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 Criticism (1941) and remained at the forefront of academic literary inquiry well into the 1960s. New Critics removed literature from its social contexts, thus departing from an older understanding of the text that was based on an examination of the author's life and times. Furthermore, they rejected a variety of critical approaches that indulged in whimsical, emotional musings rather than methodically rigorous study. As William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley explain in their essays "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy," the text is not to be approached by way of its author's statements, nor is it to be a springboard for the reader's associations. Instead, it should be considered an autonomous entity. Ivor Armstrong Richards argues that poetry is an ontological experience of its own, very different from scientific approaches to the world. While supporting Richards' belief in the organic unity of the poem, Cleanth Brooks (The Well Wrought Urn, 1947) and William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1930) emphasize the complexity, irony, and particularity of the poem. The New Critical method of close reading allows such subtleties to emerge from the text itself. Brooks and Robert Penn Warren popularized New Criticism through their textbook, Understanding Poetry (1938). Journals associated with this group of critics include The Fugitive (1923-1925), The Kenyon Review (1939- ), The Sewanee Review (1892- ), and the Southern Review (1935-1942). The tenets and practices of New Criticism seem to be entirely at odds with the enterprise of feminist criticism. New Criticism's interest in the great poem,
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which is both complex and organically whole, perpetuated a canon of literature that has historically excluded women writers. While New Criticism blocks out sociohistorical contexts, many feminist critics have found this mode of inquiry particularly fruitful. Furthermore, New Critics such as Allen Tate and other proponents of the agrarian movement exhibited a decided distaste for modernity and a nostalgic longing for the aristocratic, white, patriarchal culture of the Old South. It must be recognized, however, that New Criticism, by developing the method of close reading and by removing works from their traditional contexts, gave feminist readers the tools to interpret literature in unconventional ways. See also: Canon, Literary. References: Halfmann, Ulrich, Der amerikanische "New Criticism" (Frankfurt/M.: Athenaeum, 1971); Krieger, Murray, The New Apologists for Poetry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956); Spurlin, William J., and Michael Fischer, eds., The New Criticism and Contemporary Literary Theory (New York: Garland, 1995). RACHEL FREUDENBURG N e w Historicism. The rubric for an array of reading practices that investigate the intricate relationship between writing and culture, New Historicism developed from Stephan Greenblatt's work in the early 1980s on Renaissance literature. Claiming the influence of Clifford Geertz's cultural anthropology, Michel Foucault's post-structuralism and discourse theories, Marxism, and Mikhail Bakhtin's language theories, it is an approach to literary criticism that seeks to avoid both the decontextualizing approach of New Criticism as well as the positivism of 19th-century German or "old" historicism. One of the few developments in literary criticism to have generated some excitement in popular media, it has been the focus of a sometimes intense debate from the Right and the Left, both from within and outside academe. Feminists have also discussed its merits (Newton, Lennox, Friedrichsmeyer/Clausen); while some enthusiastically endorse a feminist New Historicism, others more cautiously articulate a belief that some of its practices might be valuable for feminist literary critics; still others, while acknowledging that many of its practices overlap with those of feminism, believe some of its goals are incompatible with feminist practice. Aside from those who stress biology and those who emphasize discourse alone, most feminists have long recognized the need to contextualize the texts they are examining and are thus in sympathy with New Historians' goals. Yet, some feminists level the criticism that the kind of history attracting New Historians has little to do with gender and the reclamation of women's role in history. In fact, gender, even as an issue for theoretical exploration, is frequently missing from the works of its leading practitioners. Virtually all New Historians stress contextualization in breaking down the barriers between works of art and other cultural texts. Many feminist critics are drawn to these claims; yet, even while challenging traditional aesthetic criteria for evaluating literary works, most would voice caution concerning New Historicism's tendency to slight aesthetics. Other critics are perturbed by New His-
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torians' reluctance to differentiate between the various materials used in their contextualizations, citing the tendency of such a practice to skirt the issues of influence, of causality, and ultimately of agency. New Historians see themselves as oppositional critics, as do most feminists. Some feminist critics, however, remain skeptical of New Historians' apparent disinterest in moving their discussions beyond the academy and their tendency to reduce their examinations to the text, to its rhetorical and discursive strategies, rather than looking for ways in which their work could impact the world outside the university. While concerned with textual strategies for representing gender and appreciating the importance of discourse in shaping culture and the individuals within it, feminist critics are even more concerned with going beyond these levels of analyses. The discussion on feminism's relationship to New Historicism will perhaps continue, but the intensity of the discussion will likely be absorbed by the larger issues involved in examining the connections between feminism and cultural studies. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Canon, Literary; Cultural Studies; Dialogics, Feminist; Gender; Gender Theories, History of; German Studies; Marxist Theories; New Criticism; Poststructuralism. References: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, and Jeanette Clausen, "What's Missing in New Historicism or the 'Poetics' of Feminist Literary Criticism." Women in German Yearbook 9 (1994): 253-58; Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, "A Return to History? The New Historicism and Its Agenda." New German Critique 55 (Winter 1992): 87-104; Kaes, Anton, "New Historicism: Writing Literary History in the Postmodern Era." Monatshefte 84.2 (Summer 1992): 148-58; Lennox, Sara, "Feminism and New Historicism." Monatshefte 84.2 (Summer 1992): 159-70; Newton, Judith Lowder, "History as Usual? Feminism and the 'New Historicism.' " The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER N e w H u m a n i s m . This was an intellectual movement that developed around 1750, striving for the perfection of humanism in a renewed study of antiquity. It focused on Humanitat and strove for the unity of body and soul, nature and art for the harmonic development of the personality. The movement started with Anthony Shaftesbury, was carried on by the classical philologists (Johann Matthias Gesner, Johann August Ernesti, Christian Gottlob Heyne), and reached its apogee under Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The discussion of women's education that arose out of the NeoHumanist discourse merits attention. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel argued in his Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792) for a full social integration of women through equal educational and occupational opportunities. His emphasis on the social usefulness of women, should they be allowed into the professions, left his treatise vulnerable to Neo-Humanist criticism. Wilhelm von Humboldt argued that self-
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actualization should not be restricted to civic activities alone but should be accomplished by moving above and beyond social systems. He claimed in his essay ' 'Uber den Geschlechtsunterschied und dessen EinfluB auf die organische Natur" (1795) that women are characterized by inherent passivity and a greater tolerance for suffering, whereas men, active and productive, are in need of the receptive resistance of unformed, inert matter—the woman, who is neither Burger nor Mensch, but just Weib. Humboldt's view on education, which excludes women, had become prevalent by the turn of the 19th century. Betty Gleim's treatise on education, Erziehung und Unterricht des weiblichen Geschlechts (1810), was influenced by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and the polemical writings of the Neo-Humanist reformers. Like many of her contemporaries, she was convinced that society can be changed only by education, not by political revolution. The role of the educator is to stimulate the student to actualize his or her potential humanity. With broader education a woman would become a better wife, mother, and homemaker. Although Gleim's intention was to expand the educational opportunities for women, she opposed their full integration into the workforce, claiming that to open the public sphere to women would turn the world upside down. Only unmarried or widowed women should actively pursue a career; one example was the Lithographische Anstalt fiir Frauen she founded in Bremen in 1819. Therese Huber and Caroline Schlegel-Schelling were daughters of two renowned professors of the University of Gottingen associated with the New Humanist movement and had access to an education exceptional for women. Besides writing travelogues, narratives, and novels, Huber became one of the first female freelance writers in Germany and was the editor of the Morgenblatter from 1816 to 1823. Schlegel-Schelling is best known for her artfully crafted letters to major figures of German Romanticism. See also: Classicism; Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von: Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber; Romanticism; Travelogues. References: Feyl, Renate, Der lautlose Aufbruch: Frauen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Neues Leben, 1981); Rasch, William, "Mensch, Burger, Weib: Gender and the Limitations of Late 18th-century Neohumanist Discourse." The German Quarterly 66.1 (1993): 20-33. PETRA S. FIERO N e w Subjectivity. Sometimes referred to as Neue Innerlichkeit, this term was coined by critics to describe an introspective and self-reflexive tendency in literature and film of the early 1970s. It signals a shift from the politically engaged literature of the 1960s, which was based on documentary formats and attempted to render reality objectively, to a self-reflective literary format that explores subjectivity, identity, self-representation, and language. New Subjectivity is often viewed as a tendency that evolved out of the Left's disillusionment with the political developments of the 1960s. For many men who participated
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in the student movement and joined the extraparliamentary opposition (Aufierparlamentarische Opposition, APO), New Subjectivity marked a withdrawal from the public political arena; they realized that the revolutionary political and social changes the Left strove for would not be attained. With the boundaries of perception drawn tighter, these sensibilities transformed into a somewhat obsessive interest in emotions, self-analysis, and the private sphere, with the result that the political arena faded into the background. Given the historical parameters from which New Subjectivity emerged, it is safe to say that women's cultural productions, particularly those associated with the feminist movement, cannot be subsumed facilely under the category of New Subjectivity. In contrast to the visible withdrawal of male writers from the public sphere, literature by women of the 1970s became highly politicized, charged with the excitement of self-discovery, and fueled by explorations into the constructions of female subjectivity. Filmmaker Helke Sander's often-cited appeal for the "politicization of the private sphere," a slogan of the women's movement that challenged the artificial separation of public and private spheres, summarizes the project that motivated much of the literature by women of the 1970s. Thus, women's self-reflective writing marked a political consciousness on the rise. The numerous Protokolle and experiential literature that appeared during this period reveal the widespread need for an examination of women's experiences and identities (Barbara Franck, Ich schaue in den Spiegel und sehe meine Mutter, 1979; Verena Stefan, Hautungen, 1975). Unlike the resigned turn toward the private sphere in works by a number of male authors (e.g., Peter Handke, Peter Schneider, and Botho StrauB), women writers did not retreat but broke through the silences that had suppressed women's experiences. Hence, grouping the works of male and female writers of the period under the heading of New Subjectivity distracts from the political implications of works by women. At a time in which a sensitivity toward gender differences was just emerging, New Subjectivity can, at best, be considered a suspect category when applied to works by women, especially because of women's historically imposed association with subjective expression (letter writing and diaries). The term disregards the historical framework, namely, the women's movement and women's disillusionment with the male-dominated Left, from which these texts emerged. For many women writers and filmmakers, the preoccupation with female subjectivity during the 1970s involved challenging traditional epistemologies. Exploring the boundaries between autobiography and fiction in literature and film provided a format for the personal examination of gendered identity and the effects of Germany's fascist past on the psychic structures of subsequent generations (Christa Wolf, Kindheitsmuster, 1976; Ruth Rehmann, Der Mann auf der Kanzel, 1980; Helma Sanders-Brahms, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter, 1979; Jutta Bruckner, Hungerjahre, 1979). Other works focused on the female body and motherhood (Karin Struck, Die Mutter, 1975). See also: Autobiography; Body, Female; Bruckner, Jutta; Diaries; Engagierte Literatur; Epistolary Culture; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Frauenliteratur/Frau-
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endichtung; Protokolle; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Struck, Karin; Student Movement; Wolf, Christa; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Women's Movement. References: Kosta, Barbara, Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Lutzeler, Paul Michael, and Egon Schwarz, eds., Deutsche Literatur in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965 (Konigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1980); McCormick, Richard W., Politics of the Self: Feminism and the Postmodern in West German Literature and Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Runge, Erika, "Uberlegung beim Abschied von der Dokumentarliteratur." Kontexte 1 (1976): 97-119; Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987).
BARBARA KOSTA N e w W o m a n . The figure of the New Woman (die neue Frau, das neue Weib), the emancipated, independent woman, developed during the 19th century as women became more vocal in their demands for access to better education, the right to vote, and responsibility for their own sexuality. The figure reached its apex in the flapper of the Weimar Republic. The New Woman and the social obstacles she encountered figure prominently in the works of novelists (Lou Andreas-Salome, Fenitschka, 1898; Hedwig Dohm, Christa Ruland, 1902; Elisabeth Dauthendey, Vom neuen Weibe und seiner Liebe. Ein Buch fur reife Geister, 1900) and dramatists (Elsa Bernstein, Dammerung, 1893; Milost Pan, 1894; Maria Arndt, 1908). During the Weimar Republic, conflict increased between progressive women, including a new group of semiskilled white-collar workers in the service and sales sectors, and patriarchal society, which viewed the New Woman as a threat and sought to redomesticate her. Whereas the New Woman was a peripheral and rather negative character in the works of male authors, female authors focused on the New Woman's struggling with issues such as taking charge of her own sexuality or balancing career and family. Many New Woman protagonists ultimately chose to return to traditional roles and to conform to patriarchal structures, having left home only to find it again. A few rejected the family for their careers (Helene Stocker, Liebe, 1922; Clara Viebig, Die mit den tausend Kindern, 1929; Marieluise FleiBer, Mehlreisende Frieda Geier, 1931). The authors' ambivalent relationship to the New Woman, which reveals the unstable mood of the Weimar Republic, shows itself in the novels' unhappy endings. The New Women in their works continue to be sacrificial lambs; and those who practice free love often meet a sorry end, either unwanted pregnancy (Vicki Baum, Stud. Chem. Helene Willfuer, 1928; Clara Viebig, Passion, 1932) or death (Mela Hartwig, Das Weib ist ein nichts, 1929; Helene Bohlau, Eine zartliche Seele, 1930). A new tone emerged in the novels of Imgard Keun, Marieluise FleiBer, and Gabriele Tergit, which employ a somewhat fragmentary structure and open endings characteristic of the literature of Neue Sachlichkeit. These formal innovations correspond to the fate of the heroines who choose work over love in these works and face uncertain—rather than stereotypically predetermined—
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futures but still remain vulnerable to patriarchal norms (Keun, Gilgi, eine von uns, 1931, and Das Kunstseidene Mddchen, 1932; Tergit, Kdsebier erobert den KurfUrstendamm, 1931; FleiBer, Mehlreisende Frieda Geier, 1931; Christa Anita Briick, Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen, 1930). See also: Dohm, Hedwig; FleiBer, Marieluise; Neue Sachlichkeit; Revolution, Sexual; Weimar Republic. References: Grossmann, Atina, "Girlkultur or Thoroughly Rationalized Female: A New Woman in Weimar Germany?" Women in Culture and Politics: A Century of Change. Ed. Judith Friedlander et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 6280; Soden, Kristine von and Maruta Schmidt, eds., Neue Frauen. Die zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1988); Soltau, Heide, "Die Anstrengungen des Aufbruchs. Romanautorinnen und ihre Heldinnen in der Weimarer Zeit," 2 vols. Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich, Beck: 1988) II: 220-34, TrennungsSpuren. Frauenliteratur der zwanziger Jahre (Frankfurt/M.: Extrabuch, 1984); Wittmann, Livia, "Zwischen 'femme fatale' and 'femme fragile'—Die Neue Frau?" Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik 17 (1986): 74-111. BELINDA CARSTENS-WICKHAM N i h i l i s m . A term coined by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in the late 18th century and later picked up by Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century as well as Martin Heidegger, nihilism refers to an absolute negation of any belief system. The negation of religious faith it implies results in the devaluation of values and the instability of a subject that was formerly integrated in a positive metaphysical context. Nihilism is most often linked to Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche saw nihilism as a historical process that all cultures and time periods must undergo in order to develop their own set of values. Despite his awareness of the cultural and social construction of gender, he codified genderspecific differences as immutable and predetermined. Not unlike earlier idealizations of the feminine (e.g., Classicism), Nietzsche elevates the feminine on a theoretical/philosophical level, while simultaneously using these concepts to reinforce the subordinate status of empirical women. Although Nietzsche's philosophy claims to aim at a universal reconceptualization or negation of values, traditional value systems of gender, namely, women's inferior position, remain largely unaffected. Women's subordinate role in the philosophy of nihilism has provoked various reactions among female writers. Some women included themselves in the notions of self-affirmation and self-overcoming by drawing up an agenda for women. Frieda von Biilow, for example, postulated that women write differently and should not be compared to men. Helene Bohlau criticized women's role in society and attempted a different portrayal of women in Ratsmddelgeschichten (1887). Helene Lange, publisher of the monthly magazine Die Frau, participated in the formation of a new female identity. Ricarda Huch, in contrast, perceived her act of writing as an androgynous activity. Instead of emphasizing sexual
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difference, she concentrated on individual accomplishments. For Huch, financial independence was freedom from male domination. Other women writers demonstrated in their lives and work that the concept of nihilism leads to an inconsistent view of women. Lou Andreas-Salome, although herself a financially independent and acknowledged writer, portrayed many of her female figures as unemancipated, citing physiological differences for women's subordination to men. The influence of nihilism is most noticeable in Franziska zu Reventlow's life and work. She celebrated life but questioned the very concept in her writing. Her autobiographical text, Ellen Olestjerne. Eine Lebensgeschichte (1903), illustrates the misery and loneliness that result from an acquired subject position. Although the initial proponents of nihilism excluded women and their status from their thinking, nihilism, in its absolute negation of established values and beliefs, provided a model for women's opposition to patriarchal values. See also: Classicism; Eternal Feminine. References: Lee, Jin-Woo, Politische Philosophic des Nihilismus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); Schutte, Ofelia, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Szekly, Johannes, Franziska Grafin zu Reventlow. Leben und Werk (Bonn: Bouvier, 1979). RHONDA DUFFAUT N o b e l Prize R e c i p i e n t s . Between 1901 and 1994, the Swedish Academy awarded 87 Nobel Prizes in literature to 91 recipients. Nine of the Nobel laureates were German. Only one of them was a woman: Nelly Sachs. Sachs was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, which she shared with the Austrian-born Israeli Samuel Yoseph Agnon. She was recognized for ' 'her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength." Sachs' poetry written before 1940 was virtually untouched by the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century and contained elements of neoRomanticism. Yet in the Swedish exile, haunted by the fate of her people, Sachs wrote poetry that was strongly influenced by Jewish and Christian mysticism, a ' 'mute outcry'' against the Holocaust. During the postwar era, East German writers initially praised her ' 'Kronzeugenbuch," whereas West Germany was not yet ready to deal with poetry thematizing death camps. As the German Democratic Republic (GDR) adopted the line that fascism had been a Western/West German, rather than an all-German, phenomenon, Sachs' poetry was no longer considered relevant in East Germany. In West Germany, however, her reception as the "poetess of the Holocaust" set in during the 1950s and 1960s, when she was awarded an impressive series of prizes and public recognition, culminating in the Nobel Prize. Even though Sachs' oeuvre is extraordinarily varied, consisting of poetry, dramas, and short stories, her critical reception in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) remains one-dimensional. A manipulative cultural industry exploited her work politically
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by creating a Nelly Sachs cult. Author and work were reduced to symbols of German-Jewish reconciliation, a problematic assessment especially in light of the blatant disregard for her work since the 1970s. See also: German-Jewish Literature; Holocaust Literature; National Socialism; NeoRomanticism; Prizes, Literary; World War II. References: Opfell, Olga S., The Lady Laureates. Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1986); Williams, Eric, "Nelly Sachs." Nobel Laureates in Literature. A Biographical Dictionary. Ed. Rado Pribic (New York: Garland, 1990) 360-65. MARGARETE LAMB-FAFFELBERGER Novel—see: Abenteuerroman; Angestelltlnnenroman; Bildungsroman; Entwicklungsroman; Gesellschaftsroman; Groschenroman; GroBstadtroman; Kriminalroman; Novel, Educational; Novel, Historical; Novel, Psychological; Picaresque Novel; Tatsachenroman Novel, Educational. The term is often used as synonymous with Bildungsroman, but the educational novel focuses on pedagogical aspects, on influences of environment and education rather than the formation of the inner self and character, as does the Bildungsroman, and may include lengthy discussions of pedagogical theories. The educational novel in its pure form is a phenomenon of the Enlightenment and its pedagogical component. Writers set out to include serious matters in the "low" genre of the novel (viewed as an adventurous, sensationalistic love story) and to educate their largely female readership. Sophie von La Roche in her Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771) favors providing girls and young women with novels of moralistic content and reallife scenes. Authors of the early Enlightenment supported a progressive view of women's capability of Bildung, promoted the education of women, and spoke in favor of women poets and "gelehrte Frauenzimmer'" but at the same time set rigid boundaries. It is significant that the authors of didactic educational novels were men, especially when the object of education was a woman: Christian Furchtegott Gellert's Leben der Schwedischen Grdfin von G***. (17471748), Johann Timotheus Hermes' Miss Fanny Wilke (1766), and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's more theoretical Lienhard und Gertrud (1781-1789). They provide a wealth of information about the images of upper-class women and their education in the 18th century. Many Romantic novels, for example, Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen (posthumously pub., 1802) and Ludwig Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), focus on the aesthetic education of a young man; in Florentin (1801), Dorothea Schlegel chose a male character as well to depict the search for poetic insight. Feminist research has begun to point out the influence that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's pedagogical novel Emile (1760), which posits a woman's education to become a good mother and a mere complement of a man as ideal, had in reversing tendencies of the early Enlightenment: the resulting assessment of the
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female "'Geschlechtscharakter" as passive and sentimental around 1800 introduced, in turn, regressive and misogynistic trends that were felt throughout the 19th century. See also: Bildungsroman; Enlightenment; Entwicklungsroman; Eternal Feminine; Geschlechtscharaktere; La Roche, Sophie von; Romanticism. References: Germer, Helmut, The German Novel of Education from 1764 to 1792: A Complete Bibliography and Analysis (Bern: Lang, 1982); Hausen, Karin, "Die Polarisierung der 'Geschlechtscharaktere'—eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbsund Famihenleben." Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Ed. Werner Conze (Stuttgart: Klett, 1977) 363-93; Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B. " That Girl Is an Entirely Different Character!' Yes, But Is She a Feminist? Observations on Sophie von La Roche's 'Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim.' " German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. A Social and Literary History. Ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 137-56; 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. WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER N o v e l , H i s t o r i c a l . Like the novel in general, the historical novel is an open form that varies according to different concepts of history and theories of narrative. Generally, the historical novel focuses on a historical epoch or historical figure; it depicts it or her or him in combination with a fictional plot or imaginative characterization, often deviating substantially from historical facts. The historical novel was most popular in the second half of the 19th century. Most of the well-known 19th-century Realists wrote historical narratives as well. During the Griinderzeit, the genre was often used to legitimate the idea of a German national state under Prussian hegemony. The popularity of historical novels such as Felix Dahn's Ein Kampfum Rom (1876-1878) expressed a general mood of conservative nationalism and the interest of the empire in monumental actions, heroic figures, and grandiose events. Conversely, historical novels can become an indirect vehicle of social criticism because they allow for the transference of current social problems and conflicts to the past. This transference was often used to divorce criticism or controversial topics from their contemporary setting (for the purpose of expressing criticism at all), a method frequently used in the 20th century by authors in "innere Emigration" (e.g., Gertrud von Le Fort's Der Papst aus dem Ghetto. Die Legende des Geschlechtes Pier Leone, 1930) and in exile (e.g., Lion Feuchtwanger's Jud Sufi, 1925, Die hafiliche Herzogin, 1923). After World War II, historical novels lost some of their popularity; the genre was revived in some fictional biographies (Rosemarie Schuder, Agrippa und das Schiff der Zufriedenen, 1977; Christa Wolf, Kein Ort, Nirgends, 1979; Elisabeth Plessen, Kohlhaas, 1979) as well as a number of other important novels by women (Sandra
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Paretti, Der Winter, der ein Sommer war, 1972; Marianne Fritz, Das Kind der Gewalt und die Sterne der Romani, 1980; Hilde Spiel, Die Fruchte des Wohlstands, 1981; and Eveline Hasler, Ibicaba. Das Paradies in den Kopfen, 1985). Christa Wolf, in her narrative Kassandra (1983), imagined—based on matriarchal mythology—a society free from patriarchal oppression set against the background of the Trojan War. Renewed interest in women in medieval and early modern times has resulted in a number of novels, especially about witches (Bernhard Schnellen's Der Fdhnrich Maria, 1994; Wolfgang Lohmeyer's Die Hexe, 1994; Maria Bengtsson's Die Hexe und ihr Racher, 1994). Feminist historical novels are inspired by a critical reevaluation of traditional historical portrayal, that is, the history of great men. Since women have made history only in exceptional cases and have therefore been included in traditional historiography only as exceptions, novels since the 1980s have continued a trend begun by 19th-century historians like Luise Otto-Peters, Ida Klokow, and Ida von Diiringsfeld: the missing women's history is invented in fiction, and missing documents and hard facts are replaced with educated guesses and speculation based on related data in order to reconstruct the role of women in history. This tendency to invent the missing history of women and to add it to the known history of man is especially obvious in historical novels by women. One of the most important novelists of the genre was Benedikte Naubert, author of many historical novels, which literary histories often denigrate as ' 'Ritter- und Rauberromane." Naubert (not, as is often claimed, Sir Walter Scott), introduced the novel on two levels, separating the historical background from the fictional plot, a technique that earned Scott the epithet "father of the historical novel," although Scott himself credited Naubert for the technique and her tremendous influence on his own work. Caroline Pichler earned great success with a series of Austrian historical novels: Die Belagerung Wiens (1824), Die Schweden in Prag (1827), and Die Wiedereroberung von Of en (1829). Luise Miihlbach (pseudonym for Klara Muller-Mundt) wrote many voluminous historical novels, 20 of which were immediately translated into English. Unlike her contemporary Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, who viewed history as the stories of kings, generals, and heroes, Miihlbach portrayed women extensively in all of her historical novels, mostly in their private role as lovers, wives, mothers, and sisters. Louise von Francois' works are also the result of extensive historical studies; her historical novels Die letzte Reckenburgerin (1871) and Frau Erdmuthens Zwillingssohne (2 vols., 1873) were considered prime examples of the genre. Authors like Miihlbach and Francois were instrumental in popularizing historical women characters. In later historical novels (e.g., Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti's Jesse und Maria, 1906) the emphasis on the female (rather than male) historical protagonist continues. Clara Viebig's Die Wacht am Rhein (1902) has been considered a genuine Naturalistic historical novel. Perhaps the most influential historical novelist of the early 20th century was Ricarda Huch. Huch was a historian with a doctoral degree and a very successful writer of fiction, historical studies, and a combi-
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nation of both. Some of her historical studies are biographical novels and simultaneously psychological studies, for example, Das Leben des Grafen Federigo Confalieri (1910) and Die Geschichten von Garibaldi (2 vols., 19061907). Her novel Der grofie Krieg in Deutschland (1912-1914) combines scholarly historiography with imaginative fiction, men's (and a few women's) historical deeds with many examples of female oppression and suffering. Another historical novel to deal with women's topics, for instance, motherhood and the suffering inflicted on women in times of war, is Ina Seidel's Das Wunschkind (1930). Her Lennacker (1938) and Das unverwesliche Erbe (1954) are fictional accounts of the history of the Lutheran Church and the confessional division. Great women of the past remain an immensely rich source of topics for women's writing and research. See also: Biography; Drama, Historical; Epos; Grunderzeit; History, Women's; Inner Emigration Matriarchy; Naturalism; Otto-Peters, Louise; Realism; Witch; Wolf, Christa. References: Aust, Hugo, Der historische Roman (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); KurthVoigt, Lieselotte E., and William H. McClain, "Louise Mtihlbach's Historical Novels: The American Reception." Internationales Archiv fiir Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 6 (1981): 52-77; Maierhofer, Waltraud, "Wahrheit und Dichtung. Historiographie und Fiktion im Erzahlwerk Ricarda Huchs." Euphorion 88 (1994): 139-55; Plessen, Elisabeth, ' 'liber die Schwierigkeiten, einen historischen Roman zu schreiben (Am Beispiel des 'Kohlhaas')." Deutsche Literatur in der Bundesrepublik seit 1965. Ed. Paul Michael Ltitzeler and Egon Schwarz (Konigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1980) 195-201; Roberts, David, and Philip Thomson, eds., The Modern German Historical Novel. Paradigms, Problems, Perspectives (New York: Lang, 1991); Sottong, Hermann J., Transformation und Reaktion. Historisches Erzahlen von der Goethezeit zum Realismus (Munich: Fink, 1992); Wesseling, Elisabeth, Writing History as a Prophet: Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical Novel (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991). WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER
N o v e l , P s y c h o l o g i c a l . The psychological novel is concerned with the protagonists' inner reality and emphasizes human thought and emotions over external situations and events. According to this definition, psychological literature was an established genre in the 19th century (notable authors are Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Christiane von Breden) and flourished particularly during the period of Realism. Following Sigmund Freud's theories, psychological literature experienced a revival in psychoanalytically influenced novels, which attempt to examine the protagonists' inner reality in portrayals of dreams and sublimated wishes (e.g., in works by Helene Bohlau and Lou Andreas-Salome). Despite the depth of the characters and the emphasis on personal experience in psychological literature, the characters must often be interpreted within the framework of relationships and the novel's larger social environment. For example, Christa Wolf's complex and sophisticated novels such as Kindheitsmuster (1976) and Nachdenken iiber Christa T. (1968) can be properly understood
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only in the political context of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By examining the interrelationship between individual subjective experience and the sociohistorical and cultural contexts in which the psychological novel is situated, the literary critic arrives at a richer and more meaningful interpretation. Twentieth-century novels that could be considered psychological novels include Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin (1983), in which the author uses grotesque actions to portray her character's inner state and development. Barbara Frischmuth in Kai und die Liebe zu den Mode lien (1979) thematizes women's attempt to combine their various roles as artists, wives, and mothers. Ingeborg Drewitz describes intergenerational conflicts between mother and daughter in Eis auf der Elbe (1982). Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina (1971) is perhaps one of the most notable examples of the genre: the inner conflicts of the female protagonist cannot be resolved and lead to her death. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Father-Daughter Relationship; GDR Literature; Gesellschaftsroman; Grotesque; Jelinek, Elfriede; MotherDaughter Relationship; Psychoanalysis; Realism; Wolf, Christa. References: Fiirkas, Joseph, Der Ursprung des psychologischen Romans. Karl Philipp Moritz' "Anton Reiser" (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977); Hirsch, Marianne, The Mother/ Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Kraft, Helga, and Elke Liebs, eds., Mutter-Tochter-Frauen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Kuhn, Anna K., Christa Wolfs Utopian Vision (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Serke, Jurgen, Frauen schreiben. Ein neues Kapitel deutschsprachiger Literatur (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1982). BARBARA FRANTZ Novella. A short prose work that Johann Wolfgang Goethe described as a "sich ereignete unerhorte Begebenheit," the novella showcases a dual emphasis on compression—in the novella's action—and expansion—in its thematic implications. Many novellas consist of a frame story (Rahmenerzdhlung) and an inner story (Binnenerzdhlung), related by a narrator who is a character in the frame story. Important 19th-century women authors of the genre are Annette von DrosteHiilshoff, the Austrian Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Betty Paoli, and Ida Fleischl-Marxow. Their novellas treat a wide range of themes: women's position in society (including the particularly difficult status of women writers, a status less respected in German-speaking countries than, for example, in England or Scandinavia), courtship and marriage (and the conflicts arising from the choice between marriage for love or marriage for money), class differences, and moral issues. Although women did write novellas during this period, novellas were not their predominant genre; most of the short prose they published tended to be travel literature and letters, not the economical prose of the novella. In the 20th century, the traditional, strict novella form has relaxed and expanded into more experimental, free-form Kurzprosa, a genre more suitable to the first-person reflections on women's changing social and political status.
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Many women writers wrote novellas in the 20th century. Gabriele Reuter's Eines Toten Wiederkehr (1910) combines 19th-century melodrama with symbolism and social realities to narrate a complicated family tale; Helene Bohlau's Regine, die Kochin (1913) relates the brief career of an unattractive cook who is both more and less than she seems; Ingeborg Bachmann's Ihr gliicklichen Augen (1972) uses the metaphor of a severely nearsighted woman to explore the inadequacies of language; Franziska Sellwig's Tee und Butterkekse (1987) focuses on the emotional dynamics of a lesbian triangle. Other novella writers who deserve further research include Isolde Kurz, Elisabeth Langgasser, Anna Seghers, Use Aichinger, Gabriele Wohmann, and many others. In addition, some writers associated with national socialism—Agnes Miegel and Lulu von StrauB und Torney, for instance—have been largely ignored for political reasons. See also: Anthology; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; EbnerEschenbach, Marie von; Fairy Tale Novella; Love; Marriage; Realism; Reuter, Gabriele; Short Story; Woman Writer. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Frauen, Literatur, Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985); Kaufmann, Eva, ed., Herr im Hause: Prosa von Frauen zwischen Griinderzeit und erstem Weltkrieg (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1989); Leibowitz, Judith, Narrative Purpose in the Novella (The Hague: Mouton, 1974); Paine, J.H.E., Theory and Criticism of the Novella (Bonn: Bouvier, 1979). KATHYSARANPA
o O c c a s i o n a l Literature—see: Gelegenheitsdichtung O d e . Any poem composed in lofty language—whether written in classical ode meter or not—can be considered an ode. Since an ode was originally meant to be sung, this type of poem is usually divided into verses. Traditionally, the ode has been occasional poetry commemorating nature, friends, deaths, or heroines or heroes. With subject matter ranging from the divine to the mundane, odes often also reflect on poetic production and can include references to ancient mythology, for example, Karoline von Giinderrode's "An Melete" (1806). Horace's metrical forms and light, singable style made him the most influential of the ancient ode authors. Sappho's works, also considered very songlike, were widely available in German from about 1705 onward. The nature poetry of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg and the odes of Anna Louisa Karsch, with their themes of kings, wars, intellectual luminaries, and so on, epitomize this branch of the tradition. Friederike Brun's elegiac odes introduce a more emotional, melancholic note; Claire Goll's "An ***" (1922) idealizes the American wilderness, and Sarah Kirsch's "Kiesel" (1979) elevates even gravel to a subject of literary praise. The ode also possesses a more cerebral and Pindaric style, which is most often associated with Friedrich Holderlin and the use of a tripartite structure. Remnants of this ode tradition can perhaps be detected in Friederike Mayrocker's opaque odes, which, as her titles indicate, often center on abstractions: "Ode an Verganglichkeit" (1973), "Ode an einen Ort." Ingeborg Bachmann's "An die Sonne" (1956) stages a tension between the presence and absence of sunlight
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but refuses to add a third element that would stabilize the relationship between these two antipodes. While women surely have participated in this male poetic tradition, it is particularly interesting to note that they have also consistently subverted the tradition of the ode by, for instance, refusing to praise what is generally considered praiseworthy. With all the rationality and enlightenment she could muster, Christiana Mariana von Ziegler explains in her "Ode" that she simply cannot fall in love, much less write a song in praise of a potential lover. Women's odes frequently call into question traditional objects of adoration, for example, Ziegler's "Das mannliche Geschlechte, Im Namen einiger Frauenzimmer Besungen" (1739); Betty Paoli's "Einem Welding" (1845); Goll's "An ***" (1922); Bachmann's "Einem Feldherrn" (n.d.). Women have sought out female friends, mentors, and muses as objects of their praise: Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff s "Katharine Schiicking"; Ida von Diiringsfeld's "An George Sand"; Kathinka Zitz-Halein's "Jeanne Manon Philipon-Roland" (1859); Marie von Najmajer's "Sappho" (1891); and Kirsch's "Der Droste wiirde ich gern das Wasser reichen" (1969). Often full of irony, many women praise what is not deemed laudable by men: Susanna von Kuntsch's "An einen guten Freund/ Welcher mit der Konigin Anna Exempel der Weiber Unbestandigkeit Beweisen Wolte" (1720); Paula Ludwig's "An meinen Sohn" (1927); Dagmar Nick's "An eine diffamierte Dame" (1969); and Ursula Krechel's "Hymne auf die Frauen der biirgerlichen Klasse" (1977). See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Hymn; Sonnet; Ziegler, Mariana Christiana von. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978); Cocalis, Susan L., The Defiant Muse. German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1986); Vietor, Karl, Geschichte der deutschen Ode (Munich: Drei Masken, 1923).
RACHEL FREUDENBURG Opera—see: Musical Theater O p e r e t t a . This term was originally used in the 17th century to designate a short opera, but by the 19th century it connoted a play with a romantic plot (spoken text) accompanied by an overture, songs, interludes, and dances. In contrast to the opera, it provided light (comic) fare intended as popular entertainment for the middle and lower classes. Its antecedents include the opera buffa, vaudeville, the Singspiel, and the (Zauber-)Posse mit Gesang. Operettas flourished in various European capitals (London, Paris, Vienna) during the 19th century, with each country developing a distinctly national variant of the genre. Thus, this form of musical theater is integrally bound to the cultural context that produced it, and the values it represents mirror the constituent elements of the emerging national identities of its time. The operetta as a genre did not survive
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the end of World War I (1914-1918), but was supplanted by the more internationally conceived musical review or Broadway type of musical. The center for operetta production in the German-speaking countries was Vienna. The golden age of operetta in the second half of the 19th century includes numerous works by Franz von Suppe, Johann StrauB Jr., Karl Millocker, and Carl Zeller; the silver age from the turn of the century until the end of the Austrian monarchy in 1918 is best represented by the compositions of Franz Lehar and Emmerich (Imre) Kalman. The distinguishing characteristics of the Viennese operetta were its waltzes, an ambiguity in its performance of gender, a certain (nonbourgeois) sexual license, and a pronounced dance component that audiences perceived as sensually exhilarating. In terms of gender representation, the Viennese operetta often scored (the lead) men's roles for mezzo-soprano, affording female actors the opportunity to play heroic or romantic parts. The possibilities for expressing female sexuality were also more varied in the Viennese operetta than in other contemporary performative contexts. Although women are usually not listed in the annals of operetta composers or librettists, the following German women dramatists wrote works that could be considered operettas (e.g., Schauspiel mit Gesang, [unspecified] libretto, musical farce, musical drama, Posse, vaudeville, comic opera, or Singspiel): Sophie Albrecht, Amalie von Sachsen, Margarethe Bernbrunn, Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, Pauline von Bronchowska, Wilhelmine von Chezy, Annette von DrosteHiilshoff, Helene von Druskowitz, Dora Duncker, Caroline Eichler, Friederike Ellmenreich, Marie Gordon, Marie Giinther, Philomene Hartl, Amalie von Helvig, Therese Huber, Ricarda Huch, Sophie von Knorring, Sophie Friederike Krickeberg, Therese Krones, Therese Megerle von Muhlfeld, Henriette Artemesia Marianne von Montenglaut, Marianne Neumann von MeiBenthal, Adele Minna Osterloh, Auguste Ribics, Friederike Sophie Seyler, Sophie Eleonore von Titzenhofer, and Friederike Helene Unger. Since the discovery of these possible operetta texts has been so recent, not much is known about them, but once they have been researched and assessed, their presence is certain to affect our understanding of the operetta tradition in the German-speaking countries. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Fairy Tale Drama; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Hosenrolle; Musical Theater; Posse; Singspiel. References: Klotz, Volker, Burgerliches Lachtheater: Komodie-Posse-SchwankOperette (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1987); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Traubner, Richard, Operetta: A Theatrical History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). SUSAN L. COCALIS Orientalism. Since the Crusades in the Middle Ages, particularly since Marco Polo's travels to China, the "mysterious Orient" has held great attraction for European adventurers, writers, and scholars. The term "Orientalism," which
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originally referred to a variety of (mostly scholarly) interests in Oriental matters, was given new currency through Edward Said's pioneering study Orientalism (1978, German 1981). In Said's analysis, Orientalism is a Western "style of thought," a discourse that developed into a cohesive, homogenizing system in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during the heyday of Anglo-French colonialism. Orientalism establishes a relationship of power between a superior Occident, marked by industry, order, control, and rationality, and an inferior Orient, characterized by sloth, deviance, sexual excess, cruelty, and irrationality. Although purely within the realm of the imaginary and representation, Orientalism informed colonialist theories as well as colonial practice. Said's theories have inspired as many follow-up studies as attacks, by Western as well as Oriental scholars. Critics bemoaned his "monolithic," "totalizing," or "reductive" concepts, his focus on the manipulation of the colonized in favor of the psychopathology of the colonizing subject, and his reluctance to engage in gender analysis. Significantly, Said himself eventually extended the range of his argument to include feminist approaches. In the context of German women's literature and feminist criticism, an Orientalist approach has proven particularly valuable in gender analyses of colonialism and colonialist/imperialist fantasies and in the rereading and reevaluation of women's Orientalist writings. On one hand, feminist critiques of Orientalist texts written by men have suggested parallels between Orientalist and other colonialist discourses: in both, the opposition of self and other is often predicated on the feminization of the other and an erotic investment in the other's subjugation. The focus on the Orientalist imagination of women writers, on the other hand, has thrown new light on their construction of the Orient: on their complicity with, or departure from, given Orientalist models. The earliest known Orientalist text written by a German woman, Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim's Pelagius (c.960), already contains all the Orientalist topoi (sex, violence, deviance, despotism) found in later writings. In subsequent centuries, the Orient seems to have constituted a site predominantly for male projections, until it is reclaimed by women in the 18th and early 19th centuries, under the influence of the tales of Arabian Nights and their female narrator: examples are the Oriental tales by Johanna von Wallenrodt ("Prinz Hassan der Hochherzige bestraft durch Rache und glucklich durch Liebe. Eine morgenlandische Urkunde," 1796), Benedikte Naubert ("Alme, oder Egyptische Mahrchen," 1798), and Karoline Pichler ("Zuleima," 1825); Karoline von Giinderrode' s fantasies of mysticism and passion, such as "Die Erscheinung," "Mahomeds Traum in der Wiiste," Mahomed, der Prophet von Mekka, "Geschichte eines Brahminen" (1804-1805); Helmina von Chezy's Hafis imitations; Marianne von Willemer's contributions to Johann Wolfgang Goethe's West-ostlicher Divan (1819-1827); and Annette von Droste-Hulshoff' s Kldnge aus dem Orient (1838). In the mid- to late 1800s, the Romantic Orientalist imagination ("the harem") is tested against real-life experience in the travelogues of Ida Pfeiffer (Reise einer Wienerin in das Heilige Land, 1844), Ida Hahn-Hahn (Or-
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ientalische Briefe, 1844), Marie Esperance von Schwarz (Blatter aus dem africanischen Reise-Tagebuche einer Dame, 1849), Anna Forneris (Schicksale und Erlebnisse einer Kdrntnerin wdhrend ihrer Reisen in verschiedenen Ldndern und fast 30jahrigen Aufenthaltes im Oriente, 1849), Maria Schuber (Meine Pilgerreise Uber Rom, Griechenland und Egypten durch die Wuste nach Jerusalem und zuriick, 1850), and Klara Miiller-Mundt (pseudonym Luise Miihlbach) (Reisebriefe aus Agypten, 1871). Germany's brief colonial period produced a flurry of memoirs by colonial women (Frieda von Biilow, Im Land der Verheifiung, 1899, a colonialist propaganda roman a clef that takes place on Zanzibar; Gabriele Reuter, "Aphrodite und ihr Dichter," 1894, a tale set in Egypt) or women married to local dignitaries (Emilie Ruete, Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin, 1886; the Austrian Djavidan Hanum, Harem. Erinnerungen der fruheren Gemahlin des Khediven von Agypten, 1930). In 20th-century texts, a Zionisminspired focus on the Near East and the Jew as Oriental (Else Lasker-Schiiler, Die Ndchte Tino von Bagdads, 1907, Der Prinz von Theben, 1912, Das Hebrderland, 1931; or in Anna Seghers, Post ins gelobte Land, 1943-1944) can be found next to women's adventurous world tours (e.g., Alice Schalek, Alma Karlin, Erna Pinner, Maria Leitner, Cacilie von Rodt). The tradition of Oriental tales (Hermynia zur Miihlen, All, der Teppichweber, 1923; Agnes Miegel, "Zein Alasman," 1927, "Das Marchen von Ali dem Dichter," 1954) is parodied in Irmtraud Morgner's Arabian Nights takeoff Hochzeit in Konstantinopel (1968). With the presence of real Orientals—workers, professionals, and students—in postwar Germany, attention shifts to an exploration of the relationship between self and other (Barbara Frischmuth, Unzeit, 1986) and to Orientals talking back (e.g., Torkan, Saliha Scheinhardt, Hulya Ozkan). See also: Colonial Literature; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Exotin; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Minority Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Postcolonialism; Reuter, Gabriele; Romanticism; Travelogues; Turkish-German Literature. References: Balke, Diethelm, "Orient und Orientalische Literaturen." Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 2nd ed. Ed. W. Kohlschmidt et al. (Berlin: Gruyter, 1955) 816ff; Pelz, Annegret, "Europaerinnen und Orientalismus." Frauen. Literatur. Politik. Ed. A. Pelz et al. (Hamburg: Argument, 1988) 205-18; Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), "Orientalism Reconsidered." Europe and Its Others I. Ed. Francis Barker et al. (Colchester: University of Essex Press, 1985) 14-27. SUSANNE ZANTOP Ottinger, Ulrike ( 1 9 4 2 - p r e s e n t ) . Avant-garde filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger's best known work, Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979), combines themes of masquerade, isolation, female narcissism, and objectification of women in a format that is episodic and antirealist, with an emphasis on stunning and painterly visualizations. Ottinger, an independent filmmaker living in Berlin since 1973, employs a surrealist aesthetic to explore possibilities for women's transformations within the power structures of society. Experimenting with camera, color, and lighting and using exaggeration and satire to break with audiences'
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genre expectations and reliance on cliches of conventional realism, Ottinger uses fantasy to mobilize the viewers' visual pleasure and seeks to make viewers more conscious of their own reality. Born as Ulrike Weinberg in Konstanz in 1942, Ottinger studied art in Munich and then Paris during the 1960s. With no formal film training, she made her first film, Laokoon und Sohne (1972), which marked the beginning of a lengthy collaboration with writer, actress, and costume designer Tabea Blumenschein. A costume fantasy with magical rituals and circuslike settings, the film depicts struggles against power structures and conventions that must be waged repeatedly since the power structures always reassert themselves. In Madame X—eine absolute Herrscherin (1977), a beautiful and tyrannical pirate calls for women all over the world who are bored with their conventional lives to rebel against the stifling conventions of their world and to join her for gold, love, and adventure. She takes on a diverse and fearless crew of women who themselves eventually succumb to hierarchical structures and thinking and then kill each other—only to take on a new crew of the same characters in different costumes. Bildnis einer Trinkerin portrays a wealthy, beautiful woman identified only as "Madame," who visits Berlin to drink herself to death. In a succession of visually stunning and bizarre costumes and situations, Madame (who never speaks) fantasizes different roles she might play within conventional society, but all her fantasies end self-destructively. In Freak Orlando (1981), loosely modeled after Virginia Woolf's novel, Orlando, who changes sexes and wanders through the history of Western culture, encounters freaks of all sorts in an exploration of normalcy and deviation by conventional standards. Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse (1984) parodies the Dr. Mabuse films in a collage intended to deconstruct consumerism, the media, big business, and gender socialization. In 1985, Ottinger directed a four-hour documentary, China—die Kunste, der Alltag, and in 1988 a fictionalized adventure story/travelogue of Mongolia called Johanna dArc of Mongolia (1988), in which seven Western women riding the Trans-Siberian Express are kidnapped by a Mongolian princess and her band of women in what turns out to be a peaceful and fascinating cultural exchange. Ottinger's work, which includes stage productions with Elfriede Jelinek, has been described as a basis for an erotic women's cinema. Ottinger has written, produced, and directed her own films but works collectively with her crew. She believes it is "unrealistic to make a film in which women revolt and triumph gloriously"—a stance that brought her much criticism from feminists. See also: Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Gender Transformation; Jelinek, Elfriede; Surrealism. References: Hake, Sabine, " 'And With Favorable Winds They Sailed Away': Madame X and Femininity." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 179-88; Hansen, Miriam, "Visual Pleasure, Fetishism, and the Problem of Feminine/Feminist Discourse." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V.
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Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 189-204; Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980); Silberman, Marc, "Interview with Ulrike Ottinger: Surreal Images." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 205-08. SANDRA FRIEDEN
Otto-Peters, Louise, nee Otto ( 1 8 1 9 - 1 8 9 5 ) . Louise Otto Peters, Saxon democrat and republican, women's activist, journalist, and fiction writer in the mid- to late 19th century, has often been praised as the "Lerche der deutschen Frauenbewegung." Motivated by the "Sehnsucht, nicht allein in und mit meiner Zeit zu leben, sondern auch/wr sie" (1878), she focused on women's issues and the social problems of industrialization. Her writings and life's work mark the beginnings of women's political journalism and their organizing to pursue middle-class objectives: women's education and careers, enabling them to gain financial independence and escape unwanted marriages of convenience. Inspired by the radical Vormdrz idealism of the 1840s, Otto-Peters publicly appealed to men's solidarity with women and advocated including woman's rights on the agenda of the democratic movement. At the same time, she called for women's own rights of association and assembly, so as to coordinate and strengthen their own emancipatory efforts. Under the motto "Dem Reich der Freiheit werb' ich Biirgerinnen," Otto-Peters founded the Frauen-Zeitung (1849-1852), a widely read organ of women's solidarity, which was banned during the reactionary Nachmdrz era. She was instrumental in the foundation of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein in 1865 and served as coeditor of its journal, Neue Bahnen, for 29 years. Besides her explicitly didactic journalism, Otto-Peters published poetry, many novels, well-researched pieces on witch-hunts and heroic women of the past, art reviews, and libretti. While her early works openly address contemporary social and women's problems, later ones, threatened by censorship, merely hint at them. Many texts portray independent, strong women characters of all ages, historical eras, social classes, and every marital status. Although criticized by her social democratic opponent Clara Zetkin as a "Gefangene ihrer Klasse," Otto-Peters showed great sympathy for the lower classes and acted on it. Like Bettina von Arnim and Louise Aston, she called attention to degrading labor conditions, especially those of women lace makers in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), Saxony. Otto-Peters' writings, published initially under a pseudonym, undoubtedly helped greatly to draw public attention to women's struggle for personal, social, and political self-determination. However, she accepted traditional concepts of femininity, considered marriage the "eigentlichen Beruf des Weibes," and tried to harmonize women's education with their domestic duties. Her reputation as a moderate, reasonable, and, above all, moral advocate of women's issues, op-
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posed to any such "indecency" as Louise Aston's smoking cigars, wearing pants, and propagating the "Emanzipation des Fleisches," may, in fact, have been the secret of her success in leading the early women's movement. See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Aston, Louise; Revolution, German (1848); Women's Journals; Young Germany; Zetkin, Clara. References: Bodeit, Friederun, ed., Ich mufi mich ganz hingeben konnen: Frauen in Leipzig (Leipzig: Verlag fiir die Frau, 1990); Boetcher Joeres, Ruth-Ellen, ed., Die Anfange der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1983); Gerhard, Ute, et al., eds., "Dem Reich der Freiheit werb'ich Biirgerinnen"': Die Frauen-Zeitung von Louise Otto (Frankfurt/M.: Syndikat, 1980); Koepcke, Cordula, Louise Otto-Peters: Die rote Demokratin (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1981); Kohlhagen, Norgard, "Louise Otto-Peters." Frauen: Portrdts aus zwei Jahrhunderten. Ed. Hans Jiirgen Schultz (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1981) 102-13. KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN
p Pacifism. The term, coined by Emile Arnaud in 1901, is derived from the Latin pacificus and refers to a radical, idealistic branch of the peace movement that denies the necessity of militaristic peacekeeping measures, such as the buildup of armaments in the interests of self-defense. The connection between pacifism and feminism lies not only in their common roots (both were originally middle-class movements) but also in their common goal (to obliterate hierarchical structures that promote violence). Most early feminist pacifist literature relies on a biological or essentialist argument to support the claim that women must play a central part in the peace process. As life bearer and nurturer, a woman is inherently more interested in, and capable of establishing, a lasting peace. Socialist feminists, however, draw a theoretical link between feminism and pacifism: war and sexism stem, they argue, from common patriarchal roots. Bertha von Suttner made significant contributions to European pacifism during its formative years. She cofounded and was president of the Austrian Gesellschaft der Friedensfreunde (1891), cofounded the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (1892) and prompted Alfred Nobel to establish his peace prize (1892), which she received in 1905. An avid participant in peace conferences throughout her life, her novels and essays also bear witness to her unique contribution to the peace movement. While other female pacifists, such as Margarethe Selenka, were largely satisfied with the establishment of the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague (1899, 1907), Suttner fought for a change of attitude that would make war obsolete and such world-policing institutions unnecessary. Her Die Waff en nieder! (1889), which describes with emotional intensity the impact
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of war on an individual woman's life, enjoyed immediate success. A periodical of the same name appeared from 1892 to 1899. During the Weimar Republic, supporters of pacifism distanced themselves from feminism; simultaneously, the movement shifted its focus from a textual to a more directly political approach. Alfred Hermann Fried and Carl von Ossietzky promoted a revolutionary, scientific pacifism and rejected Suttner's brand of pacifism as whiny and lachrymose. Feminist peace organizations, such as the Internationale der Kriegsdienstgegner, cofounded by Helene Stocker in 1921, worked in relative isolation from the mainstream pacifist movement. The rise of national socialism united the various pacifist factions once more in opposition to Hitler. Sophie Scholl was a major voice in peace movements during the Third Reich. Since the 1950s, the association of pacifism with feminism has been strengthened by the awareness that political and psychological connections between world peace and woman's rights exist. "New framework scholarship" or "new social order perspective" is a modern feminist peace theory that argues that war politics and social exploitation are inextricably entwined and that gender socialization has a profound impact on peacekeeping efforts. Feminist involvement, both theoretical and practical, in the pacifist movement of the 20th century has thus served to broaden our understanding of this phenomenon, transforming it from a political or technical issue into one of psychological and sociological significance. See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; National Socialism; Resistance (World War II); Socialism; Weimar Republic; World War I; World War II. References: Hamann, Brigitte, Bertha von Suttner. Ein Leben fiir den Frieden (Munich: Piper, 1986); Quistorp, Eva, ed., Scheherazade. Stimmen von Frauen gegen die Logik des Krieges (Hamburg: Luchterhand, 1992); Scharffenorth, Gerta, and Wolfgang Huber, eds., Neue Bibliographic zur Friedensforschung (Stuttgart: Klett, 1973); Schenk, Herrad, Frauen kommen ohne Waff en. Feminismus und Pazifismus (Munich: Beck, 1983).
ELIZABETH CALKIN
Pamphlet/Flugblatter. During the early modern period, Flugbldtter (broadsheets) and Flugschriften (pamphlets) served as an important means of communicating theological, political, and social ideas of contemporary importance to a largely urban audience. The Flugblatt was usually printed on one side and consisted of an illustration, occasionally executed by engravers such as Albrecht Diirer, and a prose or verse text. In contrast, the Flugschrift generally appeared without illustration and resembled a quarto-size book of several pages. Because of their frequently incendiary content, especially during the early years of the Reformation (1519-1525), many broadsheets and pamphlets were published anonymously, and the name of the printer and the date of publication were suppressed. Several key early Reformation documents were published as pamphlets, for example, Martin Luther's 1520 tracts An den christlichen Adel; Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen; De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae; the anonymous Karsthans dialogues, revealing the socioeconomic plight of the
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peasants; and Catholic reactions to the call for reform (Thomas Murner's Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren, 1522). Women writers contributed briefly to the exchange of polemical pamphlets between Catholics and Protestants during the early 1520s, but as the Lutheran Church became institutionalized, they were forced into silence. Despite the Pauline injunction (1 Timothy 2:11-15) that women should neither teach nor preach, Katharina Zell of Strasbourg, the Bavarian noblewoman Argula von Grumbach, and the Saxon tax collector's wife Ursula Weyda felt compelled by the urgency of the religious controversy to publish on behalf of the Protestant cause. Zell, who had recently married an ex-priest, defended the right of the clergy to marry in her Entschuldigung Katharina Schutzinn/ fur M. Matthias Zellen/jren Ehegemahel (Strasbourg, 1524), a work that was confiscated by the Strasbourg city council. Although Zell was forbidden to publish again, she later wrote hymns, psalms, and another pamphlet in 1557 against conservative Lutherans, who had accused her of deriving inspiration from the Devil. Argula von Grumbach was similarly apologetic for the right of clergy to marry (Grund und ursach aufi gotlichen rechten, warumb Prior und Convent in Sant Annen-Closter zu Augspurg jren standt verendert haben, Augsburg, 1526), but she attracted more attention for her heated defense of a Protestant instructor at the University of Ingolstadt, Arsacius Seehofer, who had been compelled to recant his teachings. In pamphlets directed at the Ingolstadt faculty senate, the duke of Bavaria, and the duke of Saxony, Argula called for Seehofer's reinstatement and ecclesiastical reform. In response, the duke of Bavaria suggested that Argula's husband cut off two of her fingers to prevent her from further writing. Because of her continued notoriety, however, especially at the 1524 Nuremberg diet, her husband was dismissed by the duke of Bavaria from his sinecure; Argula ceased publishing after 1526 to preserve her household from further harm. Ursula Weyda likewise fell silent shortly after the appearance of her well-argued 1524 pamphlet against the Benedictines at Pegau, in which she decried the corruption of the Catholic clergy. In contrast to the small, but active, role women played in pamphlet literature, the known authors of the texts of surviving broadsheets were male (although the printers and sellers were sometimes women), and these works generally served to reinforce the patriarchal order. Women were most often represented as sexually promiscuous (e.g., representations of women at the baths; women cavorting playfully with lascivious fleas; witches consorting with devils) and threats to male authority (e.g., women beating their husbands), whose "natural" evil must be contained. See also: Hymn; Reformation; Witch. References: Bainton, Roland H., Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971); Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Heinsius, Maria, Das uniiberwindliche Wort: Frauen der Reformationszeit (Munich: Kaiser, 1951); Matheson, Peter, ed., Argula von Grumbach: A Woman's Voice in the Reformation
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(Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1995); Moxey, Keith, "The Battle of the Sexes and the World Upside Down." Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Russell, Paul A., Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany 1521-1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Schilling, Michael, Bildpublizistik der friihen Neuzeit: Aufgaben und Leistungen des illustrierten Flugblatts in Deutschland bis um 1700 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990).
JAMES A. PARENTE P a r a b l e . This is a comparison cloaked in a short, schematic narrative, and is closely related to both fairy tale and fable. Originally a rhetorical device used to persuade an audience, the parable has always been an important component of both religious and didactic literature. In fact, the parable—by staging a relationship between the two parts of a comparison, between the story and its meaning—aims to express the human relationship with a greater, transcendent meaning. These two aspects—the didactic and the metaphysical—dominated this prose form until, in the late 19th century, the parable became a legitimate artistic form. By this time, women were no longer primarily the consumers and didactic objects of the parable, but its producers as well. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote two volumes of parables, Parabeln, Marchen und Gedichte (1892) and Altweibersommer (1909), some of which preach a strict ethical code of social responsibility, some of which take an incisive look at gender relationships, and still others that explore the relativity of all religious belief. Such relativization and the inaccessibility of divine wisdom are characteristic of the early 20thcentury parable: it seeks not to teach in a heavy-handed manner (Lehrparabel) but to incite the reader to quest for insight, or to initiate self-reflection. In this respect, the parable is considered the quintessential modernist prose form, and as such, it often constitutes the backbone of one-act dramas and short stories. The sardonic, parabolic writing of Ingeborg Bachmann challenges traditional icons of poetic wisdom, such as the sphinx ("Das Lacheln der Sphinx," 1949) and the Robinsonade (the radio play Zikaden, 1955). Instead of staging a quest for truth, Use Aichinger's enigmatic "Der Gefesselte" (1953) exemplifies existentialist alienation and a pronounced skepticism toward rationality. In an effort to counter the seemingly vapid nature of consumer society, Marie Luise Kaschnitz gives the quest for meaning an aesthetic and individualistic turn. In a similar vein, Gisela Eisner's entertaining Triboll (1956) explores the desire for individuality and identity in mass culture. While most 20th-century authors of the parable view transcendental meaning with distrust, the nostalgic, religious parables of Juliane Bocker, in Die Versuchung der Suleika (1975), attempt to resurrect a belief in eternal paradise and view doubt and resignation as the real temptation. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Existentialism; Fable; Fairy Tale; Horspiel; Lehrdichtung; Poetry, Spiritual; Robinsonade.
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References: Billen, Josef, ed., Deutsche Parabeln (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982); Brettschneider, Werner, Die moderne deutsche Parabel (Berlin: Schmidt, 1971); Elm, Theo, Die moderne Parabel (Darmstadt: Fink, 1982); Elm, Theo, and Hans-Helmut Hiebel, eds., Die Parabel (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986). RACHEL FREUDENBURG
P a r o d y / P a s t i c h e . Parody, an amusing or mocking imitation of the style of a writer or speaker, consciously reproduces conventions of earlier models through specific references, repetitions, and allusions to other texts. In its adaptation of preceding styles, parody often emphasizes and exaggerates typical features of the original text or performance in order to make a point. By evoking another artistic model or models in a humorous or ironic manner, writers may use parody to criticize and change the effect of earlier texts and to challenge and subvert existing genres, messages, or ideologies. Women writers have used parody as a strategy for undermining dominant social constructions of gender. Because male authors and standards have controlled the production of literature over the centuries, aspiring women writers have been forced to conform to men's literary paradigms. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women authors were influenced by the male-dominated cultural traditions of Classicism and Romanticism. Recent Germanist feminist scholarship has focused on the ways in which women authors have adapted male literary traditions and genres to suit their own needs. Throughout history, women writers have produced texts in dialogue with the mainstream literary discourse of their day, employing parody as a tactic of cultural appropriation and revision to subvert the dominant aesthetic paradigms. At the turn of the 19th century, women's texts both reflected and responded to Johann Wolfgang Goethe's literary hegemony and influence in their lives as authors. In the 20th century, intertextual allusion and play create parody in modern and postmodern performance and written texts. Erika Mann's cabaret, "Die Pfeffermuhle," which played in theaters from 1953 to 1957, parodied stereotypes of femininity through Grotesktanz. In the 1970s and 1980s, women authors continued to use parody to criticize dominant representations of women in the media as well as ideologies about women and femininity. In the collection of short stories Geschlechtertausch (1980), Sarah Kirsch, Irmtraud Morgner, and Christa Wolf wrote ironic accounts of individuals' sex reversals, playing on contemporary gender stereotypes. Morgner's critique of women's situation in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is documented in two novels that parody historical figures, such as medieval women troubadors, and mythical women, such as witches. Elfriede Jelinek parodies styles of television series in Michael: Ein Jugendbuch fiir die Infantilgesellschaft (1972) to expose the power of the media to passivize viewers. Pastiche, a text that borrows from one or more works and adheres to the exact forms of the original, is closely related to parody, but without the ironic effect. Both parody and pastiche are devices of intertextuality, citing and including
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material from other texts in a self-conscious manner. In Malina (1974), Ingeborg Bachmann incorporates various artistic forms—musical compositions and fairy tales—structurally and thematically into her text, drawing on, and critiquing, traditional cultural forms. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Cabaret; Classicism; Fairy Tale; Gender Transformation; Grotesque; Jelinek, Elfriede; Morgner, Irmtraud; Picaresque Novel; Romanticism; Wolf, Christa. References: Bauer, Dale M., and Susan Jaret McKinstry, eds., Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Hutcheon, Linda, The Politics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1989); Rose, Margaret A., Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). LISA BERNSTEIN Participation a n d Exclusion. While the exclusion of women from the arenas of power and politics has long been the credo and focus of feminist research, only since the 1980s have theorists shifted the focus to women's participation in this domain. Most notably, Christina Thiirmer-Rohr has asked disturbing questions about the participation of women in the development of patriarchal culture. Sigrid Weigel has posed similar questions and has made related observations in her analysis of women's writing. In so doing, both Thiirmer-Rohr and Weigel have taken feminist discussion beyond the old binaries of victim and perpetrator. In her much-discussed and controversial essay "Aus der Tauschung in die Ent-Tauschung: Zur Mittaterschaft von Frauen" (first pub. in 1983), ThiirmerRohr develops the notion of female complicity (Mittaterschaft). She contends that women have been complicit in men's crimes against women and the Earth, for without their participation men could not have carried out these crimes. The background of this essay as well as other essays published in the 1980s is a decade of arms race and unprecedented environmental disasters. While women may have stood outside the citadels of power, they have not stood outside patriarchy. Thus, Thiirmer-Rohr's message is primarily directed toward women: stop supporting the men in power and their projects, their constructions, and inventions. At the core of Thiirmer-Rohr's argument is her conviction that women are simultaneously excluded and involved in male culture and society. Because of a thorough fusion of interests, women profit as well as suffer from their participation in patriarchal society. The reward for a general affirmation of man and social norms shaped by man is a place in society. Sigrid Weigel focuses on the linguistic and literary realms and argues that women actively participate in the male order that at the same time excludes them. Women use the same language and norms that objectify them; they are required to master a system of which they are the symbolic object. A woman's image of herself is determined by male images of women. The result of this
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insider/outsider position, or "doppelter Ort," is, according to Weigel, "der schielende Blick," a constantly shifting perspective. In order to survive in daily life, a woman must view the world with one eye looking/seeing through the lens of a man, while the other eye is free to envision her own dreams and wishes, anticipating the liberated woman that is not yet imaginable in concrete terms. Weigel's later writings show an even more critical assessment of the possibility of liberation from patriarchal perceptions. In Die Stimme der Medusa (1987) Weigel has traced the "schielende Blick" in literature by women, analyzing how women's language and style of writing, which she summarizes as "Schreibweise," deal with this insider/outsider existence. As possible strategies she lists, among others, adaptation, masquerade, encoding, and the broken or paradoxical usage of conventional genres. While rejecting normative definitions of women's literature, she stakes out a theoretical position that reflects women's participation in, and exclusion from, society as well as from literary history. See also: Dialogics, Feminist; Feminist Theory, German; Gender Theories, History of; Patriarchy; Victimization Theories. References: Studienschwerpunkt "Frauenforschung" am Institut fiir Sozialpadagogik der TU Berlin, ed., Mittaterschaft und Entdeckungslust (Berlin: Orlanda Frauen verlag, 1989); Thurmer-Rohr, Christina, Vagabundinnen: Feministische Essays (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1987); Weigel, Sigrid, "Der schielende Blick: Thesen zur Geschichte weiblicher Schreibpraxis." Die verborgene Frau. Sechs Beitrdge zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Inge Stephan and S. Weigel (Berlin: Argument, 1983) 83-137, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987), Topographien der Geschlechter: Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Literatur (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990). HEIKE HOFMANN P a s s i o n Play—see: Drama, Biblical Pastiche—see: Parody/Pastiche P a s t o r a l Literature. This is a form of literature favored during the Baroque period (1600-1720). Written in all genres, pastoral literature frequently takes the form of a love story between shepherd and shepherdess in an idealized patriarchal/pastoral setting. Pastoral literature expresses a longing for a (highly stylized) nature or naturalness, a lost golden age, and a love of masquerade. Though conventional, pastoral literature has nevertheless allowed diverse and enriching permutations. The Pegnesischer Blumenorden (founded 1644) was the only Baroquelanguage society to encourage female participation, perhaps due to its members' self-sty lization as shepherds, who by generic definition require shepherdesses. Among its nearly two dozen female members was Gertrud Moller, known as "Mornille" (Parnafi-Blumen oder Geistliche und Weltliche Lieder, 1672). As a group the Pegnitzers cultivated highly allegorical pastoral poetry, both religious
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and nonreligious. As Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg's poetry indicates, the pastoral realm as one of sexual pleasure is problematic for female poets. In one poem, Greiffenberg transformed the pastoral male lover into a female and disputed the worldly love content of the genre. Her ''Andacht-Bereitung/zur Betrachtung des H. Leidens Christi..." (1662) rejects the loyalty of an earthly shepherd in favor of Jesus, the eternal shepherd; the pastoral setting of her "Spazier- oder Schafer-Liedlein" (1662) prompts a shepherdess' meditation on the glory of God's creation and her modest place within it. Both the city/country opposition that is implicit in pastoral literature and the Horatian desideratum for life in the country involving books, walks, and conversations with friends are themes of the novel Die Kunst- und tugend-gezierte Macarie (1673), a combined effort of another Pegnitz shepherdess, Maria Katharina Stockfleth, and her husband. The novel's second part, authored by Maria Katharina, presages Friedrich Schiller's 1795 treatise Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung with its egalitarian shepherds' community, strong moral orientation, and suggestions for social reform. Pastoral themes continue in women's writing during the 18th century. Christiana Mariana von Ziegler assumed the role of the shepherdess (Galathee, Doris, and Sylvia) longing for her absent shepherd in her Vermischte Schriften (1739). Caroline Neuber's drama Das Schdferfest oder Die Herbstfreude (1753) represents a characteristic 18th-century moralistic transformation in the service of the Enlightenment credo of reason. The pastoral poems of Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann, composed for anniversaries and weddings, contrast pastoral virtue with worldly vice. Later adaptations of pastoral themes and styles include Trautgott Christiana Dorothea Lober's Idyllen und Lieder (1784) and Sophie Mereau's "Einige kleine Gemalde" (1801-1802). Several early 19th-century female writers responded to the oldest pastoral conventions. Caroline Pichler, besides writing biblical pastorals, also reverted to Theocritian and Virgilian dialogue conventions in celebrating rural life and occupations in her Idyllen (1802-1812). Louise Brachmann wrote elegiac pastoral monologues and dialogues, many on Greek themes and in imitation of Greek meter ("Die Hirtenknaben"; "Lykaon und Euboa"). Amalie von Helvig, influenced by Weimar Classicism, set several idylls in Greek-inspired period settings in Die Schwestern auf Corcyra (1812). The cyclicity of pastoral existence is thematized in "Des alten Pfarrers Woche" (1835) by Annette von DrosteHiilshoff. The conventions of the pastoral, particularly the locus amoenus, live on in much nature lyric written by female writers, while the idyll has come to absorb most of the genre's Utopian vision. See also: Baroque Literature; Classicism; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Enlightenment; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Idyll; Language Societies; Mereau, Sophie; Nature; Nature Poetry; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Brandes, Ute, "Studierstube, Dichterklub, Hofgesellschaft. Kreativitat und kultureller Rahmen weiblicher Erzahlkunst im Barock." Deutsche Literatur von
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Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich, Beck: 1988) I: 222-47; Gnadinger, Louise, "Ister-Clio, Teutsche Uranie, Coris die Tapfere. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-1694). Ein Portrait." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich, Beck: 1988) I: 248-64.
ELIZABETH POWERS
Patriarchy. Before the 20th century, the concept of patriarchy referred to the church fathers or patriarchs and their rule. Max Weber, a renowned German sociologist at the turn of the century, defined patriarchy as a system of government in which men ruled societies through their positions as heads of households. In the 1970s, feminist sociologists narrowed this definition to the designation of men's rule over women while disregarding men's domination of other men. To feminists, patriarchy means a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women. Patriarchy was created in a historic process that took nearly 2,500 years to complete. The basic unit of its organization was the patriarchal family. During the Neolithic period of agricultural development, patriarchal rule fostered the intertribal exchange of women as a means to avoid warfare and because societies with more women could produce more children. The sexual and reproductive capacities and services of women became a commodity. Women became a resource, acquired by men as land was acquired. Roles and behavior deemed appropriate to the sexes were translated into values, customs, social roles, and laws. The patriarchal family both represented and continuously generated gender-specific roles, norms, and values. Men also appropriated and transformed major symbols of female power, such as the mother goddess and fertility goddesses, and based their theologies on the metaphor of male procreativity and superiority. Female existence was defined in a narrow and sexually dependent way. On the basis of such symbolic constructs, embedded in Greek philosophy, Judeo-Christian theologies, and the legal tradition on which Western civilization is built, men explained the world in terms that put them at the center of discourse. Women have for millennia participated in the process of their subordination. Because, for the most part, they were excluded from active participation in culture and history, they became psychologically shaped so as to internalize the idea of their inferiority. The feminist movements of the 1890s and 1970s resulted in measures that corrected legal inequalities, such as women's access to higher education, their right to vote, their position within the family and society. But in spite of the many achievements women have gained in their struggle for equality, today's society has not lost its basic patriarchal structures, which include, according to feminist scholar Sylvia Walby, (1) patriarchal production relations in the household (women do housework for their own maintenance), (2) patriarchal relations within paid work (women are often excluded from the most prestigious and best-paid employment), (3) patriarchal government and state (systematic patriarchal bias in politics and actions), (4) male violence (often
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condoned), (5) patriarchal relations in sexuality (compulsory heterosexuality, sexual double standard), and (6) patriarchal cultural institutions (representation of women within a patriarchal gaze in areas like religion, education, and the media). In spite of Walby's grim analysis, women have made inroads in all of these areas and have started to change them. Their greatest achievement on the way to overcome patriarchy is perhaps the fact that they have regained an awareness of a history and cultural tradition of their own. From this secure standpoint, women scholars and artists in all fields construct theories and produce works that analyze the effects of patriarchy. Many German literary works by women criticize the destructive elements of patriarchal rule and "progress" based on instrumental reason and see hope only in a society that respects life and nature. Both Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina (1971) and Christa Wolf's Kassandra reflect a very bleak outlook on the survival of humanity in patriarchal societies. In both works, patriarchy's quest for progress is seen as a world of crimes committed against women, whose extreme form of protest is death. In many of Margrit Schriber's novels, women cannot survive in the hostile male world; thus, they retreat into the shell of their own narrow confinement or into death. Scathing and sarcastic criticism of patriarchy is exemplified in the grotesque and deadly outcomes of patriarchal indoctrination in Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin (1983). Equally critical of patriarchy, but employing imagination and humor while never relinquishing a Utopian vision, are Irmtraud Morgner's two novels Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974) and Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (1983). The poetic and dreamlike world of Gertrud Leutenegger's Der Gouverneur (1981) also expresses criticism of patriarchy in its juxtaposition of male logic and destruction of nature with women's attempt to grow a "garden of life." See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Family; Gender Theories, History of; Goddess; History, Women's; Jelinek, Elfriede; Matriarchy; Morgner, Irmtraud; Nature; Participation/ Exclusion; Utopia; Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement. References: Borneman, Ernest, Das Patriarchat (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1975); Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Walby, Sylvia, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). KATHARINA AULLS Patriotism/Nationalism. Before the mid-19th century, the term "patriotism" characterized a sociopolitical attitude based on a general love of one's country or community, often combining emancipatory and patriotic political efforts. Only since the 1850s has patriotism been associated with nationalistic ideologies. Recent scholarship has looked into women's involvement in patriotic activities such as Louise Otto's Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein or Gertrud Baumer's Nationaler Frauenverein, founded in 1914. During times of war, these organizations promoted the education of nurses, provided unpaid voluntary
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work, and collected money for charitable and military purposes, thereby supporting national politics. Treatment of the theme in various literary genres range from Anna Luisa Karsch's patriotic odes for Friedrich II to Friederike Helene Unger's novel Julchen Griinthal (1784-1789) and Therese Huber's novel Die Familie Seldorff (1795), which are set against the background of the French Revolution and deal with emancipatory issues. Johanna Baltz wrote the play Die Konigin Luise (1883), which was performed at national festivities, and Elise Reindahl's tragedy Eleonore Prochaska (1819) portrays the female protagonist as a heroic virgin who died in the war against Napoleon. Ludowika Hesekiel's stories Gott mit Uns. Vaterldndische Erzahlungen (1883) and Gertrud von Le Fort's Hymnen an Deutschland (1932) combine religious themes with patriotic ideals. In times of national mobilization or war, concepts of femininity and womanhood were transformed according to national interests: women patriots are depicted as supporting the war effort, usually fighting on the "home front." Examples are Ina Seidel's book of war poems Neben der Trommel her (1915), Thea von Harbou's novel Die deutsche Frau im Weltkrieg (1916), Josefa Berens-Totenthol's national socialist speech "Die Frau als Schopferin und Erhalterin des Volkstums" (1938), and Kuni Termel-Eggert's famous novel Barb. Der Roman der deutschen Frau (1934). Most writers have been reluctant to address themes of nationalism and patriotism since the end of World War II and national socialism. Instead, patriotic themes have shifted from national to regional issues, as many texts written in dialect demonstrate. See also: Dialektdichtung; Hymn; National Socialism; Ode; Otto-Peters, Louise; Revolution, French; Revolution, German; Wars of Liberation; World War II. References: Busch, H. J., and U. Dierse, "Patriotismus." Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophic (Basel: Schabe, 1989) 208-18; Lipp, Carola, Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische Jungfrauen. Frauen im Vormdrz und in der Revolution 1848/9 (Buhl-Moos: Elster, 1986); Stoehr, Irene, Emanzipation zum Staat? (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1990). MARIATTE C. DENMAN P a t r o n a g e (Medieval Period). All medieval art was commissioned art. Institutions such as universities, hospitals, and religious foundations also depended on patronage. Women participated in medieval cultural life as patrons, perhaps more often than as artists. Yet, traditional ways of thinking about patronage (literally, the father's protection) have obscured the full range and significance of their patronage activities. Women's advancement of arts and institutions is most visible at the upper reaches of medieval society, where it resembled men's patronage and afforded similar benefits. But elite women also had gendered responsibilities that created distinctive patronage opportunities. Judith, Charlemagne's daughter-in-law and mother of Charles the Bald, advanced Walahfrid Strabo as her son's tutor as well as her own court poet. By patronizing Saxon royal monasteries, women in the household of Emperor Otto I—his mother, Mathilde; his second wife, Adel-
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heid; his daughter Mathilde; and his niece Gerberg—created an intellectual tradition that combined dynastic and spiritual goals, most notably in the image of the pious domina or saintly woman ruler. German noblewomen in the 13th century gave particular support to the writing of saints' lives. Eleanor of Aquitaine's advancement of poetry, romance, and history in all the languages of her realms is legendary. Her daughters carried her tradition through their marriages to distant territories, including Saxony and Bavaria, where her daughter Mathilde instigated the German adaptation of the "Song of Roland." Such family networks, in which artistic tastes and patronage traditions cemented alliances formed by political marriages, were not an isolated phenomenon. In the later Middle Ages, Mathilde of Austria practiced patronage on a grand scale as a wealthy widow. After two political marriages, Mathilde retired to the town of Rottenburg, north of Tubingen, and transformed her court into an intellectual and literary center. She helped endow two universities, Tubingen (along with her son) and Freiburg (with her second husband), as well as several religious foundations. Munificent to the end, she commissioned funerary monuments for herself and her first husband that are today recognized for their artistic merit. Other cultural transactions available to greater numbers of medieval women resembled patronage in many respects. For example, both nuns and lay women required pastoral care and spiritual guidance, and their religious advisers provided them with texts and translations. Women undoubtedly had some control over which texts were chosen. The number and variety of such works is vast. As early as the 12th century the Bavarian priest Alber composed the German Tnugdaluslegende at the request of three ladies, Otegebe, Heilke, and Gisel, whom he names but does not further identify. Much mystical writing was directed to women in interpersonal contexts that can be only partly reconstructed. A manuscript from Cologne dated about 1300 dedicates a group of anonymous mystical texts, including flower allegories, to an unspecified female readership. Though perhaps intended for nuns, texts like these rapidly circulated to lay readers. By the 15th century the translation of learned Latin texts for women readers was a major cultural phenomenon. Yet, activities involving translation rather than original composition, in which one or all of the parties are anonymous and in which groups, not individuals, are the beneficiaries, are rarely studied as forms of patronage, to the disadvantage of women. See also: Adaptation/Translation; Authorship; Medieval Literature; Saints. References: Bumke, Joachim, Mazene im Mittelalter: Die Gonner und Auftraggeber der hofischen Literatur in Deutschland 1150-1300 (Munich: Beck, 1979); Glier, Ingeborg, ed., Die deutsche Literatur im spaten Mittelalter: Reimpaargedichte, Drama, Prosa 1250-1370 (Munich: Beck, 1987); McCash, June Hall, ed., The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Westphal, Sara, Textual Poetics of German Manuscripts 1300-1500 (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993). SARAH WESTPHAL
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P h e n o m e n o l o g y . Developed in the 19th century by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel and transformed in the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology assumes that every phenomenon has an eidos, an intentional structure acting as the necessary basis and conditions for an object to appear as it does. The core (hyle) of that eidos is not empirical but rather directly given in intuition {Anschauung)', it is not an abstract form, but a center around which "meaning-sponsoring" acts of consciousness constitute phenomena (as Leistungen) within a closed world horizon. The phenomenologist uncovers this core not through reflection, but by enacting a phenomenological reduction or epoche to bracket out the particular in an appearance and to reduce it to its intentional core (a Wesensschau, revealing the essence underlying, for instance, all appearances of "chair"), to the appearance's necessary and invariant (or a priori) features within the horizon of the life world (Lebenswelt). Thereafter, the phenomenologist rebuilds the intentional character of the field of phenomena within the closed horizon of consciousness (a coherency criterion), showing how phenomena represent a conscious mind. Each phenomenon represents tacit connections to agent, object, and act of thinking, to what its enactment is about and to how it is carried out (to both its intent and its intentionality)—to the truth of its essence. Phenomenology defines art as an inter subjective intentional object for readers to concretize as their understanding of being-in-the-world; this interpretation is offered by Roman Ingarden (Das literarische Kunstwerk, 1931, Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks, 1937), Hans-Georg Gadamer (Wahrheit und Methode 1960), and much later by the Konstanz school of reader reception or ''Rezeptionsdsthetik" (e.g., Hans-Robert Jauss, "Literaturgeschichte als Provokation," 1967, and Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens, 1976). Paul Ricoeur, in Temps et recit (1983), explores narrative structure, and Jacques Derrida, in De la grammatologie (1967), provides a critique of the field by tracing the play of presence and absence in an intentional phenomenal field of words in the Western intellectual traditions. Simone de Beauvoir offers in Le deuxieme Sexe (1949) what may be considered a feminist phenomenology of women's beingin-the-world—that is, examining how women's (self-)understanding is constituted. Luce Irigaray, in Ce Sexe qui n'en est pas un (1977), and Julia Kristeva, in Histoires d'amour (1983), critique the formalism inherent in earlier phenomenology's focus on transcendentalism by adding a phenomenology of the body (an immanent reference) as a fundamental ontology for the horizon of meaning surrounding the perceiving subject. More recently, Sandra Lee Bartky offers, in Femininity and Domination (1990), a phenomenology of feminine consciousness, particularly as impeding female agency. See also: Body, Female; Existentialism; Feminist Theory, French; Hermeneutics; Reader-Response Theories; Semiotics. References: Bartky, Sandra Lee, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 1990); Husserl, Edmund, "Phenomenology." Trans. C. V. Solomon. Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed. (1927) 17: 699-
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702; Lyotard, Jean-Francois, Phenomenology. Trans. Brian Beakley (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991).
KATHERINE ARENS Picara. Lopez de Ubeda's La picara Justina (1605) is an early example of a picaresque novel about a picara. The first German example of such a figure is in Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's Landstortzerin Courasche (1670). Both of these fictional autobiographies purportedly react to the previous adventures of a picaro. Yet, earlier legends of women rogues predate the stories of the picaro, thereby offering a parallel rather than a derivative tradition for the picara. These include F. de Roja's La Celestina (1499), F. Delicado's La lozana andaluza (1528), A. J. de Solas Barbadillo's La hija de Celestina (1612), and A. de Castillo Solorzano's Teresa de Menzenores (1631) and La garduna de Sevilla (1642). Nevertheless, the women in these early accounts are objects of ridicule and often preempted by a male narrator, who corrects or chastises them. The term "picaro" was commonly applied to kitchen or errand boys. Its designation of a person of low social standing came to be associated with a character of questionable virtue. The picara was regarded as being even lower in status than the picaro because of her gender. Yet, her figure also satirizes the concept of male superiority. The picaro serves many masters, but the picara is not a servant. She uses her wits and sexuality to survive and profit from her position in a materialist world. Her figure often possesses aspects attributed to witches, such as using herbal potions. Her interactions with various members of society demonstrate that any appeals to morals or emotions are grounded in financial profit. The picara seldom marries in a culturally affirming manner: she either does not marry, does so several times, or the marriages are of short duration. Marriage offers her (often financial) advantages. The picara is also judged according to her husband's status rather than her profession. Usually childless, she served in 17th-century novels as an example of a world gone awry, in which social conditions no longer contained the woman in the role of wife and mother. In later novels, the narrative perspective aligns itself with the picara against patriarchal society. German picaras include Grimmelshausen's unrepentant social outcast and profiteer Courasche, who is reworked in Bertolt Brecht's Mutter Courage (1938— 1939) and as Libuschka in Giinter Grass' Das Treffen in Telgte (1979). There are picaresque qualities to the heroines of Irmgard Keun's novels Gilgi—eine von uns (1931) and Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932) as they attempt to rise above their position as office employees. Irmtraud Morgner's Beatriz de Dia in Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974) assumes a more accepted social position as she traverses time and space in search of a feminist Utopia. Guided by an eternal roundtable of feminists from different eras, Morgner portrays a desire for collective profit that spurs on her heroine: the profit being both personal and political, integrating society into the humane value system of the
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roundtable rather than having Beatriz succumb to the unjust world she encounters. Morgner thus posits a picara who attempts to shape, rather than react to, social conditions. Beatriz narrates the stories of Laura and her alter ego Amanda in Amanda: Ein Hexenroman (1983). Cinematic picaras occur in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's work, such as Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1978), in which the protagonist, relying on her wits and sexuality to succeed, adopts the values that undergird the Wirtschaftswunder. See also: Angestelltlnnenroman; Baroque Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Picaresque Novel; Satire; Utopia; Wisewoman; Witch. References: Friedmann, Edward H., The Antiheroine's Voice: Narrative Discourse and Transformations of the Picaresque (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); Gillespie, Gerald, "Pikara und Schelmin." Der deutsche Schelmenroman im Europaischen Kontext. Rezeption, Interpretation, Bibliographic Ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987) 151-71; Kaler, Anne K., The Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991); Marckwort, Ulf-Heiner, Der deutsche Schelmenroman der Gegenwart (Cologne: PahlRugenstein, 1984); Wicks, Ulrich, Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989). SUSAN C. ANDERSON P i c a r e s q u e Novel. This is an early form of the novel in the tradition of the Spanish picaresque narratives from the 16th and 17th centuries, which depict the adventures of a picara or picaro, that is, of a rootless figure living on the margins of society. While there has been some discussion on the differences between the Spanish picaresque novels and the Schelmenroman, the terms have come to be used interchangeably. Picaresque narratives most often take the form of an autobiography and confession. The limited mobility of women and literary conventions that promoted the man's confession as universally valid account for the paucity of picaresque novels with a woman rogue, Schelmin, or picara, as (anti)heroine. Social and religious satire and the struggle for survival and advancement through the main character's cunning nature and deception, including self-deception, characterize the picaresque. The world appears unreliable, inconstant, and especially dangerous for the outsider. Typical picaresque novels depict travel through space and/or time, interactions with representatives of different social classes, frequent ups and downs in the life of the protagonist, and costume changes and disguises, including cross-dressing, petty criminality, varied sexual encounters, initiation rites, and numerous changes in employment. These narratives responded to the transition from a feudal system with its strict social hierarchies to an early capitalist society with increasing emphasis on the individual. Freed from a preordained niche in the world, picaras (or picaros) must determine their own place in a society that is seen as increasingly corrupt. The heroine's or hero's ideas of social betterment are depicted as being in conflict with traditional views. Usually orphaned, picaresque protagonists must fend for themselves and usually endure a cruel initiation that makes them
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recognize how they must adapt in order to survive. Women figures are regularly portrayed as prostitutes or women of easy virtue. As the main figures progress in the early narratives, they assume more and more of the vices of those around them. The picara was largely the creation of male writers until the latter part of the 20th century. The German model for the picaresque novel, or Schelmenroman, is Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's Der abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1669). The seventh of Grimmelshausen's Simplicianische Schriften, Trutz Simplex: Oder Ausfiihrliche und wunderseltzame Lebensbeschreibung Der Ertzbetriigerin und Landstortzerin Courasche (1670) challenges the accuracy of Simplicius' "autobiography" and offers a counterversion of an outsider's life. Instead of atoning for her "sinful" life, Courasche gloats over her accomplishments. In contrast to Spanish, English, and American rogue novels, few German picaresque novels have a woman as the main character. Even fewer have been penned by women. Significant for its emphasis on feminist issues and its focus on a picara who traverses time is Irmtraud Morgner's Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura (1974). Although Beatriz dies, and her story is told by another, this Schelminroman expands the genre by addressing women's sexuality, abortion, politics, and woman's rights as the main character searches for a feminist Utopia. The narrator, a woman, follows in the footsteps of Beatriz de Dia, rather than attempting to usurp or condemn her. Sexuality is no longer a means for advancing in a man's world, but an expression of personal desire. The attempt to succeed for private gain is here reworked into a quest to improve social conditions for humankind. See also: Abortion; Autobiography; Baroque Literature; Hosenrolle; Morgner, Irmtraud; Picara; Prostitution; Satire; Utopia. References: Bjornson, Richard, The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977); Friedmann, Edward H., The Antiheroine's Voice: Narrative Discourse and Transformations of the Picaresque (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); Gillespie, Gerald, "Pikara und Schelmin." Der deutsche Schelmenroman im Europaischen Kontext. Ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987) 151-71; Kaler, Anne K., The Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991); Marckwort, UlfHeiner, Der deutsche Schelmenroman der Gegenwart (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1984); Wicks, Ulrich, Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989). SUSAN C. ANDERSON P i e t i s m . This was a religious reform movement that gained importance in the 1670s and 1680s in Germany. Philip Jakob Spener sought renewal in the Frankfurt Lutheran Church by establishing a conventicle Collegium pietatis (1670; Assembly of Piety). Such an assembly undermined the exclusiveness of the clergy by enabling an interaction between the congregation and the minister.
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Spener's student and Halle University's professor of theology, August Hermann Francke, added an element of social activism to the movement by founding various institutions for the poor in Halle. Women visionaries' biographies, their confessions, were considered an important source of inspiration for people's spiritual renewal by some Pietists. Gottfried Arnold's collection of women visionaries' biographies in his Unpartheyliche Kirchen und Ketzer-Geschichten (1699-1700), Johann Heinrich Reitz's Historie der Wiedergeborenen (1717), and Erdmann Heinrich von Henckel's Letzte Stunden (1746) described women's confessions, their conversion from sinful beings to God's creatures. A fusion of religious and secular elements characterized Pietist women's autobiographies. Unlike Pietist men's autobiographies, which followed mostly a strict chronological order of events, those by women defied a clear chronology and expressed their emotions while relating their religious experiences. Autobiographies and hymns by Pietist women that reflected spiritual devotion to Christ contained an element of Schwarmerei, or enthusiasm. Johanna Eleonora Petersen is one of the best-known Pietists of her time. Her autobiography was first published in an anonymous work titled Gesprache des Herzens mit Gott (1689). Petersen describes her meeting with Spener and Johann Jakob Schutz, another influential Pietist. Her conversation with Spener encouraged her to live and act according to the word of God. Another devoted Pietist was Dorothea Erdmuthe Zinzendorf, wife of the founder of the Herrnhut sect, Graf von Zinzendorf. She managed the finances, supervised the household of the Herrnhut community, and frequently visited other cities to represent the Herrnhut community during her husband's absences. In German popular literature, Pietism's influence survived until the end of the 18th century: women's writings often portrayed simple, pious, and self-sacrificing heroines. See also: Autobiography; Confessional Literature; Heroine; Hymn; Reformation; Sentimentality. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit. Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); 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; Blackwell, Jeannine, and Susanne Zantop, eds., Bitter Healing: German Women Writers 1700-1830 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Gawthrop, Richard L., Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE Play-within-a-Play. The concept of the Spiel im Spiel or Theater auf dem Theater originated in the Baroque. In works like Shakespeare's Hamlet (1602) or A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), the audience watches a performance that takes place within the framework of the original piece and assesses how the characters of the main drama react to it. Because of its tendency to obscure
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the distinction between appearance and reality, the play-within-a-play is representative of the Baroque motifs of Sein and Schein, of life as theater or a dream. During the 17th century, the technique was used to illustrate social difference, as in Andreas Gryphius' Peter Squentz (1657-1658), in which ingenuous plebeian actors perform in the play-within-the-play to the sneers of actors portraying an aristocratic audience. This and other dramas are harbingers of the literary battles of the 18th century, in which the Hanswurst-Theater came under attack. Theatrical reformers like Johann Christoph Gottsched favored the Aristotelian French Alexandrine tragedy over the Hanswurst-Theater, which, in the playwithin-a-play, employed Volkstheater-Mentalitat and directly addressed workingclass audiences. Early women writers rarely employed the technique. Educational factors may be a partial explanation: many Baroque plays, for instance, were written in schools from which women were excluded. In genres more readily available to them, women did employ devices similar to the play-within-a-play. Marguerite de Navarre wrote framed stories; the Duchess Sophie Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Luneberg remade her world into a theater in her masks; and the lifeas-a-dream motif occurs in Therese Huber's fairy tale "Der Traum des Lebens." In 19th-century dramas by women, the play-within-a-play became a vehicle to express opposition, especially against arranged marriages. In countless plays, like Johanna Franul von WeiBenthum's Das Nachspiel (1800) or Der Reukauf (1802), Wilhelmine von Hillern's Guten Abend (1872), Auguste Cornelius' Nur ein Held (1877), or Betty Young's Ein amerikanisches Duell (1872), the playwithin-a-play is initiated by the female protagonist in order to escape an arranged marriage and gain permission to marry the man of her choice. This drama, often a comedy, subverts the outside play, which follows the script intended by the male authority of the play—until the two plays collapse into one. Whereas in the male tradition, the play-within-a-play is merely an interlude in the frame drama, which eventually resumes again undisturbed, the play-within-a-play in women's dramas frequently dictates the outcome; in most cases, the tragedy intended in the frame drama (the arranged marriage) is averted; and the wit and savvy the protagonist demonstrates in the play-within-a-play are rewarded with the Happy End of marriage by choice. See also: Baroque Literature; Language Societies. References: Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Schmeling, Manfred, Das Spiel im Spiel: Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Literaturkritik (Rheinfelden: Schauble, 1977).
KRISTINE CONLON Poetry—see: Figurengedicht; Gedankenlyrik; Hermetic Poetry; Hymn; Nature Poetry; Ode; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Prose; Poetry, Spiritual. Poetry, Political. Political poetry constitutes a genre widespread in German literature throughout the centuries. However, the definition of such a term is in
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itself problematic. Arguably, all literature is political, not only works that are overtly patriotic or oppositional in tone. The works of those who represent the prevailing power structure may not be explicitly political, but they have their own agenda, namely, to preserve their privileged place in the status quo. One of the earliest female writers considered to be the author of political verse is the Enlightenment poet Anna Louisa Karsch, who wrote epic poems in honor of Friedrich II and patriotic verse celebrating his victories in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). In the 19th century, oppositional poetry was written during periods of political change and upheaval by writers such as Louise Aston and Louise Otto-Peters, at the time of the 1848 Revolution, and Clara Miiller and Emma Doltz, who were active in the women's and labor movements of the late 1800s. Women poets of the 20th century who wrote poems in praise of, or lamenting, the fall of the German Empire include Gertrud von Le Fort, Agnes Miegel, and Lulu von StrauB und Torney, none of whom openly opposed the Nazi regime. Poetry of a patriotic nature has been rare since the end of World War II. In contrast, poetry in response to, and critical of, the Third Reich and the Holocaust is prevalent in the postwar decades, some of which is collected in Hilde Domin's anthology Nachkrieg und Unfrieden: Gedichte als Index 1945-1970 (1970). Besides Domin, the women poets represented in this collection include Ingeborg Bachmann, Elisabeth Borchers, Dagmar Nick, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Helga M. Novak, and Nelly Sachs. There are few women songwriters or Liedermacher in Germany. The West German all-female musical group Schneewittchen, which formed in the late 1970s, is an outgrowth of the burgeoning peace, ecology, and women's movements. Their lyrics are openly feminist, didactic, and revisionist in theme and were published as a songbook in the early 1980s. A collection of poems from a feminist perspective can be found in The Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (1986). The work of Ursula Krechel, one of the most prolific women poets today, has shown consistent concern with feminist issues since her first book, Selbstbefreiung und Fremdbestimmung (1975), and her first volume of poetry, Nach Mainz! (1977). See also: Aston, Louise; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Enlightenment; Holocaust Literature; Otto-Peters, Louise; Patriotism/Nationalism; Revolution, German (1848); Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Young Germany. References: Cocalis, Susan L., ed., The Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology (New York: Feminist Press, 1986); Domin, Hilde, ed., Nachkrieg und Unfrieden: Gedichte als Index 1945-1970 (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1970); Krechel, Ursula, Nach Mainz! Gedichte 1977 (Munich: DTV, 1983), Selbstbefreiung und Fremdbestimmung: Bericht aus der Neuen Frauenbewegung, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1978); Schneewittchens Liederbuch: Alle Texte der Frauenmusikgruppe (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982). AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER P o e t r y , P r o s e . Prose poetry began to appear more frequently in German literature during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The prose poem may be con-
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tained in a single paragraph, or it may be divided into various stanzas. Such poems are often narrative in style, relating an event or a person's life story, though they may also be aphoristic or descriptive in nature. Characteristics that distinguish prose poems from other prose texts are their brevity, the use of traditional poetic elements such as metaphor, repetition, and numbered divisions, and lyricism in expression. One singular early example of a short text that may be considered a prose poem is the fragment "Die Nachtigall" (n.d.) by Karoline von Giinderrode. This work reads like a poem in verse due to its lyrical phrasing and imagery. As a prose poem, "Die Nachtigall" demonstrates a distinct lyricism in paragraph form, but the reader can well imagine (hear) breaks into traditional poetic lines. A short text by Ingeborg Bachmann resembles a longer prose poem stylistically and linguistically. However, it is not categorized as such in the collected works (but appears under the heading "Vermischte Schriften" and as an Entwurf in the subtitle). "Das Gedicht an den Leser" (n.d.) grapples with the difficulties of poetic expression through language and speechlessness, as do her late poems "Keine Delikatessen" (1963) and "Wahrlich" (1964). Prose poems in volumes by contemporary poets appear in a number of different formats. They may (1) alternate frequently but somewhat arbitrarily with standard poems in verse form, such as in Sarah Kirsch's Drachensteigen (1979); (2) be grouped as a series of separate, but related, vignettes, as in Marie Luise Kaschnitz's "Beschreibung eines Dorfes" (1966) and "Steht noch dahin" (1970); (3) occur as a single text among verse poems, for example, Karin Kiwus' "Grabfigur eines mit Lorbeer bekranzten Mannes" in Das Chine sis ehe Examen (1992); (4) be sporadically intermingled with other texts, both prose and poetic, as in several volumes by Friederike Mayrocker, Helga M. Novak, and Elke Erb; and (5) even contain both prose and poetic stanzas within a single text, as do Christa Reinig's "Wenn der Wind weht" (1969) and Novak's "Generalstranen" (1965). See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Reinig, Christa. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart: Gedichte und Lebenslaufe (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978).
