The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Gunter Eich and Bertolt Brecht (British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature)

The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht

Matthew Philpotts

PETER LANG

The Margins of Dictatorship

Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature Etudes britanniques et irlandaises sur la langue et la littérature allemandes

Edited by H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates Band 34

PETER LANG Oxford

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Bern

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Berlin

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Bruxelles

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Frankfurt/M.

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New York

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Wien

The Margins of Dictatorship Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht Untertitel

Matthew Philpotts

PETER LANG Oxford

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Bern

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Berlin

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Bruxelles

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Frankfurt/M.

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New York

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Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.ddb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA

ISSN 0171-6662 ISBN 3-03910-022-X US-ISBN 0-8204-6291-8

© Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Bern 2003 Hochfeldstrasse 32, Postfach 746, CH-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany

Contents

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... 7 Abbreviations ............................................................................................. 9 Introduction............................................................................................... 11

Part One Chapter 1 ‘Totalitarianism’: The organisation and dynamics of cultural policy ........................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2 ‘Ideology’: Towards a comparative paradigm ...................................... 85 Chapter 3 ‘Resistance’: Configuring literary assent and dissent in the German dictatorships ............................................................................ 133

Part Two Chapter 4 Forms of literary assent and dissent under National Socialism: Günter Eich ......................................................................... 169 Chapter 5 Forms of literary assent and dissent in the GDR: Bertolt Brecht ......................................................................................... 261 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 347 Bibliography ........................................................................................... 355 Index......................................................................................................... 373

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Acknowledgements

This book is a revised version of my PhD thesis which was submitted at the University of Manchester in 2001. Research for the thesis was undertaken with the support of a three-year studentship awarded by the British Academy Humanities Research Board, and archive research in Berlin supported through a short-term research grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Publication has been funded through a publication scholarship awarded by the Conference of University Teachers of German. Those who have helped in the completion of this book are too numerous to mention individually, but I would like to thank in particular the staff at the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin for their willingness to answer my many questions and their kindness in making material available to me, and also Adrian Philpotts, Katie Tonkinson, and Vivienne Wright for their help with illustrations. I also wish to acknowledge the generous and unstinting support, academic and otherwise, provided by colleagues in the Department of German Studies at the University of Manchester, in particular by Professor Stephen Parker, to whose rigorous, engaged, and very human supervision this book largely owes its existence. Above all, I would like to thank Victoria, without whose support this work could not have been completed and to whom this book is dedicated.

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Abbreviations

The following abbreviated forms of reference are used throughout in the body of the text: BBA

Bertolt Brecht Archive, Berlin

BFA

Bertolt Brecht, Werke: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, Klaus-Detlef Müller, 30 vols (Berlin: Aufbau; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988-1998)

GW

Günter Eich, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Karl Karst and Axel Vieregg, 4 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991)

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Introduction

Geschichtswissenschaftliche Vergleiche sind dadurch gekennzeichnet, daß sie zwei oder mehrere historische Phänomene systematisch nach Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschieden untersuchen, um auf dieser Grundlage zu ihrer möglichst zuverlässigen Beschreibung und Erklärung wie zu weiterreichenden Aussagen über geschichtliche Handlungen, Erfahrungen, Prozesse und Strukturen zu gelangen. […] Es geht beim Vergleich um Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede. Vergleichen heißt mithin nicht Gleichsetzen.1

The discovery in 1993 in a former monastery near Prague of a recording of Günter Eich’s 1940 radio play, Rebellion in der Goldstadt, provoked a predictably intense exchange of views amongst Eich scholars and beyond.2 For some, the discovery of this work, long thought lost, offered an unexpected opportunity to absolve Eich of his involvement in the Nazi propaganda machinery. For others, the discovery only served to confirm the full extent of Eich’s overtly proNazi, racist writing in the Third Reich. As the latest rounds in the long-running Eich-Debatte, neither the treatment of this particular work as a source of some fundamental moral truth about Eich’s guilt or innocence, nor the often vitriolic polemics against an essay published in the same year which dealt with Eich’s writing career under National Socialism could be considered entirely surprising.3 Indeed, the fact that much of what opponents found so objection1

2 3

Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, ‘Historischer Vergleich: Methoden, Aufgaben, Probleme. Eine Einleitung’, in Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (eds), Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansätze und Ergebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1996), pp. 9–45 (p. 9), emphasis in the original. For contributions to the debate, see Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-Eich-Debatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 109–54. See Axel Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet: Günter Eichs Realitäten 1933– 1945 (Eggingen: Edition Isele, 1993).

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able in that essay had already been known for over ten years, and even the admission from one of its harshest critics that he had neglected to read the essay concerned, provokes little more than a sense of weary inevitability. More profoundly disturbing are attempts by that same critic to equate those revealing the true extent of Eich’s literary output under National Socialism with those responsible for the atrocities of the Third Reich.4 And yet, such are the entrenched binarisms of debates concerning writing within the Third Reich perpetrator or victim; collaboration or resistance; condemnation or absolution - that it is no longer easy to be shocked even by this kind of fruitless vitriol. Such polarised debates, where equivocation and a measured response have no place, are only too strikingly reminiscent of the immediate post-Wende treatment of a generation of East German writers who, having previously been held up as examples of heroic dissidence, now found themselves condemned as Mitläufer for their continued participation in the public sphere of the GDR.5 Another writer to be the object of such treatment is Bertolt Brecht, the complexities of his relationship to the SED regime, characterised by both complicity and dissidence, all too often being subsumed under polarised and often politicised judgements. In Manfed Jäger’s words: ‘Je nach der politischen Position des Chronisten wird jeweils eine Seite absolut gesetzt.’6 The echoes in the Eich-Debatte of the controversies surrounding GDR writers raise a number of methodological questions, not only about approaches to writing which was officially sanctioned in either the Third Reich or the GDR, but also about the comparability of literary output within these two twentieth-century German dictator4 5 6

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For an overview, see Justus Fetscher, ‘Das Empire bläst zum Angriff Saxophon: Text und Kontext von Günter Eichs Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, Weimarer Beiträge, 45 (1999), 584–97. Most notably perhaps Christa Wolf. See Thomas Anz (ed.), Es geht nicht um Christa Wolf: Der Literaturstreit im vereinten Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1995). Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR: 1945–1990 (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1995), p. 67.

ships. In both respects, the recent social historiography of the Third Reich and the GDR provides a wealth of theoretical approaches which start to move beyond such polarised positions, but which have yet to be applied systematically to the sphere of literary production. In particular, the historiography of the Third Reich over the last thirty years and that of the GDR since 1990 have developed increasingly sophisticated analyses of the power structures of the German dictatorships and the roles of individuals at an everyday level within them. Within these analyses, fixed binary categories have been substantially eroded, so that the focus has shifted away from concepts of monolithic total control and towards the more fragmentary reality of life under the conditions of dictatorship. Nowhere has this tendency been more apparent than in attempts to reconfigure notions of ‘resistance’, where more nuanced typologies of behaviour have superseded the kind of moralising categorisations, both approving and condemnatory, which have been applied to writers publishing within the dictatorships. These approaches to nonconformist behaviour have also provided some of the most fertile ground for comparative approaches to the German dictatorships, and this comparative perspective is one which has itself proved increasingly viable in the last ten years.7 Both in terms of comparisons between the Hitler and Stalin regimes and between the Third Reich and the GDR, the comparative method has generated a number of highly productive analyses in diverse areas.8 7

