots so that the viewer would be forced to create a link between them and thus a new synthesis of meaning. Photomontage, as in the work of artist Hannah Hoch, takes parts of several pictures and blends them into one, attempting to make something obviously unreal look real. The term might also be used to refer to either music, film, or text made up completely of elements of other works with or without an original interconnecting text, music, or film sequence. In painting and sculpture, montage might refer to a collage of paint, newspaper, and chair caning, as in a cubist painting, or an assemblage of boxes and found objects for the modern American sculptor Louise Nevelson. Montage in literature usually refers to a specific form of intertextuality that combines various levels of perception (e.g., dream, fantasy, reality) and quotations of both literary and nonliterary texts (newspaper headlines, advertising speech, etc.) to form a new work. Irmtraud Morgner's novels Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974) and
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Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (1983) provide a montage of myths (real and invented), poetry, quotations (Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, among others), fictitious text, religious documents, and descriptions of actual historical events. She thus places her mythological and fictional characters within a specific historical context and disrupts the social, literary, and religious traditions she perceives as harmful to women in particular and society in general. Montage in all of its forms destabilizes hierarchies and can thus be an effective tool for feminist authors or any group wishing to criticize traditional values and power structures. Bauhaus artists, Marxists, Cubists, Surrealists, and Dadaists all turned to montage, and there have been Freudian, Marxist, narrative, semiotic, feminist, deconstructionist, and formalist readings of montage-based works (cf. Holmes). Montage has the capacity to shock the viewer/reader, as in a Dada or Surrealist artwork, or to create an illusion of greater realism, as in montage sequences used in narrative film. Miriam Shapiro points out that prior to the 20th century, montage or collage was usually a feature of women's art: handicrafts like quilting or collages made through pasting. As such, montage was not considered a "high art" form, until adapted early in the 20th century by male film directors such as D. W. Griffith, Dziga Vertov, and Eisenstein or artists like Pablo Picasso in his cubist phase. Shapiro coins the term "femmage" to describe women's forms such as quilting or other artistic products made with an awareness of women's lives, perspectives, and traditional techniques. Within literature, Irmtraud Morgner thought that the collection of very short, diverse chapters for her books was a form of the novel especially suited to modern women, who, working a double shift at work and in the home, would never have time to read an entire novel and would need something better suited to the constant interruptions and stressful pattern of their lives. See also: Dadaism; Formalism; Marxist Theories; Morgner, Irmtraud; Semiotics; Surrealism. References: Gerhardt, Marlis, Irmtraud Morgner: Texte, Daten, Bilder (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1990); Hoffman, Katharine, Collage—Critical Views (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989).
STEFANA LEFKO Moral. In feminist scholarship, particularly in the fields of moral psychology, sociology, and political theory, the question of a specifically feminine morality—an ethic of care—has provoked much controversy and debate. The main impetus for these recent theoretical discussions has come from Carol Gilligan's proposition that there are two distinct modes of moral deliberation and that these are linked to gender. Briefly, Gilligan argues that moral psychologists have applied and validated a moral paradigm that is essentially masculine, neither examining nor giving equal significance to a second model of moral development most often associated with women. She asserts that the moral standard by which women measure themselves and others is grounded in an ethic of care
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and responsibility, suggesting a view of humanity based on context, connection, and inclusion. By contrast, the model of morality that has dominated moral psychology, Gilligan contends, is founded on male norms. It is a paradigm that places the individual at the center and that views the self as rational and autonomous, capable of making moral decisions based on abstract and universal principles. An ethic of justice and rights underlies this kind of moral reasoning. It is striking that, in spite of the gender difference that structures both moral orientations, both of these ethical principles rely on classic representations of women. The image of the blindfolded woman holding the scales of justice is juxtaposed with the traditional representation of woman as mother. Because she is unable to see, Justitia appears to be unbiased and uses the scales to balance the rights of one individual against those of another. This representation, however, presumes the egocentrism and the separateness of the individuals involved. By contrast, in the image of woman as mother, altruism is evoked along with the values of responsibility and relationship. The fact that two distinctive moral positions have been delineated and linked to gender has spawned criticism as well as further theoretical and empirical inquiry. Moral philosophers now argue that there is no unitary kind of moral personality and that in moral psychology more than two ethical orientations are possible. With respect to Gilligan's work, feminist critics have roundly criticized her for repeating some of the same exclusionary practices that her male peers have performed, attacking her studies for their implicit class bias. Other feminist theorists have examined how women's lack of power has constituted a decisive factor in the formation of these divergent moralities and have argued that this gender difference in ethics must be interpreted in a political context. See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; Geschlechtscharaktere; Mother Figures. References: Gilligan, Carol, In Another Voice. Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Kittay, Eva, and Diana Meyers, eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987); Nunner-Winkler, Gertrud, Weibliche Moral. Die Kontroverse um eine geschlechtsspezifische Ethik. (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1991); Rommelspacher, Birgit, Mitmenschlichkeit und Unterwerfung. Zur Ambivalenz der weiblichen Moral (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1992); Tronto, Joan, Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (London: Routledge, 1993). TAMARA WANG
Moral W e e k l i e s . The term identifies a type of German Enlightenment periodical, adapted from the British moral weeklies The Tatler (1709-1711), The Spectator (1711-1712 and 1714), and The Guardian (1713), which circulated predominantly in the first half of the 18th century among the bourgeois reading public. Characteristics of the moral weeklies are their fictitious authors and their primarily moralizing and didactic agendas, which distinguish them from other periodical types, that is, literary and political journals. In the second half of the
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18th century, moral weeklies were increasingly replaced by new types of periodicals such as fashion journals and women's journals. Because moral weeklies were the first genre to target women readers, they are of interest to feminist research, in particular with regard to two intersecting aspects: the image of woman they propagated and the gender ideology—including its conceptual and discursive designs—expressed in the production, distribution, consumption, and finally the disappearance of the weeklies. Both aspects mirror the modifications and the ultimate disappearance of the genre. Moral weeklies demonstrate both thematically and discursively an ongoing preoccupation with Frauengelehrsamkeit. In exploring this issue, the periodicals appropriate, though in a secularized way, the tradition of the querelle des femmes, adapting it to the early Enlightenment project of gender equality in reasoning and envisioning gender differences as transcendable. As partners in communication, women had an extended space of discursive action and presumably the power to transcend social and gender hierarchies, an aspect that is conceptually reinforced by the use of female pseudonyms for the fictitious authors created by male authors (Johann Christoph Gottsched's Die vernunftigen Tadlerinnen, 1724-1725). Collaborative female authorship identifies female literacy as the first step toward female emancipation: erudition appears here as gesellige Gelehrsamkeit. The moral weeklies operated as a medium to teach cultural values through discursive and social behavior (Umgang) and offered patterns of gender identification. Ultimately, the ideal of female erudition gave way to the idea of the complementarity of the sexes and the differentiation of operational spheres: the "female" private sphere and the "male" public sphere. The image of women in the moral weeklies accordingly underwent three phases: from the ideal of gender equality grounded in the autonomy of the reasoning, virtuous subject, via ambivalent transitional images toward female sentimental virtue, to the ultimate inscription of gender difference as polarized and complementary. The changing images of women correlate with the emergence of gendered notions of reading: the substitution of women's literacy and purposeful intensity of reading with their Lesesucht, that is, women's emotionally dispersing and morally damaging engagement in literature. The conceptual and discursive design of gender ideology is also represented in the ratio of male to female editors of the weeklies. Because by far the majority of weeklies were edited and published by men, and because women's education was geared toward a literary and artistic dilettantism that emphasized accomplishments in the home and emphatically excluded professional training and aspirations, access to journalistic genres remained limited. In the last third of the 18th century, the emergence of a large female reading public and the increasing gender polarization led to a gendered alignment of author and reader: women began to publish women's journals. Initially, these journals had a strong epic character and thus reflect the passage of women from novelists to journalists. Charlotte Hezel's Wochenblatt fur's schone Geschlecht (1779), Ernestine Hofmann's Fiir Hamburgs Tochter (1779), Sophie von La Roche's Pomona fiir