AMY KEPPLE STRAWSER P o e t r y , Spiritual. Spiritual poetry either is written from a religious perspective or engages in a search for religious meaning and the spiritual realm. From the outset, women have consistently made significant contributions to this body of literature. In a seven-volume work, Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250-1252), Mechthild von Magdeburg, widely regarded as the most accomplished of the female mystics, describes an intimate, dialogic relationship with a God-Lover. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg's poetry grew out of the religious conflicts of the 17th century; her Geistliche Sonette, Lieder und Gedichte (1662) ex-
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presses the Baroque view that worldly conflicts and paradoxes represent a testing ground for faith. Annette von Droste-Hulshoff' s search for God in Das geistliche Jahr (1851) is frustrated by a false faith in human intellectual powers, which was encouraged by both the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the modern period, Else Lasker-Schiiler's poetry represents Expressionist suffering, along with an aesthetic and spiritual fascination with traditional religions. Gertrud von Le Fort, following in the footsteps of the renouveau catholique, seeks an escape from existential isolation in the congregation of the Catholic Church (Hymnen an die Kirche, 1924). Elisabeth Langgasser's work evokes another Expressionist sentiment—solidarity with all creatures—while Gertrud Kolmar describes the perversion of faith in bourgeois society. The horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the realization that humanity can destroy itself and the world have provoked several different responses by authors of spiritual poetry and awakened a desire for spiritual guidance. Nelly Sachs, whose poetry draws on the cabalistic tradition, confronts her readers with a Landschaft aus Schreien (1966). Christine Lavant depicts a strained relationship between a disinterested God and egocentric humans. Marie Luise Kaschnitz looks for some ray of faith and hope to emerge from the disaster of history. Younger poets, such as Eva Zeller and Beat Brechtbuhl, struggle with the emptiness of religious ceremony and contemporary skepticism. See also: Baroque Literature; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Enlightenment; Expressionism; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Holocaust Literature; Hymn; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Mysticism; Nobel Prize Recipients; Romanticism; Saints; World War II. References: Giesecke, Hans, Christliches Erbe und lyrische Gestaltung (Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang, 1961); Kober, A. H., Geschichte der religiosen Dichtung in Deutschland (Essen: Baedeker, 1919); Kranz, Gisbert, Christliche Dichtung heute. Bibliographic der Neuerscheinungen von 1960 bis 1975 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1975); Schwab, Hans-Riidiger, ed., Geistliche Gedichte (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1983); Zeller, Eva, Das Wort und die Worter: Tradition und Moderne in der geistlichen Lyrik (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990).
RACHEL FREUDENBURG Political Literature—see: Aston, Louise; Engagierte Literatur; Gesinnungsasthetik; Otto-Peters, Louise; Pamphlet; Revolution, French; Revolution, German (1848); Student Movement; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Young Germany Pornography. The pornography debate is one of the most divisive in feminist theory, for the contested terrain is not gender, but sexuality—more precisely, the representation of sexuality. In many ways, pornography stands at the center of all feminist debates about representation and about the validity of differing or contradictory interpretations of images. The strongly stated antiporn position, promulgated in the United States most notably by Diana E. H. Russell, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon,
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holds that pornographic images that explicitly represent the subordination of women harm women by contributing to the violent treatment of women by (some) men and thus constitutes a violation of women's civil rights. The work of these antiporn activists is marred by methodological flaws and essentialist assumptions, but they raise important questions that are not addressed elsewhere—and that are sometimes all too facilely dismissed by their critics. Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1979; German trans. Pornographic- Manner beherrschen Frauen, 1987) had a significant impact on the West German PorNo movement led by Alice Schwarzer. Those on the pro-porn side of the debate often label Dworkin and others "pro-censorship feminists" or "postmodern puritans." They argue that pornography's message is basically a feminist one, since pornography separates female sexuality from reproduction and from dependence on an individual man. The pro-porn position, of which Nadine Strossen's work is an excellent example, holds that it is impossible to prove that pornography causes harm; that pornographic images are no more violent or misogynistic than images found in popular and canonical literature, film, television, advertising, and other media; and that any attempt to restrict the distribution of pornography or impose sanctions on those who produce it will inevitably lead to censorship of all sexually explicit materials. The position that violent pornography or other representations of violence do not cause harm is at least potentially at variance with the (often simultaneously professed) view that consciousness is produced by the culture industry. Much antiporn theorizing is rooted in assumptions of male/female difference and emphasizes that the majority of pornographic texts were created by and for men. Defenders of pornography acknowledge the male-centeredness of mainstream pornography while also pointing out that it is not reducible to a single message, for its meanings are negotiated differently by individual consumers— women as well as men may be aroused by misogynistic or violent pornography, for example. Some critics of pornography, such as Sheila Jeffreys and John Stoltenberg, argue that this line of thinking implicitly assumes that sexual arousal is always positive while ignoring the fact that arousal is also socially constructed and may therefore be experienced negatively as well as positively. Self-styled feminist porn artists such as Annie Sprinkle produce pornography that is said to be woman-centered for its representations of women's sexual pleasure. Such performances raise new questions about the relationship between representation and experience, or between realistic and parodistic representation. The work of a literary artist such as Elfriede Jelinek raises similar questions, for example, To what extent is the author's intended satirical treatment of her subject undermined by the pornographic images (re)produced in her text? Feminist film theory has much to offer literary scholars seeking to untangle the complexities of pornographic texts and representations of sexuality. See also: Body, Female; Erotic Literature; Film Theory, Feminist; Jelinek, Elfriede.
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References: Dwyer, Susan, ed., The Problem of Pornography (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995); Gibson, Pamela Church and Roma Gibson, Dirty Looks. Women, Pornography, Power (London: British Film Institute, 1993); Russell, Diana E. H., Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993); Snitow, Ann, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (New York: Monthly Review, 1983); Strossen, Nadine, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (New York: Scribner, 1995).
JEANETTE CLAUSEN Positionality. Although the concept of positionality figures in Jacques Lacan's and Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic models of relational identities in flux, the term has acquired currency in feminist theory since the late 1980s as a result of feminist concerns about the usefulness of identity politics for political and cultural analysis. Whereas scholars and activists in the 1970s and early 1980s had tended to locate "woman's place" on the margins of social power (and thereby assigned to women a more or less fixed identity shaped by universal oppression and victimization), lesbians and feminists of color asserted that not all women occupy the same place or exercise the same degree of power in society, history, or culture. In this vein the "politics of location" invoked by the poet Adrienne Rich yielded a more differentiated sense of women's place in history, one that recognized various kinds of power differentials that shape women's lives (e.g., sexuality, race, gender, class, and ethnicity). The identity politics of the 1980s, however, frequently replicated the essentialism of global sisterhood, previously alleged, by attributing fixed, albeit different, identities to various subsets of women (African-American women, Jewish-American women, Chicanas, AngloAmerican women, and so on). Concurrent with these developments in feminist politics and theory in the United States, variants of poststructuralism became increasingly influential in academic circles; Jacques Derrida's method of deconstruction had a particularly noticeable effect on studies of literature and culture. Faced with the poststructuralist inclination to deconstruct any ontological category, including the (for feminists) pivotal category of gender, and the ongoing need to retain the category "woman" for a feminist political agenda, some feminists sought more refined analytical tools to address the multifaceted intersection of the construct of "woman" with women's oppression and women's agency (be it the agency of the perpetrator or that of the victim). The concept of positionality has proved to be one such tool, since it attempts to account for women as both objects and subjects of shifting historical experience. This entails the recognition that women's lives are simultaneously materially concrete (real) and discursively signified (imaginary), but not uniformly concretized or signified across history and culture(s). The considerable influence of Teresa de Lauretis' study in film theory, Technologies of Gender (1987),
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transcended in this regard many conventional disciplinary boundaries. Her use of the term "positionality" is more theoretically rigorous than that found in the work of several other scholars, who either invoke the concept in passing without a clarifying definition or use the term interchangeably with earlier feminist tropes of place, location, position, standpoint, or choice (of identity). The conflation of these terms that sometimes attends the use of positionality runs the risk of reducing women's lives, once again, to a mere metaphor of place or positioning. Understood in all its analytical complexity, however, positionality can lead to a more differentiated perception of the tensions between material experience and imaginary signification as they affect differences among women, nuances of context, and possibilities for transformation. See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; Film Theory, Feminist; Gender Theories, History of; Identity Theories; Lesbian Theories; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis. References: Adelson, Leslie A., Making Bodies, Making History: Feminism and German Identity (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993); Alcoff, Linda, "Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory." Signs 13 (1988): 405-36; De Lauretis, Teresa, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Rich, Adrienne, "Notes Toward a Politics of Location (1984)." Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 19791985 (New York: Norton, 1986) 210-31; Wall, Cheryl A., ed., Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989). LESLIE A. ADELSON P o s i t i v i s m . Based on the sociopolitical philosophy of Auguste Comte, this critical theory dominated much of Western European thought from the middle to the end of the 19th century. Positivism is an anti-idealistic movement and denies the validity of unobservable causes of phenomena (metaphysics). It maintains that true knowledge is obtainable only by reference to scientific facts and laws revealed through objective, value-free empirical study. There is a variety of positivist schools. Evolutionary positivism seeks the universal law in the arenas of biology and physics, while social positivism, which has had an impact on feminist scholarship, attempts to establish the general principles common to all the sciences and to use these laws as guidelines for human conduct and as the basis for social organization. Social positivism, the parent of modern sociology, collects data based on three observable factors: what Hippolyte Taine referred to as race, temps, and milieu. The literary epoch most directly affected by social positivism was Naturalism. The writings of Clara Viebig and Helene Bohlau depict, with scientific exactness and an intent regard for detail, the narrowness of bourgeois society and the consequences for women. The themes of motherhood, illicit love, illegitimacy, and divorce reveal the depths of female suffering occasioned by fate and social circumstance. In their novellas and novels, sex seems to become a fourth em-
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pirical factor, which, alongside race, temps, and milieu, has a lasting impact on one's life. The fundamental principles underlying social positivism—scientific exactness and an optimistic belief in the presence and validity of a universal law—allow for description, but not prescription. This kind of anthropological determinism, the lack of free will, which defines this critical theory's view of human behavior, prohibits the development of a program advocating fundamental changes of social structures. The seemingly objective, value-free description of events does not yield any expression of critical outrage. In the writings of Bohlau and Viebig, the women characters struggle in vain against social circumstance, ultimately learn to live with the confinements imposed on them by society, and find what fulfillment they can in motherhood. Faith in a universal, unchangeable law of nature results in a widespread avoidance of revolutionary activity. This weakness of social positivism has led to its denunciation in modern feminist methodology. The Positivismusstreit initiated by Theodor W. Adorno in 1961, partially over the issue of value-free observation, has found an echo in feminist circles. This position denies the strict positivist division between the researcher and the object of research and rejects the ideal of value-free investigation in favor of a conscious partiality, a partiality that, it is hoped, will lead to social change. See also: Frankfurt School; Naturalism; New Criticism. References: Bryant, Christopher, Positivism in Social Theory and Research (London: Macmillan, 1985); Hess, Beth B., and Myra Marx Ferree, eds., Analyzing Gender. A Handbook of Social Science Research (Newbury Park: Sage, 1987); Jonas, Friedrich, Geschichte der Soziologie 1. Aufklarung, Liberalismus, Idealismus, Sozialismus, Ubergang zur industriellen Gesellschaft (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1980); Keat, Russell, The Politics of Social Theory. Habermas, Freud and the Critique of Positivism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); Maren-Grisebach, Manon, Methoden der Literaturwissenschaft (Munich: Francke, 1970).
ELIZABETH CALKIN P o s s e . In the German dramatic tradition, the Posse is a genre of situational comedy associated with specific regions during the late 18th and the 19th centuries. (Klotz locates its more satirical variants between 1818 [Karlsbader Beschliisse] and 1870 [Reichsgrundung].) The Posse usually depicts the mundane existence of the petite bourgeoisie in a given locality and is often written in a local idiom. Although some Possen are explicitly satirical, most affirm the milieu and the characters in the end. Rather than present universalizing truths, the Posse relies heavily on common sense and provincial solutions. Anything beyond the local milieu is perceived and represented as threatening. Variants of the genre can be found in the Zauberposse, with its roster of supernatural figures and events, and the Lokalposse, which tends to rely more heavily on dialect and local allusions. The Posse often contained songs in its text and was originally performed with an accompanying musical score, although many of the latter
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have been lost over time. In addition to 18th-century authors like August von Kotzebue and Ernst Raupach, the authors most frequently cited as practitioners of this genre include Adolf Bauerle and Johann Nestroy in Vienna; Julius von Voss, Louis Angely, David Kalisch, and Emil Pohl in Berlin; Carl Malss in Frankfurt; and Ernst Elias Niebergall in Darmstadt. Since Possen focus on everyday life in a local setting, common sense, a colloquial use of language, and a plot resolved in marriage as the obligatory Happy End, it was not an intimidating genre for women authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries. That is, women dramatists would not necessarily have encountered the same norms had they written tragedy or historical drama. Therefore, although women are usually not listed as authors of Possen in the standard literary histories, it is not surprising to encounter several German women dramatists who authored at least one Posse, Zauberposse, or Lokalposse (some with music): Amalie von Sachsen, Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, Helene von Druskowitz, Dora Duncker, Caroline Eichler, Friederike Ellmenreich, Marie Gordon, Philomene Hartl, Therese Huber, Ricarda Huch, Henriette Artemesia Marianne von Montenglaut, and Friederike Helene Unger. These same women also authored comedies and Schauspiele. Since the discovery of the existence of these texts has been so recent, their significance for the genre still needs to be assessed. One might assume, however, that German women authors used the Posse as a vehicle for depicting their own views on engagement, marriage, and financial autonomy; that they might contrast the common sense of the female characters in the play with the more rigorous education of their male counterparts; or that they used the local idiom versus a more formal German usage to generate the misunderstandings between the sexes that propel the plot to its inevitable conclusion. See also: Comedy; Musical Theater; Operetta; Satire; Singspiel; Volksstiick. References: Klotz, Volker, Burgerliches Lachtheater: Komodie-Posse-SchwankOperette (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1987); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992). SUSAN L. COCALIS P o s t c o l o n i a l i s m . Recent literary or cultural approaches, particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States, have created a field of investigation and theorizing circumscribed by the terms "postcolonialism" or "postcoloniality." As the terms indicate, "postcolonial" implicitly refers to a superseded colonial stage or period. This colonial period and its effects on settlers after decolonization and independence are seen and analyzed from the perspective of the postcolonial subject in the former colonies and the so-called metropolis. Hence much of postcolonial theory has been generated by scholars from African, Arabic, or Asian countries, such as Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Edward Said, Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, or Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who explore not just the colonialist subjectivity, the collusion of
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knowledge with power, or the resistance to colonialist ideology, but the persistence of colonialist discourses and practices even today, as they intersect with discourses and representations of race, class, and gender. In Germany, postcolonialism has had a difficult start for two reasons: compared to other European nations, German colonialism constituted only a relatively brief, belated, interlude (1884-1918); unlike the British or French, German colonial administrations (in Africa or the Pacific) did not educate native elites, nor did they grant citizenship to colonial subjects, so that there was little postcolonial influx of intellectuals from the former colonies into the metropolis, no empire "writfing] back" (Salman Rushdie). Until recently, studies of colonialism have been limited to historical and ideology-critical research. Although Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and particularly Hannah Arendt ("Imperialism," part 2 of Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951) laid the theoretical groundwork for exploring the links among nationalism, racism, and imperialist expansion, a postcolonial re-vision of German culture has only just begun. In view of the peculiarities of the German colonial experience, recent studies focus more on discourse production and imaginary configurations than on practice and more on internal or internalized forms of colonizing/othering/ dominating (anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism, Jews, and migrants) than on the relationship between metropolis and colony. Furthermore, since Germany's immediate colonial ambitions traditionally extended toward the East, the term "postcolonial" has to be redefined to encompass Germany's complex relationship with Slavic peoples. See also: Colonial Literature; Exotin; Frankfurt School; Ideologiekritik; Orientalism. References: Adam, Ian, and Helen Tiffin, eds., Past the Last Post. Theorizing Postcolonialism and Post-Modernism (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1990); Ashcroft, Bill, et al., eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995); Berman, Nina, Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschen Kultur um 1900 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996); Duerr, Hans Peter, Traumzeit. Uber die Grenze zwischen Wildnis und Zivilisation (Frankfurt/M.: Syndikat, 1978); Harasym, Sara, ed., The Post-Colonial Critic. Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues with Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak (London: Routledge, 1990); Streese, Konstanze, iiCric?,,-iiCrac!,y Vier literarische Versuche, mit dem Kolonialismus umzugehen (Berne: Lang, 1991); Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Zantop, Susanne, Colonial Fantasies in Pre-Colonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
SUSANNE ZANTOP P o s t f e m i n i s m . Feminism is rooted in the daily reality of subject positions and female identities, which are different from those of men. Elements of poststructuralist theory and methodology enable feminists to locate and analyze the construction of these subjectivities as the result of cultural narratives that have no essential basis. However, many German feminists have been, and continue to be, reluctant to integrate poststructuralist thought in their own work, feeling
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that the acceptance of these theories would potentially undermine the recovery and revision of works by women writers. It would further make the institutional fight for legitimacy and against male hegemony impossible. While acknowledging poststructuralist theories, Gisela Ecker opts for an outlet of "anger" before "play" is possible, thus echoing Gayatri Spivak's "strategic essentialism'' to combat the social discrimination that women face. Ecker argues that, at present, women's anger facilitates the inclusion of women's perspectives in the many areas of history and theory and that it is more likely to help women achieve equal access to academe and to positions of theorizing. However, if gender is only a construct, if a very real one in past and present society, then feminism is aimed at abandoning itself. If a presumed female identity or essence does not exist, it cannot be the object and subject of study. Instead, one can study only various forms and expressions of a gendered subject. The term "postfeminism" thus implies the end of feminism. Many feminists reject the classification "postfeminism" because they are concerned about a potential loss of impact and relevance, and they insist instead on maintaining an identifiable feminist perspective. Gender studies can be considered another version of postfeminism. It replaces the particularist perspective of feminists to include more open discussions of gender identities, giving homosexuality and bisexuality an integral place. Ideally, postfeminism would lead not to the denial of multiple perspectives, but to the acceptance of "partially situated knowledges" (Haraway) and a politics of location. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Gender; Homosexuality; Positionality; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism. References: Brugmann, Margret, and Maria Kublitz-Kramer, Textdifferenzen und Engagement. Feminismus. Ideologiekritik. Poststrukturalismus (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1993); Ecker, Gisela, "Postrukturalismus und feministische Wissenschaft. Eine heimliche oder unheimliche Allianz?" Frauen. Weiblichkeit. Schrift. Ed. Renate Berger (Berlin: Argument SB 134, 1985) 8-19; Haraway, Donna, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991); Hoff, Dagmar von, et al., eds., Postfeminismus. Special Issue of Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft 43 (1994); Modleski, Tania, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age (New York: Routledge, 1991); Nicholson, Linda, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990).
MARITA ROMANN P o s t m o d e r n i s m . This refers to a concept, period, and practice signaling a break with the aesthetic style of high modernism and, although first used in reference to architecture, now applies to the gamut of contemporary artistic endeavors. The term "postmodemity" refers more broadly to image-dominated culture in the era of postindustrial late capitalism. Most scholarship on feminism and postmodernism hails from the United States. In Germany, discussions about modernism versus postmodernism have
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left women out of the picture because postmodernism is generally conceived as synonymous with poststructuralism, which draws on such male French theorists as Jean Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. In this debate, Jiirgen Habermas' championing of modernity as a continuation of the legacy of the Enlightenment begs to be challenged from a feminist perspective: the Enlightenment tradition of objectivity, normativity, the autonomous self, artistic independence, and the claim to universal knowledge can be seen as ideals tied to the self-legitimization of masculinity in the Western world. Feminists must ask under what conditions these ideals can operate for women as well. Furthermore, Habermas' notion of the public sphere, as it has been evoked in the postmodernism debates in Germany, has the potential of ghettoizing the personal and excluding women. Contemporary feminist work has criticized precisely this division of the private from the public life and the personal from political history. It thus also contributes to the postmodern critique of modernity's separation of art from mass culture. Women's artistic creation deconstructs the high/low opposition by referencing the (consumer) culture of everyday life. In the form of confessions, journals, (auto)biographies, and letters, women's writing valorizes the quotidian and the local, thereby contesting, along with postmodernism, the monolithic "grands recits" (Lyotard) that vindicated 19th- and 20th-century ideologies. The feminist critique of patriarchy grows out of the postmodern critique of representation. The two dovetail in particular in the parody of male representations of the woman's body. Various aesthetic categories of postmodernism— collage, pastiche, hybridization, irony, parody, and citation—can be mobilized to characterize woman's artistic production, especially in its commentary on the fetishistic parceling of the female body. In addition to undermining dominant cultural images of women, contemporary artists experiment with ways a woman can look at her body and discover the pleasure and enjoyment of doing so, thus challenging the notion that the gaze upon her is invariably male and thereby subverting fixed binary gender (op)positions. Through the lens of feminism, postmodernism ceases to be a movement solely preoccupied with aesthetics and self-referential play. Feminism thus contributes to a "postmodernism of resistance" (Huyssen). Especially the postmodern sensitivity to plurality and heterogeneity resonates with feminism: the concept of "difference" not only permits an interrogation of how gender dualisms are constructed but can be used to differentiate between women of various races, classes, ethnicities, ages, and sexual preferences. Feminism concretizes some of the abstract concepts of postmodernism—such as difference and heterogeneity— to give them a specific social and political context yoked to individual women's lives. Women's situations are changing rapidly in a postindustrial, post-Wall world: their families, class distinctions, working environments, and medical and emotional needs are undergoing radical shifts that are reflected in their art. Because of these changes and because of the diversity of women's experiences—not to
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mention the forms their expression can take in video, film, photography, installations, performance art, and writing as well as the various permutations among these media—the category of the postmodern, despite its breadth, threatens to be reductive. Danger resides in pigeonholing or collapsing contemporary art by women into this category and ignoring other traditions that inform their creative work. See also: Autobiography; Body, Female; Confessional Literature; Diaries; Enlightenment; Essentialism/Constructionism; Frankfurt School; Frauenfilm; Hybridity; Modernism; Parody/Pastiche; Postfeminism; Poststructuralism; Subjectivity. References: Doan, Laura, ed., The Lesbian Postmodern (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Docherty, Thomas, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Ferguson, Margaret, and Jennifer Wicke, eds., Feminism and Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994); Huyssen, Andreas, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); McCormick, Richard W., Politics of the Self: Feminism and the Postmodern in West German Literature and Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Nicholson, Linda, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990); Waugh, Patricia, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1989). ALICE KUZNIAR P o s t s t r u c t u r a l i s m . Poststructuralist feminism draws on its German forefathers, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, as well as on its French fathers, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, and mothers, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous. It adopts and reinterprets poststructuralist theorems in the key areas of representation and subjectivity. Poststructuralist feminism makes explicit relations of power that structure discourse and analyzes the construction of gendered subjectivity (also meant as a critique of Freud's and Lacan's phallocentric fetishizing of the male oedipal experience). Poststructuralist feminists likewise want to overcome essentialist notions of traditional feminism by describing femininity not as a self-identical entity but as constituted by language, that is, as an effect of cultural and symbolic registers. Thus, they pose the theoretical question about the status of feminism's own discourse and its representation of women. As Shoshana Felman has shown in "Woman and Madness" (1975), the act of speaking in the name of woman (prosopopeia) is always constituted only while speaking. Although there is thus no place from which woman could exorcize the male mind by which she is possessed, feminine difference has always intervened with, and inscribed itself into, male identity, which is also only an effect of a constitutional process. Hence the only way of gaining access to women's stories is to identify their sexual difference and their autobiographies negatively as "lacking" (Felman, What Does Woman Want? 1993). As a deconstructive moment of the philosophical and literary discourse, the "feminine" is the paradoxical allegory of a nonrepresentable difference. Woman, who in the
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Lacanian spectrum does not exist (Encore, 1975), is in Irigaray's reading of Lacan, the sex that is not one (not none) (Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un, 1977; Geschlecht, 1979). Thus, feminist deconstruction takes up the Freudian and Lacanian notions of woman as lack but subverts it: femininity is the moment that crosses out identity, woman is "I'afemme," not Lacan's "La femme" (Geschlecht, 112), a figure of defiguration and displacement or "double displacement," which makes her displaced position also unconquerable for male theory (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Displacement and the Discourse of Woman," 1983). Woman as the ex-centrical surplus cannot be grasped by specular representations or through binary oppositions. Thus, the feminine is neither here nor there, but the unrepresentable as such. Sigrid Weigel, in Die verborgene Frau (1983), tries to liberate woman from inauthentic representations in literature by men to more authentic visions (women's mirroring one another). By contrast, Weigel's later work, for example, "Das Weibliche als Metapher des Metonymischen" (1985), avoids essentializing woman by positioning her, following Kristeva, as "subject in motion," as constantly traversing between the semiotic and the symbolic. What Kristeva called the "effect of woman" is fulfilled—as Irigaray advises—only in "mascerade." Weigel's former paradigm of "the double place of woman" is here newly informed by the insight that women, although supporting the symbolic order, do not appear in it. They remain elsewhere (Irigaray). Rejecting oppositional systems as destructive of otherness, Eva Meyer employs Derrida's "differance," which designates dissidence, the instability within entities, the multiplicity underlying all unity, and the never-ending process of constructing meaning. With her montage of deconstructive readings of, and writings into, the philosophical and literary tradition, Meyer develops a semiotics of the feminine as a process of transformation that is representation as well as creation of itself. Meyer's antinomic and chiastic inscriptions of the feminine bring femininity back into the text while, simultaneously, deconstructing subjectivity. Her "double negation" leads to a "heterarchical negativity" (Zahlen und Erzahlen. Fiir eine Semiotik des Weiblichen, 1983) in which the feminine rebirths and reinscribes herself partogenetically. Versprechen (1984) crosses through the force to dichotomize as "Bruch/Strich" or double-ax, and her Autobiographic der Schrift (1989) traces ways in which thinking is en route to itself, to recapture itself as something alive, as autopoisis. See also: Autobiography; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, French; Postfeminism; Postmodernism; Psychoanalysis; Semiotics. References: Ecker, Gisela, "Spiel und Zorn. Zu einer feministischen Praxis der Dekonstruktion." Englisch-Amerikanische Studien 9.1 (1987): 97-108; Hahn, Barbara, "Feministische Literaturwissenschaft. Vom Mittelweg der Frauen in der Theorie." Neuere Literaturtheorien. Eine Einfuhrung. Ed. Klaus-Michael Bogdal (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990) 218-34; Johnson, Barbara, The Wake of Deconstruction (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994); Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics. Feminist Literary
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Theory (London: Methuen, 1985); Vinken, Barbara, ed., Dekonstruktiver Feminismus. Literaturwissenschaft in Amerika (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992).
SIGRID BERKA P r e f a c e . A preface is the introduction or foreword to literary works: the author's (or editor's) place to explain the genesis of the work, clarify things that might otherwise remain unclear, or attempt to influence the interpretation of the work. In pre-20th-century women's literature, it was frequently used to justify the author's literary activity, which was usually regarded as inherently "unfeminine." Although women have had to defend their right to authorship since the beginning of women's writing (as can be seen in much poetry by medieval women and in the Streitschriften by women authors of the Reformation), not until the 18th century is this debate carried out in prefaces. To the extent that prefaces became a space for gender-specific poetological reflection, they can, and should, be read as independent works exploring philosophical and aesthetic issues. That these poetological reflections are indeed gender-related is indicated by the fact that they occur only in works that were published under a female name, either the author's own name or a female pseudonym (but not in works by women published under a male pseudonym). Following contemporary leads, most women authors accepted the premise that for women, authorship and entry into public life via publication were illegitimate and could be sanctioned only in exceptional cases. Consequently, they used the prefaces to their works to present themselves as such an exception, while simultaneously assuring male contemporaries that they had no competition to fear. In women's prefaces of the period, female authorship is presented as a leisure activity, undertaken purely for the private edification of the author and a few friends after their "real" work (housework and child rearing) has been completed. Works by women, according to the authors' prefaces, are frequently the result of coincidence or of a subjective/inspirational mode of writing, according to which the work "wrote itself," relieving the author of all responsibility (Elise Burger, preface to Gedichte, 1812). Another frequent mode of justification, paradoxically, is the now-famous Bescheidenheitstopos: women emphasized the flaws in their writing (Friederike Sophie Hensel-Seyler, preface to Die Entfiihrung, 111 I), pleaded for the clemency of male critics, or claimed that they were much more skilled with the needle than with the pen. This demonstration of female modesty often led to harsh self-criticism (Sophie Eleonore Titzenhofer referred to her play Lausus und Lydie, 1116, as the "MiBgeburt meines Witzes") or demonstrative self-abasement before male superiority (Karoline von Woltmann's preface to her Ueber Natur, Bestimmung, Tugend und Bildung der Frauen, 1826). Claims that the work is based on the author's experience, that is, a true story, must be read as an assurance that the author does not wish to intrude on the male domain of fantasy and imaginative fiction. Serving the same purpose are assurances that the author did not intend to produce a work of art,
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but merely entertainment literature for her own private edification, a claim that is augmented by the frequent pretense that the work was published without the author's knowledge or against her will (Elise Levi, preface to Durch die Intendanz, 1878; Christiane Karoline Schlegel, preface to Diival und Charmille, 1778). Finally, most women writers claim a didactic purpose for their works (as opposed to the philosophical or aesthetic purpose assumed behind most literature by men), which allows them to redefine their literary activity as a means to educate other women. This representation of women's writing as a kind of extended motherhood was first suggested in Christoph Martin Wieland's preface to Sophie von La Roche's first novel, Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771), in which the stated purpose of the novel is the author's reported intention to educate "ein papirnes Madchen." The debate in forewords on the question whether or not it is permissible for the author to publish her works is sometimes incredibly elaborate: an example is Emilie von Berlepsch's 28-page preface "Ein Gesprach als Vorrede" (to her Sammlung kleiner Schriften, 11 SI), in which this debate is staged as a conversation between the author-figure Eugenie (who refuses to publish her works, using many of the arguments just cited) and her male friend Philotas, who finally persuades her to do so. While prefaces permeated by the Bescheidenheitstopos undoubtedly constituted the dominant tradition, a few women authors registered their protest in the preface. One of them was Maria Anna Sagar, who published her first novel, Die verwechselten Tochter, anonymously in 1771, but identified herself as female in the preface, in which she defiantly refuses to participate in the tradition of female modesty and self-abasement. Similarly, Johanna Franul von WeiBenthum ironizes this tradition in the preface to her six-volume collection of dramas (1810). She rejects the presumed permissibility of writing only after the fulfillment of her "feminine" duties. With the increasing occurrence and acceptance of female authorship in the late 19th and 20th centuries, the tradition of poetological reflections in the preface lost its gender-specific focus, and prefaces assumed a more work-related (rather than author-related) tone. See also: Authorship; Gender Theories, History of; La Roche, Sophie von; Medieval Literature; Prologue; Reformation. References: Heuser, Magdalene, " 'Ich wollte diefi und das von meinem Buche sagen, und gerieth in ein Verniinfteln': Poetologische Reflexionen in den Romanvorreden." Untersuchungen zum Roman von Frauen um 1800. Ed. Helga Gallas and Magdalene Heuser (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990) 52-65; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992). SUSANNE KORD P r i n c e s s . The princess in German fairy tales is a highly stereotypical figure. Usually paired with a prince as suitor or savior, the princess embodies positive characteristics like beauty and wisdom. She also fulfills functions within male-
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authored texts that highlight her desirable passivity as a prize to be won, a victim to oppress, or a sleeping beauty to be redeemed. Because this figure has been so prominent in male-authored literature, it has become a focus of feminist scholarship as a negative role model for the socialization of females; feminist authors have rewritten the patriarchal privileged narrative, seeking to break the stereotype of the passive beloved in favor of a more positive, self-actualizing heroine. The character of the princess and fairy tale plots have continued to be recycled for novel and romance plots, as well as for movie and television screenplays. The popular image of the princess has been shaped by male-authored texts, yet feminist writers and storytellers of the past three centuries have provided numerous other images. Writers in the late 18th century often drew on active models in French and English tales. Benedikte Naubert's princesses in Velleda, ein Zauberroman (1795), for example, are forceful, self-aware women who live independently of male domination and attain goddess stature. For child audiences, the princess became a relevant figure with the appearance of the children's fairy tale book at the end of the 18th century. Influenced by the general interest in, and commercial success of, fairy tale collections, many women wrote entire books for children with princesses as the main characters (Alberta Wilhelmine Henriette von Freydorf's Waldprinzefichen. Ein Marchen, 1885; Clara Johanna Forstner's Prinzess Use. Marchen, 1890; Sophie-Wilhelmine's Heideprinzesschen: Marchen mit Silhouetten, 1894; and Marie Petersen's Prinzessin Use (1894). While stories like "Prinzessin Rosalieb" figure prominently in fairy tale collections by writers such as Agnes Franz and Amalie Schoppe, other writers, like Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, wrote satirical, facetious tales. Her "Die Prinzessin von Banalien" (1872) satirizes the traditional vision of fairy tale happiness for the princess and the prince. Still other writers developed the princess motif in novels. Eugenie Marlitt in the late 19th century and Hedwig Courths-Mahler in the first half of the 20th—the first two best-selling authors in Germany—have their characters lose their mothers early on in the story, then struggle through life until a charming man saves them in holy matrimony. By contrast, 20th-century authors see the fairy tale princess as a model either to be rejected for its negative, stifling image or to be resurrected for its affirmation of women's connectedness and strength. Feminist writers have worked through fairy tales to expose women's complicity in their own oppression. In Muschelgarten (1984), the Swiss writer Margrit Schriber explores the Sleeping Beauty motif as symbolic of women's entrapment. She rejects how fairy tale narratives glamorize love as female dependence on men. Ingeborg Bachmann embeds the fairy tale "Die Geheimnisse der Prinzessin von Kagran" into her novel Malina (1971). There the present oppression of women is juxtaposed with Utopian visions of a society that allows for human relationships between women and men. Feminist critics have explored how these narratives function as prescriptions for female behavior (Stone, Degh, Kolbenschlag) and how they continue today
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to permeate literature and popular culture. The fairy tale princess is a clear example of how images of women in literature have been used to project male fantasies and prescribe female behavior. Women writers are rejecting the negative stereotype and reclaiming positive models by rewriting the patriarchal narrative. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Children's Literature; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Drama; Goddess; Novella; Participation and Exclusion. References: Degh, Linda, "Beauty, Wealth and Power: Career Choices for Women in Folktales, Fairytales and Modern Media." Fabula 30 (1989): 43-61; Kolbenschlag, Madonna, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-bye: Breaking the Spell of Feminine Myths and Models (New York: Doubleday, 1979); Stone, Kay, "Things Walt Disney Never Told Us." Women and Folklore: Images and Genres. Ed. Claire R. Farrer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975) 42-50. SHAWN C. JARVIS Prizes, Literary. Literary prizes are monetary awards, medals, and other forms of honors designed to reward or support literary works. They are funded and sponsored by various foundations, organizations, or individuals, usually named after famous writers or philanthropists, cities, or states, and normally awarded annually. Awarding prizes to writers or works of literature has been a tradition since the 5th century B.C. and the Greek festivals of Dionysus. The 20th century has seen an unprecedented plethora of literary prizes and, as a result, their devaluation. Although winners are usually selected by juries, awards can be directly and indirectly influenced by prevailing political views, special interests, and/or ideological concerns. Women writers and gender-related themes have only rarely been recognized by literary awards. Traditionally, most literary prizes awarded to women were granted for accomplishments in the genre of Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Today, the number of literary prizes named after women writers and awarded for women's writing is increasing, a development that has strengthened the visibility of writers through growing publicity and increasing publication venues and book sales. Austrian prizes named after women are the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis, the Alma-Johanna-Koenig-Preis, the Enrica-von-Handel-Mazzetti-Preis, the PaulaGrogger-Preis, and the Paula-von-Preradovic-Preis. German awards include the Annette-von-Droste-Hulshojf-Preis, the Nelly-Sachs-Preis, the Astrid-LindgrenPreis, the Elisabeth-Langgdsser-Literaturpreis, the Elisabeth-Selbert-Preis, the Ida-Dehmel-Literaturpreis der GEDUK (Gemeinschaft der Kiinstlerinnen und Kunstfreunde), the Luise-Rinser-Preis, the Marieluise - Fleifier-Preis, the MarieLuise-Kaschnitz-Preis, the Marlen-Haushofer-Preis, the Richarda-Huch-Preis, the Roswitha-Gedenkmedaille-Literaturpreis der Stadt Bad Gandersheim, the Wilhelmine-Lubke-Preis, and the Zenta-Maurina-Sachpreis fur Literatur. One of the awards in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was the Anna-Seghers-
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Stipendium der Akademie der Kunste der DDR. An award in Switzerland is the Vera-Piller-Poesiepreis. Only a few prizes are designated solely for women, among them the Meersburger Droste-Preis fiir Dichterinnen and the Schwiftinger Literaturpreis fiir Prosa von Frauen. Women who have received some of the more prestigious German literary prizes include Friederike Roth (1983) and Katja Lange-Miiller (1986), who received the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis; Richarda Huch (1931), Agnes Miegel (1940), and Annette Kolb (1955) were awarded the Goethe-Preis der Stadt Frankfurt am Main', Anna Seghers (1947), Elisabeth Langgasser (1950), MarieLuise Kaschnitz (1955), Ingeborg Bachmann (1964), and Christa Wolf (1980) were honored with the Georg-Buchner-Preis; and Gertrud von Le Fort (1952) received the Swiss Gottfried-Keller-Preis. Margarete Neumann (1957), Christa Wolf (1963), Irmtraud Morgner (1975), and Marie Luise Rinser (1987) were awarded the East German Heinrich-Mann-Preis. The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded only once to a woman writing in German, Nelly Sachs (1966). See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Children's Literature; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; FleiBer, Marieluise; Jugendliteratur; Morgner, Irmtraud; Nobel Prize Recipients; Wolf, Christa. References: Bufkin, E. C, ed., Foreign Literary Prizes (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1980); Kurschners Deutscher Literatur-Kalender (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988). ANNE L. CRITCHFIELD Proletarian Literature—see: Marxist Theories; Socialism; Workers' Literature P r o l o g u e . A prologue serves as an introduction (often in verse) to a dramatic, more rarely to a nondramatic, literary work and is often presented (in monologue or dialogue form) by one or several actors in a play. Its functions are to address and welcome the audience, to give an exposition or to summarize the play, to request silence and attention from the audience, or to point to the end (epilogue). The prologue can be the site of didactic or moral instruction, of sociocritical analysis, or of self-examination of the author. For women writers, it has very often been the place to justify their writing or to court the audience's understanding. Prologues appear only rarely in the early Passion plays, since the content of the religious plays as usually known to the audience. If present, the prologue addressed God, with the speaker's functioning as a link between the congregation and God. The only known woman playwright of this early stage of religious drama, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, used the prologue to summarize the contents of her plays. As the forms of the plays became looser (Fastnachtsspiel), the prologue developed into a diversity of forms that fulfilled pragmatic functions (request for silence and attention) or familiarized the audience with the content of the play. During the Baroque period, the prologue became a well-established,
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rigid form that summarized the content of chapters in nondramatic works. Simultaneously, the prologue developed into a new form, the Fest-prologue, which inaugurated Baroque festivities. During the 18th century, the prologue experienced a renaissance as the playwrights tried to disseminate their new theory of theater and aesthetics (cf. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's reference to the independent prologue in the English plays). Caroline Neuber used the prologue to inform the audience of the reforms she hoped to accomplish in the theater. Luise Adelgunde Gottsched prefaced her comedies with a letter exchange between the editor and a fictitious male author that substantiated her claim that she only reluctantly published her plays. Similarly, Christiane Karoline Schlegel prefaced the printed version of her play Duval und Charmille (1778) with a "Vorbericht des Herausgebers" in which the editor disavowed any literary ambitions on the playwright's part. During Romanticism, the prologue was used in a variety of forms, for example, by Ludwig Tieck, while during Realism and Naturalism, the prologue all but disappeared. The prologue was rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century as the form of the drama became more open and included analysis and commentary (Bertolt Brecht, Franz Werfel). Else Lasker-Schiiler put the playwright on stage in Ichundlch (1940/1941) with an elaboration on the play's inspiration addressed directly to the audience. In the dramatic works of modern women playwrights (e.g., Marieluise FleiBer, Friederike Roth, Elfriede Jelinek) the prologue has become rare or nonexistent. Aside from their frequent attempts to justify their literary activity in the prologue, women employed the prologue as a literary device for reasons similar to those of their male counterparts and closely followed conventional models. See also: Baroque Literature; Fastnachtsspiel; FleiBer, Marieluise; Jelinek, Elfriede; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Preface; Romanticism. References: Bnerjee, Nandakishore, Der Prolog im Drama der deutschen Klassik: Studien zu seiner Poetik (Munich: Uni-Druck, 1970); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Mason, Eva, Prolog, Epilog und Zwischenrede im deutschen Schauspiel des Mittelalters (Affolgtern am Albis: J. WeiB, 1949); Stiirzer, Anne, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstucke. Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); Zellweker, Edwin, Prolog und Epilog im deutschen Drama. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte deutscher Dichtung (Leipzig, Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1906).
KARIN BAUMGARTNER Prostitution. The appearance of the prostitute in German literature and letters coincided with a drastic increase in prostitution and white slavery in German society during the mid-19th century as a result of the Industrial Revolution. From then on, female sexuality was a topic of heated debate. While it was socially acceptable for men to engage in sex with lower-class women and prostitutes, Wilhelmine society expected middle-class women to remain chaste for marriage. In response to this patriarchal double standard, many middle-class
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women joined moral associations and campaigned against prostitution. Many wrote polemical articles and books about prostitution and white slavery (Gertrud Guillaume-Schack, Uber unsere sittlichen Verhaltnisse, 1882; Irma von TrollBorostyani, Die Prostitution vor dem Gesetz, 1893; Berta Pappenheim, SisyphusArbeit [Madchenhandel], 1910; Anna Pappritz, ed., Einfuhrung in das Studium der Prostitutionsfrage, 1919), in which they criticized the customary punishment of the prostitute (but not of the customer), rejected state control of prostitution, and advocated changes in social conditions. Numerous articles appeared in journals such as Der Abolitionist, edited by Katharina Scheven, and Die Neue Generation, edited by Helene Stocker. Some female authors viewed marriages of convenience as a high-class form of prostitution (Fanny Lewald, Eine Lebensfrage, 1845; Wanda von Dunajew, Der Roman einer tugendhaften Frau, 1873; Helene Bohlau, Der Rangierbahnhof 1895). In other novels, attempts by women to express their sexuality outside marriage resulted in pregnancy and/or death. During the Weimar Republic, many female writers sought to find the causes of prostitution in the social problems of their times. Elga Kern, who interviewed 35 prostitutes in Wie sie dazu kamen (1928), hoped to present women's point of view in search of a possible solution to prostitution. Various playwrights used the ZeitstUck (Maria Lazar, Der Henker, 1921; Use Langner, Frau Emma kdmpft im Hinterland, 1929; Elke Eckersberg, Drei Jahre und eine Nacht, 1932; Eleonore Kalkowska, Zeitungsnotizen, 1933) to portray prostitutes as products of social problems, such as the economic crises during the Weimar Republic, or as ironic responses to the madonna/whore dichotomy of male-authored literature. Several novels by women about prostitutes (Use Frapan, Der Retter der Moral, n.d.; Else Jerusalem, Der heilige Skarabdus, 1911) were published in the early 1900s; Margarethe Bohme's highly successful Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, originally published in 1905, was reprinted in unsurpassed numbers in 1931. See also: Lewald, Fanny; Neue Sachlichkeit; Revolution, Industrial; Weimar Republic; Whore. References: Giirtler, Christa, Theresia Klugsberger, and Sigrid SchmidtBortenschlager, eds., Schwierige Verhaltnisse. Liebe und Sexualitat in der Frauenliteratur um 1900 (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1992); Jans sen-Jurreit, Marielouise, Frauen und Sexualmoral (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1986); Stiirzer, Anne, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstucke. Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993). BELINDA CARSTENS-WICKHAM P r o t a g o n i s t / A n t a g o n i s t . Whereas female protagonists have been comparatively rare in men's literature, the female antagonist or opponent of the heroine or hero became a major means of promoting specific images of femininity, particularly in the dramatic tradition of the Enlightenment, Storm and Stress, and Classical movements. In this tradition, the advocated or tabooed values of femininity are expressed in the juxtaposition of the sometimes bour-
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geois, young, sexually and intellectually inexperienced—and hence beloved— innocence and the usually aristocratic, older, intellectually and sexually experienced—and hence rejected—virago, who is frequently the main instigator of the play's intrigue. Examples of such juxtapositions in the most renowned plays of the period are Sara Sampson and Marwood in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Mifi Sara Sampson (1755), Emilia and Orsina in his Emilia Galotti (1772); Luise Millerin and Lady Milford in Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (1784), Leonore and Julia in his Die Verschworung des Fiesco zu Genua (1783), Elisabeth and Eboli in his Don Carlos (1787), Thekla and Countess Terzky in his Wallenstein (1798-1799); Maria and Adelheid in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen (1773), and Gretchen and Marthe Schwerdtlein in his Faust (1808). That the juxtaposition of protagonist and antagonist, which must be read as part of the long tradition that either idealizes or demonizes femininity, was often more important than illustrating virtue through the protagonist is evidenced in Schiller's change of title from the original Luise Millerin to Kabale und Liebe. Despite the fact that the majority of these virtuous protagonists are not bourgeois (Sara Sampson, Emilia Galotti, Leonore, Elisabeth, Thekla, and Maria in Gotz), the virtuous protagonist has often been identified with the bourgeoisie; her struggle against the (usually aristocratic) seducer symbolizes aristocratic oppression of her entire class. This identification is defensible, on one hand, because the bourgeoisie sought to distinguish itself from the corrupt aristocracy based on moral virtues, which were personified in the protagonist, and for which the antagonist served as counterexample. On the other hand, the opposition of protagonist and antagonist advocates particular images of femininity and condemns others according to the moral and social values of the emerging bourgeoisie. As Luise Millerin and Emilia Galotti demonstrate, passivity and self-sacrifice were highly valued, whereas the "masculine" qualities that are symbolized in the antagonists—intelligence, activeness, and independence— were viewed as "unfeminine" and destructive (many antagonists either commit or attempt murder, for example, Marwood, Orsina, Julia in Fiesco, and Adelheid in Gotz). Thus, female protagonists and antagonists can serve simultaneously as symbols of (male) bourgeois emancipation and as an assertion that this emancipation should not be extended to the female members of the class. The juxtaposition of protagonist and antagonist and the implied advocation and condemnation of specific characteristics for women seem to have been essential components in contemporary dramas by men but appear only rarely in women's plays of the period. Of several thousand dramas written by women during the 18th and 19th centuries, only three took over the constellation of women figures known from the male tradition: Eleonore Thon's bourgeois tragedy Adelheid von Rastenberg (1788), Marianne Ehrmann's GrafBilding (1788), a Ritterschauspiel, and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's historical drama Elisabeth (1847). Each of these plays employs a historical or semihistorical romantic setting that makes heavy use of the medieval tradition of knightly courtship: Thon's
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and Ehrmann's plays are set in the Middle Ages, and Birch-Pfeiffer's in 16thcentury England. Each protagonist (the passive Adelheids in Thon's and Ehrmann's dramas and the intelligent, accomplished, and independent Elisabeth in Birch-Pfeiffer's play) are juxtaposed with evil noblewomen (Bertha in Thon's play, the countess in Ehrmann's, and Mary Tudor in Birch-Pfeiffer's) who attempt to murder the protagonists, in Thon's and Ehrmann's plays for love, in Birch-Pfeiffer's in order to prevent Elisabeth's succession to the throne. While there are some superficial similarities to the juxtapositions portrayed in plays by Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, there are also some notable differences. As is frequently the case in plays by their male colleagues, the virtuous protagonists die in both Thon's and Ehrmann's dramas (Thon's Adelheid is murdered by her antagonist Bertha, and Ehrmann's Adelheid dies as a result of the brutality of her knight's "courtship," which began with rape). However, in both cases, the courtship is portrayed as murderously brutal; whereas in the men's dramas, the blame often falls squarely on the female antagonists' shoulders, the knights in these plays are directly or indirectly held responsible for the protagonists' deaths. In Birch-Pfeiffer's play, the antagonist's intrigue fails: the play ends with Elisabeth's triumphant ascension to the throne. These plays do not vindicate the antagonist, but they do reinterpret the figure of the protagonist as either a victim of men's brutality (rather than the other woman's intrigue) or an intelligent and independent figure who does not pay for these qualities with her "femininity" (Birch-Pfeiffer). Some plays by women, for example, Christiane Karoline Schlegel's bourgeois tragedy Duval und Charmille (1778), attempt to re-view the concept of the female antagonist established in the male tradition: in Schlegel's play, Diival's wife, Mariane, and his lover, Amalie, do not oppose each other, but forge a friendship that is upheld by the similarity of their relationship to Duval, who loves and terrorizes both. While this new constellation—two women turn their ' 'natural'' rivalry into a friendship—is a blatant breach of the male tradition, the end of the play (Duval murders Amalie and then kills himself) would seem to uphold the tradition in women's plays that casts doubt on the very notion of male courtship and love. See also: Bourgeois Tragedy; Classicism; Drama, Historical; Ehrmann, Marianne; Enlightenment; Gender Theories, History of; Ritterliteratur; Storm and Stress. References: Huyssen, Andreas, "Das leidende Weib in der dramatischen Literatur von Empfindsamkeit und Sturm und Drang: Eine Studie zur biirgerlichen Emanzipation in Deutschland." Monatshefte 69 (1977): 159-73; Stephan, Inge, " 'So ist die Tugend ein Gespenst': Frauenbild und Tugendbegriff bei Lessing und Schiller." Lessing und die Toleranz: Beitrdge der vierten Internationalen Konferenz der Lessing Society in Hamburg vom 27. bis 29. Juni 1985. Ed. Peter Freimark, Franklin Kopitzsch and Helga Slessarev (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986) 357-74; Wurst, Karin, ed., Frauen und Drama im 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1991). SUSANNE KORD
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P r o t o k o l l e . These have been instrumental in the writing of women's history and of sexual subcultures, endeavoring to construct previously silenced and ignored constituencies in terms of a counterpublic. As personal histories and narratives, the Protokoll collections have proven congenial to the representation of sexual and gender oppression that occurs through subjective discourses in the private sphere. The term ' 'ProtokoW' performs a legitimating gesture intended to document and politicize what has been deemed personal and hence irrelevant. West German leftist and feminist Erika Runge first used the term Protokoll for a collection of personal narratives. Her Bottroper Protokolle (1968), which record the daily lives of factory workers in the Ruhrgebiet, carefully transcribed the speech patterns of its subjects and deliberately challenged the bourgeois notion of literature, its institutions, and aesthetic premises. Prominent feminist Alice Schwarzer compiled two volumes of women's voices that shed light on patriarchal oppression and fueled the articulation of sexual politics and the demand for reproductive rights in the early 1970s. The genre particularly blossomed in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1974, Sarah Kirsch (pseudonym for Ingrid Bernstein) published an interviewcollection, followed by Maxie Wander and Christine Miiller (1985). These volumes addressed the shortcomings of dominant gender ideology in ' 'real existing socialism." Christa Wolf's claim that the Protokoll does not obey the rules of literature and therefore escapes the trap of (self-)censorship in the introduction to Wander's book is doubtful, however, when one considers the literary quality particularly of Guten Morgen, Du Schone (1978). On the contrary, the book offers instances of self-censor ship, conformity, and affirmation that invite doubts and questions; its structure as a series of dialogues extended to the anticipated reactions of, and among, readers and created a feminist network outside official politics. The intimate explorations of socialist subjectivity, while purporting to speak privately, actually created a performative, quasi-dramatic genre built on dialogue, diversity, and collective enunciation. The Protokolle-colltctions created a space in public discourse previously denied to women for the discussion of questions and conflicts concerning gender. Many studio theaters recognized the dramatic potential of this "pre-literary" genre. They used it by putting the "private" voices on stage, thereby creating further opportunities for a dialogue between women and enabling them to connect across biographies and experiences. In the turbulent years around reunification, the Protokoll as a genre based on collective memory and by virtue of its collagelike, fragmentary shape proved congenial to addressing a society in transition. Some testimonials represent what is still simply marked as "GDR women"; others, for example, Kerstin Gutsche's collection of lesbian Protokolle or Renate Ullrich's volume of interviews with East Berlin theater women called Mein Kapital bin ich selber (1991), indicate a sense of liberation from the leveling effects of egalitarianism, even as they testify to the devastating effects the erosion of social equality has on women's biographies.
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These archaeological texts, chronicling a system that has ceased to exist but continues to shape the lives of its former citizens, now make possible an assessment of gender and sexuality in the GDR as acts performed in the interstices of official policies and individual realization. They track the subjective effects of reunification on the female population and trace the emergence and policing of feminist subjectivities and organizations in the GDR. This marks a feminist perspective as the one from which the collapse of the socialist patriarchy and the failure of all efforts to reinvigorate socialism through the male-dominated Burgerbewegungen can be described and critiqued most effectively. See also: Biography; Documentary Literature; FRG Literature (1990-present); GDR Literature; Lesbian Literature; Unification, German; Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen, Du Schone; Wende, Die; Wolf, Christa. References: Lennox, Sara, "Nun ja! Das nachste Leben geht aber heute an: Prosa von Frauen und Frauenbefreiung in der DDR." Literatur der DDR in den siebziger Jahren. Ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Patricia Herminghouse (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1983) 224-58; Sieg, Katrin, "Subjectivity and Socialism: Feminist Discourses in East Germany." Postcommunism and the Body Politic. Ed. Ellen Berry (Ithaca: New York University Press, 1995) 105-33. KATRIN SIEG P r o v e r b s . These are short, recognizable phrases expressing an apparent truth in a metaphorical, fixed, and easily memorizable form. Handed down orally from generation to generation, these expressions are characterized by tradition as well as currency. Proverbs tend to be didactic, expressing a common experience or popular belief in the form of a positive or negative statement. The following stylistic and rhetorical features are common to proverbs: internal and end rhyme, alliteration, parallelism, opposition, paradox, personification, ellipsis, and hyperbole. As a subgenre of the proverb, proverbial expressions and comparisons contain many of the same elements; however, they do not constitute complete sentences. Proverbs often contain national, ethnic, or sexual stereotypes and are frequently misogynous. Women are portrayed as men's negative counterparts and as vain, vengeful, extravagant, unfaithful, deceitful, devious, unpredictable, and, very often, dumb. Proverbial "wisdom" even encourages corporeal punishment as the best way to ensure female obedience. Only a negligible number of proverbs depict women in a favorable light. These also reinforce traditional gender roles since the praise accorded to women is usually limited to such virtues as devoutness, domesticity, thrift, and diligence. Although some of the most misogynous proverbs are no longer commonly used, advertisements still abound with proverbs either stereotyping or slandering women. Capitalizing on the apparent weight and authority of proverbial wisdom, American feminists have appropriated this form of expression to create their own antiproverbs. One of these antiproverbs, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle," appeared in 1977 in the October issue of Ms. Mag-
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azine and has made its way into the German language. Such examples expose the arbitrariness of traditional proverbial wisdom and, at the same time, make use of the proverbial form for feminist ends. See also: Aphorism; Gender Theories, History of. References: Daniels, Karlheinz, "Geschlechtsspezifische Stereotypen im Sprichwort. Ein interdisziplinarer ProblemaufriB." Sprache und Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 16 (1985): 18-25; Hufeisen, Britta, " 'Frauen und Pelze wollen oft geklopft sein.' Zur Darstellung der Frau in Sprichwortern, Redewendungen und sonstigen festen Ausdriicken." "Das Weib soil schweigen . . . " (1. Kor. 14, 34): Beitrdge zur linguistischen Frauenforschung (Berne: Lang, 1993) 153-71; Mieder, Wolfgang, "Eine Frau ohne Mann ist wie ein Fisch ohne Velo!" Sprachspiegel 38 (1982): 141-24; Rohrich, Lutz, and Wolfgang Mieder, Sprichwort (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977); Seiler, Friedrich, Deutsche Sprichworterkunde (Munich: Beck, 1967). HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER P s e u d o n y m s — s e e : Authorship P s y c h o a n a l y s i s . German-speaking women psychoanalysts advanced mainly three areas of inquiry: ego psychology, child psychology, and object relations theory. They developed the concept of the pre-oedipal phase and challenged Sigmund Freud's view on female sexuality. The child psychoanalyst Anna Freud and other ego psychologists like Ernst Kris, Erik Erikson, and Heinz Hartmann postulate the existence of an autonomous ego that is not—as Sigmund Freud would have it—derived from the id. Intellectual and creative activities have their source in neutralized energy from the ego rather than from the sublimation of libido (A. Freud, Das Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen, 1936). For the development of aggression, Anna Freud assumes phases like those in libidinal development. In all three, the infantileoral phase, the anal phase, and the phallic phase, she sees gender-specific differences at work that are inscribed through education and socialization: aggression in boys is encouraged to be directed toward the outside, and in girls, toward the inside (Wege und Irrwege in der Kinderentwicklung, 1968). Due to their emphasis on the importance of the pre-oedipal period, object relations theorists like Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott stress the crucial role of the mother-infant dyad in human development. From the infant's gratification or frustration and from the projection of his or her own libidinal and aggressive instincts, imagos of good and bad objects are derived. This fragmentation of the external world and of the mother's body in particular into "good breast" and "bad breast" leads to love or hatred felt for the whole person (Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works [1921^4195], 1977). Concerning the question of the development of female sexuality, Helene Deutsch (Psychoanalyse der weiblichen Sexualfunktionen, 1925) still holds onto the concept of a primary phallic phase in girls and women as an identification with the father, which has to be overcome with any new female function (men-
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struation, intercourse, birth, feeding, menopause). Josine Miiller was the first to challenge Sigmund Freud's view on female sexuality by interpreting penis envy and phallic attachment as a secondary development after a primary vaginal attachment ("Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Libidoentwicklung des Madchens in der genitalen Phase," 1931). Karen Horney took up this view and developed it further in "Die Leugnung der Vagina" (1933) by arguing that a primary phase of feminine/vaginal sexuality is given up only as the role of femininity decreases and that Sigmund Freud's postulation of a primary penis envy is grounded in a denial of the vagina. Although Horney labeled contemporary psychoanalytic theories of femininity as male fantasies in a male-dominated society, she nevertheless retained a biologistic notion of the "true woman." Klein similarly reversed the order of events in Die Psychoanalyse des Kindes (1932), claiming a primary eroticization of the vagina that is, however, so frightening that it needs to be postponed. In her view, the oedipal conflict is already at work in the economy of the pregenital, especially the oral phase. Both Klein and Deutsch (Psychologie der Frau, 1944) view the girl's turn toward her father and his phallus as an offshoot of the original attachment to the breast, and view female anxiety about the inside of the body as an equivalent to male castration anxiety: similar to the earlier introjection of the breast, the penis is now introjected as a bad object due to frustrations and refusals. In contrast to Sigmund Freud's postulation of a weak superego in women, Klein postulates that a particularly sadistic superego is established in girls as the result of the introjection process, which makes it more necessary for them than for boys to rely on outside objects in order to overcome anxiety and guilt feelings. Whereas the boy narcissistically endows his penis with omnipotence and thus becomes independent from the mother, the girl can only idealize the introjected paternal penis of which she phantasmically deprived her mother because she envied her for it. Taking up the controversy of the 1920s and 1930s in a series of articles in Psyche, Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen discusses clitoral/vaginal sexuality (1971), penis envy (1975), and masochism and narcissism (1978) not from an anatomical point of view, as Sigmund Freud had mainly done, but within the context of culturally sanctioned and gender-specific roles in society. Penis envy is seen as longing for power, independence, self-esteem, and integrity; female masochism is postulated as a result of societal and parental discouragement of the girl's aggressive potentials; and female narcissism is viewed as a consequence of the parents' (unconscious) prioritizing of the male sex. In Die friedfertige Frau (1985), Mitscherlich goes even further and establishes a typology of gender-specific aggressive behavior by investigating its psychic and social background. See also: Feminist Theory, French; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Narcissism, Female; Semiotics. References: Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., ed., La sexualite feminine. Recherche psychanalytic nouvelles (Paris: Payot, 1964); Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Christoffel, Judith, Neue Stromungen
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in der Psychologie von Freud und Jung. Impulse von Frauen (Freiburg: Walter, 1989); Mitchell, Juliet, and Jacqueline Rose, eds., Feminine Sexuality. Jacques Lacan and the ecole freudienne (New York: Norton, 1985).
SIGRID BERKA Publishing: see Anthology; Authorship P u p p e n s p i e l . Although the German Puppenspiel—a theatrical form utilizing hand puppets, marionettes, and stick puppets—has existed for nearly 800 years, women have been mentioned as active puppeteers only since 1800. The first evidence of hand puppets in Germany dates back to a depiction of the abbess Herrad von Landsberg with her "Schaukelpiippchen" (1175). From 1200 to 1700, traveling comedians and puppeteers competed with the theaters, incorporating bits and pieces of popular drama as well as fairy tales and other stories from as far away as China and India. Most of these puppeteers were illiterate; they memorized their puppet shows and passed them on to their apprentices. In the 17th century, Pulcinella puppets (Italy) and marionettes (France) were introduced to Germany, leading to the establishment of permanent puppet stages in large cities, all of which were initially owned and run by men, but at times passed on to the Puppenspielef s wife, daughter, or widow. In 1733, the wife of the Puppenspieler Nefzer or Neufzer, formerly a tightrope dancer, directed her own puppet theater in Mainz. Babette Klinger inherited the first local Marionettentheater in Munich from her father, the famous puppeteer "Papa Schmid" (Josef Leonard Schmid). With Klinger's help, Schmid created a unique theater of several thousand marionettes and inspired new and more artistic assessments of marionette theater. By the time Christian Josef Chuggmall's daughters, Elise, Anna, and Magdalena Chuggmall, inherited his Automatentheater in 1847, women puppeteers were recorded by their full name. In the late 1800s, there was keen competition between actresses and Puppenspielerinnen. Sophie Burger-Alexander, the famous tragic actress, was often hired as a Puppenspielerin and performed in Vienna, Breslau, Hamburg, Prague, and Munich. Her forte was tragedies. Other talented actresses who were involved in the Puppenspiel were Hedda Lindner-Schurmann and Bertha Portz. In 1802, Elisabeth Thierry-Winters and Christoph Winters established today's famous stick puppet theater Hdnneschen. Hanneschen was unusual in the sense that it did not rely on stock characters such as Hanswurst or Kasperle but instead aimed to portray society's ailments in satirical, comic vignettes. Thierry-Winters was very much recognized by the audience as a leading figure. Aside from producing shows in French and German, she took on the menial labor connected with the enterprise. Sophie Syler wrote an opera text, and Wilhelmine Oeller wrote dramatic texts for Thierry-Winter's Hanneschen theater. Oeller's texts sparkle with her sense of humor, wit, and satire. The beginning of this century marks the independence of women in the world of the Puppenspiel. Elisabeth von Groben wrote Kinder- und Puppentheater. In
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1900, Elisabeth Menzel published her own puppet play version of the Faust Puppenspiel. In 1921, Liesel Simons began a radio show, which became known as the Frankfurter Rundfunkkasperl. Hand puppet stages are owned by the Swiss women Renate Amstutz, Kathy Wuthrich, and Therese Keller. Keller is known for her exceptional talent in performing for children. Today the Verband Deutsche Puppentheater e.V. has a large number of women members. References: Bohlmeier, Gerd, Puppenspiel 1933-1945 in Deutschland. Das Puppenspiel im Dienste der Nationalsozialistischen Ideologic in Deutschland (Bochum: DIP, 1985); Niessen, Carl, Das Rheinische Puppenspiel (Bonn: Klopp, 1928); Purschke, Hans R., Uber das Puppenspiel und seine Geschichte (Frankfurt/M.: Puppen und Masken, 1983); Rehm, Hermann Siegfried, Das Buch der Marionetten (Berlin: Frensdorff, n.d.); Steinmann, P. K, Figurentheater (Frankfurt/M.: Puppen und Masken, 1983). INGRID DINTER
Q Q u e e r Theory—see Film, Lesbian; Homosexuality; Lesbian Literature; Lesbian Theories
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R Radio Play—see: Horspiel Ratgeberliteratur. This is considered a genre of moral didactic writings geared toward a specific audience with a corresponding pedagogical character. In contrast to other moral writings, the genre is marked by a constructed fictional, often highly emotional communication model. A dialogue takes place either directly between the adviser and the (female) reader or, more frequently, between a fictional character introduced by the author and an equally fictional partner. Another popular form is a collection of confidential letters presented to the addressee as an inheritance. The books are structured by polarized gender characteristics and usually address bourgeois adolescents, "Jungfrauen" and "Junglinge," who are considered immature and inexperienced. Rarely are domestics addressed, and by the end of the 18th century, the aristocratic youth no longer received consideration either. In the constructed dialogic situation, the addressees are not given a voice, at least not their own. Femininity and masculinity and their particular attributes are at the center of discussion. In this regard, Ratgeberliteratur represents an important source for woman-centered research and historical questions. Within the area of literature for adolescents, it claims a central position, marking the beginning of the Madchenliteratur during the 16th century. The genre achieved great popularity in the context of Enlightenment philanthropic educational concepts. During this time (1789-1800), the emotional component of the dialogic situation was emphasized. Joachim Heinrich Campe's Vaterlicher Rath an meine Tochter (1789) decisively influenced the genre. The
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definition of the female role as wife, mother, and housekeeper led to a functionally oriented literature for adult women, which presented specific and practical advice. In contrast, texts for girls, usually 12- to 16-year-olds, concentrated more on the process of development in terms of body, soul, and intellect. These texts were concerned with preparing the girl for life as a woman and for her entrance into the world. Around 1800, those writing from an explicitly male perspective (like Johann Ludwig Ewald) dominated. They emphasized the erotic attractiveness of young girls and viewed female maturation purely in terms of male satisfaction. As the mother figure gained more significance in the pedagogical discourse at the beginning of the 19th century, motherliness came to dominate the genre. Different authors (such as Jakob Glatz) dispensed motherly advice, employing a female pseudonym. At the same time, women's participation in the conception of the genre increased. They focused on a better education for girls and searched (within the established discourse of pedagogy and femininity) for spaces that permitted freedom and development of female self-confidence. As one of the few women authors during the 18th century, Sophie von La Roche had already written such a progressive text for girls, her Briefe an Lina (1785). After 1850, most Ratgeberliteratur was written by women, who formulated political positions with regard to the bourgeois feminist movement and the institution of the church. In Herzensworte (1859), Julie Burow carefully advocated her ideas about professions and missions for women. The teacher and women's rights advocate Marie Calm fervently demanded improved education for girls and legal status for women and addressed prejudices against "bluestockings" and well-educated girls/women in general. During the 19th century, diverse structural changes characterized the genre. In part, its content and goals were taken up by other literary forms of adolescent literature, especially Madchenliteratur. To a large extent, fashion journals and mass media complemented or appropriated its functions during the 19th and 20th centuries. See also: Enlightenment; Geschlechtscharaktere; La Roche, Sophie von; Madchenliteratur; Mother Figures; Women's Journals. References: Barth, Susanne, Jungfrauenzucht: Literaturwissenschaftliche und padagogische Studien zur Madchenerziehungsliteratur zwischen 1200 und 1600 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994); Briiggemann, Theodor, and Otto Brunken, eds., Handbuch zur Kinderund Jugendliteratur. Von 1570 bis 1750 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991); Grenz, Dagmar, Madchenliteratur: Von den moralisch-belehrenden Schriften im 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Herausbildung der Backfischliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981); Hantzschel, Gtinther, ed., Bildung und Kultur burgerlicher Frauen 1850-1918: Eine Quellendokumentation aus Anstandsbuchern und Lebenshilfen fur Mddchen und Frauen als Beitrag zur weiblichen literarischen Sozialisation (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1986); Pellatz, Susanne, "Das Korperbild und die Weiblichkeit: Madchenerziehung um 1800." Frauen und alltdgliche Lebensfuhrung. Ed. Erika Claupein (Niederkleen: Wissenschaftlicher Fachverlag Fleck, 1994); Wilkending, Gisela, ed., Kinder und Jugendliteratur:
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Madchenliteratur vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994). SUSANNE PELLATZ
R e a d e r - R e s p o n s e T h e o r i e s . These encompass a range of different theoretical approaches based on competing notions of the reader and his or her role in the process of the construction of meaning. The German version of readerresponse theory, Rezeptionstheorie, emerged in the Konstanz School of literary studies, with Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss as its main representatives. Iser developed the concept of the "implied reader," an abstract reader whose potential interpretive responses are presupposed by an author and structured into the text. For Iser, the literary text is marked by different types of indeterminacies (Leerstellen) to which the reader may respond in various ways. Thus, his approach accounts for the existence of different interpretations without abandoning the attention to textual properties. Among Iser's strongest critics is Stanley Fish, who in his later works represents the opposite end of the theoretical spectrum. Fish rejects the notion that there is any preexisting meaning in a text and instead attributes the construction of meaning to various "interpretive communities" and their interpretive strategies. Robert Jauss, Iser's colleague, focuses on literary history and canon formation—critically responding to formalist and Marxist approaches and drawing on Hans Gadamer's hermeneutics—and his views are compatible with Iser's focus on the individual literary text. Jauss' concept of the reader's "horizon of expectations"—expectations that are partially met and partially "destroyed" by a particular text—accounts for the historically changing reception of literary texts as well as for literature's critical potential (in transgressing aesthetic and social norms). Until the early 1980s, there was little formal exchange between feminist theories and reader-response theories. However, attention to the gendered reader— while virtually absent from established reader-response theories—was from the very beginning at the center of feminist literary criticism. In Resisting Reader (1978), Judith Fetterley, for instance, calls for reading strategies that resist reading from a male point of view, including the embrace of (literary representations of) misogyny and women's inferior position. Similarly, Annette Kolodny calls for feminist reading strategies, but in an argument that recalls Jauss' "horizon of expectations," she cautions against a notion of resistance that underestimates the long-term efforts involved in unlearning the androcentrism engrained in social and aesthetic expectations. Among feminist studies that explicitly comment on reader-response theories is Patrocinio Schweikart's critical revision of Iser's approach (1985). She argues that his emphasis on how the text enables and delineates the interpretive freedom of the reader can be appropriated for feminist critiques that are not solely concerned with reading strategies (as is Fish), but also with aspects of the text that perpetuate androcentric or misogynist views. But in contrast to Iser's notion of
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the reader's choice between different "concretizations" allowed by the text, Schweikart calls for reading the "text against itself" by identifying perspectives that are excluded or marginalized. Feminist critics informed by recent critical theory have challenged the unmediated notions of "women's experience" and "female identity" underlying some of these reader-centered feminist approaches. Instead of a "theory of female reading," Mary Jacobus, for instance, in Reading Women (1986) scrutinizes textual strategies that produce and naturalize women's identity. Wai Chee Dimock (1991) has suggested new venues for reader-centered approaches by critically combining feminism and New Historicism. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.American; Formalism; Hermeneutics; Marxist Theories; New Historicism; Poststructuralism; Reception; Subjectivity. References: Caughie, Pamela, "Women Reading/Reading Women: A Review of Some Recent Books on Gender and Reading." Papers on Language and Literature 24.3 (1988): 317-35; Holub, Robert, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen, 1984); Iser, Wolfgang, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Jauss, Hans Robert, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Kolodny, Annette, "A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts." New Literary History 11 (1980): 451-67; Schweickart, Patrocinio, "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading." Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Ed. Elisabeth Flynn and P. Schweickart (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) 31-62. FRIEDERIKE EIGLER R e a l i s m ( 1 8 4 8 - C . 1 8 9 0 ) . As a descriptive term, this refers to a mode of writing that portrays everyday life in a literary text and that appears throughout literary history. German Realism as a literary period (about the second half of the 19th century) was grounded in a thoroughly historical vision of peoples. It rejected Classicist idealism and Romantic visionary ideals, insisting on the primacy of actual social life and conventions, while stressing its difference from a mere Naturalist determinism. In a sense then, German Realism continued the German idealist tradition tempered by the materialism typical of the 19th century. German Realism is framed by a sensitivity to the destabilization of traditional life through the revolutions in the natural and social sciences and the concomitant development of the modern industrial nation-state. A measure of German Realism is the degree to which it represents historical or contemporary life of average, often bourgeois, characters as well as social, economic, political, and ideological topics. German Realism explores the conflicts between the individual and society, often by choosing traditional social outsiders (women, artists, criminals, children, Jews, poor people) as central characters. The dominant genres were the novella and the novel, even though drama
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continued to be the sought-after aesthetic ideal. Stylistically, the narrator moves further into the background, which makes the reproduction of dialogue of basic importance. A preference for vernacular language and regional dialects as well as domestic imagery is typical for Realist literature. At least on the surface, the texts tend to resolve positively the conflicts between individual aspirations and social norms, often introducing concepts of renunciation and a retreat into private life as necessary preconditions for such happy endings. A number of women writers from the Vormdrz period, such as Louise OttoPeters, Fanny Lewald, and Ida Hahn-Hahn, who had advocated women's emancipation in their literary works, continued to publish. After the failed Revolution of 1848/1849 during the period of conservative reaction, many of these women became more conservative, Hahn-Hahn being a prime example. Others, such as Otto-Peters and Lewald, continued to advocate women's liberation but were forced to temper the tone of their works. One of the new progressive voices was Hedwig Dohm, who argued in her essays and novels for the economic, spiritual, and political independence of women. Wie Frauen werden—Werde, die du bist (1894) and the trilogy Sibilla Dalmar (1896-1899) are penetrating analyses of women's oppression. The three most accomplished women writers of Realism were aristocrats; two were Catholics, one of French Huguenot extraction. Annette von DrosteHiilshoff s novella Die Judenbuche (1842) combines a detailed depiction of prerevolutionary rural Westphalia with a mystical vision of the human race lost in an enigmatic universe. It is one of the most celebrated novellas of 19thcentury German literature. Droste-Hulshoff's ballads are among the most notable collections of Realist lyrical poetry. Louise von Francois gained her reputation through historical novels that she wrote to support herself. Die letzte Reckenburgerin (1871), Frau Erdmuthens Zwillingssohne (1873), and Stufenjahre eines Gliicklichen (1877) have a decidedly patriotic tone and merge portrayals of important historical events in the history of the empire with family histories of representative characters. Typical for all her novels are strong female characters who fearlessly intervene on behalf of the oppressed. The works of EbnerEschenbach blend subtle psychological portraits of outsiders with a detailed representation of social conflicts, interwoven with gentle humor but also biting wit (Dorf- und Schlofigeschichten, 1883; Bozena, 1876; Unsuhnbar, 1890; Das Gemeindekind, 1887). Her Aphorismen (1880) are a classic of aphoristic literature, collecting her perceptive and witty observations of human interaction. Later renowned women writers who have been read as examples of Realist literature include Helene Bohlau (Halbtier!, 1899) and Gabriele Reuter, whose novel Aus guter Familie (1895) analyzes the social repercussions of the suppressed female psyche and became one of the most widely read novels at the turn of the century. See also: Aphorism; Dohm, Hedwig; Dorfgeschichte; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Gesellschaftsroman; Lewald, Fanny; Novel, Historical; Otto-Peters, Louise; Reuter, Gabriele; Revolution, German (1848); Young Germany.
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References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit. Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Frederiksen, Elke, "German Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century: Where Are They?" 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) 177-201, ed., Women Writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: An Annotated BioBibliographical Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Frauen-Literatur-Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985); Harnisch, Antje, "Keller, Raabe, Fontane: Geschlecht, Sexualitat und Familie im biirgerlichen Realismus." Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte. Ed. Helmut Kreuzer and Karl Riha (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1994) 104-22. PETER C. PFEIFFER R e a l i s m , Magic. The German art historian Franz Roth coined the term to name an aesthetic movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Historically, the term "magic realism" has been used in the context of some strands of postexpressionism or Neue Sachlichkeit in art, which is marked by a hyperrealism bordering on distortion, breaking down and opening up reality to elements of the supernatural. Works by Karl Haid, Max Beckmann, and Max Ernst, for example, suspend the realistic presentation of a scene or character in a fantastic juxtaposition of disparate elements or events, in a balancing act between a dreamlike state and reality. Narratives glide from the real into the magic, using a language that oscillates and mediates between the two. Traditional ways of telling stories are transformed by a narrative style that is symbolic and mythical, yet at the same time deeply empirical and personal. This is one of the features that distinguishes magic realism from other forms of the fantastic, like science fiction or fantasy, or from escapist trivial literature. The delight in stretching boundaries, exploring and transcending the borders of reality, and a strategy of packaging politically and socially explosive messages into magic narrative to escape censorship all testify to the subversive power of the genre. But magic realism is more than the sum of these parts. Literary criticism of the genre runs the risk of diluting the political and social criticism if the magic aspects are separated from their tangible ties to Realism. While the term "magic realism" requires further definition, it can also be applied to some literature written during World War II and to some more recent trends. Especially concerning the years 1933 to 1945, relatively little research has been done on the tradition of magic realism, which can be attributed to the common division between fascist and nonfascist literature. Embedding criticism was one survival strategy for German writers remaining in Germany after 1933. This generation of writers and artists, employing such subversive strategies to retain some semblance of their own voice, is thus described as having been in Innere Emigration. Elisabeth Langgasser is considered one of the main repre-
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sentatives of this generation of magic realism. Her microscopic observations of the world in Gang durch das Ried (1936) or Das unausloschliche Siegel (1946) intensify perception so that the familiar becomes strange, and the world presents itself from a new angle. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Irmtraud Morgner's critique of socialism and patriarchy employs Utopian elements in Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura (1974). In Daughters of Eve. Women's Writing from the German Democratic Republic (1993), a collection translated and edited by Nancy Lukens and Dorothy Rosenberg, many stories expose the double standards of the socialist system: frequently, women are able to balance their careers and their family responsibilities only with the aid of magic tricks and supernatural helpers. For contemporary literature, an investigation of the influences and crosscurrents among the literatures of Latin America, the United States, Canada, and German-speaking countries would be fruitful, especially regarding the political circumstances and other conditions of production that bring forth magic realism in writing. For readers the challenge lies in a willingness not only to suspend disbelief but also to engage in readings of multiple realities that bypass the laws of physics and time in their immediate connection between mental states and the concrete world. See also: Expressionism; Fantastic Literature; GDR Literature; Inner Emigration; Morgner, Irmtraud; Neue Sachlichkeit; Science Fiction; Trivial Literature; Utopia. References: Angulo, Maria Elena, Magic Realism: Social Context and Discourse (New York: Garland, 1995); Kirchner, Doris, Doppelbodige Wirklichkeiten: Magischer Realismus und nicht-faschistische Literatur (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1993); Scheffel, Michael, Magischer Realismus: Die Geschichte eines Begriffs und ein Versuch seiner Bestimmung (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1990). ERIKA BERROTH R e a l i s m , Socialist—see: Socialist Realism R e c e p t i o n . Until the onset of feminist scholarship in the 1970s, the reception of women's literature has been sporadic, inadequate, and prejudicial. This failure to read and evaluate literature by women fairly is not individual but systemic. Coincidental with a steep increase in women's literary production in the early 19th century, efforts began to canonize and classify literature, which instituted specific criteria (e.g., periodization, genre hierarchy, and the myth of the Great Author) to aid in literary interpretation. By the late 19th century, this system of literary interpretation and classification, which is based entirely on works by male authors, was firmly in place. As a result, the exclusion of women's literature from traditional literary historiography has developed, with the result that 19th-century bibliographies and encyclopedias (by Karl Goedeke, Franz Briimmer, and Georg Christoph Hamberger/Johann Georg Meusel) include many more women authors than their 20th-century colleagues (Wilhelm Kosch). This
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can be explained by the fact that 19th-century encyclopedists included many contemporary women authors who later fell victim to the rigid criteria applied to "good" literature and thus no longer appear in 20th-century works. The same is true of nonfeminist literary histories: the later the work, the fewer women appear in it. While these omissions have the most serious consequences for the reception of pre-20th-century women's literature, early 20th-century women authors have received a similar treatment in literary historiography; that is, they appear more frequently in contemporary than in later literary histories. An example is the reception of Marieluise FleiBer, who was rediscovered shortly before her death and has since received more attention for her problematic relationships with men like Bertolt Brecht and Hellmuth Draws-Tychsen than for her work. The androcentric reception of women's literature continues in modern criticism and is applied to modern women's writings as well (Frieden). Because canonical criteria lay claim to objectivity and universality, they could be used to justify essential differences in the reception of women's and men's literature. In traditional literary histories from the 19th century onward (by men or women), only few women authors appear; those few are accorded less space than their male colleagues, and they are interpreted within a framework that precludes their canonization as "world" literature, "good" literature, or works of "genius." The message that most literary histories offer about works by women—namely, that they are not works of genius—is expressed in several ways: 1. The misclassification of the author: The author is portrayed either as an exception (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff) or as the wife, lover, mother, sister, daughter, muse, or helpmate of a male artist (Charlotte von Stein as Johann Wolfgang Goethe's lover; Elsa Bernstein as Engelbert Humperdinck's librettist). In the first instance, the author's excellence serves to highlight the mediocrity of all other women's literature; in the second instance, the author's work either receives less attention than her relationship with the great man or is ignored entirely. 2. Biographism: The discussion centers on the author's illustrious life (Catherine II of Russia) or tragic death (Louise Brachmann, Karoline von Giinderrode) and largely or entirely ignores her work. 3. The nine-days-wonder-syndrome: The author's first work is interpreted as her most important work; all subsequent works are viewed as weak or trivial (Sophie von La Roche). This is frequently contrasted with the ascending productivity and sophistication of a male author's works (Goethe). 4. The double standard of contents: Women's themes are considered confessional, personal, or domestic, rather than universal (mostly political or philosophical) themes. Even if the themes, forms, and modes of expression in women's and men's works are identical or very similar (as they are in La Roche's Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim, 1771, and Goethe's Die Leiden desjungen Werthers, 111 A, which is, to a large extent, modeled after La Roche's
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novel), the woman's work is frequently read as an auto/biographical document, whereas the man's is read for its aesthetic value, as a Kunstwerk. 5. The double standard of genre: Women are limited to subjective genres like diaries, poetry, and epistolary novels and excluded from objective genres like drama and epos. To uphold this dichotomy, women writers' works are often canonized and reprinted selectively; the part of their work in these masculine genres is suppressed (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, who spent 30 years writing dramas, is canonized as an author of narratives; none of her 21 dramas appear in any edition of her "complete" works). 6. Gender-specific reviews: Especially when the sex of the author is unclear (i.e., in cases where the woman used a male pseudonym, initials, or an abbreviated first name), reviews of the work frequently center on the question of whether it was authored by a man or a woman. In many cases, reviews of the same work are radically different depending on the reviewer's assumption with regard to the author's gender. Many women authors, celebrated and successful as long as their gender was unknown or presumed to be male, were criticized severely or ignored entirely once their gender was known (Benedikte Naubert, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Elsa Bernstein). The two major goals of feminist literary historiography are, first, the rediscovery (of early) and analysis of (early and modern) women's literature and, second, the reevaluation of aesthetic criteria that have been used for centuries to interpret and classify literature—for the most part, to the detriment of women's literature—and the search for methodological, aesthetic, and theoretical alternatives to traditional canonization. While feminist scholarship has been very successful in unearthing part of women's literary production, a fair reception of this literature may well depend on a rethinking of the evaluative process: until the reader has emancipated herself or himself from canonical criteria that are based solely on the works of male authors, it will be difficult to view women's literature as anything but inferior. See also: Authorship; Biographism; Canon, Literary; Creativity; Diaries; DrosteHiilshoff, Annette von; Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Epistolary Culture; FleiBer, Marieluise; Giinderrode, Karoline von; La Roche, Sophie von. References: Frieden, Sandra, ' 'The Left-Handed Compliment: Perspectives and Stereotypes in Criticism." 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) 311-22; Russ, Diana, How to Suppress Women's Writing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983); Spender, Dale, The Writing or the Sex? Why You Don't Have to Read Women's Writing to Know It's No Good (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989). SUSANNE KORD
Reformation ( 1 5 1 7 - 1 5 7 0 ) . The Reformation of Martin Luther had an enormous impact on the lives of women. In his sermons and writings about marriage, Luther did not attempt to create a new role for women, but rather to
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elevate the status of marriage as an institution. Luther saw sex within marriage as a higher calling than the celibacy of priests and nuns, thus defining marriage and child rearing as women's only vocation. The Reformation's influence on women's education was somewhat contradictory: on one hand, opportunities for women expanded due to the new emphasis on individual Bible reading and the Protestant advocacy of girls' schools, which opened the doors to literacy for many women. On the other hand, Protestant reformers forced many convents to close, and convents were the only place where women could engage in scholarly activities. Thus, the Reformation offered many illiterate women a very basic education but closed the doors on women's scholarship and erudition, a tradition that had flourished in the convents since the early Middle Ages. One well-known example of a woman who left her convent willingly and wrote in support of Luther is Ursula von Miinsterberg. In 1528, she fled her convent in Freiburg, took refuge in Luther's house, and published her defense of Luther (and her decision to leave the convent), titled Der durchleuchtigen hochgebornen F. Vrsulen hertzogin zu Monsterberg etc. grefin zu Glotz etc. christlich vrsach des verlassen klosters zu Freyberg (1528). Her defense constitutes an example of women's religious self-determination, which in this case may have been inspired by the Reformation doctrine of individual faith. An example of a woman who disagreed with Luther and fought her convent's closing is Caritas Pirckheimer, the abbess of the St. Clara convent in Nuremberg. Pirckheimer refused to close the order in 1525 and resisted all attempts at persuasion and intimidation. Pirckheimer and her nuns succeeded in keeping their convent open, although they were forbidden to take on new novices. The convent closed when the last nun died in 1590. One of the most controversial issues of the age was the question of whether or not women were entitled to voice their opinions on religious matters and the role of women in the Reformation—a question that inspired many Streitschriften both favoring and opposing Protestantism. Argula von Grumbach, who also corresponded with Luther, is one of several authors who passionately defended women's right to participate in the debate on these issues. In her satirical poem "Ain Antwort in Gedichth" (1523), she answers a male critic's exhortations that women should listen rather than speak, with an argument women have used to defend their literary activity since the Middle Ages: that God, the highest male power of all, had instructed the author to write. Another defender of women's right to participate in public affairs and supporter of the Reformation was Elisabeth Countess of Braunschweig-Luneburg, who ruled Braunschweig-Luneburg from 1540 onward and introduced the Reformation there. Her works include a manual on effective ruler ship and states(wo)manship written for her son—the first to be authored by a woman— an instruction manual for marriage (for her daughter), and several poems and religious treatises. Her poem "Lebensbericht" is one of the few autobiographical sources by women of the Reformation still extant.
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See also: Authorship; Erudite Woman; Marriage; Medieval Literature; Pamphlet. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit: Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800 (Munich: DTV, 1989); Lorenz, Dagmar, "Vom Kloster zur Kiiche: Die Frau vor und nach der Reformation Dr. Martin Luthers." 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) 7-35; Wiesner, Merry, "Women's Response to the Reformation." The German People and the Reformation. Ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) 148-72. BRENDA L. BETHMAN Reinig, Christa ( 1 9 2 6 - p r e s e n t ) . Reinig is unique among German women authors of her generation for the radical shift in her writing and politics during the heyday of feminism in the 1970s. The result is the phenomenon of the divided Reinig: the prefeminist, apolitical author who read regularly at literary gatherings and garnered several literary prizes and, since the publication of Entmannung (1976), Reinig the lesbian-feminist. The separatist position she espouses has some similarities to Verena Stefan's, but her satirical wit, as well as her technique of combining discourses from the most diverse historical, mythological, religious, literary, and scientific traditions, invites comparison with Irmtraud Morgner. Although she is one of very few lesbian-feminist voices in German literature, her writings other than Entmannung have yet to be thoroughly studied by feminist scholars. Reinig's life includes a series of drastic changes: a childhood under national socialism, a belated Abitur earned after the war, study at the Humboldt University, emigration to the West upon receiving the Bremen literary prize in 1964, and integration into the capitalist literary marketplace. In 1971 she suffered a fall that left her permanently disabled. The accident and its aftermath are recounted in the central chapter of Die himmlische und die irdische Geometrie (1975). Often described as an autobiographical, picaresque novel, it contains vivid episodes from Reinig's childhood and postwar years in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) interspersed with philosophical reflections, disquisitions on topics as diverse as the Icelandic sagas, Buddhism, and astrology, as well as fictional dialogues between historical and/or mythological figures. By inscribing herself into the text of Geometrie, Reinig articulates a female ' T ' distinct from the ' 'neutral'' (masculine) narrative voice of her earlier works; however, lesbian experience is still suppressed. After a final radicalizing event in 1974, a sensationalized trial in which lesbians Marion Ihns and Judy Anderson were sentenced to life imprisonment for arranging the killing of Ihns' husband, Reinig was moved to declare her sexual orientation. The Ihns trial is the focus of the central chapter of Entmannung, a complex montage novel that relentlessly indicts male brutality toward women. In striking contrast to other West German feminist novels of the time, it contains no exemplary feminist figure; indeed, its main character is a man, Otto Kyra, whose "unmanning" represents Reinig's
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ongoing struggle to break free of masculinist thought patterns. The fates of four female characters reflect her bleak view of women's possibilities under patriarchy: madness, illness, imprisonment, death. Only Wolfi, a lesbian character who appears late in the novel, is not destroyed by involvement with Otto. As even this cursory description of Entmannung suggests, Reinig's fictional world is often highly disturbing. In many texts of the 1970s and 1980s she pushes satire to its limits, for example, arguing that men and women are two different species ("Neander Tales"), advocating cannibalism ("Der Wolf und die Frau"), or hypothesizing the elimination of the male population by a virus that infects only the Y chromosome ("Die Witwen"). Graphic descriptions of rape, torture, murder, and cruelty to children and animals force readers to confront the realities of misogyny and sadism. Reinig rejects all glib solutions and refuses to idealize or romanticize. Only in Mufiiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang (1979; English translation Idleness Is the Root of All Love, Calyx, 1991) does her voice soften. The volume, unique among her works for its tenderness and gentle humor, consists of one poem for each day in a year of a lesbian couple's life. In these musings on a loving relationship between two aging women, Reinig creates an affirming, even Utopian, vision of lesbian existence. Additional prose works by Reinig include Drei Schiffe (1965); Orion trat aus dem Haus (1969); Der Wolf und die Witwen (1979); Die ewige Schule (1982); Die Frau im Brunnen (1984); Nobody (1989); Gluck und Glas (1991). Her Samtliche Gedichte received a literary prize in 1984. See also: Autobiography; Lesbian Literature; Montage; Morgner, Irmtraud; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Women's Movement. References: Marti, Madeleine, Hinterlegte Botschaften: Die Darstellung lesbischer Frauen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Schmidt, Ricarda, Westdeutsche Frauenliteratur in den 70er Jahren (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1982). JEANETTE CLAUSEN
R e i n s h a g e n , Gerlind ( 1 9 2 6 - p r e s e n t ) . Gerlind Reinshagen started writing before, and independently of, the German women's movement in the 1970s. Reinshagen shows women as both excluded from, and complicit with, oppressive discourses such as nationalism, fascism, and capitalism, a position from which she articulates her critique and evokes Utopian counterimages. Trained as a pharmacist, she began to write radio plays in the 1950s, followed by dramas, novels, and poetry. Her plays have been produced at major theaters in the German-speaking regions. Two of her pieces, Himmel und Erde (1974) and Sonntagskinder (1976), were made into films. Reinshagen's work offers a wide range of topics and styles. She brought new forms and subject matter to the stage and continued to experiment throughout her work. The office setting in Doppelkopf (1967) and Eisenherz (1982) introduced the workplace to the theater. The collage Leben und Tod der Marilyn Monroe (1971) examined the phenomenon of the female star as a construction of popular media. Both Himmel und Erde and Die Clownin (1985) are virtually one-woman shows that provide
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insights into their characters' fantasy life. Her most recent plays, Die Feuerblume (1987) and Die fremde Tochter (1992), address ecological issues and use collective choruses and choreographies. Reinshagen's German trilogy, which comprises Sonntagskinder, Friihlingsfest (1980), and Tanz, Marie! (1986), demonstrates her approach to topical debates from a gendered perspective, locating questions of nationality and identity among women in the domestic realm. Sonntagskinder, her most acclaimed play, contributed to the excavation and reclaiming of Germany's fascist past. The trilogy parallels Christa Wolf's project in Kindheitsmuster (1976) but expands the historical scope by tracing the life of its protagonist from girlhood under fascism to her suicide in the affluent 1980s in West Germany. Indebted to Marxist theory, Reinshagen insists on the Utopian possibility of an autonomous female subject impelled by a history of oppression and the desire to fight back. Eisenherz examines the sexual politics of the workplace, addressing differences among women and, at the same time, underscoring the necessity of gender solidarity. Written in the mode of Neue Innerlichkeit, the play locates political agency in the subjective and interpersonal realm while maintaining the necessity of fundamental social change. Die Clownin thematizes the experience and position of women in the classical theater, pitting the actor-writer's desire for self-expression against an institution that has traditionally represented women as heroines while barring them from their participation in the cultural production of images. The central character, Dora, experiences a crisis both as an actor and as a woman, because, in a double sense, she can no longer play her assigned role. The drama leaves the problem of oppressive social and theatrical roles in suspension. In her prose work, Rovinato oder Die Seele des Geschafts (1981), Die flUchtige Braut (1984), ZwolfNachte (1989), and Jdger am Rand der Nacht (1993), Reinshagen addresses similar topics as in her dramas. Through her finely crafted, lyrical language, she creates fictional layers that describe real events and developments but also note the potentiality of a character or situation, their Utopian Gestalt. Die fluchtige Braut, for instance, superimposes a fragile network of relationships in contemporary Berlin over the images and memories of earlier moments in the city's history. As in a palimpsest, Rahel Varnhagen's salon shines through the gradually decaying circle of friends and lovers representing different intellectual, political, and sexual constellations in double exposure. Reinshagen renders history a powerful, not a deterministic, force that opens windows into other, future possibilities. Her writing does not provide heroines or programmatic solutions to historical or fictional dilemmas but emphatically marks what is not yet possible. In her work, it is, most of all, the child and young adult who offer the Utopian possibility of authenticity; her or his gradual, often painful adaptation to the adult world provides a perspective from which the suffocation of imagination, whether under fascism or in a materialistic consumer society, can be shown, mourned, and questioned.