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See, for instance, Rainer Eckert, ‘Die Vergleichbarkeit des Unvergleichbaren: Die Widerstandsforschung über die NS-Zeit als methodisches Beispiel’, in Ulrike Poppe, Rainer Eckert, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (eds), Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Anpassung: Formen des Widerstands und der Opposition in der DDR (Berlin: Links, 1995), pp. 68–84 and Christoph Kleßmann, ‘Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland: Was kann die künftige DDR-Forschung aus der Geschichtsschreibung zum Nationalsozialismus lernen?’, Deutschland Archiv, 25 (1992), 601–06. See, for instance, Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997); Wolfgang Emmerich und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995); Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien

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This study takes as its starting-point these apparently contradictory tendencies - on the one hand the persistence of unreflected, moralising approaches to writing in the Third Reich and the GDR, on the other the consistent move away from such analyses in the social historiography of the two periods. In particular, it seeks to identify an approach which is better able to cope with writing which, while not unequivocally supportive of the regime, was nonetheless officially sanctioned through its publication, cultural output which occupied the margins of dictatorship, as it were. Such output occupies a profoundly ambiguous position in relation to the regime concerned and, as such, invites the kind of polarised and contradictory interpretations outlined above. Through the approach developed in this study, it is hoped to facilitate a more objective and measured assessment of the relationship between writers and their texts and the regimes of the Third Reich and the GDR, above all in terms of the assent or dissent which was expressed through these texts. To this end, an explicitly comparative method will be employed, understood in the terms outlined by Haupt and Kocka above. This method seeks not to elide differences between writing under National Socialism and the GDR, but rather to locate initial points of contact against which can be set the substantial contrasts which existed between the conditions of literary practice under the two regimes. It is in the first half of the study that this theoretical and methodological framework for analysing literary production within the German dictatorships will be elaborated. This framework will be constructed around three central terms - ‘totalitarianism’, ‘ideology’, and ‘resistance’ - which will act as headings and as broad analytical categories for the first three chapters of the study. As objects of lengthy and involved historiographical debate, these terms are ideally suited to act as crystallisation points for a comparative analysis of the two dictatorships which stretches from the broader socio-political sphere, down to the cultural-political domain, and on to cultural production itself. (Berlin: Akademie, 1993); Ludger Kühnhardt, Gerd Leutenecker, Martin Rupps (eds), Die doppelte Diktaturerfahrung: Drittes Reich und DDR - ein historischpolitikwissenschaftlicher Vergleich (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1996).

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In the second part, the work of Günter Eich under National Socialism and Bertolt Brecht within the GDR will act as case studies in an empirical analysis conducted within the framework elaborated in part one. In chapter one, analysis will centre on one of the most problematic of comparative categories, namely ‘totalitarianism’, under which the regimes of the Third Reich and the GDR have often been pushed into a relatively superficial equivalence. While acknowledging important organisational and aesthetic similarities and highlighting the central point of contact between the two regimes, that is, the ‘total claim’ made on society, the fundamentally divergent structures and dynamics which influenced cultural politics and cultural practice within the two societies will be explored. The notion of ‘totalitarianism’ will neither be accepted in an unreflected manner, nor rejected out of hand. Instead it is hoped to employ the term as a tool to describe and explain both convergent and divergent elements in the organisation and dynamics of cultural policy in the Third Reich and the GDR. In chapter two, this comparative method is reversed, insofar as ‘ideology’ is a heading under which National Socialism and the SED are conventionally pushed apart, or even deemed noncomparable. The aim in this chapter will be to make progress towards a comparative paradigm of ideology, stressing convergent structural elements in the official ideologies on behalf of which the total claim was made. This in turn will facilitate a comparative, or contrastive, analysis highlighting the divergent elements in the two ideologies. This process will help to construct a more differentiated model of ideology capable of configuring the notions of literary assent and dissent which will emerge from the discussion in chapter three surrounding the problematic concept of ‘resistance’. This term too has acted as a significant site for contested interpretations of the Third Reich, and the shift in the historiography of the Third Reich away from Widerstand towards Resistenz, that is away from fundamental acts of resistance and towards more everyday obstructions of the total claim of the regime, opens up the analysis of precisely that literary output whose oppositional function is ambiguous or partial 15

in nature. The common total claim of the Nazi and SED regimes, elaborated in chapter one, also generates comparable patterns of politicised dissenting behaviour in the two dictatorships, so that a comparative method is particularly applicable in this area. Hence, by synthesising existing attempts to classify this range of nonconformist behaviour, by establishing criteria to measure both the effect and intention of an action, and by constructing a mirror scale of assenting behaviour, it will be possible to arrive at a novel and methodologically rewarding means of conceptualising the nature of literary output in the two German dictatorships. Part two of the study moves away from these theoretical and methodological considerations, seeking to test out the framework developed in part one through two detailed case studies. In chapter four, forms of literary assent and dissent under National Socialism are given concrete form in the writing of Günter Eich. The methodology of this study generates a measured and objective consideration of that output, free of the exaggerated judgements characteristic of the controversies outlined above. In this respect, the aim is not to defend Eich’s reputation, nor to expose the extent of his involvement in the cultural policies of the Third Reich. Both have already been attempted at length. Instead, the careful examination of both textual and contextual evidence within the framework of assent and dissent will offer a fresh insight into the nature of Eich’s output in the Third Reich and his relationship to the National Socialist regime. What were the relative levels of assent and dissent expressed by Eich through the texts written in this period? What were the mechanisms by which that assent and dissent were expressed and what was the motivational background behind it? Likewise in chapter five, the same questions will be posed of Bertolt Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR. Even more so than with Eich, making an assessment of the relative weighting of Brecht’s assent and dissent in the GDR requires the careful sifting of a vast array of primary and secondary material. In this sense, the primary value of the analysis lies not in the presentation of unknown sources, but in its capacity to examine existing, well-documented material from a novel perspective. 16