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Teutschlands Tochter (1783-1784), and Marianne Ehrmann's Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790-1792) reiterated the moralizing and didactic aspects of the weeklies, albeit in a gender-polarized manner. Their journals often included reader correspondences, thus anticipating characteristics of modern women's journals. In their overall development, moral weeklies reflect both the change of the social and ideological positions assigned to women throughout the 18th century and the inclusion and exclusion of female authors and editors in this formative process. See also: Ehrmann, Marianne; Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Geschlechtscharaktere; La Roche, Sophie von; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; University Education, Women's; Women's Journals. References: Brandes, Helga, "Das Frauenzimmer-Journal: Zur Herausbildung einer journalistischen Gattung im 18. Jahrhundert." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 452-68, "Der Wandel des Frauenbildes in den deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften." Zwischen Aufklarung und Restauration. Ed. Wolfgang Friihwald (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1989) 49-64; DiFino, Sharon Marie, The Intellectual Development of German Women in Selected Periodicals from 1725 to 1784 (New York: Lang, 1990); Martens, Wolfgang, Die Botschaft der Tugend: Die Aufklarung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971). BIRGIT TAUTZ M o r g n e r , I r m t r a u d ( 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 9 0 ) . Morgner became a freelance writer residing in East Berlin after studying German literature at the University of Leipzig and working from 1956-1958 in the editorial management of the journal Neue Deutsche Literatur. Her early prose pieces (Das Signal steht auf Fahrt, 1959, and Ein Haus am Rand der Stadt, 1962) were still an endorsement of the dictates of socialist realism. With Hochzeit in Konstantinopel (1968), Gauklerlegende (1972), and Die wundersamen Reisen Gustav des Weltfahrers (1972), Morgner broke with the ideological and aesthetic doctrines of socialist realism and established herself as an innovative writer drawing on the traditions of the picaresque novel, the narrative style of E.T.A. Hoffmann, and the open novel of Romanticism. In the 1970s, women writers in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), among them Christa Wolf, Gerti Tetzner, Brigitte Reimann, Sarah Kirsch, Maxi Wander, and Irmtraud Morgner, began to articulate dissatisfaction with their socialist government's paternalistic "equal rights" approach to women's emancipation. In particular, Morgner's antipatriarchal texts opened critical discussions with regard to the self-realization of all individuals, as well as to Utopian visions from the perspective of women. Rumba auf einen Herbst was written in 1964 but never published independently in the GDR (published in the West in 1992), because of its critical presentation of Stalinism and generational conflicts in the GDR. In Rumba auf einen Herbst Morgner abandoned the linear mode of writing by employing the mode
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of the fantastic, dream structures, and surrealistic and whimsical elements closely tied to the imagination and eroticism. Parts of the work later found their way into her multitextured montage novel, Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura (1974), which takes up the "woman question" within socialist society. The novel provides a thorough overview of life in the GDR and reflects Morgner's own tensions between oppositional and orthodox approaches to sexuality, knowledge, and power. With its disparate elements such as fairy tales, excerpts from GDR textbooks, letters, poems, interviews, parables, political treatises, and Morgner's own presence as a writer in East Berlin among mythical female characters, the text is highly unconventional. The novel challenges the foundations of patriarchy and the state's dogmatic stance toward equality between the sexes. Morgner, however, restrains the emancipatory potential through orthodox Marxist rhetoric, pointing to historical necessities behind the GDR's "real existing socialism" and the perfectibility of her society. Because Trobadora Beatriz addressed women's radically different experiences and desires in a playful transgression of boundaries and discussed women's issues in the context of the construction of a Utopian society, the novel was an instant success in the GDR and became a best-seller in West Germany. In the mythological sequence, Amanda: Ein Hexenroman (1983), Morgner, expressing increased defiance and disillusionment with the historical process, employs the fantastic, biting irony, and the female double in her urgent plea for radical change. For Morgner, humankind was moving with increasing speed toward the destruction of nature through abuse and toward self-destruction through nuclear war. In May 1990, Morgner died of cancer in Berlin before she could complete the intended trilogy. See also: Doubles, Female; Fairy Tale; Fantastic Literature; Frauenfrage; GDR Literature; Marxist Theories; Montage; Mythical Female Figures; Picara; Picaresque Novel; Romanticism; Socialist Realism; Stalinism; Surrealism; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen, Du Schone', Witch; Wolf, Christa. References: Bammer, Angelika, Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s (New York: Routledge, 1991), "Sozialistische Feminismen: Irmtraud Morgner und amerikanische Feministinnen in den 70er Jahren." Zwischen gestern und morgen: Schriftstellerinnen der DDR aus amerikanischer Sicht (Berlin: Lang, 1992) 237-47; Castein, Hanne, ''Wundersame Reisen im gelobten Land: Zur Romantikrezeption im Werk Irmtraud Morgners." Neue Ansichten: The Reception of Romanticism in the Literature of the GDR (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990) 114-26; Emde, Silke von der, "Irmtraud Morgner's Postmodern Feminism: A Question of Politics." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1995): \\1-A2\ Gerhardt, Marlies, ed., Irmtraud Morgner: Texte, Daten, Bilder (Frankfurt/M.: Luchterhand, 1989); Martin, Biddy, "Socialist Patriarchy and the Limits of Reform: A Reading of Irmtraud Morgner's 'Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatriz as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura.' " Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 5.1 (1980): 59-74. BARBARA MABEE
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Motet. The motet is one of the oldest and most important forms of Western polyphony. Beginning in the 12th century as a liturgical trope, it soon developed into the preeminent form of secular music during the later Middle Ages and reached a level of constructional intricacy in the 14th century. Not until the second half of the 15th century did an indigenous motet style begin to evolve in Germany. The apogee of the motet is traditionally considered to fall within the 15th and 16th centuries; however, female composers did not start to write more demanding sacred music until the Reformation, due to the exclusion of girls from Latin schools, which prevented them from acquiring an education in music theory. Therefore, the 19th and 20th centuries were the most fruitful for female motet composers. The structure of the medieval motet consists of the fundamental voice (tenor), which is generally arranged in a pattern of repeated rhythmic configurations. Up to three higher voices, which nearly always had different Latin or French texts, normally move at a faster rate. The word ' 'motef' (from French mot) hints at the fact that the textual characteristics rather than the musical structure are essential to this polyphonic form. Marianne Martinez stands out among the Viennese women composers of her time because of her large musical output, which also includes one motet for four voices a cappella and six motets for soprano voice and orchestra. Maria Antonia Walpurgis composed "Mottetti spirituali per la chiesa" in 1739. The 19th century produced various motet composers, such as Agnes Bernouilly from Berlin, who wrote ' 'Motet for the Commemoration of the Elisabeth Foundation, Pankow" (1854), and Agathe Plitt. The German organist and concert pianist Maria Pauline Augusta Pferdemenges wrote "Motets, op. 84" (three-part women's chorus, also for a cappella mixed chorus), as did the German choir conductor and composer Frida Dorothea Balcke. Twentieth-century motet composers include the Swiss Marguerite Sara Roesgen-Champion and the two Germans Eva Schorr-Weiler and Erna Woll. There is a pressing need for further research on female composers writing motets. Apart from occasional references, they have been largely ignored by musicologists. See also: Musical Theater; Operetta; Reformation; Singspiel. References: Cohen, Aaron I., International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (New York: Books and Music, 1987); Leichtentritt, Hugo, Geschichte der Motette (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967); Olivier, Antje, and Karin Weingartz-Perschel, Komponistinnen von A-Z (Dusseldorf: Toccata, 1988); Weissweiler, Eva, Komponistinnen aus 500 Jahren. Eine Kultur- und Wirkungsgeschichte in Biographien und Werkbeispielen (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1981). PETRA S. FIERO Mother F i g u r e s . From psychological discussions to feminist interpretations of fairy tales to women-authored texts, the figure of the mother alongside her less esteemed counterparts (the mother-in-law and the wicked stepmother) is
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persistently found in an ambivalent relation to herself as well as to her daughter. As one of the most idealized and dominant images of female selfhood in patriarchal culture, the maternal woman is the product of a fundamental split and oscillates between two extreme representations of woman. On one hand, the mother is viewed as a crucial agent in the formation of the (fe)male subject, providing the primary physical and psychological grounds on which individual selfhood is constructed. She is the good mother who personifies female omnipotence and radiates the feminine virtues of nurture and self-sacrifice. But, on the other hand, she figures as the evil and estranged mother who represents the greatest danger and barrier to young heroines struggling for independence and self-determination. This vacillation between the mother's positive role as the child's earliest provider of love and social contact and her negative image stereotypically embodied in the wicked stepmother or mother-in-law grows out of the fact that she herself possesses no self-identity and/or autonomy. As woman, she is already defined in her relation to man; as mother, she is doubly defined, acquiring her identity not only through the father but also through her daughter (or son). In modern women's writings, the theme of women producing their own personal identities does not focus on the mother as a self-reflexive subject but rather on the figure of the daughter. (Examples are Elisabeth Langgasser's Proserpina. Welt eines Kindes, 1993; Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin, 1983; Helga Novak's Die Eisheiligen, 1979; Anna Waltraut Mitgutsch's Die Zuchtigung, 1985; the works of Langgasser's daughter Cordelia Edvardson, especially Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer, 1986, and Die Welt zusammenfugen, 1980; Barbara Bronnen's Die Tochter, 1980; and Brigitte Schwaiger's Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer, 1977.) Primarily interpreted and/or written from the daughter's perspective, these literary and/or autobiographical works hold the mother culpable and ultimately responsible for both the daughter's successes and failures. As the daughter's first object of love and identification, the mother ought to represent for herself and for her daughter an image of an assertive and autonomous woman. Yet, the mother's representation is that of self-loss and misaffiliation. Depicted as either weak and insecure or as domineering and overly aggressive in much of the self-proclaimed feminist literature, the mother lacks a feminist consciousness that she can bequeath to her daughter. Rather, dispossessed of her own sexual agency and individual identity, she not only becomes the main object of her daughter's fury and contempt, but consequently figures as the primary obstruction in the daughter's own struggle to develop an independent female self. See also: Daughter; Earth Mother; Fairy Tale; Grandmother; Jelinek, Elfriede; Mother Mary; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? References: Dernedde, Renate, Mutterschatten-Schattenmiitter. Muttergestalten und Mutter-Tochter-Beziehungen in der deutschsprachigen Prosa (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1994); Klages, Norgard, Look Back in Anger: Mother-Daughter and Father-Daughter
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Relationships in Women's Autobiographical Writings of the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Peter Lang, 1995); Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds., MUtter-Tochter- Frauen: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Lundell, Torborg, Fairy Tale Mothers (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1990); Miiller, Heidy Margrit, Tochter und Mutter in deutschsprachiger Erzdhlprosa von 1885 bis 1935 (Munich: Iudicium, 1991); Schechtman, Jacqueline, The Stepmother in Fairy Tales: Bereavement and the Feminine Shadow (Boston: Sigo, 1993).