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Reinshagen has been awarded the Schiller-Preis (1974), the Muhlheimer Dramatikerpreis (1977), the Andreas Gryphius Preis (1982), and the Roswitha von Gandersheim Preis (1988). See also: Drama, Historical; Horspiel; Marxist Theories; New Subjectivity; Prizes, Literary; Utopia; Wolf, Christa. References: Case, Sue-Ellen, ed., The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Kiencke-Wagner, Jutta, Das Werk von Gerlind Reinshagen: Gesellschaftskritik und utopisches Denken (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1989); Roeder, Anke, ed., Autorinnen: Herausforderungen an das Theater (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989); Sieg, Katrin, Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists: Women in Contemporary German Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). KATRIN SIEG
R e n a i s s a n c e H u m a n i s m ( 1 4 5 0 - 1 6 5 0 ) . Women writers played a small, but noteworthy, role in the production of Renaissance humanist writing in early modern Germany. Humanist literature, which flourished between 1450 and 1650, was generally written in Latin (i.e., Neo-Latin) by scholars who studied classical language and literature in preparation for professional careers in the church, medicine, law, education, or political administration. A humanist education included the study of classical Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric, history, and philosophy, as well as the composition of original Latin and Greek and, in the 17th century, vernacular texts in imitation of the ancients. Women rarely had access to this unique curriculum, for this knowledge was disseminated in all-male public schools and universities. However, many German humanists, especially between 1480 and 1520, who had traveled to Italy, the birthplace of Renaissance humanism, and encountered many learned women at the Italian courts attempted to transmit humanist learning to their daughters and wives through private instruction. Northern humanists, such as Agrippa of Nettesheim and Erasmus, promulgated the study of antiquity for women. Both men argued that women have the ability and the right to acquire humanist learning (eruditio); Agrippa even proposed that women were intellectually superior to men. But the acquisition of learning by women occurred through the instigation—and complete control—of humanist men. Humanists promoted study for women so that they might attain glory for their families and have intellectual partners to assist them with their scholarly pursuits, rule their households, and educate their children. Conversely, the women who sought this knowledge rarely allowed its acquisition to interfere with their domestic duties, and they almost all dispensed with their studies and their writing in later life. Humanist women practiced few literary genres. The most popular was the letter, which served less as an intimate means of communication than as an occasion for displaying an elegant Latin style and broad learning (e.g., the correspondence of the Nuremberg nun Caritas Pirckheimer). Lyric poems in imi-
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tation of several antique styles and authors were also popular, especially with the Italian-born Olympia Fulvia Morata, whose close ties to the German Reformation and later years in Schweinfurt and Heidelberg earned her a place among German humanists. Morata also composed philosophical dialogues, letters, Greek verses, and orations, a genre frequently practiced by young girls on public occasions as a unique display of female learning (Juliana Peutinger). Anna Maria van Schurman, variously acclaimed as the most learned woman in 17th- century Europe, was distinguished by her prose writings, especially her letters, an essay on the virtues of humanist study for women ("Num foeminae christianae conveniat studium litterarum?" 1648) and her autobiography, Eukleri sive melioris partis electio (1673), on her spiritual journey from secular learning to God. The Silesian Maria Cunitz produced a scientific treatise Urania propitia (1650) in both Latin and German on astronomy and the mathematically determined movements of the heavens. All these women were born into privileged society, aristocratic or upper middle-class, were introduced to humanist learning by their fathers, and published relatively little except when prompted by male friends. Despite their many accomplishments, learned women remained constantly aware of, and content with, their subordinate status in the male ' 'republic of letters" (respublica litter aria). See also: Erudite Woman; New Humanism; Reformation. References: Hess, Ursula,' 'Lateinischer Dialog und gelehrte Partnerschaft: Frauen als humanistische Leitbilder in Deutschland (1500-1550)." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 113-48; KoBling, R., and Gertrud Weiss-Stahlin, eds. and trans., Olympia Fulvia Morata: Briefe aus dem Lateinischen, Italienischen und Griechischen (Leipzig: Reclam, 1990); Miller, Leo, 'Anna Maria van Schurmann's Appeal for the Education of Women." Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis. Ed. Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi, and Richard J. Schoeck (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991) 491-98; Wilson, Katharina M., ed., Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987); Wilson, Katharina M., and Frank J. Warnke, eds., Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989). JAMES A. PARENTE R e s i s t a n c e ( W o r l d W a r II). The terror regime of the national socialists (1933-1945) provoked resistance from people of all classes and professions. The women who participated in the various religiously, politically, or humanistically inspired groups recognized that Nazism would mean, among other forms of discrimination and persecution, a complete elimination of woman's rights. In August 1934, the International Women's Congress against Fascism and War took place in Paris; 1,000 delegates and 300 guests from 24 countries participated. The results of this Congress heavily influenced the development of a strong antifascist women's movement in France, which was integrated into the Resistance after Hitler's attack on France. Gerta Pohorille, a Berliner, who documented the Spanish Civil War (19361939) through her photographic reports, was one among many fighters of the
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International Brigades to help the antifascist Republicans in their struggle against Franco's troops, which were heavily supported by German airpower. After the prohibition of the trade unions in 1933, many illegal organizations arose in Germany and abroad. At the beginning of World War II, one million Germans were incarcerated for political reasons. Of these, 15-20 percent were women, most of whom came from the worker's movement. Most notable among the opposition was the Baum group in Berlin, whose members distributed leaflets, the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group, designated as Rote Kapelle by the Nazis, and discovered in 1942, and the largest resistance group of World War II, the Organization Saefkow/Jacob/Bastlein. Many women of the latter group took on important tasks for which they were either executed or deported to concentration camps: Judith Auer, Elli Voigt, Charlotte GroB, Anne Saefkow, and Katherina Jacob. Sophie Scholl, a member of the Munich resistance group Weifie Rose (1977), which was inspired by religious faith and idealism, distributed leaflets together with her brother Hans and others, for which all were executed. Many of their leaflets are reprinted in their sister Inge Scholl's Die Weifie Rose (1977), a documentary biography of Sophie and Hans Scholl and the group. Dorothee von Meding's interviews with the wives of the conspirators of July 20, 1944, whose moral support of, and loyalty to, their husbands facilitated their opposition, document the resistance in bourgeois and aristocratic circles and the stigma of treason against which they struggled. Women who resisted the Nazi ideology were deported to special camps. The first women's concentration camp was Moringen in Lower Saxony (1933-1938). In March 1938, the inmates were brought to Lichtenburg in Saxony due to their increased numbers and in 1939, to the women's concentration camp Ravensbriick in Mecklenburg. Of the 133,000 who arrived between 1939 and 1945, only 40,000 survived. See also: Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory; Inner Emigration; National Socialism; Pacifism; World War II. References: Elling, Hanna, Frauen im deutschen Widerstand 1933-45, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt/M.: Roderberg, 1979); Kerschbaumer, Marie-Therese, Der weibliche Name des Widerstands: Sieben Berichte (Freiburg i.Br.: Olten and Walter, 1980); Meding, Dorothee von, Mit dem Mut des Herzens: Die Frauen des 20. Juli (Berlin: Siedler, 1992); Vinke, Hermann, Das kurze Leben der Sophie Scholl (Ravensburg: Otto Maier, 1980); Zorn, Gerda, and Gertrud Mayer, Frauen gegen Hitler: Berichte aus dem Widerstand 193345 (Berlin: VAS, 1984). PETRA S. FIERO Reuter, Gabriele ( 1 8 5 9 - 1 9 4 1 ) . In a publishing career that spanned five decades, Gabriele Reuter wrote more than 20 novels, novellas, essays, a children's play, and an autobiography entitled Vom Kinde zum Menschen (1921). Her books were widely read not only in Western Europe but also in the United States; a few—Aus guter Familie (1895), Ellen von der Weiden (1900), Frauen-
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seelen (1902), and Der Amerikaner (1907)—even attained the status of bestsellers. While the geographic locations of her stories are not confined to German-speaking countries, all of her narratives operate in a European colonial context; some even resonate with undertones of imperialist discourse (Kolonistenvolk, 1891; Der Amerikaner). A number of her works relate back to her childhood years in Egypt (Gluck und Geld, 1888; "Aphrodite und ihr Dichter," 1894; Margaretes Mission, 1904; Im Sonnenland, 1914). As Realist fiction, Reuter's works narrate the lives of women of varying age who come from heterogeneous, yet primarily bourgeois, backgrounds and whose concerns are regularly linked to contemporary women's issues. Her protagonists frequently question late 19th-century constructs of femininity, sexuality, love, marriage, motherhood, and divorce, thereby challenging society's institutions along with its ingrained male dominance. Through the voices of female adolescents and the narrative perspectives of single, married, divorced, and aging women, we learn of women's efforts both to develop as individuals and to realize alternative ways of living that will permit them active participation in society. Reuter's female characters—frequently artists, writers, teachers, and nurses—rebel with varying success against religion, the patriarchal family structure, and the gender-specific double standards of Wilhelmine society. In Aus guter Familie, her most famous novel, Reuter describes a woman's failed attempt to develop an identity and a cultural space of her own. Reuter's novel Das Trdnenhaus (1909), based on her personal experiences as a single mother, vividly brings to life single motherhood with all its social ramifications. Much of Reuter's work is multilayered and refuses to offer pragmatic or even Utopian solutions, documenting instead the way in which social change affects both sexes, particularly with regard to their interpersonal relations. Her socially critical depiction of gender roles and class distinctions notwithstanding, Reuter's worldview remained deeply rooted in Wilhelmine society, even in her later writings from the Weimar era. Due to her bourgeois point of view, her development as a writer parallels that of the bourgeois women's movement. While both recognize the impact of the social realm on gender roles, they also presume a natural difference between the sexes. See also: Autobiography; Children's Literature; Colonial Literature; Essentialism/ Constructionism; Gender Theories, History of; Marriage; Orientalism; Realism. References: Alimadad-Mensch, Faranak, Gabriele Reuter: Portrat einer Schriftstellerin (Berne: Lang, 1984); Schneider, Georgia A., Portraits of Women in Selected Works of Gabriele Reuter (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1988); Worley, Linda Kraus, "The Body, Beauty, and Woman: The Ugly Heroine in Stories by Therese Huber and Gabriele Reuter." The German Quarterly 64 (1991): 368-78, "Gabriele Reuter: Reading Women in the >Kaiserreich<." Autoren damals und heute. Literaturgeschichtliche Beispiele veranderter Wirkungshorizonte. Ed. Gerhard P. Knapp (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991) 419— 39. CHRISTL GRIESSHABER-WENINGER
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Revolution, French ( 1 7 8 9 - 1 7 9 9 ) . Contrary to popular depictions, women were a powerful force in revolutionary events, which had been set in motion by the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. A publicist and woman of the people, Anne-Joseph Theroigne de Mericourt, who wrote and distributed leaflets urging the people to revolt, became a legend because of her participation in this and other uprisings. She and hundreds of other women were involved in popular agitation protesting the cost and shortage of bread. Since January 1789, women had joined men in submitting grievance lists, or cahiers de doleances, to be carried by deputies to the king at Versailles. These demands had little effect. On October 5, 1789, women were the major force in the march on Versailles. They demanded bread from the king and took over the National Assembly. Two other publicists were Olympe de Gouges and Etta Palm d'Aedelers. In February 1791, d'Aedelers introduced a plan to form women's patriotic societies in each section of Paris and in the country's 83 departments. The same year, Olympe de Gouges wrote her manifesto "The Rights of Women." In 1793, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women officially registered with municipal authorities. Later that year, under the auspices of the Jacobins, all women's clubs and associations were openly banned, preventing women from participating in public and government affairs. Their success meant the triumph of the bourgeois revolution over the popular revolution and the end of women's participation in political life. The involvement of Frenchwomen in the revolution was noted by German women. In her journal Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790-1792), Marianne Ehrmann writes admiringly of their political activity. Therese Huber's first novel, Die Familie Seldorf (1795-1796), is set during the French Revolution. Its heroine, Sara, joins the revolutionaries in Paris after having been deceived by a royalist sympathizer. She enters into the fighting and eventually recognizes that the revolution will permanently change her. During the Vormdrz in the first half of the 19th century, the French Revolution and continuing unrest in France stimulated German thinkers. Most German women rejected the notion of the femme libre, an emphasis on sexual emancipation advanced by the Jungdeutschen, because it ignored women's economic dependency. Feminists like Louise Otto-Peters, Louise Dittmar, Louise Aston, Luise Miihlbach, and Mathilde Franziska Anneke argued for women's economic, legal, educational, and political emancipation. Anneke emigrated to the United States in 1849, where she became involved in the emerging American women's movement. See also: Aston, Louise; Ehrmann, Marianne; Otto-Peters, Louise; Patriotism; Young Germany. References: Applewhite, Harriet B., and Darline Gay Levy, "Women, Democracy, and Revolution in Paris, 1789-1794." French Women and the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 64-79; Kelly, Linda, Women of the French Revolution (London: Hamilton, 1989); Levy, Darline, Harriet Applewhite, and
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M. D. Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1979); Meise, Helga, "Politisierung der Weiblichkeit oder Revolution des Frauenromans? Deutsche Romanautorinnen und die Franzosische Revolution." Die Marseillaise der Weiber. Frauen, die Franzosische Revolution und ihre Rezeption. Ed. Inge Stephan and Sigrid Weigel (Hamburg: Argument, 1989) 55-73; Melzer, Sara E., and Leslie W. Rabine, eds., Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Mohrmann, Renate, ed., Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormdrz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978). HELGA STIPA MADLAND Revolution, German ( 1 8 4 8 - 1 8 4 9 ) . The German Revolution started in March 1848 in the states of the Deutscher Bund. It never took on the form of a revolution that swept the whole country but rather consisted of several upheavals in different cities. After the Congress of Vienna (Wiener Kongrefi) in 1815, the forces of the Restauration dominated German politics, and liberal or oppositional thought was rigorously suppressed. The major source of revolutionary discontent derived from tensions in the structure of society; the increase of the proletariat in the cities, crop failures, and declining trade resulted in unemployment and pauperization. Women and children were increasingly drawn into factories. After the uprisings in Vienna and Berlin in March, the "Demands of the People" (Marzforderungen) were drafted, first in southwest Germany. They called for a dissociation from the Karlsbad Decrees of 1819, which abolished freedom of the press, freedom of conscience and teaching, and the right of public assembly. The Marzforderungen also demanded personal freedom, general citizens' rights, constitutional systems of government in all states, the formation of a German national Parliament, the right to a trial by jury, and unification of Germany into a single nation-state. The demand for representational democracy explicitly included all classes but did not include women. Women participated actively in the street battles during the upheavals, with Emma Herwegh, Amalia Struve, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, and Elise Blenker as the most famous examples. Women also took part in the food riots, publicly demanded the right to participate in the public sphere, and called for improvements in the education of women. Newspapers for and by women were published; the most famous was Louise Otto-Peters' Frauenzeitung, first published on April 21, 1849. Otto-Peters advocated women's emancipation, basing her argument on the Enlightenment concepts of human equality, and called for women's political participation. Barred from membership in men's political clubs, women organized into associations of their own. These new Frauenvereine included the more politically oriented Vaterlandsvereine and Gesangsvereine, as well as the numerous charitable Hilfsvereine and Wochnerinnenvereine, which served as service centers for women in need, and some women's associations that originated out of lay communities. The German Revolution was brutally suppressed in 1849. The "March Achievements" were repealed in all German states with the help of the reinstated German Confederation. Even civil rights were abolished almost every-
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where by 1852. Although women's demands for equal education, employment opportunities, and political representation were not met, the revolution provided women with the impetus to organize themselves and to find a broader forum for their concerns and demands—which later resulted in the establishment of major women's organizations such as the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein. See also: Otto-Peters, Louise; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; Young Germany. References: Gerhard, Ute, Dem Reich der Frauen werb' ich Burgerinnen: Die Frauenzeitung von Louise Otto (Frankfurt/M.: Syndikat, 1979); Hummel-Haasis, Gerlinde, Schwestern zerreifit eure Ketten (Munich: DTV, 1982); Lipp, Carola, Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische Jungfrauen: Frauen im Vormdrz und in der Revolution 1848/ 49 (Buhl: Elster, 1986).
ULLA BIDIAN R e v o l u t i o n , Industrial. A radical and lasting socioeconomic restructuring of society took place in Germany during most of the 19th century. The restructuring was characterized by centralized industrial manufacturing supported by a large number of home industries, a modernized transportation system, and urban development. Changes in the law were designed to bolster capital accumulation, while other transformations included scientific and technological innovations, increasing consumerism on one hand and pauperization on the other, growth of a powerful bourgeois as well as an underclass of laborers, massive exploitation of natural resources, imperialism toward other nations, division of labor based on sex discrimination, and profound changes in the family structure. This restructuring was not a linear or uniform development affecting all of Germany in the same way, at the same time, or even at the same speed, and women of different classes and backgrounds were affected differently by it. The newly developed societal attitudes that were held especially strongly in bourgeois homes polarized women and men and assigned certain normative, so-called natural, gender-specific character traits. These attitudes began to pervade all of society, furthering polarization between the sexes, which reflected and enforced the discriminatory division of labor in the socioeconomic sphere and resulted in the growing split between women's public and private lives. Industrialization and capital accumulation also brought about the dissociation of wage labor and family life and of work and home. The agrarian society of the 17th and 18th centuries considered the family as the central production unit, in which the sexes more or less shared productive work roles. In the 19th century this arrangement was transformed into more differentiated and specialized work roles. The growing number of home industries and factories was based on new cultural assumptions about male and female roles and an increased demand for cheap or unpaid labor. Even as late as 1882, approximately 60 percent of all employed people worked in production units of one to five persons in farming, home industries, and small businesses rather than factories.
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In mid-19th-century Prussia, only a small number of women working in factories were unmarried. Most women were working in home industries for textile manufacturing (including weaving, spinning, sewing), either as part of a family or employed by a family or a tailor. Many women were forced to work in certain areas only and for very low wages or none at all, depending on their status or that of their family. Not only did they have to work in industrial production outside or in the home, but they also were responsible for child care. In contrast, upper- and middle-class women were expected to remain at home, oversee the household servants and the children, and represent the new feminine ideal of "lady of leisure" for the husbands, who usually worked outside the home in various professions. The origin and development of modern unpaid housework done by women, segregation of men and women in different industrial sectors, devaluation of women's work in general, and lower wages or salaries for many "female" professions—all these are rooted in the economic and social transformations of the industrial age. The repercussions of the processes are still felt by women. Contrary to common perceptions, industrialization did not further the economic and social autonomy of women. See also: Family, Social History of the German; Geschlechtscharaktere; Technology; Workers' Literature. References: Duden, Barbara, and Karin Hausen, "Gesellschaftliche Arbeit—geschlechtsspezifische Arbeitsteilung." Frauen in der Geschichte, 3rd ed. Ed. Annette Kuhn and Gerhard Schneider (Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1984) 11-33; Frevert, Ute, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. Trans. Stuart McKinnon-Evans (Oxford: Berg, 1988); Joeres, Ruth-Ellen, and Mary Jo Maynes, eds., German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. A Social and Literary History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Mies, Maria, Veronika BennholdtThomsen, and Claudia von Werlhof, eds., Women: The Last Colony (London: Zed Books, 1988); Oakley, Ann, Housewife (New York: Penguin, 1976); Schild, Gerhard, Frauenarbeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1993).
HILTRUD ARENS Revolution, S e x u a l . Although the term has been inextricably linked to the student movement of 1968, it is not restricted to the ideologies of the late 1960s. In addition to designating the sexual promiscuity and communication strategies of "free love" (the slogan "make love not war"), the phrase "sexual revolution' ' is historically linked to other profound changes in patterns of sexual behavior. The development of oral contraceptives (the pill) attenuated the former distinction between sexual intercourse as pleasure versus intercourse as a means of procreation. While this pharmaceutical innovation appeared to grant women control over their bodies, feminists questioned both the potentially harmful and underresearched side effects of the drug and its impact on reinforcing the idea of the "constantly sexually accessible" woman.
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As early as 1870, questions of sexual revolution were connected to Utopian notions of emancipation. Concepts of sexual revolution were captured in the term "New Woman" during the Weimar Republic. Women's views of their own sexuality were multidimensional. Franziska zu Reventlow ascribed an erotic, emancipatory dimension to free love and challenged essentialist concepts of the women's movements of the period in Viragines oder Hetdren (1899); Ellen Olestjerne (1903); and Herrn Dames Aufzeichnungen oder Begebenheiten aus einem merkwurdigen Stadtteil (1904). In Von Paul zu Pedro—Amouresken (1912), Reventlow argued for a woman's right to experience her own sexual and erotic desire. She emphasized female experiences of the body as an essential aspect in the formation of a woman's identity. In contrast, Ida Hofmann-Oedenkoven's Monte Veritd. Wahrheit oder Dichtung (1906) moves beyond the concept of free love to include the search for professional education and equal employment opportunities for women in the emancipatory quest. In 1899, Lou Andreas-Salome criticized confessional literature by women in Ketzereien gegen die moderne Frau (1899). In opposition to this essentially "Other" womanhood, she advocated women as intellectual partners of men in Fenitschka (1898); Margit Kaffka imagined a full life without a man in Stationen (1914); and in Die Antifeministen (1902), Hedwig Dohm warned against the affirmative use of new creations of femininity. The image of the professional woman developed into that of a sexually demanding and sexually selective, active woman. While not entirely free from sexual exploitation, these "flappers" learned to use sexual liaisons to gain professional advantages. Such women are found in Irmgard Keun's Gilgi, eine von uns (1932) and Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1933), Joe Lederer's Das Mddchen George (1928), and Vicki Baum's novel Stud. chem. Helene Willfuer (19281929) which dealt with abortion and early motherhood. Heterosexuality as experienced by the New Women was tied to questions of contraception, early motherhood, and the fight for legalized abortion. The description of sexual pleasure is not thematized; texts on sexual pleasure and pleasurable descriptions of heterosexual or lesbian experiences written by women are rare in German literature until the late 1980s. Anna E. Weirauch's prototypical lesbian novel Der Skorpion (1919) thrives on heightened emotionality; sexuality is not described but merely implied. Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975), an analysis of the exploited female body, synthesizes contemporary discourses on desire and female sexuality. Stefan's solution is the establishment of a separatist lesbian identity combined with an uncritical concept of nature, reaffirming older essentialist concepts of nature. Variations of heterosexual partnerships are portrayed in Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina (1971); Karin Struck's Klassenliebe (1973); and Elfriede Jelinek's Die Liebhaberinnen (1975). A range of sexual relationships appears in Christa Reinig's Die Entmannung (1976). In the 1980s and 1990s, the question of sexual revolution has resurfaced as part of a critique of feminism by feminists themselves. Libertarian feminists fear
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that the movement is undergoing a sexual counterrevolution, designed to destroy the gains made in previous decades. The debates on pornography have crystallized elements of the conflict. The essays in Claudia Gehrke's Frauen und Pornographic (1988) offer compelling arguments against simplistic and essentialist thinking. Libertarian feminists disagree with the idea that pornography equals violence against women. They charge essentialist feminists with attempting to recriminalize the female body by criminalizing images of the body, which, in turn, strengthens the position of political and religious conservatives wishing to eliminate expressions of sexuality (at least female sexuality) within society. The historical conflicts between essentialist and libertarian concepts of love and sexuality have reemerged in recent political writings on desire, eroticism, pornography, prostitutes, and the role of sex workers; and they have been fictionalized in writings on masochism by Elfriede Jelinek (Die Klavierspielerin, 1983; Lust, 1989) and Waltraut Mitgutsch (Die Zuchtigung, 1985). See also: Abortion; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Body, Female; Dohm, Hedwig; Essentialism/Constructionism; Jelinek, Elfriede; Masochism/Sadomasochism; Nature; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Pornography; Reinig, Christa; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Struck, Karin; Student Movement (1968). References: Schenk, Herrad, Die Befreiung des weiblichen Begehrens (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1991); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987).
MAGDA MUELLER Rezeptionstheorie—see: Reader-Response Theories R h a p s o d y . In ancient Greece, rhapsody (rhapsoidid) was defined as a recitation of parts of an epic poem. Both rhapsoidid and rhapsoidos (rhapsodist) are feminine nouns. Etymologically, rhapsody forms a Greek compound noun of rhdptein (stitch) and oide (ode, song). Homer's Iliad itself consists of a series of recited and transcribed rhapsodies. A rhapsody shares aspects of a fragment, a sequel, and a patchwork texture. The applicability of the adjective "rhapsodic" to textual constructs is already woven into rhapsody's linguistic design and its historical usage. In the 16th century, rhapsody literally meant "miscellany, medley," the 17th century labeled it an "extravagant effusion," and in the 18th century, rhapsody referred to a piece in one movement based on popular, national, and folk melodies. Since the 18th century, rhapsody has often been characterized as an irregular, unconfined form specific only in its link to stereotyped Slavic temperament (e.g., in Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsodies"). The applications and shifting meanings of the term "rhapsody" demonstrate a certain resilience to normative categorizations. For this reason, the current literary use of the term is closer to a style, a structural manner, than to a genre. When Christa Burger, in paraphrasing Friedrich Schlegel, designates Caroline Schlegel-Schelling's letters as "luciferic rhapsodies," she defines her writing as
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a style that is philosophical yet abjures any systematic construct, and in its composition of anecdote, irony, paradox, parody, and portraiture continuously dissolves its status as a literary work. While today's feminist critics tend to view the rhapsodic element in women's writing as a manner of constructive resistance against male-dominated aesthetic norms, it should be remembered that the affiliation of rhapsody with the female gender and Slavophile racism has a long patriarchal history. With labels like "extravagant" and "effusive," "small" and "miscellaneous," the rhapsodic style is feminized and trivialized precisely because it remains both safely within and yet outside naturalized aesthetic/geographic boundaries and canonic limits. Women composers of musical rhapsodies include Fanny Davies, Adelina De Lara, Ilona Eibenschutz, and Clara Schumann. See also: Canon, Literary; Epos; Fragment; Ode. References: Burger, Christa, Leben Schreiben: Die Klassik, die Romantik und der Ort der Frauen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990); Epstein, Selma, Mostly Romantic Music by Women Composers (Dickeyville, MD: Chromattica, 1987); Ford, Andrew, "The Classical Definition of Rhapsodia." Classical Philology 83 (1988): 300-307; Salmen, Walther, Geschichte der Rhapsodie (Zurich: Matthaus, 1966); Simon, Sunka, "Rhapsody in Letters: Epistolary Interstices in Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina and Christine Bruckner's Ehe die Spuren verwehen." Contemporary Epistolary Fiction and Theory: A Postmodern Poetics? (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1993) 267-377. SUNKA SIMON Ritterliteratur. The literature of chivalry is not limited to a single genre or era. Prose Ritterromane arose in the manuscript culture of the late Middle Ages and thrived in the first one and a half centuries of printing. They surged again as popular novels in the late 18th century along with Ritterdramen. Heterosexual gender relations in Ritterliteratur are based on a medieval, literary concept of honor requiring fidelity for women and men. Desire conflicts with social institutions such as the dynastic family or class division. Additive plots offer adventure and escape and probe erotic fantasy. Aristocratic characters tender elite identification among readers who may not have been socially privileged themselves. Ritterromane or chivalric narratives count among the earliest examples of secular fiction in German prose. Two women, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken and Eleonore von Osterreich, made contributions to this emerging genre in an era when few women became authors. Both writers translated and adapted French sources. Among Elisabeth's four novels, Huge Scheppel (1437) is noteworthy for its acceptance of love between people of different classes, its constructive portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship, and its representation of women as eminently suited to rulership, though disempowered through inheritance law. Eleonore was a patron as well as a translator. Her novel Pontus und Sidonia (1455) helped establish the genre's pattern of active heroines who propel the plot and a male gender role that included beauty and sensitivity along with
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military prowess. Eleonore dedicated her novel to her husband, who ensured its success by having it printed. It remained in print until the end of the 18th century. The most enduring novel of chivalry, Amadis, had already become a bestseller in other parts of Europe when it was translated into German in 1569. Women readers made it a success: Amadis' devotees included women and girls from varied walks of life, and 15 of its 24 German sequels were dedicated to individually named noblewomen. The novel's acceptance of premarital sex between faithful partners was frequently criticized, but the moral discomfort of Amadis' opponents did little to lessen its popularity. Historical novels with medieval settings were one form of popular fiction in the late 18th century. An important and prolific author of this genre was Benedikte Naubert. In Geschichte Emmas, Tochter Karls des Grofien und seines Geheimschreibers Eginhard (1785), she drew on Carolingian family legend to depict love across class divisions, as had Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken three centuries earlier. Naubert's meticulous reinvention of the past is an innovation that reflects her knowledge of chronicles and documents from family archives and the library of Leipzig University. It is also likely that she knew traditional chivalric narratives; one source for her tale "Der Mantel" (1789) was Ulrich von Zazikhofen's prose Lancelet, composed in the 13th century. The aesthetic of the Ritterromane is perpetuated in Naubert's novels by the additive plot structures; by her characters, who are involved but rarely evolved; and most especially by her blending of fairy tale and novelistic elements. In contrast to Ritterromane, most Ritterdramen do not incorporate fairy tale motifs but frequently use a straightforward medieval setting. Most popular was the theme of the knight returning from the 12th-century Crusades (examples are Eleonore Thon's Adelheid von Rastenberg, 1788, Elise Burger's Adelheit, Grafin von Teck, 1799, and Marianne Ehrmann's Graf Bilding, 1788). Ritterliteratur has long suffered from critical disparagement with gendered overtones. Future tasks for feminist literary criticism will be to explore the extent to which this disparagement is systematic and to devise appropriate methods for a revised presentation of the Ritterliteratur tradition that considers its importance for women authors and readers. See also: Abenteuerroman; Adaptation/Translation; Ehrmann, Marianne; Fairy Tale; Medieval Literature; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Novel, Historical; Patronage. References: Bell, Susan Groag, "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture." Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages. Ed. Judith Bennett et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) 135-61; Blackwell, Jeannine, "Die verlorene Lehre der Benedikte Naubert: die Verbindung zwischen Phantasie und Geschichtsschreibung." Untersuchungen zum Roman von Frauen um 1800. Ed. Helga Gallas and Magdalene Heuser (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990) 148-59; Morrison, Susan Signe, "Women Writers and Women Rulers: Rhetorical and Political Empowerment in the Fifteenth Century." Women in German Yearbook 9 (1993): 25-48; Weddige, Hilkert,
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Die 'Historien vom Amadis aus Frankreich': Dokumentarische Grundlegung zur Entstehung und Rezeption (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1975).
SARAH WESTPHAL R o b i n s o n a d e . Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) has been one of the most influential novels in history. It was immediately translated into all European languages; its multiple sequels, adaptations, and imitations engendered a new novelistic genre, the Robinsonade. German readers appear to have been particularly fascinated by the story of the unruly son who, against the express advice of his father, goes to sea, falls captive, escapes, earns a fortune as a planter and slave trader in Brazil, and finally shipwrecks on a deserted island off the coast of Venezuela, where he establishes his own private colony, populated by domesticated animals and, eventually, by "domesticated" New World "natives" and reformed Old World slave traders. Four translations of the book appeared in different German cities simultaneously in 1720; by 1782, one of these had already reached its 15th edition. Innumerable rewrites, adaptations ("Der teutsche Robinson," "Der sachsische Robinson," 1722, etc.), sequels, and retranslations sprang up in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most famous of them were Joachim Heinrich Campe's Robinson der Jungere: Ein Lesebuch fur Kinder (1779/1780; 117 editions by 1900) and Johann David WyB, Der Schweizerische Robinson (1812), both of which engendered further imitations. More than any other text, Robinson Crusoe thus shaped the minds of German children, youths, and adults from the 18th century until well into the 20th century. The figure of Robinson provided female writers with a literary model as well, since Robinson's activities on the island, after he had been a sailor, planter, and trader, were predominantly domestic (if one excludes his few battles with the cannibals and mutineers). As a European colony, the island invited fantasies of colonization, and as a distant, idealized setting it allowed for Utopian projections and the creation of imaginary societies in which women would play different roles and take on new tasks. German Robinsonades with female protagonists constituted approximately 12 percent of the genre, with more than 16 female Robinsonades appearing in 18thcentury Germany alone (see list in Blackwell, 20-22). While it is likely that women writers would have wanted to cash in on the enormous success of the genre by writing their own versions of the plot, it is impossible to confirm any female authorship for 18th-century Robinsonades. Unlike their French or English counterparts (Mme. de Beaulieu, Mme. Delafaye-Brehier, Mme. Woillez, Mme. Foa, Agnes Strickland, Mrs. Holland, Anne Fraser Tytler, whose Robinsonades were subsequently published in German translations), German women authors of Robinsonades did not sign their works with their own names. The 18th-century female Robinsonades introduced changes in the original setting (the heroine's character), in the voyage, and in the island experiences. The heroines' desire to see the world is usually based on a refusal of traditional
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female roles and on an identification with male freedom of movement. The women's flight from home is justified as an escape from an unwanted marriage. Their experiences on board the ships or on distant shores teach them to defend their natural virtue against natural predators. Their island experiences tend to be more communal than men's: there is generally a community of women who interact on the same social level and are supportive of each other. Creating the perfect community seems to be more important than mastering natural surroundings. Although the plot resolutions of the female Robinsonades increasingly conform to a domesticated ideal as the century progresses—the heroines are rescued and reintegrated into repressive gender hierarchies—the egalitarian, communitarian, socially transgressive island episodes continue to mark moments of imaginary escape from the bounds of convention. In the 19th century, Robinsonades written by women (Amalie von Schoppe's Die Auswanderer nach Brasilien, 1828, and Robinson in Australien, 1843; and Bettina von Arnim's Das Leben der Hochgrdfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns, pub. 1926) were replaced by actual travelogues, as more and more women took to the road and explored the world on their own (e.g., Ida Pfeiffer's Eine Frau fahrt um die Welt, 1850). See also: Arnim, Bettina von; Colonial Literature; Travelogues. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, 'An Island of Her Own: Heroines of the German Robinsonades from 1720 to 1800." The German Quarterly 58 (1985): 5-26; Fohrmann, Jiirgen, Abenteuer und BUrgertum. Zur Geschichte der deutschen Robinsonaden im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981); Hermann, Ullrich, Robinson und Robinsonaden. Bibliographic,
Geschichte, Kritik (Weimar: Felber, 1898).
SUSANNE ZANTOP R o c o c o Literature ( 1 7 3 5 - 1 7 9 5 ) . "Rococo" is a concept borrowed from art history to describe a style of literature that thrived especially in the mid-18th century, characterized by its emphasis on graceful, miniaturized forms. Rococo literature has an air of epicurean playfulness that sets it apart from the more serious, rationalist Enlightenment that forms its context. If the depiction of women as sensual, carefree playmates is considered regressive, then Rococo literature, in the hands of its male practitioners, could be understood as a way of trivializing women, thereby opposing the emancipatory project of the early Enlightenment. For those 18th-century women, however, who had the education and prosperity to be readers and, in some cases, also writers, it can be argued that Rococo offered a vocabulary and set of conventions that allowed them to explore new areas of experience, particularly sensual pleasure. Thus, some of the love poetry written late in the Rococo period by Sophie Albrecht deploys erotic frivolity uninterrupted by moral instruction or by considerations of reputation. Johanna Charlotte Unzer, writing earlier, used Rococo license to produce a volume of jesting poems (including drinking songs for women, 1751) and, within the framework of the Enlightenment, also composed two encyclopedias of knowledge for women. Other early Enlightenment women such as
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Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann and even Luise Gottsched, wife of the main instigator of the early Enlightenment in Germany, included moments of Rococo playfulness in their work. For most women writing after midcentury, the lighthearted spirit of Rococo literature was highly inflected by emotion-laden moralism associated with another contemporary movement, Sentimentality/ Empfindsamkeit. Philippine Gatterer-Engelhard, who blended Rococo elements with Sentimentality throughout her long writing career, always tempered her playfulness with notions of proper behavior and good sentiments. This was an approach more approved of by the reviewers, who did not condone the less conventional notions of her contemporary, Nantchen Gockingk. Certain genres lend themselves well to the Rococo style, notably lyric poetry, pastoral forms (especially the idyll), verse tales (e.g., "Das Wunderbild, eine Erzahlung" by Anna Luisa Karsch), and mock epic. Rococo elements are frequently evident in 18th-century comedies, especially those in the French manner. Utilizing moments of Rococo amusement, several women playwrights translated more or less freely such plays or wrote their own in that style. The pattern of a high-ranking, honest suitor unsuccessfully courting a half-knowing, half-naive, well-protected daughter, who is supported by a coquettish and sassy maidservant, occurs, for instance, in Die Kriegslist (1792), a play by Marianne Reitzenstein, promoting the enjoyment of a cheerfully sociable life. Friederike Unger in Der Mondkaiser (1790), a Rococo comedy set on the moon, creates a more fantastical world centering on issues of power (Unger may also be the author of several Rococo courtship comedies). Rococo continued to be evident in the writing of women until the end of the 18th century (e.g., in the contributions by Gabriele von Baumberg-Bacsanyi to the Wiener Musenalmanach in 1791). Increasingly, it blended with other late styles and eventually, as in the last poetry collection of Gatterer-Engelhard (1821), became indistinguishable from the 19th-century Biedermeier. See also: Biedermeier; Enlightenment; Idylle; Pastoral Literature; Sentimentality; Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig. Reference:
Anger, Alfred. Literarisches Rokoko, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968).
RUTH DAWSON
R o m a n c e . The application of the English term "romance" to German literature is complicated by its multifaceted usage. It can simply mean novel because of its association with the imaginary rather than the factual but also implies love story, adventure story, story of chivalry, and even love affair (Romanze). The term is further obscured by romance's etymological affinity to Romanticism, both as a cultural epoch (Romantic) and a mood (romantic). While academic critics of English literature tend to focus on romance as a historically and thematically specific form of the novel (i.e., Elizabethan, Victorian romance or Gothic, Arthurian, religious, heroic romance), contemporary scholars of genrefiction are interested in romance as mass-produced fantasy. According to the
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traditional definition, romance involves a mythical quest, predominantly a quest for transcendence and spiritual salvation (as in medieval and Arthurian romances). This definition is modified as a search for authentic identity in the course of the German Enlightenment (as in Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim, 111 I). The protagonist either sublimates the quest for unrequited, illicit, or suppressed love, uses the quest to reinstate self-worth and social standing after a tragedy, or is on a mission for/to the beloved. During the protagonist's travels, he or she encounters and overcomes personal hardship or evil. A modern romance generally ends with the marriage of the (usually heterosexual) lovers (as in Christine Bruckner's Das gliickliche Buch der a.p., 1980). The diverging studies of romance link the analysis or description of its historical context, laws of production, narrative patterns, treatment of love and sexuality, and the genre's enigmatic appeal throughout the centuries to questions of Woman as author, heroine, and reader. Contemporary critics and authors have taken the conventional romance plot to task for its complicitousness with stereotypical, middle-class values, the suppression of female sexuality, and the reinscription of naturalized femininity. Alongside feminist attempts to undermine the seductive narrative patterns of romance fiction and film (like Svende Merian's Der Tod des Marchenprinzen, 1980; Elfriede Jelinek's Die Liebhaberinnen, 1975; and Monika Treut's Die Jungfrauen Maschine, 1988), mass-produced romance series targeted at a female audience (like Schicksalsroman, Herzblatt, Arztroman, and MutterglUck) uphold the "feminine" virtues of perfect housewife, lady of society, motherhood, damsel in distress, and passively enthralled, monogamous heterosexual lover. Some of the best-selling romances by 19thand 20th-century German authors include Fanny (Franziska) Tarnow's Frauenherz und Frauengluck (1816), Henriette Paalzow's Godwie Castle (1836), Eugenie Marlitt's novels, Christa Anita Briick's Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen (1930), Hedwig Courths-Mahler' s over 200 novels, Dinah Nelken's ich an dich (1938), and, more currently, Eva Heller's, as well as Utta Danella's, numerous works. See also: Abenteuerroman; Enlightenment; Groschenroman; Jelinek, Elfriede; La Roche, Sophie von; Romanticism; Trivial Literature. References: Modleski, Tania, Living with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982); Mohrmann, Renate, "Zuriick zur Reaktion." Die andere Frau. Emanzipationsansatze deutscher Schriftstellerinnen im Vorfeld der achtundvierziger Revolution (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977) 150-57; Murray, Hollice Marie, ' 'Literary Revolution as Bordello Romance: The Ideology of Gender and the Gender of Ideology in the Dawn of German Modernism" (Diss., Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1986); Radway, Janice A., Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Thurston, Carol, The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). SUNKA SIMON
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Romanticism. To approach German Romanticism through feminist eyes is to be confronted immediately with one of the major problems of literary periodization, for just as women have not always experienced an Enlightenment or a Renaissance at the historical moments implied by these terms, so has Romanticism been defined without attention to women's writing and thinking. The male poets and philosophers of Romanticism, believing in an idealized past and a Utopian future, were all too aware of their own imperfect present. They also believed themselves incomplete as human beings, too rational, and thus alienated from the organic process of the natural world with which, in the age of increasing sex-role polarization, they associated women. Preoccupied with their own Bildung, many seized upon heterosexual love (both spiritual and erotic) as the way to reclaim their androgynous wholeness. These yearnings, which were issued in their calls for "progressive" and "universal" poetry, have given Romanticism its definition; they are also the basis for the notion of the quintessential Romantic as a lonely seeker after some unattainable essence. Many women writers shared some of these aesthetic concerns, but they rarely credited literature with the same grandiose powers as did their male counterparts. In addition, their worldviews were decidedly different. While most male Romantics dreamed of merging the spiritual and the physical, most women writers dismissed such dualism and focused on a more concrete reality (e.g., Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Sophie Mereau). Although some Jewish women did convert to Christianity (e.g., Dorothea Schlegel and Henriette Herz), religion was for the majority not the major concern it was for many male Romantics. While many of the males espoused increasingly conservative notions of social structures, women writers very often developed in the opposite direction, challenging bourgeois forms not only in art but also in their lives. The same holds for political engagement: the politically radical notions of many males yielded with time to more conservative ideas; Bettina von Arnim, however, became increasingly political, writing in support of the poor and oppressed. Women also evidenced little interest in the fabulous idealizations of the Middle Ages that preoccupied so many males. To be sure, Benedikte Naubert favored the Middle Ages as a setting, but not to promote the past glories of medieval Germany. The most important difference, however, is that women writers were concerned with the social world of women, not with male development. Instead of idealizing solitary seekers, they emphasized contact with others in their art and in their lives; the friendships between B. von Arnim and Karoline von Giinderrode and between Rahel Varnhagen and the actress Pauline Wiesel are particularly well documented. An alternative feminist literary history of the early decades of the 1800s would thus inevitably raise the question of whether feminist literary historians should try to redefine the term "Romanticism" or whether they should eschew the label entirely. Either option would have to incorporate the evidence that for women writers, this period of intense and varied literary activity was inspired by the French Revolution and its promise of equality, even though the messages
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were often conflicting. On one hand, hopes for large-scale social change ignited by events in France were not completely extinguished, and some positive changes were occurring. As the middle class gained prominence, education for women was increasingly possible; and some states began reforming divorce laws and giving women control of their own property. On the other hand, the widespread call for separate spheres promulgated, for example, by Johann Gottlieb Fichte prescribed self-sacrifice and domesticity; even in 1794, Prussian law proclaimed women subservient to their husbands and ordered breast-feeding. Yet, many women writers during this period found ways to transform a revolutionary impulse into calls for tangible social and political change. Some of their contributions have been recognized. Even standard critical works acknowledge women's centrality in the Romantic salons, although they describe them as places where important men of the day gathered for stimulating conversation. Feminist critics, however, note that Varnhagen, Herz, von Arnim, and Schlegel-Schelling established and maintained salons for more than just the purpose of serving men; the Geselligkeit of the salons afforded them at least a limited opportunity to promote publicly their own ideas of culture and literature. Women around 1800 have also been recognized as supreme letter writers, a form that Christian Furchtegott Gellert had decreed their "natural" form. Schlegel-Schelling, Varnhagen, B. von Arnim, and D. Schlegel were all recognized in their day as epistolary talents. Letters, considered a written form of conversation, though ostensibly private, were often written with the expectation of a shared readership. Their epistolary writing thus provided a literary forum for women to engage in public issues while at the same time exploring their subjectivity and their own female world. But women in the decades following the French Revolution functioned as far more than the muses or the erotic impulses, the gifted conversationalists and epistolary talents of standard literary histories. Many authored translations, wrote critical reviews and essays, edited journals and newspapers. Others engaged in the "higher" art forms of novel, novella, drama, and poetry. Some wrote in order to support themselves and/or their families (e.g., Mereau, Therese Huber). Others, von Arnim, for example, began their literary careers only after the death of a husband and, in von Arnim's case, after bearing seven children. Many, yielding to public or private pressures, published their works anonymously (e.g., Naubert, Huber, D. Schlegel), under pseudonyms (Giinderrode), or even under their husbands' names (Schlegel-Schelling, D. Schlegel, Huber). Others were more dissimulating: Giinderrode, for example, adopted a male persona for some of her letters and poems. These decades are crucial in the development of a female literary tradition in Germany, in part because so many women were writing with the knowledge that others were doing the same; the extent, however, to which they felt marginalized is still debated. Few would have been able to ignore completely the social norms for women's behavior—and those norms also decreed which genres were considered suitable for women. Yet, their writing in this period is
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characterized by achievements in all forms, often with a conscious desire to expand generic boundaries. Even before the Grimms, Naubert was writing and compiling fairy tales that broke with the rational tales of J.K.A. Musaus. She also developed a new form of the historical novel that influenced Sir Walter Scott: that of a fictional romance with a historically authentic background. Schlegel-Schelling's letters included poetry, critical reviews, witty gossip, philosophical fragments, and remembered conversations. Von Arnim experimented with new prose forms in which autobiography and epistolary writing (sometimes fictitious) included diary entries and poetry. Their works often evidence an original orthography and punctuation, even occasionally a tendency toward neologisms, that cannot be merely dismissed as evidence of a limited education. Rather, these stylistic innovations can be understood as a protest against prescriptive grammar and syntax and as affirmations of creativity. Von Arnim, for example, preferred long, sometimes meandering, sentences intended to engage more than the reader's intellectual responses. Even more striking are women's thematic innovations: women's experiences and cooperation were the customary guiding spirits; their literature frequently attended to the social dimensions of women's lives. To be sure, not all their works are woman-centered. Some writers, Schlegel-Schelling and Varnhagen, for example, preferred male correspondents and friends, considering most women deformed by social dictates. But they and the majority of other women writing around 1800 all wrote from an awareness of sexual oppression. Although writers of fiction were usually too realistic to posit an end to such oppression, they offered their readers insights into the mechanics of gender relations and called, even if only implicitly, for change. Von Arnim and her daughter Gisela, for example, in their Kunstmarchen Gritta (c.1845) hinted at the joy of a female collective with its alternative social and religious structures. Naubert's Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen (17891792) sometimes combined the fantastic with examinations of women's actual experiences of aging, working, and loving. In the poetry of Giinderrode and Mereau the Romantic proclivity to nature lyrics is stretched beyond the usual association of women with the natural world. Even in Giinderrode's dramatic tragedies, in which violence and death figure prominently, there is an awareness of women's inability to determine their own fates. Women writers were especially successful in expanding thematic boundaries in the novel and short story. Writers such as Mereau and Huber experimented with various prose forms and in different works challenged bourgeois gender conventions, especially concerning marriage; Sophie Tieck deliberately mocked Romantic pretensions; Henriette Frolich focused her Utopian themes on America; and Caroline Auguste Fischer claimed woman's rights to personal and artistic self-expression. In "William der Neger" (1817), she even linked sexual and racial oppression. All of these stylistic and thematic innovations go far beyond the boundaries of what is generally considered Romanticism.
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See also: Adaptation/Translation; Allgemeines Preufiisches Landrecht; Arnim, Bettina von; Authorship; Autobiography; Confessional Literature; Diaries; Epistolary Culture; Fairy Tale; Gunderrode, Karoline von; Mereau, Sophie; Novel, Historical; Revolution, French. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, and Susanne Zantop, eds., Bitter Healing: German Women Writers 1700-1830 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Ebrecht, Angelika, Regina Nortemann, and Herta Schwarz, eds., Brieftheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts: Texte, Kommentare, Essays (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990); Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, The Androgyne in Early Romanticism: The Metaphysics of Love (Berne: Lang, 1983); Goodman, Katherine, and Edith Waldstein, eds., In the Shadow of Olympus: German Women Writers around 1800 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Hertz, Deborah, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Waldstein, Edith, Bettine von Arnim and the Politics of Romantic Conversation (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER
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s S a c h s i s c h e T y p e n k o m o d i e . So called because of its original inception in Saxony, this is a type of comedy first defined in Johann Christoph Gottsched's Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst (1730). By this (his) definition, the comedy portrays a type for which the entire character stands, a character who is contrasted with other, more reasonable characters in the play. By either ridiculing or converting this type, the comedy provides both entertainment and moral edification for the viewer, who supposedly recognizes the negative characteristics portrayed in the type in himself or herself and is thus motivated to avoid them. Two 18th-century women dramatists are particularly important for the development of the genre, Luise Adelgunde Gottsched and Caroline Neuber. Neuber initially aroused Johann Christoph Gottsched's interest in the theater, since his initial firsthand experience of stage comedy was a performance by Neuber's troupe in Leipzig. Although he disapproved of the content and form displayed on stage, he was moved enough by the performance to turn his attention toward the poetics (and ethics) of comedy. His and Neuber's collaboration produced a new theater, a form of comedy that, like Joseph Addison's and Richard Steele's from England decades earlier, broke with the more obscene, slapstick predecessors that were the object of Johann Christoph Gottsched's polemic. Neuber, a prolific playwright herself, did not write Typenkomodien but advocated the new theater in philosophical Vorspiele. Luise Gottsched's dramas, written for her husband's Deutsche Schaubilhne (a collection of plays he began shortly after Neuber's troupe departed for St. Petersburg), mark the beginning of modern German comedy. Luise Gottsched
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translated Typenkomodien (primarily from French models), authored a hybrid original/translation (Die Pietisterey im Fischbein-Rocke, 1736), and wrote four originals: Die ungleiche Heirat (1743), Die Hausfranzosinn (1744), Das Testament (1745), and Der Witzling (1745). Luise Gottsched's Typenkomodien not only satirize blind faith, greed, and unthinking adherence to social convention but also thematize women's property rights, the institution of marriage, and women as intellectuals. In this, they differ sharply from other plays in the genre, which frequently made "women's follies" the object of the comedy's satirical attack (e.g., Moliere's Les Precieuses Ridicules, 1659). See also: Comedie Larmoyante; Enlightenment; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Vorspiel; Wandertheater. References: Beare, Mary, Die Theorie der Komodie von Gottsched bis Jean Paul (Bonn: Ludwig Rohrscheid, 1927); Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zurMiindigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Friederici, Hans, Das deutsche burgerliche Lustspiel der Fruhaufklarung (1736-1750) (Halle [Saale]: Niemeyer, 1957); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Richel, Veronica C, Luise Gottsched: A Reconsideration (Berne: Lang, 1973); Schlenther, Paul, Frau Gottsched und die burgerliche Komodie. Ein Kulturbild aus der Zopfzeit (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1886). KATHYSARANPA S a g a . A literary adaptation of Greek, Roman, Germanic, and/or biblical mythology, saga is comparatively rare in German women's literature. Usually classical Greek and Roman mythology and Bible stories are preferred, and women's adaptations frequently reflect the concept of a male-oriented power system. There are, however, a few examples of feminist rewritings of dominant figures of German mythology. Whereas women authors turned to classical Greek myths during the Classic/Romantic period in Germany, they tended to turn to German mythology more frequently in the second part of the 19th century, up to World War I. Among the treatments of Germanic myths and sagas are Siegfried (n.d.) and Chriemhild (n.d.) by Amalie von Liebhaber, dramas based on the Siegfriedand Kriemhilde myth of the Nibelungenlied (c.1200). Another adaptation of Germanic mythology is Karoline von Giinderrode's dramolet Hildgund (1805), which shows an active and revengeful heroine reminiscent of Brunhilde or Kriemhilde. Giinderrode's adaptation of the myth, however, reverses the pattern of women figures whose lives are predetermined by destiny or men. Although set on revenge, Hildgund is not presented as unfeminine or repulsive; the murder of Attila, king of the Huns, appears as a justified act by which Hildgund courageously sets out to save her country from the barbaric attack of the Huns, even renouncing her fiance's affection and respect for her cause. The best known of such adaptations, a dramatization of the Gudrun saga by Mathilde Wesendonck, Gudrun, was published in 1868 in Zurich. Here also a
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basic change in the concept of mythological tradition has taken place. Sinister destiny and the wrath of the gods, often lacking a tangible connection with human morality, are mitigated and humanized: in particular, the traditionally terrifying endings of mythological tragedies are downplayed. Thus, Wesendonck minimizes the passive submission of the victims to their fate and stresses human choice and control more than the original stories permitted. In Wesendonck's Gudrun, many changes in the story line could indicate an independent, feminine approach to the heroes and their fixed destinies as portrayed in the original saga: examples are the omission of the death of the treacherous Hergart, the transformation of the queen's murder into a suicide, and the death of the abductor Hartmut, who, in the original story, is rewarded for his abduction of Gudrun by marriage to her best friend. See also: Adaptation/Translation; Classicism; Fairy Tale; Gunderrode, Karoline von; Heroine; Legend. References: Kastinger Riley, Helene, Die weibliche Muse. Sechs Essays uber kunstlerisch schaffende Frauen der Goethezeit (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1986); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992).
MARIA LUISE CAPUTO-MAYR S a i n t s . The literary treatment of female saints generally takes the form of either depictions of the life or legend of a saint or references or exhortations to a saint. Saints are rarely discussed in works by women, perhaps due to the dearth of female saints until the canonization of more women in the 20th century, for example, Joan of Arc. The comparison of a woman to a saint may stress her piety and goodness or associate her with a cultic, sometimes negative, life force or being. The medieval period yields an array of examples. Several anonymous works deemed to have been compiled by women, for example, "Gebet einer Frau" (c.1150), as well as Frau Ava's works, honor female saints, such as Mary Magdalene. Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim incorporated elements from early Christian hagiographic accounts of female saints, especially martyred virgins, and referred to many saints in her works (all after 962). Her legend Agnes features the virgin martyr who sees Christ as her bridegroom and is a model for Hrotsvitha. In her drama Gallicanus, St. Agnes is praised by Constantia, who is healed through Agnes' intervention. In another drama, Sapientia, the title heroine is identified with St. Sophia as she brings her three daughters to Rome to be sacrificed for Christ. Like Hrotsvitha, Elisabeth von Schonau in Liber revelationum de sacro exercitu virginum Coloniensium focuses on martyred virgins. Elisabeth recounts her visions about the legendary St. Ursula and her 11,000 martyred virgins of Cologne, who had become popular cult figures in the 12th century. In Das fliefiende Licht der Gottheit (1250/1282), Mechthild von Magdeburg wishes to fight the Devil at St. Katherina's side, to live with Mary Magdalene in the desert, to cool herself in Mary Magdalene's tears of Minne. Of the "new" St. Elisabeth,
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Landgrafin von Thiiringen, Mechthild reports that God sent the saint as a messenger to the unholy ladies in the castles to induce them to lead holy lives. Also attracted to the early martyrs is Magdalena Heymair, who in Die Episteln (1568/1578) tells the story of St. Sabine, a Roman widow and martyr who refused to marry a pagan and also refers to a "heilige matrona Concordia" who died for Christ. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg favors biblical women, particularly the exemplary St. Martha and St. Elisabeth, who reflect the worth of women in God's eyes. Few references are to be found in the 18th and early 19th centuries, again echoing the canonization rate of female saints. Annette von Droste-Hulshoff in " A n Christi Himmelfahrtstage" in Das geistliche Jahr (1820/1851), like Mechthild von Magdeburg, would like to take the place of Martha to be near Christ and to be kneeling with Mary Magdalene. Ida von Hahn-Hahn brought the stories of martyred saints to the salons with her works on St. Zita (1878) and Teresa of Avila (1867). Gertrud von Le Fort in Die Letzte am Schaffott (1931) recalls the martyrdom of virgins. Her two-volume novel, Das Schweifituch der Veronika (1928/1946), written in the first person, relates of a German girl growing up in Rome who later converts to Catholicism; Le Fort evokes the legend of Veronica to reflect the true piety of the girl's soul. The devout Ida Friederike Gorres wrote legends and studies, two of which are on Elisabeth von Thiiringen (1931/1959) and Maria Ward (1932/1952), and others on Radegundis von Thiiringen (1934), Johanna or Joan (1943), Therese of Lisieux (1944), and Hedwig von Schlesien (1967). A striking 20th-century depiction of a saint occurs in the autobiographical novel of a problematic mother-daughter relationship during World War II, Die Eisheiligen (1979) by Helga M. Novak. Novak links St. Sophia, whose feast day follows the three male "Eisheiligen" or "Eismanner" who annually bring cold, rainy weather in mid-May, to the cold and brutal mother, who is named "Kaltesophie" by her daughter. See also: Drama, Biblical; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von; Mariendichtung; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Mary; Mystery Play; Mysticism; Virgin. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Heffernan, Thomas J., Sacred Biography. Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Nigg, Walter, Heilige und Dichter (Zurich: Diogenes, 1991); Weinstein, Donald, and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society. The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Wilson, Stephen, ed., Saints and Their Cults. Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). CHRISTINE KALLINGER S a l o n i s m . The literary salon was typically organized by a prominent woman who gathered around herself intellectuals and other artistically inclined women
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and men from a variety of social classes for cultural and political discussions in a nonacademic setting. As a literary arena removed from the institutional environment of the university or the court, salons allowed women to participate in intellectual debates from which they were otherwise excluded. Although the term "salon" (in the sense of a conversational circle engaged in the artistic cultivation of its members) was first employed by Madame de Stael in 1807, such informal gatherings have played an important role in the formation of literary culture since the Renaissance, while serving simultaneously as a model for the emancipation of women from traditional social restraints. An early historical high point was the Parisian salons of the 17th and 18th centuries. Organized by prominent aristocratic women, these meetings embodied the Republique des Lettres. They constituted an arena of intellectual exchange free from, and very often in opposition to, the official culture of the court at Versailles. Not only did salons allow their members to postulate Enlightenment concepts of personal freedom, but their very organization enacted these principles. Distinction within salons was earned more often on the basis of intellectual facility and conversational brilliance than on social rank alone. This emancipatory tendency, coupled with the central role women had in creating these settings, has led feminist scholars to describe salons as an affirmative example of a feminine culture. The term "salonism" was first suggested as a historiographic term intended to counter the masculinist categories of German literary history. Between 1790 and 1830, a number of prominent salons led by women appeared in Weimar and Berlin. As much as any other organ of literary culture, salons formed by women such as Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz, and Dorothea Schlegel shaped the aesthetic discourse of the age. They allowed their female members to mediate between domestic life and the public sphere of intellectuals. More than any other institution, salons typify the position of women writers who were compelled to maneuver past household obligations before entering a public literary discourse. "Salonism" refers to the space in which the feminine literary tradition as it emerged from the semiprivate sphere of letter writing intersected with the masculine modes of writing. Within salons, the sharp categories dividing gender and genres were temporarily suspended, allowing women to converse as equals, or indeed superiors, with established male intellectuals. First created in the era of Baroque absolutism, salons continued until the First World War to function as an alternative society, offering a microcosmic antithesis to the patriarchical organization of intellectual discourse. While never completely immune from class and gender presumptions of their own historical period, salons presented compelling counterexamples to the established norms. Only with the emergence of mass culture and its new information technologies and distribution networks did salons lose their influential role within public discourse. See also: Enlightenment; Epistolary Culture; Romanticism.
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References: Blackwell, Jeannine, 'Anonym, verschollen, trivial: Methodological Hindrances in Researching German Women's Literature." Women in German Yearbook 1 (1985): 39-59; Hertz, Deborah, Jewish High Society in the Old Regime Berlin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Heyden-Rynsch, Verena von der, Europdische Salons: Hohepunkte einer versunkenen weiblichen Kultur (Munich: Artemis and Winkler, 1992); Landes, Joan, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Wilhelmy, Petra, Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert, 1780-1914 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989).
DANIEL PURDY S a n d e r , Helke ( 1 9 3 7 - p r e s e n t ) . Helke Sander's Die allseitig reduzierte Personlichkeit—REDUPERS (1977) was one of the earliest films by West German women filmmakers to find critical praise. Sander, among the first graduates of the Berlin Film and Television Academy, employs a self-reflexive, documentary, autobiographical style that has been called feminist modernism. Born in Berlin in 1937, Sander studied acting, German literature, and psychology. While at the Film and Television Academy, she became active in the student movement and began directing short films. Following a speech made at the 1968 Socialist Students' Association in which she expressed her disillusionment with the values of the movement and its neglect of women's issues (such as child care), she cofounded the Action Council for Women's Liberation. In 1973, she coorganized the first International Women's Film Seminar and in 1974 founded what is now the oldest existing feminist film journal in the world, Frauen und Film. Sander's earliest political films on such topics as menstruation, a nursery school teachers' strike, and abortion rights were often rejected by television networks for being too subjective or political. Her 1977 film Die allseitig reduzierte Personlichkeit—REDUPERS depicts the struggle of women photographers in Berlin trying to survive as artists in a world that does not perceive sexism in the media. Sander appears in the main role of this black-and-white documentary-style film using voice-over and lengthy tracking shots of Berlin. Der subjektive Faktor (1981) is an autobiographical account (in which Sander appears but does not play the lead role) of the beginnings of the women's movement in West Germany, intended specifically as an intervention in historical understanding and a rejection of the claim to objectivity. Der Beginn aller Schrecken ist Liebe (1983) weaves strands of melodrama, parody, and documentary to relate a love story, linking the repressive past of West Germany to sexism and oppressive relationships. In Die Deutschen und ihre Manner (1990), a woman goes to Berlin to search for a husband and interviews numerous men (among them, real politicians) and finds that Germans are more inclined to take responsibility for the German Holocaust than for their treatment of women. The 1992 film Befreier, Befreite has been a controversial documentary on the rape of German women by conquering Russian soldiers at the end of World War II. Sander prefers working without a complete script and finishing it only in the filming process; this method, however, has led to funding problems. Sander
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rejects ghettoizing women's films (a theme included in REDUPERS). Using alternative, subversive perspectives, she articulates thoughts, feelings, and their consequences. Sander has been professor of film at the Hamburg College of Visual Arts since 1986. See also: Film, Autobiographical; Film, Documentary; Film Politics; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauen und Film; Melodrama; Student Movement; Women's Movement. References: Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); McCormick, Richard, Politics of the Self: Feminism and the Postmodern in West German Literature and Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), "Re-Presenting the Student Movement: Helke Sander's The Subjective Factor." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II: 273-92; Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980); Perlmutter, Ruth, "German Grotesque: Two Films by Sander and Ottinger." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 167-78; Rich, B. Ruby, "She Says, He Says: The Power of the Narrator in Modernist Film Politics." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 143-62; Silberman, Marc, "Interview with Helke Sander: Open Forms." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) I: 163-66. SANDRA FRIEDEN
S a n d e r s - B r a h m s , Helma ( 1 9 4 0 - p r e s e n t ) . The first woman to win the top Federal Film Prize in West Germany (for the film Heinrich, 1976-1977), Helma Sanders-Brahms' best-known film is probably the (auto)biographical Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (1979), a film recounting her mother's survival of World War II, with the filmmaker as an infant. The film uses distinctive distancing techniques, such as voice-over narration by the filmmaker, insertion of documentary footage, the relating of a complete fairy tale within the narrative, and melodrama to maintain the viewers' alienation from the film's emotional events. Sanders-Brahms' films often deal with women and relationships—particularly mother-daughter relationships. Born in Emden in 1940 as Helma Sanders (she took her mother's name, Brahms, after 1977 to avoid confusion with Helke Sander), the filmmaker studied theater, German and English literatures, and pedagogy in Hannover and then in Cologne. She left a career in teaching to work as a television announcer for WDR Television. Her work there on a series of films on Italian filmmakers introduced her to Sergio Corbucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, both of whom she later assisted on film projects in Italy. Sanders-Brahms' first film was Angelika Urban, Verkauferin, verlobt (1969), a half-hour film that won two prizes in the 1970 Oberhausen Short Film Festival. The film takes a critical look at the day-to-day life of a young workingwoman. Her success with this film brought her the offer to direct a film for the ZDF Television series "Das kleine Fernsehspiel": Gewalt (1970), the story of
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a young couple who runs from the confines of life in an industrial town only to end up in a life of crime. Der Angestellte (1971-1972) tells the story of a systems analyst with a "false consciousness" who cannot find solidarity with the workers in his company. Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand (1974) reflects the failures of the late 1960s student movement in the unsuccessful relationship of a couple; the lead character interviews other women and becomes more aware of her own role as a woman in her society. Die letzten Tage von Gomorrha (1973-1974) is a science fiction collage about a world dominated by a warehouse business, and Erdbeben in Chili (1974) is based on Heinrich von Kleist's novella. A documentary film, Die industrielle Reservearmee (1970-1971), and a feature film, Shirins Hochzeit (1975), address the problems of "guest worke r s " in West Germany. Shirins Hochzeit, in relating the story of a young Turkish woman who has come to West Germany to find her fiance, demonstrates how, as a woman and as a foreigner, she is doubly discriminated against. (Local Turkish authorities opposed the film and waged a press campaign against it; the Turkish actress in the title role received death threats.) Heinrich (1976-1977) examines the life of Kleist in flashbacks. Die Beruhrte (1980-1981) is based on diary entries of Rita G. FlUgel und Fesseln (1984) presents 24 hours of a mother-daughter conflict. Laputa (1985-1986), Manover (1988), and Apfelbaume (1991) deal with German society before and after the 1990 unification and the impact of political divisions on relationships and identity. See also: Film, Autobiographical; Film, Documentary; Film Politics; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Melodrama; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Sander, Helke; Student Movement; Unification, German. References: Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); McCormick, Richard, "Confronting German History: Melodrama, Distantiation, and Women's Discourse in Germany Pale Mother." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II: 185-206; Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980). SANDRA FRIEDEN S a t i r e . This is a literary strategy used to uncover and undermine social and political power relations. Since anthologies and other collections of German, Austrian, and Swiss literary works usually concentrate exclusively on satiric literature by men, women satirists have remained underrepresented and obscure. Renowned women satirists include the German authors Gisela Eisner (Die Riesenzwerge, 1964), Ulrike Kolb (Idas Idee, 1985), and Christa Reinig, who was expelled from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1964 (Entmannung, 1976), and the Austrian Elfriede Jelinek who produced a variety of satiric literary works. Sigrid Weigel has examined female and/or feminist satirical writing and has concluded that women's satire is based on gender-specific laughter, which Weigel calls a "shuddering laughter." This laughter, a mixture of laughing and suffering, stems from the knowledge and experience of women's historical, so-
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cial, and cultural positions, which are marked by exclusion, marginalization, the recognition of one's own victim status, and participation in an oppressive order. Nevertheless, there is hope, according to Luce Irigaray, that in passing through the dominating discourse and employing a woman's perspective, established values and norms will begin to shift and become disrupted. In her novel Die Riesenzwerge (1964), Eisner presents a shockingly grotesque narrative voice juxtaposed with a monotonous, unemotional one and denounces the violence lurking behind the petty bourgeois facade. In Reinig's Entmannung (1976), a casual narrative voice defines gender relations as a violent power struggle. In both works, satire functions as a means of irritation and provocation. Novels and dramas by Jelinek (Die Liebhaberinnen, 1975) also deal with images of women. Jelinek's language criticism becomes the tool for the disruption and reversal of dominant white European discourse by, for example, deconstructing trivial myths constructed by the mass media. Jelinek attacks both male/female images and socialized behavior by exaggeration, inversion, and other satirical methods. The "shuddering laughter" of female and/or feminist satirists, originating from its entanglement in the ruling male order, may either expose and ridicule established norms or undermine prevailing social and political conditions. See also: Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Grotesque; Jelinek, Elfriede; Participation/Exclusion; Reinig, Christa. References: Coupe, William A., German Political Satires from the Reformation to the Second World War (White Plains, NY: Kraus, 1987); Fletcher, M. D., Contemporary Political Satire: Narrative Strategies in the Post-modern Context (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987); Vormweg, Heinrich, ed., Hieb und Stick Deutsche Satire in 300 Jahren (Berlin: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1968); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa. Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen, Hiddingsel: tende, 1987); Wigmore, Juliet, "Power, Politics and Pornography: Elfriede Jelinek's Satirical Exposes." Literature on the Threshold: The German Novel in the 1980's. Ed. Arthur Williams (Providence, RI: Berg, 1990) 209-19. VERA BOITER Schelmenroman—see: Picaresque Novel S c h o n e Seele—see: Beautiful Soul Schundliteratur. This denotes trashy literature and is ranked considerably below popular literature. Originally, the term was used primarily with regard to literature for young readers, who could be endangered by works of questionable taste or educational value. Schundliteratur included wartime adventures and erotic literature and was supposed to appeal to the baser impulses of its readers. Since 1945, the term has been used more loosely and refers also to dime novels (Groschenhefte) and comic books as well as to pornographic literature. This type of literature is consumed by readers of varying ages and socioeconomic
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and educational backgrounds. Romance novels make up a large part of the socalled Schundliteratur. Critics have raised the concern that trashy literature dulls the mind of its consumers and that the excessive violence contained in some types of Schundliteratur may influence real-life attitudes and behavior, especially with regard to women. The discussion of Schundliteratur raises two important issues for feminists. One concerns the elitist character of a literary criticism that scorns popular culture and thus has prevented a meaningful, theoretical study of romances and their function in particular for their large female readership. The second issue involves the call for censorship of Schundliteratur, especially pornographic and excessively violent literature. As the history of the Schundkampf (fight against trashy literature) has shown, censorship was often used as a pretext to advance specific political or economic interests. Today, the fear of being coopted by a conservative agenda partly informs those feminist critics who oppose censorship of pornographic literature. But feminists are divided in the condemnation of pornography. Radical feminists view all pornography as a form of violence against women, while libertarian feminists reject the emphasis on women's victimization. Rather, they see sexuality as an arena of constructive struggles toward women's sexual liberation. While the second issue remains unresolved, the first issue has moved closer to a resolution. The division of art into "high art" and ''popular art," which informs the discussion of Schundliteratur, has been increasingly challenged. Theoretical work on mass culture has not only led to a reevaluation of commonplace assumptions about the nature of high art and popular art, but also led to a better understanding of the function of popular art. This is also true with regard to female mass culture, where feminist critics have initiated a theoretical discussion of popular and even "trashy" literature that appeals primarily to women. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Body, Female; Canon, Literary; Erotic Literature; Groschenroman; Pornography; Romance; Trivial Literature; Victim. References: Galle, Heinz J., Groschenhefte: Die Geschichte der deutschen Trivialliteratur (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1988); Schenda, Rudolf, "Schundliteratur und Kriegsliteratur." Die Lesestoffe der kleinen Leute: Studien zur popularen Literatur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1976) 78-104. HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER
Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt
das Salz ins Meer? ( 1 9 7 7 ) .
Austrian writer Brigitte Schwaiger (1949-present) was hailed as a formidable talent upon publication of Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? in 1977 (Eng. trans. Why Is There Salt in the Sea?, 1988). The story of a short-lived marriage narrated by the unhappy wife in an uninterrupted inner monologue, Schwaiger's first work of fiction became an overnight sensation in Germany, where, swept along in the 1970s deluge of confessional literature, it was treated as a milestone of authentic female self-expression. Ideologically, its message is rather similar
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to American feminist Betty Friedan's indictment of middle-class marriage in The Feminine Mystique (1963). The success of Schwaiger's book in Germany is not without its ironies, for she had tried for two years to find a German publisher before accepting a contract from an Austrian publishing company. Perhaps because Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? has been seen primarily in terms of its impact at a specific historical moment, it has received little critical attention since the early 1980s. Like an earlier runaway best-seller, Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975), Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? was a book with which thousands of German women identified. Inevitably, comparisons between the two works focused on the protagonists' development from silenced victims to autonomous subjects. That process has been best analyzed by Sandra Frieden, who argues that these and similar literary works of the 1970s represent a female variation on that most male of German prose genres, the Bildungsroman. Although the events of the story bear little resemblance to those of Schwaiger's life, feminist and mainstream reviewers alike tended to read Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? as a fictionalized autobiography. The title alludes to the many lies the protagonist must unlearn, starting with the fairy tale (told to her by her parents) that fishermen with saltshakers put the salt into the sea. Contemporary critics noted and admired Schwaiger's use of humor and irony in Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? However, it was not read in the context of Austrian literary tradition, nor was feminist theory of the time able to capture the text's complexity. The author's skill with the technique of inner monologue, reminiscent of Arthur Schnitzler, enables her to represent the construction of a female consciousness at the same time that the narrator is deconstructing it. Schwaiger has mentioned Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar as literary models. It is to be hoped that new readings of Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer? will focus not only on its status as "movement" literature, but on its literary quality. See also: Austrian Literature; Bildungsroman; Confessional Literature; Frauenliteratur; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen. References: Frieden, Sandra, Self into Form. German-Language Autobiographical Writings of the 1970s (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1983), "The Left-Handed Compliment: Perspectives and Stereotypes in Criticism." Beyond the Eternal Feminine. Critical Essays on Women and German Literature. Ed. Susan Cocalis and Kay Goodman (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1982) 311-33; Weigel, Sigrid, " 'Woman Begins Relating to Herself: Contemporary German Women's Literature." New German Critique 31 (Winter 1984): 53-94.
JEANETTE CLAUSEN S c i e n c e Fiction. The term "science fiction" was coined in the late 1920s in the United States to describe the "gosh-wow" era of space operas in popular pulp magazines. It welded together two seemingly irreconcilable realms of culture and society: empirical science and imaginary fiction. Science fiction's prob-
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lematic relationship to women and gender is made apparent in E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale Der Sandmann (1817), in which the male protagonist falls in love with the robot-woman Olimpia, precisely because all she can say is "ach," and in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1831), which severely criticizes Faustian megalomania. Literary examples of this 19th-century type went under "fantastic and Utopian tales," "futuristic space adventures," "imaginary voyages," "scientific romances," "scientific fantasy," or even "pseudoscientific fiction." With the specification of the term in the 1920s, the genre underwent a normative change involving less fantasy and more science/technology. This thematic and generic shift toward "hard" science fiction, privileging facts and scientific jargon over fiction, and the marginalization of gender issues tied to any scientific development constituted two of the causes for women authors' and readers' general exclusion during the formative years of the golden age of science fiction in the late 1930s to 1950s. Extrapolation and analogy are the characteristic narrative strategies of science fiction. The author alienates and varies familiar information from the past and present. Sometimes, a well-introduced and believably maintained alien world becomes the founding origin for scores of other science fiction products (e.g., Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, 1950). Famous early representatives of women's science fiction, who saw the genre as an opening for feminist concerns, were Charlotte Perkins Gilman with Herland (1915) and Thea von Harbou with her filmscripts Metropolis (1926) and Die Frau im Mond (1929). In the 1960s and 1970s, the New Wave movement attempted to alter the aesthetic parameters of science fiction to include experimental narrative techniques as well as new, elaborated themes from psychology, biology, and politics: examples are Monique Wittig's Les Guerilleres (1969), Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed (1974), and Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1975). In the last two decades, women have struggled to reclaim and secure their position in science fiction. While early feminist works built on the theory of androgyny or the legend of Amazons to reorganize gender assignments and sexual politics, more recent science fiction seeks alternate representations of the biosocial constructions of reproduction, science, cybernetics, and gender. Inspired by the convergence of poststructuralism and feminist theory, science fiction writers and critics have begun to attend more to issues of language and representation: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1986), Marge Piercy's He, She and It (1992), and specifically, literary criticism as science fiction in Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book (1989). The wave of ecological consciousness-raising, mythological reorientation, and multicultural curiosity from the 1970s to the 1990s has reconnected science fiction to the esoteric, fantasy, feminism, and folklore. Male and female authors of this period have contributed to a new age of "border crossings" between "high-" and "lowbrow" literature as well as among the subgenres science fiction, fantasy, Utopia, horror, romance, and thriller (e.g., Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain, 1992, and Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, 1990).
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Science fiction has only of late arrived at a larger readership and authorship in postwar Germany. There are at least three reasons for this development. First, due to its surreal settings and premises, science fiction has borne the brunt of the culturally conservative aesthetic judgment against trivial literature. Second, the sharp genre distinction between soft Utopia, romance, and fantasy, and hard science fiction has largely relegated women's works to the former three categories (conventional German bookstores did not expressly label science fiction and fantasy until the mid-1980s). Third, science fiction has been, by and large, a literature read in translation, an imported product. The commercial push of American science fiction television series and computer/video/laser games has all but overpowered homegrown literary products. This also explains that, while numerous German studies devote themselves to American and East European science fiction, the development of literary criticism on German science fiction, especially with regard to women authors and feminist concerns, is still far behind comparable British and American scholarship. In the process of a large-scale feminist attempt to rediscover forgotten works by women authors, by, for example, reclaiming works relegated to "trivial" status and by debating the very issue of the trivialization and feminization of genres, more German science fiction by women will surely surface (e.g., works appearing in the woman-owned Fabylon Press). Starting points for further scholarship regarding aspects of science fiction in 20th-century literature by women might include Irmtraud Morgner's novels, Christa Reinig's Entmannung (1976), Christa Wolf's "Selbstversuch" (1977), Maria Erlenberger's Singende Erde (1981), and the short stories by newcomer Myra Cakan. Also of interest are German Science Fiction journals like The Science Fiction Times and Quarber Merkur along with anthologies published by Heyne and Goldmann. See also: Amazon; Androgyny; Fantastic Literature; Gender Transformation; Morgner, Irmtraud; Poststructuralism; Reinig, Christa; Romance; Trivial Literature; Utopia/ Anti-Utopia; Wolf, Christa. References: Armitt, Lucie, ed., Where No Man Has Gone Before. Women and Science Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1991); Barr, Marleen S., Lost in Space. Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Beckhoff, Dorothee, "Feministische Science Fiction." Frauen, Erfahrungen, Mythen, Projekte. Ed. Anna Maria Stuba (Berlin: Argument, 1985); Grabher, Gudrun M., ed., Women in Search of Literary Space (Tubingen: Narr, 1992); Lefanu, Sarah, Feminism and Science Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). SUNKA SIMON Seduction—see: Bourgeois Tragedy; Father-Daughter Relationship S e m i o t i c s . In the most general terms, semiotics has been defined as "the science of signs," which includes a wide range of disciplines (e.g., anthropology, architecture, cognitive psychology, cultural studies, film theory, language studies, literary theory, visual and performing arts). The place of gender studies
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and feminist studies within this wide spectrum still needs, at least to some extent, to be defined. Whereas initially, the term "semiotics" was associated with medicine or symptom studies and the science of symptomatology, arguments have since been made to read ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and 18th-century texts (like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's famous discussion on Laocoon and the aesthetics of pain) as a contribution to semiotics. For example, Simon Richter has contextualized the Laocoon debate in terms of both semiotics and gender studies. Semiotics is now generally associated with theories by Charles Sanders Peirce, Umberto Eco, and Julia Kristeva. Studies in semiotics were initially institutionalized by the International Association of Semiotic Studies, founded in Paris (1969), and by the German Society of Semiotics, founded in Berlin (1976). Whereas the previous field of semiology (in terms of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson) was still limited to binaries (although the same semiologists have often been considered the fathers of semiotics), a vast difference remains: in contrast to these semiologists, the semioticians, including Floyd Merrell and other influential theorists, work with the so-called semiotic triangle and open the inquiry to the notion of the interpretant as a constitutive element in the unlimited process of semiosis. Their dynamic models contribute to concepts of thirdness beyond the traditional representational scheme; such ideas have multiple interdisciplinary consequences. Among the scholars who combine semiotics explicitly with feminist criticism are Mieke Bal, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Douane, Fernande Saint-Martin, Kaja Silverman, Barbara Stafford, and Alice Kuzniar. These studies in semiotics, by virtue of their critique of binary structures, go beyond gender studies and challenge the dominant discourse from multiple angles. Some of them argue against the dominance of literary studies over the disciplines of the visual arts and film, others are interested in high culture and popular culture alike, and still others challenge institutionalized ways of seeing and reading or trace female voices in male texts. What connects them is that they take the recipients, readers, listeners, or observers into account and contribute to aesthetic theories that cannot be conceptualized in terms of simplistic dualism. See also: Cultural Studies; Feminist Theory, French; Film Theory, Feminist. References: Bal, Mieke, Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); De Lauretis, Teresa, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Doane, Mary Ann, "Technology's Body: Cinematic Vision in Modernity." Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 5.2 (1993): 1-23; Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Kuzniar, Alice, "Hearing Women's Voices in Heinrich von Ofterdingen." PMLA 107.5 (1992): 1196-1207; Richter, Simon, Laocoon's Body and the Aesthetics of Pain: Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, Goethe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
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1992); Saint-Martin, Fernande, Semiotics of Visual Language (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). BEATEALLERT
Sentimentality/Empfindsamkeit ( 1 7 5 0 - 1 8 0 0 ) . After the early Enlightenment's focus on reason and logic, the effort to balance head and heart was termed Empfindsamkeit, which designates both a tendency (and as such appears within pieces of literature and within a writer's oeuvre) and a movement itself. For educated men of the time, Empfindsamkeit meant enriching reason with empathy; they often depicted the positive qualities of empathic emotions with feminine images. In the field of Germanistik, as Klaus Hansen points out, Empfindsamkeit was indeed long devalued as "merely feminine." Despite recent reassessments, expressed, for example, in Jochen SchulteSasse's term '*empfindsame Hochaufklarung" which directly connects Empfindsamkeit with the achievements of the Enlightenment, Silvia Bovenschen argues that the movement's images of the feminine were not an empowering assignment of new competency to women, but rather an enlargement of male competencies (adding emotion to "male" reason). Consequently, female competencies were reduced to an emotionalism that essentially confined women to domesticity (she illustrates her point with analyses of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller, Immanuel Kant, and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau). Some women, however, resisted the disempowerment propagated by their male contemporaries and found validation as writers and thinkers (but not as scholars) through the new movement. Among women, the earliest examples of Empfindsamkeit concentrated on the personal experience of religion and on depictions of the soul. This religious tendency, which is evident in the work of Meta Klopstock and Charlotte Seidel, overlaps with Pietism, especially in its emphasis on self-examination and in the frequent assertions of religious faithfulness. The second trend of Empfindsamkeit among women entailed feelings as a valid source of action and cultural participation, which, in turn, meant that, for the first time, women became eligible, at least in theory, to join publicly in literary life as writers. Their lack of education had previously disqualified virtually all of them. This second direction of Empfindsamkeit as an interpretation of the world that opposes the ethos of (usually aristocratic) hedonism stresses the notion of empathy (Mitleid), which presupposes special knowledge of others. The Empfindsamkeit of empathy emphasizes a broad audience of readers without advanced education, whose hearts, in the rhetoric of the time, are directly touched by the emotions of the writer. Readers and especially critics steeped in knowledge of literary forms and techniques, however, are represented as typically unreceptive to such literature. Thus, Empfindsamkeit deployed an aesthetic of affect and a comparatively egalitarian notion of literature that empowered
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new groups of inexperienced women readers (e.g., domestic servants or middleclass girls in homes hostile to female education). This strand of Empfindsamkeit interpreted empathy as leading to action. Sophie von La Roche in Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771-1772), a novel that has been consistently recognized for its importance in the Empfindsamkeit, established the pattern of the heroine as literacy worker; Philippine Gatterer-Engelhard translated this philanthropic impulse into poetry. Sophie Ludwig hoped that her story of a murdered Jewish peddler would make receptive readers take pity on the man's suffering family and thus assist other Jews ("Juda," 1791). Both empathy and religious Empfindsamkeit stressed moral purity, which for women writers and women characters often meant a fixation on chastity. Emotionally touching novels and dramas are resolved when the young woman heroine, her chastity intact, is saved from a threatening situation by marriage; the Empfindsamkeit of empathy, for instance, in plays by Victoria von Rupp, Sophie Reitzenstein, Marie Antonie Teutscher, and Friederike Sophie Seyler, depicts female dependency as a successful strategy; the historical romances and fairy tales of Benedikte Naubert offer variations on these themes, including, for example, the establishment outside traditional society of female communities that give women an alternative to marriage. In its later phases, the Empfindsamkeit of empathy enabled some otherwise educationally unqualified women writers, such as Friederike Brun, to approach in their texts the particular austerity and nobility associated with the Weimar Classicism of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's and Friedrich Schiller's literary collaboration. Empfindsamkeit, as a tendency, continues to play a role in the writings of women, especially in the 19th century, often featuring victimized women characters. Masculinist literary criticism and literary history categorize many of these works as Trivialliteratur or Gothic novels. The optimistic second strand of Empfindsamkeit was soon accompanied by a pessimistic third strand, the Empfindsamkeit of alienation; feelings are represented as so strong and uncompromising as to be uncontainable in conventional bourgeois society, which is incapable of empathy with the marginalized few. Sexuality is an important, often disruptive, sometimes satisfying subtext in this strand. But self-analysis among this group becomes morbid and melancholy, with the theme of suicide frequently appearing (e.g., Sophie Albrecht; Marianne Ehrmann). Plays about injustice, such as Duval und Charmille (1778) by Christiane Karoline Schlegel and Adelheit von Rastenberg (1788) by Eleonore Thon, are examples of alienation Empfindsamkeit. This form of Empfindsamkeit might be understood as women's somewhat late version of Storm and Stress, which eventually shades into Romanticism. See also: Classicism; Ehrmann, Marianne; Enlightenment; Fairy Tale; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; La Roche, Sophie von; Maidservant; Pietism; Romanticism; Storm and Stress; Trivial Literature. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Prasentationsformen des Weib-
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lichen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1979); Doktor, Wolfgang, and Gerhard Sauder, eds., Empfindsamkeit: Theoretische und kritische Texte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976); Hansen, Klaus P., "Neue Literatur zur Empfindsamkeit." DVJS 64 (1990): 514-28; Jarvis, Shawn C , "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: SUNY Press, 1992) 189209; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Sauder, Gerhard, Empfindsamkeit: Band I, Voraussetzungen und Elemente (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974); Schulte-Sasse, Jochen, "Poetik und Asthetik Lessings und seiner Zeitgenossen." Deutsche Aufklarung bis zur Franzbsischen Revolution, 1680-1789 (Munich: DTV, 1980). RUTH DAWSON S h e p h e r d e s s — s e e : Idyll; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Pastoral Literature S h o r t S t o r y . The short story, a term adapted from the American into German (Kurzgeschichte), is a short narrative form that emerged with the increasing popularity of magazines and journals in the 1920s. Women writers in the German-speaking countries have made an important contribution to the genre, especially during the post-1945 period. In the 1950s and 1960s, major representatives of the short story included Elisabeth Langgasser, Use Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, Luise Rinser, Anna Seghers, Marieluise FleiBer, and Marie Luise Kaschnitz. Although some of these writers, such as Langgasser, FleiBer, Kaschnitz, and Seghers, had published stories and poems before the war, the literary reputations of many women writers were not forged until after 1945. In the aftermath of the Nazi period, the short story was vital in rebuilding a literary sensibility. Many short stories by women echo the sentiment that the German language was tainted by national socialism and that a new literature must emerge from the rubble of the postwar imagination. Seghers' influential short story "Der Ausflug der toten Madchen" (1943), written during her exile in Mexico, was one of the first texts in German to examine the interplay between historical and personal memory of the Hitler era. The first collection of short stories by Ingeborg Bachmann, Das dreifiigste Jahr (1960), contains stories that address issues of personal and historical remembrance from an Austrian perspective. In the 1960s, Gabriele Wohmann wrote a number of short stories, some of which (e.g., "Die Treibjagd") thematize the ways women adapt to patriarchal middle-class society and internalize traditional gender roles. Ingeborg Bachmann addresses similar issues—albeit often in an ironic or satirical manner—in her collection of stories Simultan (1972) without losing sight of the asymmetrical power relations that underlie women's internalization of traditional roles. In the 1970s, with the impact of the burgeoning women's movement in Germany and the accompanying development of a distinct Frauenliteratur, short stories by women became particularly important in German-speaking countries. In the early 1970s, writers such as Christa Wolf, Gabriele Wohmann, Karin
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Struck, Barbara Frischmuth, and Irmtraud Morgner, to name just a few, began to blur the distinction between fictional and autobiographical voices. This attempt to examine how women's lives intersect with the historical present and past marks many short stories after the 1970s and 1980s. Christa Wolf's preoccupation with what she has termed "the difficulty of saying I" is evident in many short stories written by women at this time. Wolf's well-known short story "Blickwechsel," adapted from her novel Kindheitsmuster (1976), examines the change in perspective between the narrator's present self and her memories of her childhood self at the moment of liberation in 1945. Wolf's notion of writing as an act of resistance against forgetting and as a call for social change is shared by Ingeborg Bachmann and many other women who wrote short stories and other prose fiction during the postwar period. See also: Autobiography; Bachmann, Ingeborg; FleiBer, Marieluise; Frauenliteratur; FRG Literature (1949-1990); GDR Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Struck, Karin; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Wolf, Christa. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1988); Herminghouse, Patricia, ed., Frauen im Mittelpunkt: Contemporary German Women Writers (New York: Suhrkamp, 1987); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa. Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Dulmen: tende, 1987).
LESLIE MORRIS S i n g s p i e l . The term generally signifies a light German opera of the 18th century with spoken dialogue and a comic or sentimental plot. More bourgeois in origin than the court opera, the Singspiel was initially performed by wandering troupes. In contrast to the opera, the music is subordinated to the dialogue and the plot. Folkloric elements and deliberately simple song tunes—also found in the French opera comique—were preferred to the grand arias and recitativos common in the Italian opera. Sources mention two women composers in the 17th century. Sophie Elisabeth, duchess of Brunswick and Liineburg, composed the music to the Singspiel' 'Neu erfundenes Freudenspiel" (text by Justus Georg Schottelius) for the celebration of the Brunswick Peace Treaty of 1642. Even though almost all song melodies to Sophie Elisabeth's Singspiele and ballets are lost, the melodies of the sacred songs collected in her "Christ Fiirstliches Davids-Harpfen Spiel" (1667) were used for her Singspiele and ballets. Maria Aurora von Konigsmarck wrote the text of the Singspiel "Die drey Tochter Cecrops" (1680, score by Johann Wolfgang Franck) based on the original fable found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. She also collaborated on the text to the Singspiel "Henrico IV," set to music by Johann Mattheson. The Singspiel, as an independent art form, became more prominent with the development of the German theater as an important cultural institution in the 1770s. Singspiele were performed both on civic stages and in private court theaters such as Weimar, where Johann Wolfgang Goethe was active after 1775.
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Goethe's Singspiele "Erwin und Elmire," which premiered on May 24, 1776, in Weimar, and "Die Fischerin," first performed on July 18, 1782, at an openair stage in Tiefurt, were both written in collaboration with notable women composers. Anna Amalia, the duchess of Saxe-Weimar, composed the music for "Erwin und Elmire." Corona Schroter played the female lead at the premiere and sang some of Anna Amalia's Lieder. Schroter also composed the incidental music for "Die Fischerin." Another noteworthy composer of the genre is Maria Theresia von Paradis, whose only surviving Singspiel, "Der Schulkandidat," was performed six times at the Leopoldstadter Marinellitheater between 1792 and 1793. See also: Classicism; Musical Theater/Opera; Operetta. References: Busch, Gudrun, and Anthony J. Harper, eds., Studien zum deutschen weltlichen Kunstlied des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992); Koch, Hans-Albrecht, Das deutsche Singspiel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974); Olsen, Solveig, "Aurora von Konigsmarck's Singspiel Die drey Tochter Cecrops." Daphnis 17 (1988): 67480; Weissweiler, Eva, Komponistinnen aus 500 Jahren: Eine Kultur- und Wirkungsgeschichte in Biographien und Werkbeispielen (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1981).
PETRA S. FIERO S i s t e r . Sisters in the Grimm fairy tales act out some of the plots that are common in horizontal family relationships, but their representation also shows the stereotypes associated with sisterhood and the limitations imposed on this relationship by patriarchal ideology. Brothers and brother-sister constellations grossly outnumber sister pairs or groups—the interaction between sisters lies outside male experience and interest. This is true for much of male-authored German literature. Women authors give more room to women's experience and often also incorporate or critically assess feminism's metaphorical claim that "sisterhood is powerful." The word Schwester is colored by the association of care and selfless devotion to others—ideals represented in the profession of a Krankenschwester and the sister as a member of a religious order. For a woman, a sister is the other who, at the same time, is most like herself. She is of the same gender and generation, has the same parents, and was exposed to the same values, ideas, and patterns of interaction. Their relationship is acted out between the extremes of identification/merged identity/sameness and differentiation/polarization/rivalry. Compared with brothers, sisters share more restrictions in a male-dominated society but might therefore also share a more emotionally intimate relationship. The best-known relationship between sisters in Grimms' fairy tales is the one depicted in "Aschenputtel." As is often the case in Grimm tales, the negative aspects of familial-female relationships are displaced from the biological sister and mother to the stepsister and stepmother, which makes the excessive sibling rivalry and mother-daughter competition appear less unnatural. The same technique is used in "Frau Holle," another example of extreme polarization of sisters. The only sisters who get along and who, despite their polarization, are
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mutually attached to each other appear in "SchneeweiBchen und Rosenrot." A common pattern in brother-sister tales is that the sister has to rescue her brother(s), who have been transformed into animals. She does this less through heroic acts or wit, but rather through empathic suffering, care, and persistent sibling love, thus conforming to patriarchal concepts of femininity. As Luise Pusch has laid out, famous men's sisters are often in a servile position in relation to their brothers; since they never receive the same-quality education, brothers sometimes act as their sisters' teachers. Brother-sister incest is a complicating factor, as might have been the case for Heinrich von Kleist's and Georg Trakl's sisters; Thomas Mann has developed the sibling incest theme in his novella Walsungenblut (1921). Twentieth-century women's literature and film offer further examples of narratives based on the sister plot. Marie Luise Kaschnitz's short story "Das dicke Kind" (1951) shows the significance of the sister relationship for the development of the self and identity formation. In "Flieg, Schwesterlein, flieg" (1984), Angelika Jakob describes an older sister in a surrogate mother role who resents her baby sister and is able to work through, and overcome, her feelings after her sister's death only by finally letting her sister enter the place from which she had always barred her: her writing. Barbara Frischmuth's novel Bindungen (1980) is about the delicate balance between the search for common ground and the need for differentiation among two adult sisters; it shows how difficult it is to overcome the rigidity of fixed familial and social roles and sisters' rivalry. Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer follows several generations of sisters in her novel Schwestern (1982). In Libuse Monfkova's novel Pavane fiir eine verstorbene Infantin (1983), the main character burns her older sister in effigy, in order to rid herself of the still-painful emotional lacerations received from her in childhood. In her novel Kassandra (1983), Christa Wolf focuses on the sister relationship in the family as well as in the larger context of a Utopian women's society outside patriarchal ideology. Competition for the same positions in family and society—being the father's favorite daughter and holding the office of priestess—polarizes the sisters, and Kassandra is unable to help Polyxena when she needs her most. Yet, she acknowledges how much she owes her sister: Polyxena had to embody and act out what Kassandra avoided and repressed. Recognition of this debt finally leads to Kassandra's separation from, and rejection of, the paternal authority—an act of solidarity with her sister, too late to help her but designed to expose the workings of the war machine based on patriarchal ideology. Kassandra receives support and strength from the group of women who built their own community outside the city, but their political influence remains limited and marginalized. Wolf's novel shows how feminist valorization of sisterly solidarity has begun to change the images of relationships between women and might eventually reflect on the familial relationship. In German film, Margarethe von Trotta has created powerful narratives revolving around the sister plot—they demonstrate two of the basic patterns that can shape the sister relationship. In Schwestern oder die Balance des Gliicks
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(1979), von Trotta shows the dangers of a symbiotic relationship, in which the older sister takes on the additional and dominant position of a parent figure. In the political film Die bleierne Zeit (1981), von Trotta focuses on the polarization of Ulrike Meinhof and her sister, complete with role reversals. In both films, the younger sister dies, and the older sister tries to work through the guilt of feeling responsible for her sister's death. In Schwestern, the older sister finds a substitute sister and is finally forced to recognize her mistakes. In Die bleierne Zeit, she ultimately experiences late solidarity and merged identities, which alienates her from her own self and the social ties of this (former) self. Both films show the intense bonding between sisters and the constant struggle for a balance between closeness and differentiation. See also: Fairy Tale; Father-Daughter Relationship; Monikova, Libuse; MotherDaughter Relationship; Sisterhood; Trotta, Margarethe von; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Wolf, Christa. References: Bronnen, Barbara, ed., Schwestern: Ein literarisches Lesebuch (Munich: Knaur, 1987); Downing, Christine, Psyche's Sisters: Relmagining the Meaning of Sisterhood (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988); Kraus, Helga, and Karin Kraus, Schwestern Uber Schwestern: Die Kunst der Balance (Frankfurt/M.: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 1991); Pusch, Luise, ed., Schwestern beruhmter Manner: Zwolf biographische Portraits (Frankfurt/M.: Insel, 1985); Stephens Mink, JoAnna, and Janet Doubler Ward, eds., The Significance of Sibling Relationships in Literature (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993); Vielhauer, Inge, Bruder und Schwester: Untersuchungen und Betrachtungen zu einem Urmotif zwischenmenschlicher Beziehung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1979). HELGA G. BRAUNBECK S i s t e r h o o d . Based on the conviction that all women have a common agenda, the concept of sisterhood was initially employed as a term of women's empowerment. In recent years the concept has come under scrutiny for its denial of differences of class, ethnic background, sexual orientation, age, and goals among women. The term has been replaced by the notions of location, positionality, solidarity, and coalition building. In the 1970s, U.S. feminists utilized the concept of sisterhood as an appeal to political alliance building. Robin Morgan's Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970) pleaded for solidarity among women to lobby for women's liberation, the presumed unanimous aim of all women. The concept of sisterhood stressed the experience of female bonding, self-affirmation, and a woman-centered vision. During the 1980s the presumed group identity of all women was increasingly questioned by women who were not part of the white middle-class women's movement. Adrienne Rich's question "Who is 'We'?" pointed to the necessity of a politics that acknowledges diversity among (not only) women. Influences of poststructuralist thought on feminist theory further problematize the issue of gender as an essential category by introducing new theories that destabilize gender identities, and view identity formation as a process rather than a state.