The outcomes of this empirical study are twofold. Firstly, fresh light will be shed on the cultural output of Günter Eich under National Socialism and that of Bertolt Brecht in the GDR in and of themselves. Making an assessment of the assenting and/or dissenting function of a text will involve a judgement as to both the effect of that text and, as far as possible, the intention behind it. In this respect, the analysis will go to the heart of issues relating to both the reception of the texts produced by Eich and Brecht during these two periods and the motivating factors, aesthetic or political, personal or professional, which influenced their production in the first place. Secondly, the specific examples of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht start to be of a more generalised applicability, both specifically in terms of writing within the Third Reich and within the GDR, and comparatively in terms of writing under the conditions of dictatorship. Here again, the comparative method will search for both convergent and divergent strands, considering how far the nature of the assent and dissent expressed by Brecht and Eich was a product of their individual circumstances, how far it was shaped by the particular structures and dynamics of the Third Reich and GDR respectively, and how far by the common experience of dictatorship. Perhaps paradoxically given the overt socio-political approach of the first part of the study, at least as important as identifying parallels in the nature of literary production tied to the political conditions of the twentiethcentury German dictatorships will be uncovering those determining factors in the output of these writers which have validity outside dictatorship. Eich’s writing under National Socialism and Brecht’s within the GDR were clearly not solely products of the conditions of dictatorship within which the two writers found themselves. This cultural output was also a product of individual continuities in professional, aesthetic, and political development which extend beyond the margins of dictatorship which restrict so many existing approaches. While Eich experienced dictatorship as a young, virtually unknown writer, Brecht returned to the Soviet occupied zone as one of the best known and most respected writers of his time. Hence, the common conditions of dictatorship, such as they exist, do not play 17

the sole, or even necessarily the most significant, determining role in shaping the literary production of these two figures. Too many fundamental differences exist in terms of both the individual regimes and individual writers concerned. Where the shared conditions of dictatorship may adopt a far more telling role is in their capacity to shape critical reactions to these texts, both at the time when they were written and thereafter. This study seeks to make a claim for the comparability of the writing experiences of Günter Eich under National Socialism and Bertolt Brecht in the GDR. It does not aim to make a case for equivalence or identity.

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Part One

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Chapter 1 ‘Totalitarianism’: The organisation and dynamics of cultural policy

The lengthy and often highly polemical historiographical debates surrounding the term ‘totalitarianism’, from its original non-comparative application to the Italian Fascist regime to its highly influential postwar application to both fascist and communist regimes, from its revision and loss of popularity in the 1960s and 1970s to its resurgence in the 1990s following the collapse of Soviet bloc, are already well documented.1 The aim here is not to re-analyse and re-evaluate such debates in and of themselves. Rather, the aim is to explore how the evolution of models of political ‘totalitarianism’ over the past half-century might furnish us with tools to apply to the comparative analysis of the cultural politics and cultural production of the Third Reich and the GDR. After all, for all the doubts and caveats which must continue to be applied to what is a highly problematic concept, ‘totalitarianism’ remains the single most significant comparative paradigm for analysing the structures of rule in communist and fascist regimes. Furthermore, the evolution of the concept over the past fifty years can offer important insights into the comparative method and the difficulties involved in maintaining an appropriate balance between similarity and difference. As such, existing research relating to ‘totalitarianism’ provides an obvious point of departure for an attempt to elaborate a comparative framework for analysing literary production in the two twentieth-century German dictatorships. In particular, analysis in this chapter of the mechanisms of cultural 1

See, for instance, the contributions spanning over sixty years in Eckhard Jesse (ed.), Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine Bilanz der internationalen Forschung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999).

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policy in the Third Reich and the GDR will arrive at a more sophisticated model of totalitarianism which retains the central shared feature of the two regimes - their ‘total claim’ on culture while stressing their divergent structures and dynamics. Instead of acting as a blunt tool which privileges similarity over difference, forcing two fundamentally different entities into a single constraining paradigm, it is hoped that this revised notion of ‘totalitarianism’, conceived in terms of ‘charismatic’ and ‘bureaucratic’ varieties, offers a more sensitive and refined framework capable of illuminating points of contrast under a common heading.

Conventional assumptions: ‘totalitarian art’ and the ‘megamachine’ The fullest attempt to consider cultural policy and practice within a ‘totalitarianism’ paradigm is that of Igor Golomstock.2 Although writing in the mid-1980s, Golomstock draws his theoretical basis from the ‘conventional’ totalitarianism models of Hannah Arendt and Carl Joachim Friedrich, both of which first appeared in the 1950s.3 As such, Golomstock presents a model based on an ‘intentionalist’, top-down view of political history which assumes (near) identity between the political systems of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, and by extension the GDR. Above all, this theoretical position is founded on striking similarities noted by Golomstock in the official art of such culturally and ideologically divergent regimes as the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, National Social2 3

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Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China, trans. by Robert Chandler (London: Collins Harvill, 1990). See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1951) and Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniev Brzezinsky, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956).

ist Germany, and the People’s Republic of China. In particular, Golomstock locates significant stylistic and thematic parallels in the works of officially recognised artists, that is those who were awarded state prizes, in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s. For Golomstock, neither simple coincidence nor shared cultural traditions can explain the striking similarities between such officially valued works of art. Nor does any shared personal taste between Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin account for such similarity. Indeed, given the sharply differing attitudes of the three dictators in respect to artistic and cultural matters, Golomstock attributes the origins of their shared artistic policy-orientation to political, rather than personal, factors. To be more specific, Golomstock attributes these similarities to the near identical political systems which the three dictators oversaw. ‘Total realism’, as Golomstock terms the common style, ‘was not the invention of any single one of them; it was a natural product of totalitarianism, as much so as the vast apparatuses of propaganda, organization and terror’.4 Although not explicitly stated, Golomstock’s debt to Friedrich and Brzezinsky’s six basic characteristics of totalitarian rule – an official ideology; a single mass party; terroristic police control; monopoly control over the media; monopoly of arms; central control of the economy – seems clear enough.5 The common process by which ‘totalitarian art’ develops, for instance, is seen to consist of the following steps: 1. The State declares art (and culture as a whole) to be an ideological weapon and a means of struggle for power. 2. The State acquires a monopoly over all manifestations of the country’s artistic life. 3. The State constructs an all-embracing apparatus for the control and direction of art.

4 5

Golomstock, p. xiii. See Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniev Brzezinsky, ‘Die allgemeinen Merkmale der totalitären Diktatur’, in Jesse (ed.), pp. 225–36 (pp. 230–31).

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4. From the multiplicity of artistic movements then in existence, the State selects one movement, always the most conservative, which most nearly answers its needs and declares it to be official and obligatory. 5. Finally, the State declares war to the death against all styles and movements other than the official ones, declaring them to be reactionary and hostile to class, race, people, Party or State, to humanity, to social or artistic progress etc.6

Elsewhere, in describing the decisive stages in the establishment of ‘totalitarian art’ in Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union, Golomstock makes explicit his deployment of Hannah Arendt’s model of political totalitarianism in relation to the cultural sphere: Firstly, the dogma of totalitarian art was given a definitive formulation: in the USSR it went under the name of ‘Socialist Realism’, in Germany under that of ‘the Principles of the Führer’. Secondly, a similar apparatus for the control of art was finally perfected in both countries. Thirdly, war to the death was declared against all artistic styles, forms and movements differing from the official norm. The artistic life of these countries, therefore, was now entirely determined by Hannah Arendt’s three main characteristics of totalitarianism: ideology, organization and terror.