TAMARA WANG Mother Mary. As protector of women and children, Mother Mary symbolizes virginity, purity, charity, female humility, submissiveness, and tenderness. Untainted by original sin, Mary stands as Queen of Heaven as mediator between Christ and humans; as Christ's Bride, she is equated with the church; and, as Mother and the symbol of the Transformation, she represents life and death, as well as rebirth or regeneration. During the Middle Ages, Mary was prominent in works by women. In Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim's legends and dramas, Mary is the model of virginity for all subsequent female characters. Hrotsvitha praised Mary as Jesus' mother, yet this praise does not supplant Christ's majesty, as it does in the 11th and 12th centuries. Frau Ava lauded Mary for her compassion and took her and Mary Magdalene as mediators that enable the author to feel Christ's suffering. Hildegard von Bingen believed that woman's weakness could be overcome by the strength of the Virgin, who grants salvation. In Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250-1282), Mechthild von Magdeburg linked Minne to Mary's creation and her union with God, praised Mary in terms of courtly love, and thus equated Mary with the lady and herself with a knight. In Geistliche Sonnette/Lieder und Gedichte (1662), Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg humanized Mary as an active, loving, and creative mother who sings her son to sleep ("Der H. Jungfrau Maria/Wiegenlied/wie sie dem lieben Jesulein vermuhtbar zugesungen"). In Christiane Benedikte Naubert's Marchen "Ottilie" (1819), Mary protects and rescues children and intercedes in a woman's miserable life by imposing a supernatural death. For Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Mary again is savior, rescuer, and reliever of women's sufferings. Margaret in Die Judenbuche (1842) consistently seeks comfort in Mary and prays to her for her son. In Droste's poem "Am Feste Maria LichtmeB" in Das geistliche Jahr (1820), Mary's perfection, symbolized in her motherhood and purity, causes consternation and a sense of inferiority in the lyric "ich" and even in Joseph. In 20th-century women's works, Mary as savior and icon is problematized or humanized; frequently, the emphasis shifts from idolization of the Mary figure to a representation of the suffering women who look to her for guidance. In Elsa Bernstein's Mutter Maria (1900), Mary appears as a woman's salvation in death; she is an icon, sought for guidance by a mother who fails to care for her son. Gertrud von Le Fort in her novella Unsere Liebe Frau vom Karneval
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(c.1908) presents an iconic Mary in her frame and contrasts her with an enlivened, omniscient Mary, who judges and thinks about those who pray to her. In the poems of Elisabeth Langgasser, Mary is compared to a rose and represents Bride and Mother of God the Redeemer, as well as the church. Use Langner in Die Heilige aus USA (1931) equates the Holy Mother Mary with the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. See also: Baroque Literature; Drama, Biblical; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Fairy Tale; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Legend; Mariendichtung; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Figures; Mysticism; Virgin. References: Beissel, Stephan, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Religionswissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte. 1910 (Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1970); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Kern, Peter, Trinitat, Maria, Inkarnation: Studien zur Thematik der deutschen Dichtung des spaten Mittelalters (Berlin: Schmidt, 1971); Salzer, Anselm, Die Sinnbilder und Beiworte Mariens in der deutschen Literatur und lateinischen Hymnenpoesie des Mittelalters (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967); Warner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex. The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976). CHRISTINE KALLINGER
M o t h e r - D a u g h t e r Relationship. Within the bourgeois institution of the patriarchal family, the relationship between mothers and daughters functions to intergenerationally pass on social gender roles and constructions of femininity. Whereas literary renditions of father-son relationships often narrate the conflict over traditional versus innovative forms of artistic expression, mother-daughter relationships tend to be characterized by a generational struggle over the supposedly mutually exclusive spheres of procreation and creation. For the daughter, the figure of the mother and the maternal role serve as an often negative focal point against which she negotiates her identity as a woman writer. Only recently have women begun to rewrite the narrative of the oppressive mother into stories in which mothers appear as subjects. The traditional prohibitions against women as writers render the boundaries between autobiography and fiction fluid in many mother-daughter narratives. Psychoanalytic theory draws on family relationships to gain insights into the formation of gender identity and sexuality as well as into the connections between gender and language. According to Sigmund Freud, the female child must relinquish her first object of love, the mother, in favor of the father in order to enter into paradigmatic heterosexuality, transforming the intimacy between mother and daughter into rivalry over the father. Transferring Freud's family triangle into the realm of language, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan associates the child's introduction into the symbolic order of language with the position of the father, whereas the mother represents a prelinguistic realm, which Lacan termed the imaginary. Focusing on the relationship between gender and language, feminist psychoanalysts such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray work toward psychoanalytic models that give women, both as daughters and as mothers, voices.
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Well into the 20th century, mother-daughter relationships are shaped by patriarchal contexts. In her moral story "Die zwei Schwestern" (1784), sentimental writer Sophie von La Roche shows mother-daughter relationships in their complete dependency on the ruling power of the father. Through the motif of the good and the bad mother, Karoline von Wobeser, in her successful novel Elisa oder das Weib wie es seyn sollte (1795), propagates female virtues such as passivity and modesty, a tradition continued by popular novelists Eugenie Marlitt and Hedwig Courths-Mahler. By contrast, in her narrative fragment "Ledwina" (1819-1826), Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, whose letters bespeak an intimate yet problematic relationship with her own mother, explores the psychic damage that the social limitations imposed on women inflict on motherdaughter relationships. Nazism turned the relationship of writer Elisabeth Langgasser and her daughter Cordelia Edvardson into a relationship over life and death. In her novel Proserpina (1933), Langgasser rewrites the ancient myth of the wronged mother from the perspective of the abandoned daughter, uncannily prefiguring a situation that forced Langgasser's Jewish daughter, Cordelia, to choose between her own and her "half-Jewish" mother's deportation to Auschwitz. Edvardson survived the camps and recalled these events in her autobiography Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer (1984). The literary figure of Proserpina, abducted daughter of the fertility goddess Demeter, becomes a symbol of these two women's lives. With the emergence of the second women's movement in the early 1970s, a generation of daughters rebelled against the role models they saw embodied and enforced by their mothers. Karin Struck's Die Mutter (1975) protests the objectification of the female body and its reproductive functions, whereas Helga Novak's Die Eisheiligen (1978) and Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch's Die Zuchtigung (1987) depict abusive mothers who pass on their female self-hatred to their daughters. Jutta Heinrich's Das Geschlecht der Gedanken (1977) and Gabriele Wohmann's Ausflug mit der Mutter (1976) reject weak mother figures as negative role models. Shifting emphasis to the complicity of the daughter, Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerinnen (1983) explores a sadomasochistic motherdaughter dyad. Women's rejection of patriarchal psycho-social arrangements opens up spaces for more differentiated mother-daughter narratives. In Sommerstiick (1989), Christa Wolf introduces a writer and mother who attempts to develop a relationship with her two daughters based on both independence and closeness. See also: Daughter; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Father-Daughter Relationship; Jelinek, Elfriede; La Roche, Sophie von; Masochism; Mother Figures; Psychoanalysis; Struck, Karin; Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement. References: Aulls, Katharina, Verbunden und gebunden. Mutter-TochterBeziehungen in sechs Romanen der siebziger und achtziger Jahre (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1993); Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds., Mutter-Tochter-Frauen. Weiblichkeits-
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bilder in der Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Miiller, Heidy Margrit, Tochter und Mutter in deutschsprachiger Erzdhlprosa von 1885 bis 1935 (Munich: iudicium, 1991).
KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER M u s e . In the Greek tradition of poetry, the muse at first functioned as a tutelary goddess of the arts, who was called upon before a poetry competition and who judged the poet's imitation of her inspiration. The muse used the poet as her medium and was considered the primary creator of art. This relationship changed in the Middle Ages to a purely inspirational function, as in the case of Dante, who designated a real but idealized woman, the erotic and unreachable Beatrice, who died young, as his muse. Until well into the 20th century, the muse functioned solely as an inspirational stimulus for white, Western male and usually bourgeois art. During German Romanticism, the aesthetic link between femininity and death came to a climax. The dying or dead female lover became the artist's inspirational muse, for example, in Novalis' novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), in which the death of the female literary figure Mathilde functions as the vehicle of inspiration for the male artist's achievement. Botho StrauB adopted and critically transformed the image and function of the muse in his short story ' Theorie der Drohung" (1975), showing the potentially destructive dynamic between the production of a text, the inspiration needed to produce a text, and the act of writing. On one hand, the problems of producing a text are shown in the dependency between the male and the female figure (i.e., the muse). On the other hand, the consequence of the destructive force of male creation is shown in the ultimate colonization and elimination of the muse embodied in the female figure Lea. Contemporary authors like Ingeborg Bachmann and Erica Pedretti work with, uncover, question, and re-form male projections of female images. In the outline to the uncompleted Requiem fiir Fanny Goldmann (1977), Bachmann criticizes the androcentric production of culture by means of Fanny Goldmann's reaction to a novel not only that she had inspired, but that appropriates her biography as its subject matter. In Pedretti's book Valerie oder das Unerzogene Auge (1985), the narrative angle is told from the point of view of the woman, Valerie, who is both model and muse to the painter Franz. Writing is not a gender-neutral activity: historically, female authorship has not been viewed as part of creative art and tradition. Until the 20th century, much of male art and literature has depended on the inspiration of the (dead or dying) muse, on "killing women in the art," as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have put it—a prescriptive role for women that could be read as a taboo on women's literary activity. See also: Authorship; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Kiinstlerdrama; Medieval Literature; Romanticism.
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References: Berger, Renate, and Inge Stephan, eds., Weiblichkeit in der Literatur (Cologne: Bohlau, 1989); Braun, Christina von, Die Schamlose Schonheit des Vergangenen. Zum Verhaltnis von Geschlecht und Geschichte (Frankfurt/M.: Neue Kritik, 1989); Nabakowski, Gislind, Helke Sander, and Peter Gorsen, eds., Frauen in der Kunst, vol. 2 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1980); Stephan, Inge, and Sigrid Weigel, Die verborgene Frau. Sechs Beitrdge zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin: Argument, 1983); Theweleit, Klaus, Mannerphantasien. Frauen, Fluten, Korper, Geschichte, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989).