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At the same time, the need for coalition building remains a central task for feminists. In German feminism, the problems of a privileged middle-class white movement that ignores diversity are addressed by calling attention to the issue of racism, disguised as Ausldnderfeindlichkeit, nationality, class differences, and sexual identity. While the German term "Schwesterlichkeit" is not widely used, the term ' 'Schwester'' appeals to the common political ground of women. Traditionally, this term has been associated with women affiliated with the church. Nuns and nurses in their role as caregivers are referred to as Schwestern. Their work is conducted in the interest of "sisterly" love, and they receive little or no compensation. The call for "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Schwesterlichkeit" (Moltmann) aims at the affirmation of women in an ecumenical feminist movement. A temporary favoring of women's role in the churches is intended to strengthen the position of women within the hierarchical system. Female ministers are part of women's claims to equality. See also: Gender Theories, History of; Identity Theories; Positionality; Poststructuralism; Sister; Women's Movement. References: Caraway, Nancy, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (Knoxville: Tennessee Press, 1991); Htigel, Ika, et al., Entfernte Verbindungen: Rassismus, Antisemitismus, Klassenunterdriickung (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1993); Moltmann, Elisabeth, Freiheit, Gleichheit, Schwesterlichkeit. Zur Emanzipation der Frau in Kirche und Gesellschaft (Munich: Kaiser, 1977); Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldua, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981); Morgan, Robin, Sisterhood Is Powerful (New York: Random House, 1970); Schmid, Pia, and Ulla Wischermann, eds., Sisterhood. Special issue of Feministische Studien 12.1 (1994).
MARITA ROM ANN S o a p O p e r a . Originally, the term "soap opera" referred to low-budget, daytime dramas on U.S. radio and, later, television. These programs were aimed at women, were owned and produced by soap companies such as Proctor and Gamble, and attracted a predominantly female audience. The traditional daytime soap is a reflective drama, featuring families and their complex emotional entanglements. A broader definition of the term includes prime-time shows such as "Dallas," "Dynasty," or "thirtysomething" because of certain thematic and formal parallels to daytime soaps. Such links are the emphasis on the domestic and emotional life of the characters, the serial element, and the open form. Prime-time shows, however, are geared toward a broader audience and have a significantly different scheduling format. They are shown once a week and can also be watched as reruns, while daytime soaps appear only once, every weekday. While shows like "Dallas" and "Dynasty" were shown with great success on German public television, daytime soaps are a relatively new phenomenon,
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introduced by commercial channels. These channels are now broadcasting dubbed U.S. and South American daytime soaps in the afternoon and early evening. In addition, German shows like "LindenstraBe" or "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten'' incorporate many of the thematic and formal aspects of soap operas. Like their models, these shows tend to emotionally engage their audience in such a way that the story lines become subject to public interest. Critical interest in soap operas arose in the 1980s, in the midst of the growing interest in popular television programs. Feminist critics began to recognize and argue the importance of soap operas to women, turning this much-derided genre into a legitimate object of theoretical study. While cautioning that soap operas often promote a highly conventional image of women and their role in the family, community, and the public sphere, these studies also point to the innovative narrative structure of the genre and its potential to represent less traditional images of women and a pluralistic community comprising different races, ethnicities, classes, and sexual orientations. While standard cinematic texts adhere to the aesthetics of closure, soap operas are nonlinear and open-ended. This resistance to closure and the multiplot format allow for a multiperspective reality, defying the constraints of linear history and exclusive norms that promote control and domination. Rather, the aesthetics of intimacy and mutuality define the narrative as well as the visual text of soaps. The fact that soap operas do not privilege any character's perspective results in a break with the gender hierarchy of conventional fictional screen texts, which favor the male perspective. In soaps, the audience not only is invited to identify with the emotional dilemmas of the female characters but is provided with the necessary information to understand their behavior. The ensuing emotional engagement of the mostly female audience with the soap opera characters provokes conversations about soaps at home and in the workplace, whereby women engage in a critical/analytical activity and become part of a larger community of viewers. See also: Film Theory, Feminist; Trivial Literature. References: Allen, Robert C , Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Modleski, Tania, Loving with a Vengeance. Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1982); Nochimson, Martha, No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Williams, Carol Traynor, "It's Time for My Story": Soap Opera Sources, Structure, and Response (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992).
HELGA SCHRECKENBERGER S o c i a l i s m . In the 1880s, political identity for women meant deciding between two feminist factions within the German Social Democratic Party. Bourgeois feminists sought to integrate women into the capitalist society, demanding equal education and employment, political power (e.g., the right to vote), and the elimination of double standards. Socialist feminists, headed by Clara Zetkin, believed that women's equality could be reached only through the common
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struggle of working-class women and men against capitalism; that is, they posed class (not sex) as the ultimate determining factor of women's existence. The Austrian movement, headed by Zetkin's successor, Adelheid Popp, added an emphasis on culture (women's education, literary societies), personal relationships, and socialization. The key issue for socialist feminists and the socialist movement was the reconciliation of women's employment—the tool for emancipation—with motherhood. After World War II, this became the stepping-stone and stumbling stone for women's social, political, and economic emancipation in the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR). The self-proclaimed farmer's and worker's state included an equal rights amendment in its constitution but fell back on the traditional socialist view of women's being exclusively linked to a paternalistic society, thus perpetuating previously existing gender hierarchies. This is exemplified in three stages of the new socialist literature by and about women. (1) Exemplary literature describes women's participation in the construction of the new state and the change in their political consciousness (e.g., in Anna Seghers' literary works) and women's entering traditionally male public spheres (by becoming town mayors, advancing into technical jobs, or entering politics on the regional level). Conflicts resulting from women's participation in traditionally male fields are discussed, for instance, in Marianne Bruns' novel Gliick fallt nicht vom Himmel (1954) and Elfriede Briining's novel Regine Haberkorn (1955). (2) Brigitte Reimann's novel Ankunft im Alltag (1961) and Christa Wolf's novel Der geteilte Himmel (1963) describe women's struggle to combine the professional and private sphere. (3) As Christa Wolf's early novel Nachdenken iiber Christa T. (1968) exemplifies, some literature ultimately depicts women's conflicts with the state's ideology, questioning and examining social and political behavior. Although participation in economic production was a fundamental step toward equality, GDR socialism neither considered specific women's interests nor attempted to reform the patriarchal structures in the public and private realms. See also: Ankunftsliteratur; GDR Literature; Marxist Theories; Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature; Zetkin, Clara. References: Boxer, Marilyn J., and Jean H. Quataert, eds., Socialist Women. European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (New York: Elsevier, 1978); Hauser, Kornelia, Patriarchat als Sozialismus. Soziologische Studien zu Literatur aus der DDR (Hamburg: Argument, 1994); Helwig, Gisela, and Hildegard Maria Nickel, eds., Frauen in Deutschland 1945-1992 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale fiir politische Bildung, 1993); Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Patricia Herminghouse, eds., Literatur und Literaturtheorie in der DDR (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1976). VERA BOITER S o c i a l i s t R e a l i s m . With the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, the principles of the artistic doctrine of socialist realism were, by and large, adopted as they had been established by Maxim Gorki and Andrey
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Zhdanov in the Soviet Union at the first Writers' Congress in 1934. Socialist Realism demanded of the artist a truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Art was to educate the reader to a socialist perspective. In the heated Expressionism Debate (1936-1939) among the exiled left-wing German writers, carried out in the Moscow exile newspaper Das Wort and continued in the correspondence between the Hungarian Georg Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht, and Anna Seghers, issues were raised about the relation between Marxism and literary modernism and about role models for the new socialist writers. Lukacs' rejection of subjectivity and experimentation with form stood in opposition to Seghers' emphasis on personal experience and Brecht's plea for a variety of realistic styles and the language of the people (Volkstumlichkeit). The impact of Stalinism on the GDR in the 1950s resulted in the party's systematic campaigns against modernism in art and literature and an endorsement of Lukacs' aesthetic concepts. Grounded theoretically in Georg Friedrich Hegel and aesthetically in German Classicism and 19th-century bourgeois Realism, Lukacs advocated that the artistic work should reflect the totality of social conditions and develop a positive hero who invites the readers' emulation; be partisan (parteilich) and describe the world not as objective reality but as a reality in its revolutionary development; have a simple literary form and focus on representation of the so-called typical. Seghers in particular disagreed with his exclusion of socially marginalized figures like Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Biichner, Karoline von Gunderrode, Friedrich Holderlin, and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Although Lukacs' reputation was tarnished by his participation in the brief Hungarian reform government in 1956, his influence on cultural politics remained strong through the 1960s. The so-called Ankunftsliteratur, coined after Brigitte Reimann's novel Ankunft im Alltag (1961), strictly employs the mode of socialist realism to depict the successful arrival of real socialism. Irmtraud Morgner's early work Ein Haus am Rand der Stadt (1962) still fully endorses developments in her socialist society and the prescribed aesthetic of socialist realism and, as a result, lacks the aesthetic and intellectual vigor of her later texts. Seghers, whose writings from the 1930s and from her period in Mexican exile in the 1940s revealed her desire to employ narrative innovations such as montage, simultaneity, and interior monologue, adopted an unabashedly didactic tone and the basic premises of socialist realism in Die Entscheidung (1959) and Das Vertrauen (1968). Her imaginary travel encounters in Sonderbare Begegnungen (1973) reflect the reappropriation of Romanticism and official departure from Lukacs' prescriptive dogmas in the GDR. In the case of Christa Wolf, her affirmative, linear debut novel Moskauer Novelle (1961) was still written with harmonious closure and predictability of plot. In Der geteilte Himmel (1963), her omniscient narrative style is less rigid and blends different narrative voices to set evaluative processes in motion, but aspects of socialist realism prevail: the West is only negatively portrayed, and the recuperation of the heroine indicates an ideological resolution
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to her conflict-ridden relationship with a disillusioned son of fascist parents. Generally, early works by GDR women writers demonstrate that their strong commitment to the establishment of an antifascist state and a socialist society resulted in adherence to the doctrine of socialist realism. See also: Ankunftsliteratur; Classicism; Expressionism; GDR Literature; Gunderrode, Karoline von; Marxist Theories; Modernism; Montage; Morgner, Irmtraud; Realism; Romanticism; Socialism; Stalinism; Wolf, Christa. References: Emmerich, Wolfgang, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR 1945-1988 (Frankfurt/M.: Luchterhand, 1989); Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Patricia Herminghouse, eds., Literatur und Literaturtheorie in der DDR (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1976); Reid, J. H. Writing without Taboos. The New East German Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990); Zehl Romero, Christiane, "Eine weibliche Tradition schaffen: Anna Seghers und Christa Wolf." Zwischen gestern und morgen. Schriftstellerinnen der DDR aus amerikanischer Sicht. Ed. Ute Brandes (Berlin: Lang, 1992) 143-67. BARBARA MABEE Song—see: Poetry, Political S o n n e t . A sonnet is a poetic form first used in Italy. It consists of 14 lines divided into two quatrains: an introductory strophe (Aufgesang), followed by an antistrophe (Abgesang; the rhyme scheme for both is usually abba) and two tercetts (rhyme scheme usually cdc dcd). Although the sonnet has never been a particularly popular poetic form in German literature—in contrast to English, Italian, Spanish, and French poetry, for example—there are, nonetheless, some notable examples of sonnets written by women. The sonnet form first achieved prominence in German literature in the Baroque period, in the poetry of Martin Opitz, Paul Fleming, and Andreas Gryphius. The Baroque poet Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg was the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the writing of sonnets in German. Her best-known sonnet, "Gegen Amor" (1658), inverts the convention of the Petrarchan sonnet, in which the male poetic voice expresses longing for a female love object. In "Gegen Amor" the female poetic voice declares her immunity from the arrows of the God of love and proclaims her independence from the bonds of love. In a tone both playful and ironic, the voice asserts the value of independence from love and declares that "die siisse Ruhe soil mir das Liebste sein." The voice also asserts an identity as a poet, not simply as a love object, in the second quatrain: "Der Lorbeer soil mich zieren, / nicht deine DornenRos' und Myrten-Strauchelein." In this way, "Gegen Amor" stands alongside the many sonnets of the Baroque period in its conscious foregrounding of a poetic voice and the act of poetic creation. Other poems by Greiffenberg, such as "Uber mein unaufhorliches Ungliick" (1662) and "Uber das unaussprechliche Heilige Geistes-Eingeben," explore religious content and meaning. In the Romantic period, Karoline von Gunderrode wrote sonnets, among them "Der KuB im Traume." In this sonnet, the themes of love and death are woven
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together, and the poetic voice seeks solace in the night, which is, at the same time, death. Using the form of the Petrarchan sonnet, Gunderrode creates a distinctly Romantic poem. Examples of the sonnet form in the 20th century include Marie-Luise Kaschnitz's "Die Ewigkeit" and "Eines Tages." "Die Ewigkeit" evokes the theme of "carpe diem" as it explores the relationships among love, death, and the present. Kaschnitz captures the spirit of the sonnet form, as it has been developed since Petrarch, in a poem that is both entirely modern and ageless. See also: Baroque Literature; Greiffenberg, Regina Catharina von; Gunderrode, Karoline von; Romanticism. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978); Cocalis, Susan L., The Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1986).
LESLIE MORRIS S o u b r e t t e . The soubrette (sometimes Zofe in German) originated as a stock maidservant figure in the Italian commedia dell'arte (16th to 18th centuries); the term can refer to the role itself or to the actress or singer (light soprano) who specializes in such roles. The maid serves as a foil to her mistress, moving the plot forward through intrigue; in a social order ruled by class distinctions, the soubrette says and does things forbidden to her higher-born mistress. She may be impudent, sexually forthright, and comically manipulative; her asides to the audience provide a voice for social criticism. The type embodies contradictions between class and gender that are central to later feminist thought. Due to her youth and relative freedom from gender constraints, the operatic soubrette may be compared to the pants role (Hosenrolle). Soubrette roles were most popular in German drama during the 18th century (Enlightenment). Although the influence of stage reformer Johann Christoph Gottsched led to a ban on commedia performances in Germany, his fondness for French comedy and his activities as a translator brought French soubrettes to the German stage (e.g., Dorine in Moliere's Tartuffe, 1664). Luise Adelgunde Gottsched's comedy Die Pietisterey im Fischbein-Rocke (1736) contains a delightfully two-faced soubrette who parrots her mistress' religious sentiments while conspiring against her. In Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm (1763), the maid Franziska and her romance with Werner provide comic relief from the conscience-plagued love of the main characters. Three comic operas (opere bujfe) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte contain classic examples of the soubrette. Despina in Cosi fan tutte (1790) is one of the most cunning, scheming, and sexual soubrettes in opera. Zerlina in Don Giovanni (1787) may appear self-abasing when she invites her fiance to beat her, but her gambit has the desired effect as he instead forgives her indiscretion. Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (1786, based on a play by Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais) is a musically and dramatically well rounded
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character who strains the boundaries of the soubrette type. She conspires with the countess against the count's exercise of his ius primae nocte; women and servants humble the nobleman in this revolutionary work. In the later 19th century, the soubrette migrated to operetta; Adele in Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus (1874) is a typically Viennese example. In her aria "Mein Herr Marquis," Adele publicly chastises her master for "confusing" her with a chambermaid; her performance underlines the construction of social class through convention and role-playing, a typically subversive function of the soubrette. Austrian feminist Rosa Mayreder wrote the libretto to Hugo Wolf's Der Corregidor (1895), based on Juan Ruiz de Alarcon's novel. Frasquita, sung by a mezzo, might be considered a soubrette come of age: she is happily married, not a servant, and the opera's central female character. But the corregidor's arrogance and presumption recall the questions raised in The Marriage of Figaro concerning women's sexual choice and noblemen's sexual privilege. With the virtual disappearance of the nobility and personal servants after World War I, soubrette roles are found mostly in period operas; Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss/ Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ariadne auf Naxos (1916) is a comic exaggeration of the commedia dell'arte type. See also: Colombine; Comedy; Enlightenment; Hosenrolle; Maidservant; Musical Theater/Opera; Operetta; Picara; Singspiel. References: Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1992); Youens, Susan, Hugo Wolf: The Vocal Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). KRISTIE A. FOELL S o u n d Poetry—see: Dadaism; Experimental Literature S p e e c h Act Theory—see: Linguistics, Feminist S t a l i n i s m . The political, economic, and social principles and policies associated with Joseph Stalin, Soviet state leader from the late 1920s until his death in 1953, are known as Stalinism. Extreme centralization of power, adulation of the leader, and the suppression of all dissent by means of terror, purges, and show trials characterize Stalin's efforts to bring the party, state, and all aspects of society under his control. "Stalinist" is also occasionally used to describe any dictatorial left-wing regime that relies on these repressive methods to maintain power. Any study of the subtle and complex relationship between Stalinism and literature must also raise questions about the collaboration of East German writers with the state and the significance of literary opposition in the former German Democratic Republic. A high percentage of the thousands of Germans and Austrians—chiefly communists—who fled to the Soviet Union during the 1930s after Hitler came to power became victims of Stalin's purges. In autobiographical works published
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during the 1950s and 1960s, survivors and eyewitnesses such as Brigitte Gerland, Susanne Leonhard, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Waltraud Nicolas, Hildegard Pliever, Genia Quittner, and Ruth von Mayenburg describe their often gender-specific experiences as political refugees. For instance, many women who were married to arrested communist functionaries, artists, and intellectuals were shunned or banished to outlying regions. Others who were active in the Communist Party were arrested on spurious political charges and imprisoned for years in work camps under inhumane conditions. The works of female apostates or so-called renegade writers combine political views with numerous details of daily life in the Soviet Union as they describe solidarity and friendship as well as acts of betrayal among women. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the taboo concerning critical discussions of German writers in Soviet exile was not broken until the last years of the country's existence. Women writers who addressed these issues include Elfriede Briining in Ldstige Zeugen? Tonbandgesprache mit Opfern der Stalinzeit (1990), Trude Richter in her long-suppressed memoirs Totgesagt (1990), and Hedda Zinner in her autobiographical notes Selbstbefragung (1989). Unlike similar works published in the West, these texts are devoid of any fundamental criticism of the system responsible for the injustices described. The authors focus instead on personal aspects of the emigre experience. Fictional works by women authors have both supported and criticized the GDR's Stalinist underpinnings. Ruth Werner, who worked as a spy for the Red Army for 20 years until she became a popular writer in the 1950s, created heroic female characters whose unquestioning faith in the wisdom of the party leads them to submit to every order, even if they must sacrifice friends and family. Some of Anna Seghers' works, in contrast, depict Stalinist practices in the early GDR in a more critical light. In Das Vertrauen (1968), Stalinist excesses are depicted as a phase to be overcome in a socialist society that leaves the individual the freedom to combine political engagement with fulfillment in the private realm. The posthumously published fragment "Der gerechte Richter" (1990) presents a far less optimistic picture regarding Stalinist methods of silencing dissenting voices. Christa Wolf has yet to tackle the GDR's Stalinist past with the moral rigor with which she has explored the national socialist past. In Kindheitsmuster (1976), the mentioning of Nikita Khrushchev and a dream about Stalin's death are quickly passed over, implying that the time has not yet come to talk about such problems. Monika Maron's novel Stille Zeile Sechs (1991) chronicles the confrontation between Rosa, a middle-aged historian, and Beerenbaum, an aging party functionary who returned from Soviet exile in 1945 to help build the East German state. Rosa blames Beerenbaum and the rest of her father's generation for avoiding confronting the atrocities committed under Stalin—symbolized through the Hotel Lux—and for hopelessly deforming Marxist ideals in the GDR. Now that the ideological obstacles that prevented open discussions of Stalinism in the former GDR have been largely eliminated, texts that probe more deeply into these issues may well emerge.
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See also: Autobiography; GDR Literature; Marxist Theories; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Wolf, Christa. References: Meyer-Gosau, Frauke, ed., MachtApparatLiteratur: Literatur und Stalinismus (Munich: text + kritik, 1990); Pike, David, German Writers in Soviet Exile 1933-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Rohrwasser, Michael, Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten. Die Literatur der Exkommunisten (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991).
REBECCA HENSCHEL
Stefan, Verena: Hautungen. nungen. Gedichte. Trdume.
Aultobiographische AufzeichAnalysen ( 1 9 7 5 ) . Stefan's book
meshes a variety of narrative styles to present the reader with a provocative portrayal of women's problems in the 1970s. The book's unifying theme is the protagonist's search for self-identity through sexual exploration. Initially, this search occurs only through encounters with men; a confrontation with (homo)sexuality results from the protagonist's friendship with a lesbian. Descriptions of the first attempts at heterosexual intercourse are punctuated with discussions of birth control, harassment, and rape. She explores various sex partners, seeking pleasure and the ability to have an orgasm. This culminates in a desire for equality. Reflecting on the history of humanity, the narrator boldly postulates that the first colonization occurred between the sexes: when men took possession of women. These realizations lead the protagonist to reflect on society's role in producing stereotypes. The protagonist's first homosexual experience leads to an initial desire for bisexuality, demonstrating that the protagonist has not yet extricated herself from patriarchal norms. Her identity crisis stems from the fear of hurting the man in her life. As she finally realizes her desire to form relationships with women, she strives to develop her sexual relationships in a realm outside heterosexuality, not seeking to imitate her ties with men but searching for something unique. With this text Stefan explores the phenomenon of being a woman. She focuses on sensuality, striving to define a female sexuality. This exploration occurs both internally, in the protagonist's attempt to discover her own desires, and externally through conversations and encounters with other women. The protagonist concludes that there is a vast sexual difference between men and women, finally equating heterosexual sex and men with violence. Stefan's technique incorporates unusual spelling, grammatical structures, and metaphors, juxtaposing the standard usage with her own radical style. Stefan's entire work forces a confrontation between reader and text. Her language usage purposefully reveals misogynist tendencies in the patriarchal idiom. Her goal is to destroy trusted (speech) associations and, instead, create a new feminine language. The text enjoys a unique publication history. Now in its 22d edition, the first edition produced a mere 3,000 copies, which sold out within one month. This success grew out of word-of-mouth propaganda and opened up the possibilities
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for small feminist presses to compete in larger markets. While Stefan's book has quickly achieved the status of Kultbuch in the women's movement in Germany, some feminists have, since then, maintained that Stefan reproduces stereotypes of femininity in her attempt to create a new language. See also: Lesbian Literature; Linguistics, Feminist; Women's Movement. References: Kuhn, Renate, ' 'Wider eine Regelpoetik des 'Weiblichen': Pladoyer fiir Shakespeares Schwester." Wirkendes Wort 2 (1982): 88-103; Swiatlowski, Zbigniew, "Frauenliteratur: Entwurf einer neuen Sensibilitat." Text und Kontext 10 (1982): 107— 30. CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING
Storm and Stress/Sturm und Drang (c. 1 7 6 0 - 1 7 8 5 ) . The movement's name was taken from a drama by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, originally Der Wirrwarr (1776) and later renamed Sturm und Drang by Christoph Kaufmann. As a movement, it reacted primarily against the staunch conventions, social structures, rigid class system, and aristocracy of the Enlightenment (c.1740-1781), and did little to question or improve the social and legal status of women within German society. Women have traditionally been excluded from this movement because of its emphasis on the "natural order" within society (as discussed in Jean Jacques Rousseau's philosophy) and its emphasis on the original artistic "genius"—a concept that seemed restricted to male authorship and could not be acquired—as well as its idealization of the pious and passive woman in her domestic roles of wife and mother (e.g., Lotte in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 111 A, and Gretchen in his Faust, 1808). Nevertheless, there is some evidence of feminist thought as woman's rights were advocated in the name of revolutionary liberty, as in Theodor Hippel's Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792). The works by women active in the Storm and Stress movement have been obscured by their roles as wives, lovers, sisters, and friends of famous men, as is the case with Caroline Flachsland Herder, who prepared her husband's manuscripts for the press, Charlotte Buff, who inspired Goethe's image of the "beautiful soul," and intellectuals such as Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, Johanna Fahlmer, Agnes Klinger, Albertine von Griin, and Friederike Brion. Women's contribution to literature during the Storm and Stress years has been invalidated by the focus on high literature written by their male counterparts. By 1779 women produced their own weekly journals to instruct and educate women, such as Sophie von La Roche's Pomona fur Teutschlands Tochter (1783-1784) and Marianne Ehrmann's Frauenzimmer-Zeitung (1787-1788), Amalies Erholungsstunden (1790), and Die Einsiedlerin aus den Alpen (1793— 1795). La Roche's novel Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771) was the first epistolary novel in Germany, as well as one of Germany's first novels by women, together with Maria Anna Sagar's Die verwechselten Tochter (1771). La Roche's novel, written with emotion and spontaneity, inspired Goe-
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the's emotionally charged Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, today considered one of the most important works of the movement. Anna-Luisa Karsch, a lowerclass woman who supported herself and her family by her writing, published her first volume of poetry in 1764. Her poems, for example, "Lob der Schwarzen Kirschen" (1792), resonate with the idealization of nature so prevalent in Storm and Stress literature. Other women writers participated in the dramatic tradition that formed the dominant literary tradition of Storm and Stress literature by men. Most dramas by men celebrated masculine passion, individuality, independence, and even rebelliousness and relegated women to the stereotypical roles of gentle and sensitive girl or, alternatively, the plotting and passionate corrupt woman: examples are Friedrich Schiller's Die Rduber (1781), Goethe's Egmont (1788), Gotz von Berlichingen (1773), and Faust (1808), and Heinrich Leopold Wagner's Die Kindermorderin (1776). Contemporary plays by women also tend to thematize the prevalent masculine desire for rebellion, passion, and independence but show themselves more critical of Storm and Stress discourse by portraying the catastrophic consequences this masculine passion has for women (examples are Christiane Karoline Schlegel's Duval und Charmille, HIS, and Marianne Ehrmann's plays Graf Bilding, 1788, and Leichtsinn und gutes Herz oder die Folgen der Erziehung, 1786). See also: Beautiful Soul; Comedie Larmoyante; Ehrmann, Marianne; Enlightenment; Epistolary Culture; Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb: Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung; La Roche, Sophie von; Moral Weeklies; Protagonist/Antagonist; Sentimentality; Women's Journals. References: Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1978); Gniig, Hiltrud, and Renate Mohrmann, eds., Frauen Literatur Geschichte. Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985); Joeres, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher, and Mary Jo Maynes, eds., German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. A Social and Literary History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Madland, Helga Stipa, "Gender and the German Literary Canon: Marianne Ehrmann's Infanticide Fiction." Monatshefte 84/4 (1992): 405-16; Pascal, Roy, "The Sturm und Drang and the Social Classes." The German Sturm und Drang and the Social Classes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953) 56-86; Stockmeyer, Clara, "Die Frauen." Soziale Probleme im Drama des Sturmes und Dranges (Frankfurt/M.: Diesterweg, 1922) 47-66.
KIRSTEN A. KRICK Struck, Karin ( 1 9 4 7 - p r e s e n t ) . Throughout her career—from her first novel in 1973, Klassenliebe, to her recent piece of work in 1992, an essay against abortion, 'Teh sehe mein Kind im Traum. Pladoyer gegen die Abtreibung"—Karin Struck has enjoyed controversial fame in Germany. Her books, most of them lengthy novels, usually thematize topics relevant to the major debates pertaining to the women's movement. However, their distinct personal, almost intimate voice—typical of women's literature in the 1970s and early 1980s—with the added feature of being markedly polemic, alienates many fern-
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inist readers. Struck frequently attacks many of the movement's early positions, such as the strong focus on, and preference given, the issue of equality, as well as the movement's early indifference to sexuality and, in her view, the erroneous association of self-determination with the legal right to abortion. In the 1970s, she accused certain parts of the feminist movement of contributing to the deprecation of motherhood, whose potential, on one hand, and misrepresentation, on the other, it did not understand. The role of the mother became, in effect, the topic of her second novel, Die Mutter (1975), in which she confronts the negative symbolism patriarchal societies have conferred on both the concept and reality of motherhood. The novel could be considered the most representative of Struck's books, concerning her poetics and Weltanschauung, for in it, her interest in a specific female, erotic writing manifests itself and becomes a site where the female subject experiences the pains of her own rebirth. At the same time, she further develops the motif of reproduction, which she outlined in her first and still best-known novel, Klassenliebe (1973), although Die Mutter is more concerned with uncovering the symbolic meanings/structures/symbolism that, in her view, determine discrimination against mothers in Western civilization than with the political aspects of women's exploitation. In contrast, Klassenliebe focuses on the conflict between two categories of intellectual work, on one hand, and production-reproduction, on the other. The text describes the feeling of inadequacy that a woman writer of working class origins has vis-a-vis her leftist-intellectual lover, whose opinions she can only partially share, since as a woman her subject position is erased by the categories of Marxist thought. Struck is thus confronting the socialist legacy of the women's movement, which is a central and controversial issue, and its political position within the German Left. Furthermore, she introduces her concern with issues of writing and being implicated in the canonical culture, which then recur throughout her work. She confronts these issues in her writing by attempting to create a sensitive and sensuous mode of writing grounded in woman's denied experience of life and history. Simultaneously, she juxtaposes elements of the dominant culture with her feelings of estrangement toward this very culture, which represents her intellectual heritage but at the same time excludes women. As a result, her texts are dominated by contradictions, in which happiness alternates with desperation, but traditional German Zerrissenheit is apparently overcome by a more positive feeling of self-appraisal. Struck employs quotations as a technique to demonstrate this contradiction inherent in woman's cultural experience. Many critics find her use of quotations excessive, a sign of an uncontrollable and arbitrary confusion of the private, intimate sphere with the public domain. Especially in Die Mutter, but in her successive books as well (e.g., Lieben, 1911; Trennung, 1978; Kindheits Ende, 1982; Zwei Frauen, 1982; Finale, 1984; Blaubarts Schatten, 1991), Struck acknowledges the pertinence of sexual difference for feminist theory but exhibits a tendency to turn sexual difference into an all too general and rigid symbolic category of Woman, thus disregarding
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differences among women as well as the inherent uniqueness of every woman. Consequently, while Struck's books expose the contradictions and divisions within the female subject, they nevertheless tie the reader to a picture of Woman that does not allow her to question and analyze either her own personal/political position or that of the picture portrayed. Struck's women are, for the most part, one woman, a symbol of Woman, whether they are involved in heterosexual or lesbian relationships or deal with the outward violence of the father's language or with the aggression within one's self. In light of her most recent work and public appearances on television and elsewhere, which have been dedicated to expounding a strong position against abortion as a form of negation of creativity and life, it has become clear that Struck's originally ambiguous essentialist viewpoint has evolved into a rigid, often antidemocratic stance that echoes the traditional misogynist idea that woman equals nature. This concept of nature being that of a universal category, preexisting culture—instead of a gendered construction—derived from a cultural and historical framework of the Western world. See also: Abortion; Essentialism/Constructionism; Father-Daughter Relationship; Marxist Theories; Mother Figures; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Nature; Socialism; Women's Movement. References: Adler, Hans, and Hans Joachim Schrimpf, eds., Karin Struck (Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1984); Buse, Gunhild. Macht, Moral, Weiblichkeit (Mainz: Matthias Gruenewald, 1993). CECILIA NOVERO Structuralism. In the 1960s, the structuralist influence was tangible in all fields of the human sciences and was considered the chief methodological alternative to Marxism. Its most prominent voices were the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and the linguist and literary theorist Roman Jakobson. Taking its cue from linguistics and Ferdinand de Saussure's definition of the linguistic sign, structuralism explored synchronic structures or systems of arbitrary signs. A sign consists of a signifier and a signified; for instance, the signifier ' 'c-a-t'' refers to its signified, a four-legged, furry animal. There is no inherent reason for a specific signifier to denote a specific signified. Human beings utilize signs and the larger systems unconsciously. Structuralism had only marginal impact on the emerging feminist discourse and scholarship due, in part, to the fact that initially, most feminist approaches attributed a lesser significance to methodological and theoretical reflection than to the reevaluation of the male-oriented literary canon. One of the few German women scholars who has engaged structuralist theories throughout her career is the literary critic Helga Gallas. She began working within the framework of the structuralism-Marxism debate of the late 1960s. However, Gallas does not employ an explicit feminist perspective. There are also intrinsic reasons structuralism proved not to be a viable theoretical concept for early feminist scholarship: structuralism can neither question the historical
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conditions that underlie systems nor account for the ideological bias with which they are imbued. Therefore, structuralism is an approach that ignores the historical determinants of human existence. From a feminist perspective, structuralism fails to see that signs—and the systems and structures they fashion—are the result of hierarchically organized power, especially the phallocentric order that feminists attempt to uncover. Still, feminist scholars should be aware of structuralism's main tenets, since it is the predecessor of poststructuralism, which became the theoretical point of departure for many German feminist theorists in the 1970s, particularly after the works of French feminist theoreticians such as Julia Kristeva were translated into German. Poststructuralists exposed structuralism's ahistorical prejudice as constitutive of much of Western thought and showed—by divorcing signifier from signified—that the processes involved in the production of meaning are more complex than structuralism had postulated. Some critics took this criticism, combined with insights gained from psychoanalysis, for their own, yet different, enterprise, by arguing that structures are not merely free-floating entities beyond human control but rather another disguise for Western patriarchy's suppression of women's voices. Today, a number of German feminist scholars are working, some more overtly than others, within the poststructuralist context, among them Sigrid Weigel, Inge Stephan, and Gisela Ecker. See also: Canon, Literary; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Linguistics, Feminist; Marxist Theories; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis. References: Bierwisch, Manfred, "Strukturalismus. Geschichte, Probleme und Methoden." Kursbuch 5 (1966): 77-152; Ecker, Gisela, "Poststrukturalismus und feministische Wissenschaft-eine heimliche oder unheimliche Allianz?" Frauen, Weiblichkeit, Schrift. Ed. Renate Berger et al. (Berlin: Argument, 1985) 8-20; Gallas, Helga, Strukturalismus als interpretatives Verfahren (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1972); Jakobson, Roman, Language in Literature (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1987); Levi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963); Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics (London: Fontana, 1974). MICHAEL J. BOSGES
S t u d e n t M o v e m e n t ( 1 9 6 8 ) . One enduring legacy of the 1968 student movement is the mushrooming of the second feminist movement and a concomitant growth of women's literature. By 1968, women within the SDS (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund) recognized that the male students had relegated them to traditional positions of political marginality, as mere providers of emotional and sexual support. In the spring of 1968, the first Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frau (also known as Weiberrdte) met in Berlin; in September 1968, the organization broke with the male-dominated SDS, initiating the beginning of the women's movement in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This so-called Aufstand der Frauen has been documented in feminist films and in writings on the history of the student and the feminist movements. The goals
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of the Weiberrdte were determined by a quest for identity within a socialist pattern of inquiry. On one hand, they analyzed the historical conditions surrounding the establishment of women's work (Frauenarbeit) and the so-called Leichtlohngruppen (minimum-wage categories for women) in the FRG; on the other hand, they examined the disappearance of the private domain and the emergence—and subsequent dominance—of a public realm. Their analysis of the social and historical situation of women, combined with their experiences as emotional surrogates within the SDS, led them to conclude that there were no private spheres for women within the world of male-dominated leftist politics. Consequently, they had to leave the societal space of men in order to establish spaces of autonomy. This emphasis on the existence of gendered space influenced their theoretical and practical concepts of society and culture as a whole, and produced a body of discourses proclaiming that "the private is the political." This led to concrete manifestations in society as a whole, for example, feminist bookstores, health centers, and rape crisis centers. Whereas the Marxist and socialist ideologies of the 1960s reshaped the analysis of the individual and society, of capital and working conditions, the feminist interpretations originating from these discussions questioned notions of a woman's place in society. Women's social and political oppression referred to in Marxist and socialist terminology as a Nebenwiderspruch (secondary contradiction) became the focal point of analysis. While traditional socialist analysis of society focuses on the working and living conditions of the proletariat, feminist analysis shifted its focus from the proletariat to women, by carefully examining points of convergence among working conditions, exploitation, and physically defined conditions of otherness, for example, the female body's ability to give birth. The forces of the student revolution and the autonomous women's movement combined to create discourses on the female body and the patriarchal inscriptions it bears. After 1968, nonsocialist women's groups took up the struggle for reproductive rights in their Kampagnen gegen den Abtreibungsparagraphen 218. Women authors created feminist versions of Reportageliteratur and Protokolliteratur; for example, Erika Runge's Bottroper Protokolle (1968) centers around questions of identity. Alice Schwarzer (later the editor of the feminist monthly journal Emma) publicized female perspectives on sexuality in her reportage Der Kleine Unterschied und die Folgen (1975). In Der Schlachter empfiehlt noch immer Herz (1976), Margot Schroder focuses on violence within heterosexual relationships, presenting a protagonist who engages in progressive feminist political activism and fights for an autonomous house for battered women. Verena Stefan paints a compelling picture of the feminist movement's links to the student revolution in her novel Hautungen (1975). An instant best-seller upon its publication in 1975, the book describes contemporary feminist debates and discourses. In addition, it offers indictments of a Left that projects the problems of the FRG onto the Third World and of a sexual revolution that
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proclaims that sexism goes deeper than racism and class struggle, while maintaining traditional double standards of behavior for men and women. Various authors of the 1970s acknowledged their debt to the student movement by creating a genre of political literature, typically promoting a socialist worldview and featuring restless young protagonists. In Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974), East German author Irmtraud Morgner portrays a Utopian socialism energizing the student movement in France; nevertheless, her female protagonist is raped and therefore not part of the envisioned society. Karin Struck's Klassenliebe (1973), Verena Stefan's Hautungen, and Margot Schroder's Ich stehe meine Frau (1975) all focus, in similar ways, on moments of convergence between contemporary left-wing politics and female sexuality. The international nature of feminism and its ties to the 1968 Revolution are thematized within the realm of political theory, specifically within the correspondence between Ernst and Karola Bloch and between Rudi Dutschke and Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz. The most enduring legacy of the union between student revolutionaries and feminists was an autonomous women's culture, encompassing projects directed by and for women only (such as women's health and rape crisis centers), as well as an array of feminist journals, bookstores, newspapers, publishing houses, travel agencies, and resorts, which flourished in most university cities and were later found in almost all the larger cities of the FRG. See also: Body, Female; Documentary Literature; Marxist Theories; Morgner, Irmtraud; Protokolle; Revolution, Sexual; Socialism; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Struck, Karin; Utopia/Anti- Utopia; Women's Journals; Women's Movement. References: Altbach, Edith Hoshino, et al., eds., German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984); Frauen und Film (1974); Frauenjahrbuch '75. Ed. Frankfurter Frauen (Frankfurt/M.: Roter Stern, 1975); Dutschke, Rudi, Die Revoke. Wurzeln und Spuren eines Aufbruchs. Ed. Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz, Jiirgen Miermeister, and Jiirgen Treulieb (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1983); Wolff, Frank, and Eberhard Windaus, eds., Studentenbewegung 1967-69 (Frankfurt/M.: Roter Stern, 1977) 219-32.
MAGDA MUELLER Subjective Authenticity. In the work of the East German writer Christa Wolf, prose and essay are closely intertwined and create spaces for reflection, self-discovery, and the discovery of truth for the writer and the reader. The title essay of Wolf's "Lesen und Schreiben" (1972), written after Nachdenken Uber Christa T. (1968) as a way to articulate the experiences made in writing the book, makes clear that for Wolf, experience and reflection processes form the crux of her writing. In her 1973 interview with Hans Kaufmann, which appeared a year later in Weimarer Beitrdge and was considered rather polemical in its break with conventional socialist realism, she develops her concept of inner or subjective authenticity. The term implies an unconditional demand for truth in dealing with one's own experiences and, therefore, calls for a new relationship to reality. Instead of attempting an objective reproduction of facts, in which
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subjective elements are hidden or suppressed, Wolf suggests to bring the subjective element out into the open. This subjective element involves the experience of the individual in the writing process as well as personal evaluations and thoughts. Closely tied to Wolf's concept of subjective authenticity is her term "fourth dimension," the dimension of the author, a concept she developed before she used subjective authenticity for her form of writing. In her essay ' 'Lesen und Schreiben," Wolf refers to Georg Buchner's novella Lenz (1842) as the beginning of modern prose because of his inclusion of unsolvable personal conflicts in the narrative. She asserts that fiction in the traditional style of the 19th-century Realist novel (e.g., Honore de Balzac) is no longer appropriate for the modern world because science has steered us away from surface reality. In calling for a new realism that surpasses mere reproduction of the surfaces of things, she dismisses character, plot, linear time, development, and 19th-century conventions as cliches. She asks the prose writer to add a personal fourth dimension, the "coordinate of depth," to the three dimensions of surface reality. By blurring the distinction between author and narrator, Wolf dethrones the omniscient narrator, a reader's guide in Georg Lukacs' concept of socialist realism. For Wolf, writing should reveal an individual's subjective vision of reality as a "playing with open possibilities." Many critics leveled severe criticism against Wolf's new technique of writing, claiming that it ignored the mimetic dimension and commitment at the core of the artistic principle of socialist realism. They claimed that the personal experiences and moments of crisis depicted in her texts were not grounded concretely in history nor set in relationship to the development of the socialist society as a whole. However, the official criticism could not prevent the large following Wolf gained with her emphasis on the writer's experience. Many feminists responded to the dialogical dimensions of Wolf's aesthetic with their own reflective self-confrontation. See also: Dialogics, Feminist; Essay; GDR Literature; Socialist Realism; Wolf, Christa. References: Ankum, Katharina von, Die Rezeption von Christa Wolf in Ost und West: von "Moskauer Novelle" bis "Selbstversuch" (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992); Clausen, Jeannette, "The Difficulty of Saying T as Theme and Narrative Technique in the Works of Christa Wolf." Gestaltet und Gestaltend. Frauen in der deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 319-33; Fries, Marilyn, ed., Responses to Christa Wolf. Critical Essays (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Schuler, Birgitta, Phantastische Authentizitat. Wirklichkeit im Werk Christa Wolfs (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1988); Thomassen, Christa, Der lange Weg zu uns selbst. Christa Wolfs Roman ' 'Nachdenken uber Christa T.'' als Erfahrungs- und Handlungsmuster (Kronberg/ Ts.: Scriptor, 1977). BARBARA MABEE Subjectivity. Traditional theories of selfhood either have failed to address subjectivity as gendered altogether, purporting to speak about the human and
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the universal, when, in fact, they meant the male, or have relegated the female to a realm of negativity, to that which is nonmale, thereby making female subjectivity codependent on the male parameter. The issue of female subjectivity therefore continues to be of central concern in feminist theory. It is closely linked to questions of identity and difference, agency, and, above all, as many argue, language. While feminists in the 1960s and 1970s focused on female experience as the authentic basis of female subjectivity, the notion of experience has meanwhile become highly problematic. Informed by post-Freudian psychoanalysis and poststructuralism, theorists in the 1980s and 1990s argue that any allegedly immediate experience is itself a cultural construct, rather than a precultural given. Consequently, the question of how to define female subjectivity has, by and large, been replaced by an investigation of the cultural, that is, discursive, mechanisms that have helped shape a society's images of the female. The question of the subject remains at the center of the debate between a socalled liberal humanist feminism and poststructuralist feminism. At the heart of the issue lies a political question, the question of agency, most prominently carried out in the current controversy between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler. Benhabib and others pledge for the need of an integrated core self in order not to deprive the individual of its capacity to freely act on its own behalf. To understand the subject as a mere performative and rhetoric figuration, they claim, would lead to a kind of relativism that does not allow for the development of a set of values necessary to guide any form of responsible action. Furthermore, they maintain, this concept of the subject denies "real" women's existence. Contrary to this position, Butler and other feminists, opting for an alliance between deconstruction and feminism, insist on the possibility of subversive agency on the subject's part not despite, but because of, its discursive disposition. If reality does not consist of some substantial truths, but rather of a plurality of interpretations negotiating what counts as truth, then, they conclude, a feminist politics cannot attempt to unearth new truths. Instead, it must aim for a shifting of meanings, its target being the culturally available systems of signification. To argue, then, that there is not one subject of feminism, no subject that could be defined, is not synonymous with declaring the death of the subject. It means, rather, to radically historicize the subject. Instead of taking recourse to some prediscursive, inert substance, subjectivity must be comprehended as the shifting positions from which one speaks or chooses not to speak. Instead of searching for the essential difference between a male and a female subject, differences within each woman and among women must be investigated. See also: Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Feminist Theory, German; New Subjectivity; Positionality; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Semiotics; Subjective Authenticity. References: Alcoff, Linda, "Cultural Feminism Versus Poststructuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory." Signs 13.3 (Spring 1986): 405-36; Benhabib, Seyla,
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Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Friday, Der Streit um Differenz (Frankfurt/ M.: Fischer, 1994); Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Silverman, Kaja, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Vinken, Barbara, ed., Dekonstruktiver Feminismus. Literaturwissenschaft in Amerika (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992). ALMUTFINCK Suffrage. This right to vote, or enfranchisement, was not gained by women in German-speaking countries until the 20th century. The woman suffrage movement (Frauenstimmrechtsbewegung) emerged with the revolutionary ideals of 1848. In the United States, the "Declaration of Sentiments" (1848) and a petition presented by John Stuart Mill to Parliament in Great Britain (1866) called for women's enfranchisement. New Zealand and Colorado became the first to introduce woman's suffrage in 1893. Today, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland have universal suffrage. The voting age is 18, except in Austria, where it is 19. In Germany, Hedwig Dohm was one of the first to call for woman suffrage (1873). August Bebel presented the first petition for female suffrage to the Reichstag (1895). The Deutsche Vereinfiir Frauenstimmrecht, founded in 1902 by Anita Augspurg, concentrated on the political education of women, the right to vote, and the abolition of the Preufiisches Vereinsgesetz (1850), which prohibited women from participating in political assemblies. The Deutsche Vereinigung fur Frauenstimmrecht supported the Dreiklassenwahlrecht (1849), a system of voting rights dependent on taxation levels. Except for isolated protests, the German woman suffrage movement, although inspired by the theatrical and sometimes violent actions of British and American suffragettes, was never as aggressive. On November 12, 1918, the Weimar Republic proclaimed suffrage for all citizens over 20 years of age, to the surprise of many German women who had been neutral toward the woman suffrage movement. In Austria, Karoline von Perin founded the Wiener demokratischer Frauenverein (1848), which called for universal democratic rights, including suffrage. In 1861 women obtained voting rights in some Austrian principalities, which were again withdrawn in 1888. Thereafter, Viennese teachers led the woman suffrage movement. The Bund Osterreichischer Frauenvereine, founded in 1899 by Marianne Hainisch, the Allgemeiner Osterreichischer Frauenverein, and the proletarian women's movement led by Adelheid Popp and Emmy Freundlich also worked for the enfranchisement of women. Universal suffrage became law in Austria in 1918. Women retained voting rights during the Third Reich and after World War II in both German states. The woman suffrage movement in Switzerland began in earnest only in 1958, as described in Iris von Roten's Frauen im Laufgitter (1991), a book that outlined the status of women in modern Swiss society. On February 1, 1959, female suffrage was rejected two-to-one by federal referendum. The 1960s saw protests against this all-male decision, including symbolic Day-of-Mourning demonstra-
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tions held on February 1. The Frauenbefreiungsbewegung (FBB) published the "Zurcher Manifest" (1968), which called for equal rights for women. On February 7, 1971, the enfranchisement of women on the federal level was finally approved two-to-one, but some cantons still withheld voting rights for women on local matters. The half cantons of Appenzell (Ausserrhoden and Innerrhoden) were the very last to grant women full suffrage (1989 and 1990). Liechtenstein introduced woman suffrage on a national level in 1984, but 3 of Liechtenstein's 11 communes did not award women the right to vote on communal affairs until 1986. See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Manifesto; Revolution, German (1848); Weimar Republic; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature. References: Kaplan, Gisela, Contemporary Western European Feminism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1992); Weiland, Daniela, Geschichte der Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland und Osterreich. Biographien. Programme. Organisationen (Dusseldorf: ECON, 1983). ANNE L. CRITCHFIELD S u r r e a l i s m . Sparked by Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, this international movement, centered in France, hoped to eliminate the workings of the superego and combine subconscious thoughts, impulses, and dreams with conscious activity, eventually creating a new social order through the creation of a new art. The Surrealists attempted to ignore existing aesthetic and moral dictates and emphasized the importance of chance and ''absolute truth" in their artworks. Although German and Swiss artists such as Max Ernst and Meret Oppenheim were involved in the movement, Surrealism never reached the popularity within Germany that it attained in France or England. One of Surrealism's best-known female artists, Meret Oppenheim, created the fur-lined teacup that was chosen by visitors of the 1937 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exhibition as the "quintessential Surrealist symbol." Although the original Surrealist movement purported to liberate individuals from bourgeois morality and provide them with the opportunity for selfexpression, the male founders of the movement conceived of a set of roles for women as stringent as those of conventional bourgeois society. Their views of women derived from Romanticism, Sigmund Freud, and the Marquis de Sade. Sade was especially admired for his writings on the free expression of sexuality. The surrealist roles for women included the following: (1) the femme-enfant, muse, and erotic inspiration for the male artist through her special connection to the subconscious; (2) the praying mantis, that is, seductress and harbinger of death; and (3) the passive victim/transformed horror, who might be shown only as a body part, chained, gagged, mutated, or mutilated. The desire to present women as the inspiration of the male artist, as well as the object of his fear or sadistic desires, was generally not shared by the female artists considered Surrealists. Not surprisingly, no women were invited to the 1928 Surrealist session on women's sexuality. Although generally encouraged to paint and exhibit as
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Surrealists, most female artists did not feel comfortable with the designation. Even those who officially joined the movement after 1929 never considered themselves part of Breton's inner circle. Artistically, the Surrealist woman artist, unlike the men, did not need a parallel external being to function as a screen for the projection of erotic desire (cf. Chadwick). Women Surrealists concerned themselves instead with their own psychic reality. Although sometimes erotic violence was included within women's works, it was usually directed at their self-representations. Breton thought that only the male artist had access to both the male, rational world and the female world, closer to nature and madness. However, female artists refused to believe that women served only as a part of male creation. The Italian Leonor Fini stated, "I was hostile first because of Breton's Puritanism; also because of the paradoxical misappreciation for the autonomy of women— characteristic of this movement which pretended to liberate men." Not content to play the part of the mediator between men and nature, artists like Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo often painted themselves within Surrealist landscapes that reflected their own inner reality. Barren landscapes helped to represent the desolation of personal loss for Kahlo and the pain of World War II for the Czech artist Maria Toyen. Like the male Surrealist artists, the women artists often drew upon mythological references or created a personal symbolic language to express their thoughts. See also: Body, Female; Child-Woman; Femme Fragile; Madwoman; Masochism/ Sadomasochism; Muse; Psychoanalysis; Romanticism; Victim; World War II. References: Breton, Andre, Manifestos of Surrealism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969); Caws, Mary Ann, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, and Gwen Raaberg, Surrealism and Women (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985). STEFANA LEFKO
S u f i e s Madel. A product of patriarchal double standards in Viennese society, the figure of the sufies Mddel (sweet girl) represents a charming, lower-class girl who functions as a sexual plaything for upper-class males. The sufies Mddel first appeared in Johann Nestroy's Volksstiick Das Mddel aus der Vorstadt (1841), and then figured prominently in Arthur Schnitzler's works, especially in the plays Liebelei (1895) and Reigen (1900). After World War I, variations of the figure appeared in Volksstucke by Marieluise FleiBer and Odon von Horvath (Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, 1931). The plays often contain two parallel relationships: one between a "sweet girl" and upper-class male, which depicts sexual exploitation (Nestroy's Mddel aus der Vorstadt), and another in which the second "sweet girl" falls in love and suffers for her feelings. FleiBer transposes this originally Austrian figure into a German (Bavarian) context in her drama Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1928), in which visiting soldiers and a young man from the village attempt to seduce two local servant girls. While one of FleiBer's "sweet girls," in keeping with the literary
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tradition, seeks true love and is jilted, the other attempts unsuccessfully to gain control of her life. Each author criticizes the thoughtless exercise of male privilege and documents the double standard of sexual morality in fin-de-siecle Vienna and later in the Weimar Republic. In the Weimar plays, "sweet girls" paralleling the well-known figure of the independent New Woman attempt to assert their independence in a still-male-dominated society but are eventually forced back into traditional modes of behavior in a brutal reaffirmation of patriarchal power. The "sweet girls" fall victim to male selfishness, and their own cliched notions of true love are perpetuated by the popular patriarchal culture. See also: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; FleiBer, Marieluise; New Woman; Volksstiick; Weimar Republic. References: Kosta, Barbara, "Employed Bodies: Female Servants in Works by Marieluise FleiBer." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 47-64; Miiller, Gerd, Das Volksstiick von Raimund bis Kroetz (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1979); Thompson, Bruce, Schnitzler's Vienna: Image of a Society (London: Routledge, 1990). BELINDA CARSTENS-WICKHAM S w i s s German Literature. In Switzerland, a small but multilingual country, each of the four linguistic regions has a literature of its own, but there is very little literary contact between them. With the exception of the minor literature of the tiny Romanche-speaking population of 50,000, all literary contacts are with the specific corresponding language and culture across its national border, that is, with Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. Yet, this literary diversity has a certain unity of themes due to a common political and social culture and to linguistic regionalisms. Swiss literature written in German is, by far, the oldest and most prolific of Swiss literatures and includes important medieval manuscripts of the monastery St. Gall, a Bible translation by Ulrich Zwingli of Zurich (a church reformer and contemporary of Martin Luther), and theoretical writings on art that played a crucial role for 18th-century aesthetics. The theorists include Johann Jakob Bodmer, Johann Jakob Breitinger, philosopher Caspar Lavater, philosopher and poet Albrecht Haller, and pedagogue and novelist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. During the 1790s, the first monthly journal for women, Die Einsiedlerin aus den Alpen (1793-1794), was published in Zurich, edited by Marianne Ehrmann. During the first half of the 19th century, Regula Engel-Egli was among the very few Swiss women writers who enjoyed any kind of literary recognition. Her memoirs of an unusual life of adventures (Lebensbeschreibung der Wittwe des Obrist Florian Engel von Langwies, in Bundten, geborener Egli von Fluntern, bey Zurich, 1821) was so popular that it appeared in a second edition (Die schweizerische Amazone, revised edition 1825). During the second half of the 19th century, the prolific entertainment author Johanna Spyri achieved international success with her two Heidi novels (1880/1881), which created the myth of an idyllic Switzerland. Less known outside Switzerland but well re-
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spected within their country were a few female authors who published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Silvia Andrea's stories and novels, such as Violanta Prevosti (1905), incorporated Romanche history and were appreciated by local readers. However, the same author's Wilhelm Tell (1891) was rejected by readers and critics alike, because Andrea had added independently minded female characters to the well-known plot of Swiss patriotism. Meta von Salis, besides being an author and a strong advocate of woman's rights, also was the first Swiss female historian. In her first collection of poems (Gedichte, 1881), she addressed her anger about the mysogynist attitude of men. She published novels that dealt with women's struggles in a man's world, and she wrote for a feminist journal. Von Salis became known to a wider public primarily due to her association with Friedrich Nietzsche and the scandalous attacks she suffered for her outspoken defense of the first female physician in Zurich. Ruth Waldstetter was a well-published and successful novelist, poet, and playwright whose plays were premiered in Zurich's Schauspielhaus. She gained literary recognition with her novel Die Wahl (1910). In subsequent works, as in the novel Eine Seele (1917), Waldstetter dealt critically with women's social disadvantages. When the author Maria Waser wrote the biography of a woman painter (and namesake) of the late 17th century (Die Geschichte der Anna Waser, 1913), she described, in part, her own experience of confinement as a woman artist in a man's world. At the height of her career, Waser exerted a great influence on the literary scene in Switzerland as president of the writers' association and as editor in chief of a culture magazine. However, during the last decade of her life, Waser regressed into a world of conservatism and maternal myths, views expressed in her later works. The literature of the 1920s and 1930s is often read as reaction to World War I and the rise of fascism. One type of reaction was to produce works that addressed political and social topics, as did those by Elisabeth Gerter, an active socialist. In her novel Schwester Lisa (1934), she wrote about the victimization of women at home and at work, and in Die Sticker (1938) she deplored the exploitation of the workers in the textile industry. The other type of reaction was to create a world of one's own that ignored all political reality, as did Cecile Ines Loos, whose works portray a world of children and childlike personalities in a dreamlike environment. Loos rose to fame with her first novel, Matka Bo ska (1929), only to be soon forgotten. Her two subsequent novels, published a decade later, hardly sold any copies, until they were republished in 1983. Cecile Lauber's work comprises novels, poems, stories, and plays and focuses on the situation of the helpless, orphans, underdogs, and especially children (e.g., her first novel, Die Versundigung an den Kindern, 1922). Lauber's use of imagery raised themes of nature and ecology to mythic proportions, as in the novel Stumme Natur (1939). These authors had no ties to Zurich's literary scene of the 1920s, when the city became the center of the Dada movement, and of the 1930s, when Zurich was a refuge for many German authors and people of the theater. Indeed, Zur-
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ich's Schauspielhaus profited from these talented exiles and became the leading theater of German language. Leading women poets of the time include Erika Burkart, who, in over 15 volumes of poetry and four novels, conjured up the magic world of childhood and the beauty of nature. The poet juxtaposes her feeling of security during childhood with the later feeling of uprootedness and longing for a world forever lost. Burkart's delicate poetry treats nature as myth and mirror of the soul, and the poet mourns its destruction with resignation, yet leaves room for hope and Utopia. Silja Walter published her first collection of poems (Gedichte) in 1944, before entering a convent. Her later poetry, as well as her religious plays and tales, is full of mysticism. In the 1960s, writers of a new generation expressed their individualism in works ranging from documentary prose to literature. They questioned the traditional conceptualization of narrator and the nature of language itself. Swiss literature took on a new meaning, one of pluralism that did not differ in principle from that of Germany. Again, only few women, among them Gertrud Wilker, belonged to this group. Wilker established her literary career with the novel Elegie auf die Zukunft (1966), which introduces some of her deep concerns: the future and survival. As a writer, Wilker takes on the role of a witness of current events who represents them in words, since only words will survive. In Blick auf meinesgleichen (1979), Wilker described unfulfilled desires of women from a critical feminist perspective. She also published various collections of poetry. Not until the height of the new women's movement (1975) were the works of numerous women authors published—but these authors did not follow the political program of German feminists. Instead, they analyzed social problems from an individualistic perspective and searched for adequate forms to express personal concerns, a stance that can be read as resistance against all norms and signs of ideology. In her first prose work, Harmloses, bitte (1970), Erica Pedretti deals with the difficulty of putting painful memories into words. During the process of writing, the author questions all thoughts, perceptions, and language, a stance that is a form of resistance against ideologies and aesthetic norms. Margrit Schriber wrote in Aussicht gerahmt (1976) that writing is "gauging existential space," which expresses the central theme of many new works written by women. For most of these authors, their first works were concerned with finding their own identity and defining their own space. Indeed, all of Schriber's novels deal with women's searching for their own self and trying to break out of confinement. But often, Schriber's female protagonists retreat into the safety of home, even if this means self-imprisonment and self-extinction. Elisabeth Meylan's debut Raume, unmdbliert (1972) expresses women's need for security and identity and depicts their loss of self for the sake of a man. Meylan's stories and poems portray human relationships with passion, irony, and melancholy. Maja Beutler's first collection of stories (Flissingen fehlt auf der Karte, 1976) also deals with women's space or its absence. For Beutler, writing provides a different entry into social and personal reality. She analyzes the function of words, concepts, and language in bringing together the outer and
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inner world. In Wortfalle (1983), a confrontation of two spouses demonstrates a confrontation between men's and women's language and reveals how language itself can function as a trap. Her latest play, Lady Macbeth Doesn't Wash Her Hands Any More (1994), deals with women's language. The many stories of Hanna Johansen question the usually hidden feelings of insecurity, despair, or fear. Johansen refuses to separate the desire to be in harmony with the world from the need to look into the abyss. Her female characters are not assimilated into the male worldview. Rather, they see the gaps and cracks under the surface. Helen Meier published her first collection of stories (Trockenwiese, 1984) only after having won the first prize at a literary competition. In the collection of stories, as well as in all subsequent works dealing with the topics of love and life, the author looks beneath the layers of social conventions in order to expose women's dependencies. While Rahel Hutmacher plays with matriarchal, spiritual, and archetypal elements in tales of poetic language, Eveline Hasler, after a career of writing young adult literature, turned to writing historical novels that portray the fate of the poor and the downtrodden in a realistic way. Her novel Anna Goldin, letzte Hexe (1982) recounts, from a woman's perspective, the life of the last "witch" to be put to death in 1785. Claudia Storz entered the literary scene with the novel Jessica mit Konstruktionsfehlern (1977). By rendering the heroine physically handicapped, Storz clearly demonstrates the position of woman as an outsider, a theme she explored in the form of a parable in subsequent novels. The Swiss authors who enjoy international recognition include Erica Pedretti and the prolific author Gertrud Leutenegger. Leutenegger's novels and dramatic poems are protests against patriarchal and stagnated forms of life and create a poetic and dreamlike world of beauty and emotions. In her first novel, Vorabend (1975), Leutenegger presents a finely woven cloth of impressions, memories, dreams, and reflections that attest to her aesthetic principle of writing against the grain of male logic and structure. Her novel Der Gouverneur (1981) contrasts the patriarchal quest for power and control over nature and life with matriarchal qualities of life-sustaining love. Swiss literature of the 1980s and 1990s continues to scrutinize the effects of a closed and patriarchal Swiss society on women's psyche and their lives. On the pessimistic end of the spectrum, a sense of total alienation is depicted by Margrit Dach, and psychological illness is portrayed by Ana Lang. Ruth Schweikert creates a shock effect with her ironic and sarcastic stories about single mothers who vent their frustrations on their own children, one of them actually drowning her son (Erdniisse. Totschlagen, 1994). On the optimistic end of the spectrum is the theme of coming to terms with oneself (Maja Bianchi). Since the 1980s, women of earlier generations have been encouraged to speak out and to publish their first works late in life (Doris Morf, Eleonore Frey). See also: Austrian Literature; Dadaism; Ehrmann, Marianne; FRG Literature; GDR Literature (1949-1990); Inquisition; Jugendliteratur; Nature Poetry; Novel, Historical; Witch; Women's Journals; Women's Movement.
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References: Flood, John L., ed., Modern Swiss Literature. Unity and Diversity (London: Oswald Wolff, 1985); Gsteiger, Manfred, ed., Die zeitgenossischen Literaturen der Schweiz (Zurich: Kindler, 1974); Lexikon der Schweizer Literaturen (Basel: Lenos, 1991); Linsmayer, Charles, Literaturszene Schweiz. 157 Kurzportraits von Rousseau bis Leutenegger (Zurich: Unionsverlag, 1989); Pezold, Klaus, and Hannelore Prosche, eds., Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Schweizer Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 199); Stump, Doris, Maya Widmer, and Regula Wyss, Deutschsprachige Schriftstellerinnen der Schweiz 1700-1945. Eine Bibliographic (Zurich: Limmat, 1994); Zwischenzeilen. Schriftstellerinnen der deutschen Schweiz (Berne: Pro Helvetia/Zytglogge, 1985).
KATHARINA AULLS S y m b o l i c Content. In The Man of Reason (1984), Genevieve Lloyd investigates the symbolic content of ' 'feminine/female'' versus ' 'masculine/male'' as cognitive entities. Different conceptual schemes and underlying philosophical premises that perpetuate sexual/gender difference display a variety of relations (i.e., mind-body, reason-unreason) as sexual and/or gender difference and content. Despite the representational function that woman acquires within cultural history, namely, to "symbolically represent what is 'outside' symbolic structures," women themselves are by no means outside the symbolic structures. They share a reservoir of philosophical and cognitive concepts and their metaphors with men, in particular in regard to knowledge, reason, and cognitive identity. The philosophical operation of these metaphors in the articulation of reason discloses a maleness of reason that ' 'belongs properly neither with sex nor to gender." Rather, it refers to the formation of cognitive identities that invoke a symbolic content of maleness and femaleness. Delineated by what is regarded as masculine and feminine cognitive style, the symbolic contents interact with socially constructed gender and become involved in the process of gendered identity formation. Epistemologically, Lloyd's approach mediates the primary concerns of Anglo-American and French feminisms, which emphasize different premises of Western philosophy: the autonomy of the subject (AngloAmerican), on one hand, and the subject as effect and product of language and culture (French), on the other hand. See also: Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Identity Theories; Semiotics. Reference: Lloyd, Genevieve, The Man of Reason: "Male" & "Female" in Western Philosophy. 1984 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). BIRGIT TAUTZ
S y m b o l i s m ( 1 8 8 0 - 1 9 2 0 ) . The international literary and artistic movement known as Symbolism, which has much in common with Neo-Romanticism, Jugendstil, and poesie pure, evolved as an aesthetic reaction to the detailed, near photographic reproductions of reality advocated by the naturalists. Rather than portraying nature and social milieus realistically, the Symbolists relied on their
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heightened sensitivity and awareness of the evocative and symbolic qualities of language, on its musicality, and on an ability to reveal affinities between natural, everyday images and the unseen transcendental realities of the soul. Although Symbolism has come to be associated almost exclusively with the movement's canonized male representatives (in France with its forerunners, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine and in Germany principally with Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal), women figured prominently in the movement as well. The representation of women in Symbolism was influenced by a revived interest in neoclassicism and the medieval imagery of Romanticism (popularized by the works of Richard Wagner). The earlier discovery of Venus of Milo and important excavations of classical ruins unearthed Hellenistic representations of femininity such as Helena, Electra, and Ariadne, which the Parnassian poets celebrated in their works, and rekindled enthusiasm for the often-demonized figures of Lilith, Salome, Medea, Cleopatra, the Sphinx, and the Siren, who were later incorporated into Symbolist poetry, prose, and drama. Despite women's restrictive educational opportunities, incomes rarely large enough to support further study, and a growing anti-Semitism that at times prevented their work from being published or exhibited, some women succeeded in overcoming their marginalization and lent inspiration to the movement as writers, artists, translators, and interlocutors. Women found themselves excluded from Mdnnervereine and stayed on the peripheries of private clubs, play and reading circles (such as the "George-Kreis") and ateliers (such as August Rodin's), all of which chiefly catered to men. Clara Westhoff-Rilke, an accomplished sculptress and painter at Worpswede, studied with Rodin in Paris and introduced Rilke to Rodin's notion of konzentriertes Sehen, the skill of perceiving essences within objects. It is at the core of Symbolist poetics and exemplified in Rilke's famous "Dinggedichte." The psychologically oriented prose works and essays of Lou Andreas-Salome, most notably Ruth (1895), Fenitschka (1898), and Der Mensch als Weib (1899), give evidence of her acquaintance with Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Schnitzler and their shared interest in the unconscious. Andreas-Salome, a student of religious history, influenced Rilke's religious outlook with her Im Kampfum Gott (1885), as did the writer and translator Franziska von Reventlow, who introduced Rilke to artistic and intellectual circles of Schwabing and the work of Ellen Key. Other women were members of the "George-Kreis," and several contributed to George's famous Symbolist periodical Blatter fur die Kunst (1892-1909). Sabine Lepsius, another well-known artist and poet, owned a Berlin atelier with her husband, where she, George, and other Symbolists often gathered to discuss aesthetics. Gertrud Kantorowicz, a member of the Lepsius circle, contributed poems to Blatter fur die Kunst; Ida Dehmel, a short story writer and journalist, contributed translations of works by French Symbolists and poems, as did, most likely, the poet Hedwig Lachmann. Although Symbolism was primarily a poetic
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tradition, several prose works by Richarda Huch and dramas by Elsa Bernstein indicate their artistic connection to the Symbolists. See also: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Jugendstil; Naturalism; Neoclassicism; NeoRomanticism; Short Story. References: Balakian, Anna, The Symbolist Movement (New York: Random House, 1967); Brosi, Sibylle, Der Kufi der Sphinx: weibliche Gestalten nach griechischem Mythos in Malerei und Graphik des Symbolismus (Miinster: Lit, 1992); Lepsius, Sabine, Ein Berliner Kiinstlerleben um die Jahrhunderts ende (Munich: Miiller, 1972); Martin, Biddy, Women and Modernity. The (Life) Styles of Lou Andreas-Salome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Schaffer, Hannelore, ed., Ehen in Worpswede: Paula Modersohn Becker and Otto Modersohn, Clara Rilke -Westhoff and Rilke Himself (Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje, 1994); Zophoniasson-Baierl, Ulrike, Elsa Bernstein alias Ernst Rosmer (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1985). JENNIFER HAM
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T Tanztheater. A neo-expressionistic form of German dance that originated as an alternative to ballet and abstract modern dance in the 1970s and attained international prominence in the 1980s, Tanztheater has its roots in German Ausdruckstanz as practiced by Kurt Jooss, Rudolf von Laban, and Mary Wigman earlier in the century. Tanztheater is most often associated with the choreographers Gerhard Bohner, Pina Bausch, Reinhild Hoffmann, Hans Kresnik, and Susanne Linke, although it has become so popular that similar Tanztheater groups have proliferated. Formal aspects of Tanztheater include a return to emotional content as opposed to the abstract "motion for motion's sake" that characterized modern dance in the wake of Merce Cunningham; montage of disparate fragments; alienation effects; dance as both a collaborative project and a work-in-progress; mixed-media presentations; spoken parts that incorporate the dancer's everyday experiences; heavy reliance on props; cross-dressing and the thematization of gender; and the rejection of prevailing dance codes concerning how dancers should look and move. Dance in general and Ausdruckstanz/Tanztheater in particular have long been of interest to feminist critics and scholars. Dance has always been considered a female preserve within the male-dominated world of the performing arts and has been marginalized as dilettantism in Germany since the Enlightenment because of the primacy of the body and rhythmic motion as opposed to the word and logic. Thus, the reception of dance and its critical evaluation within the hierarchy of the arts in the German tradition have always reflected a covert gender bias despite all claims of universality. Perhaps as a result of this initial marginalization, nonballetic dance has provided German women with a forum
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for expressing themselves creatively. In this type of dance, more so than in any other performing art, one can speak of a continuous female artistic tradition in Germany. Bausch's Tanztheater in Wuppertal is regarded as a model of dance theater, probably because her work is most familiar to audiences outside Germany. In contrast to other exponents of this genre like Kresnik or Hoffmann, Bausch almost always stages gender in her theater evenings. Whether she is working with a unified narrative (e.g., Blaubart, 1977) or loosely assembled fragmentary scenes generated by her dancers from their personal experience, the frank brutality of the interaction between the sexes in her works has shocked some audiences and exhilarated others. Not only are dance patrons deprived of the spectacle of beautiful bodies moving gracefully and rhythmically to (familiar) music, but they are also subjected to filth on stage (e.g., dirt, leaves, water), physically brutal interchanges between the male and female dancers (with or without accompanying music), cross-dressing (most often with male dancers in drag), nudity baring a broad spectrum of (non-dancerly) bodies, and verbal exchanges in various languages that bluntly voice the personal experience of the dancers on themes related to the evening's focus. Analogous to Bausch's disruption of gender codes and her creation of a middle ground straddling the traditional polarities, her Tanztheater occupies a no-man's-land situated between traditional theater and dance. See also: Body, Female; Musical Theater. References: Brauneck, Manfred, and Gerard Schneilin, eds., Theaterlexikon: Begriffe und Epochen, Biihnen und Ensembles (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1986); Gilpin, Heidi L., "Failure, Repetition, Amputation, and Disappearance: Issues of Composition in Contemporary European Movement Performance" (Diss., Harvard University, 2 vols., 1993); Schlicher, Susanne, TanzTheater (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1987).
SUSAN L. COCALIS T a t s a c h e n r o m a n . Drawing on historical and factual material, Tatsachenromane (documentary or factual novels) delineate historical, political, economical, or cultural events and the lives of individuals. Even though most critics agree that factual novels represent their material in a fictional mode, they consider factual novels either as light fiction with no artistic pretensions or as documentary literature expressing social critique. Because factual novels draw on facts, it is often difficult to distinguish them from biographies or historical novels. However, in contrast to historical novels, which draw on history as a background for their fictional plot, factual novels claim to relate entirely true stories. Many factual novels written by women are biographies or focus on events concerning women's lives from a traditional, as well as emancipatory and critical, point of view. Examples are Louise von Francois' Die letzte Reckenburgerin (1871), a female bildungsroman portraying a female Prussian patriot, and Maria Waser's Die Geschichte der Anna Waser. Ein Roman aus der Wende des 17. Jahrhunderts (1913). Hilde Spiel's Fanny von Arnstein oder Die Emanzi-
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pation. Ein Frauenleben an der Zeitwende 1758-1818 (1962) relates the life of a famous founder of a Viennese salon, while Eveline Hasler describes the political circumstances that led to the last Swiss witch trial in Anna Godlin, letzte Hexe (1982). Whereas Ricarda Huch's historical epics, Der grofie Krieg in Deutschland (1912-1914) and Der dreifiigjahrige Krieg (1929), delineate an extensive historical period, Johanna Hoffmann's fiction novel Das Geheimnis der Weifien Erde (1963) gives an account of the production of chinaware in Germany. Since the emergence of documentary literature during the 1970s, factual novels also include nonfictional source material such as interviews, reports, and letters; this applies to Elfriede Bnining's documentary report Kinder ohne Eltern (1969) and Eveline Hasler's account of the tragic life of the first Swiss female lawyer in Die Wachsflugelfrau (1991). Factual novels written by women represent a broad spectrum of topics but often focus on women's lives. Emancipatory factual novels pursue social criticism or didactic aims, exploring the mechanisms of women's exclusion from, or participation in, historical events. See also: Bildungsroman; Biography; Documentary Literature; Epos; Novel, Historical. References: Koopmann, Helmut, ed., Handbuch des deutschen Romans (Diisseldorf: Bagel, 1983); Miller, Nikolaus, "Dokumentarische Literatur." Literaturlexikon. Ed. Volker Ried (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1992) 183-85. MARIATTE C. DENMAN T e c h n o l o g y . The term is derived from the Greek Techne: art, craft, skill, and Logia: logic. In common usage, technology has become a synonym for applied science and is generally presumed to be positive or value-neutral, ignoring the fact that Western technology is closely linked with patriarchal and capitalistoriented society. In the course of the 20th century, the imbalanced application of technology and science has become especially apparent in the rapid advance in technologies of war and a corresponding lack of technological advancement in response to Third World problems of famine and disease. Due to the late onset of the industrial age in Germany, commentaries by women writers on the effects of technology were rare until after World War II. Early texts by women include Else Lasker Schiller's Die Wupper (1909), in which the senselessness of life in a small factory town is depicted, and Gerrit Engelke's poetry collection Rhythmus des neuen Europa (1921), in which images of technology, the worker, and war are omnipresent. After World War II, the question of technology became more problematic. Use Langner's Cornelia Kungstrom (1955) takes a critical view of technology and the role of women in science. The scientist Kungstrom develops a formula with the power to heal or kill. She must choose between global annihilation and murder when her son threatens to use the formula as the ultimate military weapon: Kungstrom shoots her son.
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In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), technology played a highly significant role in both the construction of the official image of the East German state and the development of the East German economy. Initially, the representation of technology in GDR women's literary texts was primarily positive, as in Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel (1963), in which the factory is viewed as the birthplace of the new state, despite the narrator's ambivalence toward technology. In 1968, women writers from both Germanies protested the destructive capability of nuclear weapons in Gegen den Tod (1968); contributors included Anna Seghers and Nelly Sachs. By the early 1980s, issues such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and industrial pollution led women writers to voice their strong critique of technology. Monika Maron's novel Flugasche (1981) examines the issues of environmental pollution and the effects of heavy industry on the city of B. Edited and compiled by Ingrid Kriiger, Mut zur Angst (1982) is a collection of stories and essays by East and West German writers protesting the buildup of nuclear arms in Central Europe in the early 1980s; contributors included Sarah Kirsch, Irmtraud Morgner, Dorothee Solle, and Ulla Hahn. Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1983) also played a significant role in the critique of technology that emerged in response to the arms race. Written in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, Wolf's Storfall (1987) draws a parallel between cancer and the self-destruction inherent in nuclear technology. East German physicist Helga Konigsdorf has contributed fascinating insights into women's problematic role in the sciences. In Respektloser Umgang (1988), Konigsdorf examines the life of Lise Meitner, a physicist whose work made a significant, if unacknowledged, contribution to the discovery of nuclear fission. The work of American literary theorist Teresa De Lauretis, Technologies of Gender (1987), delineates the construction of women in a gendered role via "technologies of gender" such as cinema and theoretical discourse. Theorist Avital Ronell deconstructs various texts from Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger, with a special emphasis on the interface between technology and writing in The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (1989). See also: GDR Literature; Morgner, Irmtraud; Nobel Prize Recipients; Wolf, Christa. References: Faulkner, Wendy, and Erik Arnold, Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives (London: Pluto Press, 1985); Feyl, Renate, Der lautlose Aufbruch: Frauen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Neues Leben, 1981); Harding, Sandra, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Malcolm, Shirley, Science, Technology and Women: A World Perspective (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1985); Rothschild, Joan, Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983), Teaching Technology from a Feminist Perspective (New York: Pergamon Press, 1988). LESLIE W. BATCHELDER
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T o t e n t a n z . The Dance of Death or danse macabre represents human mortality. Its depiction may be literary, musical, or representational or a combination of forms; the earliest extant examples from the Middle Ages include both a painting and an accompanying text. The portrayal of women is not as common as that of men but occurs from the beginning. The female figures often serve merely as counterparts to the males. The organizational principle is often a hierarchy of social ranks; the evolution of this hierarchy mirrors the rise of the middle class. Patriarchal attitudes are apparent when some figures represent not only positions in society but also allegorical characteristics, for example, a sin such as Wohllust. The female figures can be divided into religious, aristocratic, middle-class, working-class, and artist groupings; they can also be typed by their marital status (wife, virgin), by their age, and by their lack of acceptance by traditional society, for example, witches and gypsies. In some versions, the figures are obviously corpses, some of which—according to their physical attributes—are clearly female. The dance motif eventually becomes optional, and the various social ranks—all of which are visited by death—are depicted in individual engravings. In some representations the victims fight against their fate and struggle with death; in others, a sexual element is added when death holds a beautiful woman in an amorous embrace. The motif regained popularity in the Symbolist and Expressionist movements at the beginning of the 20th century. A modern example of the Totentanz motif may be found in two dramatic works by August Strindberg, Dance of Death I and 7/(1901), in which a marital relationship is savagely depicted. In the graphic arts, Kathe Kollwitz adapted the theme in her "Dance around the Guillotine" and in her series Tod (1934-1935). A play by Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Totentanz, was published in Hamburg in 1947. See also: Expressionism; Symbolism; Witch. References: Cosacchi, Stephan, Makabertanz: Der Totentanz in Kunst, Poesie und Brauchtum des Mittelalters (Meisenheim: Hain, 1965); Koller, Erwin, Totentanz (Innsbruck: Bader, 1980); Stammler, Wolfgang, Der Totentanz: Entstehung und Deutung (Munich: Hanser, 1948).
KRISTINE CONLON
Tragedy. This is a form of drama that teaches a moral lesson through its depiction of the suffering of its main characters. The classic tragedy adheres to the Aristotelian unities of time, space, and action and aims to awaken pity, fear, and astonishment in the viewer, thereby leading him or her to a catharsis. German tragedy developed in the 18th century under the influence of Johann Christoph Gottsched, who instituted a series of reforms in the German theater in order to improve its quality and status. Gottsched's rules for tragedy were based on Aristotle and heavily influenced by the French theater but were later transformed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. He demanded not only that tragedy be morally instructive and adhere to the three unities but also that it be written in verse, focus on noble
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emotions and actions, and deal exclusively with the lives and fates of the nobility and upper classes. As such, 18th- and early 19th-century German tragedy rarely dealt with the everyday lives of working people, and it tended to focus on the deeds and fates of male heroes. Women were more likely to see their lives and concerns reflected on the comic stage, which was the ' 'proper'' venue for depiction of the domestic sphere and the lives of common people. Although some tragedies dealt with tragic heroines (e.g., Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, 1806), most tragedies that focused on female characters featured them chiefly as victims of the tragic hero's actions and mistakes (Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson, 1755, and Emilia Galotti, 1772). Tragedy was not a popular genre among female dramatists. Women writers produced only around 90 tragedies during the 18th and 19th centuries (as opposed to about 1,000 comedies). One possible reason for the dearth of tragedies written by women could be the fact that women were limited in their choice of genre by both societal expectations and their own educational background. Tragedy was considered one of the most masculine of genres, requiring strict adherence to generic rules and conventions, familiarity with classical Greek theater, and a solid education in history and rhetoric, from which women were barred. In addition, social expectations about the proper spheres for women and theories about the gender-specific writing talents women possessed (i.e., women were supposedly naturally more suited to produce personal and private writing, in the form of letters, autobiographies, memoirs, and novels) made it difficult for women to break into the "masculine" field of drama in general and the very prestigious field of tragedy in particular. Economic factors may also have played a major part in keeping women from experimenting with the tragic form. Many female dramatists were dependent on their writing for an income; during the 18th and 19th centuries, comedies were much more popular among theatergoing audiences than tragedies and therefore more readily produced. In addition, tragedies often came under closer scrutiny by the censor, who kept a keen eye on negative depictions of authority, which might incite public unrest. Comedies, which dealt with the lives of ordinary people, were less likely to expose the author to difficulty with the censors and could be produced more quickly. Since what little money there was to be made came from the production (rather than publication) of a play, women had a strong economic incentive to write comedies. Nonetheless, several women did write tragedies, and many women made their living translating tragedies written by men. Female tragedians who have recently come into focus in anthologies and critical studies are Luise Adelgunde Gottsched, Christiane Friederike Huber, Christiane Karoline Schlegel, Luise Hedwig von Pernet, Eleonore Thon, Therese von Artner, Karoline von Gunderrode, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Christiane von Breden. Many of their dramas subvert or ignore the aesthetic conventions established by male tragedians and theoreticians of the genre. In contrast, for example, to Jo-
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hann Christoph Gottsched's demand that the villain must be adequately punished, the villain escapes in Luise Gottsched's Panthea (1744). Contrary to the tragedian's supposed obligation to evoke contrasting emotions with regard to virtue and vice (pity, fear), virtue and vice receive identical treatment in many tragedies by women, such as Huber's Cleveland dritter Theil (1756) or Giinderrode' s Magie und Schicksal (1805). Some tragedians have thematized gender as the cause of tragedy: ambitions that are permitted men prove deadly to the heroine (Breden's Faustina, 1871; Droste-Hiilshoff s Bertha oder die Alpen, 1814). See also: Comedy; Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Gunderrode, Karoline von; Tragedy, Historical. References: Blackwell, Jeannine, and Susanne Zantop, eds., Bitter Healing: German Women Writers 1700-1830 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Graf, Ruedi, Das Theater im Literaturstaat: Literarisches Theater auf dem Weg zur Bildungsmacht (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1992); 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, Frauen und Drama im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau, 1991). WENDY ARONS Tragedy, Historical. Predominantly a 19th-century genre, historical tragedies are dramatic adaptations of historical events or persons that are portrayed either with a claim to historical accuracy or with adjustments occasioned by the play's narrative and aesthetic concerns. Perhaps due to the dictates of Johann Christoph Gottsched's Standeklausel, which ordained that tragedy should portray the lives of kings, the aristocracy, and other "exalted" personages, whereas comedy had to concern itself with the lives of lower-class members, tragedy remained, with few exceptions, the predominant dramatic genre for historical portrayals throughout the 19th century, at least to the extent that historical events were understood as events surrounding members of the upper classes. Historical dramas are somewhat more rare than historical tragedies; historical comedies are extremely uncommon (one of the exceptions is Maria Arndts' Mozart als Ehestifter, 1869). Nineteenth-century historical dramas by women show significant differences in genre and agenda, depending on whether the historical character portrayed in the play is male or female. Most historical plays portraying male heroes are classified as dramas (examples are Caroline Pichler's Ferdinand der Zweyte, 1816; Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's Mazarin, 1849; Johanna Franul von WeiBenthum's Johann, Herzog von Finnland, 1810; Mathilde Wesendonck's Friedrich der Grofie, 1871; and Laura Steinlein's Kaiser Karl V., 1857). In contrast, most plays featuring historical women are tragedies, for example, Engel Christine Westphalen's Charlotte Corday, 1804; Elisabeth vom Berge's Charlotte Corday, n.d.; Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Marie Roland, 1867; vom Berge's Marie Antoinette, n.d.; Elisabeth von Rumanien and Marie von Krem-
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nitz's cowritten Anna Boleyn, 1886; Ebner-Eschenbach's Maria Stuart in Schottland, 1860; Steinlein's Das Haus Cenci, 1861; and Auguste Gotze's Vittoria Accoramboni, 1890. Although dramas on female characters (Charlotte BirchPfeiffer's Elisabeth, 1841; Elisabeth Muller's Anna von Cleve, 1881; Wilhelmine von Wickenburg's Radegundis, 1879) and tragedies on male characters (Elise Schmidt's Peter der Grofie and Machiavelli, both n.d.; Birch-Pfeiffer's Ulrich Zwinglis Tod, 1837) also exist, there seems to be a clear understanding that being a part of history more often leads to a tragic outcome for women than it does for men. The second notable difference between these plays that seems related to the gender of the historical heroine or hero portrayed lies in the treatment of history itself: dramas on male heroes frequently exhibit patriotic or nationalistic tendencies by invoking past national glory. Many historical tragedies on women, on the other hand, attempt to represent, celebrate, or justify the heroine or simply to portray her as a historical agent, an agenda that is startlingly similar to that of many 19th-century women historians (Ida Klokow's Die Frau in der Geschichte, 1881; Louise Otto-Peters' Einflufireiche Frauen aus dem Volke, 1869; and Ida von Diiringsfeld's Das Buch denkwiirdiger Frauen, 4th edition—edited by Klokow—1891). Whereas plays on male heroes usually attempt a portrayal of history that is intended to be seen as accurate, plays on heroines are aware of the frequent omission of women from history and exhibit a correspondingly critical attitude toward historical "facts." In the many cases in which little historical data are available about the play's heroine, the surrounding historical circumstances are portrayed accurately, whereas the heroine's story, character, and motivations are reinvented in the play. Politically active women, including famous assassins or revolutionaries, are portrayed as driven by noble political idealism (Westphalen's Charlotte Corday, EbnerEschenbach's Marie Roland); women depicted as victims of history act from personal motives that are pure (e.g., von Rumanien and Kremnitz's Anne Boleyn marries Henry VIII for love, not power); and famous historical murderesses (Gotze's Vittoria Accoramboni; Steinlein's Beatrice Cenci) are proven innocent in the play, even in cases where history has proven them guilty. The fact that most of the heroines portrayed in women's historical tragedies end on the scaffold (Beatrice Cenci, Anne Boleyn, Charlotte Corday, Marie Roland, Mary Stuart) supports the supposition that many of these plays were intended as justifications of their historical actions and motivations and, by extension, the justification of women's historical agency in general, rather than the portrayal of women's involvement in history as necessarily successful. In the 20th century, historical tragedy in the 19th-century sense became a rarity. In the wake of the First and Second World Wars, affirmative or celebratory adaptations of German history in drama became increasingly problematic. Dramatic adaptations of history tended to concentrate on historical settings rather than characters; frequently, these settings merely functioned as a parable for contemporary political events (as in Bertolt Brecht's Mutter Courage, 1941). Many of these plays can no longer be regarded historical since they relinquish
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all claim to historical accuracy; they instead strive to heighten the viewer's awareness of parallels between contemporary reality and the history portrayed in the play. Since part of the agenda of many 20th-century plays was to make viewers aware of their own potential for historical agency, traditional historical character tragedies lost in popularity because they tacitly limited historical agency to "great" historical figures. Marieluise FleiBer's historical tragedy Karl Stuart (1944) is one of the rare 20th-century dramas that still takes the character as the focal point of the history portrayed in the play. See also: Drama, Historical; History, Women's; Novel, Historical; Otto-Peters, Louise. References: Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992), 'Terforming Genders: Three Plays on the Power of Women." Monatshefte 86.1 (Spring 1994): 95-115. SUSANNE KORD Translation—see: Adaptation/Translation T r a v e l o g u e s . Traveling can be motivated by many different causes: an attempt to explore the world, stepping out by leaving a social context that became too restrictive, or merely leisure activity. These various motivations are reflected in women's travelogues, which make use of various literary forms, ranging from travel diaries or letters to more essayistic or novel-like attempts that sometimes were written long after the journey had been completed. Since travel (in its broadest sense) was sometimes forced or could lead to a long stay at a chosen destination, it is difficult to distinguish strictly between travelogues and, for example, exile literature, Emigrantenliteratur, colonial literature, and Migrantenliteratur. One could also extend the definition to descriptions of imaginary voyages or texts that are constructed around the metaphor of life as a voyage. A criterion that reflects upon motivation and in particular upon the readiness to leave traditional patterns of behavior is whether travel was planned and initiated by the woman traveler, and whether or not she was accompanying a husband or male relative. Women's travel and travel writing throughout modern history were partly influenced by the polarization of gender roles at the end of the 18th century, which—following Jean Jacques Rousseau's model—declared women unfit for travel and confined them to the home. Despite this regressive philosophy—in comparison with the frequency of women's travel during earlier epochs—travel literature by women increased during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Authors who contributed to travel literature include, in the late 17th century, Maria Sibylla Merian, who traveled to Surinam; in the early 18th century, Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann; in the late 18th century, Sophie Becker-Schwarz, Marianne Kraus, Friederike von Riedesel, Sophie von La Roche, and Marianne Stark; in the early 19th century, Emilie Berlepsch, Friederike Brun, Regula
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Engel-Egli, Anna Hafner-Forneris, Therese Huber, Sophie Leo, Fanny Mendelssohn, Elisa von der Recke, Johanna Schopenhauer, and Friederike Helene Unger; in the mid-19th century, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, Ottilie Assing, Therese von Bacheracht, Louise Biichner, Ida von Duringsfeld, Clara von Gerstner, Ida von Hahn-Hahn, Emma Herwegh, Fanny Lewald, Malwida von Meysenbug, Ida Pfeiffer, Louise von Plonnies, Maria Schuber, Mathilde Weber, and Louise Weil; in the late 19th century, Frieda Freiin von Biilow, Sophie Dohner, Elisabeth Freifrau von Heyking, Anna Maria Lohn Siegel, Catharina Migerka, Louise Miihlbach, Marie Esperance von Schwartz, Caecilie Seler-Sachs; and in the 20th century, Lina Boegli, Christine Bruckner, Marie von Bunsen, Eva Demski, Ingeborg Drewitz, Barbara Frischmuth, Alwa Hedin, Ricarda Huch, Marie Jacobi, Alma Karlin, Marta Karlweis, Annette Kolb, Use Langner, Marie Leitner, Mechthilde Fiirstin Lichnowsky, Erika Mann, Luise Rinser, Cacilie Rodt, Iris von Roten, Alice Salomon, Annemarie Schimmel, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Bettina Selby, Victoria Wolff, and Barbara Yurtas. Travelogues in the form of subjective reflections did not evolve before the 18th century; travel up to that time was mainly recorded—if at all—in the form of statistical information that was gathered according to Apodemiken or in the form of scientific data and descriptions. For these reasons, women's travel writing of the late 18th century to the mid-19th century documents a critical phase in the history of women's travel. Cut off from earlier traditions of female mobility, women wrote travel literature that can be perceived as a search for a new voice. During this period, women's travel literature mirrored differing, uncoordinated, and even contradictory strategies that attempted to reestablish avenues for women's travel and mobility. Women initially traveled mainly within Europe, but they began to venture to the Orient and North America toward the mid-19th century (one voyager, Ida Pfeiffer, traveled around the world twice). While many of their texts bear an emancipatory potential, travel accounts depicting journeys to the Orient, to socalled undeveloped countries, or to the colonies often reinforced colonial views, for example, the belief in racial superiority. With further improvement of the means of transportation and the development of tourism on a worldwide scale in the 20th century, a shift can be noticed within the genre. Texts now become either even more impressionistic (the author increasingly becomes the focus of attention, and the surrounding locale is reduced to a stimulus for self-reflection), or the authors attempt to depict the cultures, countries, landscapes, or cities with or without their respective inhabitants in the form of Reportagen. See also: Colonial Literature; Documentary Literature; Exile Literature; Exotin; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; La Roche, Sophie von; Lewald, Fanny; Meysenbug, Malvida von; Orientalism; Postcolonialism; Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig. References: Felden, Tamara, Frauen Reisen. Zur literarischen Representation weiblicher Geschlechterrollenerfahrung im 19. Jahrhundert (New York: Lang, 1993); Jedamsik, Doris Hiltgund Jehle, and Ulla Siebert, eds., ''Und tat' das Reisen wahlen!"
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Frauenreisen—Reisefrauen (Zurich: eFeF, 1994); Ludtke, Helga, "Grenzen tiberschreiten—Die Faszination der Fremde. Frauen-Reise-Literatur in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart." Buch und Bibliothek 47.7/8 (1995): 698-714; Ohnesorg, Stefanie, Mit Kompafi, Kutsche und Kamel. (Ruck-) Einbindung der Frau in die Geschichte des Reisens und der Reiseliteratur (St. Ingbert: Rohrig, 1996); Pelz, Annegret, Reisen durch die eigene Fremde. Reiseliteratur von Frauen als autogeographische Schriften (Cologne: Bohlau, 1993); Pelz, Annegret, and Wolfgang Griep, Frauen reisen. Ein bibliographisches Verzeichnis deutschsprachiger Frauenreisen 1700-1810 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1995); Potts, Lydia, ed., Aufbruch und Abenteuer. Frauen-Reisen um die Welt ab 1785 (Berlin: Orlanda, 1988).