Perhaps most significantly for the present study, Golomstock confirms that the cultural sphere of the GDR can also be subsumed under the paradigm of ‘totalitarian art’: ‘there was not one country in the Soviet bloc where the ideology of totalitarian art was inculcated with such rigid consistency, where its language attained such a purity of form as in the German Democratic Republic.’ Hence, the similarities in the cultural policies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany outlined above must also be deemed to have been present in the GDR. As such, both the Third Reich and GDR are perceived to be monolithic entities fundamentally different from democratic societies. In Golomstock’s words, ‘an ideal totalitarian state, if such a thing existed, would turn into an inorganic monolith – a congealed 6

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Golomstock, p. xiii. Subsequent references, p. 82 and p. xiv.

slab of historical time incorporating millions of frozen human intentions’.7 The primary image which Golomstock employs to describe totalitarianism is that of the ‘megamachine’. The functioning of this megamachine is utterly efficient and unyielding, ‘with no parts that are not strictly functional, with a rigid programme and a universal aim. Anything that hinders its work is ruthlessly eliminated’. In this conventional totalitarianism approach, little or no space is left for divergence from the centrally imposed norm or for evolution within the system. Although Friedrich and Brzezinsky do explicitly allow for the incomplete outcome of the regimes’ attempts at total control and do claim to offer a dynamic model,8 the focus on monocratic structures and mechanisms of control almost inevitably leads to a static model where the emphasis is on completion, rigidity, and totality. Hence, it is noticeable in the passages quoted above that Golomstock writes of the apparatus of control being ‘finally perfected’ and artistic life being ‘entirely determined’ by the principles of totalitarianism.9 In both Germany and the USSR in the 1930s, Golomstock identifies smoothly functioning and harmonious pyramid systems of cultural policy, directed by Hitler and Stalin at their apex and efficiently transmitting dogmatic certainties from above. Similarly in the GDR, it is the ‘rigid consistency’ of cultural dogmas which Golomstock highlights. Organisational and aesthetic similarities For all the acknowledged difficulties associated with such an orthodox, conventional model of totalitarianism, such an approach is not entirely without value. Even Ian Kershaw, a consistent sceptic of this approach, concedes as much:

7 8 9

Golomstock, p. xi. Subsequent reference, p. xiii. Friedrich and Brzezinsky, ‘Die allgemeinen Merkmale’, pp. 226–27. Golomostock, p. 95. Subsequent reference, p. 305.

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The totalitarianism concept allows comparative analysis of a number of techniques and instruments of domination, and this, too, must be seen as legitimate in itself. The underlying assumption that both regimes made total claims upon society, based on a monopolistic set of ideological imperatives, resulting in unprecedented levels of repression and of attempted indoctrination – giving these regimes a dynamic missing from more conventional authoritarian regimes – again seems largely incontestable.10

In a similar vein, Mary Fulbrook acknowledges the value of comparing the Third Reich and the GDR in this way: ‘[The SED] made similar total claims on individuals; they employed comparable organisational means to try and incorporate people into some wider sense of “national community”.’11 Likewise Jürgen Kocka: ‘Beide Herrschaftssysteme zielten auf die Umgestaltung der Gesellschaft und die Erziehung eines neuen Menschentyps.’12 Above all, it is here, ‘als ein Herrschaftssystem zur Realisierung totalistischer Absichten unter modernen politischen und technischen Bedingungen’,13 as a term to denote regimes making comparable total(itarian) claims on society, that the notion of totalitarianism acquires its legitimacy as a comparative concept. This legitimacy as a comparative framework in the broader political sphere can also be applied to the cultural sphere. Hence, just as the Friedrich and Arendt models of totalitarianism have value in pointing to certain shared features of communist and fascist regimes, particularly in terms of their organisational structures, so Golomstock highlights undeniable similarities in the approaches of the regimes to art and culture. In terms of organisational similarities, the 10

11 12 13

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Ian Kershaw, ‘“Working towards the Führer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. 88–106 (pp. 88–89). Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 285. Jürgen Kocka, ‘Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem: Einleitung’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien (Berlin: Akademie, 1993), pp. 9–26 (pp. 22–23). Friedrich and Brzezinsky, ‘Die allgemeinen Mermale’, p. 227.

way in which the Hitler, Stalin, and SED regimes sought to exercise total control over the cultural sphere, making it serve their own ideological requirements through a network of institutional surveillance and exclusion, clearly invites comparison. The foundation and operation of institutions of control in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany echo one another intimately, even down to the timings of some of the key developments. In particular, Golomstock highlights the significance of artists’ unions in the two systems, a parallel also taken up by Dietrich Beyrau in his comparative analysis of Stalinist and National Socialist rule where he draws an explicit comparison between the institutional control of culture by these two regimes.14 Even Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, who operate outside the totalitarianism framework, concede that striking parallels exist: ‘the Soviet Union, during the 1930s, provides a particularly significant example of shared similarities with developments in culture and art under National Socialism, despite the ostensibly unbridgeable ideological gulf between the two regimes.’15 More striking still are the areas of aesthetic similarity which exist between the official fascist and communist art. While in political terms the totalitarian regimes appear to share only external, surface characteristics, mainly to do with organisational elements, in artistic and cultural terms the regimes seem to share much deeper features which extend to the actual content of aesthetic policy. The many examples provided by Golomstock from the visual arts illustrate only too clearly how fascist and communist art seem to exhibit a genuinely shared tendency towards a particular type of aesthetic which we might variously term ‘conservative’, ‘realist’, ‘neo-classicist’, ‘heroicising’, or ‘monumental’. Parallels are to be found in the way both 14 15

See Dietrich Beyrau, ‘Bildungsschichten unter totalitären Bedingungen: Überlegungen zu einem Vergleich zwischen NS-Deutschland und der Sowjetunion unter Stalin’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 34 (1994), 35–54 (pp. 51–54). Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, ‘Aesthetics and National Socialism’, in Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (eds), The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1991), pp. 1–13 (p.7).

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regimes sought to promote art which was accessible to, and representative of, the entire population, rather than only an educated elite. Both regimes condemned the individualism of ‘capitalist’ art, preferring instead to foster a mass, collectivist culture. As Taylor and van der Will acknowledge, the artistic doctrine of Socialist Realism, advanced in the GDR as throughout the Soviet bloc, ‘is to be placed inevitably alongside the technical and conceptual axioms of National Socialist art’.16 Above all, though, it is in the virulent rejection of the Modernist culture of the first thirty years of the twentieth century that the official artistic policies of each regime seem to mirror one another so closely. Where Nazi cultural policy reacted against the artistic decadence of Weimar, its Stalinist equivalent sought to oppose the Soviet avant-gardism of the 1920s. As Beyrau points out, ‘in beiden Fällen […] war die Stoßrichtung die gleiche: In der Kultur galt alles als verwerflich, was der Moderne seit der Jahrhundertwende zugerechnet wurde und was den Massen oder dem Volk angeblich unverständlich sei’.17 In both cases, purges of Modernist art took place, a policy-orientation which seems to have been taken up again in the Formalism Campaign in the GDR almost twenty years later. Indeed, as Golomstock indicates, one of the most striking features of SED cultural policy was the way in which it sought out many of the same individuals for exclusion, such as Ernst Barlach or Käthe Kollwitz, as Nazi cultural policy had before it.18 Inefficiencies in the megamachine And yet, for all these undoubted similarities, such a model simply does not match the wide-ranging consensus which has been established in the social history of the Third Reich over the last thirty years. Here, the shift in focus to the everyday reality of life in the Third Reich and structures of rule at a lived level has exposed the 16 17 18

28

Taylor and van der Will, ‘Aesthetics and National Socialism’, p. 7. Beyrau, p. 52. Golomstock, p. 302.