VERA BOITER M u s e n a l m a n a c h ( 1 7 7 0 - 1 8 1 0 ) . First used in Germany in 1770, adapted from the French Almanach des Muses, the Musenalmanach is a yearly anthology of previously unpublished poetry, sometimes accompanied by a small number of short prose pieces, such as idylls. The editors, who constantly needed new material, usually did not produce a volume that was a coherent manifesto for any particular style or movement, although rococo and sentimental poetry both were commonly represented. For many writers, women and men, especially those born in the 1750s and 1760s, the Musenalmanach offered a first opportunity to publish, sometimes pseudonymously but often under their own names. Among the women who began publishing in Musenalmanache are Philippine Gatterer-Engelhard, Sophie Albrecht, Dorothea Spangenberg, Agnes von Stolberg, Gabriele von Baumberg-Bacsanyi, Wilhelmine Miiller, Anna Nolde, and Wilhelmine Rail. In the case of Gatterer-Engelhard, the poetry collection that followed her debut in a Musenalmanach appeared in a form resembling the annual anthology. For already published writers, the almanachs were convenient opportunities to continue their literary career despite conflicting obligations; the relatively small scale of the entries and the possibility of being represented by even a single entry minimized the quantity of work needed. Among the women who continued to publish in almanachs—usually after having already published a volume of poetry of their own—were Gatterer-Engelhard and Albrecht, as well as Emilie von Berlepsch, Friederike Brun, Anna Luisa Karsch, Caroline Rudolphi, Sophie Mereau, Elise Burger, Henriette Frolich, Friederike Jerusalem, and Julie von Reventlow. Some women, such as Karoline Kremer, published only in the almanachs. Although men invariably predominated among the contributors, the welcome involvement of women is perhaps indicated by the instance of at least one man's use of a female pseudonym, and the absence of any known cases of women's use of male pseudonyms. To the extent that women were sought as Musenalmanach readers and contributors (though not editors), the Musenalmanach was a form that stimulated and supported the literary life of women at a time when women's access to literature and even to reading material was still very limited. The most comprehensive collection of poetry from the almanachs was edited by Max Mendheim. It contains excerpts from Bandemer, Baumberg, Berlepsch, Brachmann, Brun,
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Burger, Frolich, Gatterer, Hagen, Jerusalem, Klenke, Mereau, Recke, Rudolphi, Stolberg, and Spangenberg for the 18th century and Assing, Bernhardi, Helvig, and Vermehren for the 19th century. See also: Idyll; Mereau, Sophie; Rococo Literature; Sentimentality. References: Mendheim, Max, ed., Lyriker und Epiker der klassischen Periode (Stuttgart: Union deutscher Verlagsgesellschaft, 1882-1899; Tokyo: Sansyusya, 1972-1974); Mix, York-Gotthart, Die deutschen Musenalmanache des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck, 1987). RUTH DAWSON
Musical T h e a t e r / O p e r a . From its very beginning, musical theater and opera offered women professional positions as singers and performers and thus a powerful vehicle for emancipation; the contents, however, consistently reinforced stereotypes about women. During the 19th century, the heyday of grand opera, the heroines in a male composer's opera more often than not died a violent death. Once they have been cleared from the stage, the law of the fathers can again prevail and uphold its pretension to "universality"—"Cosf fan tutte," that's how all women are. Since opera depends on access to private or public patronage and funding, women composers of the genre have often found themselves excluded from most sources of support. But even if they prevailed, much of the work of women composers has been lost or not yet rediscovered, or never reached the stage. In many cases, we do not have the complete scores, only few reviews of performances, and often barely any biographical data or exact dates of composition. Nevertheless, a multitude of women composed grand opera, fairy tale opera, Singspiele, operetta, and incidental music for drama: Sophie Elisabeth von Braunschweig's "Ballet der Zeit" (operetta, 1655); Sophia Charlotte's (the mother of Frederick the Great's children) "I Trionfi di Parnasso," c.1732; Maria Antonia Walpurgis' "Talestri regina delle amazzoni" (Singspiel); the duchess of Saxony-Weimar Anna Amalia's three works, including "Erwin und Elmire" and "Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern" (texts by Johann Wolfgang Goethe); and the 15 operas and one operetta by Amalia Maria, princess of Saxony. Noblewomen were the first to have the resources to stage their work. The blind composer of at least five operas, Maria Theresia von Paradis, had her last work, "Rinaldo und Alcina," produced in Prague in 1797. Actresses like Corona Schroter and Therese Krones wrote incidental music for plays, the latter also two "Zauberspiele mit Gesang." During the 19th century there was a proliferation of operas, operettas, and fairy tale operas by women, among them Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, Ingeborg Starck von Bronsart, Johanna Kinkel, Amalie Jochheim, Lena Stein-Schneider, and the playwright Auguste Gotze, to name just a few. Among late 19th- and early 20th-century composers are Elizabeth Mentzel-Schippel, Louisa Adolpha Le Beau, Lili Reiff, Johanna Magdalena Beyer, Philippine Schick, Lotte Backes, Ruth Zechlin, Rosa Danziger, and Babette Koblenz. Altogether, we know of
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over 100 titles of musical drama by German women composers during the last 350 years. See also: Operetta; Singspiel. References: Briscoe, James R., ed., Historical Anthology of Music by Women (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1987); Clement, Catherine, Opera or the Undoing of Women. Trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Cohen, Aaron, International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (New York: Books and Music, 1987); Jezic, Diane Peacock, Women Composers. The Lost Tradition Found (New York: Feminist Press, 1988); Olivier, Antje, and Weingartz, Karin, eds., Komponistinnen von A-Z (Dusseldorf: Toccata, 1988); Weissweiller, Eva, Komponistinnen aus 500 Jahren (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1981). ULRIKE RAINER M y s t e r y P l a y . The medieval Mysterienspiel dramatized biblical stories and the Apocrypha by having priests act out the liturgy. When the plays moved from the church onto movable stages, the actors changed to include male guild members. Performed in the vernacular, frequently vulgar, containing much comic relief and examples of lower-class attitudes, the plays are an excellent source of information on the role of women and the structure of nonaristocratic society during the Middle Ages. The life of Mary especially offers details on such highly charged topics as age and sexuality in marriage, domestic and economic relationships, adultery, cuckoldry, illegitimacy, and the plays' relationships to the communities and individuals by and for whom they were produced (Theresa Coletti). Some plays portray Mary's relationship with Joseph, in which she often dominates, or a trial in which she is charged with fornication. Many mystery plays can be read as early attempts to inhibit female sexuality and to reinforce husbands' rights. Other stories that received theatrical representation include the story of the seven wise and the seven foolish virgins, the life of Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman, the woman taken in adultery, the eviction of Eve from Paradise, Susanna and the Elders, and the Judgment of Solomon. Nonbiblical stories depicting women include the lives of saints and the debates between the church and the synagogue, often allegorically portrayed as women. Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim employs both humor and subtle arguments as she attempts to refute portrayals of female lewdness in plays by the Roman comedy author Terence. Her dramas portray the life of Mary and defend the chastity of women saints. The Easter plays also helped form the basis for the Klausnerin Ava's poems on Jesus (c.1125). See also: Drama, Biblical; Mariendichtung; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Mysticism; Saints; Virgin. References: Ferrante, Joan M., Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); Lomperis, Linda, and Sarah Stanbury, eds., Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). KRISTINE CONLON
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Mysticism ( 1 1 0 0 - 1 4 5 0 ) . According to Greek religion, the mystae were those initiates of the "mysteries" who were believed to have received the vision of God and, with it, a new and higher life. Mysticism has also been called "the science of the love of God" and "the life which aims at union with God." Since these definitions underscore the double nature of mysticism as knowing and as doing, the Christian church treated visionaries who claimed to have direct communication with God with suspicion, especially if they were women. There was always the fear that women, empowered by their visions, would invade the male preserves of theology and liturgy with their own innovations. Women mystics shattered the stereotypes of good feminine behavior to sing their love of God and mapped out new experiences of the divine. In the High Middle Ages (1100-1450), mystics, both men and women, became the inspired leaders who synthesized Christian tradition and proposed new models for the Christian community. Women mystics drew on their personal experience of the divine to provide spiritual guidance for others. Such women became highly respected leaders of the faithful; their role as prophets and healers was the one exception to women's presumed inferiority in medieval society. The woman mystic's identification as a genuine religious figure freed her from conventionalized female roles that mandated submission, and her public activities were socially sanctioned by the church. In the Middle Ages, a religious community was the only place where a woman could read and write and also have some privacy. The vow of celibacy exempted women from pregnancy and childbearing, and they lived longer than married women. Convents also enabled leadership and teaching. Many women mystics, however, preferred to live in more fluid structures for their spirituality; they were Beguines (a name probably used by their opponents to specify something heretical, especially since the Beguines had quite early on been linked with the southern French Albigenser, who were the arch sorcerers for Roman Catholics) or recluses in cities. Nevertheless, they shared with their convent-enclosed sisters celibacy, common spiritual practices, access to books and ideas, and opportunities for leadership. Hildegard of Bingen is the first of the great 12th-century women mystics. Since women feared to obey even God's direct commands without the support of the male clergy, Hildegard sought confirmation from mystics like Bernhard of Clairvaux and from the pope that her work was acceptable to the church. Mechthild of Magdeburg is the most famous of the German Beguines, author of Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit. In 1270, she joined the convent of Helfta, perhaps because of her outspoken criticism of corruption in the church. Unlike Hildegard, who wrote in Latin, Mechthild wrote in the vernacular and contributed, along with another mystic, Hadewijch of Antwerp, to a new spirituality known as Rheno-Flemish mysticism. For Mechthild, God is an experience for body and soul. "Herr, Du bist mein Geliebter,/ Meine Sehnsucht,/ Mein flieBender Brunnen,/ Meine Sonne,/ Und ich bin Dein Spiegel." The mirror is the completion of the process of becoming divine, not
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a projection of the self or a reflection. Other women mystics of note are Gertrud of Hackeborn, Christine Ebner, and Margarethe Ebner. See also: Medieval Literature; Pietism. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Charewatuk, Karen, and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds., Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); Lundt, Bea, ed., Auf der Suche nach der Frau im Mittelalter—Fragen, Quellen, Antworten (Munich: Fink, 1991); Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda, Body and Soul—Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). KAMAKSHIP. MURTI Mythical F e m a l e Figures. In the middle of the 16th century, Paracelsus wrote about "elementary spirits" and described nymphs and undinas as spirits living in the water, sylphs and sylvestres as those living in the air, pygmaes as those living on the Earth, and salamanders and vulcanis as those living in fire. Although they are different by nature, these "elementary spirits" share some characteristics: they are female, part of nature, can occasionally communicate with humans, and appear almost human at times. Nevertheless, they lack the most essential human distinction: a soul. Consequently, they do not have an identity either. Since concepts of identity have been challenged from various angles of literary and cultural studies, the notion of female mythical creatures who cannot be conceptualized in terms of fixed identities poses interesting questions. The appearance of such fluctuating features associated with femininity has gained new relevance in poststructuralist debates, for example, concerning the problem of representation in general and of representing the genuine in particular. There may be peculiar affinities between the shifting qualities of these female "elementary spirits" and what Gilles Deleuze calls "multisensorial complexes." There are many female figures associated with fluidity, with water. For example, Sirens can be found in ancient Greek mythology and are widespread throughout European literature and popular culture. Nixes are water sprites that originate in German mythology and are usually half human and half fish. Ophelia in William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600) is associated with the beautiful dying female, a trope that has been regarded as a cultural stereotype of idealized femininity. This is documented not only in literature but also in visual art. There are paintings of Ophelia by Johann Everett Millais, Eugene Delacroix, and Albert Ciamberlani. Gustav Klimt's "Die Sirenen" combines eroticism and femininity with the dangerous process of dissolution. A more active female associated with water and death is the figure of Loreley, which recurs in the works of Joseph von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and others. In these works, Loreley's beauty and her songs have a hypnotic effect on the male observer or listener, frequently causing his death. In Friedrich de la Motte Fouque's Undine (1811), the female mythic figure can obtain a soul if loved by a male. After their wedding night Undine has