STEFANIE OHNESORG Trivial Literature. Prior to the sociopolitical and academic reconfigurations of the late 1960s, the term "trivial literature" tended to express an unproblematized aesthetic judgment of literature appealing to popular taste (in this vein also referred to as kitsch, non-art, entertainment, popular, or ephemeral literature). Trivial literature is made up of subgenres such as science fiction, fantasy, adventure, mystery, war, romance, horror, Heimat, and western, whose means of production and display contributes to their aesthetic devaluation by cultural gatekeepers: mass-produced for instant consumption, published in recognizable series with glossy paperback covers, extreme star-cult or anonymity/pseudonymity of the author. Women authors and readers, who entered the published literary realm in increasingly greater numbers as of the mid-18th century, have suffered doubly from the dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow literature. On one hand, genres that were more open to women, such as the epistolary novel, autobiographical prose, and Gelegenheitspoesie, were trivialized due to their easily identifiable formal patterns and great popularity during specific historical periods. On the other hand, women's range of experience and education often limited them to the domestic sphere, thus also effectively feminizing the genres with which they expressed their understanding of society. Since the adjective ' 'trivial" describes commonplaces, banalities, and the knowable and stands in opposition to avant-garde innovation, not only does the label confine predominantly women's works to conventionality, but wielding it, maledominated criticism has simultaneously laid claim to all that women know, feel, and express. Due to the nature of popular taste, trivial literature tends to solidify rather than criticize the societal and political status quo, with the effect of reinforcing both the discursively determined gap between highbrow and lowbrow literatures and their accompanying gender, class, and race biases. The ongoing battle about trivial literature's worth and function in society harks back to the aesthetic concept of autonomous art of German Enlightenment and idealism. In post-Restoration West Germany, Helmut Kreuzer, Jochen Schulte-Sasse, and Christa Burger were among the first to assess trivial literature historically. Most studies limited themselves to declaring that trivial literature spouted ste-
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reotypical gender assignments. Hedwig Courths-Mahler's best-selling love stories between the poor and the rich, for example, were commonly asserted to seduce female readers into escapist dream worlds, while the high visibility of her works in contrast to other female authors enabled critics to attest to the inferior quality of women's writing per se (e.g., what Robert Naumann, in reference to Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina, 1972, called Prosatexthakeln—prosecrocheting). Similar to Gottfried Keller's severe critique of women's "voracious reading appetite" in the 19th century, contemporary critics seem equally concerned about the evocation, expression, and channeled outlet of what they consider extravagant female desires in conjunction with reading and writing. It appears as if women's involvement with trivial literature in itself constituted an act of adultery. The debate about trivial literature as a legitimate subject of literary criticism has been fueled anew due to the postmodern bricolage of literary modes in contemporary fiction (e.g., in works by Irmtraud Morgner) and women authors' subversion of, and experimentation with, stereotypically heterosexual plot and character developments (as in Bachmann's Malina). Ludwig Fischer, for example, attests to the difficulty of distinguishing trivial literature from mainstream literature by advocating a division of literature into "ambitious" trivial fiction (e.g., by Elfriede Bruning, Christine Bruckner, Eva Demski, Irmgard Keun, Ingeborg Drewitz, and Claudia Keller) and "fabricated" popular works (e.g., by Eugenie Marlitt, Vicki Baum, Hedwig Courths-Mahler, Ina Seidel, and Utta Danella). Although more recent studies mention modernizing changes within the makeup of trivial literature and its ambiance (such as the depiction of verbally explicit sex and violence and working women with their own needs for sexual and professional gratification), most German sources do not acknowledge that, for example, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels have developed their own feminist subculture (e.g., Anne McCaffrey's and Marge Piercy's novels). In addition to continuing investigations of the sociopolitical conditions of women authors (regarding the fixed salary per volume, the pseudonym cult, the normative lists of dos and don'ts for hired writers) and the gendered narratological and thematic patterns in trivial literature, future research needs to include trivial literature's characteristic multimedia design and maximized commercial exposure (pre- and posttext productions) as well as issues of intertextuality, paraand hypertext, and the postmodern call to cross the dichotomous divide. See also: Abenteuerroman; Autobiography; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Canon, Literary; Enlightenment; Epistolary Culture; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Groschenroman; Heimatdichtung; Kriminalroman; Morgner, Irmtraud; Postmodernism; Romance; Schundliteratur; Science Fiction. References: Burger, Christa, ed., Zur Dichotomierung von hoher und niederer Literatur (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1982); Geyer-Ryan, Helga, Der andere Roman. Versuch uber die verdrangte Asthetik des Popularen (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1983); Liebs, Elke, "Diktierte Traume: Mutter und Tochter in popularen Lesestoffen." Mutter-Tochter-Frauen: Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur. Ed. Helga Kraft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993) 149-72; Schulte-Sasse, Jochen, Die Kritik an der Trivialliteratur seit der
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Aufklarung. Studien zur Geschichte des modernen Kunstbegriffes (Munich: Fink, 1971); Wintgens, Hans-Herbert, Trivialliteratur fiir die Frau. Analyse, Didaktik und Methoden zur Konformliteratur (Baltmannsweiler: Burgbiicherei Schneider, 1979). SVNKA SIMON
Trotta, Margarethe v o n ( 1 9 4 2 - p r e s e n t ) . One of the best-known filmmakers emerging from New German Cinema, Margarethe von Trotta started her career as an actress in the films of Volker Schlondorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Herbert Achternbusch; as a director she has won numerous international prizes, particularly for Die bleierne Zeit (1981) and Rosa Luxemburg (1985). Her collaborative work style and use of narrative emphasize the influence of personal experience on contemporary history. Common themes include boundaries, doubling, and women's socialization within patriarchy. Her nondidactic, accessible film style has gained her wide audiences as well as criticism, although her films are quite complex. Born in Berlin in 1942, von Trotta moved with her mother to Diisseldorf after the war, where she eventually attended a business school. She moved to Paris and began working on films and then returned to Germany to resume her studies in art, German literature, Romance languages, and theater. In 1969, she played a role in the film Baal by Schlondorff, whom she married in 1971. She coauthored Der plotzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Krombach (Schlondorff, 1970-1971), an example of a "critical Heimatfilm" (the reworking in the 1970s of the sentimental genre used for escapism during the 1950s), and with Schlondorff codirected Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975), the film version of Heinrich Boll's novel about the ultraconservative press in West Germany and its assault on civil liberties within the context of terrorism. This film became the first large public success for New German Cinema. Together with Genevieve Dorman and Jutta Bruckner, von Trotta coauthored the screenplay for (and starred in) Schlondorff s Der Fangschufi (1976). In 1977, von Trotta began her own directorial career with Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages, a film based on the true story of a kindergarten teacher in Munich who robs a bank in order to fund a cooperative child-care center. The film emphasizes women's relationships to each other and particularly to the central character. Von Trotta's next film in 1979, Schwestern oder die Balance des Gliicks, depicts the relationship of two sisters and the delicate emotional balance and sense of identity they attempt to maintain with each other. Die bleierne Zeit (1981), von Trotta's first international success, again studies the lives of sisters. From the fictionalized point of view of Christiane Ensslin, the film looks at Gudrun Ensslin, one of the accused terrorists found hanged in the Stammheim prison during the height of terrorist/antiterrorist frenzy in West Germany. The film examines the interworkings of private and public spheres, as well as the span of German history from the 1950s through the 1970s. Von Trotta has described the Ensslins' experience as only a "point of departure" for her story. Her 1983 film Heller Wahn deals with the beginning of a friend-
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ship between two women. The film Rosa Luxemburg (1985) won the German Film Prize in 1986 and gives more of a personal profile of the title character than a historical account. In 1987, von Trotta joined Helke Sander, Helma Sanders-Brahms, and Christel Buschmann for a humorous "episode film" called Felix, in which each director provides a segment about a "new man" in his 30s and his attempts at relationships. Furchten und Lieben (1988) is a modern version of Chekhov's Three Sisters', and Die Ruckkehr (1990) tells the story of two women in a relationship with the same man. See also: Bruckner, Jutta; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauenfilm; Heimatdichtung; Sander, Helke; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Sister. References: Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992); Mohrmann, Renate, Die Frau mit der Kamera: Filmemacherinnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Hanser, 1980), "The Second Awakening of Christa Klages." Gender and German Cinema, 2 vols. Ed. S. Frieden, R. McCormick, V. Petersen, and L. M. Vogelsang (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993) II: 73-84.
SANDRA FRIEDEN Turkish-German Literature. This refers to the German-language literature produced since the late 1970s by authors of Turkish background residing in Germany. Previous labels—guest worker literature, foreigners' literature, migrant literature—linked the recent development of minority literature in German to the presence of over 4 million Turkish, Yugoslavian, Italian, and other nonGerman laborers and their dependents who had migrated to Germany beginning in 1956. Such labels, however, fostered erroneous expectations regarding authorship, thematic emphases, and literary quality, in addition to promoting a political subtext that insisted on the racial homogeneity of German culture. The publication of Turkish-German and other minority literature began with special issues of cultural and academic journals (e.g., Kurbiskern, 1979; Zeitschrift fur Kulturaustausch, 1985) and two definitive series of anthologies in the early 1980s. Franco Biondi from Italy, Jusuf Naoum from Lebanon, and Rafik Schami and Suleman Taufiq from Syria, editors of the series Sudwind Gastarbeiterdeutsch, produced four volumes of lyric and prose texts dedicated to worker solidarity and intercultural understanding {Im neuen Land, 1980; Zwischen Fabrik und Bahnhof 1981; Annaherungen, 1982; Zwischen zwei Giganten, 1983). Simultaneously, Irmgard Ackermann and Harald Weinrich at the Institute for German as a Foreign Language in Munich promoted the creative efforts of non-Germans via literary contests and the subsequent publication of three volumes of contest entries (Als Fremder in Deutschland, 1982; In zwei Sprachen leben, 1983; Tiirken deutscher Sprache, 1984). While the wide circulation of the latter anthologies served to establish both the presence and the importance of "foreigners' literature," the decision to solicit texts from nonGermans in any country obscured the literary, cultural, and political challenges raised by minority writers residing in Germany.
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Since these beginnings, Turkish-German literature has proliferated and made its way into a number of established German publishing houses, among them Luchterhand, Fischer, Goldmann, and Rowohlt. But authors have found it difficult to escape the "guest worker" label and the categorization of their work as marginal and exotic. Male writers such as Aras Oren, Yiiksel Pazarkaya, Giiney Dal, and Zafer §enocak and women authors such as Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, Renan Demirkan, and Zehra £irak have received scant attention from literary scholars, even though their works constitute a vital part of German literary life in the 1980s and 1990s. Turkish and other minority women were conspicuously underrepresented, if not altogether absent, in the publishing endeavors and theoretical discussions of the early 1980s. Since the late 1980s, however, women of Turkish background have ranked among the most prominent minority authors in Germany. Most interesting are Aysel Ozakin, an avant-garde writer who has insisted on her cultural and aesthetic cosmopolitanism (e.g., Die blaue Maske, 1989; Deine Stimme gehort dir, 1992); Ozdamar, recipient of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1991, who explores issues of ethnicity, class, and gender in Turkish culture in Turkey and in Germany (Mutterzunge, 1990; Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, 1992); Saliha Scheinhardt, whose works investigate and, at the same time, reinforce as a stereotype the plight of the Turkish woman subjugated by patriarchal Islamic tradition (Drei Zypressen, 1984); Alev Tekinay, a university instructor, whose short stories make unsettling use of popular German cliches concerning the Turks (Die Deutschprufung, 1989); and Demirkan, a successful actress, whose second novel, Die Frau mit Bart (1994), refutes the exotic commonplaces of her earlier best-seller, Schwarzer Tee mit drei StUck Zucker (1991). Turkish-German women writers, with divergent backgrounds and diverse literary strategies, offer a complex, fluid picture of Turkish life that belies many of the stereotypes reproduced in Germany by mainstream sociologists and journalists. Furthermore, their rich body of work challenges readers to reflect upon the ideological premises and interpretive practices of German literary study and to rethink the "Germanness" of German literature. See also: Black German Literature; Exotin; German Studies; Hybridity; Minority Literature. References: Ackermann, Irmgard, and Harald Weinrich, eds., Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur (Munich: Piper, 1986); Suhr, Heidrun, "Auslanderliteratur. Minority Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany." New German Critique 46 (1989): 71-103; Teraoka, Arlene Akiko, "Gastarbeiterliteratur. The Other Speaks Back." Cultural Critique 1 (1987): 77-101; Wierschke, Annette, "Schreiben als Selbstbehauptung: Kulturkonflikt und Identitat in den Werken von Aysel Ozakin, Alev Tekinay und Emine Sevgi Ozdamar" (Diss., University of Minnesota, 1994). ARLENE A. TERAOKA
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u Unification, German (October 3 , 1 9 9 0 ) . The formal merger of the two Germanies, which had been divided in 1949 as a result of World War II and the cold war, followed a brief but intense period of grassroots mobilization known as die Wende (1989). The old term Wiedervereinigung (reunification) is considered problematic, signifying that the peoples of two diametrically opposed political systems had evolved into separate cultures by 1989. No women participated in the hastily concluded unity negotiations, reflecting their absence at the highest levels of government on both sides. The first step, the state treaty of May 18, 1990, establishing a monetary, economic, and social union, contained one reference to women's status in the new Germany: "Consideration shall be given to the interests of women and disabled persons" (Article 19). The Einheitsvertrag of September 6, 1990, mentioned women only in relation to future abortion legislation (postponed, to secure the German Democratic Republic's [GDR] accession under Article 23 of the basic law); the emphasis fell on women's "ability to combine career and family" in a manner "which guarantees the protection of unborn life" (Article 31). Eastern women were less enthusiastic about the idea of immediate unification than men, fearing it would result in high unemployment, rising crime rates, and a resurgence of right-wing extremism. A majority nonetheless voted for Lothar De Maiziere's CDU-East in March 1990 and Helmut Kohl's CDU-West in December 1990 as the fastest route to democratic rule and economic rehabilitation in the five new Lander. Many expected West German feminists to rally to preserve various social achievements adopted by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) in the 1970s; they included extensive maternal and sick
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leave benefits, state-subsidized day care for children of all ages, free contraception, legal abortion, and promotion of women in nontraditional occupations. Though more pro-natalist than pro-emancipation in nature, these policies had made it possible for 90 percent of all GDR women aged 15-60 to engage in paid labor, while, at the same time, they produced more children than their FRG counterparts (on average, two per family) at a younger age. This higher natality was likewise encouraged by special marriage loans to couples under 25, which led to a high divorce rate and a profusion of single mothers (one-third of all births). It is interesting to note that after 1990, birthrates dropped 50 percent. Since unification, 60 percent of all East German women have lost their jobs, remaining unemployed for longer periods than men. Western investors are now excluding them from fields in which they were once dominant, for example, insurance, banking, and midlevel industrial management. West German men have gained the most (over 80 percent of the full professorships) from higher educational "reform" in the new states. However, the profusion of goods and services afforded by a free market has made daily life easier for most women. All cities have set up shelters and Equal Opportunity Offices (Gleichstellungsstellen) to protect women against violence and discrimination. Relations between feminists in the old and new states remain quite strained, especially in light of the 1995 abortion law liberalizing it for West German women but recriminalizing the procedure ("illegal but unpunishable") for East German women. See also: Abortion; FRG Literature; GDR Literature; Wende, Die. References: Dolling, Irene, "Alte und neue Dilemmata: Frauen in der ehemaligen DDR." Women in German Yearbook 7 (1991): 121-36; Funk, Nannette, and Magda Mueller, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism (New York: Routledge, 1993); Institut fiir Demoskopie Allensbach, ed., Frauen in Deutschland. Lebensverhaltnisse, Lebensstile und Zukunftserwartung (Cologne: Bund, 1995); Rohnstock, Katrin, ed., Stiefschwestern. Was Ost-Frauen und West-Frauen voneinander denken (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1994); Rosenberg, Dorothy, "Shock Therapy: Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market Economy." Signs 17.1 (1991): 129-51. JOYCE MARIE MUSHABEN
University Education, W o m e n ' s . As long as women were denied the opportunity to attend universities, they lacked a major prerequisite for participating on equal terms with men in the production of political, cultural, and economic norms. Women's exclusion from institutions of higher learning led to their exclusion from knowledge and power. Whereas a university education offered middle-class men access to social prestige in the public sphere, this newly educated class used so-called natural gender characteristics to relegate women to the positions of wife, mother, and head of inner household. Ever since this mandatory division of labor took place in the late 18th century, calls by women for education were ridiculed and feared as "die Invasion der Weiber" (Heinrich von Treitschke around 1900). Not until the 1920s did women begin to enroll in universities on a large scale.
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The first female Ph.D.'s in Germany were professors' daughters who had received an extensive education at home. They were regarded as exceptions: Dorothea Leporin, the first woman to be granted a doctorate in medicine (Halle, 1754), was also the first to question women's exclusion from institutions of higher learning; Dorothea Schlozer received a doctorate in philosophy in Gottingen (1787). Before 1900, women could receive formal training only at foreign universities. The university of Zurich began to admit women in 1864. Ricarda Huch and Rosa Luxemburg, the latter of whom obtained her doctorate in law in 1898, were among the German women who received their degrees in Zurich. By 1908, 89 German women had completed their doctoral degrees at Swiss universities. In 1865, the first German Women's Conference of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein called for a fundamental reform of girls' secondary and higher education. The demands included women's general admission to university study, public grammar schools to prepare girls for the Abitur (the prerequisite for admission to universities), and improved teacher training for female teachers, who until 1920 could teach only until they married. In 1896, the first woman, a student of Helene Lange's school initiative, completed her Abitur. The first public grammar school for girls in Prussia was not founded until 1908. Around 1900, the German states, by individual ministerial decrees, gradually admitted women to regular degree programs. Prussia was one of the last states to allow women to attend universities in 1908. Women began to study primarily in medicine, law programs, and in the humanities, with the goal of becoming teachers. Their number increased from 1,172 in 1908 to 22,084 in 1931. In 1918, women gained the right to habilitate. In 1933, national socialist rule limited the percentage of female university students to 10 percent. In women's literature, particularly turn-of-the-century literature, universityeducated women (and, conversely, women's usual exclusion from university study) have been thematized occasionally, for example, in Elsa Bernstein's Dammerung (1893), Use Levien Akunian's Wir Frauen haben kein Vaterland. Monologe einer Fledermaus (1899), and Aimee Due's Sind es Frauen? (1901). Whereas women receive 50 percent of all university acceptances today, and female students form the majority of students in the humanities, women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of the natural sciences, law, technology, and computer science. The ratio of tenured female faculty in Germany has continued to stagnate at 5 percent. See also: Erudite Woman; Geschlechtscharaktere; Leporin, Dorothea: Grundliche Untersuchung; Women's Movement. References: Albisetti, James C , Schooling German Girls and Women. Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Belser, Katharina, ed., Ebenso neu als kuhn: 170 Jahre Frauenstudium an der Universitat Zurich (Zurich: eFeF, 1988); Benker, Gita, and Senta Stormer, Grenzuberschreitungen. Studentinnen in der Weimarer Republik (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1991); Mertens, Lothar, Vernachldssigte Tochter der Alma Mater (Berlin: Duncker und
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Humblot, 1991); Soden, Kristine von, and Gabi Zipfel, eds., 70 Jahre Frauenstudium: Frauen in der Wissenschaft (Cologne: Pahl-Regenstein, 1979).
MARITA ROMANN Utopia/Anti-Utopia. Women's Utopian writing creates women's spaces that resist and challenge traditional patriarchal concepts and institutions and sexual, class, and racial exploitation. Representations of lesbianism, androgyny, pathogenesis, ecological balance, matriarchal religion, and anarchy open up Utopian notions of gender identities in women's fictional and nonfictional texts. One essential element of women's Utopia is language as a tool for rewriting and revisioning women's lives. Utopian texts by women connect criticism, theory, and philosophy and create a multiperspective vision, whereas male writers' Utopias tend to concentrate on specific social visions, for example, state Utopia, Zionist Utopia, island Utopia. Women's Utopias tend to differ from men's since the concept of Utopia, for women authors, involves remodeling patriarchal reality to open spaces for women. During the early Romantic movement, women's Salonkultur fostered dialogues, intellectual exchanges, and support. Modern feminist research has viewed these salons as semi-Utopian spaces for women. One example for a literary representation of this Utopian dialogism is Bettina von Arnim's Die Gunderode (1840). The author shows Utopian changes in women's and men's personal lives through a holistic union with nature and religion. Christa Wolf expands von Arnim's female dialogism into a Utopian androgynous model in Selbstversuch (1980). Wolf's Kassandra (1983) explores female subjectivity and matriarchal elements of culture, myth, and history. Irmtraud Morgner's novel Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (1983) combines fantastic and grotesque elements with an account of women's lives in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of the 1980s. Witch power, which is accessible to both sexes, leads, in the end, to a successful revolution. One of the most radical Utopian texts, Verena Stefan's Hautungen (1975), was intensely debated in the women's movement of the 1970s and eventually became a cult book. Her experimental and provocative lesbian Utopia provokes an ongoing reflection on language in patriarchal society and its culturally encoded meanings. In contrast to American and British women's Utopian novels, German women authors tend toward anti-Utopian writing. The works portray a negative, destructive vision of life, often referring to historical events and social/political developments in the 20th century: the trauma of two world wars, the Holocaust, the cold war, militaristic overkill, nuclear threat, capitalism, and technology. They provide a warning and call directly for women's political awareness and ultimately for political and social change. Anti-Utopia often utilizes satire and science fiction and is sometimes contrasted with Utopian visions. One of the earliest anti-Utopian works is Thea von Harbou's novel Metropolis (1926), made famous by Fritz Lang's cinematic production. The novel portrays a society of slave workers who are finally saved by the good human Maria after
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the destruction of her twin sister, the evil robot Maria. A more complex example is Ingeborg Bachmann's Der Fall Franza (1979), which comes to an antiUtopian conclusion when Franza commits suicide after reliving her tortured past on her long journey through Egypt. In Bachmann's Malina (1971), the question of Utopia or dystopia remains unresolved when the female " I " disappears in the crack of the wall. In contrast to Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek compiles montages of anti-Utopian images and stereotypes. Her play Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1987) leaves no hope for positive change. In the final scenes, the lesbian vampires Camilla and Emily stroll through a contaminated environment and are eventually killed by two male protagonists. Jelinek's novel Lust (1992) sketches the sexually violent elements in heterosexual relationships. Christa Reinig traces forms of women's destruction through prison, suicide, mental institutions, and cancer. Her novel Entmannung (1976) ends in a dismissal of men from society. Maria Erlenberger's science fiction novel Die singende Erde (1980) depicts the encounter of the female first-person narrator with societies practicing radical sexual freedom, ascetic societies, and cannibalistic children communities. In Das Judasschaf (1985), Anne Duden uses a dense montage technique to sketch female experience and perception, contrasting texts from the Third Reich with martyr portraits. See also: Androgyny; Arnim, Bettina von; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Fantastic Literature; Grotesque; Jelinek, Elfriede; Lesbian Literature; Matriarchy; Montage; Morgner, Irmtraud; Reinig, Christa; Romanticism; Salonism; Science Fiction; Stefan, Verena: Hautungen; Subjectivity; Vampirism; Witch; Wolf, Christa. Reference: Holland-Cunz, Barbara, Utopien der Neuen Frauenbewegung. Gesellschaftsentwurfe im Kontext feministischer Theorie und Praxis (Meiting: Corian, 1988). CARMEN JANSSEN
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V Vampirism. According to Sigmund Freud (Totem und Tabu, 1912/1913), ghosts and vampires are created by the defense mechanism of projection: one's unconscious feelings toward an object are projected onto this object and then treated as if coming from the outside. These feelings frequently express gendered binarisms: men/women, heterosexuals/homosexuals, normality/perversion, nonJews/Jews, West/East. The logic at work in most vampire novels is the anxiety of reverse colonization by which the colonizer appears to be colonized: in Dracula (1897), for example, Bram Stoker played on fears that the late 19th-century colonial superpower England could be invaded from Eastern Europe. The novel depicts this reversal through the heterosexual male's passivity: he finds himself at the receiving end of the sexual act by the female vampire's "phallic" penetration, allowing her to advance to the status of the "New Woman." The traditional female vampire in works by male authors figures as the return of repressed sexuality (i.e., Lucy, who desires three men simultaneously in Dracula; the bride of Christ in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's "Die Braut von Korinth," 1797). This traditional pattern is slightly modified in Ossip Schubin's two-volume Vollmondzauber (1899), in which a woman who aggressively lives her sexual desire is presented as undead. This story is influenced by E.T.A. Hoffmann's discussion of female vampirism in Die Serapionsbruder (1819— 1821), Ivan Turgenev's "Clara Milic" (1882), and Prosper Merimee's novella Lokis (1869). Reinterpretations of the vampire in women's literature deal critically with violence against women, their resistance against being vampirized, the pornographic aspects of a dominating sexuality, gender inversion, and lesbian eroti-
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cism, as in a volume edited by Barbara Neuwirth, Blafi sei mein Gesicht. Vampir'geschichten (1988), which contains 24 short stories written by women. Male and female vampires have found entry even into children's literature: see Angela Sommer-Bodenburg's Der kleine Vampir series (1980s). The vampire can also stand in for a more abstract undead life, a life translated into pure text. This is the case in Ingeborg Bachmann's poem "Heimweg" from her second volume of poems, Anrufung des Grofien Baren (1956). Here the vampire personifies the danger the poet faces between the paradoxical poles of her existence in writing, between the principle "Ich schreibe, also bin ich" (from the Frankfurter Vorlesungen. Probleme zeitgendssischer Dichtung, 1959/ 1960), and the last sentence from Malina (1971), "Es war Mord," which can be read as a reference to woman's destruction by man but also to writing as one of the most painful ways of dying. To the extent that the figures of all of Elfriede Jelinek's plays exist only in a citational mode, on a stage deprived of life, they lead the vampiristic existence Bachmann described in her poem. Preying on the textual bodies from Emily Bronte to Roland Barthes, Jelinek's Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1987), which is an extension of her radio play Erziehung eines Vampirs (1986), moreover practices a vampiristic recriture by not respecting the usual boundaries of genres, genders, and generations. The female vampires Emily and Carmilla exist only from the perspective of those whom they haunt, that is, their male partners who use, abuse, and, in the end, exterminate those who are different from themselves. But while gender (crossing) is an important site of struggle in vampirism, its very notion is subverted again in this satiric play, since the vampire women, modeled after the subtext in Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla (1872), turn into lesbians. The lesbian Doppelgeschopf in the last scene thus doubles as an allegory for the feminist and deconstructive discourses on "the double place of woman," positioning woman in the nonposition between participation in, and simultaneous exclusion/disappearance from, the symbolic order: "Ich bin und nicht." See also: Austrian Literature; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Colonial Literature; Doubles, Female; Jelinek, Elfriede; New Woman; Postcolonialism; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis. References: Bunson, Matthew, The Vampire Encyclopedia (New York: Crown, 1993); Carter, Margaret L., The Vampire in Literature. A Critical Bibliography (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1993); Case, Sue-Ellen, "Tracking the Vampire." Differences 3.2 (1991): 1-20; Kittler, Friedrich, Draculas Vermachtnis. Technische Schriften (Leipzig: Reclam, 1993); Meyer, Eva, "Den Vampir schreiben." Autobiographic der Schrift (Basel: Stroemfeld, 1989) 97-110; Piitz, Susanne, Vampire und ihre Opfer: Der Blutsauger als literarische Figur (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1992). SIGRID BERKA Vaterromane—see: Father-Daughter Relationship; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung
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Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen. In 1979, German women working in all areas of film formed the Association of Women Filmworkers, an organization whose initial manifesto demanded 50 percent of all film subsidies and funding, 50 percent of all seats on funding committees, 50 percent of all jobs and training positions, and support for the distribution, sale, and exhibition of films by women. While these goals have not yet been achieved, the strong and united effort by this group has helped achieve the highest proportional number of women filmmakers of any other film-producing country. The strong subsidy system in West Germany, based on taxes collected with the sale of each cinema ticket, funded the robust New German Cinema productions of the late 1960s and the 1970s. Women filmmakers, however, found that their project proposals were being rejected and that they were generally relegated to the traditionally "female" job of film editor. A 1978 Frauen und Film interview with nine men in highly visible positions within the film industry revealed little sensitivity to the bias against women built into the existing system. While a number of small groups had formed around these issues and had lobbied for gender parity, no changes ensued. A media-women conference with representatives from these groups first met in 1978 to discuss both women's positions in the film industry and their representation in films. Following their dissatisfaction with the collective declaration published at the 1979 Hamburg Film Festival, Hildegard Westbeld, Christiane Kaltenbach, and Petra Haffter called together other women filmmakers and drafted a Manifesto of Women Filmworkers as a statement by the new organization. Besides the demands for parity in funding, jobs, and committee seats, the manifesto declared as its goal "to support, promote and distribute all films by women which are committed to feminist, emancipatory and nonsexist forms of representation and goals." Furthermore, the association wanted to preserve archival records, to catalog films, to publicize and advise on film projects, and to facilitate cooperative projects with national and foreign groups with similar objectives. An important factor was the inclusion of all women working in any position in the film industry. Ten years later, the organization had built up its membership to well over 100. The association publishes a regular informational newsletter listing festivals, meetings, grant and subsidy application information, and reports on the organization's work. The association has also published a women's film handbook (Frauen Film Handbuch, 1984) with filmographies of over 400 women working in film in West Germany. Although it was published in a loose-leaf format, it has unfortunately never been updated. In 1986, the association took its demands for gender parity in the funding committees to court but has been unsuccessful thus far. The organization remains committed to its original goals and is still working to achieve them. See also: Film Politics; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauen und Film; Frauenfilm. References: Buschmann, Christel, and Claudia Lenssen, "Wenn der Hahn kraht auf dem Mist, andert sich das Wetter, oder es bleibt, wie es ist. Fragen von Christel Busch-
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mann and Claudia Lenssen an: Klaus Eder, Alexander Kluge, Dr. Giinter Struve, Robert Backheuer, Wilhelm Roth, Dr. Giinter Rohrbach, Manfred Hohnstock, Volker Baer, Dr. Gerd Albrecht." Frauen und Film 15 (1978): 22-62; Elsaesser, Thomas, New German Cinema: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Knight, Julia, Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992).
SANDRA FRIEDEN V e r g a n g e n h e i t s b e w a l t i g u n g . This term ("coming to terms with the past") refers to attempts to deal with the devastating and long-lasting effects of Germany's national socialist rule (1933-1945) and its fascist ideology, as well as Austro-fascism (1938-1945) and the remnants of Nazi mentality present in political and social structures in post-1945 Germany and Austria. In the process of searching and reestablishing a post-World War II identity, collective silence concerning the Nazi past coincided with rapid economic and political rebuilding. The negative psychological effects of the existential trauma and emotional insecurity covered up by this silence were addressed in literature. The social conscience was particularly stirred by women writers and filmmakers, who devoted much of their efforts to Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. During the first two decades after the war, literary Vergangenheitsbewaltigung was expressed in a mute outcry against the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. The poetry of Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan have become synonymous with these early literary attempts of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. The postwar generation of women writers, such as Use Aichinger (Die grofiere Hoffnung, 1948), Ingeborg Bachmann, and Luise Rinser (Jan Lobl aus Warschau, 1956), embarked on a search for self-realization in their writing. Central to their early work is the confrontation with the pain inflicted by the deceit of their fathers and their fathers' generation. Violence, women's subordination, and men's inability to love as remnants of fascist ideology are analyzed within the realm of the private sphere. Bachmann's Der Fall Franza (posthumously, 1979), part of her uncompleted trilogy Todesarten, brings to light the microcosm of arrogance, ignorance, and chauvinism that continued after 1945. Johanna Moosdorf's Die Andermanns (1969) combines the memories of fascism with a criticism of male domination and can be considered an important forerunner of the Vaterromane of the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, the first postwar generation of writers had come of age, many of whom explored the individual and collective past by focusing on patriarchal family relations and their fathers' role in Nazi Germany. Authors of these autobiographically shaped Vaterromane (and, in some cases Mutter- or Elternromane) include Barbara Bronnen, Elisabeth Plessen, Ruth Rehmann, and Brigitte Schwaiger. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), de-Nazification took place on a larger scale than in West Germany and Austria. Literature depicting resistance fighters played an important role in the creation of the new antifascist socialist state. Taking up some themes and motifs of exile literature—such as guilt, complicity and joint responsibility, and strategies of the antifascist resistance
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movement—women writers attempted to prove that the social and cultural changes occurring in the GDR were a natural and positive result of history's lessons (Anna Seghers' Die Saboteure, 1946). Postwar authors like Christa Wolf in Kindheitsmuster (1976) and Helga Schiitz in Vorgeschichten oder Schone Gegend Probstein (1971) retrace "Kindheitsspuren" to articulate the childhood experiences in Nazi Germany but simultaneously express hope for a more humane future under the socialist regime. The younger generation of writers in the West, like Barbara Bronnen, Anne Duden, Gertrud Leutenegger, Elfriede Jelinek, Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch, Elisabeth Plessen, Elisabeth Reichart, and Brigitte Schwaiger, assess external conditions from an inward perspective. Leutenegger's Gouverneur (1981) and Jelinek's Die Ausgesperrten (1980) continue to expose fascism as part of contemporary everyday life. Vergangenheitsbewaltigung as perpetrator-victimdialogue is continued in Duden's Judasschaf (1985). Influenced by Bachmann's texts, Duden uses metaphors to reactivate memory and write against the collective memory loss. Reconstructing memory of women's lives during the Nazi era also becomes central to Reichart's Februarschatten (1984) and Komm iiber den See (1988), in which the author attempts to relate the experiences of female victims of fascism. In the GDR, the "fatherless generation" of authors voiced similar concerns. Examples are Beate Morgenstern's Nest im Kopf (1989), which describes the protagonist's search for emotional security against the background of fascist attitudes at home, and Helga Schubert's Judasfrauen (1990), which is based on autobiographical and court information by and about women Nazi collaborators. Vergangenheitsbewaltigung is thematized in numerous films by women filmmakers, for example, Jutta Bruckner's Hungerjahre (1979), Helma SandersBrahms' Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (1979), Marianne Rosenbaum's Peppermint Frieden (1983), and Ruth Beckermann's Die papierene Briicke (1993). In the context of contemporary feminist and minority discourse, Beckermann's film presents a noteworthy contribution to an interdisciplinary exploration of questions that are related to the ethnic and cultural identity of Jewish Austrians. See also: Austrian Literature; Bachmann, Ingeborg; Bruckner, Jutta; Exile Literature; Frauenfilm; FRG Literature (1949-1990); GDR Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Hermetic Poetry; Holocaust Literature; Jelinek, Elfriede; National Socialism; Nobel Prize Recipients; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Schwaiger, Brigitte: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?; Wolf, Christa. References: Daviau, Donald G, ed., Austrian Writers and the Anschluss: Understanding the Past—Overcoming the Past (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991); Fichera, Ulrike Bohmel, "Aus dem Dunkel des Vergessens aufgestort. Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in Texten deutschsprachiger Autorinnen der achtziger Jahre." Colloquia Germanica 25 (1992): 35-56; Mitscherlich, Alexander und Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfahigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens (Leipzig: Reclam, 1990); Wagener, Hans,
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ed., Gegenwartsliteratur und Drittes Reich. Deutsche Autoren in der Auseinandersetzung mit der Vergangenheit (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977).
MARGARETE LAMB-FAFFELBERGER Victim. Whereas the English word victim carries a negative connotation in standard usage, the German Opfer is more ambiguous, encompassing both the idea of the victim of a crime (such as rape) and the concept of sacrifice in the positive sense. Traditionally, German male authors have inscribed women in the role of victims in their literary works and indeed actively constructed woman in a victim role; in many texts, the heroine is a victim. Even when the analyses of women's victimization are socially conscious and critical, they remain incapable of confronting the patriarchal structures that form its basis. In the wake of World War II, the traditional concept of the victim was problematized in two ways: first, the massive, systematic victimization that became known as the Holocaust called into question the very notion of Western civilization. Jewish survivors Nelly Sachs and Ruth Kliiger articulated their horror at the institutionalized brutality of a society dependent on wholesale victimization. In her poetry collections In den Wohnungen des Todes (1947) and Sternverdunklung (1949), Sachs attempts to make present the silenced victims of the Holocaust. Kliiger recounts her double victimization as a Holocaust survivor and a woman in her autobiographical novel welter leben (1992). Second, writers such as Ingeborg Bachmann and Christa Wolf explored the complexity of Mittdterschaft (complicity) and victim/perpetrator dynamics. Bachmann's short story collection Simultan (1972) and her novel-trilogy Todesarten (1979) deliver a devastating critique of patriarchy as an inherently destructive system based on violence and war. Bachmann draws a parallel between everyday violence in patriarchal society and the systematic mass murder of the Holocaust. Like Bachmann, Wolf examines the dialectic between victim and perpetrator, particularly within the context of war. In her earlier texts, Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968) and Kindheitsmuster (1976), Wolf probes the formation of identity by incorporating memories of the Third Reich into the text. With Kassandra (1983), Wolf delivers a powerful critique of patriarchal culture poised on the brink of self-annihilation in the 1980s. Christa Reinig's Entmannung'. Die Geschichte Ottos und seiner vier Frauen (1976) problematizes the war of the sexes and offers a fairly pessimistic view of women's fate in patriarchal society. Helke Sander's film Befreiter und Befreite (1991) examines the rape of women in wartime. This documentary-style film consists of interviews with women from the occupied zones. Helma Sanders-Brahms' film Deutschland bleiche Mutter (1979) depicts women as victims of war and patriarchy, suggesting an integral relationship between the two but without addressing the issue of women's complicity. Theoretical writings by women that examine the complexity of the role of women as victims and/or perpetrators include those by Claudia Koonz (1987), Gudrun Kohn-Waechter (1991), and Christina Thiirmer-Rohr (1989). Anka
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Meyer-Knees (1992) analyzes the discursive victimization of women: women constructed as victims in the discourses of law, medicine, and forensics. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Frauenfilm; Geschlechterkampf; Holocaust Literature; Nobel Prize Recipients; Participation/Exclusion; Protagonist/Antagonist; Reinig, Christa; Sander, Helke; Sanders-Brahms, Helma; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victimization Theories; Wolf, Christa. References: Kohn-Waechter, Gudrun, Schrift der Flammen: Opfermythen und Weiblichkeitsentwurfe im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Orlanda, 1991); Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Meyer-Knees, Anka, Verfiihrung und sexuelle Gewalt. Untersuchung zum medizinischen und juristisehen Diskurs im 18. Jahrhundert (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1992); Thiirmer-Rohr, Christina. "Frauen in Gewaltverhaltnissen. Zur Generalisierung des Opferbegriffs." Frauenforschung: Mittaterschaft und Entdeckungslust. Ed. Christina Thiirmer-Rohr (Berlin: Orlanda, 1989) 22-37; Weigel, Sigrid, "Die geopferte Heldin und das Opfer als Heldin." Die verborgene Frau. Sechs Beitrdge zu einer feministischen Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Stephan, Inge and Sigrid Weigel (Berlin: Argument, 1983) 138-52. LESLIE W. BATCHELDER V i c t i m i z a t i o n T h e o r i e s . The discussion about victims and their victimizers is one of the core issues in the attempt to redefine feminism for the 1990s. Writers such as Donatien-Alphonse de Sade, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and Sigmund Freud marked out their own definitions of victims and victimizers. Further investigation was propelled by such varied currents as the still-ongoing efforts to understand the German past and the works of Michel Foucault, with his insistence that victims derive some satisfaction from their victimization. But the renewed interest in these theories is largely a reaction to the works of women writers and critics, especially in the 1970s, who assumed the sameness of female experience, including their almost inevitable victimhood in a patriarchal society. By the 1980s, feminist theorists began to realize that to see women as eternal victims did not allow them the possibility for genuine equality, selfdetermination, or agency. They have, therefore, concentrated on the issue of whether women in a patriarchal society are always and forever victims and, if not, under what circumstances they escape that position. In Germany, victimization theories emerged with the works of Frigga Haug, Christina Thiirmer-Rohr, and others who questioned the traditional linkage between women and victimhood and asked questions about women's complicity in their own victimization. Postulating that women are held back not only by the social structures of a patriarchal society but also by their own internalized responses to those structures, Haug asks whether women have recourse to strategies other than their victimhood. Thiirmer-Rohr, whose theories are more controversial, insists that women suffer and profit from their victim status. Both justify their claims by insisting that victim status hinders women's quest for selfhood. In the United States, the work of Jessica Benjamin, a practicing psychoanalyst, reveals domination to be a complex psychological process requiring
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both someone who dominates and someone who submits, that is, both a victimizer and a victim. Benjamin, who has investigated the prevalence of this dynamic in relations between the sexes, suggests different child-rearing practices as a possible tactic for changing it. Despite a great deal of discussion, there is not a feminist consensus on victimization theories; in fact, the issue has proven extremely divisive. In the early 1990s, a number of women writing for a mass market launched an attack against the identification of women as victims. Authors representing this trend, like Katie Roiphe (The Morning After, 1994) and Naomi Wolf (Fire with Fire, 1994), educated and white, chose to ignore the historical victimization of women and their continuing victimization around the world. Given the equal opportunity now guaranteed by law, they insist that women are either imagining their victim status or choosing it. In Wolf's words, the "victim feminism" of the 1970s and 1980s needs to be replaced by "power feminism." On the other side of the debate are writers such as Ann Jones, who documents and discusses hostility against women, arguing that male violence continues unabated and that a growing hostility toward their female victims can be observed. The victimization debate raises the question of to what degree feminism must still be considered a human rights movement. See also: Masochism/Sadomasochism; Participation and Exclusion; Sisterhood; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victim. References: Benjamin, Jessica, The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon, 1988); Haug, Frigga, Erinnerungsarbeit (Hamburg: Argument, 1990); Jones, Ann, Next Time, She'll Be Dead: Battering and How to Stop It (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); ThiirmerRohr, Christina, ed., Mittaterschaft und Entdeckungslust (Berlin: Orlanda, 1989).
SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER Virgin. Virginity in its literal, symbolic, and spiritual manifestations was central to the life and writings of medieval women. Female sexuality was condemned in medieval law codes and penitentials and idealized, objectified, and feared in epic, romance, and lyric works. Virginity was considered the source of the legendary maiden warrior's prowess. In medieval visions of heaven and hell, virginity was rewarded; sins of sexuality were primarily associated with the female through biblical and patristic imagery and punished in horrific scenes of torture, recalling the admonition of the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 7:9 that it is "better to marry than to burn." Regardless of whether Paul's reference is to the passion of desire or the pain of hellfire, women writers interpreted social and religious views of sexuality and virginity for themselves. Already in the 10th century, the playwright Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim reverses the apostle's phrase: for her characters it was better to burn. In Hrotsvitha's play Dulcitius (c.962), set in pre-Christian Rome, two sisters choose to be burned to death in martyrdom rather than give in to the sexual demands of a bungling Roman officer.
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Virginity is at the core of Hildegard of Bingen's theology: Mary's virginity enabled the divine plan of salvation. Only a savior born of female fertility unpolluted by male seed could redeem the world. Mary, correcting the mistake of Eve (who shares responsibility for the Fall with Adam), forms a triad with Eve and Ecclesia, the church, all of whom are expressions of Sapientia, the eternal feminine divine. Hildegard thus celebrates both female creativity and virginity, in the abstract as the feminine divine and in the concrete as Mary and those who follow her example. She wrote numerous hymns in praise of the virgin and had her virgin novices dress in white bridal gowns for their symbolic marriage to Christ. The fact that many women chose a spiritual marriage to Christ and a protected life of virginity above an arranged marriage contributed to the growth of convents throughout the 12th century. In the 13th century, the mystics Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch of Brabant, while retaining chastity as a condition for a pious life, appropriated the language of courtly love lyric, of unfulfilled and unconsummated longing, to describe the soul's desire for God. In her earlier writings, Mechthild's image of herself shifts from that of being one of the children souls suckling at the breast of Mary, portrayed as the Virgin Mother Church, to that of becoming the bride of Christ. She speaks both in the voice of the Virgin Mary and, recalling the biblical Song of Songs, as the virgin soul intoxicated with love for the heavenly Bridegroom. She describes the soul's ecstatic spiritual union with him in erotic imagery, completing the consummation of the marriage. In her later writings, Mechthild no longer sees herself as the young bride of Christ, but as his mature wife. The mystic Gertrude the Great meditates so devoutly on the wounds of Christ that it merits her his embrace, thus linking blood, redemption, and virginity. The play Mary of Nijmegen, attributed to Anna Bijns, is about a virgin who becomes the whore of the Devil for seven years. Its plot is similar to that of Hrotsvitha's play Abraham (c.962), in which the virgin niece of Abraham becomes a prostitute after being seduced by a man dressed as a monk. Both stories are about virgin nieces in the care of men who fail to protect them. Both women are seduced through deception: Maria in Abraham by a monk in a position of trust and dominance, and Mary of Nijmegen by Satan himself. Both women condemn themselves, are redeemed, and perform heavy penance. In Abraham the uncle convinces his niece to return to a chaste life by disguising himself as a client, implying an interchangeability of male roles that contributes to her "fall." See also: Body, Female; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Mariendichtung; Martyrerdrama; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Mary; Mysticism; Prostitution. References: Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone, 1991); Kristeva, Julia, "Stabat Mater." The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives. Ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) 99-118; Newman, Barbara, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda, Medieval Women's
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Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Warner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976).
JANS. EMERSON V o l k s b u c h . The term "Volksbuch" was first used in 1807 by the Romantic scholar Johann Joseph Gorres to describe the popular prose books of the late Middle Ages, enjoyed by the lower classes, whose plots derived from medieval legends and allegedly conveyed the true, unadulterated spirit of the German Volk (people). Today Volksbuch refers to a large corpus of prose works, written between 1450 and 1650, comprising German adaptations of medieval French chansons de geste, collections of short tales (facetiae) from ancient and Romance traditions (e.g., Heinrich Steinhowel's translations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decamerone, 1473; Johannes Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, 1522), travelogues, joke books, religious legends, and original narratives (e.g., Fortunatus, 1509; Historia von Dr. Johann Fausten, 1587). Many of the texts recount the unusually perilous adventures of the protagonists, most of whom belonged to the nobility (both knights and urban patricians) or the upper bourgeoisie, in a fast-paced, direct style designed to entertain and, secondarily, to edify. In the early modern period, the Volksbucher were read by members of the landed nobility and the higher urban social classes, especially women, and many of the authors and publishers of these tales fashioned these works for, and addressed them to, a female audience (e.g., the anthology of popular Volksbucher assembled by the printer Siegmund Feyerabend, Das Buch der Liebe, 1587). Women played a major role in the history of the Volksbuch. The earliest Volksbuch authors were aristocratic women, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken and Eleonore von Osterreich, and their works, along with several other Volksbucher of male authorship (e.g., Thiiring von Ringoltingen, Die schone Melusine, 1474; Veit Warbeck, Die schone Magdelona, 1527/1535), served to project Utopian social roles for women in an increasingly misogynistic world. Both Elisabeth and Eleonore transformed several late medieval French verse epics into prose texts in which aristocratic women are portrayed as astute political rulers (Queen WyBblume in Elisabeth's Hug Schapler, c.1437), wise spousal councillors of kings and princes (Queen of England in Eleonore's Pontus und Sidonia, c.1460), and, though disguised as a man, a daring military leader (duchess of Bourges in Elisabeth's Herpin, c.1435). Men, chiefly husbands, who distrust female intelligence or moral strength are represented as weak and evil and are ultimately vanquished by heroes who regard women as the unjustly oppressed victims of male violence and indifference (Elisabeth's Konigin Sibille, c. 1436). Elisabeth's and Eleonore's fascination with politics, especially with royal succession and court intrigue, arose from problems within their own ruling families, and their works idealistically represent the indispensability of women in resolving such complex matters. Similarly significant public roles are accorded women in Thiiring von Ringoltingen's Die schone Melusine, where the mermaid/woman Melusine saves her future husband, showers him with riches,
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and educates him in the inviolability of marital fidelity. In Warbeck's Die schone Magdelona, Magdelona helps her young suitor learn that strong marriages, at least between nobility, are founded on sexual discipline and divine approbation. Despite these strong characterizations, however, most Volksbucher portray an unchanging world in which women, though respected, remain submissive adherents of the patriarchal order. See also: Medieval Literature; Mythical Female Figures; Romanticism; Utopia. References: Bennewitz-Behr, Ingrid, "Melusines Schwestern: Beobachtungen zu den Frauenfiguren im Prosaroman des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts." Germanistik und Deutschunterricht im Zeitalter der Technologic: Selbstbestimmung und Anpassung, vol. 1: Das Selbstverstandnis der Germanistik. Ed. Norbert Oellers (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988) 291-300; Classen, Albrecht, The German Volksbuch: A Critical History of a LateMedieval Genre (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995); Ertzdorff, Xenja von, Romane und Novellen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989); Morrison, Susan Signe, "Women Writers and Women Rulers: Rhetorical and Political Empowerment in the Fifteenth Century." Women in German Yearbook 9 (1994): 25-48. JAMES A. PARENTE V o l k s d i c h t u n g . Essentially synonymous with Volkspoesie, this is a collective term for all genres of oral literature, most commonly assumed to mean those that carry the prefix Volks-, for example, Volksbuch, Volksstiick. The term originated in conjunction with the construction of the ideology of the Volk in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder and Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. The collection of oral literature assumed an urgency at the turn of the 18th century due to a burgeoning interest in creating a national literature in Germany. However, oral tales, charms, chants, legends, and sagas had been recorded in writing for centuries; only with the theories of Herder and the Grimms did such work attain a special status. For Herder, Volksdichtung referred to indigenous traditions, and the boundaries between the oral and the written were not rigidly conceived. The Grimms, in contrast, tied Volksdichtung to orality in theory (even if, in practice, their material was—like Herder's—of mixed provenience) and differentiated sharply between Volks- and Kunstpoesie. Their theory includes the notion that Volksdichtung originates among the lower classes, that the German peasantry speaks for a unified Germany of the past, that women and children in particular embody this voice, that the preservers of this heritage are not themselves creative, and that this material is characterized by purity. All of these notions stem from two primary assumptions: that oral literature is stable and therefore represents history and that written culture succeeds and eradicates oral culture. Recognition that this is not the case—that oral and literate culture coexist and mutually influence each other—deprives the term of its usefulness as a description of works of literature today. This stands in contrast to Volksbuch, Volksstiick, Volksmarchen, and Volkssage, which, despite their related genesis,
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have for so long designated particular works and collections that they have assumed wider ranges of association over time. See also: Dialektdichtung; Fairy Tale; Saga; Volksbuch; Volkskunde; Volksstiick. References: Burde-Schneidewind, Gisela, et al., eds., Geschichte der deutschen Volksdichtung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981); Rohrich, Lutz, and Erika Lindig, eds., Volksdichtung zwischen Mundlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit (Tubingen: Narr, 1989); Riittgers, Severin, Geschichte der deutschen Volksdichtung. Ein Buch fiir junge Deutsche (Berlin: Beltz, 1933). AMY HORNING MARSCHALL V o l k s k u n d e . While Johann Gottfried Herder is generally regarded as the originator of the concept of Volkskunde, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were among the first to publish significant collections of folkloristic material. A desire to preserve the past and to construct a national identity motivated the Grimms and informed their theory and practice. As is consistent with their theoretical convictions, the Grimm brothers failed to note the names of their sources in the annotations to their famous fairy tale collections, noting instead the regions where these individuals lived. Their sources were primarily upper- and middleclass women, including, among others, Johanna, Amalie, and Marie Hassenpflug; Catharina, Dorothea, Margareta, Elisabeth, and Mie Wild; Ludovica Jordis; Friederike Mannel; Annette von Droste-Hulshoff; and Dorothea Viehmann. The Grimms suppressed these names because they sought to capture the voice of the "folk," a voice they regarded as unified and expressive of a pure ethnic identity and a voice independent of social context. This orientation toward the text and the past and the suppression of women's voices are related legacies. These legacies persisted in the discipline of Volkskunde in Germany until well into the post-World War II era, despite the fact that Volkskunde had become intertwined with fascist ideology. In 1967, German students challenged the theoretical assumptions implicit in the traditional methods of Volkskunde, revolting against its antiquarian orientation and demanding a reorientation toward cultural theory. These developments parallel changes in the field of folklore in the United States, with the focus of investigation shifting from text to context and from products to processes. Since the discipline began to deal explicitly with the problem of the relationship between observer and observed, techniques for allowing a different voice to break through a dominant discourse and assert itself have been developed. Feminist approaches both contribute to, and profit from, this development, which is marked by reevaluations of the genres considered worthy of investigation and a critical awareness of the relationship between field-worker and informant. While special issues of major American journals, including the Journal of American Folklore (1987) and the Journal of Folklore Research (1988), have addressed feminist reevaluations of the theoretical assumptions of the field, feminist folklorists in Germany currently face strong resistance. The difficulty
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of changing the curricula in German Volkskunde departments may be, in part, due to the paucity of women in positions of power in the field. See also: Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von; Fairy Tale; Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory; Folk Song; Volksdichtung. References: Chmielewski-Hagius, Anita, et al., eds., Frauenalltag—Frauenforschung (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1988); Dow, James R., and Hannjost Lixfeld, eds. and trans., German Volkskunde: A Decade of Theoretical Confrontation, Debate, and Reorientation (1967-1977) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Fairer, Claire R., ed., Women and Folklore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975); Hollis, Susan Tower, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young, Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Jordan, Rosan A., and Susan J. Kalcik, eds., Women's Folklore, Women's Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); Radner, Joan Newlon, Feminist Messages: Coding in Women's Folk Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993). AMY HORNING MARSCHALL Volksmarchen—see: Fairy Tale Volkssage—see: Saga Volksstiick. In contrast to the English folk play, which connotes nonliterary, improvisational spectacle (e.g., mumming play), is often accompanied by song and dance (e.g., sword dance, morris dance), and is performed at village festivals by the villagers themselves, the German Volksstiick is a literary genre that can be traced to the late 18th century. It evolved as a form of entertainment for regional or local theaters, with its action set in the local milieu and written in the regional idiom. The cast of characters for the Volksstiick is drawn from the middle or lower classes, and the plots involve some disturbance of the normative, patriarchal social order that is resolved by the play's end. The traditional Volksstiick is sentimental in tone and tends to be a farce, fairy tale, or satirical comedy. It can be written in prose or verse, often with musical accompaniment. In the 1920s and 1930s, a subgenre, the critical Volksstiick, developed in the works of Marieluise FleiBer, Carl Zuckmayer, Odon von Horvath, Anna Gmeyner, and Bertolt Brecht. This new genre makes reference to certain conventions of the traditional Volksstiick (provincial milieu, realistic style, common people, locally colored idiom or dialect), but instead of idealizing this milieu and affirming the social order, it reveals how the protagonists are oppressed and how their frustrations often escalate into brutality and explode in violence. This form of critical Volksstiick, especially as represented by FleiBer and Horvath, served as a model for a revival of this genre among male dramatists like Martin Sperr, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Rainer Werner FaBbinder during the late 1960s and 1970s and among women dramatists like Elfriede Jelinek and Kerstin Specht in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although no women dramatists are usually listed in the current reference works as having written Volksstiicke during the 19th century, we do know now
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that a number of women were writing farces, fairy tale plays, satirical comedies, musicals, and operettas. Therefore, these texts still need to be examined to establish the extent to which women might have been involved in the production of the traditional Volksstiick. In the 20th century, this situation changes, as women dramatists like FleiBer, Gmeyner, Jelinek, and Specht have been instrumental in changing the parameters of the genre. One way in which FleiBer and Gmeyner have modified the critical Volksstiick has been by introducing gender (in addition to class, lack of education, or xenophobia) as a source of social oppression and by radically denying the sentimentality that still lingers on in the plays by their male counterparts. Jelinek plays a somewhat different role in her biting satire on the genre of the Posse mit Gesang in her play Burgtheater (1982), in which she links this dramatic tradition to fascism in Austria during the Anschlufi and has the symbolic embodiment of Austrian Volkstheater, Ferdinand Raimund's Alpenkonig, ritually executed on stage. A new generation of women dramatists, represented by Specht, is following in the footsteps of FleiBer but is integrating gender issues into the treatment of more topical themes like the provincial response to reunification. See also: Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Drama; FleiBer, Marieluise; Jelinek, Elfriede; Musical Theater; Operetta; Posse; Satire; Singspiel. References: Aust, Hugo, Peter Haida, and Jiirgen Hein, Volksstiick: Vom Hanswurstspiel zum sozialen Drama der Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 1989); Case, Sue-Ellen, ed., The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Cocalis, Susan L., and Ferrel Rose, eds., Thalia's Daughters: German Women Dramatists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Tubingen: Narr, 1996); Fuhrich, Angelika, Aufbriiche des Weiblichen im Drama der Weimarer Republik: Brecht-Fleifier-Horvdth-Gmeyner (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1992); Hassel, Ursula, and Herbert Herzmann, eds., Das zeitgenossische deutschsprachige Volksstiick (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1992); Schmitz, Thomas, Das Volksstiick (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990); Sieg, Katrin, Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists: Women in Contemporary German Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
SUSAN L. COCALIS Vormarz—see: Aston, Louise; Biedermeier; Frauenfrage; Otto-Peters, Louise; Realism; Revolution, German (1848); Young Germany. Vorspiel. A dramatic genre usually independent from the piece it precedes, the Vorspiel emerged during the 18th century from the Lustspiel tradition, a tradition in which women eagerly participated. Early Vorspiele were unrehearsed and formulaic, intended to provide comedie diversion and to fill out an evening's entertainment; therefore, they were frequently not written down. As the Vorspiel evolved, it took on a more formal identity and became more connected, both technically and thematically, to the main drama it preceded. In Ein deutsches Vorspiel (1734), Friederike Caroline Neuber set forth allegorically the central theatrical conflict of the day between the reform-minded
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Gottsched camp, to which Neuber herself belonged, and the proponents of the burlesque Hanswurst. To make her point, Neuber used the very medium, the Vorspiel, that was the mainstay of the burlesque Harlequin. Neuber's contemporary, Luise Gottsched, counts among her Vorspiele a more traditional comedy, Der beste Fiirst (1755). Other Vorspiele of the period include Karoline Luise von Klencke's Die Grazien (HIT) and the many Vorspiele by Sophie Charlotte Ackermann, an actress and director of a successful theatrical troupe. Ackermann's pieces never appeared in print. In the 19th century, the Vorspiel became a more integral part of the primary drama. Some Vorspiele still retained their own titles; for instance, in Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's oeuvre, Zulima is a Vorspiel to her romantic play Schlofigreifenstein oder Der Samtschuh (1828), Das Vermachtnis is a Vorspiel for Waldemars Traum (1831), and Die Verbannung is a Vorspiel for Robert der Teufel (1849). Wilhelmine von Hillern wrote a Vorspiel for the dramatization of her novel Die Geier-Wally entitled Die Klotze von Rafen (1880). Some Vorspiele became part of the whole and were identified only generically; for instance, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie's Der Schatten (1901) is described as a play in three acts with a Vorspiel. While most of these Vorspiele recalled their Lustspiel tradition, they could also display bitter sarcasm, as does delle Grazie's Vorspiel, Moralische Walpurgisnacht (1896), a call to revolution to overthrow the age of hypocrisy. See also: Comedy; Enlightenment; Nachspiel; Neuber, Friederike Caroline. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Miindigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); 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: 379-93; Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992); Mohrmann, Renate. "Von der Schandbuhne zur Schaubuhne: Friederike Karoline 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, 1991); 61-71. JANE CHEW
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w Wander, Maxie: Guten Morgen,
Du Schone:
Frauen in der
DDR. Protokolle ( 1 9 7 8 ) . Maxie Wander's collection of 17 Protokolle by East German women was one of the most important books to construct a female subject position that challenged the ostensibly gender-neutral concept of the socialist New Man, embodied by the worker-hero. A document of women's consciousness-raising in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), it called attention to the discrepancies between public and private acts and gender-specific experiences and questioned the egalitarian paradigm as a valid political goal for the future of socialism. The Protokolle chart a feminist departure from socialist gender ideology. The volume sets out with the voices of socialist women whom the GDR's gender policies and programs have turned into successful, selfassured, and unquestioning party members. While the speakers never question their gender identification, the reader is led to ask whether male standards guarantee a fulfilled life. These introductory stories mark the limit of the egalitarian ideology and signal the longing for alternatives, a longing that becomes explicit in the subsequent pieces. The largest group of the Protokolle presents women whose lives deviate from the norm and who raise criticism of "real existing socialism'' as a stagnant set of rules rather than a system inspiring its citizens with the spirit of collectivity, contending that socialist society has failed to cope with its fascist past by encouraging conformism and dogmatism instead of curiosity, risk taking, and the courage to change. The book also includes the voices of those women whose lives testify to the accomplishments of the GDR. Their personal knowledge of the past places the socialist state, despite all its flaws
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and shortcomings, in historical perspective as the most egalitarian model of human organization. Wander renders the ideological crisis of the GDR in the mid-1970s in the language of sexuality, when she reveals the sexual hierarchy in socialist Germany, topped by the privileged practice of heterosexual monogamy, as a collective collusion not unlike the petrified dogmas sustaining the political hierarchy and its party functionaries. The book displays a range of sexual experiences, expressions, and desires that challenge the sanctioned, monogamous norm, ranging from same-sex attraction to promiscuity and open relationships. The Protokolle suggest that a sexual ideology that ensures the division of erotic practices into correct and incorrect, moral and immoral through surveillance and self-censorship prevents, rather than facilitates, the identification of individuals with the larger social order. Wander thus politicized the private as the realm of emotions and energies the state should have tapped as a powerful, national resource, stressing the necessity to break the silence concealing individual differences, doubts, questions, experiments, and errors in the process of becoming socialist. While expanding the parameters of gender performance, however, Wander's book duplicated certain silences and invisibilities within the dominant discourse. Despite the many erotic moments between women, representations of lesbian sexuality or lifestyles are missing from this book, along with those dissident voices who did not share the unspoken consensus of Wander's interviewees, that socialism, despite its many flaws, was preferable to capitalism. Wander turned personal narratives into poetic literature while maintaining the fiction of authenticity, a technique that enabled her to sidestep censorship. Overtly political references are missing from the text; yet, as a whole, the collection puts into doubt the patriarchal assumptions underlying socialist gender legislation. See also: GDR Literature; Protokolle', Socialism; Utopia. References: Lennox, Sara, "Nun ja! Das nachste Leben geht aber heute an: Prosa von Frauen und Frauenbefreiung in der DDR." Literatur der DDR in den siebziger Jahren. Ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Patricia Herminghouse (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1983) 224-58; Sieg, Katrin, "Subjectivity and Socialism: Feminist Discourses in East Germany." Postcommunism and the Body Politic. Ed. Ellen Berry (Ithaca: New York University Press, 1995) 105-33. KATRIN SIEG
W a n d e r t h e a t e r . Influenced by traveling English, Dutch, and Italian acting companies, traveling theater troupes became a dominant form of German theater in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since there were no large cities as cultural centers able to support permanent theaters, acting companies traveled throughout German territory, performing mostly improvised comedy. At this time, acting was one of the few professions open to women, and women became indispensable to these troupes in the last quarter of the 17th century. Despite the poverty,
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insecurity, uncertainty, rigorous work, and outsider status that accompanied acting, this profession gave women a sense of independence not otherwise possible. Every Wandertheater was headed by a Prinzipal/in or director who secured permission from a city or ruling prince for the troupe to perform in the city or at court. She or he also took care of the actors' contracts and wages, secured the usually primitive stage, and was liable to the city and creditors. Many troupes were essentially a family enterprise, and women often came to this profession through their husbands or fathers. Several women took over the directorship of the companies as Prinzipalin upon their husbands' death. One well-known example of this is Catharina Elisabeth Velten, who successfully assumed directorship of her troupe for many years after her husband's death and who also wrote one of the first convincing defenses of theater and women in the theater in response to a theological attack on the profession. The Prinzipalin Caroline Neuber was one of the most influential of all Wandertheater directors. Best known for her efforts to reform German theater practices, particularly for ridding the stage of the Harlequin, she attempted to raise the level of the Wandertheater by replacing the improvised comedies with the French alexandrine play favored by Johann Christoph Gottsched. To serve as prototypes for this new theater, Neuber herself authored about 30 dramas, 3 of which survive in print {Ein deutsches Vorspiel, 1734; Das Schdferfest, 1754; and Die Verehrung der Vollkommenheit, 1737). As an actor and director, Neuber indisputably influenced the subsequent course of German theater. Toward the end of the 18th century, as theaters began to be established in cities, traveling troupes increasingly became more attached to the town or court theater. Whereas women had been influential as actors, dramatists, and directors of the Wandertheater, the more secure lifestyle of the stehende Theater was obtained at the price of an increased dependence on male patrons or directors. Although some women assumed directorships of established theaters, like Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's directorship of the Stadttheater in Zurich (1837-1842), most women were relegated to limited character roles and barred from influential organizational positions. See also: Court Theater; Enlightenment; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Vorspiel. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit (Munich: DTV, 1989); Meyer, Reinhart, "Von der Wanderbuhne zum Hof- und Nationaltheater." Deutsche Aufklarung bis zur franzosischen Revolution. 1680-1789. Ed. Rolf Grimminger (Munich: Hanser, 1980) 186-216; Mohrmann, Renate, "Von der Schandbuhne zur Schaubuhne. 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, 1991) 61-71. ELIZABETH G. AMETSBICHLER War—see: Pacifism; Wars of Liberation; World War I; World War II
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Wars of Liberation ( 1 8 1 3 - 1 8 1 5 ) . The Wars of Liberation (Befreiung skriege) against Napoleon Bonaparte's rule over portions of Germany unified many patriots and created a wave of enthusiasm for one German nation. Citizens became involved in the national defense. Prussian, Austrian, British, and Swedish troops defeated the emperor at Leipzig in October 1813. Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated in June 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. That same year, the Congress of Vienna led to a German Confederation of 39 German states and cities. The Wars of Liberation changed the way that the public perceived women and their contributions to contemporary political events. No longer reduced to the supporting role of nursing wounded soldiers or selling and trading in the war camps, a few daring women crossed the line into a territory that men had kept under tight control: fighting for the homeland. Through letters and literary evidence, these departures from traditional behavior became widely known. Eleonore Prochaska, for example, was hailed by many writers and newspapers as Germany's Jeanne d'Arc. The daughter of a staff sergeant who had grown up in the military environment, Prochaska decided to take the defense of her homeland into her own hands and, disguised as a man, enlisted with the Ltitzow Free Corps in early 1813 under the name August Renz. During the first weeks, she wrote one of the two extant letters in which she defends her decision to become a soldier with her refusal to be considered "a coward while everyone around me is determined to engage in this honorable fight." Prochaska fought during the months until September in the famous Ltitzow Corps of Volunteers until she was fatally wounded and died on October 5, 1813, in Dannenberg. A fellow comrade, Friedrich Forster, wrote a poem about her, titled "Eine Heldin' ': ' 'Da unten auf grtiner Heide tot/Da lag eine Jungfrau zart/Prochaska war sie gehei6en-Das tapferste Madchen in PreuBen!/Sie war mein Kamerad!" Prochaska's courage and heroic acts inspired many other artists, for example, Ludwig van Beethoven and Ernst Moritz Arndt, to use her as a leitmotif. The case of Anna Luhring shows the suspicion the German public had against women of the sword. It illustrates the limited scope the Wars of Liberation had on improving woman's rights in 19th-century Germany. Purity, patriotism, and virginity were the mold from which a few female role models emerged. The Allgemeines Preufiisches Landrecht, which remained in effect until 1900, required a father's or a husband's consent to a woman's deed in any public affair. Luhring had enrolled in the battalion of Friedrich (Turnvater) Jahn in the Ltitzow Corps in February 1814, without her father's consent, under the pseudonym Eduard Kruse. She was noted for continued heroic service and was honorably discharged in May, following the peace treaty of April 1814. She was, however, not welcomed at home and had to remain in Berlin: her father did not want to deal with his ungerathene daughter, although Marianne of Prussia and many others gave testimony to Ltihring's proper conduct. The lore of the Wars of Liberation, produced by the poets of the Ltitzow Corps, musicians, and countless writers, presented a third sex to the public: the
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German Heldenjungfrau. However, women in Germany were no better off after the Liberation Wars than their counterparts in France had been after the French Revolution. Women remained outside the political mainstream because female liberation fighters were immobilized by being placed on heroic pedestals or by never being acknowledged. See also: Allgemeines PreuBisches Landrecht; Gender Transformation; Heroine; Mannweib; Revolution, French; Virgin. References: Dalhoff, Jutta, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Scholl, eds., Frauenmacht in der Geschichte. Beitrdge des Historikerinnentreffens 1985 zur Frauengeschichtsforschung (Dtisseldorf: Schwann, 1985); Grubitzsch, Helga, ed., Grenzgangerinnen: Revolutionare Frauen im 18. und. 19. Jahrhundert. Weibliche Wirklichkeit und mannliche Phantasien (Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1985); Klein, Tim, ed., Die Befreiung 1813-1814-1815. Urkunden, Berichte, Briefe (Ebenhausen: Langewiesche-Brandt, 1913); Konig, Helmut, ed., Patrioten in Wort und Tat: Lehrer und Schiller, Professoren und Studenten im Befreiungskrieg (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1963); Weber, Ernst, Lyrik der Befreiungskriege (1812-1815): Gesellschaftliche Meinungs- und Willensbildung durch Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991). ROLAND H. SPECHT-JARVIS
Weimar Republic ( 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 3 3 ) . Germany's first experiment in democracy, occasioned by Germany's defeat in World War I rather than by mass support, failed when the republic voided its own Constitution and ceded power to the Nazi Party. At the dawn of a modern, technological age, the Weimar period witnessed turbulent socioeconomic changes (introduction of the assembly line, dramatic increase in office workers, etc.), along with an explosion of cultural innovation (Dadaism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Bauhaus, etc.), and became a battlefield between reactionary and progressive forces. Under the impact of a newly developing urban mass culture, distinctions between popular and elitist art blurred; class differences, moral concepts, and sexual taboos abated. For the first time in German history, women were enfranchised; but despite relative democratization and women's heightened visibility in public places, many felt ambivalent about their new position. Fierce debates about their role in the workforce and the prohibition of abortion stood in sharp contrast to the emerging concept of the New Woman, a young emancipated female in control of her reproductive rights, dressed in masculine clothes, and earning wages. German women writers responded to the Weimar era's new social reality by depicting young, independent female protagonists in a society on the edge between radical changes and a fascist backlash. Women's sexual liberation, illegitimate pregnancies, and the conflict between love/marriage and career became recurring themes. The older generation of women writers—the most renowned among them were Gabriele Reuter, Helene Bohlau, and Clara Viebig—seemed to seek a stabilizing effect on Weimar's social turmoil: their protagonists tend to be young, commendable women who are momentarily led astray by loosened sexual morals but who ultimately embrace the (albeit redefined) nurturing role
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as their purpose in life. Marieluise FleiBer, Irmgard Keun, and Gabriele Tergit, however, are indicative of a new generation of writers that emerged in the late 1920s. Their works, written in a more fragmentary, disjointed, and at times satiric manner, portray ambivalent and disoriented women situated in an increasingly technology- and market-oriented society, thereby questioning the very essence of femininity and displaying its commodification instead. See also: Angestelltlnnenroman; Dadaism; FleiBer, Marieluise; National Socialism; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Realism; Reuter, Gabriele; Suffrage; Technology; World War I. References: Bridenthal, Renate, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review, 1984); Kaes, Anton, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); 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: 220-35, Trennungs-Spuren. Frauenliteratur der zwanziger Jahre (Frankfurt/M.: extrabuch, 1984). URSULA HORSTMANN-NASH W e n d e , D i e . This refers to a dramatic period of mass mobilization in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), resulting in the 1989 collapse of the socialist regime. It began with a massive (self-)expatriation of GDR citizens by way of the Austro-Hungarian border in August 1989; thousands more sought refuge in embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest, provoking GDR-residents to join in church-sponsored "peace hours" conducted each Monday, the first of which were held in Leipzig. The Socialist Unity Party (SED) staged a major celebration, marking its 40th anniversary on October 7, 1989; it responded to protesters demanding freedom with extensive acts of police brutality and mass arrests. The actual "turningpoint" (Wende) occurred on October 9th in Leipzig, when reform-minded SED officials refused to use force against 70,000 silent-march participants; protest spread throughout the country. Erich Honecker resigned on October 18, and the Berlin Wall was opened (due to miscommunication among Politburo members) on November 9; die Wende ended with the first free elections of March 18, culminating in unification on October 3, 1990. Women played significant leadership roles in hundreds of "illegal" prodemocracy, peace, and ecology movements, creating an organizational framework for the 1989 protests. Frauen fiir den Frieden, formed in 1982 under the protection of the Lutheran Church, attracted many potential reformists, influenced by the actions of Ulrike Poppe, Ingrid Koppe, Barbel Bohley, and Vera Wollenberger. In 1985 Poppe helped to create the Initiative fiir Menschenrechte\ human rights activist Marianne Birthler became a cofounder of the Greens and later minister for education in Brandenburg. Koppe and Bohley joined Jens Reich in creating Neues Forum, which competed in all four 1990 elections as
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Bundnis 90/Die Griinen. Die Weiberrunde (Women's Circle), including Christa Wolf, Daniela Dahn, Helga Konigsdorf, and Helga Schutz, composed the Schriftstellerverband's first formal resolution criticizing the SED; Wolf coauthored the appeal "Fiir unser Land," urging would-be exiles to stay and join in democratization processes. Dahn was a cofounder of Demokratischer Aufbruch and served on the first committee investigating top Stasi officials; Angelika Barbe, a cofounder of Demokratie Jetzt and the SPD-East, was elected to the Volkskammer and the Bundestag, as were Wollenberger and Koppe (Bundnis '90/Die Griinen). December 1989 saw the birth of the Unabhdngiger Frauenverband (UVF), one of only three "native" parties to compete in pre- and post-unity elections. Founding member Tatiane Bohm served as a minister without portfolio in the transitional Round-Table government of Hans Modrow (November-March 1990). Women functioned as local Round-Table delegates throughout the GDR, addressing the prosecution of Stasi abuses, abortion rights, environmental rehabilitation, and economic conversion, yet neither Bundnis 90 nor the UVF secured more than 3 percent of the vote in the first free elections; women's share of parliamentary seats fell from 30 percent under the old regime to 20 percent (total) in the first all-German Bundestag. Many now argue that the events of 1989-1990 constituted an implosion rather than a turnaround, merely replacing one patriarchal system with another. See also: Unification, German; Wolf, Christa. References: Dodds, Dinah, and Pam Allen-Thompson, eds., The Wall in My Backyard: East German Women in Transition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); Knabe, Hubertus, ed., Aufbruch in eine andere DDR. Reformer und Oppositionelle zur Zukunft ihres Landes (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990); Kolinsky, Eva, Women in Contemporary Germany: Life, Work, and Politics Providence, RI: Berg, 1993); Links, Christoph, and Hannes Bahrmann, Wir sind das Volk. Die DDR im Aufbruch. Eine Chronik (Berlin: Aufbau, 1990); Nickel, Hildegard M., "Sex-Role Socialization in Relationships as a Function of the Division of Labor: A Sociological Explanation for the Reproduction of Gender Differences." The Quality of Life in the German Democratic Republic: Changes and Developments in a State Socialist Society. Ed. Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Christine Lemke. Trans. Michel Vale (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1989) 44-58; Rosenberg, Dorothy, "Shock Therapy: GDR Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market Economy." Signs 17.1 (Autumn 1991): 129-51.
JOYCE MARIE MUSHABEN W e s t German Literature—see: FRG Literature (1949-1990); FRG Literature (since 1990) W h o r e . The female prostitute has been a prevalent figure in German literature for centuries; she served to entertain, to stimulate, to shock, to arouse social consciousness, and to distinguish the moral from the immoral. The rise of Christianity prompted the prostitute's moral condemnation and exacerbated her social
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marginalization. Numerous early Christian legends, among them Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim's play Abraham (c.960), focus on prostitutes, mainly to portray their salvation. In medieval works by men, the whore gains her literary status mainly as antipode to virgin and wife, a tradition that continues until well into the 18th century (Lady Milford in Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, 1784; Grafin Orsina in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti, 1772). By the end of the 19th century, prostitution had become one of the most pressing social problems of the rapidly growing European urban areas. The representation of whores in German literature from the fin de siecle onward varies from moralistic condemnations to a growing number of social appeals and shocking provocations. Especially her potential to provoke was utilized by numerous authors (Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen, 1896, Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist, 1895, and Die Biichse der Pandora, 1904). In expressionist works, the whore appears as the New Woman, as icon of modern capitalism, as the personification of the power of eros, as streetwalking personification of destruction and liberation at the same time. Female authors of the time approach prostitution mostly from a critical point of view and depict the lives of whores to illustrate social injustice, bourgeois prejudice, and the hardship of this profession. One of the most successful of these works was Else Jerusalem's Der heilige Skarabaus (1909). It is a novel about the life of a prostitute but simultaneously serves as a call for compassion and a condemnation of society's treatment of prostitutes. Margarethe Bohme also told a prostitute's life story in Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1905). In this work, the everyday life of prostitutes is described in a detailed and critical, albeit rather sentimental, manner. Society's condemnation of whores is criticized by Jerusalem, Bohme, and Amely Bolte (e.g., Die Gefallene, 1882), because it sustains the milieu by marginalizing the prostitute, making escape and reintegration impossible. Use Frapan's play Die Better der Moral (1905) centers around the abolitionists' fight for the end of regulated prostitution. It depicts a young proletarian female, wrongly accused of prostitution, who is forced to undergo a physical examination during which she is raped. The play ends with the young woman's suicide. Her death serves as a powerful criticism of the state's regulation of prostitution, which enabled authorities to arrest and physically examine any unaccompanied woman suspected of prostitution. Emmy BallHennings depicted the fate of a young woman who turns to prostitution as means of survival in her novel Das Brandmal. Ein Tagebuch (1920). See also: Dadaism; Erotic Literature; Expressionism; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; New Woman; Prostitution; Protagonist/Antagonist; Virgin. References: Borst, Eva, Uber jede Scham erhaben. Das Problem der Prostitution im literarischen Werk von Else Jerusalem, Margarete Bohme und Use Frapan unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Sittlichkeits- und Sexualreformbewegung der Jahrhundertwende (New York: Lang, 1993); McCombs, Nancy, Earth Spirit, Victim, or Whore? The Prostitute in German Literature, 1880-1925 (New York: Lang, 1986); Roberts,
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Nickie, Whores in History. Prostitution in Western Society (London: HarperCollins, 1992); Roth-Muller, Christel, Die Verfemte in der Literatur (New York: Lang, 1994). CHRISTIANE SCHONFELD
Widerstandsbewegung—see: Resistance Wild W o m a n . Wild People—women, men, and children—figure among the demonic characters in folktales and Romantic literature. They represent that part of the psyche or the animate world that is untamed and incomprehensible. Wild People, male and female, play an important role in the folk tradition of the European Alpine regions, where they are said to roam the mountains and valleys alone or in groups. The men are attributed impish and frightening traits, but the women, also referred to as selige Frduleins or Salige, can assume goddesslike qualities. Occasionally they have individual names such as Stuze or Muze. Like Devil figures, to whom similarly strange sounding names are ascribed, they often appear dressed in green. Wild People are ambiguous—they may be helpful, kind, and industrious, but they can also be malicious and lure human children away from their homes. Like witches, Wild Women are said to be of great beauty and cunning, particularly when it comes to seducing human men. They are noted for their alluring singing and their ability to soar through the skies on clear, moonlit nights. Wild People and similar characters such as Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid are often depicted in intimate relationships with humans, even as their spouses. In contrast to the water sprite Loreley of Heinrich Heine's and Clemens Brentano's poems, Wild Women are earth sprites, capable of hard work. Their marriages or other relationships with humans are usually described as exceedingly happy and advantageous to the human partner, but they end tragically because the human partner or employer transgresses a taboo specified by the woman before the wedding (e.g., maltreating the Wild Woman, asking about the wife's name or family, touching her in a certain way, or using profane language). Since the Wild Woman is often portrayed as inarticulate or mute, she can be used to represent the ultimate "other" and become a cipher for men's alienation from nature. Particularly, the dangerous Wild Woman seductress or avenger symbolizes the realm of the supernatural and the uncanny. Male authors portray Wild Women as enigmatic and either as inferior or as superior to humans, for example, the "brown girl" in Adalbert Stifter's novella Katzensilber (1853) or the Wild Woman in Felix Mitterer's drama Die wilde Frau (1986). Feminist writers and critics tend to adopt the perspective of the Wild Women protagonists, interpreting their rebelliousness as a liberating force and as a woman's potential for self-realization, however risky, as is the case in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992) (satirized by Barbara Graham, Women Who Run with the Poodles, 1994). Ingeborg Bachmann's Undine figure in "Undine geht" (1961), Rahel Hutmacher's Wild Woman in Wildleute (1986), and,
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to some extent, Elizabeth Cunningham's The Wild Mother (1993) reflect the suffering and disappointment of women under patriarchy. In the latter two works, the negative relationships with men are counterbalanced by the experience of motherhood. The portrayal of these mythological figures by women authors expresses frustration and disagreement with male discourse, which does not offer women opportunity for identification, while the images of the male authors denote apprehension vis-a-vis the female realm and what is perceived as chaotic nature. To contain the "other," authors reify female figures and turn them into signifiers of the voiceless and nameless "other." By demystifying Wild Women and witches and by taking the side of these human/animal hybrids who inspire desire and contempt, women writers make them appear familiar and assign men and " h u m a n s " under patriarchy the role of the dangerous, inscrutable, and monstrous "other." In feminist texts, the Wild Woman figure serves as a vehicle for social and political criticism. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Demon; Goddess; Mythical Female Figures; Vampirism; Volksdichtung; Witch. References: Bachtold-Staubli, Hanns, Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1935/1993) 967-69; Cunningham, Elizabeth, The Wild Mother (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1993); Estes, Clarissa Pinkola, Women Who Run with the Wolves (New York: Ballantine, 1992); Graham, Barbara, Women Who Run with the Poodles (New York: Avon Books, 1994); Hutmacher, Rahel, Wildleute (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1986); Mitterer, Felix, Die wilde Frau (Munich: Friedl Brehm, 1986); Schmolders, Claudia, ed., Die wilde Frau (Cologne: Diederichs, 1984); Thomas, Sue, ed., The Wild Woman Reader. Contemporary Short Stories for Women Who Run with Wolves (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1994). DAGMAR C. G. LORENZ W i s e w o m a n . This is a woman skilled in medicine or healing, also a soothsayer, diviner, or magician. During the medieval and early modern periods, wisewomen provided the bulk of medical care to both men and women, either in the household or as practitioners recognized by their communities. Since they had neither university sanction, state licensure, nor guild regulation, wisewomen may be counted among the empirics. Their skills included physical healing, applying prayers and blessings, charms, rituals, and amulets, knowledge of herbs, and preparation of remedies from herbal and animal sources. Wisewomen who were primarily diviners may also be included among health practitioners, since healing and divination were related in prognosis. Knowledge of European wisewomen is based on anthropological parallels from modern, nonindustrial societies as well as on a wide range of historical and literary sources (from Norse sagas to Middle High German texts). The term "wisewoman" was narrowed to mean midwife, but not before the 15th century, when midwifery itself emerged from the fund of shared knowledge to become both a recognized and a regulated specialization. It is also necessary
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to distinguish between wisewomen who were healers and the discerning and upright matrons called wisewomen who were consulted in legal cases to determine virginity, pregnancy, and so on. Records of witchcraft trials show that wisewoman was a social role vulnerable to accusations. Care must be taken, though, to determine whether victims were charged or simply identified as wisewomen, since women's healing and beneficent magic were presumably valued and ongoing aspects of rural life. Although depictions of wisewomen in medieval literature cannot be taken as historical evidence, they do reveal positive medieval attitudes toward women's healing as an aspect of elite gender identity. A depiction of a literary wisewoman is found in one of the earliest medieval texts, Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit (c.1170). The most famous example from the German tradition is the wise Queen Isolde, mother of the heroine, in Gottfried von StraBburg's Tristan (c.1210). Recognized throughout her realm as a consummate healer, she understands poisons and their antidotes, prescribes medicinal baths, discovers fraud at court in her dreaming, and brews the love potion. Arnive, the wise old queen in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (1200-1210), treats arrow and claw wounds, administers drugs to induce sleep, and has prayers said for her patient. Medieval literature contains many additional depictions of healers who can be defined contextually as wisewomen, although the term is not mentioned. The various healers in Hartmann von Aue's Erec (all80)—Famurgan, Guinevere, the sisters of the dwarf king Guivreiz, even the heroine Enite—belong to this group. Wisewomen continued to be the subject of narrative well beyond the Middle Ages. In Critische Dichtkunst (1740), Johann Jakob Breitinger noted that stories of wisewomen, witches, magicians, spooks, and knights errant were popular among the literate masses. About a century later the Grimm brothers collected fairy tales in which the ubiquitous witch figure is occasionally contrasted with the wisewoman or "good witch" who uses similar skills for beneficent ends ("Die Gansemagd am Brunnen," "Dornroschen," both 1812). The concept of the wisewoman and her contribution to cultural history require further research, which may result, for instance, in a better understanding of the relationship among physical, magical, and religious healing—interrelated aspects that traditional scholarship has tended to separate. In terms of feminist epistemology, the wisewoman exemplifies "lebensweltliches Wissen" versus the "wissenschaftliches Wissen" derived from written authority. See also: Fairy Tale; Inquisition; Medieval Literature; Witch. References: Green, Monica H., "Documenting Medieval Women's Medical Practice." Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death. Ed. Luis Garcia Ballester et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 322-52, "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14.2 (1989): 434-73; Haupt, Barbara, "Heilung von Wunden." An den Grenzen hofischer Kultur: Anfechtungen der Lebensordnung in der deutschen Erzdhldichtung des hohen Mittelalters. Ed. Gert Kaiser (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1991) 77-113; Horsley,
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Richard A., "Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9.4 (1979): 689-715; Hughes, Muriel Joy, Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literature (New York: King's Crown Press, 1943); Scherzer, Ricarda, Hebammen: Weise Frauen oder Technikerinnen? Zum Wandel eines Berufsbildes (Frankfurt/M.: Inst. fiir Kulturanthropologie und Europaische Ethnologie, 1988).
SARAH WESTPHAL Witch. As part of the second wave of the women's movement and the post19608 interest in the marginal and repressed, a large body of interdisciplinary scholarship on the European witch hunts (15th to 17th centuries) has developed among feminists, historians, and theologians. The persecution of witches occurred during the period that fell between medieval and Enlightenment thinking: demonology was a strong component of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. The Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Johann Sprenger established in their catechism of demonology, Malleus Maleficarum (1486), that witchcraft arises from carnal lust, which they viewed as insatiable in women. Together with Jean Bodin's Demonomanie (1580), their writing paved the way for the systematic demonization, defamation, and persecution of women as sexually impure, erotic, and instinctual beings. The view of witchcraft as a Devil-worshiping heresy was supported by religious and secular authorities. Demonologists' treatises and forced confessions made by suspects after they had been tortured reflect distinctive elements of witchcraft. Trial documents are more indicative of folk beliefs than official theory and establish accusations against sorceresses, wisewomen practicing beneficent magic, and midwives, as well as wisewomen working with charms and spells and witches endowed with supernatural powers to do harm. The real existence of "witches" as members of Satanic cults or of an organized pre-Christian fertility religion was maintained by earlier studies, but has, more recently, been disclaimed. The "witch" fell prey to the power struggle between the church and the flourishing sciences. To the church, she represented a threat because of her alleged claim of domination, and to the scientific community, her magical oneness with nature was a counterforce to the Enlightenment call for rational control over nature. By diagnosing women's melancholy, depression, and insanity as manifestations of alleged magic-demonic powers, the medical profession, attempting to establish itself as a science and to free itself of medieval magic, degraded women to pitiful, insane creatures who belonged in lunatic asylums. In fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, Basile, and Charles Perrault, the stereotypical witch figure is a woman casting spells and possessing various magical powers or knowledge of occult sciences. The stereotype was promoted in images of resentful or abusive stepmothers and women with intense passions, aiding or hindering young love, cursing or transforming youths, and harming or imprisoning children and young women. In the 1970s and 1980s, a new image of the witch emerged in the women's movement, in feminist discourse, and in literary texts by women, particularly
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by East German women writers such as Sarah Kirsch (Zauberspruche, 1972), Irmtraud Morgner (Amanda. Ein Hexenroman, 1983), Elke Willkomm (Hexensommer, 1984), and Renate Apitz (Hexenzeit, 1986). The witch appears in these texts as a political model that contains the potential for autonomy and resistance (denied to witches during the historical witch-hunts) against patriarchal oppression and society's definition of woman. In texts by German women writers (often with allegorical, symbolic, and mythological dimensions and elements of the fantastic or fairy tale), the witch becomes a source of reflection, commemoration, and identification because she defies cultural expectations of women and exists as the marginalized Other in society. See also: Demon; Enlightenment; Fairy Tale; Fantastic Literature; Inquisition; Madwoman; Morgner, Irmtraud; Reformation; Renaissance Humanism; Wisewoman. References: Becker, Gabriele, et al., eds., Aus der Zeit der Verzweiflung. Zur Genese und Aktualitdt des Hexenbildes (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1977); 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; Bovenschen, Silvia. "The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch, Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature." New German Critique 15 (1978): 83-119; Daly, Mary, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978); Horsley, Ritta Jo, and Richard A. Horsley, "On the Trail of the 'Witches': Wise Women, Midwives and the European Witch Hunts." Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 1-28. BARBARA MABEE Wolf, Christa ( 1 9 2 9 - p r e s e n t ) . Christa Wolf is one of the most important writers in contemporary Germany; she has won major literary prizes, her books have been translated into many languages, and she is appreciated not only by critics but by a sizable reading public. Although her works before 1989 evidenced an increasingly critical stance toward state socialism, she remained in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and continued to believe in the possibility of a more humane socialism. This Utopian vision is linked with her belief in the power of literature to change the world. Although she has never identified herself as a feminist, her writing increasingly demonstrates a feminist vision. Her works deal with the development of what she calls truly human beings and the search for a way to balance the needs of such individuals with those of the collective. Her style is experimental, incorporating flashbacks and various narrative strategies and perspectives; in most of her works she finds ways to engage the reader in her search. She is conscious of writing within a German tradition and repeatedly affirms the legacy of reason; she has, however, long warned about the danger of its being instrumentalized. Her best-known work is Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968), in which the self-examination that has continued to be a focus in her fiction, as well as the
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attempt to find a balance between the individual and collective, was first incorporated. This concern has also provided one of the underpinnings for her ouevre and has brought her into conflict with the doctrines of socialist realism. Other major works include Kindheitsmuster (1976), in which she turned to autobiographical fiction to explore her own repressed and/or forgotten childhood in Hitler's Germany; Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979), in which she focuses on the Romantic generation of outsiders to indirectly express her own discontent with GDR state socialism; Kassandra (1983), her overtly feminist scrutiny of Western culture and the resulting identification of the roots of aggression in Greek patriarchy; and Storfall (1987), in which she struggles with the relative importance of scientific technology only days after the Chernobyl disaster. Since the Wende, she has continued to publish essays and other nonfictional works, has given occasional speeches, and has tried to find some anonymity to continue her writing, most recently in California. From the beginning of her career, politics has entered into the reception of her works: in the West she was often lauded in proportion to the criticism she endured in the East. Her reception has continued to be highly politicized, especially after the publication of the semiautobiographical Was bleibt—written in 1979, reworked in 1989, and published in 1990—and the revelation of her Stasi contacts of the early 1960s. Although she and Was bleibt have been harshly denounced, often by the very critics who had earlier supported her, the controversy surrounding its publication is, ironically, one more testimony to her stature in Germany: it sparked a fierce debate about the legitimacy of GDR literature and the GDR itself and has come to be referred to as the Christa Wolf controversy. See also: Autobiography; GDR Literature; Gender Transformation; Gesinnungsasthetik; Prizes, Literary; Romanticism; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Subjective Authenticity; Technology; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Wende, Die. References: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, "On Multiple Selves and Dialogics: Christa Wolf's Challenge to the 'Enlightened' Faust." Impure Reason: Dialectic of Enlightenment in Germany. Ed. W. Daniel Wilson and Robert C. Holub (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993) 65-86; Fries, Marilyn, ed., Responses to Christa Wolf: Critical Essays (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Hornigk, Therese, Christa Wolf (Gottingen: Steidl, 1989); Kuhn, Anna, Christa Wolfs Utopian Vision: From Marxism to Feminism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER W o m a n W r i t e r . At least until (and frequently into) the 20th century, the woman writer as a literary figure has received harsh treatment in literature by men (beginning with Friedrich Schiller's poem "Die beriihmte Frau. Epistel eines Ehemanns an einen andern"). Common epithets for women who ventured into the overwhelmingly male literary marketplace included "Blaustrumpf" "Manning "Federfuchserin," "Unterrock-Autor," and "Schmiererin." Concepts that justified women's literary activities were usually restrictive. The Emp-
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findsamkeit (Sentimentality), for example, presumed that men's writing was firmly rooted in (intellectual) culture but valued women's writing for its "natural" propensities. This move precluded the possibility of cultural meaning's being expressed in women's literature and denied the authors access to a man's education. (In his foreword to Sophie von La Roche's novel Die Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim, \11\, Christoph Martin Wieland cites La Roche's poor orthography as proof of her "natural" mode of writing.) Unlike literature by men, which was the product of education, intellect, and deliberation, women's literature supposedly came into being fully formed from the subconscious or unconscious (which by implication precluded the possibility of a literary career for women). For women writers, a reinterpretation of these concepts in general and of the woman writer in particular became a challenge and a necessity. Many women writers of the Middle Ages, Reformation, and Baroque identified themselves as the woman writer in question and cited, in defense of their literary activities, the highest male authority of all: God. Examples are Mechthild von Magdeburg's "Von diesem Buche," Argula von Grumbach's "Ain Antwort in Gedichth" (1523), and Anna Owena Hoyers' poem "An den christlichen Leser" (1650). As of the 18th century, works distinguished more clearly between the woman writer as a literary figure and the actual author, although it can be assumed that in many works, the woman writer stands symbolically for the author's own literary activity. The first and most consequential move in this direction was La Roche's Sternheim, in which the heroine, who is also one of the narrators of the novel, defines herself and the world around her through her writing in a manner unparalleled until that time. In the novel, Sternheim's authorship falls into two genres: her diaries enable her to survive even the most destructive attacks on her authorship and personality (the rape by Lord Derby and her captivity in the Scottish mountains); and her letters enable her to share her views with others, to teach—which is one of the foremost goals identified in the novel. As is the case in many other novels by women, Sternheim's authorship ends with her marriage. What in Sternheim is merely an apparent coincidence—the end of authorship with the onset of marriage—is later thematized expressly and becomes one of the most ardent dilemmas in women's discussion of women's writing. In Meta Liebeskind's novel Maria. Eine Geschichte in Briefen (1784), the alternatives offered to writing women (marriage, death, silence, renunciation) are played out in the exchange of letters among the three friends and narrators Marie, Sophie, and Julie. The most radical interpretation of marriage as the end of authorship and the death of the author is offered in Maria Anna Sagar's novel Karolinens Tagebuch (1774). The death of Karoline's authorship by her marriage to Karl is described in the author's last entry ("Und jezt soil ich schon aufhoren zu schreiben; soil denn unsere Hochzeit so einfach weg ablaufen? nichts ausserordentliches vorfallen?") and symbolized in the elimination of the
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author's name (Karoline), that is, its mutilation and subsumption in her fiance's name (Karl). In dramas by women, the woman writer frequently appears as a character. Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff s comedy Perdu! oder Dichter, Verleger, und Blaustriimpfe (1840) is an ironic commentary on the distinction made between men writers (Dichter) and women writers (Blaustriimpfe). At the end of the play, the author Frau von Thielen withdraws her poems from a publication contract because she realizes that publication would expose her to public ridicule: women writers are left with the choice to write either unpublished "Gedichte" or published "Bagatellen." The fact that these prejudices continued unabated throughout the century is demonstrated in Marie Giinther's comedy Sammelfieber (1887). Almost 50 years after Droste-Hulshoff' s play, Gunther set out to prove that not every woman writer is, as is frequently claimed in the drama, "ein Blaustrumpf . . . , von erschreckender Magerkeit, mit kurz abgeschnittenen Haaren und einer Brille auf der, aus Wissensstolz moglichst hochgetragenen Nase!" The play supports this interpretation, since the figure of the author Marianne, who is beautiful, feminine, a loving wife and dedicated housewife, always publishes under a male pseudonym and proves her "femininity" in several venomous outbursts against "emancipated" women. The message of Giinther's drama, namely, that women writers are quite capable of being happy (and submissive) housewives, is relativized in Elsa Bernstein's more complex naturalistic drama Wir Drei (1891). Its author-figure Sascha sacrifices love and friendship to her profession; at the extremely ambivalent conclusion of the play, she follows her calling but pays for her continued authorship with permanent loneliness and suffering. See also: Authorship; Baroque Literature; Emanze; Erudite Woman; Gender Theories, History of; Geschlechtscharaktere; Hoyers, Anna Owena; Kiinstlerdrama; La Roche, Sophie von; Marriage; Medieval Literature; Naturalism; Preface; Reformation; Sentimentality; University Education, Women's. References: Jirku, Brigitte E., "Wollen Sie mit Nichts. . . Ihre Zeit versplittern?" Ich-Erzahlerin und Erzahlstruktur in von Frauen verfafiten Romanen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1994); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992).