shortfalls and inefficiencies in the totalitarian system with a parallel shift in focus from monocratic to polycratic mechanisms. The ‘governmental chaos’ of the Third Reich has long been acknowledged,19 but even if the SED regime resists the application of such a term, the historicisation of the GDR in the last ten years has brought about a comparable change of approach in accounts of its history, with a similar change in emphasis to the patterns of popular complicity and dissent which both aided and hindered its efficient functioning. As Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen suggest, historians are turning increasingly away from examining the SED’s exercise of total control and towards an exploration of the limitations of dictatorial rule: Anders als bei den politikwissenschaftlichen Forschungen zur Entwicklung der DDR, die bis 1989 erschienen sind und deren Verfasser keinen Zugang zu ungedruckten Quellen hatten, wurden in den letzten Jahren durch Archivquellen fundierte historische Studien möglich. Und in der Regel sieht eine Gesellschaft weniger ‘durchherrscht’ und ein politisches System weniger effizient aus, wenn man Zugang zu seinen internen Akten hat, deren Hauptgegenstand oft die Probleme der Herrschaftsorganisation sind. Die Widersprüche und Ambivalenzen des Alltags und der tagtäglichen Praxis von Herrschaft treten hierdurch scharf vor Augen. Fast unvermeidlich ergibt dies einen schärferen Fokus auf die Grenzen der Diktatur.20

It is in this context that Jürgen Kocka is able to assert of the Third Reich and the GDR: ‘in beiden Systemen wurde der Anspruch auf Steuerung der Gesellschaft nur begrenzt eingelöst, nicht zuletzt aufgrund eingebauter Ineffizienzen, Rivalitäten und Widersprüche’.21 Or in the words of Mary Fulbrook: ‘in general, the attempt at total 19 20

21

Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, third edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), p. 68. Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen, ‘Einleitung: Die Grenzen der Diktatur’, in Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen (eds), Die Grenzen der Diktatur: Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), pp. 7–23 (p. 17). Kocka, ‘Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem’, p. 23.

29

influence on people, and the total transformation of attitudes, was not a realizable goal in either the Third Reich or the GDR.’22 To take one very specific example from the cultural sphere, architectural construction in the Third Reich amply demonstrates the inadequacies of Golomstock’s conventional model of totalitarian culture and illustrates the way in which cultural continuities extend across the boundaries of totalitarian systems. Barbara Miller Lane, for instance, refutes any suggestion that actual building under Nazism differed substantially from the rest of Western Europe or the US. Greater ideological claims may have been made on behalf of architecture, but the ‘extraordinary variety of styles’ which were employed reflected building elsewhere, with a mixture of monumental, modified neo-classicism; folk, rustic styles; and functional, industrial designs.23 Nazi architecture, it seems, was no more monolithicly conservative or monumental than was Weimar architecture monolithicly Modernist. This is a point made by Elaine Hochman: For whatever reasons then - Hitler’s basic disregard of architecture outside buildings of state; the disparity of impulses within Nazism; or the inability of any governing power, no matter how authoritarian to totally control every aspect of building activity - the architectural production of the Third Reich exhibited much of the stylistic diversity of the Weimar period, despite the massive attempts of Nazi propaganda to make it seem otherwise. Much as the worldwide attention paid to the German modernists made their actual production within the overall building picture of the Weimar period appear larger than it was, so too did Nazi propaganda distort the actual building output of the Third Reich.24

In the diversity of Nazi architecture, and in this shortfall between propaganda and practice, we find an expression of the inefficiencies 22 23 24

30

Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 284. Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918–1945 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 185. Elaine S. Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York: Fromm, 1990), pp. 236–37.

of the megamachine and its inability to exert total control. As Lane asserts: ‘the inconclusiveness of the measures taken to purge the architectural profession and control its output was in part the product of rivalries among the Nazi leadership’; ‘the Nazi regime [did not] go very far along the road toward establishing “totalitarian” control of architectural style [...]. Thus style in Germany remained to a large extent a product of the taste of those who paid for it, as in the rest of western Europe.’25 Similarity and difference The corollary of conventional assumptions concerning the innate differences between totalitarian and democratic societies is the elision of distinctions between totalitarian states. Not only does Golomstock begin from Friedrich and Brzezinsky’s basic assumption, that totalitarian regimes are ‘im Sinne von Organisation und Verfahrensweise – das heißt, im Sinne von Struktur, Institutionen und Herrschaftsprozessen – im Grunde gleichartig’,26 he goes as far as to almost entirely dismiss the significance of ideological differences between regimes: In a totalitarian system art performs the function of transforming the raw material of dry ideology into the fuel of images and myths intended for general consumption. The precise nature of the raw material – whether it is the cult of the Führer or of the leader, dogmas of race or of class, laws of nature or of history – is of no more importance than whether one uses beet or wheat when distilling alcohol: the raw material lends a specific flavour to a final product which is in essence identical. And it is not only the final product that is identical; the means of preparation (totalitarian aesthetics) and the technology of production (totalitarian organization) turn out to be equally similar.27

25 26 27

Lane, p. 170 and p. 216. Friedrich and Brzezinsky, ‘Die allgemeinen Merkmale’, p. 228, emphasis in the original. Golomstock, p. xii. Subsequent reference, p. xiv.

31

Indeed, given that the mechanisms of totalitarian art are seen to operate ‘with the regularity of a physical law’, Golomstock leaves no room in his model for the substantial differences which exist between particular regimes. Even restricting the analysis to the more readily comparable examples of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, significant and deep-seated differences in the structures and methods of rule exist. Both regimes were governed by a system of one-party rule overseen by a single dictator, but the organisation and function of the party, the approach and role of the dictator, and, above all, the ideology of both differed starkly. It is primarily for these reasons that Kershaw judges a comparison based on ‘totalitarianism’ as ‘doomed from the outset to be superficial and unsatisfactory’.28 For Kershaw, as a scholar of the Third Reich and a biographer of Hitler, totalitarianism fails to acknowledge sufficiently the uniqueness of the Third Reich, so that his fundamental assumption is one of difference between the Hitler dictatorship and that of Stalin: ‘my starting point [...] is the presumption that despite superficial similarities in forms of domination the two regimes were in essence more unlike than like each other.’29 In particular, Kershaw stresses that ‘the character of [...] Stalin’s and Hitler’s leadership positions within their respective regimes was fundamentally different’. Stalin was the product of a bureaucratic system and continued to employ this system in a highly interventionist manner. That system, together with its ideology, both pre-dated Stalin and proved itself capable of stabilisation and selfreproduction after his death. Hitler, by contrast, remained aloof from state bureaucracy, his power transmitted not through day-to-day interventions but through his personal charismatic authority. He embodied both the ideology and governmental ‘system’ of Nazism in person: ‘The Nazi movement, to put the point bluntly, was a classic “charismatic” leadership movement; the Soviet Communist Party 28 29

32

Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 32. Kershaw, ‘Working towards the Führer’, p. 89, emphasis in the original. Subsequent reference, p. 97.