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obtained a soul and gender but has simultaneously lost her erotic power. Before, she seemed like both boy and girl, with shifting gender specifications. The story ends with the death of her lover/husband, to whom she always remained strange and uncanny. A related figure to Undine is Melusine, who appears, for example, in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795). In all versions of the Undine myth, love with strange (or alienated) creatures leads to confusion, crisis, and death. Ingeborg Bachmann's "Undine geht" (1961) reverses the juxtaposition of male, aboveground normality with female, underwater demonism. It is now "Hans" (a generic male name, representing all men) who is an "Ungeheuer." Although the story's narrative perspective seems to express a shifting viewpoint, seen, as it were, from under water, Bachmann stated in an interview that her narrative perspective is rooted in Hans' rather than Undine's, claiming that she could narrate only from a male perspective. Although the story takes the dualistic model as its point of departure, '' Undine gehf' offers counterstrategies and experiments to escape the dominant logic of gender fixation. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Identity Theories; Nature; Poststructuralism; Subjectivity; Volksbuch. References: Baackmann, Susanne, " 'Beinah morderisch wahr': Die neue Stimme der Undine. Zum Mythos von Weiblichkeit und Liebe in Ingeborg Bachmann's 'Undine geht.' " German Quarterly 68.1 (1995): 45-59; Cornell, Drucilla, Transformations (New York: Routledge, 1993); Deleuze, Gilles, Foucault. Trans, and ed. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1988); Horsley, Ritta Jo, "Re-reading 'Undine geht': Bachmann and Feminist Theory." Modern Austrian Literature 18.3-4 (1985): 223-32. BEATEALLERT
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N Nachspiel. A dramatic genre indebted to the Lustspiel tradition of the Schwank and the Possenspiel, the Nachspiel flowered in the 18th century. Although it might have a loose thematic connection to the main dramatic work, the Nachspiel usually provided comic relief to the preceding tragedy. Nachspiele were typically improvised and centered on a Hanswurst figure; hence, they were predictable, but highly entertaining. The Nachspiel also served the practical function of rounding out an evening's entertainment. Because of their improvisational nature, few Nachspiele from the first half of the 18th century survive. Although her husband, Johann Christoph Gottsched, was eager to cleanse the 18th-century stage of such bawdiness and to turn the theater into an instrument of moral instruction, Luise Gottsched was a prolific author of Nachspiele. Her most celebrated and influential work in this genre is Der Witzling, ein deutsches Nachspiel (1745), a comedy in the tradition of Moliere. Like most of Gottsched's female characters, Jungfer Lottchen in this Nachspiel is more independent in thought than in deed. Gottsched's contemporary and intellectual parallel in the 18th-century German theater, Karoline Neuber, listed 31 Nachspiele in her repertoire, many of which she had written herself. Few of them survive in print. With the demise of the Hanswurst on the German stage, the Nachspiel lost its primary raison d'etre. By 1800, the Nachspiel had become the object of parody in Johanna Franul von WeiBenthurn' s one-act play entitled Das Nachspiel (1800). In the play within the play, which is the Nachspiel, the uncle invokes conventional patriarchal authority in matters concerning his niece's marriage, while the frame play contrasts distinctly, if not uncontroversially, with that view. Late in the century,
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WeiBenthurn's play was imitated with variations in Wilhelmine von Hillern's Guten Abend (1872) and Nur ein Held (1877) and in Betty Young's Ein amerikanisches Duell (1872). In these plays, the female protagonist is the author of her own play within a play, no longer an actress in a man's creation. But in the 19th century, these plays, which evolved out of the tradition of the Nachspiel, are rarely identified as Nachspiele. Although still containing a comic element, they had left Hanswurst far behind, and technically, they were no longer postproduction pieces; rather, they had become the production itself. The more common designation for this theatrical phenomenon was Lustspiel in einemAkt, which more recently has come to be called the Einakter. See also: Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Posse; Vorspiel; Wandertheater. References: Dawson, Ruth P, ' 'Frauen und Theater: Vom Stegreifspiel zum biirgerlichen Ruhrsttick." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 379-93; John, David G. The German Nachspiel in the Eighteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992). JANE CHEW Naive. Although Christoph Martin Wieland and Moses Mendelssohn attributed the naive with grace, sublime beauty, superior morality, and genius (Abhandlung vom Naiven, 1753, and Betrachtungen uber das Erhabene und das Naive, 1758), an ambivalent evaluation based on Charles Batteux's Principes de la Literature (1747) predominantly characterized this central category of 18thcentury German aesthetic and sociocultural criticism. Die Naivitat refers to natural, simple, innocent expression (edle Einfalt), while eine Naivitat exposes unreflected, situationally inappropriate language and behavior and ignorance of the cultivated world. Both interpretations are frequently part of the presentation of naive women. According to Immanuel Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) and Anthropologie (1798), the observer views the naive against the background of cultural norms and conventions; his reactions to the naive are as much a reflection on culture as on the naive itself. In Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795), Friedrich Schiller posits the naive as the opposite of the sentimental observer who desires the lost unity of being and natural perfection embodied in the feminine naive, the beautiful soul (schone Seele). Despite the emphasis on the naturalness of the naive in most of these models, some theories claim that, using self-observation, women may employ aspects of the naive consciously. For example, Friedrich Schlegel concludes, in "Literarische Notiz" (1290), that a characteristic female tone is constructed naivete. During the second half of the 18th and the early 19th centuries, the category of the naive established a constructed, yet socially accepted, space for women. The aesthetic and anthropological reflections on the naive were stylized in various texts by, and lives of, women. The biography and poetry of Anna Luisa Karsch exemplify the image of the naive poetess. The anacreontic poets em-
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phasized her peasant background to prove her "unspoiled," termed her "rough" appearance natural, and called her spontaneous poetry ingenious and graceful. Her playful self-presentation in Belloisens Lebenslauf (1792) underscored the construction of a legend from which she gained her livelihood and that granted a poetological raison d'etre to other women writers, for example, Therese Huber. By contrast, stylizing herself as unable to write, Katharina Elisabeth Textor-Goethe created in her large corpus of letters the image of the mother whose link to the orality of fairy tale narration enabled the male genius (her son) to write; Textor-Goethe provided the model of the idealized relationship between the naive woman and the male professional author in Clemens Brentano 's Die Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und schbnen Annerl (1817), in which the determined, pious grandmother represents archaic continuity in a complex modern world. Problematizing the image of the naive young woman, Sophie von La Roche employed a multiperspective epistolary format to present the seduction and redemption of the heroine in Die Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim (1771). While Sophie von Sternheim's letters reveal education and differentiated reflection in a struggle for identity, the male point of view (represented by characters like Lord Derby and Lord Seymour as well as Christoph Martin Wieland in his preface) reduces Sophie to an innocent beauty whose natural tone and behavior contrast with the courtly surroundings. The attractiveness of feminine naivete is not only a topic in kitsch, such as Heinrich Clauren's eroticized depiction of a sensual, yet innocent, Swiss peasant girl in Mimili (1818), but also a central question for women educators like Friederike Helene Unger, who tries to present a balance between the necessary education and maintenance of attractive naivete in the country girl Julchen Griinthal (1784-1798). In its most radical form, this educational process may lead to a masquerade that simultaneously hides and reveals the woman. Bettina von Arnim, frequently considered an exotic and wild child-woman (both by men of society like Wilhelm von Humboldt and at home by her husband Achim von Arnim), employed the naive as a role that presents her with a playful critical license to question social norms, such as bodily discipline or the conventions of writing styles. She exposed and undermined the construction of the naive as an ontological and structural foil to the idealized poet in Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835). Women's explorations of the naive seem to balance a problematized affirmation of male projections, such as the innocent child, seductive girl, or natural poetess, and the awareness of the space and liberty such projections create for women in life and art. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Beautiful Soul; Child-Woman; Grandmother; La Roche, Sophie von; Preface. References: Fischer, Andre, Inszenierte Naivitat: Zur asthetischen Simulation von Geschichte bei Giinter Grass, Albert Drach und Walter Kempowski (Munich: Fink, 1992); Geitner, Ursula, Die Sprache der Verstellung: Studien zum rhetorischen und anthropologischen Wissen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1992);
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Henn-Schmolders, Claudia, Simplizitat, Naivitat, Einfalt: Studien zur asthetischen Terminologie in Frankreich und in Deutschland 1674-1771 (Zurich: Juris, 1974); Preisendanz, Wolfgang, "Matthias Claudius' 'naiver launigter Ton': Zur Positivierung von Naivitat im 18. Jahrhundert." Modern Language Notes 103 (1988): 569-87. ANGELA BORCHERT N a r c i s s i s m , F e m a l e . The term "narcissism" originates from the Greek myth of the youth Narcissus, and describes love of one's own self-image or exaggerated self-love. According to Ovid's Metamorphosis (A.D. 5), the youth Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, ignoring the maiden Echo. Nemesis punished him by paralyzing him in the position of contemplating his own face in a pool. In clinical psychology today, the term has a variety of meanings. Sigmund Freud placed the concept of narcissism at a pivotal point within psychoanalytic theory, linking it to identificatory investments in others and distinguishing between primary and secondary narcissism. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) has identified "narcissism, triviality and essential 'bad faith' " as women's main characteristics and concluded that until women learned to abandon them, they would never escape from the kind of unrealized and partial existence that she saw as the lot of women. Recent theories of female narcissism discuss connections between the feminine role (passivity, conformity) and fear of loss of love. Certain aspects of female narcissism are considered important for research on female creativity and the role of self-reflexivity in women's writings. They can be utilized when assessing an inner, regressive activity of women, like reading, and the absence of public activity, like writing and publishing. Underuse of talent often occurred in female artists and writers who resigned themselves to the role of helper. Prokop asserts that unselfish, helping women often are inhibited in their creativity; assuming the roles of collaborator or muse involves less risk and thus less guilt. Feminist research has begun to uncover the phenomenon of narcissistic trauma experienced by wives, mothers, and/or sisters of male geniuses as disclosed in letters and other writings (e.g., Caroline Flachsland, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, Cornelia Goethe). Corresponding to patriarchal structures, the man represents harmony and self-love, while the woman can participate only by admiration, identification, and self-denial. The figure of Narcissus plays an emancipatory role in writings by Julia Kristeva and Lou Andreas-Salome. For Andreas-Salome, a close friend of Freud, narcissism is a life-affirming force that tends to be dominant in women but that is also essential for the creativity of the (male) artist and writer. In her essays "Gedanken iiber das Liebesproblem" (1900) and "NarziBmus als Doppelrichtung" (1921), she spoke in defense of primary narcissism as "falling back into love" and "recuperating life's creativity." See also: Authorship; Creativity; Muse; Psychoanalysis. References: Andreas-Salome, Lou, Die Erotik. Ed. Ernst Pfeiffer (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1985), Das 'zweideutige' Lacheln der Erotik. Texte zur Psychoanalyse.