SUSANNE KORD W o m e n in German (U.S.). The Coalition of Women in German (WIG) is an association for feminist studies in German literature, language, and culture. WIG provides its members with information, access to a support network, and opportunities to present and publish their work. Regular publications include a quarterly newsletter and the Women in German Yearbook, a refereed journal; an annual WIG conference has been held since 1976. A collaborative spirit and a commitment to feminist goals have shaped the organization's structure as well as its scholarly and pedagogical goals from the beginning.
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WIG's history parallels that of the American women's studies movement, which began in the late 1960s as the academic branch of the women's liberation movement. Professors and students of German who wanted to integrate feminism into their teaching and research were hampered by the conservatism of the field, the (then) small numbers of women faculty, and the lack of an international perspective in women's studies at the time. The WIG newsletter, begun in 1974 by a student-faculty collective at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, quickly found an enthusiastic readership, and special WIG sessions at the annual meetings of older academic associations drew such large audiences that holding a separate WIG conference became not only feasible but necessary. WIG members' priorities in the early years were self-education (on the work of feminist theorists), "spadework" criticism (to uncover and republish longneglected works by German women writers), feminist critiques of canonical literature, highly successful campaigns against sexism in teaching materials, and—especially at the annual WIG conferences—a striving for alternative, collaborative forms of presentation and interaction that could overcome the traditional split between presenters and audience, faculty and students, experts and learners. WIG also organized political initiatives around feminist issues, among them a boycott of conferences held in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. By the early 1980s, as feminist scholarship mushroomed and women's studies programs were debating the relative merits of mainstreamed versus autonomous feminist curricula, many of WIG's founders had achieved tenure, and their students were entering the job market in increasing numbers. Issues of professionalization and institutionalization became more pressing. More systematic attention to feminist theories at WIG conferences, as well as the organization of annual conferences (since 1980) around the work of a guest author, scholar, or filmmaker from a German-speaking country, reflected the need to legitimate feminist criticism in the field, to appeal to a broader constituency, and to reach beyond the borders of the United States. An important factor in the success of these initiatives was support from the German Academic Exchange Service, which emphasizes interdisciplinary efforts. The founding of the WIG yearbook, first published in 1985, was a further step toward institutionalization, as well as a means to counter antifeminism in publishing. The greater visibility and high quality of feminist scholarship in German studies in recent years are largely due to WIG. The proportion of women in tenure-track positions in German has also increased, reaching nearly 50 percent in 1991. Interdisciplinary research and teaching, political engagement, and attention to new theoretical developments continue to be priorities for WIG in the 1990s. With about 650 paying members in 1994, the organization has a significant pool of talent and experience on which to draw, including many WIG members in leadership positions. Shrinking budgets for higher education, waves of feminist backlash, demographic changes in student populations, and dwindling enroll-
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ment in German necessitate flexibility and innovation, which have always been a hallmark of WIG's work. References: Clausen, Jeanette, ' 'The Coalition of Women in German: An Interpretive History and Celebration." Women in German Yearbook 1 (1985): 1-27, and Sara Friedrichsmeyer, "WIG 2000: Feminism and the Future of Germanistik." Women in German Yearbook 10 (1995): 267-72. [The Women in German Archival Collection is located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706).] JEANETTE CLAUSEN W o m e n in German S t u d i e s (British). In October 1988, a group of about 50 Germanistinnen met for the first Women in German Studies (WIGS) conference in England and formally established the British WIGS as an association. The British association is independent of the North American Women in German (WIG) organization. Not unlike the North American WIG, the British WIGS was created to provide a forum to discuss the professional concerns of women working in Germanic languages and literatures. One important aspect of the WIGS meetings is the presentation and discussion of research and other work utilizing feminist approaches to the various aspects of German studies, including sociolinguistics, literary studies, and foreign-language teaching. Discussion of the opportunities for women in German studies is of particular interest. To some extent, the foundation of the British WIGS is a response to the low representation of women teaching in higher education, which could effectively be changed by establishing a network for professional women. Since WIGS views itself as a forum to exchange information, the association collects and circulates information on employment opportunities in German studies or related fields and has created a register of all part-time, freelance, or unpaid Germanistinnen, which will be made available to every department head in England. Reference: Zimnik, Nina, "Report on First WIGS Conference." Women in German Newsletter (November 1988): 12-13. ULLA BIDIAN W o m e n ' s C a u c u s for t h e Modern L a n g u a g e s . As the activist branch of the Division of Women and Literature, one of the largest divisions of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages (WCML) was founded as an activist feminist organization in 1970. The organization addresses professional issues concerning women in the modern languages, such as academic climate, graduate education, jobs, and tenure. The WCML also functions as a forum for discussion, analysis, and strategization against discrimination.
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The organization, founded in conjunction with the Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession, has six regional caucuses: the Midwest, North East, Rocky Mountain, South Atlantic, and South Central Modern Language Associations, and the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast. DePaul University's Lincoln Park Campus Library in Chicago has housed the WCML Archive since February 1993. Each year, the Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship is sponsored by one of the regional caucuses. WCML regularly sponsors sessions at the annual MLA convention. In 1992, the caucus newsletter was replaced by the journal Concerns, which appears three times a year. Concerns contains information on the organization itself and articles on a wide variety of topics related to feminism and academic life, ranging from pedagogy/methodology and scholarly articles to strategyoriented essays (Family Care Issues). Special issues of the journal at times focus on a particular subject. The journal also features a "Ms. Mentor" column, a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Ann Landers' or Miss Manners' columns, which offers advice to anonymous advice seekers, as well as Annis Pratts' column "Dancing through the Minefield," which reports news from the Task Force on Academic Discrimination and is affiliated with the National Women's Studies Association. For feminist research on issues in modern languages, Concerns is an invaluable source of information. VERA BOITER W o m e n ' s J o u r n a l s . These focus on women's issues: women's lives and work, their interests, their history, and their role within society. One of the earliest German women's periodicals was Die verniinftigen Tadlerinnen, a Moral Weekly edited by Johann Christoph Gottsched (1725/1726). Soon thereafter, a number of different journals for women appeared, predominantly literary magazines (e.g., Iris, edited by Johann Georg Jacobi and Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse, 1774-1776; Journal fur deutsche Frauen, originally published by Christoph Martin Wieland, 1805-1806; and the fashion magazines, which first appeared at the turn of the 18th century and also offered essays on health care, hygiene, and women's "place" in the home or society in general). All of these early journals were published by men. While many of these men used female pseudonyms to attract a female readership, contemporary women only rarely became editors of women's journals. Famous examples are Sophie von La Roche's Pomona. Fur Teutschlands Tochter (1783-1784), Marianne Ehrmann's Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790-1792), and the journals of Charlotte von Hetzel, Meta Klopstock, Ernestine Hofmann, and Caroline Friederica von Kamienski. After the revolution of 1848, women's journals were usually one of two types: Familienzeitschriften like Die Gartenlaube, which specialized in light entertainment, and political and early feminist journals, which encouraged political enlightenment and provided useful information on many different topics for women. The center for these journals was Berlin. The Frauen-Zeitung, founded
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by Mathilde Franziska Anneke in 1848, was the first daily newspaper for women. It was followed the same year by the Freischdrler. Fiir Kunst und soziales Leben, edited by Louise Aston and directed predominantly at the intellectual bourgeoisie. In 1849, the first issue of the Frauen-Zeitung published by the feminist Louise Otto-Peters appeared. The journal focused on promoting equal educational opportunities for women. Frequently, feminist groups or educational organizations for women published their own periodicals. The longest running of these was Louise Otto-Peters' Neue Bahnen from 1866 to 1918, published for the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein. Jenny Hirsch edited Der Frauen-Anwalt, later Deutscher FrauenAnwalt, from 1870 to 1881 in Berlin. Helene Lange founded Die Frau in 1893. Die Gleichheit (1891-1923) ran from 1892 until 1917 under Clara Zetkin's editorship; and Minna Cauer and Lily von Gizycki edited the monthly Die Frauenbewegung in 1895. Die Frau im Staat (1919), published by feminists and pacifists Anita Augspurg and Lida Heymann, sought to report on political events from a female viewpoint and encouraged women's participation in politics. In addition to journals by and for women, daily newspapers like the Tagliche Rundschau inserted special pages reserved for women's issues (Frauenbeilagen or Frauenblatter). During the Nazi regime, women's journals were used for propaganda purposes, for example, the NS-Frauen-Warte (19321944). After World War II, a number of journals, such as Brigitte, Freundin, Fur Sie, Frau im Spiegel, and Petra, proliferated in West Germany; they focus on "women's" topics like fashion, cosmetics, recipes, diets, and gossip and occasionally on women's work and education, in varying depth. For example, Brigitte, edited by Anne Volk, offers articles on such diverse subjects as health care, legal matters, the environment, foreign affairs, medicine, culture, lifestyles, and travel but also presents portraits of important women scholars and successful female personalities. The first feminist women's journals in Germany were EMMA, founded in 1977 (a journal that took as its model the feminist journal Ms., founded in the United States in 1972), and Courage (1976-1984), originally a Berlin city journal, which achieved nationwide circulation with the appearance of the first issue of EMMA. Alice Schwarzer, EMMA's chief editor, plays a leading role in German feminism and the new women's movement in general. EMMA was founded by Schwarzer and Christiane EnBling with two goals in mind: to give female journalists a chance to publish and to provide women with an alternative to the male-dominated media. Today, EMMA has become virtually synonymous with feminism in Germany; the journal has achieved the status of an institution, as the one and only radical feminist voice nationwide. EMMA does not support any political party, functions as a mouthpiece for all women, and offers, besides literary criticism, articles on topics like battery, incest, pornography, and sexism, among many others. Today, EMMA is the most widely circulated feminist journal in Europe.
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The only women's magazine to appear in the former East Germany, FurDich, focused on workingwomen viewed from a Marxist perspective. It continues to appear after unification, with a new touch of commercialism. See also: Aston, Louise; Braun, Lily; Ehrmann, Marianne; Frauenfrage; La Roche, Sophie von; Moral Weeklies; Otto-Peters, Louise; Revolution, German (1848); Zetkin, Clara. References: Geiger, Ruth-Esther, and Sigrid Weigel, eds., Sind das noch Damen? Vom gelehrten Frauenzimmer-Journal zum feministischen Joumalismus (Munich: Frauenbuchverlag, 1981); Schwarzer, Alice, Das Emma-Buch (Munich: DTV, 1981), Das neue Emma-Buch (Munich: DTV, 1986), Das neueste Emma-Buch (Munich: DTV, 1991); Ulze, Harald, Frauenzeitschriften und Frauenrolle (Berlin: Spiess, 1977).
DAGMAR SCHULZ W o m e n ' s M o v e m e n t . This movement is geared toward emancipation and equal rights for women within the existing framework of society. Women's liberation aims more broadly at changing the very framework of society. Both movements are part of the emancipatory processes initiated in the Enlightenment. From its beginnings the German women's movement has been divided, with some women propagating moderate, and others more radical, goals. Three traditions can be distinguished. The liberal tradition was led by Hedwig Dohm, the first German woman to demand woman's suffrage in 1876, and Louise Dettmer and Louise Otto-Peters, who organized the first German women's conference, which led to the foundation of the General German Women's Union, Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (ADF). Primary concerns were the improvement of women's education, job opportunities, and work conditions. In the 1890s the ADF split into the moderate Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF, 1894) and the Bund fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine (1899), which represented the more liberal approach advocated by Helene Stocker in her "Neue Ethik." The radical liberals emphasized the recognition of motherhood and sexual reforms, emancipation, abortion rights, support for unwed women with children, and the abolition of prostitution. Working from within a socialist framework, Clara Zetkin represents the third tradition, which focused on the situation of working-class women. She was the key figure of the socialist women's movement that called for an end to the Geschlechtssklaverei der Frau as a goal to be achieved in a new society. The Weimar Republic granted women the right to vote and to hold office in 1918. In 1933, the BDF ended its work, fearing for its Jewish members and the possible integration into the NS-Frauenwerk and NS-Frauenschaft. In January 1949, the West German Parliament included an Equal Rights Statute in its Constitution (Article 3). It was not until 1968 that the second German women's movement arose out of discontent with the treatment of women's issues in the New Left. Women's groups began to consider themselves auton-
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omous feminists who put women's concerns first. The fight to abolish the restrictive abortion law, paragraph 218, was revived in 1970. Parallel to the autonomous movement, the liberal tradition is continued by the Frauenrat, the central organization for the moderate women's movement. There is, however, little common ground between the two movements. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) guaranteed equal rights for women and facilitated women's access to work by subsidizing child-care facilities. Women still faced the twofold stress of workplace and household labor since the underlying patriarchal structures had not changed. Since the late 1980s, Frauen- or Gleichstellungsbeauftragte, appointed officials, were in charge of ensuring equal opportunities for women in local and state government institutions. Differences between U.S. and German women's movements are largely based on the emphasis the German movement places on women's special protection during pregnancy, child-care facilities, reintegration into the workplace, retirement benefits, and other financial compensation for the Familienphase, as well as on practical self-help and involvement in the peace movement. See also: Abortion; Dohm, Hedwig; Enlightenment; Frauenfrage; Otto-Peters, Louise; Prostitution; Socialism; Student Movement (1968); Suffrage; University Education, Women's; Weimar Republic; Zetkin, Clara. References: Cugot, Regina, ed., Frauenadressbuch Deutschland. 3000 Adressen von Frauenverbdnden, Initiativen und Beratungsstellen fiir Frauen (Munich: Heyne, 1994); Gerhard, Ute, Unerhort. Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990); Kahlau, Cordula, ed., Frauenbewegung in der DDR. Dokumentation (Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1990); Schwarzer, Alice, Der kleine Unterschied und seine grofien Folgen: Frauen iiber sich. Der Beginn einer Befreiung (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1975).
MARITA ROM ANN W o m e n ' s Publishers—see: Anthology; Feminisms, German W o m e n ' s Studies—see: German Studies; Women in German Workers' Literature. The term comprises texts written by workers and for workers about aspects of working-class life, variously emphasizing the class identification of the author, the reader, and the content. Workers' literature is a product of the organized working-class movement and the cultural politics of its various subdivisions, including the labor union movement. Political in its self-understanding, it recognizes workers as legitimate subjects of dramas, poetry, and novels, as well as autobiography and documentary. Women have contributed to workers' literature from its inception in the mid-19th century. Many of their texts address the relationship between gender and class identity in the context of an ideology that regards the "woman question" as a "secondary contradiction." Among poets, Emma Doltz and Clara Miiller-Jahnke, whose lyric poems appeared in social democratic newspapers, count most prominently. Their Utopian
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quests for equality address the specific situation of women as mothers and workers (Doltz, "Die Heimarbeiterin"), alternately viewing women in a supporting role: "wir stehn dem Mann im Kampfe bei" (Miiller-Jahnke, "Wir Frauen") or as equals: "der Freiheit starken Sohnen/reich' ich die Schwesterhand" (Miiller-Jahnke, "Rot"). The interconnectedness of gender and class identifications is apparent also in the autobiographical genre. Constructing herself as a model for others, the Austrian social democrat Adelheid Popp, whose 1909 autobiography Jugendgeschichte einer Arbeiterin gained canonical status during her lifetime, uses her own example to show other workers, in particular female workers, that women can, and must, participate in the political struggle of the working class. Dramatists Lu Marten ("Bergarbeiter," 1909) and Ida StrauB show onstage the misery of workers and their political fight. In her one-act play "MiBbrauchte Frauenkraft" (n.d.), StrauB explores class differences among women. Writing after the split of the working-class movement in 1917, Berta Lask, who together with Anna Seghers was a founding member of the communist Bund Proletarisch-Revolutionarer Schriftsteller, based her drama Leuna 1921 (1927) on the failed workers' uprising in central Germany. Indebted to the aesthetics of avant-garde modernism, the drama, whose female characters incidentally play subordinate roles as mothers and wives, critiques the disunion among workers and in the end calls for an international general strike. With the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949), workers' literature lost its status as a radical counterdiscourse. Maria Langner's production novel Stahl (1952) and Kathe Rtilicke's interviews with socialist activist Hans Garbe (Hans Garbe erzahlt, 1952) count among the texts that celebrate the new socialist worker. A product of the Bitterfelder Weg (named after the 1959 and 1964 conferences aimed to involve workers in the production of literature), Brigitte Reimann's novel Ankunft im Alltag (1961) relates the story of a young Jewish woman's quest for a socialist identity. The Bitterfeld-texts attempt to bridge the gap between workers and intellectuals in the service of a socialist collective, yet also begin to develop a critical perspective on GDR society, for example, Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel (1963). In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the Dortmunder Gruppe 61, an affiliation of independent writers, revived workers' literature with its critique of the West German "achievement-oriented society." In her documentary Bottroper Protokolle (1968), a compilation of interview transcripts unaccompanied by commentary, journalist Erika Runge attempted to provide unmediated insights into the lives of coal miners. Dissatisfied with the dominance of professional writers in the Gruppe 61, the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt (1970) sought the cooperation of writers and workers. Werkkreis member Margot Schroeder's autobiographical novel Ich stehe meine Frau (1975) describes the struggles of a mother, housewife, and worker against her perceived status as an object within a classist and sexist society that denies her independent subjecthood. Workers' literature finds a continuation in "guest worker literature," which explores the situation of foreign workers in Germany.
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See also: Ankunftsliteratur; Autobiography; Documentary Literature; Frauenfrage; GDR Literature; Gruppe 61; Minority Literature; Protokolle; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Turkish-German Literature; Wolf, Christa; Women's Movement. References: Friedrich, Cacilia, Aus dem Schaffen friiher sozialistischer Schriftstellerinnen (Berlin: Akademie, 1966); Klucsarits, Richard, and Friedrich G. Kurbisch, eds., Arbeiterinnen kampfen um ihr Recht. Autobiographische Texte rechtloser und entrechteter 'Frauenspersonen' in Deutschland, Osterreich und der Schweiz des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Hannover: Hammer, 1975).
KATHARINA
GERSTENBERGER
World War I ( 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 8 ) . The outbreak of World War I offered many women in Germany the opportunity for work outside the home. With most of the male workforce away at war, women took over men's jobs at home, in factories, and especially in the war plant, frequently working for half pay. Feminist reactions to the war differed considerably. Helene Lange and Gertrud Baumer, members of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Alliance of German Associations of Women), helped organize the Nationaler Frauendienst (National Service of Women) and welcomed the war as an opportunity to prove themselves. Many women writers, particularly those of the older generation like Kathe Schirmacher and Ina Seidel, exhibited a certain ambivalence about the war and tended to describe both the "glories" of death on the battlefield and their anguish at the destruction of the German youth. A minority of women, however, proclaimed that a battle for women's equal rights also included the abolition of violence, war being its most extreme form (Internationaler Frauenkongress in Den Haag, 1915). Between 1912 and 1914, Ricarda Huch published an insightful analysis of the Thirty Years' War (1618— 1648), entitled Der grofie Krieg in Deutschland. In 1915, Hedwig Dohm, then 85 years old, published her essay "Der MiBbrauch des Todes," which passionately denounced European militarism. Other examples of women who opposed the war were Bertha von Suttner and Annette Kolb, who was exiled in 1917 for her pacifist involvement; Clara Zetkin, who had to leave the Social Democratic Party and give up the party-supported magazine Gleichheit because of her antiwar essays; and Claire Goll with her powerful anti-war poems, stories, and polemics. Rosa Luxemburg, German-Polish revolutionary, feminist, and pacifist and one of the founders of the German Communist Party, spent most of World War I in prison, where she wrote the clandestine pamphlet Junius (1915), a powerful account of the failings of social democracy. As a response to expressionism, women's poetry was blossoming before and during the war. Berta Lask's and Else Lasker-Schiiler's poetry takes as its theme, among others, images of womanhood, sexuality, and religiosity and creates new mythic images. German sculptor, graphic artist, diarist, and epistolary writer Kathe Kollwitz, one of the most important German artists of the 20th century, thematizes war and social injustice in her art, especially how they affect women and children. Her letters, memoirs, and diaries are collected in Ich sah die Welt mit liebevollen Augen (1970).
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See also: Dohm, Hedwig; Expressionism; Pacifism; Socialism; Women's Movement; Zetkin, Clara. References: Evans, Richard J., Sozialdemokratie und Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Kaiserreich (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1979); Goldman, Dorothy, Women and World War I: The Written Response (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993); Heymann, Lida Gustava, Erlebtes, Erschautes: Deutsche Frauen kampfen fur Freiheit, Recht und Frieden 1850-1940 (Frankfurt/M: U. Helmer, 1992); Schenk, Herrad, Die feministische Herausforderung. 150 Jahre Frauenbewegung in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 1992). KATRIN KOMM
World War II ( 1 9 3 9 - 1 9 4 5 ) . Engaging six continents, this war took a devastating toll on Japan, the Soviet Union, and Europe. The primary instigators of the war were the German national socialists (Nazis) with their heavily armed maneuvers toward territorial supremacy in Europe. A coexisting goal on the domestic front was the annihilation of certain groups whom the Nazis had tagged inferior to the German "Aryan." Victims of systematic extermination were persons of Jewish decent, political opponents, homosexuals, persons with physical or mental disabilities or severe illnesses, and members of religious or ethnic minority groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and gypsies (Sinti and Roma). The role of women in this war was complex. On the whole, women were both victims and perpetrators, with some occupying extreme ends on the continuum and some participating as both simultaneously. Most German-Jewish women, for example, lost everything—their citizenship, their dignity, their lives. Many non-Jewish women also lost much that was important to them, but very few of those who stayed in Germany actively resisted either the war of expansion or the war of extermination. Some women, however, did risk their lives to aid an "enemy of the state," and some provided an underground countervoice to the political absurdities through their diaries, illegal pamphlets, or writings in exile. A few even tried to sabotage Nazi crimes, which was considered, by and large, high treason. The Munich student Sophie Scholl is perhaps the best-known active resister, in part due to the film Die Weifie Rose, named for the group in which she participated. Together with other members of the group, she was denounced, tried, and beheaded for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. Elisabeth von Thadden also lost her life working for the oppositional Bekennende Kirche, and Susanne Simonis acted as messenger for an oppositional circle within the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940-1941. Women were active in underground movements of the Social Democratic and Communist Party youth organizations, but the names of many women resisters have not been acknowledged in mainstream history. A great majority of women, however, did what was expected of them without challenging the leadership's military aims or their ordinances (e.g., the law to cease all business with the Jews). Many mothers wore the medals they were given for supplying soldiers for battle, and married and single alike sustained
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the war effort through their work in munitions factories with much the same fervor with which they cleaned up debris after the war. Before the conscription of women began in 1944, some volunteered for jobs close to the front, for example, as clerks for the German Railroad in the occupied areas or as camp guards. A few women supported the Third Reich through their art. The most renowned is Leni Riefenstahl for her filming of the Nazis' early military parades (Triumph des Willens, 1938). The view of women as the "conscience" of the country does not hold up to closer scrutinity of the period. See also: Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory; National Socialism; Pacifism; Resistance. References: 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
Y Y o u n g Germany ( 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 5 0 ) . The literary and political movement Junges Deutschland—so named because of its opposition to the ancien regime— was at its peak between 1830 (July Revolution in France) and 1835, when a parliamentary resolution banned the works of several authors due to their subversive nature. Young German literature, opposed to the political stagnation and the reactionary spirit of the Metternich era, sought to revoke the established aesthetic values of Classicism and Romanticism through its reflection on social and political issues. Attempting to influence public opinion, Young Germans frequently published in journals and almanacs, preferring less traditional literary genres such as travelogues, letters, and novels. Today, this movement is often categorized under Vormdrz, along with Biedermeier. Searching for moral and political liberation, Young Germans declared the emancipation of women to be one of their major goals. Under the SaintSimonian slogan "emancipation of the flesh," many opposed the customary marriage of convenience. This appealed to a growing number of women who felt that mutual affection, rather than financial and social criteria, should constitute the basis of a marriage. Encouraged by Young Germany's politically engaged aesthetics, women writers such as Klara Miiller-Mundt (pseudonym Luise Miihlbach), associated with the new movement through her husband, made the socioeconomic situation of women a topic worthy of literary representation. In articles and novels that came to be known as the jungdeutsche or emanzipatorische Frauenroman, precursors of Germany's first woman's rights movement, such as Fanny Lewald, Louise Otto-Peters, and Ida Hahn-Hahn, insisted on women's right to higher education
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and work. Inspired by Young Germany's democratic ideals, Louise Dittmar propagated a more active participation of women in the public and political sphere, and Otto-Peters demanded the right of franchise for women. See also: Biedermeier; Classicism; Frauenfrage; Lewald, Fanny; Otto-Peters, Louise; Romanticism; Suffrage; Travelogues; Women's Journals. References: Goetzinger, Germaine, " 'Allein das BewuBtsein dieses Befreienkonnens ist schon erhebend.' Emanzipation und Politik in Publizistik und Roman des Vormarz." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) II: 86-104; Lorenz, Dagmar, "Weibliche Rollenmodelle bei Autoren des 'Jungen Deutschland' und des 'Biedermeier.' Gestaltet und Gestaltend: Frauen in der Deutschen Literatur. Ed. Marianne Burkhard (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980) 155-84; Mohrmann, Renate, ed., Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormdrz: Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978). URSULA HORSTMANN-NASH
z Zaunemann, S i d o n i a H e d w i g ( 1 7 1 1 - 1 7 4 0 ) . Born in 1711 (not in 1714 as most sources claim) in Erfurt to Nikolaus Zaunemann, a lawyer with the Erfurt city government, and Hedwig Dorothea Guldemund, daughter of an influential wealthy patrician, Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann was an early and fervent champion of woman's rights. Zaunemann published two substantial works, Poetische Rosen in Knospen (1738), a 640-page work containing nearly all of her poetry, and Die von denen Faunen gepeitschte Laster (1739), a verse satire on contemporary German society. Although she was mainly known as a poet during her short life, the Hamburger Berichte von den neuesten gelehrten Sachen printed several of her letters on scientific and philosophical subjects and used her picture as frontispiece in their 1736 edition. When in 1738 the new Georg-Augustus University of Gottingen crowned her poet laureate, she was the second woman in Germany after Christiana Mariana von Ziegler to receive this honor. Zaunemann's repeated allusions to Greek and Roman literature and mythology, ancient as well as contemporary European writers, philosophers, and scientists are evidence that she was widely read, probably knew some Latin and French, and took an active interest in new scientific developments. Zaunemann's correspondence with literary women and famous personalities reflects her attempt at broadening the intellectually and emotionally limiting space in which women were constrained. Her life and her work express a consciously profeminist stance. Zaunemann was known to go horseback riding alone in male clothing, and she arranged two personal visits to the ore mines of Ilmenau, both highly uncommon activities for a woman of her class in her time. In clear contrast to some of the customary, orthodox Gelegenheitsgedichte she wrote
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earlier, her two poems "Das Ilmenauische Bergwerk" and "Andachtige Waldund Pfingstgedanken," in which she relates personal experiences, discuss themes that were not deemed suitable for women and break with poetic conventions of her day. In them she adopts a view of poetry as a means of validation of subjective experience, which was just beginning to emerge in the 18th century. In her satire, a genre considered inappropriate for women, she ridicules the subordination of women in general and women artists in particular. Zaunemann's sudden death by drowning—which has variously been attributed to depression, to her daring and liberated lifestyle, and to an unhappy love affair—has, to date, been the object of much more speculation and scholarly attention than her works. See also: Enlightenment; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von. References: Cassel, Paulus St. Selig, ' 'Erfurt und die Zaunemannin. Eine literarhistorische Skizze." Weimarisches Jahrbuch fur Deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kunst, vol. 3. Ed. Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Oskar Schade (Hannover: Carl Riimpler, 1855) 426-57; DeBerdt, August J. J., "Sidonia H. Zaunemann: Poet Laureate and Emancipated Woman 1714-1740" (Diss., University of Tennessee, 1977); Gresky, Wolfgang, "Eine Gottinger Dichterkronung von 1738: Sidonia H. Zaunemann (1714-1740)." Gottinger Jahrbuch 32 (1984): 207-26; Heuser, Magdalene, "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; Schuchardt, Hans, "Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann, Erfurts 'gekronte Poetin.' " Erfurter Heimatbriefe (1964): 68-74; Tragnitz, Jutta, "Sidonia Hedwig Zaunemann: Feminist Poet Manque? Discrepancies Between Her Early Poetry and Her Last Work 'Die von denen Faunen gepeitschte Laster.' " Lessing Yearbook 24 (1992): 121-33. JUTTA TRAGNITZ Zetkin, Clara ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 9 3 3 ) . As a leading figure of the German proletarian women's movement of the 19th century (together with Rosa Luxemburg, Ottilie Baader, and, in Austria, Adelheid Popp), Clara Zetkin was an influential voice in contemporary debates on the Frauenfrage (woman's question). A member of the Social Democratic Party and, after 1917, the Communist Party, Zetkin saw no common ground with the bourgeois women's movement's demands for gradual reform of society. Since she saw class, not gender, as the root of women's oppression, she argued that only a full-scale revolution would change women's lot. Consequently, she attacked bourgeois women leaders such as Louise Otto-Peters for their elitist focus on the abolishment of Geschlechtssklaverei, while, in her view, it was Klassensklaverei that enslaved the majority of women (Zur Geschichte der proletarischen Frauenbewegung Deutschlands, 1928). Similarly, she disparaged the bourgeois fight for woman suffrage as an elitist fight for Damenwahlrecht (ladies' suffrage), which would not contribute to the improvement of the lot of women workers. While receiving her secondary schooling at the Steyber Institute in Leipzig, Zetkin was introduced to socialist ideas and the Social Democratic Party. From
ZIEGLER, CHRISTIANA MARIANA VON
583
1882 to 1890, Zetkin lived in exile in Paris with her husband, the Russian revolutionary Ossip Zetkin, who had been expelled from Germany. Dire financial circumstances brought on by her husband's prolongued illness and the need to care for two children forced Zetkin to become the sole breadwinner for her family. She embarked on a minimally lucrative publishing and speaking career for socialist journals in France and Germany and succeeded—at the expense of her own health—in supporting her family. At the International Workers' Congress in Paris in 1889, she aroused attention in socialist circles with her speech on the difficult situation of female workers in capitalist society, which was published as Die Arbeiterinnen- und Frauenfrage der Gegenwart (1889). After her husband's death in 1889 and the repeal of the Sozialistengesetz in Germany, she was able to return to Germany in 1890. From 1892 to 1917 Zetkin edited Die Gleichheit, the women's journal of the Social Democratic Party. Under her guidance, the journal reached a record circulation of 124,000 in 1914. Since Zetkin believed that the emancipation of the proletarian masses and the development of a proletarian literature were conjoined, she used her position as editor to promote literature by female workers. She expressed her views on the connection between socialism and art in her essay "Kunst und Proletariat" (1911). In 1917, the SPD party executive dismissed her from her position as editor of Die Gleichheit because of her insistence on a leftist, antimilitaristic course for the party. One year later, Zetkin joined the Communist Party and was elected to the Reichstag in 1920. She traveled frequently to the Soviet Union and is buried at the Kremlin Wall. See also: Frauenfrage; Otto-Peters, Louise; Pacifism; Socialism; Suffrage; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; Workers' Literature. References: Frederiksen, Elke, ed., Die Frauenfrage in Deutschland 1865-1915: Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981) 96-104, 107-12, 174-79, 287-95, 32025, 407-16, 499-502; Haferkorn, Katja, "Clara Zetkin in Paris (1882-1890)." Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 26.2 (1984): 184-96; Honeycut, Karen. "Clara Zetkin: A Socialist Approach to the Problem of Women's Oppression." European Women on the Left. Ed. Robert Kern and Jane Slaughter (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981) 29-49; Reutershan, Joan, Clara Zetkin und Brot und Rosen: Literaturpolitische Konflikte zwischen Partei und Frauenbewegung in der deutschen Vorkriegssozialdemokratie (New York: Lang, 1985); Trommler, Frank, ed., Sozialistische Literatur in Deutschland: ein historischer Uberblick (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1976) 266-70. ASTRID WEIGERT Ziegler, Christiana Mariana v o n ( 1 6 9 5 - 1 7 6 0 ) . A prominent and celebrated author, Christiana Mariana von Ziegler occupies an outstanding position among early German women writers. Ziegler's works mark the beginnings of a national German literature and a new stage in women's literary history. Celebrated by contemporaries yet neglected by subsequent literary and cultural histories, the reception of the author Ziegler represents the dialectics of inclusion
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and exclusion of women in the emerging public sphere and in the development of a bourgeois literature in particular. As was the case for many women writers, Ziegler's poetic production was tied to her marital status: she started writing only after the death of her second husband and stopped when she married for a third time. Ziegler was an established poetess (whose lyrics Johann Sebastian Bach set to music) and the first German poeta laureata. She played a leading role in Johann Christoph Gottsched's attempts at literary reform. In Gottsched's view, Ziegler represented both the Enlightenment ideal of the educated woman and proof that the German language had a unique value as a medium of literary production. Ziegler's work reflects the shift toward the rearrangement of literary and poetic conventions: the emergence of German as the language of science, philosophy, and literature in the early 18th century. In language and style, a functional and gender dichotomy appears between the genres of rhetoric, which are based on the Latin tradition and taught at the universities, thus generally accessible only to men, and the genres that are influenced by the oral tradition and thus accessible to women (who were barred from university study and therefore without access to literary conventions). Ziegler's writings are situated within this framework of poetic conventions, limitations, and potentials and inscribe her struggle to position herself in the process of writing rather than in images imposed on her. A clear example of Ziegler's poetic agenda is her poem "Als sie ihr Bildnis schildern sollte," which builds on the structural tension between the literarization of a visual image of the ideal woman and the subversion of this image in the self-reflective process of writing. At the same time, this process undermines emblematic conventions of the literary Baroque. Ziegler reflected upon the conditions of writing, voiced her critical awareness of gender differentiation, and appropriated particular genres (letters and chorales as expressions of personal experiences and events, jokes and satire as exclusively male genres) in her Versuch in gebundener Schreib-Art (2 vols., 1728-1729) and Moralische und vermischte Send-Schreiben an einige ihrer vertrauten und guten Freunde gestellet (1731). In the prefaces to Versuch, Ziegler voices her insights into her public role as a female author of German literature and her resistance against a symbiosis of authorship with male editorship and censorship—a resistance expressed most sharply in her critique of the male literary establishment. Although Ziegler in her "Abschied von der Poesie" refused to further serve as a token woman author, she does not reject female authorship in general—on the contrary. Ziegler viewed herself as a role model for other women, insisted on the uniqueness of women's writing, and thus opened a path for the potentially subversive power of women's literature. The obstacles that such a project faced are described in Ziegler's last work Vermischte Schriften in gebundener und ungebundener Rede (1739), in which she moved closer to Gottsched's normative poetics.
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See also: Authorship; Baroque Literature; Enlightenment; Participation/Exclusion; Satire; University Education, Women's. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit. Frauen und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Heuser, Magdalena, "Das Musenchor mit neuer Ehre zieren." Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. Ed. Gisela BrinkerGabler (Munich: Beck, 1988) I: 293-313; Simon, Sunka, " 'Als sie ihr Bildnis schildern sollte.' Die sprachliche Struktur der Innen- und AuBenportrats in der Lyrik Christiana Mariana von Zieglers." Daphnis 19.2 (1990): 247-65. BIRGIT TAUTZ
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APPENDIX OF NAMES Editors' Note: Authors and other relevant persons are listed in this appendix with a reference to all entries in which they appear. We have supplied birth and death dates wherever possible but omitted dates in cases where they either could not be found or seemed unreliable. Entries in boldface type refer to main entries in the encyclopedia. Achternbusch, Herbert, 1938-present: Trotta, M. v. Ackermann, Sophie Charlotte, 1714-1793: Kiinstlerdrama; Vorspiel Addison, Joseph, 1672-1719: Neoclassicism Adelheit, second wife of Otto I, d. 999: Patronage Adler, Almut: Aphorism Adler, Emma, 1858-1935: German-Jewish Literature Adlon, Percy, 1935-present: Film, Lesbian Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969: Cultural Studies; Engagierte Literatur; Essay; Frankfurt School; Positivism; Postcolonialism Ado wo wa-Abraham, Elisabeth: Film, Lesbian Aedelers, Etta Palm d', 1743-?: Revolution, French Aeschylus, 525/524 B . C - 4 5 6 / 4 5 5 B.C.: Amazon Aesop, 6th century B.C.: Fable Agnon, Shmuel Yoseph, 1888-1970: Nobel Prize Recipients Agrippa von Nettesheim, 1486-1535: Renaissance Humanism Aichinger, Use, 1921-present: Austrian Literature; Bachmann, I.; Confessional Literature; FRG Literature (1949-1990); German-Jewish Literature; Gruppe 47; Horspiel; Novella; Parable; Short Story; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung
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APPENDIX OF NAMES
Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna, 1889-1966: Formalism Akunian, Use Levien: see Frapan, Use Al-Shaykh, Hanan: Exotin Alber, 12th century: Patronage Albrecht, Sophie, 1757-1840: Bourgeois Tragedy; Erlebnisdichtung; Idyll; La Roche, Sophie von; Musenalmanach; Operetta; Rococo Literature Alcuin of York, 735-804: Medieval Literature Alemann, Claudia von: Film, Documentary Alexis, Willibald, 1798-1871: Fashion Altenberg, Peter (pseudonym for Richard Englander), 1859-1919: Femme Fragile Althaus, Theodor, 1822-1852: Meysenbug, M. v. Althusser, Louis, 1918-1990: Cultural Studies; Existentialism; Feminist Theory, British Amalie Maria, Prinzessin von Sachsen, 1794-1870: Court Theater; Musical Theater; Operetta; Posse Ambrose, St., d. 397: Hymn Amilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, 1637-1706: Hymn Amstutz, Renate: Puppenspiel Andersen, Hans Christian, 1805-1875: Wild Woman Anderson, Edith: Gender Transformation Andrea, Silvia, 1840-1935: Swiss German Literature Andreas-Salome, Lou, 1861-1937: Dialogics, Feminist; Ebner-Eschenbach, M. v.; Fairy Tale Drama; Hysteric; Jugendstil; Love; Manifesto; Modernism; Narcissism, Female; New Woman; Nihilism; Novel, Psychological; Revolution, Sexual; Symbolism Angeloff, Therese: Cabaret Angely, Louis, 1787-1835: Posse Anna Amalia, Herzogin von Sachsen-Weimar, 1739-1807: Matinee; Musical Theater; Singspiel Anna Amalia von PreuBen, 1723-1787: Hymn Anna Sophia von Anhalt, 1584-1652: Language Societies Anneke, Mathilde Franziska, 1817-1884: Exile Literature; Frauenfrage; Revolution, French; Revolution, German; Travelogues; Women's Journals Anton Ulrich, Herzog von Braunschweig-Luneburg, 1633-1714: Abenteuerroman Apitz, Renate, 1939-present: Witch Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975: Biography, Literary; Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Marxist Theories; Postcolonialism Argula von Grumbach, 1492-1552: Reformation Aristophanes, c. 357 B . C - 1 8 0 B.C.: Amazon
Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.: Anticlimax; Existentialism; Fable; Heroine; Madwoman; Tragedy Arjouni, Jakob: Dorrie, D. Arnaud, Emile: Pacifism Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 1769-1860: Wars of Liberation
APPENDIX OF NAMES
589
Arndt, Johann, 1555-1621: Erbauungsliteratur Arndts, Maria, 1832-1882: Kiinstlerdrama; Tragedy, Historical Arnim, Achim von, 1781-1831: Arnim, B. v.; Grotesque; Naive Arnim, Bettina von, 1785-1859: Austrian Literature; Authorship; Autobiography; Bildungsroman; Biographical Fiction; Biography, Literary; Demon; Entwicklungsroman; Epistolary Culture; Erlebnisdichtung; Eternal Feminine; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; Freundschaftskult; Grotesque; Gunderrode, K. v.; La Roche, S. v.; Mereau, S.; Naive; Narration; Otto-Peters, L.; Robinsonade; Romanticism; Utopia/Anti-Utopia Arnim, Gisela von, 1827-1889: Arnim, B. v.; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; Grotesque; Kiinstlerdrama; Romanticism Arnold, Gottfried, 1666-1714: Pietism Arnold-Zinsler, Martha: Heimatdichtung Arnstein, Fanny von, 1758-1818: Austrian Literature; Tatsachenroman Arp, Jean, 1887-1966: Dadaism Artner, Therese von, 1772-1829: Epos/Prose Epos; Tragedy Assing, Ottilie, 1819-1884: Travelogues Aston, Luise, 1814-1871: Androgyny; Autobiography; Epistolary Culture; Frauenfrage; Ideologiekritik; Lewald, F.; Love; Manifesto; Otto-Peters, L.; Poetry, Political; Revolution, French; Women's Journals Atwood, Margaret, 1939-present: Science Fiction Auer, Annemarie, 1913-present: Gender Transformation Auer, Judith, 1905-1944: Resistance Auerbach, Berthold, 1812-1882: Dorfgeschichte Auerbach, Inge: Holocaust Literature Augspurg, Anita, 1857-1943: Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Frauenfrage; Suffrage; Women's Journals Ausfeld, Anna, 1857-?: Fairy Tale Drama Auslander, Rose, 1907-1988: Austrian Literature; Earth Mother; Erlebnisdichtung; Exile Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Heimatdichtung; Heimkehrerliteratur; Hermetic Poetry Ava, Frau, d. 1127: Austrian Literature; Legend; Lehrdichtung; Mother Mary; Mystery Play; Saints Axmatova, Anna: see Akhmatova, Anna Ayim, May, 1960-1996: Black German Literature; Minority Literature Ayrer, Jakob, 1543-1605: Fastnachtsspiele Baader, Ottilie (pseudonym Martha Barthels), 1869-1939: Frauenfrage; Zetkin, C. Bacheracht, Therese von, 1804-1852: Travelogues Bachmann, Ingeborg, 1926-1973: Abortion; Austrian Literature; Dialogics, Feminist; Doubles, Female; Earth Mother; Entwicklungsroman; Essay; Fantastic Literature; Femme Fragile; Fragment; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gedankenlyrik; Geschlechterkampf; GroBstadtroman; Gruppe 47; Hermetic Poetry; Horspiel; Hysteric; Ideologiekritik; Love; Muse; Mythical Female Figures; Narration; Nature Poetry; Novel, Psychological; Novella; Ode; Parable;
590
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Patriarchy; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Prose; Princess; Prizes, Literary; Revolution, Sexual; Short Story; Trivial Literature; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Vampirism; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victim; Wild Woman Bachofen, Johann Jakob, 1815-1887: Amazon; Matriarchy Backes, Lotte, 1901-?: Musical Theater Bacon, Sir Francis, 1561-1626: Essay Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1895-1975: Dialogics, Feminist; Grotesque; Maskenspiel; New Historicism Baklan, Melek: Minority Literature Balcke, Frida Dorothea, 1886-?: Motet Baldinger, Friderica, 1739-1786: Enlightenment; La Roche, S. v. Ball, Hugo, 1886-1927: Dadaism Ball-Hennings, Emmy, 1885-1948: Dadaism; Erotic Literature; Expressionism; Modernism; Whore Baltz, Johanna, 1849-1918: Patriotism Balzac, Honore de, 1799-1850: Subjective Authenticity Bandemer, Susanne von, 1751-1828: Charakterdrama Barbe, Angelika, 1951-present: Wende, Die Barben, Katrin: Film, Lesbian Barnick, Erna: see Richter, Trude Barth, Karl, 1886-1968: Existentialism Barthes, Roland, 1915-1980: Authorship; Cultural Studies; Vampirism Basile, Giambattista, c. 1575-1632: Narration; Witch Bassi, Laura, 1713-1780: Erudite Woman Batteux, Charles, 1713-1780: Naive Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867: Hermetic Poetry; Meysenbug, M. v.; Symbolism Baudissin, Sophie von, 1813-1894: Children's Literature Bauer, Dale, 1956-present: Dialogics, Feminist Bauer, Karoline, 1807-1877: Actress Bauer-Horn, Kristin: Cabaret Bauerle, Adolf, 1786-1859: Besserungsstiick; Posse Baum, Vicki, 1888-1960: Austrian Literature; New Woman; Revolution, Sexual; Trivial Literature Baumberg-Bacsanyi, Gabriele von, 1768-1839: Musenalmanach; Rococo Literature Baumer, Gertrud, 1873-1954: Eternal Feminine; Grunderzeit; Patriotism; World War I Bausch, Pina, 1940-present: Epic Theater; Tanztheater Beardsley, Monroe C , 1915-present: New Criticism Beaulieu, Mme. de, 18th century: Robinsonade Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin de, 1732-1799: Soubrette Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986: Essentialism/Constructionism; Existentialism; Feminist Theory, French; Gender; Narcissism, Female; Nature; Phenomenology
APPENDIX OF NAMES
591
Bebel, August, 1840-1913: Braun, L.; Marxist Theories; Suffrage Becker, Anni: Cabaret Becker, Franziska: Emanze Becker-Froriep, Amalia, 1752-1784: Idyll Becker-Schwarz, Sophie, 1754-1789: Travelogues Beckermann, Ruth, 1952-present: Film, Documentary; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Beckmann, Max, 1884-1950: Realism, Magic Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827: Hosenrolle; Wars of Liberation Behrens, Katja, 1942-present: FRG Literature (since 1990); German-Jewish Literature Bengtsson, Maria: Novel, Historical Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940: Allegory; Fascist Aesthetics; Fashion; Frankfurt School; Narration; Neue Sachlichkeit; Postcolonialism Benn, Gottfried, 1886-1956: Black German Literature Berber, Lucie: Cabaret Berbo, Vernessa: Children's Literature Berens-Totenohl, Josefa, 1891-1969: Earth Mother; Patriotism Berge, Elisabeth vom, 1838-1909: Tragedy, Historical Bergson, Henri, 1859-1941: Existentialism Berlau, Ruth, 1906-1974: Epic Theater Berlepsch, Emilie von, 1755-1830: Charakterdrama; Enlightenment; Epistolary Culture; Idyll; Musenalmanach; Preface; Travelogues Berlioz, Hector: Meysenbug, M. v. Bernbrunn, Margarethe, 1788-1861: Operetta Bernhard of Clairvaux, 1090/1091-1153: Mysticism Bernouilly, Agnes, 1825-?: Motet Bernstein, Caroline, 1797-1838: Kiinstlerdrama Bernstein, Elsa (pseudonym Ernst Rosmer), 1866-1949: Austrian Literature; Drama, Biblical; Erudite Woman; Mother Mary; Naturalism; Neo-Romanticism; New Woman; Reception; Symbolism; University Education, Women's; Woman Writer Bernstein, Ingrid: see Kirsch, Sarah Berr, Annette, 1962-present: Lesbian Literature Besson, Benno, 1922-present: Epic Theater Beutler, Magdalena: Medieval Literature Beutler, Maja, 1936-present: Body, Female; Hysteric; Swiss German Literature Beutler, Margarethe, 1884-1949: Cabaret Beyer, Johanna Magdalena, 1888-1944: Musical Theater Bianchi, Maja, 1962-present: Swiss German Literature Bienenfeld, Elsa, 1877-1942: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Biermann, Pieke, 1956-present: Kriminalroman Heins, Barbara Schmidt, 1949-present: Anagram Biermann, Wolf, 1937-present: Exile Literature; GDR Literature
592
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Bijns, Anna: Virgin Binder, Helene, 1855-?: Fairy Tale Drama Binswanger, Ludwig, 1881-1966: Existentialism Binzer, Emilie, 1801-1891: Kiinstlerdrama Biondi, Franco, 1947-present: Minority Literature Birch-Pfeiffer, Charlotte, 1800-1868: Austrian Literature; Biedermeier; Court Theater; Drama, Historical; Kiinstlerdrama; Musical Theater; Operetta; Posse; Protagonist/Antagonist; Tragedy, Historical; Vorspiel; Wandertheater Birken, Sigmund von, 1626-1681: Figurengedicht; Greiffenberg, C. v. Birthler, Marianne, 1948-present: Wende, Die Blenker, Elise: Revolution, German Bloch, Ernst, 1885-1977: Narration; Student Movement Bloch, Karola: Student Movement Blum, Ida, 1845-1908: Fairy Tale Drama Blumenschein, Tabea: Ottinger, U. Blumenthal-WeiB, Use, 1899-?: Holocaust Literature Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375: Adaptation/Translation; Narration Bocker, Juliane: Parable Bodenstedt, Alice: see Fliegel, Alice Bodin, Jean, 1530-1596: Witch Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 1698-1783: Swiss German Literature Bodmershof, Imma von, 1895-1982: Austrian Literature Bogli, Lina, 1858-1941: Travelogues Bohlau, Helene, 1859-1940: Ebner-Eschenbach, M. v.; Grunderzeit; Naturalism; New Woman; Nihilism; Novel, Psychological; Novella; Positivism; Prostitution; Realism; Weimar Republic Bohler-Mueller, Charlotte: Aphorism Bohley, Barbel, 1945-present: Wende, Die Bohm, Tatiane: Wende, Die Bohme, Jakob, 1575-1624: Androgyny/Hermaphrodism Bohme, Margarethe, 1869-1939: Erotic Literature; Naturalism; Prostitution; Whore Bolte, Amely, 1811-1891: Whore Bonaparte, Napoleon, 1769-1821: Wars of Liberation Bonia, Jasmine: Cabaret Bora, Katharina von, 1499-1552: Hymn Borchers, Elisabeth, 1926-present: Poetry, Political Borges, Jorge, 1899-1986: Monikova, L. Borke, Helene von: Colonial Literature Bottger, Fritz: Anthology Bougeant, Guillaume-Hyacinthe, 1690-1743: Adaptation/Translation Braband, Jutta: Wende, Die
APPENDIX OF NAMES
593
Brachmann, Louise, 1777-1822: Gedankenlyrik; Idyll; Legend; Pastoral Literature; Reception Bradbury, Ray, 1920-present: Science Fiction Braun, Isabella, 1815-1886: Children's Literature Braun, Lily, 1865-1916: Grunderzeit; Manifesto; Modernism; Women's Journals Braune, Rudolf, 1907-1932: Angestelltlnnenroman Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956: Abortion; Ballad; Epic Theater; Fascist Aesthetics; FleiBer, M.; Gender Transformation; Neue Sachlichkeit; Picara; Prologue; Reception; Socialist Realism; Tragedy, Historical; Volksstiick Brechtbiihl, Beat, 1939-present: Poetry, Spiritual Breden, Christiane von (pseudonym Ada Christen), 1839-1901: Austrian Literature; Canon, Literary; Erotic Literature; Naturalism; Novel, Psychological; Tragedy Breitel, Heide: Film, Documentary Breitinger, Johann Jakob, 1701-1776: Swiss German Literature; Wisewoman Brentano, Bettina: see Arnim, Bettina von Brentano, Clemens, 1778-1842: Naive; Wild Woman Breton, Andre, 1896-1966: Surrealism Brik, Lily: Formalism Brik, Osip: Formalism Brion, Friederike, 1752-1813: Storm and Stress Brockmann, Clara: Colonial Literature; Exotin Brodsky, Bozena: Cabaret Bronchowska, Pauline von, 1794-1853: Operetta Bronnen, Barbara, 1938-present: Father-Daughter Relationship; Mannerbilder; Mother Figures; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Bronsart, Ingeborg Starck von, 1840-1913: Musical Theater Bronte, Emily, 1818-1848: Vampirism Brooks, Cleanth, 1906-1994: New Criticism Brtick, Christa Anita, 1899-present: Angestelltlnnenroman; New Woman; Romance Bruckner, Christine, 1921-1996: Biographical Fiction; Heimatdichtung; Romance; Travelogues; Trivial Literature Bruckner, Jutta, 1941-present: Epic Theater; Film, Autobiographical; Frauenfilm; New Subjectivity; Trotta, M. v.; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Brugger, Traute: Dialektdichtung Brun, Friederike, 1756-1835: Idyll; Musenalmanach; Ode; Sentimentality; Travelogues Briining, Elfriede, 1910-present: Grandmother; Socialism; Stalinism; Tatsachenroman; Trivial Literature Bruns, Marianne: Socialism Bruyn, Giinter de, 1926-present: Gender Transformation Buber-Neumann, Margarete, 1901-1989: Stalinism Buchner, Georg, 1813-1837: Socialist Realism; Subjective Authenticity
594
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Biichner, Louise, 1821-1877: Travelogues Buff, Charlotte, 1753-1828: Storm and Stress Biihrmann, Traude: Lesbian Literature Biilow, Frieda von, 1858-1909: Abenteuerroman; Colonial Literature; Exotin; Jugendstil; Manifesto; Nihilism; Orientalism; Travelogues Bunsen, Marie von, 1860-1940/1941: Travelogues Burger, Elise, 1769-1833: Musenalmanach; Preface; Ritterliteratur Burger-Alexander, Sophie, 1781-1868: Puppenspiel Burkart, Erika, 1922-present: Swiss German Literature Burmeister, Brigitte, 1940-present: Doubles, Female; FRG Literature (since 1990) Burow, Julie, 1806-1868: Ratgeberliteratur Busch-Schiicking, Katharina, 1791-1831: Droste-Hulshoff, A. v. Buschmann, Christel, 1942-present: Trotta, M. v. Busse-Lange, Erika: Colonial Literature Busta, Christine, 1915-1987: Austrian Literature Cakan, Myra: Science Fiction Callimachus, c.305 B.c-c.240 B.C.: Hymn Calm, Marie, 1832-1887: Ratgeberliteratur Campe, Johann Heinrich, 1746-1818: Geschlechtscharaktere; Madchenliteratur; Ratgeberliteratur; Robinsonade Camus, Albert, 1913-1960: Existentialism Canetti, Elias, 1905-1994: Aphorism; Geschlechterkampf; Jelinek, E. Canetti, Veza Calderon, 1897-1963: Austrian Literature; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Carrington, Leonora, 1917-present: Surrealism Carsten, Uwe: Anthology Catherine II of Russia, 1729-1796: Enlightenment; Reception Cauer, Minna Schelle, 1841-1922: Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Braun, L.; Frauenfrage; Manifesto; Women's Journals Celan, Paul, 1920-1970: Heimkehrerliteratur; Hermetic Poetry; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Cezanne, Paul, 1839-1906: Expressionism Chezy, Wilhemine (Helmina) von, 1783-1856: Legend; Operetta; Orientalism Christ, Lena, 1881-1920: Daughter Christen, Ada: see Breden, Christiane von Christine de Pizan, C.1365-C.1431: Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches Christine von Stommeln, 1242-1312: Medieval Literature Chuggmall, Anna: Puppenspiel Chuggmall, Christian Josef: Puppenspiel Chuggmall, Elise: Puppenspiel Chuggmall, Magdalena: Puppenspiel Ciamberlani, Albert: Mythical Female Figures
APPENDIX OF NAMES
595
£irak, Zehra, 1960-present: Minority Literature; Turkish-German Literature Cixous, Helene, 1937-present: Aesthetics, Feminist; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/ Constructionism; Existentialism; Feminist Theory, French; Fragment; Poststructuralism Clairvaux, Bernhard of: see Bernhard of Clairvaux Claudius, Matthias, 1740-1815: Kreis von Miinster Clauren, Heinrich (pseudonym for Karl Gottlieb Samuel Heun), 1771-1854: Naive Coler, Johann, 1566-1639: Hausvaterliteratur Comte, Auguste, 1798-1857: Positivism Corbucci, Sergio: Sanders-Brahms, H. Cornelius, Auguste, 1826-1891: Kiinstlerdrama; Play-within-a-Play Courths-Mahler, Hedwig, 1867-1950: Anagram; Grandmother; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Princess; Romance; Trivial Literature Cramer, Ada: Colonial Literature Cranstown, Johanna von: Austrian Literature Crede, Carl, 1878-?: Abortion Creutziger, Elisabeth von Meseritz, 1505-1535: Hymn Crichton, Michael, 1942-present: Science Fiction Croissant-Rust, Anna, 1860-1943: Naturalism Cronegk, Johann Friedrich von, 1731-1758: Martyrerdrama Csokor, Franz Theodor, 1885-1969: Geschlechterkampf Cunitz, Maria, 1610-1664: Renaissance Humanism Cunningham, Elizabeth: Wild Woman Czurda, Elfriede, 1946-present: Anagram; Geschlechterkampf Dach, Margrit, 1946-present: Swiss German Literature Dacus, Petrus: Medieval Literature Dahn, Daniela, 1949-present: Wende, Die Dahn, Felix, 1834-1912: Novel, Historical Dal, Giiney, 1944-present: Turkish-German Literature Danella, Utta, 1920-present: Romance; Trivial Literature Dante Alighieri, 1254-1321: Femme Fragile; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Muse Danziger, Rosa: Musical Theater Dauthendey, Elisabeth, 1854-1943: New Woman Davies, Fanny, 1861-1896: Rhapsody Defoe, Daniel, 1661-1731: Abenteuerroman; Robinsonade Dehmel, Ida, 1870-1942: Prizes, Literary; Symbolism Delacroix, Eugene, 1798-1863: Mythical Female Figures Delafaye-Brehier, Mme. de, 18th century: Robinsonade Delaunay, Robert, 1885-1941: Dadaism Delaunay-Terk, Sophie, 1885-1979: Dadaism
596
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995: Mythical Female Figures delle Grazie, Marie Eugenie, 1864-1931: Drama, Biblical; Epos/Prose Epos; Fin-deSiecle Vienna; Naturalism; Reception; Vorspiel Delvard, Marya, 1874-1965: Cabaret De Maiziere, Lothar, 1940-present: Unification, German Demirkan, Renan, 1955-present: Turkish-German Literature Demski, Eva, 1944-present: Travelogues, Trivial Literature Derrida, Jacques, 1930-present: Aesthetics, Feminist; Feminisms, German; Feminist Theory, French; Phenomenology; Positionality; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism Dery, Juliane, 1864-1899: Comedy Destree, Olga: Cabaret Dettmer, Louise: Women's Movement Deutsch, Helene, 1884-1982: Homosexuality; Masochism; Psychoanalysis Dhuoda, 9th century: Medieval Literature Dia, Countess Beatritz of: Love, Courtly/Platonic; Minnesang Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784: Mannerism Diel, Luise, 1893-?: Colonial Literature Dieter, Ina: Cabaret Dietrich, Marlene, 1902-1992: Film, Lesbian; Film Theory, Feminist Dilthey, Wilhelm, 1833-1911: Erlebnisdichtung; Existentialism; Hermeneutics Dinglreiter, Senta, 1893-?: Colonial Literature Diodorus Siculus: Amazon Dische, Esther: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Dischereit, Esther, 1952-present: German-Jewish Literature Dischner, Gisela, 1939-present: Anthology; Biography, Literary Dittmar, Luise, c.1848: Revolution, French; Young Germany Doblin, Alfred, 1878-1957: Allegory; Neue Sachlichkeit Doeuff, Michele Le, 1948-present: Existentialism Dohm, Ernst, 1819-1883: Dohm, H. Dohm, Hedwig, 1831-1919: Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Comedy; Essay; Eternal Feminine; Frauenfrage; German-Jewish Literature; Gesellschaftsroman; Grandmother; Grunderzeit; Ideologiekritik; Jugendstil; Madwoman; New Woman; Realism; Revolution, Sexual; Suffrage; Women's Movement; World War I Dohner, Sophie, c.1840-?: Travelogues Dolorosa: see Eichhorn, Maria Doltz, Emma, 1866-1950: Poetry, Political; Workers' Literature Domin, Hilde, 1912-present: Exile Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Heimkehrerliteratur; Hermetic Poetry; Poetry, Political Dore, Gustave, 1832-1883: Meysenbug, M. v. Dorman, Genevieve: Trotta, M. v.
APPENDIX OF NAMES
597
Dormitzer, Else, 1877-1958: Holocaust Literature Dorn, Emma: Colonial Literature Dorrie, Doris, 1955-present: Comedy; Frauenfilm; Melodrama Drewitz, Ingeborg, 1923-1986: Biography, Literary; GroBstadtroman; Horspiel; Ideologiekritik; Mannerbilder; Novel, Psychological; Travelogues; Trivial Literature Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von, 1797-1848: Ballad; Biedermeier; Demon; Dorf geschichte; Doubles, Female; Ebner-Eschenbach, M. v.; Epos/Prose Epos; Erlebnisdichtung; Fable; Folk Song; Fragment; Gedankenlyrik; Kreis von Miinster; Lesedrama; Madwoman; Mother Mary; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Nature Poetry; Novella; Ode; Operetta; Orientalism; Pastoral Literature; Poetry, Spiritual; Prizes, Literary; Realism; Reception; Saints; Tragedy; Volkskunde; Woman Writer Druskowitz, Helene von, 1858-1918: Operetta; Posse Due, Aimee: see Wettstein, Hedwig Maria Ducasse, Isidore-Lucien: see Lautreamont, Comte de Duden, Anne, 1942-present: Body, Female; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Dunajew, Wanda von: see Sacher-Masoch, Aurora Duncker, Dora, 1855-1916: Operetta; Posse Durbahn, Birgit, 1952-present: Film, Lesbian Diirer, Albrecht, 1471-1528: Pamphlet/Flugblatter Diiringsfeld, Ida von, 1815-1876: Novel, Historical; Ode; Tragedy, Historical; Travelogues Duse, Eleonora, 1858-1924: Actress Dutschke, Rudi, 1940-1979: Student Movement Dutschke-Klotz, Gretchen: Student Movement Dworkin, Andrea: Pornography Ebeling, Elisabeth, 1828-1905: Fairy Tale Drama Eberti, Johann Caspar, 1677-1760: Gender Theories Ebinger, Blandine: Cabaret Ebner, Christine, 1277-1356: Medieval Literature; Mysticism Ebner, Margarete (Margaretha), 1291-1351: Love, Courtly/Platonic; Medieval Literature; Mysticism Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von, 1830-1916: Actress; Aphorism; Austrian Literature; Autobiography; Comedy; Diaries; Dorfgeschichte; Fable; Father-Daughter Relationship; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Gesellschaftsroman; Governess; Heroine; Kiinstlerdrama; Novel, Psychological; Novella; Parable; Princess; Realism; Reception; Tragedy, Historical Eckart, Gabriele, 1954-present: Lesbian Literature Eckenbrecher, Margarete von, 1875-?: Colonial Literature Eckersberg, Elke: Prostitution Eckstein-Diener, Bertha, 1874-1948: Amazon
598
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Eco, Umberto, 1932-present: Semiotics Edel, Peter, 1921-present: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Edvardson, Cordelia: Daughter, Mother Figures; Mother-Daughter Relationship Ehrmann, Marianne, 1755-1795: Bourgeois Tragedy; Moral Weeklies; Protagonist/ Antagonist; Revolution, French; Ritterliteratur; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Swiss German Literature; Women's Journals Eibenschiitz, Ilona, 1873-1967: Rhapsody Eichendorff, Joseph von, 1788-1857: Mythical Female Figures Eichhorn, Maria, 1879-after 1908: Governess Eichler, Caroline, 1856-?: Operetta; Posse Eikhenbaum, Boris, 1886-1959: Formalism Eisenstein, Sergei, 1898-1948: Montage Ejxenbaum, Boris: see Eikhenbaum, Boris Eleonore von Aquitanien, 1122-1204: Patronage Eleonore von Osterreich, 1433-1480: Abenteuerroman; Court Culture; Ritterliteratur; Volksbuch Elisabeth, Grafin von Braunschweig-Liineburg, 1510-1558: Reformation Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken, 1397-1456: Abenteuerroman; Amazon; Court Culture; Ritterliteratur; Volksbuch Elisabeth von Rumanien, 1834-1916: Kiinstlerdrama; Tragedy, Historical Elisabeth von Schonau, c.l 129-1164: Medieval Literature; Saints Elisabeth-Eleonore von Sachsen-Meiningen, 1658-1729: Hymn Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939: Homosexuality; Mannweib Ellmenreich, Friederike, 1777-1845: Drama, Biblical; Operetta; Posse Elsbeth von Volkensdorf: Mare Eisner, Gisela, 1937-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gruppe 61; Parable; Satire Empson, William, 1906-present: New Criticism Endres, Ria, 1946-present: Biographical Fiction; FRG Literature (1949-1990) Engel-Egli, Regula, 1761-1853: Swiss German Literature; Travelogues Engelke, Gerrit, 1890-1918: Technology Engels, Friedrich, 1820-1895: Marxist Theories; Matriarchy Englander, Richard: see Altenberg, Peter Engstrom, Ingemo, 1941-present: Film, Lesbian Erasmus von Rotterdam, 1466-1536: Renaissance Humanism Erb, Elke, 1938-present: Droste-Hiilshoff, A. v.; FRG Literature (since 1990); Grotesque; Hermetic Poetry; Poetry, Prose Erlenberger, Maria: Body, Female; Madwoman; Science Fiction; Utopia/Anti-Utopia Ernesti, Johann August, 1707-1781: New Humanism Ernst, Max, 1891-1976: Realism, Magic; Surrealism Eronu, Yasmin: Minority Literature Erxleben, Dorothea: see Leporin, Dorothea Escher, Nanny, 1855-1932: Dialektdichtung
APPENDIX OF NAMES
599
Estes, Clarissa Pinkola: Wild Woman Ewald, Johann Ludwig, 1748-1822: Ratgeberliteratur Export, Valie, 1940-present: Frauenfilm Fahlmer, Johanna, 1744-1821: Storm and Stress Falkenhausen, Helene von: Colonial Literature Fallada, Hans, 1893-1947: Angestelltlnnenroman; Neue Sachlichkeit Fanon, Frantz, 1925-1961: Postcolonialism Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 1945-1982: Film, Lesbian; FleiBer, M.; Melodrama; Picara; Trotta, M. v.; Volksstiick Fauth, Gertrud, 1886-1932: Lesedrama Fenelon, Fania: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Feuchtwanger, Lion, 1884-1958: Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Novel, Historical Feyerabend, Sigmund, 1528-1590: Volksbuch Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762-1814: Gender Theories; Geschlechtscharaktere; Romanticism Fickert, Auguste, 1855-1910: Austrian Literature Filhes, Berta: see Lehmann-Filhes, Bertha Fini, Leonor, 1918-present: Surrealism Firestone, Shulamith, 1945-present: Feminisms, German Fischart, Johann, 1546-1590: Grotesque Fischer, Caroline Auguste, 1764-1842: Romanticism Fischer, Robert: Dorrie, D. Flachsland, Caroline, 1750-1809: Biographism; Darmstadter Kreis; Folk Song/ Volkslied; Narcissism, Female; Narration; Storm and Stress Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880: Schwaiger, B. Fleischl-Marxow, Ida: Novella FleiBer, Marieluise, 1901-1974: Dialektdichtung; Drama, Biblical; Drama, Historical; Epic Theater; Modernism; National Socialism; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Prizes, Literary; Prologue; Reception; Short Story; StiBes Madel; Tragedy, Historical; Volksstiick; Weimar Republic Fleming, Paul, 1609-1640: Sonnet Fliegel, Alice (pseudonym for Bodenstedt, Alice), 1884-?: Horspiel Foa, Eugenie, d. 1853: Robinsonade Folz, Hans, C.1450-C.1515: Fastnachtsspiele Fontane, Theodor, 1819-1898: Father-Daughter Relationship; Gesellschaftsroman; Schwaiger, B. Forneris, Anna, 1789-1847: Orientalism; Travelogues Forster, Friedrich, 1791-1868: Wars of Liberation Forstner, Clara Johanna, 1850-1907: Princess Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984: Authorship; Cultural Studies; Existentialism; Feminisms, German; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, German; New Historicism; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Victimization Theories
600
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Fouque, Friedrich de la Motte: see Motte-Fouque, Friedrich de la Fouque, Karoline de la Motte: see Motte-Fouque, Karoline de la Franck, Barbara: New Subjectivity Francke, August Hermann, 1663-1727: Pietism Francois, Louise von, 1817-1893: Governess; Novel, Historical; Realism; Tatsachenroman Frank, Leonhard, 1882-1961: Neue Sachlichkeit Franz, Agnes, 1794-1843: Canon, Literary; Children's Literature; Princess Frapan, Use, 1849-1908: Erotic Literature; Prostitution; University Education, Women's; Whore Frederick II of Prussia: see Friedrich II Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 1810-1876: Meysenbug, M. v. Fremgen, Gisela: Black German Literature Frenssen, Gustav, 1863-1945: Colonial Literature Freud, Anna, 1895-1928: Psychoanalysis Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939: Aesthetics, Feminist; Androgyny; Child-Woman; Fantastic Literature; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories; Homosexuality; Hysteric; Masochism; Matriarchy; Modernism; Montage; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Narcissism, Female; Novel, Psychological; Poststructuralism; Psychoanalysis; Surrealism; Symbolism; Technology; Vampirism; Victimization Theories Freundlich, Emmy, 1878-1948: Suffrage Frey, Eleonore, 1939-present: Swiss German Literature Freydorf, Alberta Wilhelmine H. von, 1846-1923: Princess Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895: Bildungsroman Fried, Alfred Hermann, 1864-1921: Pacifism Friedan, Betty, 1921-present: Schwaiger, B. Friedlander, Rebecca, 1783-1850: German-Jewish Literature Friedrich II von PreuBen, 1712-1786: Allgemeines PreuBisches Landrecht; Court Theater Friedrich Wilhelm II, 1744-1797: Allgemeines PreuBisches Landrecht Frisch, Max, 1911-1991: Bachmann, I. Frischmuth, Barbara, 1941-present: Austrian Literature; Experimental Literature; Fantastic Literature; Goddess; Novel, Psychological; Orientalism; Short Story; Sister; Travelogues Fritz, Marianne: Novel, Historical Frobel, Friedrich, 1782-1852: Gender Theories Frolich, Henriette, 1768-1833: Musenalmanach; Romanticism Fromm, Erich, 1900-1980: Frankfurt School Fuller, Loie, 1862-1928: Futurism Furstenberg, Franz Freiherr von, 1729-1810: Kreis von Miinster
APPENDIX OF NAMES
601
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-present: Hermeneutics; Phenomenology; Reader-Response Theories Gallitzin, Adelheid Amalia von, 1748-1806: Kreis von Miinster Garbe, Hans: Workers' Literature Garibaldi, Guiseppe, 1801-1882: Meysenbug, M. v. Gatterer Engelhard, Philippine, 1756-1831: Idyll; La Roche, S. v.; Musenalmanach; Rococo Literature; Sentimentality Gay, John, 1685-1732: Epic Theater Gedrut, 13th century: Minnesang Geertz, Clifford: New Historicism Gehrke, Doris, 1937-present: Kriminalroman Gellert, Christian Fiirchtegott, 1715-1769: Epistolary Culture; Gender Theories; Novel, Educational; Romanticism George, Stefan, 1868-1933: Hermetic Poetry; Symbolism Gerberg, niece of Emperor Otto I, 10th century: Patronage Gerhard, Adele, 1868-1956: Expressionism Gerhard, Melitta, 1891-?: Entwicklungsroman Gerhardt, Marlies, 1940-present: Essay Gerland, Brigitte: Stalinism Germershausen, Christian Friedrich, 1725-1810: Hausvaterliteratur Gersdorf, Wilhelmine von, 1768-1847: La Roche, S. v. Gerstl, Elfriede, 1932-present: Austrian Literature Gerstner, Clara von, 19th century: Travelogues Gert, Valeska, 1892-1978: Cabaret Gerter, Elisabeth, 1895-1955: Swiss German Literature Gertrud von Helfta, 1256-1302: Love; Medieval Literature Gertrude the Great, 1241-1298: Virgin Gertrude von Hackeborn, 1256-1301: Medieval Literature; Mysticism Gesner, Johann Matthias, 1691-1761: New Humanism Gessner, Salomon, 1730-1788: Idyll Giehse, Therese, 1898-1975: Cabaret Gilbert, Yvette, 1867-1944: Cabaret Gilligan, Carol, 1936-present: Moral Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935: Femme Fragile; Science Fiction Gisel, 12th century: Patronage Gizycki, Georg von, 1851-1895: Braun, L. Gizycki, Lily von: see Braun, Lily Glas-Larsson, Margareta: Holocaust Literature Glatz, Jakob, 1776-1831: Ratgeberliteratur Gleich, Josef Alois, 1772-1841: Besserungsstiick Gleim, Betty, 1781-1827: Erudite Woman; New Humanism
602
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Gleit, Maria, 1909-?: Angestelltlnnenroman Gloger, Gotthold, 1924-present: Gender Transformation Gluck, Babette Elisabeth (pseudonym Betty Paoli), 1814-1894: Austrian Literature; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Novella; Ode Gliickel von Hameln, 1645-1724: Confessional Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Hybridity Gliimer, Claire von, 1825-1906: Biography, Literary Gmeyner, Anna, 1904-?: Volksstiick Gochhausen, Luise von, 1752-1807: La Roche, S. v.; Matinee Gbckingk, Nantchen, 1743-1781: Rococo Literature Goebbels, Joseph, 1897-1945: Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth: see Textor-Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, Cornelia, 1750-1777: Narcissism, Female Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 1749-1832: Actress; Amateur Theater; Amazonentheater; Anticlimax; Arnim, B. v.; Authorship; Autobiography; Beautiful Soul; Bildungsroman; Biographism; Canon, Literary; Child-Woman; Classicism; Darmstadter Kreis; Daughter; Erlebnisdichtung; Erudite Woman; Eternal Feminine; Idyll; Infanticide; Kreis von Miinster; Kiinstlerdrama; La Roche, S. v.; Lewald, F.; Mannerism; Matinee; Montage; Musical Theater; Mythical Female Figures; Narration; New Humanism; Novella; Orientalism; Parody; Protagonist/Antagonist; Reception; Sentimentality; Singspiel; Storm and Stress; Technology; Vampirism Goethe, Katharina Elisabeth: see Textor-Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890: Expressionism Goll, Claire, 1891 (1901?)-1977: Expressionism; Ode; World War I Goncharova, Natalia, 1881-1962: Futurism Gordon, Marie, 1812-1863: Operetta; Posse Gorki, Maxim, 1868-1936: Socialist Realism Gorres, Ida Friederike: Saints Gorres, Joseph, 1776-1848: Volksbuch Gottfried von StraBburg, 13th century: Wisewoman Gotthelf, Jeremias, 1797-1854: Dorfgeschichte Gottner-Abendroth, Heide, 1941-present: Aesthetics, Feminist; Matriarchy Gottsched, Johann Christoph, 1700-1766: Authorship; Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Haupt- und Staatsaktion; Moral Weeklies; Nachspiel; Neoclassicism; Neuber, F. C ; Play-within-a-Play; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Soubrette; Tragedy; Tragedy, Historical; Wandertheater; Women's Journals; Ziegler, C. M. v. Gottsched, Luise Adelgunde, 1713-1762: Adaptation/Translation; Authorship; Charakterdrama; Comedy; Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Fairy Tale Drama; Freundschaftskult; Governess; Nachspiel; Neoclassicism; Prologue; Rococo Literature; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Soubrette; Tragedy; Vorspiel Gotze, Auguste, 1840-1908: Drama, Historical; Musical Theater; Tragedy, Historical
APPENDIX OF NAMES
603
Gouges, Olympe de, 1755-1793: Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Revolution, French Graham, Barbara: Wild Woman Grahn, Christine, 1965-present: Kriminalroman Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937: Cultural Studies Grass, Giinter, 1927-present: Bildungsroman; Exotin; FRG Literature (since 1990); Monikova, L.; Picara Greenblatt, Stephen, 1943-present: New Historicism Greer, Germaine, 1939-present: Feminist Theory, British Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von, 1633-1694: Austrian Literature; Baroque Literature; Creativity; Figurengedicht; Gedankenlyrik; Hymn; Language Societies; Love; Mother Mary; Narration; Ode; Pastoral Literature; Poetry, Saints; Sonnet; Spiritual Griffith, D. W. (David Wark), 1875-1948: Montage Grillparzer, Franz, 1791-1872: Austrian Literature; Exotin; Geschlechterkampf; Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Kiinstlerdrama Grimm, Gisela: Arnim, Gisela von Grimm, Hans, 1875-1959: Colonial Literature Grimm, Jakob, 1785-1863: Arnim, B. v.; Canon, Literary; Children's Literature; Droste-Hiilshoff, A. v.; Erbauungsliteratur; Fairy Tale; Narration; Romanticism; Sister; Volksdichtung; Volkskunde; Wisewoman; Witch Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786-1859: Arnim, B. v.; Canon, Literary; Children's Literature; Droste-Hiilshoff, A. v.; Erbauungsliteratur; Fairy Tale; Narration; Romanticism; Sister; Volksdichtung; Volkskunde; Wisewoman; Witch Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph, 1625-1676: Anagram; Baroque Literature; Picara; Picaresque Novel Groeben, Elisabeth von, c.1882?: Puppenspiel Grogger, Paula, 1892-1984: Prizes, Literary GroB, Charlotte, 1905-present: Resistance Grosz, Georg, 1893-1959: Futurism Grote, Alexandra von, 1944-present: Film, Lesbian Grumbach, Argula von, 1492-1554: Pamphlet; Woman Writer Grim, Albertine von, 1749-1792: Storm and Stress Grim, Max von der, 1926-present: Gruppe 61; Minority Literature Grunicke, Helene: Colonial Literature Gryphius, Andreas, 1616-1664: Baroque Literature; Father-Daughter Relationship; Martyrerdrama; Play-within-a-Play; Sonnet Guardini, Romano, 1885-1968: Existentialism Gubitz, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1786-1870: Kiinstlerdrama Guillaume-Schack, Gertrud: Prostitution Gumpert, Thekla von, 1810-1897: Jugendliteratur; Madchenliteratur
604
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Gunderrode, Karoline von, 1780-1806: Androgyny; Anticlimax; Arnim, B. v.; Authorship; Biographical Fiction; Biography, Literary; Earth Mother; Epistolary Culture; Erlebnisdichtung; Fragment; Freundschaftskult; Gedankenlyrik; Heroine; Hosenrolle; La Roche, S. v.; Lesedrama; Love; Mereau, S.; Nature Poetry; Ode; Orientalism; Poetry, Prose; Reception; Romanticism; Saga; Socialist Realism; Sonnet; Tragedy Giinther, Agnes, 1863-1911: Femme Fragile; Jugendstil Giinther, Marie, 1854-1916?: Erudite Woman; Operetta; Woman Writer Gutsche, Kerstin, 1961-present: Lesbian Literature; Protokolle Gutzkow, Karl, 1811-1878: Bildungsroman Haas, Thea de: Colonial Literature Habermann, Johann, 1516-1590: Erbauungsliteratur Habermas, Jiirgen, 1929-present: Frankfurt School; Hermeneutics; Postmodernism Hacks, Peter, 1928-present: Gender Transformation Hadewijch of Antwerp/Brabant, C.1200-C.1250: Lehrdichtung; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Virgin Haffter, Petra, 1953-present: Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen Hafner-Forneris, Anna: see Forneris, Anna Hahn, Ulla, 1946-present: Technology Hahn-Hahn, Ida von, 1805-1880: Abenteuerroman; Biedermeier; Entwicklungsroman; Epistolary Culture; Exotin; Frauenfrage; Heroine; Love; Orientalism; Realism; Saints; Travelogues; Young Germany Haid, Karl: Realism, Magic Haidegger, Christine, 1942-present: Austrian Literature Haider, Ursula, 1413-1498: Medieval Literature Halbe, Max, 1865-1944: Naturalism Haller, Albrech von, 1708-1777: Swiss German Literature Hallmann, Johann Christian, d. 1704: Martyrerdrama Hamburger, Kate, 1896-1992: Formalism Handel-Mazetti, Enrica Freiin von, 1871-1955: Austrian Literature; Impressionism; Novel, Historical; Prizes, Literary Handke, Peter, 1942-present: Bildungsroman; New Subjectivity Hannsmann, Margarete, 1921-present: Heimatdichtung Hanum, Djavidan: Orientalism Harbou, Thea von, 1888-1954: Grotesque; Patriotism; Science Fiction; Utopia/AntiUtopia Harden, Sylvia von, 1894-1964: Expressionism Hardenberg, Friedrich von: see Novalis Hardenberg, Henriette, 1894-?: Expressionism Harding, Sandra: Technology Harsdorffer, Georg Philipp, 1607-1658: Gelegenheitsdichtung Hartl-Mitius, Philomene, 1852-1928: Dialektdichtung; Operetta; Posse
APPENDIX OF NAMES
605