was not.’30 Such differences, allied to more obvious differences in ideology, aims, economic structures, and, not least, chronologies, become all the more acute when attempts are made to draw postStalinist regimes, such as the GDR, into the analysis. The ability of the GDR to survive for forty years compared to the twelve years of Nazi rule, the relative absence of a leadership cult, and the relatively lower level of terror are all factors which cause Kershaw ‘to exclude the application of the comparative totalitarianism concept to postStalinist communist systems, where it rapidly approaches futility if not outright absurdity’.31 Perhaps not surprisingly in this light, those same scholars who have highlighted similarities between cultural policies in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany also point to a number of significant differences. Of particular significance is Beyrau’s observation ‘daß es im Nationalsozialismus eine so markante Kunstdoktrin wie in der UdSSR nicht gegeben hat. Denn das Mythische, das Völkische und Heldische, der Bezug auf Heimat, Blut und Boden boten noch weniger Orientierung als der Sozialistische Realismus’.32 A central plank of Golomstock’s model is an equation between the artistic doctrines of Socialist Realism and what he refers to as ‘the Principles of the Führer’, the two of which are held up as equally coherent and consistent aesthetic programmes. And yet, while the former rested on relatively clearly defined, institutionally prescribed norms, the latter is reconstructed ‘somehow or other’ from Hitler’s speeches between 1933 and 1937.33 Indeed, Brandon Taylor openly questions the existence of any coherent Nazi aesthetic: ‘strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a National Socialist aesthetic. Too many phases 30

31 32 33

Kershaw, ‘Working towards the Führer’, p. 97. Kershaw’s notion of ‘charismatic authority’ draws explicitly on Max Weber’s typology of charismatic rule which is seen to be inherently revolutionary and unstable. See Ian Kershaw, Hitler (London: Longman, 1991), p. 10 and Max Weber, Grundriß der Sozialökonomik: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1947), pp. 140–42. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 39. Beyrau, p. 52. Golomstock, p. 82.

33

were passed through on the tortuous road to 1937.’34 Even as late as 1937, when Golomstock considers ‘totalitarian art’ to be fixed in the Third Reich, the state is seen by Taylor to be ‘still lacking a clear conception of the style of National Socialist art’. Any contrast on this issue between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin only becomes more marked when the cultural policies of the GDR are taken into account. Factional disputes notwithstanding, the SED enjoyed a considerable advantage over the Nazi regime, being able to call upon the pre-established norms of the Soviet cultural orthodoxy. In contrast to the rather amorphous norms of Nazi cultural policy, Lukács’s literary theories and Stanislavsky’s dramatic method constituted a codified aesthetic programme with a readily identifiable textual basis. The greater coherence of GDR aesthetic norms may also rest on what was a relatively more smoothly functioning apparatus of control, a function of the substantial differences in structures of rule which undermine conventional totalitarianism assumptions. To return to the example of architecture, Golomstock concedes that not all construction proceeded according to the tenets of ‘totalitarian art’ and that Modernist styles did indeed flourish in certain contexts, in particular where a distinction was drawn between ‘utilitarian’ and ‘ideological’ construction.35 Golomstock further concedes that ‘art under totalitarian regimes’ is a very different theme from ‘totalitarian art’ and that ‘not all art created in Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany can be defined in this way’. However, such a position is entirely inconsistent with the theoretical model of ‘totalitarian art’ maintained so rigidly elsewhere in his text. In a system where ‘war to the death’ is declared ‘against all styles and movements other than the official ones’, where all non-official culture is ‘ruthlessly eliminated’, it is not at all clear how the kind of exceptions noticeable in the sphere of architecture could be allowed to prosper. How is a distinction possible, for instance, between ‘utilitarian’ and ‘ideological’ architecture in a society where all art and 34 35

34

Brandon Taylor, ‘Post-Modernism in the Third Reich’, in Taylor and van der Will (eds), pp. 128–43 (p. 128). Subsequent reference, p. 133. Golomstock, pp. 283–85. Subsequent references, p. xv and p. xiii.

culture is by definition ideologically determined? It is this kind of evidence which begins to suggest that the very rigid boundaries of conventional totalitarianism need to be broken down. The starkly drawn distinctions between fascism and Modernism, between ‘totalitarian art’ and ‘non-totalitarian art’, ‘totalitarian’ societies and ‘nontotalitarian’ societies, are clearly in need of some revision. Nonetheless Golomstock’s model provides, if nothing else, a striking example of the force of what is the defining characteristic of ‘totalitarian’ regimes, namely the total claim made on society on behalf of their ideology. It is the politicising power of this claim which tends to obscure differences between regimes and which tends to render any similarities the product of the political system and nothing else. As we shall see, exposing the nature of this claim and non-political elements hidden by it will be a consistent theme of this book.

Totalitarianism in the Third Reich: charismatic, dynamic, and self-destructive Although the shortcomings of the totalitarianism paradigm employed by Golomstock may seem to point to an outright rejection of the totalitarianism concept, Ian Kershaw accepts that the renaissance of the term in the 1990s may force us to work with it and revise it rather than reject it altogether. It is this observation which provides the impetus for his 1994 article ‘Totalitarianism Revisited’, where the conventional totalitarianism paradigm is reconfigured so as to take account of the more recent traditions of Third Reich social historiography.36 The central presumption here is not one of identity between totalitarian regimes, but one of difference.

36

Ian Kershaw, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited: Nazism and Stalinism in Comparative Perspective’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 23–40.

35

Revised totalitarianism The elaboration of this revised totalitarianism paradigm rests on two principal theoretical and methodological steps. Firstly, Kershaw restricts the concept of totalitarianism so that it no longer applies to a system or state as a whole. Instead, totalitarianism is seen as ‘a dynamic, but transitional, phase in certain modern authoritarian systems of rule. “Totalitarianism” can give way either to complete collapse, or to systematization. But it is not in itself a “system”’.37 Indeed, revised totalitarianism is characterised primarily by its ‘systemlessness’. Secondly, in this restricted usage, totalitarianism can be applied only to Nazism and ‘Stalinism’, where the latter term is itself restricted to the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule and not to post-Stalin ‘Stalinist’ regimes, such as the GDR. As such, Kershaw identifies two main characteristics of the totalitarian phase of rule: (i) ‘the “total claim” of each regime on its subjects’; (ii) ‘the deformation of existing structures of rule’. What regimes share in their totalitarian phase is an attempt to achieve total ideological penetration throughout society, lending the regime a revolutionary dynamic at the expense of existing structures of ‘rational’ political rule. However, in contrast to conventional totalitarianism models it is only the claim which is total, not the outcome. At the same time, even given these common features, the differences in leadership function outlined above have significant consequences for the extent to which existing structures of rule were deformed under Nazism and Stalinism. While Stalin’s leadership cult was not entirely incompatible with existing bureaucratic structures, Hitler’s leadership role produced ‘an irreconcilable conflict between charismatic and bureaucratic authority’. As bureaucracy was increasingly ‘corroded and distorted’ in favour of ‘quasi-feudal bonds of personal loyalty’, and in the absence of direct everyday intervention from Hitler, the driving force of his ‘charismatic authority’ generated a ‘cumulative radicalisation’ of policy with 37

36

Kershaw, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited’, p. 32. Subsequent references in this paragraph, pp. 37–40.