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Ed. Inge Weber and Brigitte Rempp (Freiburg: Kore, 1990); Baumgartel, Bettina, Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807): Bedingungen weiblicher Kreativitdt in der Malerei des 18. Jahrhunderts (Weinheim, Basel: Beltz, 1990) 210-11; Freud, Sigmund, "On Narcissism: An Introduction." Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14 (London: Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1981) 67-104; Prokop, Ulrike, "Die Einsamkeit der Imagination. Geschlechterkonflikt und literarische Produktion um 1770." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 325-65, Weiblicher Lebenszusammenhang: Von der Beschrdnktheit der Strategien und der Unangemessenheit der Wunsche (Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1976); Schultz, Karla, "In Defense of Narcissus: Lou Andreas-Salome." German Quarterly 67.2 (1994): 185-96. WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER N a r r a t i o n . Defined narrowly, narration involves a narrator's telling a story to a listener in a social situation. This form of epic and immediate oral communication associated with the fairy tale, novella, and short story contrasts with narration in a larger sense that includes all forms of prose, oral and written, ranging across genres, periods, and aesthetics. While the first definition attributes to women the passive position of the listener, the latter, broader definition opens up possibilities for women to take an active role as narrators. Women are represented as silent listeners of men in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decamerone (1349-1353), which is directed at women readers; in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderter (1795), in which the baroness provides the impetus for the storytelling; and in Ludwig Tieck's Phantasm (1812-1816), in which women judge the story on an aesthetic basis. The prerogative of imparting knowledge and advice, of narrating experience, is viewed as traditionally male (Walter Benjamin). Tall tales, adventures, or legends are uncommon genres for women. Women are more frequently presented as narrators of fairy tales, in the role of nurse, aristocratic lady, or bourgeois (grand-)mother (examples are Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone, 1634-1636; the Arabian Nights, popular in Weimar during the 1780s; and Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm's Kinder-und Hausmarchen, 1812). These images of women narrators limit female narrative authority to the areas of education or erotic experience and to the genres of the so-called poetic middle sphere, that is, the fairy tale, novella, or short story. Although it has been argued that around 1800, the eroticization of the mother's voice, which frequently appears in male autobiographies, redefines narration as maternal, only few women published teleological stories. These rare stories appeared either in contemporary journals or in calendars for women (Sophie Mereau) or in collections for children (Ottilie Wildermuth). Based on the narrow definition of narration, most women remained within the traditional female positions of silent listener and reader. More women were conceptually included as narrators within a broader understanding of narration in terms of living speech or viva-vox, a concept developed by Ernst Bloch. In the social context of (female) community, in medieval monasteries, or at Baroque courts, women narrated visions and prophecies claiming author-
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ization by God. When Hildegard von Bingen or Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg used the rhetorical category of humble speech, writing in the manner of the simple, nonelaborate speech of the uneducated, characteristics of orality entered into their highly stylized written narration of experience. By the 1750s, writing in an oral style had become the poetological norm for the epistolary genre. Meta Moller and Caroline Flachsland incorporated a dialogical quality into epistolary narration; Pauline Wiesel radicalized the ambiguities arising from the tensions between orality and literacy; and Bettina von Arnim distilled silence in the oscillatory framings of her epistolary works. Beginning with the exploration of inner and outer space in Sophie von La Roche's novels, women have tested the possibilities of narration and orality, writing in various aesthetic contexts and genres during the 19th and 20th centuries. Examples are Gabriele Reuter's interior monologues (1920s) or Friedericke Mayrocker's experiments of ecriture automatique (1950s). The impossibilities of linear narration and closure become a concern for Ingeborg Bachmann, who transforms female experience into narration in a manner of writing that challenges and displaces the structures of narration by collapsing, for instance, internal and external realms. Christa Wolf seeks subjective authenticity in the process of narration while the narration itself thematizes the absence of an authentic and self-identical subject. Renate Lachmann theorizes these concepts in her construct of women's metonymic narration, which incorporates marginalized discourses or suppressed meanings, challenging a notion of language that privileges metaphoric substitution and naturalizes the relationship between signifier and signified. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Epistolary Culture; Fairy Tale; Grandmother; Greifenberg, Catharina Regina von; La Roche, Sophie von; Medieval Literature; Mereau-Brentano, Sophie; Reuter, Gabriele; Subjective Authenticity; Wolf, Christa. References: Benjamin, Walter, "Der Erzahler." Illuminationen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1977) 385-413; Bloch, Ernst, "Gesprochene und geschriebene Syntax; das Anakoluth." Literarische Aufsdtze (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1985) 560-68; Kittler, Friedrich, Aufschreibesysteme 1800-1900 (Munich: Fink, 1987); Lachmann, Renate, "Thesen zu einer weiblichen Asthetik." Weiblichkeit oder Feminismus? Ed. Claudia Opitz (Weingarten: Drumlin, 1984) 181-94. ANGELA BORCHERT National S o c i a l i s m . The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), the ruling power during the Third Reich (1933-1945), referred to its political ideology as national socialism. The NSDAP was founded in Munich in 1919. In addition to the overt anti-Semitism of the national socialists, other trends made up this nationalistic ideology: antiliberalism, antirationalism, antiMarxism, antiparliamentarianism, anticlericalism, and antifeminism. Many women did not perceive the misogyny of this ideology. In the elections of 1930 and 1933, almost as many women as men voted for the NSDAP, and women filled the streets to shout their adulation as the military parades rolled
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by. The national socialists won the support of many women because they promised to restore the dignity that belonged to the female, as helpmate of her husband and bearer of the strong ''Aryan," ensuring the future of the German race. Policies of the NSDAP were consistently reactionary on all questions relating to women, from education to employment. Women lost the ground they had gained toward their emancipation in the Weimar Republic. While 111 women, for example, had served in the German Reichstag between 1919 and 1933, none occupied high posts under the national socialists. Soon after 1933, women were dismissed or pressured into resigning from federal and regional bureaucracies and the legal and medical professions. The number of women teachers at all levels dropped significantly. Women laborers were told that in the patriotic spirit they should surrender their jobs to men. The woman in the Third Reich had a well-defined place as caretaker of the home. She was to be obedient to her husband as both were to the Fuhrer. However, as more men left for the front lines after 1942, women were recruited into the workforce on the grounds that they would be better workers than foreigners would be. One of the most atrocious programs that victimized women was the Lebensborn program, which orchestrated copulation and reproduction in a systematic way to produce "ultimate Aryans" by clinically mating prime males and females. Under the Nazi regime, women's participation in the arts and literature was drastically curbed; political opponents were forced into exile (Anna Seghers) or prohibited from publishing more than a predetermined amount (Marieluise FleiBer). Because women were principally discouraged from seeking occupations outside the home, even women writers who supported the regime were only rarely published: poets like Anne Marie Koeppen, whose battle hymns glorify death for the Fatherland, and filmmakers like Leni Riefenstahl, whose famous film Triumph des Willens (1935) was the first public representation of national socialism on a grand scale, were the exception rather than the rule. Women's exclusion from literature was an integral part of Nazi ideology, as the introduction to Hermann Gerstner's 1939 anthology Deutsche Dichter unserer Zeit demonstrates: "Wir stehen im Zeitalter einer volksverwurzelten, mannlichen und heroischen Dichtung!" Women who survived the war bore the burden of the physical cleanup (Triimmerfrauen, or debris women). Initially, women who had Nazi associations through either their own activity or that of their husbands were forced into these assignments as punishment. Later, all women participated, some against their will. Eventually, women provided labor for the new factories until foreign workers were recruited in the mid-1950s to allow women to return to "their place" in the home. In the immediate aftermath of the war, women with clerical skills and knowledge of English also provided a primary bridge between the old government and the new as they worked for the occupying powers.
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See also: Exile Literature; Fascist Aesthetics; FleiBer, Marieluise; Holocaust Literature; Patriotism/Nationalism; Weimar Republic; World War II. References: Bock, Gisela, "Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State." When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Ed. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984) 271-96; Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Saldern, Adelheid von, "Victims or Perpetrators? Controversies about the Role of Women in the Nazi State." Nazism and German Society. Ed. David Crow (London: Routledge, 1994) 141-65. PAMELA ALLEN-THOMPSON Nationalism—see: Patriotism/Nationalism Naturalism ( c . 1 8 8 0 - 1 9 1 0 ) . Traditional definitions of Naturalism describe it as a literary movement of the late 19th century that developed out of Realism and was based on the scientific theories of the time, notably Darwin's theory of evolution. Naturalist works focused on the role played by the environment and biological destiny in determining a person's fate and are noteworthy for the attention they paid to the lives of the impoverished and underprivileged. The Naturalist work is usually marked stylistically by detailed descriptions of environment and milieu, depiction of the lives of the social underclass, and, especially in the drama, the use of local dialect. In Germany, Naturalism is chiefly known as a theatrical movement, although many Naturalist novels were also produced. The authors most frequently included in anthologies of German Naturalist drama are Gerhart Hauptmann (Vor Sonnenaufgang, 1889; Die Weber, 1892), Max Halbe (Freie Liebe, 1890; Eisgang, 1892), Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf (Die Familie Selicke, 1890), and Hermann Sudermann (Die Ehre, 1889). Although female authors are seldom mentioned in the standard anthologies, the Naturalist movement saw a proliferation of works by female authors. The best known among these are Clara Viebig and Elsa Bernstein (pseudonym Ernst Rosmer). Other female writers of the Naturalist period were Anna Croissant-Rust, Helene Bohlau, Gabriele Reuter, Bertha von Suttner, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Helene Voigt-Diederichs, Clara Miiller Jahnke, Christiane von Breden, and Margarete Bohme. Clara Viebig was perhaps the most prolific writer of the female Naturalists, with over 30 novels and several plays to her name. She published her first collection of stories, Kinder der Eifel, in 1897. Her early novels (Rheinlandstdchter, 1897; Dilettanten des Lebens, 1898; Das Weiberdorf, 1900; and Das tdgliche Brot, 1902) were exemplary instances of the kind of detailed realism that marked the Naturalist movement. Her work is noteworthy for its sharp and sympathetic descriptions of the material and spiritual hardships suffered by her characters, in particular by women and the working class. Viebig's first play, Barbara Holzer (1897), was based on Die Schuldige, one of the stories in her first collection, and dealt with a love triangle between a weak-willed man and