Hartlieb, Johann, 15th century: Exotin Hartmann von Aue, 12th century: Wisewoman Hartwig, Mela, 1895-1963: Austrian Literature; New Woman Hase, Annemarie: Cabaret Hasing, Helga: Anthology Hasler, Eveline, 1933-present: Novel, Historical; Swiss German Literature; Tatsachenroman Hassenpflug, Johanna: Volkskunde Hassenpflug, Marie: Fairy Tale; Volkskunde Hatzlerin, Clara, c.1471: Folk Song; Mare Haug, Frigga, 1937-present: Masochism/Sadomasochism; Victimization Theories Haugwitz, August Adolph von, 1654-1706: Martyrerdrama Hauptmann, Elizabeth, 1897-1973: Epic Theater Hauptmann, Gerhart, 1862-1946: Femme Fragile; Naturalism Haushofer, Marlen, 1920-1970: Austrian Literature; Entwicklungsroman; Heimatdichtung; Mannerbilder; Prizes, Literary Hausmann, Julie, 1825-1901: Hymn Havranek, Bohuslav: Formalism Hayn, Henriette Luise von, 1724-1782: Hymn Hebbel, Friedrich, 1813-1863: Father-Daughter Relationship; Geschlechterkampf Hebel, Johann Peter, 1760-1826: Classicism Hedin, Alwa, 1876-?: Travelogues Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm, 1770-1831: Existentialism; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories; Phenomenology; Socialist Realism Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976: Bachmann, I.; Existentialism; Hermeneutics; Hermetic Poetry; Lesedrama; Nihilism; Phenomenology; Technology Heilke, 12th century: Patronage Heim, Uta Maria, 1962-present: Kriminalroman Heine, Heinrich, 1797-1856: Mythical Female Figures; Wild Woman Heinemann, Marlene, 1948-present: Holocaust Literature Heinersdorf, Richard: Kiinstlerdrama Heinrich, Jutta, 1940-present: Body, Female; Daughter; Grotesque; Ideologiekritik; Mother-Daughter Relationship Heinrich von Nordlingen, c. 1300-1351: Love, Courtly/Platonic; Medieval Literature Heinrich von Veldeke, c. 1140-1210: Legend; Wisewoman Heins, Barbara Schmidt, 1949-present: Anagram Heinse, Johann Jakob Wilhelm, 1746-1803: Women's Journals Heinz-Erian, Hanna, 1925-present: Dialektdichtung Heller, Eva, 1948-present: Romance Helm, Clementine, 1825-1896: Jugendliteratur; Madchenliteratur Helvig, Amalie von, 1776-1821: Classicism; Drama, Biblical; Idyll; Operetta; Pastoral Literature
606
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Hemsterhuis, Frans, 1721-1790: Kreis von Miinster Henckel, Erdmann Heinrich von: Pietism Hensel, Friederike Sophie: see Seyler, Friederike Sophie Hensel, Kerstin, 1961-present: FRG Literature (since 1990) Hensel, Luise, 1798-1876: Biedermeier; Kreis von Miinster Henze, Hans Werner, 1926-present: Bachmann, I. Herbst, Christine: Anthology Herder, Caroline: see Flachsland, Caroline Herder, Johann Gottfried, 1744-1803: Black German Literature; Canon, Literary; Folk Song; Geschlechtscharaktere; Kreis von Miinster; New Humanism; Sentimentality; Volksdichtung; Volkskunde Herking, Ursula, 1912-1974: Cabaret Hermes, Johann Timotheus, 1738-1821: Novel, Educational Herodotus, 484? B . C - 4 3 0 / 4 2 0 B.C.: Amazon Herrad von Landsberg, c.l 130-1195: Medieval Literature; Puppenspiel Herwegh, Emma, 1817-1904: Revolution, German; Travelogues Herz, Henriette, 1764-1847: German-Jewish Literature; Romanticism; Salonism Herzfeld, Marie, 1855-1940: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Herzl, Theodor, 1860-1904: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Herzog, Marianne: Minority Literature Hesekiel, Ludowika, 1847-1889: Patriotism Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962: Exotin Hesterberg, Trude: Cabaret Hett, Christine: Film, Documentary Heun, Karl Gottlieb Samuel: see Clauren, Heinrich Heyking, Elisabeth Freifrau von, 1861-1925: Travelogues Heymair, Magdalena, d. after 1586: Saints Heymann, Lida Gustava, 1868-1943: Frauenfrage; Women's Journals Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 1729-1812: New Humanism He(t?)zel, Charlotte, 1755-1817: Enlightenment; Moral Weeklies; Women's Journals Hildegard von Bingen, 1098-1179: Abortion; Allegory; Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Confessional Literature; Demon; Erbauungsliteratur; Hymn; Hysteric; Lehrdichtung; Mariendichtung; Medieval Literature; Mysticism; Narration; Virgin Hillern, Wilhelmine von, 1836-1916: Bildungsroman; Epos/Prose Epos; Hysteric; Nachspiel; Play-within-a-Play; Vorspiel Himmler, Heinrich, 1900-1945: Inquisition Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von, 1741-1796: Enlightenment; Gender Theories; New Humanism; Storm and Stress Hirsch, Jenny, 1829-1902: Women's Journals Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945: Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory
APPENDIX OF NAMES
607
Hoch, Hannah, 1889-1978: Dadaism; Manifesto; Montage Hochhuth, Rolf, 1931-present: Lesedrama Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 1776-1822: Demon; Morgner, I.; Science Fiction; Vampirism Hoffmann, Johanna, 1930-present: Tatsachenroman Hoffmann, Utta C : Film, Documentary Hofland, Barbara, 1770-1844: Robinsonade Hofmann, Ernestine, 1752-1789: Moral Weeklies; Women's Journals Hofmann, Kitty, d. after 1834: Children's Literature Hofmann-Oedenkoven, Ida: Revolution, Sexual Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 1874-1926: Femme Fragile; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Hermetic Poetry; Soubrette; Symbolism Hogel, Minna, 1849-1929: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Hoggart, Richard, 1918-present: Cultural Studies Holder, Luise, 1763-1843: Children's Literature Holderlin, Friedrich, 1770-1843: Classicism; Fragment; Giinderrode, K. v.; Hymn; Ode; Socialist Realism Holl, Gussy: Cabaret Holthausen, Johanna, 1812-1875: Drama, Biblical Holz, Arno, 1863-1929: Naturalism Holzl, Luisa: Minority Literature Homer, c.850 B.C.: Amazon; Epos/Prose Epos; Hymn; Rhapsody Honecker, Erich, 1912-1994: GDR Literature; Wende, Die Honigmann, Barbara, 1949-present: German-Jewish Literature Hopker, Lydia: Colonial Literature Horace, 65-8 B.C.: Hymn; Lehrdichtung; Ode; Pastoral Literature Horkheimer, Max, 1895-1973: Cultural Studies; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories; Postcolonialism Horney, Karen, 1885-1952: Masochism/Sadomasochism; Psychoanalysis Horvath, Odon von, 1901-1938: SuBes Madel; Volksstiick Hoyers, Anna Owena, 1584-1655: Baroque Literature; Erbauungsliteratur; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Woman Writer Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, 935-after 973: Authorship; Comedy; Demon; Drama, Biblical; Epos/Prose Epos; Erbauungsliteratur; Legend; Lesedrama; Madwoman; Martyrerdrama; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Mystery Play; Orientalism; Prizes, Literary; Prologue; Saints; Virgin; Whore Huber, Christiane Friederike, 17217—1799: Adaptation/Translation; Tragedy Huber, Ludwig Ferdinand, 1764-1804: Ehrmann, M. Huber, Therese, 1764-1829: Amazon; Authorship; Bildungsroman; Naive; New Humanism; Operetta; Patriotism; Play-within-a-Play; Posse; Revolution, French; Romanticism; Travelogues
608
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Huch, Ricarda, 1864-1947: Ballad; Canon, Literary; Epos/Prose Epos; Gender Theories; Impressionism; Inner Emigration; Jugendstil; Neo-Romanticism; Nihilism; Novel, Historical; Operetta; Posse; Prizes, Literary; Symbolism; Tatsachenroman; Travelogues; University Education, Women's; World War I Huelsenbeck, Richard, 1892-1974: Dadaism Htigel, Ika: Black German Literature Hugo von Langenstein, 13th century: Legend Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 1767-1835: Canon, Literary; Gender Theories; Naive; New
Humanism
Humperdinck, Engelbert, 1845-1921: Reception
Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938: Existentialism; Phenomenology
Hutmacher, Rahel, 1944-present: Swiss German Literature; Wild Woman Illic, Monica: Aphorism Imhoff, Amalie von: see Helvig, Amalie von Ingarden, Roman, 1893-1970: Formalism; Phenomenology Institoris, Heinrich, 1430-1505: Inquisition; Witch Irigaray, Luce, 1930-present: Aesthetics, Feminist; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/ Constructionism; Existentialism; Feminisms, German; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Fragment; Lesbian Theories; Linguistics, Feminist; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Phenomenology; Poststructuralism; Satire
Irle, Hedwig: Colonial Literature Iser, Wolfgang, 1926-present: Hermeneutics; Phenomenology; Reader-Response Theories Jacob, Katherina, 1907-present: Resistance Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 1743-1819: Kreis von Miinster; Nihilism Jacobi, Johann Georg, 1740-1814: Women's Journals Jacobi, Marie, 20th century: Travelogues Jacobus, Mary: Reader-Response Theories Jagemann, Karoline, 1777-1848: Court Theater Jahn, Ebba: Film, Documentary Jahn, Friedrich, 1778-1852: Wars of Liberation Jahnn, Hans Henny, 1894-1959: Geschlechterkampf Jakob, Angelika: Sister Jakobs, Karl-Heinz, 1929-present: Gender Transformation Jakobson, Roman, 1896-1982: Formalism; Semiotics; Structuralism Janitschek, Maria, 1860-1927: Amazon Jannberg, Judith: Abortion Jansen, Fasia: Cabaret Janstein, Elisabeth, 1891-1944: Expressionism Jaspers, Karl, 1883-1969: Existentialism Jauss, Hans-Robert: Hermeneutics; Phenomenology; Reader-Response Theories Jean Paul: see Richter, Jean Paul
APPENDIX OF NAMES
609
Jeffreys, Sheila: Pornography Jelinek, Elfriede, 1946-present: Actress; Austrian Literature; Biographical Fiction; Body, Female; Comedy; Daughter; Dialektdichtung; Drama, Historical; Erotic Literature; Experimental Literature; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Geschlechterkampf; Grotesque; Heimatdichtung; Ideologiekritik; Kiinstlerdrama; Lesedrama; Love; Mannerbilder; Masochism; Mother Figures; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Novel, Psychological; Ottinger, U.; Parody; Patriarchy; Pornography; Prologue; Revolution, Sexual; Romance; Satire; Utopia/AntiUtopia; Vampirism; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Volksstiick Jens, Walter, 1923-present: Gruppe 47 Jerusalem, Else, 1877-1942?: Erotic Literature; Prostitution; Whore Jerusalem, Friederike, 1759-1836: Musenalmanach Jochheim, Amalie, 1839-1874: Musical Theater Johansen, Hanna, 1939-present: Swiss German Literature Joldic, Emil: Children's Literature Jollifous: Haupt- und Staatsaktion Jonigkeit, Elke: Film, Documentary Jordis, Ludovica: Volkskunde Joyce, James, 1882-1941: Feminist Theory, French; Monikova, L. Judith, daughter-in-law of Charlemagne, 9th century: Patronage Jung, Carl Gustav, 1875-1961: Androgyny; Geschlechterkampf Jungmann, Recha: Film, Autobiographical Kaffka, Margit: Revolution, Sexual Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924: Fragment; Monikova, L.; Montage Kahlo, Frieda, 1910-1954: Surrealism Kaiser, Georg, 1878-1945: Expressionism Kaleko, Mascha, 1907-1975: Cabaret Kalisch, David, 1820-1872: Posse Kalkowska, Eleonore, 1883-1937: Prostitution Kallimachos: see Callimachus Kalman, Emmerich (Imre), 1882-1953: Operetta Kaltenbach, Christiane: Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen Kamenko, Vera: Confessional Literature; Minority Literature Kamienski, Caroline Friederica von, 1755-1813: Women's Journals Kaminsky, Andre, 1923-present: Exotin Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804: Enlightenment; Erbauungsliteratur; Existentialism; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories; Geschlechtscharaktere; Naive; Sentimentality Kantorowicz, Gertrud, 1876-1945: Symbolism Karl V., 1500-1558: Abortion Karlin, Alma, 1891-1950: Orientalism; Travelogues Karlstadt, Liesl, 1892-1960: Cabaret
610
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Karlweis, Marta, 1889-1965: Travelogues Karmel, Ilona, 1925-present: Confessional Literature Karow, Maria: Colonial Literature Karsch, Anna Luisa, 1722-1791: Authorship; Erlebnisdichtung; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Idyll; Musenalmanach; Naive; Ode; Patriotism; Poetry, Political; Rococo Literature; Storm and Stress Kaschnitz, Marie Luise, 1901-1974: Demon; Essay; Fable; FRG Literature (19491990); Gedankenlyrik; Hermetic Poetry; Horspiel; Parable; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Prose; Poetry, Spiritual; Prizes, Literary; Short Story; Sister; Sonnet; Totentanz Kastner, Erich, 1899-1974: Abortion; Neue Sachlichkeit Ka-Tzetnik: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Kaub, Hannelore: Cabaret Kauffmann, Angelika, 1741-1807: Beautiful Soul Kaufmann, Christoph, 1753-1795: Storm and Stress Kautsky, Minna, 1837-1912: Dorfgeschichte; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Grunderzeit Kawaters, Corinna, 1962-present: Kriminalroman Kayser, Alwine: Colonial Literature Keller, Claudia: Trivial Literature Keller, Gottfried, 1819-1890: Bildungsroman; Dialektdichtung; Trivial Literature Keller, Therese: Puppenspiel Kellner, Marion: Film, Documentary Kern, Elga, 1888-1955: Prostitution Kerr-Sokal, Charlotte: Film, Documentary Kerschbaumer, Marie-Therese, 1936-present: Austrian Literature; Documentary Literature; Experimental Literature; Sister Kertbeny-Benkert, Karoly Maria, 1824-1882: Homosexuality Kessel, Martin, 1901-?: Angestelltlnnenroman Keun, Irmgard, 1905-1982: Angestelltlnnenroman; Body, Female; Entwicklungsroman; Exile Literature; GroBstadtroman; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Picara; Revolution, Sexual; Trivial Literature; Weimar Republic Key, Ellen, 1849-1926: Symbolism Kierkegaard, Soren, 1813-1855: Existentialism Kinkel, Johanna, 1810-1858: Musical Theater Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936: Epic Theater Kirndorfer, Marie, 1893-1966: Cabaret Kirndorfer, Marietta: see Kirndorfer, Marie Kirsch, Sarah, 1935-present: Anthology; Documentary Literature; Droste-Hulshoff, A. v.; Exile Literature; Feminisms, German; GDR Literature; Gender Transformation; Morgner, I.; Nature Poetry; Ode; Parody; Poetry, Prose;
Protokolle; Technology; Witch Kirschner, Lula (Aloysia), 1854-1934: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Vampirism
APPENDIX OF NAMES
611
Kiwus, Karin, 1942-present: Grotesque; Poetry, Prose Klaj, Johann, 1616-1656: Figurengedicht Kleist, Heinrich von, 1777-1811: Amazon; Biographical Fiction; Charakterdrama; Classicism; Geschlechterkampf; Gunderrode, K. v.; Sanders-Brahms, H.; Sister; Socialist Realism; Tragedy Klencke, Karoline Luise von, 1754-1802: Vorspiel Klettenberg, Susanne Katharina von, 1723-1774: Beautiful Soul; Storm and Stress Klimt, Gustav, 1862-1918: Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Jugendstil; Mythical Female Figures Klinger, Agnes: Storm and Stress Klinger, Babette: Puppenspiel Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian, 1752-1831: Geschlechterkampf; Storm and Stress Klokow, Ida, 1850-1912: Novel, Historical; Tragedy, Historical Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 1724-1803: Darmstadter Kreis; Freundschaftskult Klopstock, Meta (=Margarete): see Moller, Meta Klostermann, Helena: Anthology Kliiger, Ruth, 1931-present: Austrian Literature; Confessional Literature; GermanJewish Literature; Holocaust Literature; Victim Knauss, Sybille: Biographical Fiction Knorring, Sophie von, 1775-1833: Operetta Koblenz, Babette, 1956-present: Musical Theater Kobus, Kathi: Cabaret Koch, Gertrud: Film Theory, Feminist Koch, Minna, 1845-1924: Hymn Koch, Rosalie, 1811-1880: Jugendliteratur Koenig, Alma Johanna, 1887-1942: Austrian Literature; Erotic Literature; Prizes, Literary Koeppen, Anne Marie, 1899-1940: National Socialism Kohl, Helmut, 1930-present: Unification, German Kohler, Barbara, 1959-present: FRG Literature (since 1990) Kokoschka, Oskar, 1886-1980: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Kokula, Use: Lesbian Literature Kolb, Annette, 1870-1967: Prizes, Literary; Travelogues; World War I Kolb, Ulrike: Satire Kollwitz, Kathe, 1867-1945: Diaries; Totentanz; World War I Kolman, Trude: Cabaret Kolmar, Gertrud, 1894-1943?: Ballad; Erlebnisdichtung; Gedankenlyrik; GermanJewish Literature; Nature Poetry; Poetry, Spiritual Konigsdorf, Helga, 1938-present: Biographical Fiction; FRG Literature (since 1990); Ideologiekritik; Lesbian Literature; Technology; Wende, Die Konigsmarck, Maria Aurora von, 1662-1728: Singspiel Koppe, Ingrid, 1958-present: Wende, Die
612
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Kossuth, Lajos, 1802-1894: Meysenbug, M. v. Kotzebue, August von, 1761-1819: Amazon; Bildungsroman; Posse Kracauer, Siegfried, 1889-1966: Angestelltlnnenroman; Fascist Aesthetics Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 1840-1902: Gender Theories; Homosexuality Kraft, Anna, 1863-after 1913: Drama, Biblical Kralik, Mathilde von, 1857-1944: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Kramer, Heinrich: see Institoris, Heinrich Kraus, Karl, 1874-1936: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Gender Theories; Jelinek, E. Kraus, Marianne, late 18th century: Travelogues Krechel, Ursula, 1947-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gedankenlyrik; Hermetic Poetry; Ode; Poetry, Political Kremer, Karoline: Musenalmanach Kremnitz, Marie von, 1852-1916: Tragedy, Historical Kress, Nancy: Science Fiction Kreuzberg, Use: Colonial Literature Krickeberg, Sophie Friederike, 1770-1842: Operetta Kridl, Manfred, 1882-1957: Formalism Kristeva, Julia, 1941-present: Aesthetics, Feminist; Ecriture Feminine; Feminisms, German; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Fragment; Linguistics, Feminist; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Narcissism; Phenomenology; Positionality: Poststructuralism; Semiotics Kroetz, Franz Xaver, 1946-present: FleiBer, M.; Volksstiick Kronauer, Brigitte, 1940-present: Mannerbilder Krones, Therese, 1801-1830: Besserungsstiick; Musical Theater; Operetta Krull, Heidi: Film, Lesbian KUhl, Hilda, 1921-present: Dialektdichtung Kiihl, Kate: Cabaret Kiihnhold, Grete: Colonial Literature Kuntsch, Susanna Margaretha von, 1651-1717: Erbauungsliteratur; Ode Kurz, Isolde, 1853-1944: Impressionism; Novella Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981: Aesthetics, Feminist; Essentialism/Constructionism; Existentialism; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Positionality; Poststructuralism Lachmann, Hedwig, 1865-1918: German-Jewish Literature; Symbolism Lachmann, Renate, 1936-present: Feminist Theory, U.S.; Narration La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine de, 1634-1693: Adaptation/Translation Lamprecht, Pfaffe, 12th century: Exotin Landau, Paul, 1880-1951: Anthology Lander, Jeannette, 1931-present: FRG Literature (since 1990)
APPENDIX OF NAMES
613
Landry, Geoffrey de Latour, 14th century: Madchenliteratur Lang, Ana, 1946-present: Swiss German Literature Lang, Fritz, 1890-1976: Grotesque; Utopia/Anti-Utopia Lang, Marie, 1855-1934: Austrian Literature Lange, Helene, 1838-1930: Ebner-Eschenbach, M.v.; Frauenfrage; Griinderzeit; Manifesto; Nihilism; University Education, Women's; Women's Journals; World War I Lange-Muller, Katja, 1951-present: FRG Literature (since 1990); Prizes, Literary Langgasser, Elisabeth, 1899-1950: Earth Mother; FRG Literature (1949-1990); German-Jewish Literature; Inner Emigration; Mother Figures; Mother Mary; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Nature Poetry; Novella; Poetry, Spiritual; Prizes, Literary; Realism, Magic; Short Story Langmann, Adelhaid, c.1375: Medieval Literature Langner, Use, 1899-1987: Abortion; Amazon; Drama, Biblical; Drama, Historical; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Heimkehrerliteratur; Inner Emigration; Mother Mary; Neue Sachlichkeit; Prostitution; Technology; Travelogues Langner, Maria, 1901-1967: Workers' Literature Lara, Adelina de, 1872-1961: Rhapsody La Roche, Sophie von, 1731-1807: Abenteuerroman; Arnim, B. v.; Authorship; Beautiful Soul; Bildungsroman; Biographism; Court Culture; Ehrmann, M.; Enlightenment; Entwicklungsroman; Epistolary Culture; Geschlechtscharaktere; Heroine; Maskenspiel; Moral Weeklies; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Naive; Narration; Novel, Educational; Preface; Ratgeberliteratur; Reception; Romance; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Travelogues; Woman Writer; Women's Journals Lask, Berta, 1878-1967: Expressionism; Workers' Literature; World War I Laska, Vera, 1923-?: Holocaust Literature Lasker-Schiiler, Else, 1869-1945: Androgyny; Ballad; Drama, Biblical; Drama, Historical; Earth Mother; Erlebnisdichtung; Exile Literature; Exotin; Expressionism; German-Jewish Literature; Heimkehrerliteratur; Jugendstil; Modernism; Orientalism; Poetry, Spiritual; Prologue; Technology; World War I Laube, Iduna, 1808-1879: Austrian Literature Lauber, Cecile, 1887-1981: Swiss German Literature Lautreamont, Comte de, 1846-1870: Feminist Theory, French Lavant, Christine, 1915-1973: Austrian Literature; Poetry, Spiritual Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 1741-1801: Erbauungsliteratur; Swiss German Literature Lazar, Maria, 1895-1948: Prostitution Le Beau, Louisa Adolpha, 1850-1927: Musical Theater Lederer, Joe, 1907-1987: Revolution, Sexual Le Doeuff, Michele, 1948-present: Existentialism Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873: Vampirism
614
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Le Fort, Getrud von, 1876-1971: Aphorism; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Hymn; Mother Mary; Novel, Historical; Patriotism; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Spiritual; Prizes, Literary; Saints LeGuin, Ursula K., 1929-present: Science Fiction Lehar, Franz, 1870-1948: Operetta Lehmann-Filhes, Bertha, 1819-after 1887: Fairy Tale Drama Lehms, Georg Christian, 1684-1717: Gender Theories Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 1646-1716: Enlightenment Leitner, Maria, 1892-1942?: Orientalism; Travelogues Lenclos, Ninon de, 1620-1705: Adaptation/Translation Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 1870-1924: Marxist Theories Lenya, Lotte, 1898-1981: Epic Theater Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 1751-1792: Classicism; Daughter; Socialist Realism; Tragedy Lenzer, Gertrud: Masochism/Sadomasochism Leo, Sophie, 1795-after 1861: Travelogues Leonhard, Susanne, 1895-?: Stalinism Leporin-Erxleben, Dorothea, 1715-1762: Erudite Woman; Gender Theories, University Education, Women's Lepsius, Sabine, 1864-1942: Symbolism Lerner, Gerda, 1920-present: History, Women's Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729-1781: Bourgeois Tragedy; Canon, Literary; Comedie Larmoyante; Daughter; Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Fable; Father-Daughter Relationship; Lehrdichtung; Martyrerdrama; New Humanism; Prologue; Protagonist/Antagonist; Semiotics; Soubrette; Tragedy; Whore Lester, Rosemarie: Black German Literature Leutenegger, Gertrud, 1948-present: Epos/Prose Epos; GroBstadtroman; Patriarchy; Swiss German Literature; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Levi, Elise, 1832-1892: Daughter; Kiinstlerdrama; Preface Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1908-present: Feminist Theory, French; Structuralism Levy, Sarah: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Lewald, Fanny, 1811-1889: Autobiography; Bildungsroman; Diaries; Entwicklungsroman; Epistolary Culture; Frauenfrage; German-Jewish Literature; Gesellschaftsroman; Grunderzeit; Ideologiekritik; Love; Manifesto; Prostitution; Realism; Travelogues; Young Germany Lichnowsky, Mechthilde von, 1879-1958: Expressionism; Travelogues Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 1742-1799: Aphorism Liebenthal, Ite, 18957—1941: Expressionism Liebeskind, Meta (Margarethe), 1765-after 1822: Woman Writer Liebhaber, Amalie von, 1779-1845: Drama, Biblical; Saga Liebmann, Irena, 1943-present: Grotesque Liliencron, Adda Freifrau von, 1844-1913: Colonial Literature
APPENDIX OF NAMES
615
Lindgren, Astrid, 1907-present: Prizes, Literary Lion, Margo: Cabaret Lipinska-Leidinger, Barbara: Film, Documentary Littrow-Bischoff, Auguste von, 1819-1890: Austrian Literature Lloyd, Genevieve: Symbolic Content Lobe, Mira, 1913-1995: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Lober, Trautgott Christiana, 1725-1788: Pastoral Literature Lober-Lilien, Dorothea, 1724-?: Idyll Locher, Anna Emilie, 1870-1963: Dialektdichtung Locke, John, 1632-1704: Enlightenment Lodermeier, Gabi: Cabaret Lohenstein, Daniel Caspar von, 1635-1683: Martyrerdrama Lohmeyer, Wolfgang, 1919-present: Novel, Historical Lohn-Siegel, Maria Anna, 1830-1902: Drama, Biblical; Travelogues Loos, Cecile Ines, 1883-1959: Swiss German Literature Lopez de Ubeda, Francisco: Picara Lorde, Audre, 1934-1992: Film, Lesbian; Lesbian Theories Lorentz, Kay: Cabaret Lorentz, Lore: Cabaret Lowenthal, Leo, 1900-1994: Frankfurt School Liibke, Wilhelmine: Prizes, Literary Lucius, Christiane Karoline: see Schlegel, Christiane Karoline Ludecus, Caroline Amalie, 1757-1827?: Bildungsroman Ludwig, Paula, 1900-1967: Austrian Literature; Expressionism; Ode Ludwig, Sophie, 1764-1815: Sentimentality Luhring, Anna, 1796-1866: Wars of Liberation Lukacs, Georg, 1885-1971: Fascist Aesthetics; Frankfurt School; Socialist Realism Luther, Martin, 1483-1546: Erbauungsliteratur; Fable; Hymn; Marriage; Pamphlet; Reformation; Swiss German Literature Luxemburg, Rosa, 1870-1919: Marxist Theories; Modernism; Trotta, M. v.; University Education, Women's; World War I; Zetkin, C. Lycophron of Chalkis, 3d century B.C.: Anagram Lyotard, Jean Francois, 1922-present: Postmodernism MacKinnon, Catharine: Feminist Theory, U.S.; Pornography Maeterlinck, Maurice, 1862-1949: Femme Fragile Mahler, Gustav, 1860-1911: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Mahler-Werfel, Alma, 1879-1964: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Majakovskij, Vladimir: see Mayakovsky, Vladimir Malcolm, Shirley: Technology Mallarme, Stephane, 1842-1898: Hermetic Poetry; Symbolism Malss, Carl, 1792-1848: Posse
616
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Mandeville, Jean de, 14th century: Amazon Mann, Erika, 1905-1969: Cabaret; Parody; Travelogues Mann, Heinrich, 1871-1950: Actress; Bildungsroman; Femme Fatale; Femme Fragile Mann, Klaus, 1906-1949: Cabaret Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955: Bildungsroman; Femme Fatale; Femme Fragile; Gesellschaftsroman; Inner Emigration; Sister Mannel, Friederike: Volkskunde Manuel, Niklas, 1484-1515: Fastnachtsspiele Marc, Franz, 1880-1916: Futurism Marcuse, Herbert, 1898-1979: Frankfurt School Margarethe von Savoy en: Mare Marguerite de Navarre, 1492-1549: Play-within-a-Play Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Princess of Saxony, 1724-1780: Amazon; Court Theater; Motet; Musical Theater Maria Theresia, Empress of Austria, 1717-1780: Amateur Theater; Austrian Literature Marianne von PreuBen: Wars of Liberation Marie de France, 12th century: Minnesang Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 1876-1944: Futurism Marlitt, Eugenie, 1825-1887: Bildungsroman; Love; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Princess; Romance; Trivial Literature Maron, Monika, 1941-present: Doubles, Female; FRG Literature (since 1990); GDR Literature; Ideologiekritik; Stalinism; Technology Marriot, Emil (pseudonym): see Mataja, Emilie Marten, Lu, 1879-1970: Grunderzeit; Workers' Literature Martin, Eva Maria: Comedy Martin von Cochem, 1634-1712: Erbauungsliteratur Martinez, Marianne, 1744-1812: Motet Marx, Karl, 1818-1883: Cultural Studies; Feminist Theory, British; Frankfurt School; Marxist Theories; Matriarchy; Montage; Poststructuralism Mataja, Emilie (pseudonym Emil Marriot), 1855-1938: Austrian Literature; Comedy; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Modernism Mathilde, daughter of Otto I., d. 999: Patronage Mathilde, mother of Emperor Otto I., d. 968: Patronage Mathilde von Aquitanien: Patronage Mathilde von Osterreich, 1419-1482: Patronage Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954: Expressionism Matuschka, Marion Grafin von, 1847-?: Colonial Literature Maurina, Zenta, 1897-1978: Prizes, Literary May, Karl, 1842-1912: Exotin Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 1893-1930: Formalism Mayenburg, Ruth von, 1907-?: Stalinism Mayer, Ruth, 1943-present: Aphorism
APPENDIX OF NAMES
617
Mayreder, Rosa, 1858-1938: Austrian Literature; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Griinderzeit; Modernism; Soubrette Mayrocker, Friederike, 1924-present: Austrian Literature; Experimental Literature; FRG Literature (since 1990); Horspiel; Narration; Ode; Poetry, Prose Mazzini, Guiseppe, 1805-1872: Meysenbug, M. v. McCaffrey, Anne, 1926-present: Trivial Literature Mechtel, Angelika, 1943-present: Austrian Literature; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gruppe 61 Mechthild von Magdeburg, 1212-C.1294: Confessional Literature; Hysteric; Lehrdichtung; Love; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Medieval Literature; Mother Mary; Mysticism; Poetry, Spiritual; Saints; Virgin; Woman Writer Meding, Dorothee von: Resistance Meerapfel, Jeannine: Film, Autobiographical Megerle von Miihlfeld, Therese, 1813-1865: Operetta Meier, Helen, 1929-present: Swiss German Literature Meinhof, Ulrike Marie, 1934-1976: Essay; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Lesbian Literature; Sister Meisel-Hess, Grete, 1879-1922: Modernism Meisl, Carl, 1775-1853: Besserungsstiick Meitner, Lise, 1878-1968: Technology Memmi, Albert: Postcolonialism Mendelssohn, Fanny, 1805-1847: Travelogues Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729-1786: Naive Menschik, Jutta: Anthology Mentzel-Schippel, Elisabeth, 1847-1914: Musical Theater Menzel, Elisabeth: Puppenspiel Merck, Johann Heinrich, 1741-1791: Darmstadter Kreis Mereau-Brentano, Sophie, 1770-1806: Adaptation/Translation; Bildungsroman; Classicism; Epistolary Culture; Erlebnisdichtung; Gedankenlyrik; Love; Musenalmanach; Narration; Pastoral Literature; Romanticism Merian, Maria Sibylla, 1647-1717: Travelogues Merian, Svende, 1955-present: Entwicklungsroman; Romance Merimee, Prosper, 1803-1870: Vampirism Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand, 1825-1898: Exotin; Novel, Historical Meylan, Elisabeth, 1937-present: Swiss German Literature Meysenbug, Malvida von, 1816-1903: Frauenfrage; Travelogues Miegel, Agnes, 1879-1964: Ballad; Impressionism; Legend; Novella; Orientalism; Poetry, Political Migdal, Ulrike, 1948-present: Holocaust Literature Migerka, Katherina, 1844-1922: Travelogues Mikesch, Elfi, 1940-present: Film, Documentary; Film, Lesbian Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873: Suffrage Millais, John Everett, 1829-1896: Mythical Female Figures
618
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Millett, Kate, 1934-present: Feminisms, German Millocker, Karl, 1842-1899: Operetta Misselwitz, Helke: Film, Documentary Mitgutsch, Anna Waltraud, 1948-present: Austrian Literature; Daughter; Masochism/ Sadomasochism; Mother Figures; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Revolution, Sexual; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Mitterer, Erika, 1906-present: Austrian Literature Mitterer, Felix, 1948-present: Wild Woman Mobius, Ernst, 1779-1838: Gender Theories Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 1876-1907: Autobiography Modrow, Hans, 1928-present: Wende, Die Mohere, 1622-1673: Authorship; Nachspiel; Sachsische Typenkomodie; Soubrette Molina, Tirso de, 1584-1648: Hosenrolle Moller, Gertrud, 1641-1705: Baroque Literature; Pastoral Literature Moller, Meta, 1728-1758: Darmstadter Kreis; Epistolary Culture; Narration; Sentimentality; Women's Journals Monikova, Libuse, 1945-present: Mannerbilder; Sister Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592: Essay Montazami-Dabui, Mehrangis: Film, Documentary Montenglaut, Henriette A. M., 1867-1838: Operetta; Posse Moosdorf, Johanna, 1911-present: Lesbian Literature; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Morf, Doris, 1927-present: Swiss German Literature Morgan, Robin, 1941-present: Sisterhood Morgenstern, Beate, 1946-present: Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Morgenstern, Carl: see Morgenstern, Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern, Johann Karl Simon, 1770-1852: Bildungsroman Morgner, Irmtraud, 1933-1990: Abenteuerroman; Androgyny; Demon; Doubles, Female; Eternal Feminine; Fantastic Literature; GDR Literature; Gender Transformation; Inquisition; Love; Love, Courtly/Platonic; Matriarchy; Montage; Orientalism; Parody; Patriarchy; Picara; Picaresque Novel; Prizes, Literary; Realism, Magic; Reinig, C ; Science Fiction; Short Story; Socialist Realism; Student Movement; Technology; Trivial Literature; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Witch Morike, Eduard, 1804-1875: Child-Woman Morstatt, Else, 1880-?: Colonial Literature Moser, Milena, 1965-present: Kriminalroman Motte-Fouque, Friedrich de la, 1777-1843: Mythical Female Figures Motte-Fouque, Karoline de la, 1773-1831: Erudite Woman; Madwoman; Maskenspiele Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791: Hosenrolle; Soubrette Mudersbach-Giovane, Juliana von, 1757-1805: Idyll Mues, Ingeborg: Anthology Miihlbach, Luise: see Miiller-Mundt, Klara
APPENDIX OF NAMES
619
Miihlen, Hermynia zur, 1883-1951: Fable; Orientalism Muhr, Caroline: Hysteric Miiller, Adam, 1779-1829: Gender Theories Miiller, Christine, 1949-present: Protokolle Miiller, Elfriede, 1956-present: Comedy; Drama, Historical; FRG Literature (19491990) Miiller, Elisabeth, 1827-1898: Tragedy, Historical Miiller, Herta, 1953-present: FRG Literature (since 1990) Miiller, Johannes, 1752-1809: Folk Song Miiller, Otto, 1816-1894: Kiinstlerdrama Miiller, Wilhelmine, 1767-1807: Musenalmanach Miiller-Jahnke, Clara, 1860-1905: Naturalism; Poetry, Political; Workers' Literature Miiller-Mundt, Klara (pseudonym Luise Miihlbach), 1814-1873: Actress; Epistolary Culture; Frauenfrage; Novel, Historical; Orientalism; Revolution, French; Travelogues; Young Germany Miinchhausen, Bbrries von, 1874-1947: Ballad Miinchhausen, Otto von, 1716-1774: Hausvaterliteratur Murner, Thomas, 1475-1537: Pamphlet Musaus, J.K.A., 1735-1787: Romanticism Najmajer, Marie von, 1844-1904: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Ode Naoum, Jusuf, 1941-present: Minority Literature Nathusius, Marie, 1817-1857: Dorfgeschichte; Governess Naubert, Benedikte, 1756-1819: Demon; Fairy Tale; Fairy Tale Novella; Goddess; Governess; Mother Mary; Novel, Historical; Orientalism; Princess; Reception; Ritterliteratur; Romanticism; Sentimentality Ne(u?)fzer,: Puppenspiel Negt, Oskar, 1934-present: Frankfurt School Neidhart von Reuental, c. 1185-1240: Daughter Nelken, Dinah, 1900-?: Romance Nestroy, Johann, 1801-1862: Comedy; Posse; Sufies Madel Neuber, Friederike Caroline, 1697-1760: Actress; Authorship; Comedy; Enlightenment; Epos/Prose Epos; Haupt- und Staatsaktion; Kiinstlerdrama; Nachspiel; Neoclassicism; Pastoral Literature; Prologue; Sachsische Typenkomodie; • Vorspiel; Wandertheater Neumann, Margarete, 1917-present: Prizes, Literary Neumann von Meifienthal, Marianne, 1768-1837: Operetta Neuwirth, Barbara: Vampirism Nick, Dagmar, 1926-present: Ode; Poetry, Political Nicolas, Waltraud, 1897-1962: Stalinism Nider, Johannes, 1380-1438: Medieval Literature Niebergall, Ernst Elias, 1815-1843: Posse Nieden, Susanne zur: Anthology
620
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Niefien-Deiters, Leonore, 1879-1939: Colonial Literature Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1844-1900: Existentialism; Expressionism; Frankfurt School; Meysenbug, M. v.; Modernism; Nihilism; Poststructuralism; Swiss German Literature; Symbolism Noack, Ursula: Cabaret Nolde, Anna, 1772-1802: Musenalmanach Nostlinger, Christine, 1936-present: Dialektdichtung; Jugendliteratur Novak, Helga M., 1935-present: Ballad; Daughter; Exile Literature; Mother Figures; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Prose; Saints Novalis (pseudonym for Friedrich von Hardenberg), 1772-1801: Androgyny; Exotin; Muse; Novel, Educational Niitzel, Anna Maria, d. 1685: Language Societies Oeller, Wilhelmine: Puppenspiel Offenbach, Jacques, 1819-1880: Hosenrolle Oguntoye, Katharina: Anthology; Black German Literature; Body, Female Opitz, Elisabeth: Body, Female Opitz, Martin, 1597-1639: Baroque Literature; Sonnet Opitz, May: see Ayim, May Oppenheim, Meret, 1913-1985: Surrealism Oppermann, Ingrid: Film, Documentary Oren, Aras, 1939-present: Turkish-German Literature Ossietzky, Carl von, 1889-1938: Pacifism Ossowski, Leonie, 1925-present: Heimatdichtung Osterloh, Adele Minna, 1857-1946: Operetta Otegebe, 12th century: Patronage Ottinger, Ulrike, 1942-present: Comedy; Film, Lesbian; Frauenfilm; Melodrama Otto-Peters, Louise, 1819-1895: Biography, Literary; Epistolary Culture; Frauenfrage; Gender Theories; Griinderzeit; Ideologiekritik; Lewald, F.; Manifesto; Novel, Historical; Patriotism; Poetry, Political; Realism; Revolution, French; Revolution, German; Tragedy, Historical; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; Young Germany; Zetkin, C. Overberg, Bernard Heinrich, 1754-1826: Kreis von Miinster Ovid, 43 B.C-A.D.17 or 18: Medieval Literature; Narcissism, Female; Singspiel Ozakin, Aysel, 1942-present: Body, Female; Hybridity; Turkish-German Literature Ozdamar, Emine Sevgi, 1946-present: FRG Literature (since 1990); Turkish-German Literature Ozkan, Hiilyal, 1956-present: Minority Literature; Orientalism Paalzow, Henriette, 1788-1847: Romance Pabst, Georg Wilhelm, 1885-1967: Film, Lesbian Paoli, Betty: see Gliick, Babette Elisabeth Pappenheim, Bertha, 1859-1936: Austrian Literature; German-Jewish Literature; Prostitution
APPENDIX OF NAMES
621
Pappenheim-Frischauf, Marie, 1882-1966: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Pappritz, Anna, 1861-1939: Prostitution Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 1493-1541: Inquisition; Mythical Female Figures Paradis, Maria Theresia von, 1759-1824: Musical Theater; Singspiel Paretti, Sandra: see Schneeberger, Irmgard Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 1922-1975: Sanders-Brahms, H. Pastior, Oskar, 1927-present: Anagram Paul, the Apostle, 1st century B.C.: Virgin Pauli, Johannes, C.1450-C.1533: Volksbuch Paullini, Christian Franz, 1643-1712: Gender Theories Pausch, Birgit, 1942-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990) Pazarkaya, Yiiksel, 1940-present: Minority Literature; Turkish-German Literature Pedretti, Erica, 1930-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990); Muse; Swiss German Literature Peirce, Charles Sanders, 1839-1914: Semiotics Percillier, Nathalie: Film, Lesbian Perm, Karoline von, 1808-1888: Suffrage Perincioli, Cristina, 1946-present: Film, Documentary; Film, Lesbian Pernet, Luise Hedwig von, 1742-1801: Fable; Tragedy Perrault, Charles, 1628-1703: Witch Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 1746-1827: New Humanism; Novel, Educational; Swiss German Literature Petersen, Johanna Eleonora, 1644-1724: Pietism Petersen, Marie, 1816-1859: Princess Petrarca, Francesco, 1304-1374: Sonnet Peutinger, Juliana, c.1500: Renaissance Humanism Pfeffer, Anna M. Specht, 1649-1746: Gelegenheitsdichtung Pfeiffer, Ida, 1797-1858: Abenteuerroman; Exotin; Orientalism; Robinsonade; Travelogues Pferdemenges, Maria Paulina A., 1872-?: Motet Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973: Montage Pichler, Anita: Heimatdichtung Pichler, Caroline, 1769-1843: Austrian Literature; Canon, Literary; Court Theater; Idyll; Novel, Historical; Orientalism; Pastoral Literature; Tragedy, Historical Piercy, Marge, 1936-present: Science Fiction; Trivial Literature Pierson, Caroline, 1811-1899: Fable; Kiinstlerdrama Piller, Vera, 1949-1983: Prizes, Literary Pindar, 5227-443 B.C.: Hymn Pinner, Erna, 1890-?: Orientalism Pinoff, Minna: Erudite Woman Pirckheimer, Caritas, 1466-1532: Reformation; Renaissance Humanism
622
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Plath, Sylvia, 1932-1963: Schwaiger, B. Plato, 427?-347 B.C.: Androgyny/Hermaphrodism; Enlightenment; Existentialism Plato, Heidi von: FRG Literature (1949-1990) Plessen, Elisabeth, 1944-present: Father-Daughter Relationship; Novel, Historical; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Plievier, Hildegard, 1900-1970: Stalinism Plitt, Agathe, 1831-?: Motet Plonnies, Louise von, 1803-1872: Epos/Prose Epos; Travelogues Poe, Edgar Allen, 1809-1849: Femme Fragile Pohl, Emil, 1824-1901: Posse Pohorille, Gerta (pseudonym Gerda Taro), 1913-1937: Resistance Pollock, Friedrich, 1894-1970: Frankfurt School Ponte, Lorenzo da, 1749-1838: Soubrette Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744: Neoclassicism Popp, Adelheid, 1869-1939: Austrian Literature; Frauenfrage; Griinderzeit; Socialism; Suffrage; Workers' Literature; Zetkin, C. Poppe, Ulrike, 1953-present: Wende, Die Porges-Bernstein, Elsa: see Bernstein, Elsa Porta, Conrad, 1541-1585: Madchenliteratur Portz, Bertha: Puppenspiel Praunheim, Rosa von, 1942-present: Film, Lesbian Prellwitz, Gertrud, 1869-1942: Drama, Biblical Preradovic, Paula von, 1887-1951: Austrian Literature Prince, Magdalene von: Colonial Literature Prochaska, Eleonore, 1785-1813: Wars of Liberation Propertius, Sextus, 55 or 43 B.c.-after 16 B.C.: Amazon; Medieval Literature Pruckner, Karoline, 1832-1908: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Piirrer, Ursula: Film, Lesbian Pusch, Luise, 1944-present: Existentialism; Linguistics, Feminist; Sister Puttkamer, Marie Madeleine von (pseudonym Marie Madeleine), 1881-1944: Erotic Literature Piitz, Claudia, 1958-present: Lesbian Literature Pynchon, Thomas: Monikova, L. Quistorp, Eva-Maria, 1945-present: Frauenfrage Quittner, Genia: Stalinism Raabe, Wilhelm, 1831-1910: Bildungsroman Radegunde, Queen, 520-587: Medieval Literature Raimund, Ferdinand, 1790-1836: Besserungsstiick; Comedy; Volksstiick Raleigh, Sir Walter, 1552-1618: Amazon Rail, Wilhelmine, 1768-1839: Musenalmanach Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974: New Criticism
APPENDIX OF NAMES
623
Rasp, Renate, 1935-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990) Raupach, Ernst, 1784-1852: Posse Reber-Gruber, Auguste: Fascist Theory Reck, Ina: Colonial Literature Recke, Elisa von der, 1754-1833: Diaries; Enlightenment; Epistolary Culture; Travelogues Redern, Hedwig von, 1866-1936: Hymn Rehmann, Ruth, 1922-present: Father-Daughter Relationship; FRG Literature (since 1990); New Subjectivity, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Reich, Jens, 1939-present: Wende, Die Reich, Wilhelm, 1897-1957: Matriarchy Reichardt, Luise, 1779-1826: Hymn Reichart, Elisabeth, 1943-present: Austrian Literature; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Reidemeister, Helga: Film, Documentary Reiff, Lili, 1866-1958: Musical Theater Reiling, Netty: see Anna Seghers Reimann, Brigitte, 1933-1973: Ankunftsliteratur; Fragment; GDR Literature; Morgner, I.; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Workers' Literature Reindahl, Elise, 1788-1825: Patriotism Reinig, Christa, 1926-present: Ballad; Engagierte Literatur; Exile Literature; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Grotesque; Ideologiekritik; Lesbian Literature; Love; Poetry, Prose; Revolution, Sexual; Satire; Science Fiction; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Victim Reinshagen, Gerlind, 1926-present: Authorship; Drama, Historical; FRG Literature (1949-1990) Rein-Wuhrmann, Anna: Colonial Literature Reiser, Ricky: Black German Literature Reitz, Johann Heinrich, 1655-1720: Pietism Reitzenstein, Sophie, 1770-1823: Comedie Larmoyante; Rococo Literature; Sentimentality Reschke, Karin, 1940-present: Biographical Fiction Reusch, Henriette, 1834-1902: Drama, Biblical ReuG, Eleonore, 1835-1903: Hymn Reuter, Gabriele, 1859-1941: Bildungsroman; Colonial Literature; Griinderzeit; Love; Madwoman; Narration; Naturalism; Neo-Romanticism; Novella; Orientalism; Realism; Weimar Republic Reventlow, Franziska zu, 1871-1918: Daughter; Earth Mother; Jugendstil; Love; Nihilism; Symbolism; Revolution, Sexual Reventlow, Friederike Schimmelmann, 1762-1816: Kreis von Miinster Reventlow, Julie von, 1763-1816: Musenalmanach Rhoden, Emmy von, 1829-1885: Jugendliteratur; Madchenliteratur Ribics, Auguste, 1808-?: Operetta
624
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Rich, Adrienne, 1929-present: Homosexuality; Lesbian Theories; Positionality; Sisterhood Richards, Ivor Armstrong, 1893-1979: New Criticism Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761: Comedie Larmoyante; Madchenliteratur Richter, Emmy: Colonial Literature Richter, Hans-Werner, 1908-1994: Gruppe 47 Richter, Jean Paul, 1763-1825: Classicism; Giinderrode, K. v. Richter, Trude, 1899-1989: Stalinism Ricoeur, Paul, 1913-1986: Phenomenology Riedesel, Friederike von, 1746-1808: Travelogues Riefenstahl, Helene (Leni), 1902-present: Fascist Aesthetics; Film Theory, Feminist; National Socialism; World War II Rigardo, Mariette de: Cabaret Rilke, Phia: Aphorism Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926: Femme Fragile; Fragment; Hermetic Poetry; Modernism; Symbolism Rimbaud, Arthur, 1854-1891: Symbolism Ringseis, Emilie, 1831-1895: Fairy Tale Drama Rinser, Luise, 1911-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990); Heimkehrerliteratur; Inner Emigration; Prizes, Literary; Short Story; Travelogues; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Ritter, Ernst: see Binzer, Emilie Rodin, Auguste, 1840-1917: Symbolism Rodt, Cacilie von, late 19th/20th century: Orientalism; Travelogues Roesgen-Champion, Marguerite, 1894-1976: Motet Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944: Meysenbug, M. v. Ronnell, Avital: Science Fiction Rosenbaum, Marianne, 1940-present: Film, Autobiographical; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Rosenberg, Alfred, 1893-1946: Fascist Theory Rosenpliit, Hans, C.1400-C.1470: Fastnachtsspiele Rosmer, Ernst: see Bernstein, Elsa Rossetti, Christina, 1830-1894: Hymn Roten, Iris von, 1917-1990: Suffrage; Travelogues Roth, Franz: Realism, Magic Roth, Friederike, 1948-present: Drama, Historical; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Prizes, Literary; Prologue Roth, Joseph, 1894-1939: Bachmann, I. Rothers, Rosalie: Documentary Literature Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778: Confessional Literature; Enlightenment; Fascist Theory; Gender Theories; Geschlechtscharaktere; Neoclassicism; Novel, Educational; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress
APPENDIX OF NAMES
625
Roussilon, Henriette von, d. 1773: Darmstadter Kreis Rudolphi, Caroline, 1754-1811: Governess; Musenalmanach Ruete, Emilie, 1844-1924: Orientalism Riilicke, Kathe, 1922-present: Workers' Literature Runckel, Dorothea Henriette von, 1724-1800: Freundschaftskult Runge, Doris, 1942-present: Nature Poetry Runge, Erika, 1939-present: Documentary Literature; Feminisms, German; Frauenfilm; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Gruppe 61; Protokolle; Student Movement; Workers' Literature Rupp, Victoria von, 1755-1824: Adaptation/Translation; Bourgeois Tragedy; Comedie Larmoyante; Sentimentality Russ, Joanna, 1937-present: Science Fiction Russell, Diana E. H.: Pornography Rypka, Jan, 1886-1968: Formalism Sacher-Masoch, Aurora, 1845-after 1906: Prostitution Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von, 1836-1895: Femme Fatale; Masochism; Victimization Theories Sachs, Hans, 1494-1576: Fastnachtsspiele Sachs, Nelly, 1891-1970: Drama, Biblical; Erlebnisdichtung; Exile Literature; Gedankenlyrik; German-Jewish Literature; Heimatdichtung; Heimkehrerliteratur; Hermetic Poetry; Horspiel; Nobel Prize Recipients; Poetry, Political; Poetry, Spiritual; Prizes, Literary; Technology; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victim Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois de, 1740-1814: Surrealism; Victimization Theories Saefkow, Anne: Resistance Sagan, Leontine, 1899-1974: Film, Lesbian Sagar, Maria Anna, 1727-1805: Preface; Storm and Stress; Woman Writer Said, Edward, 1935-present: Orientalism; Postcolonialism Saint Ambrose: see Ambrose Saint-Point, Valentine de: Futurism Salins-Marschlin, Meta: see Salis, Meta von Salis, Meta von, 1855-1929: Griinderzeit; Swiss German Literature Salomon, Alice, 1872-1948: Travelogues Sand, George, 1804-1876: Kiinstlerdrama Sander, Helke, 1937-present: Comedy; Epic Theater; Film, Documentary; Film Theory, Feminist; Frauen und Film; Frauenfilm; Melodrama; New Subjectivity; Sanders-Brahms, H.; Trotta, M. v.; Victim Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 1940-present: Epic Theater; Film, Autobiographical; Frauenfilm; Melodrama; New Subjectivity; Trotta, M. v.; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victim Sappho, c.610-c.580 B.C.: Hymn; Ode Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980: Engagierte Literatur; Existentialism; Phenomenology Saussure, Ferdinand de, 1857-1913: Poststructuralism; Semiotics; Structuralism
626
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Schaefer, Oda, 1900-1988: FRG Literature (1949-1990) Schalek, Alice, 1874-1956: Austrian Literature; Orientalism Schami, Rank, 1946-present: Minority Literature Scheffler, Johann, 1624-1677: Baroque Literature Scheinhardt, Saliha, 1950-present: Confessional Literature; Minority Literature; Orientalism; Turkish-German Literature Scheirl, Angela Hans: Film, Lesbian Scherer, Sophie von, 1817-1876: Lehrdichtung Scheven, Katharina: Prostitution Schick, Philippine, 1893-1970: Musical Theater Schieber, Anna, 1876-1945: Lesedrama Schiele, Egon, 1890-1918: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805: Authorship; Beautiful Soul; Black German Literature; Canon, Literary; Classicism; Daughter; Ebner-Eschenbach, M.v.; Gedankenlyrik; Geschlechterkampf; Infanticide; Naive; New Humanism; Mereau, S.; Pastoral Literature; Protagonist/Antagonist; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Tragedy; Whore; Woman Writer Schimmel, Annemarie, 1922-present: Travelogues Schipeck, Dietmar: Film, Lesbian Schirmacher, Kathe, 1859-1930: World War I Schlaf, Johannes, 1862-1941: Naturalism Schleebusch, Anna Elisabeth, 1626-1706: Erbauungsliteratur Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 1767-1845: Adaptation/Translation; Droste-Hulshoff, A. v. Schlegel, Caroline: see Schlegel-Schelling, Caroline Schlegel, Christiane Karoline, 1739-1833: Bourgeois Tragedy; Epistolary Culture; Preface; Prologue; Protagonist/Antagonist; Sentimentality; Storm and Stress; Tragedy Schlegel, Dorothea, 1764-1839: Adaptation/Translation; Austrian Literature; Authorship; Bildungsroman; Biography, Literary; Fragment; German-Jewish Literature; Novel, Educational; Romanticism; Salonism Schlegel, Friedrich, 1772-1829: Androgyny; Bildungsroman; Essay; Fragment; Gender Theories; Gender Transformation; German-Jewish Literature; Grotesque; Naive; Nihilism; Rhapsody Schlegel-Schelling, Caroline, 1763-1809: Biographical Fiction; Biography, Literary; Epistolary Culture; Erlebnisdichtung; New Humanism; Rhapsody; Romanticism Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1768-1834: Gender Theories; Hermeneutics Schleime, Cornelia: FRG Literature (since 1990) Schlier, Paula, 1899-?: Angestelltlnnenroman Schlondorff, Volker, 1939-present: Bruckner, J.; Trotta, M. v. Schlosser, Johann Ludwig, 18th century: Kiinstlerdrama Schlozer, Dorothea, 1770-1825: Erudite Woman; University Education, Women's Schlupmann, Heide: Film Theory, Feminist; Frauen und Film Schmettau-Gallitzin, Amalie, 1748-1806: Enlightenment
APPENDIX OF NAMES
627
Schmid, Josef Leonard, 1822-1879: Puppenspiel Schmidt, Arno, 1914-1979: Fragment; Monikova, L. Schmidt, Elise, 1824-?: Drama, Historical; Kiinstlerdrama; Tragedy, Historical Schmidt, Wilhelm: Matriarchy Schmolck, Benjamin, 1672-1737: Erbauungsliteratur Schmoll, Helene, 1924-?: Horspiel Schnee, Ada: Colonial Literature Schnee, Heinrich, 1871-1949: Colonial Literature Schneeberger, Irmgard (pseudonym Sandra Paretti), 1935-present: Novel, Historical Schneider, Peter, 1940-present: New Subjectivity Schneider, Rolf, 1932-present: Gender Transformation Schneider-Lengyel, Use, 1903-1972: Gruppe 47 Schnellen, Bernhard, 1921-present: Novel, Historical Schnitzler, Arthur, 1862-1931: Actress; Femme Fragile; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Kiinstlerdrama; Schwaiger, B.; SiiBes Madel; Symbolism; Whore Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Scholl, Hans, 1918-1943: Resistance Scholl, Inge, 1917-present: Resistance Scholl, Sophie, 1921-1943: Pacifism; Resistance; World War II Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud, 1902-?: Fascist Theory Schonemann, Sybille: Film, Documentary Schopenhauer, Adele, 1797-1849: Diaries; Droste-Hulshoff, A. v. Schopenhauer, Johanna, 1766-1838: Abenteuerroman; Bildungsroman; Classicism; Entwicklungsroman; Madwoman; Travelogues Schoppe, Amalie von, 1791-1858: Princess; Robinsonade Schoppmann, Claudia, 1958-present: Lesbian Literature Schorr-Weiler, Eva, 1927-present: Motet Schottelius, Justus Georg, 1612-1676: Singspiel Schriber, Margrit, 1939-present: Patriarchy; Princess; Swiss German Literature Schroder, Margot, 1937-present: Body, Female; Lesbian Literature; Love; Student Movement; Workers' Literature Schroter, Corona, 1751-1802: Amateur Theater; Matinee; Musical Theater; Singspiel Schuber, Maria, 19th century: Orientalism; Travelogues Schubert, Helga, 1940-present: Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Schubin, Ossip: see Kirschner, Lula Schiicking, Levin, 1814-1883: Droste-Hulshoff, A. v. Schuder, Rosemarie: Novel, Historical Schuffenhauer, Ida: Colonial Literature Schultz, Dagmar, 1941-present: Black German Literature; Minority Literature Schulze-Kummerfeld, Karoline, 1745-1815: Actress
628
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Schumann, Clara, 1819-1896: Kiinstlerdrama; Rhapsody Schurman (Schurmann), Anna Maria van (von), 1607-1678: Erudite Woman; Renaissance Humanism Schurmann, Hedda: Puppenspiel Schutting, Julian (formerly: Jutta), 1937-present: Austrian Literature; Father-Daughter Relationship; Mannerbilder Schutting, Jutta: see Schutting, Julian Schiitz, Helga, 1937-present: Heimatdichtung; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Wende, Die Schiitz, Johann Jakob, 1640-1690: Pietism Schwaiger, Brigitte, 1949-present: Austrian Literature; Bildungsroman; FatherDaughter Relationship; Love; Mannerbilder; Mother Figures; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Schwarz, Alice: Austrian Literature Schwar(t?)z, Marie Esperance von, 1818-1899: Orientalism; Travelogues Schwarz, Sibylla, 1621-1638: Baroque Literature; Figurengedicht; Gedankenlyrik Schwarzenbach, Annemarie, 1908-1942: Travelogues Schwarzer, Alice, 1942-present: Abortion; Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministisches; Emanze; Feminisms, German; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Ideologiekritik; Pornography; Protokolle; Student Movement; Women's Journals Schweikert, Ruth, 1965-present: Swiss German Literature Schwenkfeld, Kaspar von, 1489-1561: Hoyers, A. O. Schwitters, Kurt, 1887-1948: Dadaism Scott, Sir Walter, 1771-1832: Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Novel, Historical; Romanticism Sedova, Jana: Holocaust Literature Seelich, Nadja: Film, Autobiographical Seemann, Elsa: Cabaret Seghers, Anna, 1900-1983: Dorfgeschichte; Exile Literature; Fantastic Literature; GDR Literature; Heimkehrerliteratur; Horspiel; Legend; Modernism; National Socialism; Novella; Orientalism; Prizes, Literary; Short Story; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Stalinism; Technology; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Workers' Literature Seidel, Charlotte, 1743-1778: Sentimentality Seidel, Ina, 1885-1974: Earth Mother; Heimkehrerliteratur; Novel, Historical; Patriotism; Trivial Literature; World War I Selbert, Elisabeth, 1896-1986: Prizes, Literary Selby, Bettina, 20th century: Travelogues Selenka, Margarethe, 1860-1923: Pacifism Seler-Sachs, Caecilie, 1855-1935: Travelogues Sellwig, Franziska: Novella Senocak, Zafer: Turkish-German Literature
APPENDIX OF NAMES
629
Seuse, Heinrich, 1293-1366: Medieval Literature Seyler, Friederike Sophie, 1738-1789: Anticlimax; Comedie Larmoyante; Comedy; Fairy Tale Drama; Operetta; Preface; Sentimentality Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616: Authorship; Hosenrolle; Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Mythical Female Figures; Play-within-a Play Shelley, Mary, 1797-1851: Science Fiction Sibylla Ursula von Braunschweig-Wolfenbiittel: see Sybilla Ursula von BraunschweigWolfenbiittel Sibylle Ursula von Braunschweig-Luneburg, 1629-1691: Abenteuerroman Sichtermann, Barbara, 1943-present: Essay Siedler, Johanna, 1835-?: Fairy Tale Drama Siefke, Wilhelmine, 1890-?: Dialektdichtung Simonis, Susanne: World War II Simons, Liesel: Puppenspiel Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904-1991: Jewish Woman, Beautiful Sirk, Douglas, 1900-1987: Melodrama Sklovskij, Viktor, 1893-?: Formalism Solle, Dorothee, 1929-present: Technology Sommer-Bodenburg, Angela: Vampirism Soneland, Senta: Cabaret Sontag, Susan, 1933-present: Fascist Aesthetics Sophie Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Luneburg, 1613-1676: Maskenspiel; Musical Theater; Play-within-a-Play; Singspiel Spangenberg, Dorothea, 1755-1808: Musenalmanach Specht, Kerstin, 1956-present: Dialektdichtung; Drama, Historical; Volksstiick Speer, Albert, 1905-1981: Fascist Aesthetics Spener, Philip Jakob, 1635-1705: Pietism Sperr, Martin, 1944-present: FleiBer, M.; Volksstiick Sperr, Monika, 1941-1984: Lesbian Literature Spiel, Hilde, 1911-1990: Austrian Literature; Novel, Historical; Tatsachenroman Spies, Gerty, 1897-?: Holocaust Literature Sprenger, Jakob, 1436 or 1438-1495: Inquisition; Witch Sprickmann, Anton Matthias, 1749-1819: Droste-Hiilshoff, A. v.; Kreis von Miinster Sprinkle, Annie: Pornography Spyri, Johanna, 1827-1901: Swiss German Literature Stael, Anne Louise Germaine Necker de, 1766-1817: Salonism Stagel, Elsbeth, d. 1360: Medieval Literature Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953: Marxist Theories; Stalinism Stark, Marianne, late 18th century: Travelogues Steele, Richard, 1672-1729: Neoclassicism
630
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Stefan, Verena, 1947-present: Bildungsroman; Body, Female; Engagierte Literatur; Feminisms, German; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; FRG Literature (19491990); Ideologiekritik; Lesbian Literature; Love; Nature; New Subjectivity; Reinig, C ; Revolution, Sexual; Schwaiger, B.; Utopia/Anti-Utopia Steffin, Margarethe, 1908-1941: Epic Theater Stein, Charlotte von, 1742-1827: Amateur Theater; Amazonentheater; Classicism; Drama, Biblical; Hosenrolle; Matinee; Reception Stein-Schneider, Lena, 1874-?: Musical Theater Steineckert, Gisela: Grandmother; Student Movement Steinhowel, Heinrich, 1412-1478 or 1482: Volksbuch Steinlein, Laura, 1826-1901: Tragedy, Historical Steinwachs, Ginka, 1942-present: Biographical Fiction; Drama, Historical; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Kiinstlerdrama Stern, Carola, 1925-present: Biography, Literary Sternheim, Carl, 1878-1942: Fashion Steup, Else: Colonial Literature Stifter, Adalbert, 1805-1868: Austrian Literature; Bildungsroman; Exotin; Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Wild Woman Stocker, Helene, 1869-1943: Frauenfrage; New Woman; Pacifism; Prostitution; Women's Movement Stockfleth, Maria Katharina, d. 1692: Pastoral Literature Stockl, Ula, 1938-present: Bruckner, J.; Film, Lesbian; Frauenfilm Stoker, Bram (Abraham), 1847-1912: Vampirism Stolberg, Agnes von, 1761-1788: Musenalmanach Stolberg, Henriette von, 1751-1832: Drama, Biblical Stolberg-Stolberg, Friedrich L. zu, 1750-1819: Kreis von Miinster Stolberg-Stolberg, Katharina zu, 1751-1832: Kreis von Miinster Stolberg zu Stolberg, Sophia von, 1669-1745: Erbauungsliteratur Stoltenberg, John: Pornography Storz, Claudia, 1948-present: Swiss German Literature Stotzer-Kachold, Gabriele, 1953-present: FRG Literature (since 1990) Straeten, Andrea van: Film, Lesbian Straube, Hanne: Minority Literature StrauB, Botho, 1944-present: Bildungsroman; Muse; New Subjectivity StrauB, Ida: Workers' Literature StrauB, Johann, 1825-1899: Hosenrolle; Operetta; Soubrette StrauB, Richard, 1864-1949: Femme Fatale; Hosenrolle; Soubrette StrauB und Torney, Lulu von, 1873-1956: Ballad, Dorfgeschichte; Impressionism; Novella; Poetry, Political Strickland, Agnes, 1796-1874: Robinsonade Strindberg, August, 1849-1912: Totentanz Strossen, Nadine: Pornography
APPENDIX OF NAMES
631
Struck, Karin, 1947-present: Abortion; Confessional Literature; Earth Mother; Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung; FRG Literature (1949-1990); Love; Mannerbilder; Mother-Daughter Relationship; New Subjectivity; Revolution, Sexual; Short Story; Student Movement Struve, Amalie, c. 1825-1862: Revolution, German Struzyk, Brigitte, 1946-present: Biographical Fiction Studer, Claire: see Goll, Claire Sudermann, Hermann, 1857-1928: Naturalism Suppe, Franz von, 1819-1895: Austrian Literature; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Hosenrolle; Operetta Suttner, Bertha von, 1843-1914: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Modernism; Naturalism; Pacifism Sybilla Ursula von Braunschweig-Wolfenbiittel: Baroque Literature Sydow, Wilhelmine von, 1789-1863: Children's Literature; Epos/Prose Epos Syler, Sophie: Puppenspiel Szeps, Bertha Zuckerkandl, 1863-1945: Austrian Literature; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Tarnow, Fanny, 1779-1862: Romance Tauber-Arp, Sophie, 1889-1943: Dadaism Taufiq, Suleman, 1953-present: Minority Literature Tekinay, Alev, 1951-present: Body, Female; Minority Literature; Turkish-German Literature Terence (Publius Terentius), c.195 B . C - 1 5 9 ? B.C.: Drama, Biblical; Martyrerdrama; Mystery Play Tergit, Gabriele, 1894-1982: Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Weimar Republic Tetzner, Gerti, 1936-present: GDR Literature; Morgner, I. Teutscher, Marie Antonie, 1752-1784: Comedie Larmoyante; Sentimentality Textor-Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth, 1731-1808: Naive; Narcissism, Female Thadden, Elisabeth von: World War II Theroigne de Mericourt, Anne-Josephe, d. 1817: Revolution, French Theweleit, Klaus, 1942-present: Fascist Aesthetics; Fascist Theory Thierry-Winters, Elisabeth: Puppenspiel Thomas, Adrienne, 1897-1980: Abenteuerroman Thomas a Kempis, 1380-1471: Erbauungsliteratur Thomasius, Christian, 1655-1728: Enlightenment Thon, Eleonore, 1753-1807: Bourgeois Tragedy; Protagonist/Antagonist; Ritterliteratur; Sentimentality; Tragedy Thorbecke, Marie Pauline: Colonial Literature Thun-Hohenstein, Christiane, 1859-?: Grandmother Thiiring von Ringoltingen, d. 1483: Volksbuch Thiirmer-Rohr, Christina, 1936-present: Essay; Feminist Theory, German; Participation and Exclusion; Victimization Theories Tieck, Dorothea, 1799-1841: Adaptation/Translation
632
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Tieck, Ludwig, 1773-1853: Adaptation/Translation; Bildungsroman; Fairy Tale Novella; Narration; Novel, Educational; Prologue Tieck, Sophie, 1775-1833: Romanticism Tillich, Paul, 1886-1965: Existentialism Titze, Marion, 1953-present: FRG Literature (since 1990) Titzenhofer, Sophie Eleonore von, 1749-1823: Charakterdrama; Operetta; Preface Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939-present: Fantastic Literature Toller, Ernst, 1893-1939: Expressionism; Neue Sachlichkeit Tomasevskij, Boris, 1890-1957: Formalism Tonnies, Use: Aphorism Torkan (=Daneshtar Patzoldt), 1941-present: Hybridity; Orientalism Toyen, Maria, 1902-1980: Surrealism Trakl, Georg, 1887-1914: Sister Trauberg, Ursula: Documentary Literature Traun, Bertha: Meysenbug, M. v. Tremel-Eggert, Kuni, 1889-1957: Patriotism Treut, Monika, 1954-present: Film, Lesbian; Frauenfilm; Lesbian Theories; Masochism; Romance Trnka, Bohumil, 1895-?: Formalism Troll-Borostyani, Irma von, 1849-1912: Modernism; Prostitution Trotta, Margarethe von, 1942-present: Briickner, J.; Film, Lesbian; Frauenfilm; Melodrama; Sister Tucholsky, Kurt, 1890-1935: Abortion; Cabaret Turgenev, Ivan, 1818-1883: Vampirism Tytler, Anne Fraser, 1849-1877(7): Robinsonade Tzara, Tristan, 1896-1963: Dadaism Ubeda, Lopez de: see Lopez de Ubeda, Francisco Ubelmann, Cleo, 1962-present: Film, Lesbian Uhde, Sofie von, c. 1900-1956: Colonial Literature Uhland, Ludwig, 1787-1862: Folk Song Ullrich, Renate: Protokolle Ulrich von Zazikhofen, 13th century: Ritterliteratur Unger, Friederike Helene, 1741-1813: Bildungsroman; Heroine; Naive; Operetta; Patriotism; Posse; Rococo Literature; Travelogues Unzer, Johanna Charlotte, 1724-1782; Enlightenment; Rococo Literature Ursula von Miinsterberg, C.1495-C.1534: Reformation Ury, Else, 1877-1943: Madchenliteratur Valentin, Karl, 1882-1948: Cabaret Valetti, Rosa, 1869-1937: Cabaret Vargas, Eva: Cabaret
APPENDIX OF NAMES
633
Varnhagen, Rahel Levin, 1771-1833: Aphorism; Arnim, B. v.; Austrian Literature; Autobiography; Biography, Literary; Confessional Literature; Epistolary Culture; Freundschaftskult; Gender Theories; German-Jewish Literature; Jewish Woman, Beautiful; Mereau, S., Reinshagen, G.; Romanticism; Salonism Varo, Remedios, 1908-1963: Surrealism Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574: Mannerism Velten, Catharina Elisabeth, c. 1650-1715: Haupt- und Staatsaktion; Wandertheater Verlaine, Paul, 1844-1896: Symbolism Vertov, Dziga, 1896-1954: Montage Viebig, Clara, 1860-1952: Gesellschaftsroman; Impressionism; Naturalism; New Woman; Novel, Historical; Positivism; Weimar Republic Viehmann, Dorothea: Fairy Tale; Volkskunde Vietinghoff, Lilly: Grandmother Vilar, Esther, 1935-present: Comedy Villinger, Hermine, 1849-1917: Dorfgeschichte Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 70 B.C.-19 B.C.: Medieval Literature Voigt, Elli, 1912-1944: Resistance Voigt-Diederichs, Helene, 1875-1961: Naturalism Volkensdorf, Elsbeth von: see Elsbeth von Volkensdorf Voss, Johan Heinrich, 1751-1826: Idyll Voss, Julius von, 1768-1832: Posse Vylova, Nina: Confessional Literature Wagner, Heinrich Leopold, 1747-1779: Daughter; Infanticide; Storm and Stress Wagner, Otto, 1841-1918: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883: Meysenbug, M. v.; Symbolism Walden, Herwarth, 1878-1941: Futurism Waldis, Burkhard, C.1490-C.1556: Fastnachtsspiele Waldorf, Claire, 1884-1957: Cabaret Waldstetter, Ruth, 1882-1952: Swiss German Literature Wallenrodt, Johanna von, 1740-1819: Orientalism Walpurgis, Maria Antonia, 1724-1779: Amazon Walter, Silja, 1919-present: Swiss German Literature Walther von der Vogelweide, C.1170-C.1230: Minnesang; Nature Poetry Wander, Maxie, 1933-1977: Anthology; Documentary Literature; Erudite Woman; Morgner, I.; Protokolle Warbeck, Veit, 1490-1534: Volksbuch Ward, Elsa: Cabaret Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989: New Criticism Waser, Maria, 1878-1939: Swiss German Literature; Tatsachenroman Weber, Mathilde, 1829-1901: Travelogues Weber, Max, 1864-1920: Frankfurt School; Patriarchy
634
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Wedekind, Frank, 1864-1918: Actress; Ballad; Child-Woman; Femme Fatale; Film, Lesbian; Monikova, L.; Whore Wegner, Lisa, 1858-1941: Fable Weigel, Helene, 1900-1971: Epic Theater Weigel, Valentin, 1533-1588: Hoyers, A. O. Weil, Felix: Frankfurt School Weil, Louise, 1837-?: Travelogues Weininger, Otto, 1880-1903: Femme Fatale, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Gender Theories; Impressionism Weirauch, Anna Elisabeth, 1904?-1980: Revolution, Sexual Weiss, Peter, 1916-1982: Bildungsroman WeiBenthum, Johanna Franul von, 1772-1847: Comedy; Erudite Woman; Nachspiel; Play-within-a-Play; Preface; Tragedy, Historical Welcker, Karl Theodor, 1790-1869: Gender Theories Wellek, Rene, 1903-?: Formalism Wellmer, Albrecht, 1933-present: Frankfurt School Werfel, Franz, 1890-1945: Prologue Werner, Ruth, 1907-present: Stalinism Wesendonck, Mathilde, 1828-1902: Drama, Biblical; Drama, Historical; Saga; Tragedy; Tragedy, Historical Westbeld, Hildegard: Film Politics; Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen Westerlind, Marianne: Colonial Literature Westhoff-Rilke, Clara, 1878-1954: Symbolism Westphal, Karl: Homosexuality; Mannweib Westphalen, Engel Christine, 1758-1840: Drama, Historical; Heroine; Kiinstlerdrama; Tragedy, Historical Wette, Adelheid, 1858-?: Fairy Tale Drama Wettstein, Hedwig Maria, 1867-?: Lesbian Literature; University Education, Women's Wetzel von Bernau: Legend Weyda, Ursula, d. 1550: Pamphlet Weyrather, Irmgard, 1953-present: Anthology Weyrauch, Wolfgang, 1907-present: Gruppe 47 Whorf, Benjamin, 1897-1941: Linguistics, Feminist Wickenburg, Wilhelmine von, 1845-1890: Tragedy, Historical Wied, Martina, 1882-1957: Austrian Literature Wieland, Christoph Martin, 1733-1813: Beautiful Soul; Canon, Literary; Erudite Woman; Grotesque; La Roche, S. v.; Naive; Preface; Woman Writer; Women's Journals Wiesel, Pauline, 1779-1848: Freundschaftskult; Narration; Romanticism Wild, Dorothea: Fairy Tale; Volkskunde Wild, Martha, 1895-1976: Dialektdichtung; Volkskunde
APPENDIX OF NAMES
635
Wildermuth, Ottilie, 1817-1877: Narration Wilhelmine Grafin von Bayern: Court Theater Wilker, Gertrud, 1924-1984: Swiss German Literature Willemer, Marianne von, 1784-1860: Authorship; Orientalism Williams, Raymond: Cultural Studies Willkomm, Elke: Witch Wimsatt, William K., 1907-1975: New Criticism Wimschneider, Anna. 1919-?: Documentary Literature; Heimatdichtung Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 1717-1768: Classicism; New Humanism Winkler-Buber, Paula, 1877-1958: German-Jewish Literature Winkworth, Catherine: 1827-1878: Hymn Winsloe, Christa, 1888-1944: Lesbian Literature Winters, Christoph: Puppenspiel Wisinger-Florian, Olga, 1844-1926: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951: Austrian Literature, Bachmann, I.; Hermetic Poetry Wittig, Monique, 1935-present: Existentialism; Feminist Theory, German; Lesbian Theories; Science Fiction Wittum, Johanna: Colonial Literature Wobeser, Wilhelmine Karoline von, 1769-1807: Bildungsroman; Love; Madwoman; Mother-Daughter Relationship Wohlbriick, Olga: Cabaret Wohmann, Gabriele, 1932-present: FRG Literature (1949-1990); FRG Literature (since 1990); Horspiel; Madwoman; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Novella; Short Story Woillez, Mme, 18th century: Robinsonade Wolf, Christa, 1929-present: Abenteuerroman; Amazon; Androgyny; Ankunftsliteratur; Autobiography; Bildungsroman; Biographical Fiction; Biographism; Biography, Literary; Body, Female; Confessional Literature; Dialogics, Feminist; Doubles, Female; Engagierte Literatur; Epos/Prose Epos; Erlebnisdichtung; Essay; Fragment; Frankfurt School; FRG Literature (since 1990); GDR Literature; Gender Transformation; Gesinnungsasthetik; Giinderrode, K. V.; Heimatdichtung; Heroine; Ideologiekritik; Mannerbilder; Marxist Theories; Matriarchy; Morgner, I.; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Narration; New Subjectivity; Novel, Historical; Novel, Psychological; Parody; Patriarchy; Prizes, Literary; Protokolle; Reinshagen, G.; Science Fiction; Short Story; Sister; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Stalinism; Subjective Authenticity; Technology; Utopia/Anti-Utopia; Vergangenheitsbewaltigung; Victim; Wende, Die; Workers' Literature Wolf, Friedrich, 1888-1953: Abortion Wolf, Hugo, 1860-1903: Soubrette Wolff, Christian, 1679-1754: Gender Theories Wolff, Victoria, 1908-present: Travelogues Wolfram von Eschenbach, 12th century: Wisewoman Wolfram, Susanne: Anthology
636
APPENDIX OF NAMES
Woll, Erna, 1917-present: Motet Wollenberger, Vera, 1952-present: Wende, Die Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797: Enlightenment; Hippel, Th. G. Wolter, Charlotte, 1834-1897: Actress Woltmann, Karoline von, 1782-1847: Madwoman; Preface Wolzogen, Karoline von, 1763-1847: Bildungsroman; Classicism; Drama, Biblical; Entwicklungsroman; La Roche, S. v. Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941: Dialogics, Feminist; Gender Transformation; Ottinger, U. Worishoffer, Sophie, 1838-1890: Exotin Wiistenfeld, Emilie: Meysenbug, M. v. Wiithrich, Kathy: Puppenspiel Wysocki, Gisela von, 1940-?: FRG Literature (1949-1990) WyB, Johann David, 1743-1818: Robinsonade Young, Betty, 1832-1887: Nachspiel; Play-within-a-Play Yurtas, Barbara, 1937-present: Travelogues Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig, 1711-1740: Enlightenment; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Pastoral Literature; Rococo Literature; Travelogues Zechlin, Ruth, 1926-present: Musical Theater Zeidler, Susanna Elisabeth, c.1686: Baroque Literature Zell, Katharina, 1497 or 1499-1562: Pamphlet/Flugblatter Zeller, Carl, 1842-1898: Operetta Zeller, Eva, 1923-present: Poetry, Spiritual Zesen, Philip von, 1619-1689: Anagram, Figurengedicht; Greiffenberg, C. v. Zetkin, Clara, 1857-1933: Braun, L.; Frauenfrage; Griinderzeit; Marxist Theories; Modernism; Socialism; Women's Journals; Women's Movement; World War I Zhdanov, Andrey, 1896-1948: Socialist Realism Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von, 1695-1760: Enlightenment; Erudite Woman; Galante Dichtung; Gelegenheitsdichtung; Neoclassicism; Ode; Pastoral Literature Ziegler, Luise von, 1750-1814: Darmstadter Kreis Ziemann, Grete: Colonial Literature Zinner, Hedda, 1905-present: Stalinism Zinzendorf, Dorothea Erdmuthe, 1700-1756: Pietism Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von, 1700-1760: Pietism Zitz(-Halein), Katharina (Kathinka), 1801-1877: Ode Zuckerkandl, Bertha: see Szeps-Zuckerkandl, Bertha Zuckmayer, Carl, 1896-1977: Volksstiick Ziirn, Unica, 1916-1970: Anagram; FRG Literature (1949-1990) Zwaka, Petra: Anthology Zweig, Stefan, 1882-1942: Amazon Zwingli, Ulrich, 1484-1531: Swiss German Literature
INDEX Abenteuerroman, 1-2, 454, 459, 525 Abortion, 2-4, 155, 360, 398, 452, 49698, 532, 557, 574 Academia: women's role in, 63, 532-33; and feminism, 569, 570-71 Achternbusch, Herbert, 527 Ackermann, Sophie Charlotte, 274, 551 Activism, women's: denigration of, 110; during Vormarz and German Revolution, 26, 185, 254-55, 318-19, 449-50; in Fin-de-Siecle-Vienna, 29, 224; in the women's movements, 93, 381-82, 573-74 Actress, 4-5, 117 Adaptation/translation, 6-7, 75, 357, 394, 455, 461, 466, 546 Addison, Joseph, 357 Adelheit, second wife of Otto I, 393-94 Adler, Almut, 23 Adler, Emma, 207 Adlon, Percy, 170 Adorno, Theodor W., 81, 111-12, 126, 179-80, 407, 409 Ado wo wa-Abraham, Elisabeth, 170 Aeschylus, 12 Aesop, 139
Aestheticism, 164, 165, 235 Aesthetics, feminine/feminist, 7-9, 80, 362; and allegory, 10; in feminist theory, 108, 433-34; and film, 58, 167; in German feminism, 155; during Romanticism, 25 Agency, 81, 111-12, 253, 363, 388-89, 395, 405, 409-10, 542-43 Agnon, Shmuel Yoseph, 368 Agrippa von Nettesheim, 444 Aichinger, Use, 30, 37, 77, 189, 208, 22425, 243^14, 374, 386, 481, 540 Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna, 177 Akunian, Use Levien. See Frapan, Use Al-Shaykh, Hanan, 134 Alber, 394 Albrecht, Sophie, 56, 123, 256, 338, 377, 457 Alcuin of York, 313 Alemann, Claudia von, 168 Alexis, Willibald, 152 Allegory, 9-10; and femininity, 519 Allgemeines Preufiisches Landrecht, (ALR) 10-11, 59-60, 212, 304, 461, 556 Altenberg, Peter, 165 Althaus, Theodor, 318-19
638 Althusser, Louis, 81, 132, 157 Amalie Maria, Prinzessin von Sachsen, 79, 339, 377, 408 Amateur theater, 11-12, 310 Amazon, 12-14, 151, 210, 476 Amazonentheater, 14, 12 Ambrose, St., 248 Amilie Juliane von SchwarzburgRudolstadt, 249 Amstutz, Renate, 428 Anagram, 14-15, 22 Andersen, Hans Christian, 561 Anderson, Edith, 206 Andrea, Silvia, 508 Andreas-Salome, Lou, 89, 107, 142, 250, 268, 289, 297, 324, 348, 366, 368, 372, 452, 512 Androcentrism: in assessing women's literature, 32, 186, 433; and autobiography, 35; and Bildung, 46; and Frankfurt School, 180; and morality, 327 Androgyny/hermaphrodism, 12, 15-17, 66, 476, 534 Angeloff, Therese, 62 Angely, Louis, 408 Angestelltlnnenroman, 17-18, 221, 360, 396, 557 Ankunftsliteratur, 10, 18-19, 197, 488, 489, 575 Anna Amalia, Herzogin von SachsenWeimar, 311, 339,483 Anna Amalia von PreuBen, 249 Anna Sophia von Anhalt, 277 Anneke, Mathilde Franziska, 131, 185, 448-49, 524, 572 Anonymity, 32-33, 461. See also Authorship Antagonist. See Protagonist/antagonist Anthology, 20-21, 23, 338, 528 Anticlimax, 21-22 Anti-fascism, 196 Anti-feminism, 13, 162, 193, 350 Anti-semitism, 53, 185, 207, 264, 350, 409 Anti-utopia, 264 Antiquity, 363
INDEX
Anton Ulrich, Herzog von BraunschweigLiineburg, 1 Apartheid, 92 Aphorism, 22-23, 106, 424, 435 Apitz, Renate, 565 APO (Aufierparlamentarische Opposition), 365 Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum, Feministiches (Cologne), 23-24, 190 Arendt, Hannah, 51, 265, 306-307, 409 Argula von Grumbach, 440 Aristocracy, and femininity, 78 Aristophanes, 13 Aristotle, 21, 131, 139, 236, 295, 519 Arjouni, Jakob, 96 Arnaud, Emile, 383 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 556 Arndt, Johann, 121 Arndts, Maria, 274, 521 Arnim, Achim von, 25, 222, 347 Arnim, Bettina von, 24-25, 28, 33, 119, 123, 130, 275, 318, 381; autobiographical writing by, 35, 462; biography of, 52; Clemens Brentanos Fruhlingskranz, 116; Die Gunderrode, 47, 116, 188, 227, 534; epistolary works by, 350, 462; fairy tales by, 140-41, 143-44, 222, 457; friendships with other women, 460; Gesprache mit Damonen, 87; Goethes Briefwechsel, 45, 116, 347; and salons, 461 Arnim, Gisela von, 25, 140-41, 143, 222, 274, 462 Arnold, Gottfried, 399 Arnold-Zinsler, Martha, 232 Arnstein, Fanny von, 28, 516-17 Arp, Jean, 83 Artner, Therese von, 120, 520 Asphaltliteratur, 18 Assing, Ottilie, 524 Association of Women Filmworkers. See Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen Aston, Louise, 16, 26-27, 35, 119, 185, 254, 286, 288, 297, 381-82, 401, 448, 572 Atwood, Margaret, 476 Auer, Annemarie, 206 Auer, Judith, 446
INDEX
Auerbach, Berthold, 94 Auerbach, Inge, 240 Augspurg, Anita, 24, 185, 504, 572 Ausfeld, Anna, 142 Auslander, Rose, 30, 106, 123, 131, 207, 231, 233, 236 Auslandergesetz, 27-28 Austrian literature, 28-31, 37-38, 106107, 173-74, 263-64, 474-75, 540-41 Authenticity: in diaries, 91; in documentary literature, 91; in Erlebnisdichtung, 122; and existentialism, 132; in medieval literature, 314; in Volksdichtung, 547 Authorship, 31-34, 49, 275-76, 348; and canonization, 62-64, 69-71, 80, 12627, 337, 437-39; in contemporary literature, 98; in Reformation, 437-39; representation of, 566-68; and translation, 7, 394 Autobiography, 35-36, 76-77, 90-91, 118; and biographical fiction, 47-48, 51; in film, 167; misrepresentation of works as, 49, 123, 186; in 19th-century literature, 26, 462; and postmodernism, 411; in 17th-century literature, 397-98, 399; in 20th-century literature, 17-18, 192, 323, 365, 482, 492-93, 566 Ava, Frau, 28, 278-79, 334, 340, 467 Avant-garde, 31, 83-84, 135-136, 13738, 193-94, 323-24, 326-27, 557 Axmatova, Anna, 177 Ayim, May, 53, 322 Ayrer, Jakob, 152 Baader, Ottilie, 185, 582 Bacheracht, Therese von, 524 Bachmann, Ingeborg, 37-39, 127, 189, 255, 289, 350; Bachmann Preis, 41718; Der Fall Franza, 4, 30, 166, 250, 535; Der gute Gott von Manhattan, 243; Die gestundete Zeit, 224-25; Frankfurter Vorlesungen, 538; Horspiele by, 386; Malina, 89, 97, 116, 210, 221, 250, 416, 452, 538; poetry by, 199, 235-36, 356, 375-76, 392, 401-402, 526, 535, 538; Requiem fur Fanny Goldmann, 337; short fiction by,
639 373-74, 481-82; Todesarten, 147-48, 178-79, 540^2; "Undine geht," 106, 343, 561 Bachofen, Johann Jakob, 13, 311-12 Backes, Lotte, 339 Bacon, Sir Francis, 126 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 89, 222, 308, 362 Baklan, Melek, 322 Balcke, Frida Dorothea, 332 Baldinger, Friderica, 114, 276 Ball, Hugo, 83 Ballad, 39-40 Ball-Hennings, Emmy, 83-84, 124, 138, 324, 560 Baltz, Johanna, 393 Balzac, Honore de, 502 Bandemer, Susanne von, 65 Barbe, Angelika, 559 Barben, Katrin, 170 Barnick, Erna, 493 Baroque literature, 28, 40-41, 218-19, 244-45, 276-77, 399-400, 567, 584; and allegories, 9; anagrams in, 14; and drama, 42, 418-19; and mannerisms, 299; and novels, 390, 396, 397-98; and poetry, 166, 249, 334, 365, 39890, 402-403, 490 Barth, Karl, 132 Barthes, Roland, 32, 81, 538 Basile, Giambattista, 349, 564 Bassi, Laura, 125 Batteux, Charles, 346 Baudelaire, Charles, 235, 319, 512 Baudissin, Sophie von, 67 Bauer, Dale, 89 Bauer, Karoline, 4 Bauer-Horn, Kristin, 62 Bauerle, Adolf, 42, 408 Baum, Vicki, 30, 366, 452, 526 Baumberg-Bacsanyi, Gabriele von, 338,458 Baumer, Gertrud, 130, 223, 392, 576 Bausch, Pina, 118, 515-16 Beardsley, Monroe C , 361 Beaulieu, Mme de, 456 Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin de, 491 Beautiful soul, 41-42, 46, 237, 346, 495 Beauvoir, Simone de, 128, 132, 158, 201, 348, 355, 395
640 Bebel, August, 57, 306, 504 Becker, Anni, 62 Becker, Franziska, 110 Becker-Froriep, Amalia, 256 Beckermann, Ruth, 168-69, 541 Becker-Schwarz, Sophie, 523 Beckmann, Max, 436 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 244, 556 Befreiungskriege, 231, 393, 556-57 Behrens, Katja, 192-93, 208 Bengtsson, Maria, 371 Benjamin, Walter, 10, 149, 152, 179-80, 349, 360, 409 Benn, Gottfried, 52 Berber, Lucie, 61 Berbo, Vernessa, 68 Berens-Totenohl, Josefa, 106, 393 Berge, Elisabeth vom, 521 Bergson, Henri, 132 Berlau, Ruth, 117 Berlepsch, Emilie von, 65, 113, 119, 256, 338, 415, 523 Berlioz, Hector, 319 Bernbrunn, Margarethe, 377 Bernhard of Clairvaux, 341 Bernouilly, Agnes, 332 Bernstein, Caroline, 274 Bernstein, Elsa, 29, 99, 126, 334, 353, 358, 366, 438-39, 513, 533, 568 Bernstein, Ingrid. See Kirsch, Sarah Berr, Annette, 282 Besserungsstuck, 42-43 Besson, Benno, 117 Beutler, Magdalena, 315 Beutler, Maja, 54, 250, 509-10 Beutler, Margarethe, 61 Beyer, Johanna Magdalena, 339 BGB. See Burgerliches Gesetzbuch Bianchi, Maja, 510 Bible, 210, 230, 238, 340 Biedermeier, 43-44, 102, 579, 458 Bienenfeld, Elsa, 174 Biermann, Pieke, 272-73 Biermann, Wolf, 131, 198 Bijns, Anna, 545 Bildung, 41, 124, 275 Bildungsroman, 41, 44-47, 70, 208, 275, 369, 475, 516
INDEX
Binder, Helene, 142 Binswanger, Ludwig, 132 Binzer, Emilie, 274 Biographical fiction, 47-49, 50, 52 Biographism, 15, 42, 47-^8, 49-50, 5051, 182, 186, 438 Biography, 35, 47-48, 50-51, 51-52, 370, 516-17; literary, 50, 51-52, 423 Biondi, Franco, 321 Birch-Pfeiffer, Charlotte, 28, 44, 79, 100, 274, 339, 377, 408, 421-22, 521-22, 551, 555 Birken, Sigmund von, 166, 218 Birthler, Marianne, 558 Bisexuality, 284 Bitterfelder Weg, 18-19, 575 Black German literature, 21, 52-53, 55, 191, 247, 297, 322 Blenker, Elise, 449 Bloch, Ernst, 349, 501 Bloch, Karola, 501 Blum, Ida, 142 Blumenschein, Tabea, 380 Blumenthal-Weifi, Use, 240 Blut und Boden, 95, 106, 231, 351 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 6, 349 Bocker, Juliane, 386 Bodenstedt, Alice, 243 Bodin, Jean, 564 Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 507 Bodmershof, Imma von, 30 Body, female, 54-55, 451-53, 500; and abortion, 4; as sexual object, 17, 133, 136, 151-52, 173-74, 404, 474, 505506, 545-46; in theory, 395; as trope, 9, 108; women's relationship to, 59; in women's works, 222, 365, 411, 45253, 515-16 Bogli, Lina, 524 Bohlau, Helene, 107, 224, 352-53, 36667, 372, 374, 406^107, 420, 435, 557 Bohler-Mueller, Charlotte, 23 Bohley, Barbel, 558 Bohm, Tatiane, 559 Bohme, Jakob, 16 Bohme, Margarethe, 124, 354, 420, 560 Bolte, Amely, 560 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 556
INDEX
Bonia, Jasmine, 62 Borchers, Elisabeth, 401 Borges, Jorge, 324 Borke, Helene von, 72 Bottger, Fritz, 20 Bougeant, Guillaume-Hyacinthe, 6-7 Bourgeois innocence. See Bourgeois tragedy Bourgeois tragedy, 55-57, 154, 258, 305, 420-22 Bourgeoisie, 45; and morality, 118, 421 Brachmann, Louise, 199, 256, 278, 390, 438 Bradbury, Ray, 476 Braun, Isabella, 67 Braun, Lily, 57-58, 223, 297, 324, 572 Braune, Rudolf, 17 Brecht, Bertolt, 3, 39, 116-18, 149, 17475, 206, 360, 396, 419, 438, 489, 522, 549 Brechtbuhl, Beat, 403 Breden, Christiane von, 29, 64, 124, 352, 354, 372, 520-21 Breitel, Heide, 169 Breitinger, Johann Jakob, 507, 563 Brentano, Bettina. See Arnim, Bettina von Brentano, Clemens, 24-25, 347, 561 Breton, Andre, 505-506 Brik, Lily, 177 Brik, Osip, 177 Brion, Friederike, 495 Brockmann, Clara, 72, 134 Brodsky, Bozena, 61 Bronchowska, Pauline von, 377 Bronnen, Barbara, 154, 298, 333, 540-41 Bronsart, Ingeborg Starck von, 339 Bronte, Emily, 538 Brooks, Cleanth, 361 Brtick, Christa Anita, 17-18, 367, 459 Bruckner, Christine, 48, 231, 459, 524, 526 Bruckner, Jutta, 58-59, 117-18, 167, 183, 365, 527, 541 Brugger, Traute, 88 Brun, Friederike, 256, 338, 375, 480, 523 Briining, Elfriede, 217, 488, 493, 517, 526 Bruns, Marianne, 488
641 Bruyn, Giinter de, 206 Buber-Neumann, Margarete, 493 Biichner, Georg, 489, 502 Biichner, Louise, 524 Buff, Charlotte, 495 Buhrmann, Traude, 282 Biilow, Frieda von, 2, 73, 134, 268, 297, 367, 379, 524 Bunsen, Marie von, 524 Burger, Elise, 338-39, 414, 455 Burger-Alexander, Sophie, 427 BUrgerliches Gesetzbuch, 10, 59-60, 304 Burkart, Erika, 509 Burmeister, Brigitte, 98, 192 Burow, Julie, 432 Buschmann, Christel, 528 Busch-Schucking, Katharina, 102 Busse-Lange, Erika, 72 Busta, Christine, 30 Cabala, 14 Cabaret, 61-62, 83, 101, 387 Cakan, Myra, 477 Callimachus, 248 Calm, Marie, 432 Campe, Johann Heinrich, 211-12, 293, 431,456 Camus, Albert, 132 Canetti, Elias, 22, 210, 263 Canetti, Veza Calderon, 30, 174 Canon, literary, 7, 62-65, 525; women writers in, 107; women's critique of, 201, 208-209, 296; women's exclusion from, 31, 80, 362, 437-39, 453-54, 498 Capitalism, 57, 205, 488, 560, 583; postindustrial, 263, 410 Carrington, Leonora, 506 Carsten, Uwe, 20 Catherine II of Russia, 115, 438 Cauer, Minna Schelle, 24, 57, 185, 297, 572 Celan, Paul, 233, 235, 540 Censorship, 25, 213, 381, 404, 554, 584 Cezanne, Paul, 137 Charakterdrama, 65 Chezy, Wilhemine (Helmina) von, 278, 377-78
642 Childhood, 293 Children's literature/children's theater, 63, 67-69, 142, 147, 266-67, 293-94, 416, 417 Child-Woman, 65-67, 268, 347, 505 Christ, Lena, 86 Christen, Ada. See Breden, Christiane von Christianity: and abortion, 3; and biblical drama, 99; and demons, 86; and Erbauungsliteratur, 121, 246; and female sexuality, 54, 320, 559; and goddesses, 215; and infanticide, 258; and inquisition, 260; and legend, 277-78; and marriage, 144 Christine de Pizan, 24 Christine von Stommeln, 315 Chuggmall, Anna, 427 Chuggmall, Christian Josef, 427 Chuggmall, Elise, 427 Chuggmall, Magdalena, 427 Church: women's critique of, 385; women's role in, 486 Ciamberlani, Albert, 342 Cinematic, conventions, women's challenge of, 183 Cirak, Zehra, 322, 529 Citizenship, German, 27, 409 Cixous, Helene, 8, 108, 128, 132, 15859, 178, 412 Clairvaux, Bernhard of, 341 Classicism, 63-64, 69-71, 113, 222, 363, 387, 480, 489, 579; and drama, 34, 482; representation of the feminine in, 41-42, 66, 114, 129, 421; use of mythology in, 99, 390, 466; women writers in, 227, 317-18 Claudius, Matthias, 271 Clauren, Heinrich, 347 Coler, Johann, 230 Collaboration, women's: unacknowleged, 117, 141, 175,548 Colombine, 71-72 Colonial literature, 72-73, 133-34, 408409, 447, 456, 523, 537 Colonialism, 247 Comedie larmoyante, 21-22, 56, 73-74
INDEX