ever more limitless aims. It is this charismatic policy dynamic which Kershaw views as the unique feature of National Socialism. Key features of rule: incomplete outcomes, polycractic structures, and cumulative radicalisation Research into the cultural sphere over the past twenty-five years seems to have gradually come to match the consensus within the social and political historiography of the Third Reich, that structures of rule were chaotic and polycratic, that control was not monolithic and total. One of the first scholars to take on board the methodological approach of the Bavaria Project and to apply an Alltagsgeschichte approach to the cultural sphere, in the process undermining a conventional totalitarian view of Nazi culture, was Hans Dieter Schäfer. Schäfer exposes, for instance, ‘vier charakteristische Elemente der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft [...], die – neben der pluralistischen Machtauffächerung – für die uneinheitliche Lebenswirklichkeit verantwortlich zu machen sind: 1. Personalisierte Zensur; 2. Anpassungsfähigkeit an die privatwirtschaftliche Eigendynamik; 3. Sicherung der Macht durch Duldung einer politikfreien Sphäre; 4. Begrenztheit der bürokratischen Kontrolle bei Interessen von Mehrheitsgruppen’.38 In particular, Schäfer is able to cite a wide array of examples which lend support to the existence in the cultural sphere of significant continuities across the historical and geographical boundaries of the Third Reich. In this sense, Schäfer’s approach anticipates that of Bessel and Jessen who see such continuities as one of the primary limitations on the exercise of dictatorial rule.39 In exposing such continuities, Schäfer further refutes the assumptions of Golomstock’s conventional model, that a 38

39

Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945’, in Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), pp. 114–62 (p. 133). Bessel and Jessen, p. 9.

37

total Gleichschaltung was achieved within the Third Reich and that any cultural phenomena deviating from the official norm were completely eradicated. Just how significant Schäfer’s work is in this field is underlined by Wolfram Wessels in the introduction to his study of radio drama in the Third Reich, published in 1985.40 Surveying the critical writing on literature under Nazism, Wessels sees Schäfer as the honourable exception to a tradition which has failed to challenge ‘die Vorstellung eines monolothischen NS-Kultursystems’ and which has only too infrequently tackled the long-established historiographical debate between ‘intentionalist’ and ‘structuralist’ explanations of the Nazi regime. Schäfer is the first scholar to start to reveal the true extent of ‘non-fascist’ cultural production, and in this respect he provides an opportunity to place research into culture in the Third Reich on a new footing. Schäfer has begun the process of eroding the myth of a monolithic Nazi culture, and this process has now been taken up by an ever increasing number of scholars. In his introduction to a collection of essays on National Socialist cultural policy, for instance, Glenn Cuomo recognises Schäfer’s ‘pioneering study’ which has ‘demonstrated that the everyday reality of cultural life under Hitler not only was quite diverse and remarkably “liberal” in some areas, but also often at odds with the values promoted by National Socialist ideology’.41 In the same volume, Erhard Bahr confirms that the cultural sphere conforms to the broader model of overlapping governmental structures: ‘Nazi rule was a polycratic system and its cultural policies were no exception. On the contrary, the interagency rivalry was perhaps more evident here than in any other area.’42 Similarly, Jonathan Petropoulos draws explicitly on Martin Broszat’s work in order to apply the notion of polycracy to the cultural40 41 42

38

Wolfram Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich: Zur Institutionen-, Theorie- und Literaturgeschichte (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985), p. 12. Glenn R. Cuomo, ‘Introduction’, in Glenn R. Cuomo (ed.), National Socialist Cultural Policy (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 1–4 (pp. 1–2). Erhard Bahr, ‘Nazi Cultural Politics: Intentionalism vs. Functionalism’, in Cuomo (ed.), pp. 5–22 (p. 13).

political sphere to describe ‘the web of multiple and intertwined offices that characterized the governmental structure’.43 In this context, it is striking that in his examination of polycratic Nazi power structures, the political historian Peter Hüttenberger cites Reinhard Bollmus’s account of the power struggle between Goebbels and Rosenberg over cultural policy as an archetypal instance of that same polycracy.44 Norbert Frei is another historian of the Third Reich who has drawn on Schäfer’s work to highlight ‘die Grenzen der Reglementierung des Kulturbetriebs’, a product of ‘Kalkül, Notwendigkeit und Unabänderlichem zugleich’.45 We have already noted the shortfall between Nazi propaganda and practice in the realm of architecture and this is one of the areas highlighted by Frei: ‘doch bei der Betrachtung des im Dritten Reich tatsächlich Gebauten fällt es schwer, einen spezifischen NS-Stil auszumachen.’ But it is perhaps in the sphere of music where the reality of life in the Third Reich most clearly exposes the myth of a monolithic regime: ‘[es] bestand zwischen dem offiziell erwünschten und dem privat möglichen Musikgenuß ein erheblicher Unterschied. Im Laufe einiger Jahre durchzog diese Spaltung das gesamte Kulturleben.’ In particular, it is the fate of jazz and swing music in the Third Reich which plays an exemplary role in this re-appraisal of Nazi culture, and in this respect the work of Michael Kater has been fundamental, both in undermining conventional assumptions about the incompatibility of Nazism and jazz and in demonstrating the wider significance of jazz for an analysis of the power structures of the Third Reich. Consider, for instance, the following: 43 44

45

Jonathan Petropoulos, ‘A Guide through the Visual Arts Administration’, in Cuomo (ed.), pp. 121–53 (p. 140). Peter Hüttenberger, ‘Nationalsozialistische Polykratie’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2 (1976), 417–42 (p. 417, note 1). See Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner: Zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970). Norbert Frei, Der Führerstaat: Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft 1933–1945 (Munich: dtv, 1987), p. 109. Subsequent references, pp. 116–17 and p. 114.

39

The Nazis had early on decreed that ‘Nigger-Jew jazz’ and National Socialist dogma were unalterable opposites – this ruling was carved in stone. Yet, despite categorical condemnation of the music, not only was there, from 1933 to 1945, no clearly enunciated and therefore nationally binding prohibition of jazz, but there existed, throughout, a confusing mix of tolerance, acquiescence, indictment, and policy reversal that today allows for fundamental doubts about the consistency of the Nazi regime both in its theory and practice.46

Despite the apparent mutual exclusivity of Nazi ideology and jazz, this form of music clearly survived and, in places, thrived. This ably demonstrates the shortfall between propaganda-influenced perceptions of the Third Reich and the everyday reality and, in Kater’s words, provides a looking glass ‘to focus on the polycratic and often contradictory structures of the Third Reich’. In terms of literary production, an approach which questions the conventional totalitarianism thesis seems to hold equal validity. Roger Griffin, for example, writes as follows: The fate of literature and poetry under the Third Reich can be seen as a microcosm of the regime as a whole: the facts in no way bear out the stereotype of a coherent policy being adopted towards aesthetic issues or of all writers being coerced into serving as docile propagandists for Nazi values.47

This suggestion is taken up in the work of Martin Travers who maintains that the conventional ‘assumption – that the state was able to exert total control over individual writers – hinders rather than promotes a recognition of the true relationship between literary production and state control in Nazi Germany’.48 More specifically, he identifies three dimensions of literary activity in the Third Reich 46 47 48