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two women. Although Naturalist in its use of rustic dialect and the exact evocation of the country setting, the play has a romantic strain that pulls it out of the strictly Naturalist mode. Her comedy Pharisder (1899) takes a critical look at class pride among the landed aristocracy and is considered Naturalist in its social critique. Viebig's cycle of one-act plays, Der Kampfum den Mann (1905), is generally considered her most purely Naturalist drama. The first three plays of the cycle (Frdulein Freschbolzen, Eine Zuflucht, and Mutter) illuminate the lives of working-class women in Berlin; the last, Die Bduerin, deals once again with the dilemma of a man caught between two women. Elsa Bernstein is the female author who is most frequently included in standard Naturalist anthologies. Her best known Naturalist play is Ddmmerung (1893), which deals with the conflict faced by a widowed artist who must choose between his blind daughter and his lover. The play's immediate success at the Freie Buhne in Berlin in 1893 assured its author a place among the Naturalist dramatists, and critics compared her favorably with Gerhart Hauptmann. Aside from her first play, Wir Drei (1893), Bernstein's numerous other works are generally not considered Naturalist dramas. Anna Croissant-Rust attempted to depict the world of the Bavarian mountain farmer in her plays, sketches, and novels. Her fragmentary slices of rural life were presented with a particularly fine eye for realistic detail and a sense of humor that is rare in Naturalist writing. Among her better-known works are the short story collections Aus unseres Herrgotts Tiergarten (1906), Arche Noah (1911), and Kaleidoskop (1921); the stories "Pimpernellche" (1901) and "Das Winkelquartett" (1908); the folk play Der Bua (1897); and the novel Die Nann (1906), considered by critic Albert Soergel to be "one of the best naturalist novels." Helene Bohlau authored several collections of stories and many novels that have been placed under the rubric of Naturalism. Her best-known story collections are Ratsmadelgeschichten (1888) and Altweimarische Geschichten (1897). Her novels Rangierbahnhof (1895), Das Recht der Mutter (1897), and Halbtier (1899) deal thematically with the battle for women's sexual and spiritual freedom and maternal rights. Her other works include Im frischen Wasser (1891) and Isebies (1911), an autobiographical novel. Gabriele Reuter belonged to the Munich Women's Circle for a short time, where she actively participated in the women's movement. In her autobiography, Vom Kinde zum Menschen (1921), she describes leaving active participation in the movement in order to make her contribution through her writing. In her novels she attempted to show "what girls and women suffer silently. Not the great pains of passion . . . no, I wanted to find the mute tragedy of everyday life upon which thousands of blossoming creatures founder" (Vom Kinde zum Menschen, 432). Her most successful novel is Aus guter Familie (1895), which depicts the social and psychological struggles faced by a young woman "of good family" who strives to break through the barriers of convention. Her other novels similarly deal with problems faced by the modern woman seeking eman-
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cipation, from motherhood (Frau Burgelin und ihre Sohne, 1899), to marriage (Ellen von der Weiden, 1900, and Liselotte von Reckling, 1903), to unwed motherhood (Das Tranenhaus, 1909). Reuter also wrote two theoretical texts on the woman question, Das Problem der Ehe (1907) and Liebe und Stimmrecht (1914). Nobel peace prizewinner Bertha von Suttner's novel Die Waff en nieder (1889) boldly depicts the horrors of war and flatly condemns militarism. Von Suttner shared her antimilitarism with other female Naturalist writers, many of whom recognized that the quest for peace was inextricably linked to domestic social conditions. Among these were Christiane von Breden (pseudonym Ada Christen), author of Lieder einer Verlorenen (1868) and Jungfer Mutter (1892), and Clara Miiller-Jahnke, who authored Mit roten Kressen in 1910. Other female writers associated with the movement are Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Helene Voigt-Diederichs, and Margarete Bohme. Delle Grazie wrote two Naturalist plays, Moralische Walpurgisnacht (1896) and Schlagende Wetter (1899), and contributed to the Naturalist journal Gesellschaft. Voigt-Diederichs was a prolific prose and poetry writer from 1898 to 1905. Her works include SchleswigHolsteiner Landleute (1898), Abendrot (1899), Unterstrom (1901), Regine Vosgenau (1901), Leben ohne Ldrmen (1903), and Dreiviertel Stund vor Tag (1905). Margarete Bohme published her famous Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, a candid account of prostitution, in 1905. See also: Dialektdichtung; Frauenfrage; Nobel Prize Recipients; Pacifism; Positivism; Prostitution; Realism; Reuter, Gabriele; Workers' Literature. References: Bansch, Dieter, "Naturalismus und Frauenbewegung." Naturalismus. Ed. Helmut Scheuer (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974) 122^9; Cowen, Roy C , Der Naturalismus: Kommentar zu einer Epoche (Munich: Winkler, 1973); Hoefert, Sigfrid, Das Drama des Naturalismus, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); KrauB-Theim, Barbara, Naturalismus und Heimatkunst bei Clara Viebig: Darwinistisch-evolutionare Naturvorstellungen und ihre asthetischen Reaktionsformen (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1992); Mahal, Gunther, Naturalismus (Munich: Fink, 1975); Munchow, Ursula, Deutscher Naturalismus (Berlin: Akademie, 1968); Osborne, John, The Naturalist Drama in Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971); Wingenroth, Sascha, Clara Viebig und der Frauenroman des deutschen Naturalismus (Endingen a. K.: Wild, 1936). WENDY ARONS N a t u r e . Two images of nature have informed Western thought: one, domination over nature, found in Greek philosophy and Christian religion; the other, nature as a nurturing mother, also present in Greek philosophy and in other pagan philosophies. Nature has almost always been represented as female. The view that the Earth is a nurturing mother has, at times, served as a cultural constraint, preventing human beings from exploiting nature. During the Renaissance, for example, the Earth was regarded as a nurturing female whose secrets
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were not to be violated; thus, a fairly strong prohibition against mining was in place. During the course of the scientific revolution, the attitude toward nature changed, and the view that man must dominate nature prevailed. Nature and culture are regarded as separate and opposed to one another, and a connection between women and nature is retained. Three different attitudes regarding women's relationship to nature have emerged in feminist thought: first, the integration of women into the world of culture and production and severance of the woman/nature connection as a condition of women's emancipation. This position is taken by most socialist feminists and by Simone de Beauvoir. The second position reinforces the woman/ nature connection. The spiritual and the intuitive, women and nature, are opposed to men, culture, and reason. While neither the first nor the second view questions the nature/culture dualism, ecofeminists argue that women can use the women/nature connection as a vantage point for creating a new kind of culture— this is the third position—that integrates intuitive/spiritual and rational forms of knowledge. The ecofeminist model is appealing but leads to the question, Does the amalgamation of feminine and masculine virtues mean that no significant character differences should remain between men and women? Val Plumwood suggests transcending the dualistic gender characteristics. Plumwood uses the terms "degendered," meaning that affirmed characteristics are not associated with one sex or the other, and "regendered," meaning not the elimination of gender and gender differences, but their reconstruction free from traditional oppositions. The desire for a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature, well known in Romanticism, reemerges in contemporary feminist texts such as Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975). In the tradition of German idealism, Stefan's heroine withdraws into introspection to protest materialism and destructive rationalism. A concentration on spirituality, emotion, and subjectivity is evident in the work of many post-1968 female and male writers. See also: Nature Poetry; Renaissance Humanism; Romanticism; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Subjectivity; Technology. References: Adelson, Leslie, "Subjectivity Reconsidered: Botho StrauB and Contemporary West German Prose." New German Critique 30 (1983): 3-59; Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); Plumwood, Val, "Women, Humanity and Nature." Socialism, Feminism, and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader. Ed. Sean Sayers and Peter Osborne (London: Routledge, 1990) 211-34; Warren, Karen J., "Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections." Environmental Ethics 9 (1987): 3-19. HELGA STIPA MADLAND
Nature P o e t r y . Descriptions of nature in poetry reflect a problematic definition of nature itself, that is, the extent to which it is merely a projection of the human mind.
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In the medieval Minnesang of the 12th century to the beginning of the 14th century, allusions to nature in language and metaphors represented reflections of human nature and emotions, most often expressing love and longing for a distant lover. Walther von der Vogelweide described broken flowers and grass in his verse to represent his broken heart. In Baroque and Enlightenment poetry, images of nature served as psychological or moral correspondences, as places to meditate the world's affairs. The poetry of Romanticism discovered the beauties of nature in descriptive language both as projection and as sublimation of emotions. Nature affected the Romantics' soul in mythic proportions and was deemed eternal. With the Darwinian revolution, a deterministic view was advanced. Nature evolved according to its own laws; the mythic union of man and nature celebrated earlier became endangered. At the turn of the 20th century, during Naturalism and Expressionism, nature was viewed as hostile to human existence; its representations in poetry became shattered and fragmented. Even postwar neo-Romantic poets could not reverse the questioning of harmonious nature images in contemporary poetry. Initially, women poets had no distinct and recognizable voice, either in the medieval songs (the few women's stanzas cannot be proven to have been written by women) or in the subsequent literary periods. The earliest female contributions to poetry consisted of copying, translating, and celebrating private events in occasional verse, which adhered to poetic rules set down by male literati. Not until the women of the Romantic period, among them Karoline von Giinderrode and later especially Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, were given the opportunity to publish their work was a female lyrical voice heard conjuring up compelling, haunting, and demonic images of nature. Although Droste-Hulshoff did not transgress the rules of poetic discourse, her verse meant to break with the conventions of female literary production by escaping into the realm of a haunting imagination. She served later generations of women poets as a model and inspiration: the close-up and personal identification with nature in DrosteHiilshoff's descriptions echoes in the poems of Gertrud Kolmar and Elisabeth Langgasser. Contemporary women poets write from a different perspective. With increasing consciousness, they inscribe their work with a distinct female subjectivity. Nature metaphors and language of nature serve as a place of subversion against the sociopsychological positioning of women as closer to nature due to their role in the reproduction and maintenance of the species. Ingeborg Bachmann created barren landscapes in negative nature imagery. Sarah Kirsch, a biologist by training, seems to celebrate nature only to create a contradictory subtext of political and personal oppositions. Doris Runge deconstructs nature poetry with the precision of her elliptical language and reverses the traditional male position with her incisive irony. Many contemporary women writers subvert the lyrical discourse of nature poetry by either questioning women's assumed position within nature as opposed to culture, or by pointing to strategies of ecofeminism,