Comedy, 21, 74-76, 97, 407-408, 491, 520, 550-51 Communism, 492-93, 582 Complicity, women's: in National Socialism, 259, 540-41, 542, 577-78; in nationalism, 101, 392-93; in socialism, 566; in women's oppression, 309, 38889, 543-44 Comte, Auguste, 406 Concrete poetry, 83, 135 Confessional and testimonial literature, 35, 40, 76-77, 90-91, 115-16, 186, 399,411,461,475 Copyright, 6, 34 Corbucci, Sergio, 471 Cornelius, Auguste, 274, 400 Court culture, 77-78, 320 Court theater, 78-79, 555 Courths-Mahler, Hedwig, 14, 217, 336, 416, 459, 526 Cramer, Ada, 72 Cranstown, Johanna von, 28 Creativity, 25, 34, 79-80, 105, 235-54, 437-39 Crede, Carl, 3 Creutziger, Elisabeth von Meseritz, 24849 Crichton, Michael, 476 Critical theory, 179, 412 Critique, social: and androgyny, 16; and fantastic literature, 147; and film, 380; and Gesellschaftsroman, 212; and Kriminalroman, 272; and madwoman, 295; and marriage, 462; and montage, 327; and Neue Sachlichkeit, 360; and picara, 396; and representations of the witch, 565; and wild women, 562 Croissant-Rust, Anna, 352-53 Cronegk, Johann Friedrich von, 305 Cross-dressing, 14, 16, 134, 244-45, 397, 515-16. See also Hosenrolle Csokor, Franz Theodor, 210 Cultural studies, 64, 80-82, 157, 208209, 247, 255, 307, 362-63, 477 Culture, high: and cultural studies, 81; and literary canon, 62 Culture, popular, 157, 172, 263, 360, 474, 487, 525. See also Mass culture
INDEX
Cunitz, Maria, 445 Cunningham, Elizabeth, 562 Czurda, Elfriede, 15, 211 Dach, Margrit, 510 Dacus, Petrus, 315 Dadaism, 83-84, 135, 297, 323, 326-27, 508-509, 557 d'Aedelers, Etta Palm, 448 Dahn, Daniela, 559 Dahn, Felix, 370 Dal, Guney, 529 Dance. 515-16. See also Tanztheater Dance, conventions women's challenge of, 515-16 Danella, Utta, 459, 526 Dante Alighieri, 165, 290, 337 Danziger, Rosa, 339 Darmstadter Kreis, 84-85 Daughter, 85-86, 154, 333, 335-36 Dauthendey, Elisabeth, 366 Davies, Fanny, 454 De Maiziere, Lothar, 531 Death: of female protagonist, 164, 337, 342, 366, 373, 420, 462; of male protagonist, 210 Decadence, 165-166 Deconstruction, 405, 412-13, 503, 538. See also Positionality; Poststructuralism; Subjectivity Defoe, Daniel, 1, 456 Dehmel, Ida, 417, 512 Delacroix, Eugene, 342 Delafaye-Brehier, Mme de, 456 Delaunay, Robert, 84 Delaunay-Terk, Sophie, 84 Deleuze, Gilles, 342 delle Grazie, Marie Eugenie, 99, 120, 174, 352, 354, 439, 551 Delvard, Mary a, 61 Demirkan, Renan, 529 Demon, 86-88, 114, 250, 561, 564 Demonization, and fairy tales, 261; of femininity, 215, 217, 222, 237, 258, 421, 512, 564; of mother figures, 338; of old women, 217; of wild women, 561 Demski, Eva, 524, 526
643 Derrida, Jacques, 8, 156, 158-59, 395, 405,411-12 Dery, Juliane, 75 Destree, Olga, 61 Dettmer, Louise, 573 Deutsch, Helene, 241, 309, 425-26 Devotional literature. See Erbauungsliteratur Dhuoda, 313 Dia, Countess Beatritz of, 290, 320 Dialektdichtung, 88, 352, 393, 547 Dialogics, feminist, 47, 89-90, 308, 362 502 Diaries, 76, 90-91, 259, 365, 411, 439, 461-62 Didactic literature, 278-80, 386. See also Ratgeberliteratur Diderot, Denis, 299 Diel, Luise, 72 Dieter, Ina, 62 Dietrich, Marlene, 170, 172 Dilettantism, women's, 32, 329 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 122, 132, 234 Dinglreiter, Senta, 72 Diodorus Siculus, 12 Disability, women's, as metaphor, 510 Dische, Esther, 265 Dischereit, Esther, 208 Dischner, Gisela, 20, 52 Discrimination against women: and Civil Code, 11, 59-60; and class, 11; and gender theories, 238; and non-German minorities, 27; and theater, 181 Displacement, and femininity, 413 Dittmar, Louise, 448, 580 Divorce, 11, 304 Doblin, Alfred, 9, 360 Documentary literature, 77, 91-93, 189, 225-26, 423, 500, 516, 523, 574-75 Doeuff, Michele Le, 132 Dohm, Ernst, 93 Dohm, Hedwig, 24, 93-94, 130, 452; activism by, 185, 207, 504, 573, 576; Christa Ruland, 268, 366; dramas by, 75; essays by, 127, 255; Sibilla Dalmar, 212, 435; Werde, die du bist, 217, 223, 295, 435 Dohner, Sophie, 524
644 Dolorosa. See Eichhorn, Maria Doltz, Emma, 401, 574-75 Domin, Hilde, 131, 208, 233, 236, 401 Doppelganger, 87, 97-98. See also Doubles, female Dore, Gustave, 319 Dorfgeschichte, 94-95, 107, 221, 435 Dorman, Genevieve, 527 Dormitzer, Else, 240 Dorn, Emma, 72 Dorrie, Doris, 75, 95-97, 184, 317 Doubles, female, 87, 97-98, 102, 294-95, 331, 538 Drama. See Amateur theater; Amazonentheater; BesserungsstUck; Charakterdrama; Children's literature; Court theater; Drama, biblical; Drama, historical; Epic theater; Fairy tale drama; Fastnachtsspiel; Frauen im Theater; Horspiel; Kiinstlerdrama; Lesedrama; Martyrerdrama; Maskenspiel; Melodrama; Musical theater; Nachspiel; Neuber, F.C.; Posse; Puppenspiel; Singspiel; Tanztheater; Volksstiick; Vorspiel; Wandertheater Drama, biblical/mythological/spiritual, 98100, 304-305, 334, 340, 467 Drama, historical/national/political, 100101, 227, 237, 421, 443, 522-23 Drewitz, Ingeborg, 52, 221, 243, 255, 298, 373, 524, 526 Droste-Hulshoff, Annette von, 97, 101103, 272, 438, 548; ballads by, 435; Das Fraulein von Rodenschild, 87; Das geistliche Jahr, 403, 468; "Der Knabe im Moor," 39; Die Judenbuche, 4 3 ^ 4 , 87, 94, 178, 334, 435; dramas by, 43-44, 178, 285, 520-21, 568; Droste-Preis, 417-18; epic poems by, 120; fables by, 140; Klange aus dem Orient, 378; novellas by, 373; novels by, 178, 295, 336; operettas by, 377; poetry by, 43-14, 123, 176, 199, 356, 390 Druskowitz, Helene von, 377, 408 Due, Aimee, 281, 533 Ducasse, Isidore-Lucien, 159
INDEX
Duden, Anne, 54, 535, 541 Dunajew, Wanda von, 420 Duncker, Dora, 377, 408 Durbahn, Birgit, 170 Diirer, Albrecht, 384 Duringsfeld, Ida von, 371, 376, 522, 524 Duse, Eleonora, 5 Dutschke, Rudi, 501 Dutschke-Klotz, Gretchen, 501 Dworkin, Andrea, 403—104
Earth mother, 105-106, 217, 303, 308, 333 East-German literature. See GDR Literature Ebeling, Elisabeth, 142 Eberti, Johann Caspar, 203 Ebinger, Blandine, 62 Ebner, Christine, 315, 342 Ebner, Margarete (Margaretha), 290, 315, 342 Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von, 106-107, 438; aphorisms by, 22, 435; autobiography by, 35; biography by, 29; diaries by, 90; dramas by, 5, 75, 237, 274, 439, 520, 521, 522; fables by, 140; Das Gemeindekind, 213; parables by, 386; prose narratives by, 94-95, 174, 216, 372, 373, 416, 435; Unsuhnbar, 154; "Wieder die Alte," 216 Eckart, Gabriele, 282 Eckenbrecher, Margarete von, 72 Eckersberg, Elke, 420 Eckstein-Diener, Bertha, 13 Eco, Umberto, 478 Ecofeminism, 128, 355 Ecology, 112, 355, 518 Ecriture feminine, 8, 47-48, 108-109, 127, 132, 158, 179, 253, 287 Edel, Peter, 266 Education, women's: and Bildungsroman 45-46; and Classicism, 32; and Empfindsamkeit, 567; during Enlightenment, 114, 329, 357, 369-70, 432; History of, 224, 280-81, 532-33; and New Humanism, 363-64; and Reformation, 440; and Renaissance, 444;
INDEX
and women's struggle for, 109, 203205, 579-80 Edvardson, Cordelia, 86, 333, 336 Ehrmann, Marianne, 56, 109-10, 330, 421-22, 448, 455, 480, 495-96, 507, 571 Eibenschiitz, Ilona, 454 Eichendorff, Joseph von, 342 Eichhorn, Maria, 216 Eichler, Caroline, 377, 408 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 177 Eisenstein, Sergei, 326 Ejxenbaum, Boris, 177 Eleonore von Aquitanien, 394 Eleonore von Osterreich, 1, 78, 454, 546 Elisabeth, Grafin von BraunschweigLuneburg, 440 Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken, 1, 13, 78, 454-55, 546 Elisabeth von Rumanien, 274, 521-22 Elisabeth von Schonau, 314, 467 Elisabeth-Eleonore von SachsenMeiningen, 249 Ellis, Havelock, 241, 300-301 Ellmenreich, Friederike, 99, 377, 408 Elsbeth von Volkensdorf, 302 Eisner, Gisela, 189-90, 226, 386, 472-73 Emancipation, Jewish, 185, 207, 265 Emancipation, women's: 52, 92, 184-85, 294, 319; and concepts of nature, 355; and French Revolution, 238, 448; and National Socialism, 151; during Romanticism, 317-18; women's critique of, 13, 94, 368; and women's movement, 573-74; and Young Germany, 26, 579. See also Equality; Liberation Emanze, 110-11 Empfindsamkeit. See Sentimentality/£m/?findsamkeit Empire, German, 223-24, 370 Empson, William, 361 Endres, Ria, 48, 190 Engagierte Literatur, 111-12, 192, 21314, 365 Engel-Egli, Regula, 507, 523-24 Engelke, Gerrit, 517 Engels, Friedrich, 306, 312 Englander, Richard, 165
645 Engstrom, Ingemo, 170 Enlightenment, 112-15, 196, 222, 266, 288, 308, 357-58, 401, 403, 411, 457, 479; and drama, 55-57, 65, 73-74, 258, 359, 390, 420, 465, 550-51, 55455; educational concepts in, 431; family in, 145; and Frankfurt School, 180; gender characteristics in, 211-12, 294; laws in, 10; and novels, 369, 459, 495; and poetry, 356, 390, 581, 584; salons in, 12, 28, 469; and witch, 564; women's rights in, 237-38, 280, 329, 363, 495, 573 Entwicklungsroman, 44, 115-16, 213, 369 Epic poem, 119-21, 453 Epic theater, 101, 116-18, 279 Epistolary culture, 25, 76, 115-16, 11819, 187-88, 313-15, 350, 365, 439, 461-62, 469, 495-96, 525 Epos/prose epos, 119-21, 453 Equality, women's, 13, 15, 93, 161, 18485, 573-74; and Enlightenment, 113; and socialism, 197, 487-88; and suffrage, 504-505. See also Emancipation; Liberation Erasmus von Rotterdam, 444 Erb, Elke, 102, 192, 222, 236, 402 Erbauungsliteratur, 43, 121-22, 166, 245, 293 Erlebnisdichtung, 122-23, 199 Erlenberger, Maria, 54, 295, 477, 535 Ernesti, Johann August, 363 Ernst, Max, 436, 505 Eronii, Yasmin, 322 Erotic literature, 123-24, 404, 474, 55960 Erudite woman/gelehrte, 124-26, 200, 202-205, 275-76, 280, 313-16, 329, 363-64, 440, 444-45, 532-33, 567 Erxleben, Dorothea. See Leporin, Dorothea Escher, Nanny, 88 Essay, 126-27, 323, 502 Essentialism/constructionism, 128-29, 201, 202-205, 279, 383; and aesthetics, 7-8; and androgyny, 15-16; and feminist theory, 108, 132, 253, 308, 405-
646 406, 409-10, 411, 412-13, 503; in film, 183; and lesbianism, 283; in literature, 255, 447, 453, 497 Estates, literary, 24 Estes, Clarissa Pinkola, 561 Eternal feminine, 9, 129-30, 175, 259, 268, 367, 369 Ethnocentrism, 134 Ewald, Johann Ludwig, 432 Exile literature, 30, 62, 130-31, 196, 243, 247, 259-60, 323, 351, 523, 540; and Jewish authors, 206-207, 231, 233, 240-41 Existentialism, 111, 131-33, 236, 395 Exotin, 53, 72, 133-35, 164, 265-66, 378, 524, 529 Experimental literature, 83, 135-36, 263 Export, Valie, 136-37, 184 Expressionism, 10, 137-38, 149, 174, 296, 323, 356, 360, 403, 489, 519, 560, 576 Fable, 139-40, 279, 386 FAD (Feministisches Archiv und Dokumentationszentrum), 190 Fahlmer, Johanna, 495 Fairy tale, 25, 87, 140-42, 386, 455, 547, 548, 549; and drama, 142-43; gender characteristics in, 68; 20th century, 31, 331, 388, 565; and novella, 143-44; women figures in, 85, 215, 217-18, 261, 333, 334, 349, 415-17, 483, 563 Fairy tale dmma/Marchendrama, 42-43, 142-43, 165, 550 Fairy tale novella)'Marchennovelle, 87, 141, 143-44 Falkenhausen, Helene von, 72 Fallada, Hans, 17, 360 Family, social history of the German, 14447, 211-12, 230-31, 239, 301-302, 303-304, 312, 391, 450-51 Fanon, Frantz, 408 Fantastic literature, 8, 86-87, 147-48, 330-31, 436-37, 475-76, 534, 565 Fantasy, male: and amazon, 12; and childwoman, 66; and femme fatale; and National Socialism, 151; and Orientalism, 378; and psychoanalysis, 173, 426
INDEX
Fascist aesthetics, 148-50, 151, 231, 351, 548, 578 Fascist theory, 149, 150-51, 548, 577 Fashion, 151-52 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 170, 174, 317, 397, 527, 549 Fastnachts spiel, 152-53, 418 Father-daughter relationship, 85-86, 15355, 167, 298, 335-36, 484 Fauth, Gertrud, 285 Fear, male: of female sexuality, 54, 173, 210; and feminization of labor force, 17; of women, 12, 238 Feminisms, German, 155-57 Feminist theory, British, 8, 82, 157-58, 511 Feminist theory, French, 108, 128, 13233, 158-60, 395, 412, 478, 511; British reception of, 175; and fragmentary writing, 178; German reception of, 8, 160-61, 255-56, 287, 499 Feminist theory, German, 8, 155-56, 158— 59, 160-62, 163, 287, 388-89, 410, 433-34, 472-73, 499, 503 Feminist theory, U.S.-American, 8, 12829, 155-56, 157, 160-61, 162-63, 43334, 503, 511 Feminization: of culture in modernism, 323; of labor force in the 1920s, 17 Femme fatale, 5, 8, 163-65, 169, 173, 268, 323 Femme fragile, 8, 165-66, 266, 268, 505 Fenelon, Fania, 265 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 266, 370 Feyerabend, Sigmund, 546 FFBIZ (Frauenforschungs- Bildungs- und Informationszentrum), 190 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 203, 211, 461 Fickert, Auguste, 29 Figurengedicht, 166-67 Filhes, Bertha, 142 Film: autobiographical, 167-68, 470, 471; documentary, 168-69, 470; lesbian, 169-71, 184, 283 Film politics, 171-72, 173, 182, 183, 47071, 471-72, 539 Film theory, feminist, 58-59, 149, 17273, 300, 379-80, 405-406, 470-72, 527; and autobiography, 167; and doc-
INDEX
umentary film, 168; and fascism, 149; and pornography, 404, and subjectivity, 365; and television, 487 Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, 5, 107, 164, 16566, 173-74, 250, 267-68, 297, 323, 377, 506-507, 512, 560 Fini, Leonor, 506 Firestone, Shulamith, 156 Fischart, Johann, 222 Fischer, Caroline Auguste, 462 Fischer, Robert, 96 Flachsland, Caroline, 49, 84-85, 176, 348, 350, 495 Flaubert, Gustave, 475 Fleischl-Marxow, Ida, 373 FleiBer, Marieluise, 174-75, 351, 438, 558; dramas by, 88, 100, 101, 116-18, 324, 506, 523, 549-50; Marieluise FleiBer-Preis, 417; prose narratives by, 360, 366-67, 481 Fleming, Paul, 490 Fliegel, Alice, 243 Flugblatt. See Pamphlet/Flugblatter Foa, Eugenie de, 456 Folk song/Volkslied, 39, 176-77, 548 Folz, Hans, 152 Fontane, Theodor, 154, 213, 475 Formalism, 177-78 Forneris, Anna, 379, 524 Forster, Friedrich, 556 Forstner, Clara Johanna, 416 Foucault, Michel, 32, 81, 132, 156-57, 160,362,411-12,543 Fouque, Friedrich de la Motte-, 342^4-3, Fouque, Karoline de la Motte-, 125, 295, 308 Fragment/fragmentary writing, 102, 17879, 227, 453 Franck, Barbara, 365 Francke, August Hermann, 399 Francois, Louise von, 216, 371, 435, 516 Frank, Leonhard, 360 Frankfurt School, The, 8, 81, 111-12, 179-81, 234, 253, 254, 306-307, 407, 409,411 Franz, Agnes, 64, 67, 416 Frapan, Use, 124, 420, 533, 560 Frauen im Theater, (FIT), 181-82, 190
647 Frauen und Film, 172, 182-83, 470, 539 Frauenfilm, 58-59, 96, 136-37, 182, 18384, 365, 379-80, 471-72, 527, 539, 541-542; and autobiography, 167; and comedy, 75; and documentary film, 168; and film theory, 172-73 Frauenfrage, 184-85, 306-307, 323, 331, 354, 572, 573, 575, 579, 582 Frauenliteratur/Frauendichtung, 64, 6971, 186-87, 190, 475, 481, 365 Frauenstudium. See University education, women's Frederick II of Prussia, 10, 79 Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 319 Fremgen, Gisela, 53 Frenssen, Gustav, 72 Freud, Anna, 425 Freud, Sigmund, 16, 147, 164, 173, 204, 324, 335, 372, 425-26, 518, 543; and feminist theory, 8, 157-58, 160, 41213; and Frankfurt School, 179-80; and homosexuality, 241; and hysteria, 250; and masochism, 309-10; and matriarchy, 312; and narcissism, 66, 348; and Surrealism, 505; and Symbolism, 512; and vampirism, 537 Freundlich, Emmy, 504 Freundschaftskult, 84, 119, 187-88 Frey, Eleonore, 510 Freydorf, Alberta Wilhelmine H. von, 416 Freytag, Gustav, 45 FRG: children's literature, 67-68; civil code, 60; and family, 146; immigration laws, 27 FRG literature (1949-1990), 20-21, 186, 188-91, 192, 213-14, 224-25, 423-24, 481-82, 540-41; since 1990, 49-50, 191-93, 198, 213-14 Fried, Alfred Hermann, 384 Friedan, Betty, 475 Friedlander, Rebecca, 207 Friedrich II von PreuBen, 10, 79 Friedrich Wilhelm II, 10 Friendship, 119, 422; and lesbianism, 28384. See also Freundschaftskult Frischmuth, Barbara, 31, 135-36, 148, 215, 373, 379, 482, 484, 524 Fritz, Marianne, 371
648 Frobel, Friedrich, 204 Frolich, Henriette, 338-39, 462 Fromm, Erich, 179 Fuller, Loie, 194 Furstenberg, Franz Freiherr von, 271 Futurism, 135, 177, 193-94, 296 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 234-35, 395, 433 Galante Dichtung, 195-96, 357-58 Gallitzin, Adelheid Amalia von, 271-72 Garbe, Hans, 575 Garibaldi, Guiseppe, 319 Gatterer Engelhard, Philippine, 256, 276, 338-39, 458, 480 Gay, John, 117 Gaze, male, 159, 172, 308 GDR: and children's literature, 68; and documentary literature, 92; and family, 146; laws pertaining to women, 60, 146, 197 GDR Literature, 20-21, 95, 148, 196-98, 307, 372-73, 437, 482, 518, 553; Ankunftsliteratur, 10, 18-19; critique of socialism in, 100, 488; and drama, 100; and exile literature, 130-31, 493; and fairy tales, 141; gender concepts in, 206; individual authors, 30-31, 401402, 553-54, 565-66; Protokolle, 423, 575; reception of, 192, 213-14; and Socialist Realism, 498-90; women figures in, 97-98, 217-18 Gebrauchsliteratur, 121, 199-201 Gedankenlyrik, 199 Gedrut, 320 Geertz, Clifford, 362 Gehrke, Doris, 272 Gelegenheitsdichtung, 34, 199-201, 311, 356, 376, 525, 581 Gelehrte. See Erudite Woman/Gelehrte Gellert, Christian Fiirchtegott, 118, 203, 369, 461 Gender, 129, 136, 148, 160-61, 201-202, 203-206, 211-12, 308, 362, 410 Gender studies, 160-61, 283-84, 410, 502-503 Gender theories, history of, 113, 125, 186, 201, 202-205, 211-12, 230-31, 256, 421, 479-80, 523; and cross-
INDEX
dressing, 16, 151-52; in fin-de-siecle Vienna, 164, 173; and French feminist theory, 8, 128-29, 158-59, 405; and German feminist theory, 164, 486; and matriarchy, 12-13; and mythology, 210, 238, 391; and psychoanalysis, 66, 80; and stereotypes, 300-301; and U.S. feminist theory, 485; and women's authorship, 414-15, 567-68; women's view of, 257, 280, 388-89, 391-92 Gender transformation/Geschlechtertaucsch, 13, 16, 201-202, 205-206, 282, 380, 387 Genius, 25, 64, 348; and androcentrism, 80, 438, 495 Genre: and femininity, 121, 186, 438-39, 454, 455, 477, 525, 584; and masculinity, 120, 126, 199, 520, 584 Genre, Literary, 31, 34, 64, 438-39 George, Stefan, 235, 512 George-Kreis (Stefan George), 235 Gerberg, niece of Emperor Otto I, 394 Gerhard, Adele, 138 Gerhard, Melitta, 115 Gerhardt, Marlies, 127 Gerland, Brigitte, 493 German studies, 208-10, 362-63, 528-29 Germanistik, 63, 186, 208-209, 437-38, 479, 547, 548 German-Jewish literature, 29-30, 53, 123, 192, 206-208, 233, 240-41, 247, 26566, 368-69, 541 Germershausen, Christian Friedrich, 230 Gersdorf, Wilhelmine von, 276 Gerstl, Elfriede, 31 Gerstner, Clara von, 524 Gert, Valeska, 62 Gerter, Elisabeth, 508 Gertrud von Helfta, 288, 315 Gertrude the Great, 545 Gertrude von Hackeborn, 314, 342 Geschlechterkampf, 210-11, 264, 542 Geschlechtscharaktere, 16, 113-14, 202205, 211-12, 357, 450, 484, 496, 511; critique of, 238, 264, 300-301, 31718, 450-51, 567-68; in literature, 230, 279, 293-94, 329, 370, 431-32, 479-
INDEX
80; polarization of, 145, 210, 431-32, 523, 532 Gesellschaftsroman, 212-13, 435 Gesinnungsasthetik, 191, 213-14, 566 Gesner, Johann Matthias, 363 Gessner, Salomon, 256 Giehse, Therese, 62 Gilbert, Yvette, 61 Gilligan, Carol, 327-28 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 166, 476 Gisel, 394 Gizycki, Georg von, 57 Gizycki, Lily von. See Braun, Lily Glas-Larsson, Margareta, 240 Glatz, Jakob, 432 Gleich, Josef Alois, 42 Gleim, Betty, 125, 364 Gleit, Maria, 17 Gloger, Gotthold, 206 Gluck, Babette Elisabeth, 29, 174, 373, 376 Gliickel von Hameln, 76, 207, 247 Glumer, Claire von, 51 Gmeyner, Anna, 549-50 Gochhausen, Luise von, 276, 310 Gockingk, Nantchen, 458 Goddess, 105, 214-15, 236, 303, 416, 561 Goebbels, Joseph, 149-50 Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth. See TextorGoethe, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, Cornelia, 348 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 49, 69-71, 276, 363, 438, 480; aesthetics by, 3 1 32, 41, 373; autobiography by, 35; Bildungsromane by, 4, 44-46; correspondence of, 24, 271; critique of, 387; dramas by, 11, 14, 85, 258, 273, 339, 421-22, 482-83, 495-96; Hermann und Dorothea, 256; as a literary figure, 12, 25, 311; representation of women in, 66, 129, 343, 537; Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, 349; Werther, 84, 495-96; Westostlicher Divan, 378 Gogh, Vincent van, 137 Goll, Claire, 138, 375-76, 576 Goncharova, Natalia, 194
649 Gordon, Marie, 377, 408 Gorki, Maxim, 488 Gorres, Ida Friederike, 468 Gorres, Joseph, 546 Gothic literature, 87, 97 Gottfried von StraBburg, 563 Gotthelf, Jeremias, 94 Gottinger Hainbund, 84, 271 Gottner-Abendroth, Heide, 8, 312 Gottsched, Johann Christoph, 33, 112, 124; as journal editor, 114, 329, 571; and oppression of women, 113; as theater reformer, 229, 345, 357, 359, 400, 465, 491, 519-21, 555, 584; and women's education, 200 Gottsched, Luise Adelgunde, 33, 113, 125, 458; comedies by, 65, 75, 216, 345, 357, 419, 465-66, 551; dramatic adaptations/translations by, 6-7, 75, 142, 357, 491; epistolary works by, 188; tragedy by, 520-21; and women's education, 125 Gotze, Auguste, 100, 339, 522 Gouges, Olympe de, 24, 448 Governess, 215-16, 296 Graham, Barbara, 561 Grahn, Christine, 273 Gramsci, Antonio, 81 Grandmother, 217-18, 333, 347 Grass, Giinter, 45, 134, 191, 325, 396 Greenblatt, Stephen, 362 Greer, Germaine, 157-58 Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von, 80, 218-19, 277; poetry by, 28, 40, 166, 199, 249, 334, 375, 390, 402-403, 490; and religious themes, 288, 350, 468 Griffith, D. W., 327 Grillparzer, Franz, 28-29, 133, 210, 265, 273-74 Grimm, Gisela. See Arnim, Gisela von Grimm, Hans, 72 Grimm, Jakob, 25, 63, 68, 102, 121, 140-41, 349, 462, 483, 547^18, 563, 564 Grimm, Wilhelm, 25, 63, 68, 102, 121, 140-41, 349, 462, 483, 547-48, 563, 564
650 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph, 14, 40, 396, 398 Groeben, Elisabeth von, 427 Grogger, Paula, 417 Groschenroman, 62, 219-20, 459, 474, 525 GroB, Charlotte, 446 Grofistadtroman, 9, 17, 221, 232, 273 Grosz, Georg, 194 Grote, Alexandra von, 170 Grotesque, 221-23, 373, 387, 473, 534 Grumbach, Argula von, 385, 567 Grim, Albertine von, 495 Griin, Max von der, 226, 321 Grunderzeit/German Empire, 223-24, 370 Grunicke, Helene, 72 Gruppe 47, 37, 189, 214, 224-25 Gruppe 61, 225-27, 575 Gryphius, Andreas, 40, 154, 305, 400, 490 Guardini, Romano, 132 Gubitz, Friedrich Wilhelm, 273 Guillaume-Schack, Gertrud, 420 Gumpert, Thekla von, 266, 294 Gunderrode, Karoline Friederike Louise Maximiliane von, 16, 25, 33, 123, 22728, 276, 318, 356, 438, 460-61; dramas by, 21-22, 237, 245, 285, 378, 462, 466, 520-21; epistolary works by, 119; as literary figure, 47-^8, 52, 188, 489; poetry by, 105, 179, 199, 289, 375, 402, 490-91 Giinther, Agnes, 166, 268 Giinther, Marie, 126, 377, 568 Gutsche, Kerstin, 282, 423 Gutzkow, Karl, 46
Haas, Thea de, 72 Habermann, Johann, 121 Habermas, Jiirgen, 179, 234-35, 411 Hacks, Peter, 206 Hadewijch of Antwerp/Brabant, 279, 290, 545 Haffter, Petra, 539 Hafner-Forneris, Anna, 379, 524 Hahn, Ulla, 518
INDEX
Hahn-Hahn, Ida von, 2, 44, 116, 119, 134, 185, 237, 288, 378-79, 435, 468, 524, 579-80 Haid, Karl, 436 Haidegger, Christine, 31 Haider, Ursula, 315 Halbe, Max, 352 Haller, Albrecht von, 507 Hallmann, Johann Christian, 305 Hamburger, Kate, 177 Handel-Mazetti, Enrica Freiin von, 30, 257, 371, 417 Handke, Peter, 45, 365 Hannsmann, Margarete, 232 Hanswurst, 345 Hanum, Djavidan, 379 Happy end, 21-22, 73-74, 408 Harbou, Thea von, 222, 393, 476, 534-35 Harden, Sylvia von, 138 Hardenberg, Friedrich von. See Novalis Hardenberg, Henriette, 138 Harrassment, sexual, 17, 296, 494 Harsdorffer, Georg Philipp, 200 Hartlieb, Johann, 133 Hartl-Mitius, Philomene, 88, 377, 408 Hartmann von Aue, 563 Hartwig, Mela, 30, 366 Hase, Annemarie, 62 Hasing, Helga, 20 Hasler, Eveline, 371, 510, 517 Hassenpflug, Johanna, 548 Hassenpflug, Marie, 141, 548 Hatzlerin, Clara, 176, 302 Haug, Frigga, 309, 543 Haugwitz, August Adolph von, 305 Haupt- und Staatsaktion, 229-30 Hauptmann, Elizabeth, 117 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 165, 352-53 Haushofer, Marlen, 30, 116, 232, 298, 417 Hausmann, Julie, 249 Hausvater literatur, 230-31 Havranek, Bohuslav, 177 Hayn, Henriette Luise von, 249 Hebbel, Friedrich, 154, 210 Hebel, Johann Peter, 69 Hedin, Alwa, 524
INDEX
Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm, 131, 179, 204, 395, 489 Heidegger, Martin, 37, 132, 236, 234, 285, 367, 395, 518 Heilke, 394 Heim, Uta Maria, 273 Heimatdichtung, 39, 231-33, 525, 527 Heimkehrerliteratur, 233 Heine, Heinrich, 342, 561 Heinemann, Marlene, 240 Heinersdorf, Richard, 274 Heinrich, Jutta, 55, 86, 222, 255, 336 Heinrich von Nordlingen, 290, 315 Heinrich von Veldeke, 278, 563 Heinse, Johann Jakob Wilhelm, 571 Heinz-Erian, Hanna, 88 Heller, Eva, 459 Helm, Clementine, 266, 294 Helvig, Amalie von, 69, 71, 99, 256, 377, 390 Hemsterhuis, Frans, 271 Henckel, Erdmann Heinrich von, 399 Hensel, Friederike Sophie. See Seyler, Friederike Sophie Hensel, Kerstin, 192 Hensel, Luise, 44, 272 Henze, Hans Werner, 38 Herbst, Christine, 20 Herder, Caroline. See Flachsland, Caroline Herder, Johann Gottfried, 52, 63, 176, 211, 271, 363,479, 547-48 Herking, Ursula, 62 Hermeneutics, 89, 234-35, 395, 433 Hermes, Johann Timotheus, 369 Hermetic poetry, 235-36, 540 Herodotus, 12 Heroine, 236-37, 399, 466-67, 542, 556 Herrad von Landsberg, 314, 427 Herwegh, Emma, 449, 524 Herz, Henriette, 207, 460-61, 469 Herzfeld, Marie, 174 Herzl, Theodor, 173 Herzog, Marianne, 322 Hesekiel, Ludowika, 393 Hesse, Hermann, 134 Hesterberg, Trude, 61-62 Heteroglossia, 89
651 Heterosexism, 281, 301 Heterosexuality, 201-202, 554 Hett, Christine, 169 Heun, Karl Gottlieb Samuel, 347 Hexenverfolgung. See Inquisition Heyking, Elisabeth Freifrau von, 524 Heymair, Magdalena, 468 Heymann, Lida Gustava, 185, 572 Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 363 He(t?)zel, Charlotte, 114-15, 329, 571 Hierarchization, of literary genres, 34, 64, 285, 437 Hildegard von Bingen, 3, 9, 24, 76, 87, 122, 248^9, 250, 279, 303, 314, 341, 350, 545 Hillern, Wilhelmine von, 45, 120, 250, 345_46, 400, 551 Himmler, Heinrich, 261 Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von, Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung, 114, 203204, 237-39, 363, 495 Hirsch, Jenny, 572 Historical Romance, 140-41, 143-44, 37072, 458-59 Historicism, 362 History, women's, 239-40, 312, 370-71, 391-92, 522 Hitler, Adolf, 148-50 Hoch, Hannah, 84, 297, 326 Hochhuth, Rolf, 285 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 87, 330, 476, 537 Hoffmann, Johanna, 517 Hoffmann, Utta C , 169 Hofland, Barbara, 456 Hofmann, Ernestine, 329, 571 Hofmann, Kitty, 67 Hofmann-Oedenkoven, Ida, 452 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 165, 173, 235, 492, 512 Hogel, Minna, 174 Hoggart, Richard, 81 Holder, Luise, 67 Holderlin, Friedrich, 69, 179, 227, 249, 375, 489 Holl, Gussy, 61-62 Holocaust, 577; literature, 31, 76-77, 92, 206-207, 240-41, 265, 351, 401, 403,
652 540, 542. See also National Socialism, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Holthausen, Johanna, 99 Holz, Arno, 352 Holzl, Luisa, 322 Homer, 12, 120, 248, 453 Homosexuality/homoeroticism/homosociality, 169-70, 201-202, 241-43, 28384, 289, 300-301, 310, 410 Honecker, Erich, 197, 558 Honigmann, Barbara, 208 Hopker, Lydia, 72 Horace, 248, 279, 375, 390 Horkheimer, Max, 81, 179-80, 205, 409 Horney, Karen, 309, 426 Horspiel, 38, 189, 243-44, 386, 443 Horvath, Odon von, 506, 549 Hosenrolle, 13, 14, 16, 152, 169, 244-45, 300-301, 377, 397, 491 Hoyers, Anna Owena, 40, 122, 200, 24546, 567 Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, 34, 122, 295; comedies by, 74; dramas by, 87, 99, 285, 304-305, 313-14, 334, 340, 378, 467, 544, 560; epics by, 120; legends by, 278, 313, 334, 467; RoswithaGedenkmedaille, All Huber, Christiane Friederike, 6-7, 520-21 Huber, Ludwig Ferdinand, 109 Huber, Therese, 13, 33, 45, 347, 364, 377, 393, 400, 408, 448, 461-62, 524 Huch, Ricarda, 63, 259, 358, 367-68, 513, 524, 533; aestheticworks by, 205; dramatic works by, 377, 408; historical works by, 120, 371-72, 517, 576; novels by, 257; poetry by, 39, 257, 268; Richarda-Huch-Preis, All Huelsenbeck, Richard, 83 HUgel, Ika, 53 Hugo von Langenstein, 278 Human rights, 114 Humanity and idealized femininity, 6971, 129 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 63, 204, 347, 363-64 Humor, 21 Humperdinck, Engelbert, 438 Husserl, Edmund, 131, 395
INDEX
Hutmacher, Rahel, 510, 561 Hybridity, 89, 247-48, 411, 562 Hymn, 40, 121, 248-50, 376, 385, 393, 399, 403 Hysteric, 66, 173, 250-51 Idealization: of femininity, 42, 69-71, 130, 258, 367, 421; of the muse, 274; of the naive, 347; of sexual wholeness, 16; of socialism, 19 Identity theories, 53, 89, 152, 160-61, 162, 201-202, 247, 253-54, 283-84, 322, 342^3, 405-406, 485, 511 Ideologiekritik, 8, 235, 254-55, 409 Idyll, 255-57, 338, 390, 458 Illic, Monica, 23 Imhoff, Amalie von. See Helvig, Amalie von Immigration, 247. See Auslandergesetz Imperialism, 133 Impersonator, male, 244^5, 281-82, 300301, 377 Impressionism, 257-58, 323 Industrialization, 145, 232, 517 Infanticide, 86, 258-59 Ingarden, Roman, 177, 395 Inner emigration, 259-60, 370, 436 Inquisition, 54, 87, 260-62, 563, 565 Insanity, and social critique, 97, 295, 510; of women figures, 66, 236 Institoris, Heinrich, 260, 564 Intentionality, 395 Interdisciplinarity, 208-209 Intertextuality, 89-90, 326, 387, 395, 410-12, 413, 433-34, 477-78, 526, 538 Irigaray, Luce, 8, 108, 128, 132, 156, 15859, 160, 178, 283, 287, 335, 395, 41213, 473 Irle, Hedwig, 72 Iser, Wolfgang, 234, 395, 433 Jacob, Katherina, 446 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 271, 367 Jacobi, Johann Georg, 571 Jacobi, Marie, 524 Jacobus, Mary, 434 Jagemann, Karoline, 79
INDEX
Jahn, Ebba, 169 Jahn, Friedrich, 556 Jahnn, Hans Henny, 210 Jakob, Angelika, 484 Jakobs, Karl-Heinz, 206 Jakobson, Roman, 177, 478, 498 Janitschek, Maria, 13 Jannberg, Judith, 4 Jansen, Fasia, 62 Janstein, Elisabeth, 138 Jaspers, Karl, 132 Jauss, Hans-Robert, 234, 395, 433 Jean Paul, 69, 227 Jeffreys, Sheila, 404 Jelinek, Elfriede, 31, 255, 263-64, 289, 298, 538, 541; and anti-utopia, 535; dramas by, 5, 48, 75, 88, 101, 190, 210, 222, 274, 285; prose narratives by, 55, 86, 124, 135-36, 231-32, 310, 333, 336, 373, 387, 392; representation of sexuality, 404, 452-53, 459; satire by, 473, 549-50 Jens, Walter, 224 Jerusalem, Else, 124, 420, 560 Jerusalem, Friederike, 338-39 Jewish woman, beautiful, 264-66 Jochheim, Amalie, 339 Johansen, Hanna, 510 Joldic, Emir, 68 Jollifous, 229 Jonigkeit, Elke, 169 Jordis, Ludovica, 548 Journals, literary. See Moral Weeklies; Women's journals Joyce, James, 159, 324 Judeo-Christian tradition, 79, 240, 354, 391 Judith, daughter-in-law of Charlemagne, 393 Jugendliteratur, 67-68, IA2-A3, 266-67, 293-94, 417 Jugendstil, 164, 267-69, 511 Jung, Carl Gustav, 16, 210 Junges Deutschland. See Young Germany Jungmann, Recha, 167 Kaffka, Margit, 452 Kafka, Franz, 179, 324-25, 327
653 Kahlo, Frieda, 506 Kahlschlagliteratur, 224 Kaiser, Georg, 137 Kaleko, Mascha, 62 Kalisch, David, 408 Kalkowska, Eleonore, 420 Kallimachos, 248 Kalman, Emmerich (Imre), 377 Kaltenbach, Christiane, 539 Kamenko, Vera, 77, 322 Kamienski, Caroline Friederica von, 571 Kaminsky, Andre, 134 Kant, Immanuel, 113-14, 121, 131, 179, 203, 211, 346,479 Kantorowicz, Gertrud, 512 Karl V., 3 Karlin, Alma, 379, 524 Karlstadt, Liesl, 62 Karlweis, Marta, 524 Karmel, Ilona, 77 Karow, Maria, 72 Karsch, Anna Luisa, 33, 123, 200, 256, 338, 346-47, 375, 393, 401, 458, 496 Kaschnitz, Marie Luise, 87, 189; essays by, 127; fables by, 140, 386; Horspiele by, 243, Kaschnitz-Preis, 417-18; plays by, 519; poetry by, 199, 236, 401-403, 491; short prose by, 481, 484, 491 Kastner, Erich, 3, 360 Ka-Tzetnik, 266 Kaub, Hannelore, 62 Kauffmann, Angelika, 42 Kaufmann, Christoph, 495 Kautsky, Minna, 95, 174, 224 Kawaters, Corinna, 273 Kayser, Alwine, 72 Keller, Claudia, 526 Keller, Gottfried, 45, 88, 526 Keller, Therese, 428 Kellner, Marion, 169 Kern, Elga, 420 Kerr-Sokal, Charlotte, 169 Kerschbaumer, Marie-Therese, 31, 92, 135-36, 484 Kertbeny-Benkert, Karoly Maria, 241 Kessel, Martin, 17 Keun, Irmgard, 17, 54, 116, 131, 221, 360, 366-67, 396, 452, 526, 558
654 Key, Ellen, 512 Kierkegaard, Soren, 131 Kinkel, Johanna, 339 Kipling, Rudyard, 117 Kirndorfer, Marie, 62 Kirndorfer, Marietta, 62 Kirsch, Sarah, 102, 131, 155, 198, 330; poetry by, 356, 375-76, 402, 565; Protokolle by, 20, 92, 423; short prose by, 206, 387, 518 Kirschner, Lula (Aloysia), 174, 537 Kiwus, Karin, 222, 402 Klaj, Johann, 166 Kleist, Heinrich von, 12, 47-48, 65, 69, 210, 227, 472, 484, 489, 520 Klencke, Karoline Luise von, 551 Klettenberg, Susanne Katharina von, 41, 495 Klimt, Gustav, 164, 173, 268, 342 Klinger, Agnes, 495 Klinger, Babette, 427 Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian, 210, 495 Klokow, Ida, 371, 522 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 84-85, 187 Klopstock, Meta. See Moller, Meta Klostermann, Helena, 20 Kliiger, Ruth, 30, 77, 208, 240, 542 Knauss, Sybille, 48 Knorring, Sophie von, 377 Koblenz, Babette, 339 Kobus, Kathi, 61 Koch, Gertrud, 172-73 Koch, Minna, 249 Koch, Rosalie, 266 Koenig, Alma Johanna, 30, 124, 417 Koeppen, Anne Marie, 351 Kohl, Helmut, 531 Kohler, Barbara, 192 Kokoschka, Oskar, 173 Kokula, Use, 282 Kolb, Annette, 418, 524, 576 Kolb, Ulrike, 472 Kollwitz, Kathe, 90, 519, 576 Kolman, Trude, 62 Kolmar, Gertrud, 39, 123, 199, 207, 356, 403 Konigsdorf, Helga, 48, 192, 255, 282, 518, 559
INDEX
Konigsmarck, Maria Aurora von, 482 Koppe, Ingrid, 558 Kossuth, Lajos, 319 Kotzebue, August von, 13, 46, 408 Kracauer, Siegfried, 17, 149 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 204, 241 Kraft, Anna, 99 Kralik, Mathilde von, 174 Kramer, Heinrich. See Institoris, Heinrich Kraus, Karl, 173, 204, 263 Kraus, Marianne, 523 Krechel, Ursula, 190, 199, 236, 376, 401 Kreis von Miinster, 271-72 Kremer, Karoline, 338 Kremnitz, Marie von, 521-22 Kress, Nancy, 476 Kreuzberg, Use, 72 Krickeberg, Sophie Friederike, 377 Kridl, Manfred, 177 Kriminalroman, 272-73, 525 Kristeva, Julia, 8, 108, 156, 158-59, 160, 178, 287, 335, 348, 395, 405, 412-13, 478, 499 Kroetz, Franz Xaver, 175, 549 Kronauer, Brigitte, 298 Krones, Therese, 43, 339, 377 Krull, Heidi, 170 Kuhl, Hilda, 88 Kiihl, Kate, 62 Kiihnhold, Grete, 72 KUnstlerdrama, 273-74, 337, 568 Kuntsch, Susanna Margaretha von, 122, 376 Kurz, Isolde, 257, 374 La Roche, Sophie von, 113, 275-76, 350, 480, 567; didactic texts by, 212, 432; and masquerade, 308; moral weeklies edited by, 329-30, 495, 571; reception of works by, 32, 49, 415, 438; short fiction by, 336; Sternheim, AI-A2, 45, 78, 116, 119, 237, 347, 369, 495; travel literature by, 1-2, 523 Lacan, Jacques, 8, 128, 132, 157-60, 335, 405, 412-13 Lachmann, Hedwig, 207, 512 Lachmann, Renate, 163, 350 La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine de, 6
INDEX Lamprecht, Pfaffe, 133 Landau, Paul, 20 Lander, Jeannette, 193 Landry, Geoffrey de Latour, 293 Lang, Ana, 510 Lang, Fritz, 222, 534 Lang, Marie, 29 Lange, Helene, 107, 185, 223, 297, 367, 533, 572, 576 Lange-Mller, Katja, 192, 418 Langgasser, Elisabeth, 106, 189, 207208, 259, 333, 335-36, 356, 374, 403, 417-18, 436-37, 481 Langmann, Adelhaid, 315 Langner, Use, 3, 13, 99-100, 189, 233, 259, 335, 360, 420, 517, 524 Langner, Maria, 575 Language, women's, 494-95, 510 Language societies, 40, 200, 218, 27677, 390, 400 Lara, Adelina de, 454 Lask, Berta, 138, 575-76 Laska, Vera, 240 Lasker-SchUler, Else, 123, 131, 207, 324; and cross-dressing, 16, 134; dramas by, 100-101, 138, 419, 517; and Orientalism, 379; poetry by, 39, 106, 138, 233, 268, 403, 576 Laube, Iduna, 29 Lauber, Cecile, 508 Lautreamont, Comte de, 159 Lavant, Christine, 30, 403 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 121, 507 Laws, and BGB, 59-60; and immigration, 27; and marriage, 303-304; pertaining to women, 10, 197 Lazar, Maria, 420 Le Beau, Louisa Adolpha, 339 Le Doeuff, Michele, 132 Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 538 Le Fort, Getrud von, 22-23, 189, 249, 334-35, 370, 393, 401, 403, 418, 468 Lebensphilosophie, 132 Lederer, Joe, 452 Legend, 119, 277-78, 279, 334, 467-68 LeGuin, Ursula K., 476 Lehar, Franz, 377 Lehmann-Filhes, Bertha, 142
655 Lehms, Georg Christian, 203 Lehrdichtung, 278-80, 386 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 112 Leitner, Maria, 379, 524 Lenclos, Ninon de, 6 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 306 Lenya, Lotte, 117 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 70, 85, 489, 519 Lenzer, Gertrud, 310 Leo, Sophie, 524 Leonhard, Susanne, 493 Leporin, Dorothea, Grundliche Untersuchung, 125, 203, 280-81, 533 Lepsius, Sabine, 512 Lerner, Gerda, 239 Lesbian film. See Film Lesbian literature, 53, 253-54, 281-83, 289, 300-301, 423, 441^2, 494, 534 Lesbian theories, 129, 169-70, 201-202, 241-42, 283-84, 300-301, 405-406 Lesbianism, 169-70, 242, 289, 537-38 Lesedrama, 99, 284-85 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 63, 73, 113, 125, 363, 419; aesthetic works by, 279, 478; bourgeois tragedies by, 56, 85, 114, 154, 305, 421-22, 519-20, 560; comedies by, 491; fables by, 139; Nathan, 11A Lester, Rosemarie, 53 Leutenegger, Gertrud, 120, 221, 392, 510, 541 Levi, Elise, 86, 274, 415 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 159, 498 Levy, Sarah, 265 Lewald, Fanny, 185, 285-86, 288, 297, 435, 524; autobiographical writing by, 35, 90, 207; epistolary works by, 119; essayistic writing by, 223, 254, 57980; novels by, 45, 116, 213, 420, 57980 Liberation, women's, 96, 485; and Realism, 435; sexual, 452, 474. See also Emancipation, women's; Equality Lichnowsky, Mechthilde von, 138, 524 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 22 Liebenthal, Ite, 138 Liebeskind, Meta (Margarethe), 567
656 Liebhaber, Amalie von, 99, 466 Liebhabertheater 11-12, 310 Liebmann, Irena, 222 Liliencron, Adda Freifrau von, 72-73 Lindgren, Astrid, 417 Linguistic, conventions women's challenge of, 287 Linguistics, feminist, 89, 108, 182, 251, 286-88, 494, 499 Lion, Margo, 62 Lipinska-Leidinger, Barbara, 169 Literary, conventions women's challenge of: in Baroque literature, 584; and canon, 64; and Classicism, 69-71; in drama, 22, 73-74, 75, 99, 422, 521; and heroism, 120, 237; in poetry, 376, 582; in prose, 47, 141, 347, 387, 466, 457 Literary Societies. See Darmstadter Kreis; Gruppe 47; Gruppe 61; Kreis von Miinster; Language Societies Literature, women's: as fake translations, 7 Littrow-Bischoff, Auguste von, 29 Lloyd, Genevieve, 511 Lobe, Mira, 266 Lober, Trautgott Christiana, 390 Lober-Lilien, Dorothea, 256 Locher, Anna Emilie, 88 Locke, John, 112-13 Lodermeier, Gabi, 62 Lohenstein, Daniel Caspar von, 305 Lohmeyer, Wolfgang, 371 Lohn-Siegel, Maria Anna, 99, 524 Loos, Cecile Ines, 508 Lopez de Ubeda, Francisco, 396 Lorde, Audre, 170, 283 Lorentz, Kay, 62 Lorentz, Lore, 62 Love, 38, 119, 210, 220, 286, 288-89, 320; and bourgois tragedy, 55; courtly/ platonic, 9, 78, 289-91, 314-15, 320, 356, 545 Lowenthal, Leo, 179 Liibke, Wilhelmine, 417 Lucius, Christiane Karoline. See Schlegel, Christiane Karoline Ludecus, Caroline Amalie, 46
INDEX
Ludwig, Paula, 30, 138, 376 Ludwig, Sophie, 480 Luhring, Anna, 556 Lukacs, Georg, 149, 179, 489 Luther, Martin, 121, 139, 248-49, 303, 384-85, 439-40, 507 Luxemburg, Rosa, 306, 324, 528, 533, 576, 582 Lycophron of Chalkis, 14 Lyotard, Jean Francois, 411 McCaffrey, Anne, 526 MacKinnon, Catharine, 163, 403 Madchenliteratur, 67-68, 211-12, 26667, 293-94, 432 Madwoman, 294-95, 564 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 165 Mahler, Gustav, 173 Mahler-Werfel, Alma, 174 Maidservant, 71, 216, 286, 295-96, 480, 491 Majakovskij, Vladimir, 177 Mallarme, Stephane, 235, 512 Malss, Carl, 408 Mandeville, Jean de, 12 Manifesto, 296-97, 504 Mann, Erika, 62, 387, 524 Mann, Heinrich, 5, 45, 164-65 Mann, Klaus, 62 Mann, Thomas, 45,164-65,213,260,484 Mannel, Friederike, 548 Mannerbilder, 297-99 Mannerism, 299-300 Mannweib, 300-301, 556 Manuel, Niklas, 152 Marc, Franz, 194 Marcuse, Herbert, 179-80 Mare, 85, 301-302 Margarethe von Savoyen, 302 Marguerite de Navarre, 400 Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Princess of Saxony, 13, 79, 332, 339 Maria Theresia, Empress of Austria, 11, 28 Marianne von Preuen, 556 Marie de France, 320 Mariendichtung, 248, 278, 301, 302-303, 314-15, 334, 340, 545
INDEX
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 193 Marlitt, Eugenie, 45, 288, 336, 416, 459, 526 Maron, Monika, 98, 192, 198, 255, 493, 518 Marriage: and Common Law Marriage, 10-11, 60, 211, 220, 288, 301, 303304, 373, 440, 447, 567; of convenience, 286, 288; critique of, 360, 400, 474-75, 579; and immigration, 27; and medieval literature, 301 Marriot, Emil. See Mataja, Emilie Marten, Lu, 224, 575 Martin, Eva Maria, 75 Martin von Cochem, 121 Martinez, Marianne, 332 Martyr, female, 467-68 Martyrerdrama, 154, 248, 278, 304-306, 544 Marx, Karl, 81-82, 157-58, 179-80, 306307, 312, 327, 412 Marxist theories, 178, 306-307, 312, 324, 362, 387-88, 498; in Austrian literature, 31, 255, 263; and cultural studies, 81-82; and feminist theory, 132, 157, 179-80, 309; in the FRG, 112, 443, 497, 500; in the GDR, 19, 197, 255, 327, 488-90; in the 19th century, 58; and Stalinism, 492-94; in theater, 116 Mary (mother of Christ) 9, 303, 334-35, 340. See also Mother Mary Masculinity, women's representation of, 297-98; and postmodernism, 411 Maskenspiel, 308-309 Masochism/sadomasochism, 54-55, 164, 184, 264, 284, 309-10, 336, 505, 54344, 426, 453 Masquerade, 223, 308-309, 347, 379-80, 389, 413. See also Hosenrolle Mass culture, 180, 316, 386, 411, 557. See also Culture, popular Mass media, 361, 486; and female body, 54; and sexism, 470 Mataja, Emilie, 29, 75, 174, 324 Mathilde, daughter of Emperor Otto I, 394 Mathilde, mother of Emperor Otto I, 393 Mathilde von Aquitanien, 394
657 Mathilde von Osterreich, 394 Matinee, 12, 14, 310-11 Matisse, Henri, 137 Matriarchy, 8, 13, 214-15, 232, 311-13, 371, 391, 534 Matuschka, Marion Grafin von, 73 Maurina, Zenta, 417 May, Karl, 134 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 177 Mayenburg, Ruth von, 493 Mayer, Ruth, 23 Mayreder, Rosa, 29, 174, 224, 323-24, 492 Mayrocker, Friederike, 31, 135-36, 192, 243, 350, 375, 402 Mazzini, Guiseppe, 319 Mechtel, Angelika, 189-90, 226 Mechthild von Magdeburg, 76, 250, 279, 288, 290, 314, 334, 341, 402, 467-68, 545, 567 Media center, feminist, 24 Medicine: and female homosexuality, 300; and inquisition, 261; women's contribution to, 279, 280, 562-63 Medieval literature, 278, 313-16, 337, 393-94, 454-55, 467, 544, 546, 56263, 567; and confessional literature, 75; and didactic literature, 279, 301-302; and drama, 87, 99, 304, 340; and Minne, 9, 77-78, 289-90, 303, 320, 467; and mysticism, 288; and poetry, 248, 402; representation of Mary in, 302-303, 334-35, 340, 545 Meding, Dorothee von, 446 Meerapfel, Jeannine, 167 Megerle von Miihlfeld, Therese, 377 Meier, Helen, 510 Meinhof, Ulrike Marie, 127, 189, 485 Meisel-Hess, Grete, 324 Meisl, Carl, 42 Meitner, Lise, 518 Melodrama, 316-17, 470, 471 Memmi, Albert, 408 Mendelssohn, Fanny, 524 Mendelssohn, Moses, 346 Menschik, Jutta, 20 Mentzel-Schippel, Elisabeth, 339 Menzel, Elisabeth, 428
658 Merck, Johann Heinrich, 84 Mereau-Brentano, Sophie Friederike, 6970, 123, 317-18, 390, 460-62; epistolary works by, 119; novels by, 46, 70, 288; poetry by, 199; 338-39; short fiction by, 349; translations by, 6 Merian, Maria Sibylla, 523 Merian, Svende, 116, 459 Merimee, Prosper, 537 Mermaid. See Mythical female figures Metaphor: of the female body, 108; gendered, 101, 106, 413; and narration, 350 Metonomy, and narration, 350 Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand, 133, 371 Meylan, Elisabeth, 509 Meysenbug, Amalie Malvida Wilhelmina Tamina von, 185, 318-19, 524 Midwife, 562 Midwifery, 562-563, 564. See also Wise Woman Miegel, Agnes, 39, 257, 278, 374, 379, 401 Migdal, Ulrike, 240 Migerka, Katherina, 524 Mikesch, Elfi, 169-70 Mill, John Stuart, 504 Millais, John Everett, 342 Millett, Kate, 156 Millocker, Karl, 377 Minnesang, 9, 78, 289-90, 303, 320-21, 334, 356, 545 Minorities in Germany, representation of, 472, 528-29 Minority literature, 52-53, 77, 247, 32123, 324-26, 378, 528-29, 575 Misogyny: in aphorisms, 22; and Fastnachtsspiele, 153; and gender theories, 204-205; and language, 494; and literary conventions, 433; and National Socialism, 350; in 19th-century Austria, 29; inproverbs, 424 Misselwitz, Helke, 169 Mitgutsch, Anna Waltraud, 31, 86, 310, 333, 336, 453, 541 Mitterer, Erika, 30 Mitterer, Felix, 561 Mobius, Ernst, 205
INDEX
Modernism, 149, 178, 323-24, 386, 410, 489 Modernity, 127, 149, 163; and allegory, 9 Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 35 Modrow, Hans, 559 Moliere, 32, 345, 466, 491 Molina, Tirso de, 244 Moller, Gertrud, 40^11, 389 Moller, Meta, 85, 119, 350, 479, 571 Monikova, Libuse, 298, 324-25, 484 Monologue, inner, 475 Montage, 91, 135, 183, 326-27, 331, 360, 441, 489, 535 Montaigne, Michel de, 126 Montazami-Dabui, Mehrangis, 169 Montenglaut, Henriette A. M., 377, 408 Moosdorf, Johanna, 282, 540 Moral, 327-28 Moral Weeklies, 109-10, 112, 125, 27576, 328-30, 495, 571 Morata, Olympia Fulvia, 445 Morf, Doris, 510 Morgan, Robin, 485 Morgenstern, Beate, 541 Morgenstern, Carl, 44 Morgenstern, Johann Karl Simon, 44 Morgner, Irmtraud, 289, 330-31, 482, 526; Amanda, 2, 87, 98, 130, 148, 262, 313, 327, 392, 397, 534, 565; Haus am Rand der Stadt, 489; Hochzeit in Konstantinopel, 379; novels by, 477; prizes awarded to, 418; short fiction by, 206, 387, 518; Trobadora Beatriz, 16, 98, 148, 197, 290-91, 326, 392, 396-98, 437, 501 Morike, Eduard, 66 Morstatt, Else, 73 Moser, Milena, 273 Motet, 332 Mother figures, 105-106, 328, 332-34, 335-36, 432, 497 Mother Mary, 9, 54, 248, 278, 303, 31415, 333, 334-35, 340, 545. See also Mary (mother of Christ) Mother-daughter relationship, 20, 284, 335-37; in 15th-century literature, 454; in film, 167, 184, 471; and masochism, 55, 309-10; in 19th-century literature,
INDEX
86, 483; in 20th-century literature, 264, 333, 468, 497 Motherhood: and creativity, 105, 415; idealization of, 303, 328, 333; and laws, 10-11; and National Socialism, 150; single, 447; and women's selfrealization, 58, 407; and work, 575 Motte-Fouque, Friedrich de la, 3A2-A3 Motte-Fouque, Karoline de la, 125, 295, 308 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 244, 491 Mudersbach-Giovane, Juliana von, 256 Mues, Ingeborg, 20 Miihlbach, Luise. See Miiller-Mundt, Klara Miihlen, Hermynia zur, 140, 379 Muhr, Carolina, 250 Miiller, Adam, 203 Miiller, Christine, 423 Miiller, Elfriede, 75, 101, 190 Miiller, Elisabeth, 522 Miiller, Herta, 192 Miiller, Johannes, 176 Miiller, Otto, 274 Miiller, Wilhelmine, 338 Muller-Jahnke, Clara, 352, 354, 401, 57475 Miiller-Mundt, Klara (pseud. Luise Miihlbach), 5, 119, 185, 371, 379, 448, 524, 579 Multiculturalism, 68 Miinchhausen, Borries von, 39 Miinchhausen, Otto von, 230 Murner, Thomas, 385 Musaus, J.K.A., 462 Muse, 274, 324, 337-38, 348, 505 Musenalmanach, 338-39 Musical theater/opera, 79, 142, 244-45, 332, 339-40, 376-77, 407-408, 482, 491, 515-16, 550 Mystery play, 340, 467-68 Mysticism, 16, 44, 76, 206, 219, 250, 279, 290, 314-16, 334, 340, 341-42, 402, 468, 545 Mythical female figures, 38, 105, 331, 342-43, 546, 561-62 Mythology: German 99, 466; Greek, 79, 99, 205, 210, 312, 348; Oriental, 205
659 Nachspiel, 345-46 Naive, 346-48 Najmajer, Marie von, 174, 376 Naoum, Jusuf, 321 Narcissism, female, 66, 309, 348-49, 37980, 426 Narration, 349-50 Nathusius, Marie, 95, 216 Nation: and allegory, 10; and Austrian identity, 245; and German identity, 52, 160; 323, 529 National Socialism, 88, 95, 216, 323, 35052, 557, 577-78; and abortion, 3; and aesthetics, 148-49; and exile literature, 130-31, 208; and the family, 146; and gender images, 106, 150-51; and Holocaust literature, 240-41, 368; reception of, 31, 540-41; and women's journals, 572; women's opposition to, 207, 35960, 384, 401, 445-46 Nationalism, 45, 101, 133, 556; and postcolonialism, 409. See also Patriotism/ Nationalism Naturalism, 88, 124, 257, 267, 296, 323, 352-54, 356, 371, 406-407, 511, 567 Nature, 105-106, 232, 256, 3 4 2 ^ 3 , 35455, 356, 390, 392, 498, 518 Nature poetry, 106, 260, 355-57, 390, 509 Naubert, Benedikte, 87, 140, 143, 21516, 334, 371, 378, 416, 439, 455, 46062, 480 Ne(u?)fzer, 427 Negt, Oskar, 179 Neidhart von Reuental, 85 Nelken, Dinah, 459 Neoclassicism, 357-58 Neo-Romanticism, 358, 368, 511 Nestroy, Johann, 75, 408, 506 Neuber, Friederike Caroline, 5, 33-34, 359; dramas by, 120, 345, 357, 390, 465, 550-51, 555; as literary figure, 274; as theater reformer, 75, 112, 229, 357, 419, 465, 550-51, 555 Neue Sachlichkeit, 17, 175, 323, 359-61, 366, 419, 436, 557 Neumann, Margarete, 418 Neumann von MeiBenthal, Marianne, 377
660 Neurosis, 66 Neuwirth, Barbara, 538 New Criticism, 361-62 New German Cinema, 317 New Historicism, 64, 209, 307, 362-63, 434 New Humanism, 363-64, 444-45 New Subjectivity, 364-66, 443 New Woman (Weimar), 16, 17, 268, 297, 323, 360, 366-67, 452, 507, 537, 557, 560 Nick, Dagmar, 376, 401 Nicolas, Waltraud, 493 Nider, Johannes, 315 Niebergall, Ernst Elias, 408 Nieden, Susanne zur, 21 NieBen-Deiters, Leonore, 73 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 132, 137, 179, 319, 324, 367, 412, 508, 512 Nihilism, 367-68 Noack, Ursula, 62 Nobel Prize recipients, 233, 236, 324, 354, 368-69, 418 Nolde, Anna, 338 Nostlinger, Christine, 88, 267 Novak, Helga M., 39, 86, 131, 333, 336, 401^02, 468 Novalis, 16, 133, 337, 369 Novel, educational, 44, 216, 275, 360, 369-70;, 516-17; historical, 120, 237, 257, 259, 370-72, 435, 454, 462, 510, 517; psychological, 212-13, 372-73. See also Abenteuerroman; Angestelltlnnenroman; Bildungsroman; Entwicklungsroman; Gesellschaftsroman; Groschenroman; Grofistadtroman; Kriminalroman; Picaresque Novel/ Shelmenroman Novella, 373-74, 416 Niitzel, Anna Maria, 277
Object, sexual, women as: and cabaret, 61; and erotic literature, 123; and Jewishness, 265; and martyr plays, 305; and medieval literature, 85; and Surrealism, 505; in turn-of-the-century Vienna, 506-507
INDEX Occasional Literature. See Gelegenheitsdichtung Ode, 195, 200, 375-76, 453 Oeller, Wilhelmine, 427 Offenbach, Jacques, 244 Oguntoye, Katharina, 21, 53, 55 Opera. See Musical Theater/Opera Operetta, 244-45, 332, 339, 376-77, 407408, 482, 492, 550 Opitz, Elisabeth, 54 Opitz, Martin, 40, 490 Opitz, May, 53, 322 Oppenheim, Meret, 505 Oppermann, Ingrid, 169 Orality, 349-50, 547, 584 Oren, Aras, 529 Orientalism, 133-34, 164, 244^5, 37779, 447, 524 Ossietzky, Carl von, 384 Ossowski, Leonie, 231 Osterloh, Adele Minna, 377 Otegebe, 394 Ottinger, Ulrike, 75, 169-70, 184, 317, 379-81 Otto-Peters, Louise, nee Otto, 185, 223, 255, 297, 381-82, 435, 448, 449, 57980, 582; biography of, 51; critique of family and marriage by, 204, 286; as editor of Frauenzeitung, 572; epistolary works by, 119, 223; as founder of Frauenverein, 392, 573; historical works by, 371, 522; poetry by, 401 Overberg, Bernard Heinrich, 271 Ovid, 313, 348, 482 Ozakin, Aysel, 55, 247, 529 Ozdamar, Emine Sevgi, 193, 529 Ozkan, Hiilyal, 322, 379 Paalzow, Henriette, 459 Pabst, Georg Wilhelm, 169 Pacifism, 20, 29, 94, 354, 383-84, 51718, 576, 577, 583 Pamphlet/Flugblatter, 296-97, 384-86, 440 Paoli, Betty. See Gliick, Babette Elisabeth Pappenheim, Bertha, 29, 207, 420 Pappenheim-Frischauf, Marie, 174 Pappritz, Anna, 420
INDEX
Parable, 140, 279, 386-87 Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 261, 342 Paradis, Maria Theresia von, 339, 483 Paretti, Sandra, 370-71 Parody/Pastiche, 61, 324, 387-88, 411 Participation, political: women's exclusion from, 448, 449; women's struggle for, 504-505; 572, 580 Participation and exclusion, 8, 160-61, 310, 388-89, 391, 392-93, 415-17, 473, 542, 543-14 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 471 Passion play. See Drama, biblical/mythological/spiritual Pastiche. See Parody/Pastiche Pastior, Oskar, 15 Pastoral literature, 256, 389-91, 458 Pater familias, 10, 145 Patriarchy, 143, 154, 230-31, 296, 313, 388-89, 391-92 Patriotism/nationalism, 351, 392-93, 401, 448, 522 Patronage (medieval Period), 78, 79, 339, 393-94, 454-55 Paul, the Apostle, 544 Pauli, Johannes, 546 Paullini, Christian Franz, 203 Pausch, Birgit, 190 Pazarkaya, Yiiksel, 321, 529 Peace movement, 29 Pedretti, Erica, 189, 337, 509-10 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 478 Percillier, Nathalie, 170 Performance: art, 136, 184, 515-16; and Dadaism, 83; and gender, 129, 202, 223, 308, 554; lesbian, 245 Perm, Karoline von, 504 Perincioli, Cristina, 169 Periodization, 43, 437; and Romanticism, 460; and Salonism, 469; and Sentimentality, 479-80 Peripeteia, 21 Pernet, Luise Hedwig von, 140, 520 Perrault, Charles, 564 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 364, 369, 507 Petersen, Johanna Eleonora, 399 Petersen, Marie, 416
661 Petrarca, Francesco, 490 Peutinger, Juliana, 445 Pfeffer, Anna M. Specht, 200 Pfeiffer, Ida, 2, 134, 378, 457, 524 Pferdemenges, Maria Paulina A., 332 Phenomenology, 131, 235, 395-96 Philosophy: 18th-century and femininity, 113; Western, 8, 159 Picara, 396-97, 491 Picaresque Novel, 2, 330, 387, 396, 39798 Picasso, Pablo, 327 Pichler, Anita, 232 Pichler, Caroline, 28, 64, 79, 256, 371, 378, 390, 521 Piercy, Marge, 476, 526 Pierson, Caroline, 140, 274 Pietism, 16, 41, 44, 275, 341, 398-99, 479 Piller, Vera, 418 Pindar, 248 Pinner, Erna, 379 Pinoff, Minna, 125 Pirckheimer, Caritas, 440, 444 Plath, Sylvia, 475 Plato, 16, 113-14, 132 Plato, Heidi von, 190 Play-within-a-play, 399^100 Plessen, Elisabeth, 154, 370, 541 Plievier, Hildegard, 493 Plitt, Agathe, 332 Plonnies, Louise von, 120, 524 Poe, Edgar Allen, 165 Poetry: 166-67, 199, 235-36, 540; political, 61, 236, 400-401; prose, 401^402; spiritual, 40, 121-22, 248-49, 386, 402403. See also Hymn; Nature poetry; Ode Pohl, Emil, 408 Pohorille, Gerta, 445 Political literature, 26, 111-12, 213-14, 381, 384-85, 448, 449, 499-500, 54041, 579-80 Pollock, Friedrich, 179 Ponte, Lorenzo da, 491 Pope, Alexander, 357 Popp, Adelheid, 29, 185, 224, 488, 504, 575, 582
662 Poppe, Ulrike, 558 Porges-Bernstein, Elsa. See Bernstein, Elsa Pornography, 124, 173, 284, 403-405, 474, 453 Porta, Conrad, 293 Portz, Bertha, 427 Positionality, 50-51, 89, 156, 160-61, 234, 247, 405-406, 410, 485, 503 Positivism, 406-407 Posse, 345, 376, 407-408, 550 Postcolonialism, 162, 193, 247, 255, 378, 408-409 Postfeminism, 163, 409-10, 411-13 Postmodernism, 178, 180, 235, 247, 264, 282, 300, 325, 410-12, 413, 526 Poststructuralism, 35, 89, 90, 178, 190, 234, 342, 411, 412-14; and cultural studies, 82; and feminist theory, 82, 108, 132, 160-62, 187, 409-10, 476, 485, 503; and film theory, 172, 434, 476-77, 485, 499, 503, 538; and literary theory, 362, 405, 499 Praunheim, Rosa von, 170 Preface, 414-15, 418 Pregnancy, 341, 360, 366, 420 Prellwitz, Gertrud, 99 Preradovic, Paula von, 30 Prince, Magdalene von, 73 Princess, 415-17 Private sphere: and Bourgeois Tragedy, 55; and epistolary culture, 118; and film, 59; and New Subjectivity, 365 Prizes, literary, 37, 224-25, 243, 324, 368-69, 417-18, 444, 565 Prochaska, Eleonore, 556 Proletarian literature. See Workers' literature Prologue, 414-15, 418-19 Propertius, Sextus, 12, 313 Prostitution, 4, 85, 194, 273, 352-53, 41920, 545, 560, 573 Protagonist/antagonist, 97-98, 258, 31617, 420-22, 496, 560 Protestantism, 219, 246 Protokolle, 20, 189, 197, 226, 282, 365, 423-24, 500, 553-54, 575 Proverbs, 424-25
INDEX
Pruckner, Karoline, 174 Pseudonymity, 32-33, 207, 338, 461 Psychoanalysis, 372, 405-^06, 412, 42527, 499, 505, 512, 537; and creativity, 80; and cultural studies, 82; and femininity, 66, 250-51, 312, 335, 348; and feminist theory, 8, 82, 108, 157-59, 162, 413; and film, 172; and language, 335; and masochism, 309-10; and subjectivity, 80, 164, 503 Public sphere: and dramatic production, 74; and film, 59; and New Subjectivity, 365; women's restricted access to, 112 Publishing, 20, 32-34, 155, 225, 417, 571-72 Puppenspiel, 427-28 Piirrer, Ursula, 170 Pusch, Luise, 132, 286, 484 Puttkamer, Marie Madeleine von (pseud. Marie Madeleine), 124 PUtz, Claudia, 282 Pynchon, Thomas, 324 Queer Theory, 169-70, 241-42, 281-82, 283-84 Quistorp, Eva-Maria, 185 Quittner, Genia, 493 Raabe, Wilhelm, 45 Racism, 52-53, 297; and colonialism, 72, 524; and Exotin, 134; and German unification, 322; and postcolonialism, 409 Radegunde, Queen, 313 Radio Play. See Horspiel Raimund, Ferdinand, 42-43, 75, 550 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 12 Rail, Wilhelmine, 338 Ransom, John Crowe, 361 Rape, 194, 298, 325, 470, 501, 542 Rasp, Renate, 189 Ratgeberliteratur, 211-12, 230-31, 279, 293-94, 431-33 Rationality, critique of, 316-17, 392 Raupach, Ernst, 408 Reader-response theories, 234, 395, 43334 Realism, 39, 106-107, 154, 212-13, 221, 223, 319, 352, 370, 373, 434-36, 447,
INDEX
489, 557; magic, 436-37. See also Socialist realism Reber-Gruber, Auguste, 150 Reception, 15, 33, 42, 49-50, 63, 107, 117-18, 234, 239, 276, 433, 437-39; selective, of women authors, 102, 107, 186, 276 Reck, Ina, 73 Recke, Elisa von der, 90, 115, 119, 524 Redern, Hedwig von, 249 Reformation, 40, 248-49, 278, 305, 332, 384, 398, 414, 439-41, 444-45, 564, 567 Rehmann, Ruth, 154, 192, 365, 540 Reich, Jens, 558 Reich, Wilhelm, 312 Reichardt, Luise, 249 Reichart, Elisabeth, 31, 541 Reidemeister, Helga, 169 Reiff, Lili, 339 Reiling, Netty. See Seghers, Anna Reimann, Brigitte, 18-19, 178, 197, 330, 488-89, 575 Reindahl, Elise, 393 Reinig, Christa, 131, 289, 441-42; Entmannung, 112, 186, 190, 222, 255, 452, 472-73, 477, 535, 542; poetry by, 39, 402; short fiction by, 282 Reinshagen, Gerlind, 34, 101, 190, 44244 Rein-Wuhrmann, Anna, 73 Reiser, Ricky, 53 Reitz, Johann Heinrich, 399 Reitzenstein, Sophie, 73, 458, 480 Renaissance humanism, 152-53, 257, 28485, 300, 354-55, 444-45, 564 Representation, equal: and film politics, 171; political, 184, 449, 504-505 Reproduction. See Pregnancy; Rights, reproductive Reschke, Karin, 48 Resistance (World War II), 384, 445-46, 577 Reusch, Henriette, 99 ReuB, Eleonore, 249 Reuter, Gabriele, 45, 73, 224, 288, 295, 350, 352-54, 358, 374, 379, 435, 44647, 557
663 Reventlow, Franziska zu, 86, 105, 268, 288, 368, 512, 452 Reventlow, Friederike Schimmelmann, 272 Reventlow, Julie von, 338 Revolution, French, 43, 227, 238, 317, 393, 448-49, 460-61, 556 Revolution, German (1848), 26, 29, 13031, 204, 286, 297, 318-19, 381, 393, 401, 435, 449-50, 504, 571-72 Revolution, Industrial, 145, 419, 450-51 Revolution, Sexual, 54, 366, 451-53, 500501 Rezeptionstheorie. See Reader-response theories Rhapsody, 453-54 Rhoden, Emmy von, 266, 294 Ribics, Auguste, 377 Rich, Adrienne, 242, 283, 405, 485 Richards, Ivor Armstrong, 361 Richardson, Samuel, 73, 294 Richter, Emmy, 73 Richter, Hans-Werner, 224 Richter, Jean Paul, 69, 227 Richter, Trude, 493 Ricoeur, Paul, 395 Riedesel, Friederike von, 523 Riefenstahl, Helene (Leni), 148-49, 172, 351, 578 Rigardo, Mariette de, 61 Rights, reproductive, 168, 423, 451, 500 Rilke, Phia, 22-23 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 165, 179, 235, 324, 512 Rimbaud, Arthur, 512 Ringseis, Emilie, 142 Rinser, Luise, 189-90, 233, 259, 417-18, 481, 524, 540 Ritter, Ernst. See Binzer, Emilie Ritterliteratur, 421, 454-56 Robinsonade, 2, I A3, 456-57 Rococo literature, 338, 457-58 Rodin, Auguste, 512 Rodt, Cacilie von, 379, 524 Roesgen-Champion, Marguerite, 332 Rolland, Romain, 319 Romance, 220, 288-89, 458-59, 474, 477, 526
664 Romanticism, 75, 113-14, 222, 288, 295, 387, 403, 419, 458, 460-63, 480, 579; and androgyny, 16; individual authors, 24-25, 227, 317-18; and drama, 28485, 308, 378; and epistolary writing, 119, 364; and Erlebnisdichtung, 123; and fairy tales, 141, 143, 378; and folk art, 176; and fragmentary writing, 178; and literary salons, 469; and novels, 369, 534; and poetry, 356, 491; reception of, 232, 330, 355, 489, 505, 534, 566; reception of medieval literature in, 546; and representation of women, 164, 288, 337 Ronnell, Avital, 476 Rosenbaum, Marianne, 167, 541 Rosenberg, Alfred, 150-51 Rosenpliit, Hans, 152 Rosmer, Ernst. See Bernstein, Elsa Rossetti, Christina, 249 Roten, Iris von, 504, 524 Roth, Franz, 436 Roth, Friederike, 101, 190, 418-19 Roth, Joseph, 38 Rothers, Rosalie, 92 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 76, 113, 150, 203,211, 358, 369,479,495 Roussilon, Henriette von, 84 Rudolphi, Caroline, 216, 338-39 Ruete, Emilie, 379 Rulicke, Kathe, 575 Runckel, Dorothea Henriette von, 188 Runge, Doris, 356 Runge, Erika, 92, 155, 183, 189, 226, 423, 500, 575 Rupp, Victoria von, 6, 56, 73-74, 480 Russ, Joanna, 476 Russell, Diana E. H., 403 Rypka, Jan, 177
Sacher-Masoch, Aurora, 420 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von, 164, 310, 543 Sachs, Hans, 152 Sachs, Nelly, 231; dramas by, 100, 243; Nelly-Sachs-Preis, All; as Nobel Prize recipient, 368-69, 418; poetry by, 123,
INDEX
131, 199, 207, 233, 236, 368, 403, 540, 542; short fiction by, 518 Sachsische Typenkomodie, 65, 75, 357, 465-66 Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois de, 505, 543 Saefkow, Anne, 446 Saga, 466-67, 547 Sagan, Leontine, 169 Sagar, Maria Anna, 415, 495, 567-68 Said, Edward, 378, 408 Saint Ambrose, 248 Saint-Point, Valentine de, 193 Saints, 8, 278, 301, 314-16, 340, 394, 467-68 Salins-Marschlin, Meta, 224, 508 Salis, Meta von, 224, 508 Salomon, Alice, 524 Salonism, 12, 25, 28, 70, 76, 206, 46870, 534 Sand, George, 274 Sander, Helke, 75, 118, 168-69, 172, 18283, 317, 365, 470-71, 528, 542 Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 118, 167, 183, 317, 365, 471-72, 528, 5 4 1 ^ 2 Sappho, 248, 375 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 111, 132, 395 Satire, 61, 75, 263, 396-97, 398, 407, 472-73, 550, 584 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 412, 478, 498 Schaefer, Oda, 189 Schalek, Alice, 29, 379 Schami, Rank, 321 Scheffler, Johann, 40 Scheinhardt, Saliha, 77, 322, 379, 529 Scheirl, Angela Hans, 170 Schelmenroman. See Picaresque Novel Scherer, Sophie von, 279 Scheven, Katharina, 420 Schick, Philippine, 339 Schieber, Anna, 285 Schiele, Egon, 173 Schiller, Friedrich, 63, 69, 107, 363, 480; aesthetic writings by, 31-33, 41, 346; dramas by, 52, 85, 210, 421-22, 496, 519, 560; poetry by, 199, 258, 318, 566; and images of women, 479, 566 Schimmel, Annemarie, 524
INDEX
Schipeck, Dietmar, 170 Schirmacher, Kathe, 576 Schlaf, Johannes, 352 Schleebusch, Anna Elisabeth, 122 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 6, 102 Schlegel, Caroline. See SchlegelSchelling, Caroline Schlegel, Christiane Karoline, 56, 118, 415, 419, 422, 480, 496, 520 Schlegel, Dorothea, 6, 28, 33, 4 5 ^ 6 , 52, 179, 207, 369, 460-61, 469 Schlegel, Friedrich, 16, 46, 126, 179, 203, 206-207, 222, 346, 367, 453 Schlegel-Schelling, Caroline, 48, 52, 119, 123, 364, 453-54, 460-62 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 204, 234 Schleime, Cornelia, 192 Schlier, Paula, 17-18 Schlondorff, Volker, 58, 527 Schlosser, Johann Ludwig, 274 Schlozer, Dorothea, 125, 533 Schlupmann, Heide, 172-73, 183 Schmettau-Gallitzin, Amalie, 115 Schmid, Josef Leonard, 427 Schmidt, Arno, 179, 324 Schmidt, Elise, 100, 274, 522 Schmidt, Wilhelm, 312 Schmidt Heins, Barbara, 15 Schmolck, Benjamin, 121 Schmoll, Helene, 243 Schnee, Ada, 73 Schnee, Heinrich, 72 Schneeberger, Irmgard, 370-71 Schneider, Peter, 365 Schneider, Rolf, 206 Schneider-Lengyel, Use, 224 Schnellen, Bernhard, 371 Schnitzler, Arthur, 5, 165, 173, 273, 475, 506, 512, 560 Schoenberg, Arnold, 173-74 Scholl, Hans, 446 Scholl, Inge, 446 Scholl, Sophie, 384, 446, 577 Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud, 150 Schone Seele. See Beautiful Soul Schonemann, Sybille, 169 Schopenhauer, Adele, 90, 102
665 Schopenhauer, Johanna, 1, 45, 69-70, 116, 295, 524 Schoppe, Amalie von, 416, 457 Schoppmann, Claudia, 282 Schorr-Weiler, Eva, 332 Schottelius, Justus Georg, 482 Schriber, Margrit, 392, 416, 509 Schroder, Margot, 54, 282, 289, 501, 575 Schroter, Corona, 12, 310, 339, 483 Schuber, Maria, 379, 524 Schubert, Helga, 541 Schubin, Ossip. See Kirschner, Lula (Aloysia) Schiicking, Katharina. See BuschSchiicking, Katharina Schiicking, Levin, 102 Schuder, Rosemarie, 370 Schuffenhauer, Ida, 73 Schultz, Dagmar, 53, 322 Schulze-Kummerfeld, Karoline, 4 Schumann, Clara, 274, 454 Schundliteratur, 220, 473-74, 526 Schurman (Schurmann), Anna Maria van (von), 124, 445 Schurmann, Hedda, 427 Schutting, Julian, 31, 154, 298 Schutting, Jutta, 31, 154, 298 Schiitz, Helga, 231, 541, 559 Schiitz, Johann Jakob, 399 Schwaiger, Brigitte, 31, 154, 289, 540; Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?, 46, 289, 298, 333, 474-75, 541 Schwar(t)z, Marie Esperance von, 379, 524 Schwarz, Alice, 30 Schwarz, Sibylla, 40, 166, 199 Schwarzenbach, Annemarie, 524 Schwarzer, Alice, 3, 23, 110, 156, 189, 255, 404, 423, 500, 572 Schweikert, Ruth, 510 Schwenkfeld, Kaspar von, 246 Schwitters, Kurt, 83 Science fiction, 147, 220, 436, 475-77, 526, 534-35 Sciences, women's role in, 517-18 Scott, Sir Walter, 265, 371, 462 Sedova, Jana, 240 Seduction, 55-56, 154
666 Seelich, Nadja, 167 Seemann, Elsa, 61 Seghers, Anna, 196-97, 324, 351, 488, 575; Anna-Seghers-Stipendium, 417-18; Das siebte Kreuz, 131; "Der Ausflug," 481; dramas by, 243; and Expressionism, 489; metaphysical literature by, 278; novels by, 379, 489, 493, 541; short prose fiction by, 95, 148, 233, 374, 481, 518; Transit, 131 Seidel, Charlotte, 479 Seidel, Ina, 106, 233, 372, 393, 526, 576 Selbert, Elisabeth, 417 Selby, Bettina, 524 Selenka, Margarethe, 383 Seler-Sachs, Caecilie, 524 Self-censorship, 423 Self-hatred, female, 336 Sellwig, Franziska, 374 Semiotics, 8, 108, 132, 287, 327, 395, 413,477-79,503,511 Senocak, Zafer, 529 Sentimentality/Empfindsamkeit, 73, 84, 109, 275, 329, 338, 458, 479-81, 495, 566-67 Separatism, women's, 13; lesbian, 128 Seuse, Heinrich, 315 Sexism: and colonialism, 72; and media, 182, 470; and racism, 53 Sexuality, female: and ecriture feminine, 108; and erotic literature, 124; and father-daughter relationship, 154; and inquisition, 564; and lesbianism, 16970, 280-81, 283-84, 494; and marriage of convenience, 420; and medieval literature, 302, 340; and popular fiction, 220; and pornography, 403^104; and psychoanalysis, 173, 425-26; and sexual revolution, 452, 500; and Surrealism, 505-506; as threat, 9, 85, 133; during Weimar Republic, 366; women's denial of, 55 Seyler, Friederike Sophie, 21, 73-75, 142, 377, 414, 480 Shakespeare, William, 32, 244, 265, 342, 399 Shelley, Mary, 476 Shepherdess, 255-56, 359, 389
INDEX
Short story, 38, 373, 481-82 Sibylla Ursula von BraunschweigWolfenbiittel, 1 Sibylle Ursula von BraunschweigLuneburg, 1 Sichtermann, Barbara, 127 Siedler, Johanna, 142 Siefke, Wilhelmine, 88 Simonis, Susanne, 577 Simons, Liesel, 428 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 266 Singspiel, A3, 332, 339, 376, 407-408, 482-83, 492, 549 Sirk, Douglas, 317 Sister, 483-85, 486, 527 Sisterhood, 284, 483, 485-86 Sklovskii, Viktor, 177 Soap opera, 486-87 Socialism, 487-88; in FRG, 499-501; in GDR literature, 19, 196-98, 489, 493, 553-54, 565-66, 575; theories of, 306307; in turn-of-the-century Germany, 57, 573, 576, 582-83; in turn-of-thecentury literature, 95 Socialist realism, 18-19, 100, 148, 198, 330, 488-90, 493, 502, 565-66, 575 Socialization, gender-specific, 67, 85 Sociology, 406 Solle, Dorothee, 518 Sommer-Bodenburg, Angela, 538 Soneland, Senta, 61 Song. See Poetry, political Sonnet, 199, 218, 490-91 Sontag, Susan, 148 Sophie Elisabeth von BraunschweigLiineburg, 308, 339, 400, 482 Soubrette, 491-92 Sound poetry, 83, 135 Spangenberg, Dorothea, 338-39 Specht, Kerstin, 88, 101, 549-50 Speech Act Theory, 287 Speer, Albert, 149 Spener, Philip Jakob, 398-99 Sperr, Martin, 175, 549 Sperr, Monika, 282 Spiel, Hilde, 30, 371, 516-17 Spies, Gerty, 240
INDEX
Sprachkritik, 31, 135, 473 Sprenger, Jakob, 260, 564 Sprickmann, Anton Matthias, 102, 27172 Sprinkle, Annie, 404 Spyri, Johanna, 507 Stael, Anne Louise Germaine Necker de, 469 Stagel, Elsbeth, 315 Stalin, Joseph, 306, 492-93 Stalinism, 306, 330, 489, 492-94 Stark, Marianne, 523 Steele, Richard, 357 Stefan, Verena: Hautungen, 54, 112, 155, 190, 255, 365, 441, 475, 494-95, 500; as autobiographical text, 187; as bestseller, 475; as Bildungsroman, 46; critique of, 186; as critique of women's objectification, 54; as eco-feminist text, 355; as engagierte literatur, 112; language in, 186, 289; as lesbian-feminist text, 282, 289, 452; and nature, 355; as Utopian novel, 534 Steffin, Margarethe, 117 Stein, Charlotte von, 12, 14, 69, 99, 245, 310-11,438 Steineckert, Gisela, 218 Steinhowel, Heinrich, 546 Steinlein, Laura, 521-22 Stein-Schneider, Lena, 339 Steinwachs, Ginka, 48, 101, 190, 274 Stereotypes: of erudite woman, 126; of fashion, 152; of governess, 216; of ideal femininity, 129; of maidservant, 296; of old women, 217; and popular fiction, 220, 459, 526; of princess, 41516; and proverbs, 424; of sister, 483; of Turks, 528-29; of women writers, 566-68 Stern, Carola, 52 Sternheim, Carl, 152 Steup, Else, 73 Stifter, Adalbert, 28, 45, 133, 265-66, 561 Stocker, Helene, 185, 366, 384, 420, 573 Stockfleth, Maria Katharina, 390 Stockl, Ula, 58, 169, 183
667 Stoker, Bram (Abraham), 537 Stolberg, Agnes von, 338-39 Stolberg, Henriette von, 99 Stolberg zu Stolberg, Sophia von, 121 Stolberg-Stolberg, Friedrich L. zu, 271— 72 Stolberg-Stolberg, Katharina zu, 272 Stoltenberg, John, 404 Storm and Stress/Sturm und Drang, 113, 495-96; and drama, 65, 109, 284-85, 358, 480; and folk culture, 278; and ghost stories, 87; images of femininity in, 258, 420-22; infanticide as topos in, 258; and language, 187; and novel, 84, 109 Storz, Claudia, 510 Stotzer-Kachold, Gabriele, 192 Straeten, Andrea van, 170 Straube, Hanne, 322 StrauB, Botho, 45, 337, 365 StrauB, Ida, 575 StrauB, Johann, 244, 377, 492 StrauB, Richard, 164, 244, 492 StrauB und Torney, Lulu von, 39, 95, 257, 374, 401 Strickland, Agnes, 456 Strindberg, August, 519 Strossen, Nadine, 404 Struck, Karin, 4, 77, 106, 186, 190, 289, 298, 336, 365, 452, 481-82, 496-98, 501 Structuralism, 8, 177-78, 498-99 Struve, Amalie, 449 Struzyk, Brigitte, 48 Student movement (1968), 91, 180, 190, 253, 307, 364-65, 452-53, 471, 472, 499-501 Studer, Claire, 138, 375-76, 576 Subjective authenticity, 49-50, 253, 350, 501-502, 565 Subjectivity, 4, 35, 47^18, 80, 90-91, 178, 188, 234, 342, 355, 364-65, 434, 502-504, 534-35 Sudermann, Hermann, 352 Suffrage, 93, 504-505, 557, 580, 582 Suppe, Franz von, 244, 377 Surrealism, 15, 135, 296, 323, 327, 380, 505-506
668 SttBes Madel, 165, 173, 506-507 Suttner, Bertha von, 174, 324, 352, 354, 383 Swiss German literature, 109-10, 507-11 Sybilla Ursula von BraunschweigWolfenbiittel, 41 Sydow, Wilhelmine von, 67, 120 Syler, Sophie, 427 Symbolic content, 511 Symbolism, 164, 177, 235, 257, 323, 51113 Szeps, Bertha Zuckerkandl, 29, 174 Tanztheater, 118, 515-16 Tarnow, Fanny, 459 Tatsachenroman, 360, 516-17 Tauber-Arp, Sophie, 84 Taufiq, Suleman, 321 Technology, 193, 206, 232, 267, 355, 356, 450-51, 517-18, 558, 566 Tekinay, Alev, 55, 322, 529 Terence (Publius Terentius), 99, 305, 340 Tergit, Gabriele, 360-61, 366-67, 558 Terrorism, 527 Tetzner, Gerti, 197, 330 Teutscher, Marie Antonie, 73, 480 Textor-Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth, 34748 Thadden, Elisabeth von, 577 Theater reforms, 359 Theroigne de Mericourt, Anne-Josephe, 448 Theweleit, Klaus, 149, 151 Thierry-Winters, Elisabeth, 427 Thomas, Adrienne, 2 Thomas a Kempis, 121 Thomasius, Christian, 112 Thon, Eleonore, 56, 421-22, 455, 480, 520 Thorbecke, Marie Pauline, 73 Thun-Hohenstein, Christiane, 217 Thiiring von Ringoltingen, 546^-7 Thurmer-Rohr, Christina, 127, 161, 388, 543 Tieck, Dorothea, 6 Tieck, Ludwig, 6, 45, 143, 349, 369, 419 Tieck, Sophie, 462 Tillich, Paul, 132
INDEX
Titze, Marion, 192 Titzenhofer, Sophie Eleonore von, 65, 377, 414 Todorov, Tzvetan, 147 Toller, Ernst, 137, 360 Tomasevskij, Boris, 177 Tonnies, Use, 23 Torkan (Daneshtar Patzoldt), 247, 379 Totentanz, 519 Toyen, Maria, 506 Tragedy, 21, 55-57, 519-21; historical, 100, 237, 520, 521-23 Trakl, Georg, 484 Translation. See Adaptation/translation Trauberg, Ursula, 92 Traun, Bertha, 319 Travelogues, 2, 35, 134, 276, 286, 37879, 457, 523-25, 579 Tremel-Eggert, Kuni, 393 Treut, Monika, 170, 184, 284, 310, 459 Trivial literature, 74, 148, 173, 186, 220, 276, 294, 436, 458, 473-74, 477, 480, 487, 525-27 Trnka, Bohumil, 177 Troll-Borostyani, Irma von, 324, 420 Trotta, Margarethe von, 58, 170, 183, 317, 484-85, 527-28 Troubadour, female, 290, 320 Tucholsky, Kurt, 3, 62 Turgenev, Ivan, 537 Turkish-German literature, 55, 77, 96, 193, 247, 322, 379, 528-29, 575 Tytler, Anne Fraser, 456 Tzara, Tristan, 83 Ubeda, Lopez de, 396 Ubelmann, Cleo, 170 Uhde, Sofie von, 73 Uhland, Ludwig, 176 Ullrich, Renate, 423 Ulrich von Zazikhofen, 455 Unger, Friederike Helene, 45, 237, 347, 377, 393, 408, 458, 524 Unification, German, 2, 20, 101, 156, 185, 191, 198, 322, 423, 472, 531-32, 559 University education, women's, 93, 125-
INDEX
26, 203-204, 280, 329, 532-34, 567, 570-71, 573, 584 Unzer, Johanna Charlotte, 113, 457 Urbanization, 17, 232, 267 Ursula von Miinsterberg, 440 Ury, Else, 294 Utopia/Anti-Utopia, 306, 312, 476-77, 534-35; in Austrian literature, 236, 289; in fantastic literature, 147; in FRG literature, 442, 443; in GDR literature, 98, 330-31, 392, 396, 398, 437, 484, 501, 565; in Romanticism, 105, 143; in women's drama, 101, 143 Valentin, Karl, 62 Valetti, Rosa, 61 Vampirism, 169, 222, 264, 535, 537-38 Vargas, Eva, 62 Varnhagen, Rahel Levin, 318; autobiographical writing by, 22, 35, 76; biographies and studies of, 51, 265; epistolary works by, 119, 188, 203, 460-62; as literary figure, 443; as saloniere, 25, 28, 188, 207, 443, 469 Varo, Remedios, 506 Vasari, Giorgio, 299 Vaterromane, 154, 540 Velten, Catharina Elisabeth, 229, 555 Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen, 172, 183, 539-40 Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, 76-77, 154, 188, 264, 266, 365, 401, 443, 470, 48182, 540-42, 553, 565 Verlaine, Paul, 512 Vertov, Dziga, 327 Victim, 310, 405, 474, 505, 542-43, 544 Victimization theories, 264, 388-89, 405, 542, 543-44 Viebig, Clara, 212, 257, 352-53, 366, 371, 406^107, 557 Viehmann, Dorothea, 141, 548 Viennese Actionism, 136 Vietinghoff, Lilly, 217 Vilar, Esther, 75 Villinger, Hermine, 95 Violence: against female protagonists, 28, 174, 302, 305, 422, 441^2, 474, 500; by female protagonists, 310, 322, 421;
669 and pornography, 404; and victimization theories, 544 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 313 Virgin, 54, 78, 99, 154, 248, 278, 303, 334, 340, 467-68, 544-46, 557 Virtues, feminine, 74, 129-30, 258; 415, 480; and bourgeois tragedy, 421; and Christianity, 334; of maidservant, 296; and romance, 459; in Storm and Stress, 495 Voigt, Elli, 446 Voigt-Diederichs, Helene, 352, 354 Volkensdorf, Elsbeth von, 302 Volksbuch, 546-47 Volksdichtung, 39, 547-48, 561 Volkskunde, 547, 548-49 Volksmarchen. See Fairy Tale Volkssage, 466-67, 547 Volksstiick, 42, 88, 101, 175, 323, 407408, 506, 547, 549-50 Vormarz, 26, 43, 184-85, 381, 435, 44950, 579-80 Vorspiel, 359, 550-51 Voss, Julius von, 408 Voss, Johan Heinrich, 256 Voyeurism, 152 Vylova, Nina, 77 Wagner, Heinrich Leopold, 85, 258-59, 496 Wagner, Otto, 173 Wagner, Richard, 319, 512 Walden, Herwarth, 194 Waldis, Burkhard, 152 Waldorf, Claire, 61 Waldstetter, Ruth, 508 Wallenrodt, Johanna von, 378 Walter, Silja, 509 Walther von der Vogelweide, 320, 356 Wander, Maxie, Guten Morgen, Du Schone, 20, 92, 126, 197, 330, 423, 553-54 Wandertheater, A, 71, 78-79, 230, 345, 357, 359, 465, 554-55 War, 231, 393, 556-57. See Pacifism; World War I; World War II Warbeck, Veit, 547 Ward, Elsa, 61
670 Warren, Robert Penn, 361 Wars of Liberation, 231, 393, 556-57 Waser, Maria, 508, 516 Weber, Mathilde, 524 Weber, Max, 179, 391 Wedekind, Frank, 5, 39, 66, 164, 169, 325, 560 Wegner, Lisa, 140 Weigel, Helene, 117 Weigel, Valentin, 246 Weil, Felix, 179 Weil, Louise, 524 Weimar Republic, 384, 504, 557-58, 573; and abortion, 3, 360; and film, 281; and images of women, 16-17, 360, 366, 420, 507; and laws, 60; and new woman, 366; and novels, 16-17, 175; and theater, 61-62, 175, 285, 507; and women's emancipation, 351, 360 Weimarer Kreis, 211 Weinerliches Lustspiel. See Comedie larmoyante Weininger, Otto, 164, 173, 204, 257 Weirauch, Anna Elisabeth, 452 Weiss, Peter, 45 WeiBenthum, Johanna Franul von, 75, 126, 345-46, 400, 415, 521 Wellek, Rene, 177 Wellmer, Albrecht, 179 Wende, die, 2, 60, 185, 191-92, 213, 273, 423, 531, 558-59, 566 Werfel, Franz, 419 Werner, Ruth, 493 Wesendonck, Mathilde, 99, 100, 466-67, 520-21 West German Literature. See FRGLiterature Westbeld, Hildegard, 171, 539 Westerlind, Marianne, 73 Westhoff-Rilke, Clara, 512 Westphal, Karl, 241, 300 Westphalen, Engel Christine, 100, 237, 274, 521-22 Wette, Adelheid, 142 Wettstein, Hedwig Maria, 281, 533 Wetzel von Bernau, 278 Weyda, Ursula, 385 Weyrather, Irmgard, 20
INDEX
Weyrauch, Wolfgang, 224 Whore, 8, 133, 153, 419-20, 559-61 Whorf, Benjamin, 286 Wickenburg, Wilhelmine von, 522 Widerstandsbewegung. See Resistance Wied, Martina, 30 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 42, 63, 125, 222, 275-76, 346, 415, 567, 571 Wiesel, Pauline, 188, 350, 460 Wild, Dorothea, 141, 548 Wild, Martha, 88, 548 Wild woman, 300-301, 561-62 Wildermuth, Ottilie, 349 Wilhelmine Grafin von Bayern, 79 Wilker, Gertrud, 509 Willemer, Marianne von, 33, 378 Williams, Raymond, 81 Willkomm, Elke, 565 Wimsatt, William K., 361 Wimschneider, Anna, 92, 232 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 69, 363 Winkler-Buber, Paula, 207 Winkworth, Catherine, 249 Winsloe, Christa, 281-82 Wisinger-Florian, Olga, 174 Winters, Christoph, 427 Wise woman, 214, 261, 396, 562-64 Witch, 54, 94, 218, 260-62, 313, 331, 371, 385, 396, 510, 519, 534, 561, 563, 564-65 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 31, 37, 236 Wittig, Monique, 132, 160-61, 283, 476 Wittum, Johanna, 73 Wobeser, Wilhelmine Karoline von, 45, 288, 295, 336 Wohlbruck, Olga, 61 Wohmann, Gabriele, 189, 193, 244, 295, 336, 374, 481 Woillez, Mme, 456 Wolf, Christa, 18-19, 127, 231, 255, 330, 423, 481, 559, 565-66; autobiographical writing by, 35, 49-50, 192, 198; Der geteilte Himmel, 489, 575; essays by, 502; Kassandra/"Voraussetzungen," 2, 13, 120, 237, 313, 392, 484, 518, 534, 542; Kein Ort. Nirgends, Al, 227, 232, 370; Kindheitsmuster, 11, 123, 179, 365, 370-73, 443, 482, 493,
671
INDEX 541^2; Moskauer Novelle, 489; Nachdenken uber Christa T, 45, 54, 98, 197, 307, 372-73, 488, 501, 542; as object of "Christa-Wolf-debate," 19192, 213-14; reception of Romantic authors by, 47-48, 52, 227, 534; as recipient of literary prizes, 418; "Selbstversuch," 16, 206, 387, 477, 534; short prose by, 482; Sommerstuck, 336; Storfall, 112, 198, 518; studies on, 89, 180, 298; and Subjective Authenticity, 350, 501-502 Wolf, Friedrich, 3 Wolf, Hugo, 492 Wolff, Christian, 203 Wolff, Victoria, 524 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 563 Wolfram, Susanne, 20 Woll, Erna, 332 Wollenberger, Vera, 558 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 114, 238 Wolter, Charlotte, 5-6 Woltmann, Karoline von, 295, 414 Wolzogen, Karoline von, 45, 69-70, 99, 116, 276 Woman writer, 33, 295, 566-68 Women in German (U.S.), 163, 209, 56870 Women in German Studies (British), 570 Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages, 570-71 Women's journals, 571-73; contemporary feminist, 24, 155, 190, 501; 18th century, 109-10, 114, 258, 318, 328-30, 495, 507; 19th century, 223, 381, 432, 449, 579; early 20th century, 583 Women's movement, 26, 180, 186, 239, 247, 336, 365, 385, 397, 485, 495, 509, 573-74; archived documents of, 24; to gain entry into professions, 146, 185, 204, 223; for higher education, 93, 146, 185, 203-204, 223, 391, 449; for peace, 576; for reproductive rights, 3, 155, 183, 239, 470, 497; for sexual emancipation, 183, 204, 268, 441; and socialist movement, 575, 582; and students' movement, 190, 499; for suffrage, 93, 131, 185, 391, 449, 504, 582
Women's Publishers, 20-21, 155 Women's Studies, 209, 568-70 Woolf, Virginia, 89, 206, 380 Worishoffer, Sophie, 134 Workers' literature, 124, 224, 255, 267, 306, 448, 488, 504, 574-76, 583; and bourgeois women's movement, 57-58, 184-85; and journalism, 29; and Marxist theory, 306-307; during Naturalism, 352-54 Workforce, and women, 17, 18-19, 576; and sexual politics, 443 Working-class women, 138, 286, 352-53, 381, 423, 451, 488, 574-75 World War I, 81, 130, 233, 297, 384, 557, 576-77 World War II, 130-31, 231, 233, 240-41, 351, 368, 384, 393, 403, 445-46, 57778 Wustenfeld, Emilie, 319 Wuthrich, Kathy, 428 Wy6, Johann David, 456 Wysocki, Gisela von, 190 Xenophobia, 322, 409 Young Germany, 119, 130-31, 185, 212, 223, 254-55, 288, 401, 435, 448, 449, 579-80; individual authors, 26-27, 28586, 318-19, 381-82 Young, Betty, 346, 400 Yurtas, Barbara, 524 Zaunemann, Sidonia Hedwig, 113, 200, 390, 458, 523, 581-82 Zechlin, Ruth, 339 Zeidler, Susanna Elisabeth, 40-41 Zell, Katharina, 385 Zeller, Carl, 377 Zeller, Eva, 403 Zesen, Philip von, 14, 166, 218-19 Zetkin, Clara, 57, 185, 223, 306, 324, 487-88, 572-73, 576, 582-83 Zhdanov, Andrey, 488-89 Ziegler, Christiana Mariana von, 113, 125, 195-96, 200, 357-58, 376, 390, 583-85 Ziegler, Luise von, 84
672 Ziemann, Grete, 73 Zinner, Hedda, 493 Zinzendorf, Dorothea Erdmuthe, 399 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von, 399 Zitz-Halein, Kathinka, 376
INDEX
Zuckerkandl, Bertha, 29, 174 Zuckmayer, Carl, 549 Ziirn, Unica, 14-15, 189-90 Zwaka, Petra, 21 Zweig, Stefan, 12 Zwingli, Ulrich, 507
CONTRIBUTORS Leslie A. Adelson, Cornell University Pamela Allen-Thompson, Toledo, OH Beate Allert, Purdue University, West Lafayette Elizabeth G. Ametsbichler, University of Montana Susan C. Anderson, University of Oregon, Eugene Hiltrud Arens, University of Maryland, College Park Katherine Arens, University of Texas, Austin Wendy Arons, University of California, San Diego Katharina Aulls, Montreal, Canada Leslie W. Batchelder, University of California, Davis Karin Baumgartner, Washington University Sigrid Berka, Barnard College Lisa Bernstein, University of Maryland, College Park Erika Berroth, Lewis and Clark College Brenda Bethman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Ulla Bidian, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Vera Boiter, Ohio State University Angela Borchert, Princeton University Helga G. Braunbeck, North Carolina State University Michael J. Biisges, Catholic University of America
674
CONTRIBUTORS
Helen Cafferty, Bowdoin College Elizabeth Calkin, Queen's University, Kingston Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr, Temple University Belinda Carstens-Wickham, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville Jane Chew, Furman University Jeanette Clausen, Indiana University/Purdue University Susan L. Cocalis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Kristine Conlon, Muscatine, IA Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Pennsylvania State University Anne L. Critchfield, University of Oregon, Eugene Ruth Dawson, University of Hawaii, Honolulu Mariatte C. Denman, University of California, Davis Carol A. DeVore, University of Iowa Ingrid Dinter, University of Washington, Seattle Rhonda Duffaut, University of California, Irvine Friederike Eigler, Georgetown University Jan S. Emerson, University of Oregon, Eugene Friederike B. Emonds, University of Toledo Heidi Esslinger, Rice University Petra S. Fiero, Western Washington University Almut Finck, Universitat Konstanz Kristie A. Foell, Bowling Green State University Barbara Frantz, University of California, Santa Barbara Elke Frederiksen, University of Maryland, College Park Rachel Freudenburg, Harvard University Sandra Frieden, University of Houston Sara Friedrichsmeyer, University of Cincinnati Angelika Fuhrich, University of Iowa Katharina Gerstenberger, University of Cincinnati Vibha Bakshi Gokhale, Maiden, MA Christl Griesshaber-Weninger, Washington University Sabine Hake, University of Pittsburgh Jennifer Ham, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay Katharina von Hammerstein, University of Connecticut, Storrs James M. Harding, Eastern Michigan State University Rebecca Henschel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Edda Dupke Hodnett, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
CONTRIBUTORS Heike Hofmann, University of California, Davis Amy Horning Marschall, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Ursula Horstmann-Nash, University of Maryland, College Park Barbara Hyams, Brandeis University Carmen Janssen, University of Maryland, College Park Shawn C. Jarvis, St. Cloud State University Francine Jobatey, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Sheila Johnson, University of Texas, San Antonio Christine Kallinger, City University of New York Katrin Komm, University of Maryland, College Park Susanne Kord, Georgetown University Barbara Kosta, University of Arizona, Tucson Kirsten A. Krick, University of California, Santa Barbara Alice Kuzniar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, Lafayette College Stefana Lefko, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Ohio State University Nancy Lukens, University of New Hampshire Barbara Mabee, Oakland University Helga Stipa Madland, University of Oklahoma Waltraud Maierhofer, University of Iowa Elizabeth Mittman, Michigan State University Cornelia Niekus Moore, University of Hawaii, Honolulu Leslie Morris, Bard College Magda Mueller, California State University, Chico Beth Muellner, University of Minnesota Kamakshi P. Murti, University of Arizona, Tucson Joyce Marie Mushaben, University of Missouri, St. Louis Douglas Nash, University of Maryland, College Park Kathleen Rose Noe, University of Maryland, College Park Cecilia Novero, University of Chicago Karin Obermeier, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Stefanie Ohnesorg, University of Tennessee, Knoxville James A. Parente, University of Minnesota Sara Paulson, Harvard University Susanne Pellatz, Universitat GieBen Ann Penningroth, Georgetown University
676 Peter C. Pfeiffer, Georgetown University Elizabeth Powers, City University of New York Daniel Purdy, Columbia University Ulrike Rainer, Dartmouth College Lisa C. Roetzel, Eastman School of Music Marita Romann, University of California, San Diego Ferrel Rose, Grinnell College Roger Russi, North Carolina State University Kathy Saranpa, University of Oregon, Eugene Richard E. Schade, University of Cincinnati Christiane Schonfeld, University of Wales, Lampeter Helga Schreckenberger, University of Vermont Dagmar Schulz, Universitat Hamburg Katrin Sieg, Indiana University, Bloomington Sunka Simon, Smith College Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Michigan Roland H. Specht-Jarvis, St. Cloud State University Amy Kepple Strawser, Ohio State University Birgit Tautz, University of Minnesota Arlene A. Teraoka, University of Minnesota Jutta Tragnitz, University of Illinois at Chicago Tamara Wang, Cornell University Astrid Weigert, Georgetown University Gabriele Weinberger, Lenoir-Rhyne College Sarah Westphal, McGill University Linda Kraus Worley, University of Kentucky, Lexington Karin A.Wurst, Michigan State University Susanne Zantop, Dartmouth College Gesa Zinn, University of Minnesota