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which argues for a noninstrumental relationship with our environment in order to save it. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Baroque Literature; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Enlightenment; Expressionism; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Minnesang; Naturalism; Nature; Romanticism; Technology. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978); Gaard, Greta, ed., Ecofeminism. Women, Animals, Nature (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Haupt, Jiirgen, Natur und Lyrik: Naturbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983); Heukenkamp, Ursula, Die Sprache der schonen Natur. Studien zur Naturlyrik (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1982); Mabee, Barbara, Die Poetik von Sarah Kirsch. Erinnerungsarbeit und Geschichtsbewufitsein (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989). EDDA DUPKE HODNETT N e o c l a s s i c i s m . The growth of neoclassical poetic standards and practice in Germany coincided with the Enlightenment and a movement for female education. Neoclassicism was founded upon the equivalence of poetry and rhetoric, the construction of poetry according to rules (which, in turn, could be derived philosophically), and the imitation of, and reliance on, earlier poetic models. Since the movement strove to attain linguistic and literary reform through imitation of exemplary foreign models, little distinction was made between poets and translators. Luise Adelgunde Gottsched, whose husband, Johann Christoph, was one of the principal reformers of German language and theater, translated or transposed a formidable number of foreign plays into German and authored five original plays for her husband's Deutsche Schaubilhne (1741-1745). Her translations of Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock (trans. 1744) and essays from Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator (founded in 1711) also contributed to the development of German as a literary language. The actress and dramatist Caroline Neuber assisted J. C. Gottsched in his efforts to introduce the regular verse drama based on French models onto the German stage. Neuber, one of the premier actresses of her day and one of the first female directors of a theater troupe, authored about 30 dramas, only three of which were ever printed. Her large literary production shows extensive knowledge of ancient and modern writers and is representative of the "good taste" advocated by J. C. Gottsched. One of the premier poets of the age was Christiana Mariana von Ziegler. Like Luise Gottsched, she was an active translator; her own poetry incorporates European poetic traditions from Greek and Roman antiquity, thus effectively establishing her as one of the age's most erudite poets (e.g., her cantata "Die in Lorbern verwandelte Daphne," 1739; the poem "Ueber des Engellanders John Underwoods sonderbare Hochachtung und Liebe zu des Horatius Schriften," 1739). Ziegler problematized men's tendency not to take women seriously in both poetry and prose and wrote a semiscientific treatise on the theme of worn-
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en's right to scientific education ("Abhandlung, ob es dem Frauenzimmer erlaubet sey, sich nach Wissenschaften zu bestreben?" 1739). The Enlightenment discourse of reason expressed in Ziegler's work coincides with the neoclassical demand for universality and objectivity, which is answered in the work of Luise Gottsched. In her plays, women assume positions of rationality, and vice is represented, in accordance with Enlightenment ideas, as human rather than inherently male or female—an idea that rose to prominence under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and contributed to the establishment of gender characteristics during the second half of the 18th century. See also: Adaptation/Translation; Enlightenment; Galante Dichtung; Geschlechtscharaktere; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Wandertheater; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Blackall, Eric, The Emergence of German as a Literary language, 1700-1775 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959); Briiggemann, Fritz, Die burgerliche Gemeinschaftskultur der vierziger Jahre (Leipzig: Reclam, 1933). ELIZABETH POWERS
N e o - R o m a n t i c i s m ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 2 0 ) . Originally a reaction against Naturalism, this was a short-lived literary movement. Neo-Romantic authors take their cue from Romanticism in embracing the Romantic idea of mixing art forms and the Tart pour Tart philosophy, adding to these traits Dionysian and mythological elements. Characteristic of neo-Romantic literature are contradictory shapes, pseudo-heroes, and Zwischentone. One of the most prominent neo-Romantic women writers was Gabriele Reuter, whose style combined elements of Romanticism and Realism. Her first novel, Gluck und Geld (1888), can be read as an example of her Romantic writings. Later publications, such as Aus guter Familie (1895) and her autobiography, Vom Kinde zum Menschen (1921), are a critical examination of her earlier Romantic ideals, earning her a reputation as the "realist of Romanticism." Like other neo-Romantic woman writers (e.g., Elsa Bernstein and Ricarda Huch), Reuter openly criticized the subordination of women in her works, thereby not only helping to fashion a literary style but also creating a new view of women's experiences in the early 20th century. See also: Naturalism; Realism; Reuter, Gabriele; Romanticism. References: Frank, Miriam, "Ricarda Huch and the German Women's Movement." Beyond the Eternal Feminine: Critical Essays on Women and German Literature. Ed. Susan L. Cocalis and Kay Goodman (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1982) 245-60; Frommholz, Riidiger, "Ricarda Huch." Deutsche Dichter: Realismus, Naturalismus und Jugendstil (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989) 376-84; Johnson, Richard L., "Gabriele Reuter: Romantic and Realist." Beyond the Eternal Feminine: Critical Essays on Women and German Literature. Ed. Susan L. Cocalis and Kay Goodman (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1982) 225-44. BRENDA L. BETHMAN
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Neuber, Friederike Caroline ( 1 6 9 7 - 1 7 6 0 ) . Neuber was a playwright, actress, one of the first and most successful theater directors, and also one of the most important contributors, along with Johann Christoph Gottsched, to the reform of the German stage in the 18th century. Often referred to as the mother of German theater, she headed her own theater troupe after 1725 and became one of the most influential proponents of the artistic and moral improvement of the stage. She shared Gottsched's ideas about the necessity to elevate the language and quality of plays performed at that time—she favored translations of French tragedies even before her encounter with Gottsched—but also viewed theater reform in terms of practical improvements (rehearsal time) and improvements in the actors' living conditions. A talented actress and an efficient, courageous, and creative theater director, Neuber attempted to further the cause of stage reform by writing dramas herself. Although she wrote and performed approximately 30 dramas, only 3 are still available in print: Ein Deutsches Vorspiel (1734), Das Schdferfest oder die Herbstfreude (1753), and Die Verehrung der Vollkommenheit durch die gebesserten teutschen Schauspiele (1737). Many of her one-act Vorspiele and plays deal with the improvement of German theater, the abolition of vulgarity and the farcical characters (e.g., the Harlequin). She kept most of her plays for the exclusive use of her own theater troupe, not wishing to have them printed and consequently pirated by rival theater troupes. During the many adversities she encountered as an early woman entrepreneur, she fought a valiant battle for her troupe. Her troupe performed all over Germany and even in Russia; but after falling out with Gottsched, her fortune waned, and she ultimately lost her theater troupe and had to return to acting. She died penniless. Contemporary and later critics have considered Neuber exclusively as a theater reformer and ignored her as an author, a tone set by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose play Derjunge Gelehrte (1747) was performed for the first time by her troupe and who enthusiastically collaborated with her reform efforts in Leipzig but who nonetheless spoke derisively of her achievements as a playwright. See also: Enlightenment; Vorspiel; Wandertheater. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Heckmann, Hannelore, "Theaterkritik als Unterhaltung. Die Vorreden und Vorspiele der Neuberin." Lessing Yearbook 18 (1986): 111-27; Kord, Susanne: Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 293-301; RedenEsbeck, Friedrich Johann von, Caroline Neuber und ihre Zeitgenossen. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kultur und Theatergeschichte (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1881); Sasse, Hannah, "Friedericke Caroline Neuber. Versuch einer Neuwertung" (Diss., Endingen/Kaiserstuhl, 1937). MARIA LUISE CAPUTO-MAYR N e u e Sachlichkeit. A term used for an exhibit of contemporary German art in 1925, this denotes neither a literary period nor a coherent style but is a
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collective term for literary and artistic tendencies of the mid-1920s until the early 1930s that focus on the social reality of the Weimar Republic. In marked contrast to the foregrounding of subjective and expressive styles in Expressionism, works of Neue Sachlichkeit are less concerned with individual artistic perception than with the depiction of how individuals were affected by modern society. Despite this emphasis on the depiction of social reality (a claim that is even further stressed in the English translation "new objectivity"), Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, among others, saw aestheticizing and thus reactionary tendencies in works of Neue Sachlichkeit. Attempts to reach a larger audience for art and literature during the 1920s coincided with the popularity of widely accessible genres characteristic of Neue Sachlichkeit (e.g., Tatsachenroman, Gebrauchslyrik, and Zeitstiick) and with the expansion of the notion of art (e.g., Reportagen, features, and the blending of real and fictional elements in montages and collages). Thus, Neue Sachlichkeit contributed to the increased blurring between high culture and popular art in the 1920s. Most standard reference works discuss Hans Fallada, Alfred Doblin, Leonhard Frank, Erich Kastner, Ernst Toller, and other male authors in the context of Neue Sachlichkeit, whereas women authors, including Marieluise FleiBer, Use Langner, Irmgard Keun, and Gabriele Tergit, are rarely mentioned. All of them wrote works that exhibit characteristics of Neue Sachlichkeit and that focus on the ways in which women's lives were affected by new employment opportunities, by a liberalization of gender-specific moral and social norms (exemplified by the emancipated New Woman), and, on the downside, by economic depression, unemployment, restricted access to abortion, and the confinement to traditional gender roles within marriage and family (examples include FleiBer's collection of stories Ein Pfund Orangen, 1929, and her novel Mehlreisende Frieda Geier, 1931; Irmgard Keun's novels Gilgi—eine von uns, 1931, and Das kunstseidene Mddchen, 1932). A comparative analysis of works frequently mentioned as examples of Neue Sachlichkeit (Fallada's Kleiner Mann—was nun?, 1932, and Kastner's Fabian, 1931) and the novels by FleiBer and Keun, mentioned before, illustrates significant differences regarding the role of gender within larger social critiques (see Wittmann). While Kastner and Fallada resort to traditional male projections in their depiction of women (whore versus caring mother), Keun shows how the most intimate relations are affected by economic depression (e.g., the emotional and economic implications of unwanted pregnancies both within and outside marriage). Keun and FleiBer portray women who choose to struggle for economic and personal independence and who reject traditional marriage, an aspect that contemporary male critics in generally very positive reviews disapproved of and attributed to the women's inability to love. The embrace of traditional gender roles by male authors and critics at a time of major social changes can be attributed to anxieties triggered by the destabilization of long-held concepts of masculinity during the Weimar Republic.
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The journalist and author Tergit wrote Reportagen about socially marginalized and disfranchised people within an increasingly rationalized and anonymous modern society. In her novel Kdsebier erobert den Kurfurstendamm (1931), Tergit provides an inside view of the workings of the media business and portrays an "emancipated" woman who is, however, fully immersed in the profitoriented machinery that produces the news. See also: Abortion; Angestelltlnnenroman; Expressionism; FleiBer, Marieluise; Montage; New Woman; Tatsachenroman; Weimar Republic. References: Kniesche, Thomas, and Stephen Brockmann, eds., Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994); McCormick, Richard, "Private Anxieties/Public Projections: 'New Objectivity,' Male Subjectivity, and Weimar Cinema." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1995): 118; Petersen, Klaus, " 'Neue Sachlichkeit:' Stilbegriff, Epochenbezeichnung oder Gruppenphanomen?" Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literatur und Geistesgeschichte 56.3 (1982): 463-77; Soltau, Heide, "Die Anstrengungen des Aufbruchs: Romanautorinnen und ihre Heldinnen in der Weimarer Zeit." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 205-35; Wittman, Livia, "Der Stein des AnstoBes: Zu einem Problemkomplex in beruhmten und geruhmten Romanen der Neuen Sachlichkeit." Jahrbuch fiir Internationale Germanistik 14.2 (1982): 56-78. FRIEDERIKE EIGLER N e w C r i t i c i s m . This evolved in the southern United States of the 1920s; it was christened in John Crowe Ransom's The New