40

Michael Kater, ‘Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich’, American Historical Review, 94 (1989), 11–43 (p. 43). Subsequent reference, also p. 43. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 107–08. Martin Travers, ‘Politics and Canonicity: Constructing Literature in the Third Reich’, in J. Milfull (ed.), The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), pp. 253–72 (pp. 256–57). Subsequent references, p. 257.

obscured by the assumptions of the conventional totalitarianism model: (i) ‘contradictions, tensions, dysfunctions within the apparatus of Nazi cultural control’; (ii) ‘lapses in the control and surveillance exercised over individual writers and certain literary institutions and journals’; (iii) ‘overlaps and continuities that exist between the literature produced under the aegis of the Third Reich and literature produced in literary communities generally typified as “liberal” or “democratic”’. Empirical evidence to confirm Travers’s observations is not difficult to locate. The latter two points lie at the heart of Schäfer’s research outlined above, while even as early as 1960, Dietrich Strothmann was able to expose the internal power-struggles and overlapping spheres of authority within the National Socialist literary apparatus.49 Twenty years later, Volker Dahm’s study of Jewish publishers in the Third Reich exposed what he termed ‘die autoritäre Anarchie’ of literary policy.50 Dahm was able to demonstrate, in Cuomo’s words, ‘daß das NS System für Schrifttumsüberwachung keine einheitlichen Richtlinien hatte und unter administrativer Inkompetenz sowie interner Rivalität zwischen Ämtern mit sich überlagernden Kompetenzen litt’.51 In a similar vein, Jörg Thunecke draws on research which indicates ‘wie durchlässig in letzter Instanz das angeblich perfekt organisierte System des NS-Schrifttumswesens in der Praxis doch war’, pragmatic and financial considerations often taking precedence over ideological concerns.52 Most recently of all, 49 50 51

52

Dietrich Strothmann, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik: Ein Beitrag zur Publizistik im Dritten Reich (Bonn: Bouvier, 1960), pp. 56–61. Volker Dahm, Das jüdische Buch im Dritten Reich, 2 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1979–1982), I: Die Ausschaltung der jüdischen Autoren, Verleger und Buchhändler (1979), p. 6. Glenn R. Cuomo, ‘Hanns Johst und die Reichsschrifttumskammer: Ihr Einfluß auf die Situation des Schriftstellers im Dritten Reich’, in Jörg Thunecke (ed.), Leid der Worte: Panorama des literarischen Nationalsozialismus (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), pp. 108–32 (p. 108). Jörg Thunecke, ‘NS-Schrifttumspolitik: Am Beispiel der vertraulichen Mitteilungen der Fachschaft Verlag (1933–1945)’, in Thunecke (ed.), pp. 133–52 (p. 143).

41

Jan-Pieter Barbian has undertaken a detailed examination of literary policy in the Third Reich using a wide range of archival sources.53 While the impressive weight of detail often tends to somewhat obscure broader interpretative issues concerning the structures of rule in the Third Reich, Barbian makes it clear that a multiplicity of agencies, resting on rival, personalised power bases, characterised the organisation of the literary sphere. Elsewhere, Barbian has explicitly characterised cultural policy in the Third Reich as ‘rule by bureaucracies in competition with one another’.54 Highlighting friction generated by inter-agency rivalries, Barbian asserts that ‘such friction is especially clear concerning the agencies responsible for state literary policy’. There can be little doubt then that outcomes in National Socialist cultural policy fell short of the total claim of the regime, as research across a broad spectrum of cultural phenomena has increasingly revealed the discrepancy between propaganda and practice. Research into the cultural sphere has also confirmed that it was characterised by polycratic, chaotic even, structures of rule. As such, the evidence presented above seems to argue strongly in favour of the kind of governmental model which underlies Kershaw’s revised totalitarianism paradigm where existing structures of rule are deformed and distorted. Furthermore, the contrast between the cultural-political climate of 1933–1934 - when a liberal wing of the NS-Studentenbund, supported by Joseph Goebbels, sought to promote German Expressionism as the basis for a new Nazi art and when the Expressionist poet Gottfried Benn enthusiastically backed the new regime - and that of 1937–1938 - when Modernist art was vilified at the Entartete Kunst exhibition and Benn was banned as a ‘pornographer’ - suggests the presence in cultural politics of a radicalising dynamic to match that present elsewhere in the regime. As Erhard Bahr indicates, ‘a process of “cumulative radicalization”, as it has 53 54

42

Jan-Pieter Barbian, Literaturpolitik im ‘Dritten Reich’: Institutionen, Kompetenzen, Betätigungsfelder (Munich: dtv, 1995). Jan-Pieter Barbian, ‘Literary Policy in the Third Reich’, trans. by Glenn R. Cuomo, in Cuomo (ed.), pp. 155–96 (p. 168). Subsequent reference, p. 168.

been called by Hanns Mommsen, also can be observed in the realm of cultural politics’.55 The presence of this radicalising dynamic, together with polycratic governmental structures, suggests strongly that Kershaw’s revised, charismatic model of totalitarianism may also be applied to Nazi cultural policy. Explaining cultural policy: intentionalism or structuralism? And yet, even the raft of evidence outlined in this section, pointing to the significant inefficiencies and limitations of direct rule from above, does not automatically rule out a more conventional, intentionalist interpretation of Nazi cultural policy. In an echo of historiographical debates concerning the Nazi regime as a whole, disagreement remains as to how to interpret this cultural-political ‘chaos’ and Hitler’s role within it.56 For some, polycracy constitutes not a symptom of the deformation of existing structures of rule, but is rather part of a conscious divide-and-rule strategy employed by Hitler. Similarly, the breakdown of the monolithic image of National Socialist cultural policy is explained not by fundamental inefficiencies and failures in the mechanisms of control. Rather, any relatively ‘open’, contested areas of cultural policy are perceived either as temporary and illusory, generated during an initial implementation phase, or as deliberate and non-political spaces, part of a calculated policy on Hitler’s part to secure conformity.57 As Bracher comments in relation to the multiplicity of agencies in foreign policy: ‘Gewiß lag bei Hitler die absolute, unkontrollierbare Entscheidungsgewalt. Alle inneren Konflikte und Rivalitäten stärkten letztlich nur diese Stellung

55 56 57

Bahr, p. 14. For a summary and evaluation of the broader debates, see Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, pp. 59–79. See, for instance, Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Verführung und Gewalt: Deutschland 1933–1945 (Berlin: Siedler, 1986), p. 511.

43

des “Führers”.’58 In terms of cultural policy, any such intentionalist interpretation rests on three unresolved issues: firstly, the extent to which strands of Modernism, specifically German Expressionism, could ever have functioned within the mature, official Nazi aesthetic; secondly, the duration of the initial, contested phase of cultural policy and the approximate date at which policy radicalised into a virulent anti-Modernism from which there was no turning back; and finally, and most importantly, the mechanism by which this policy radicalised and Hitler’s role within it. Bahr’s essay, ‘Nazi Cultural Politics: Intentionalism vs Functionalism’ provides the clearest and most complete statement of the intentionalist view of Nazi cultural policy.59 As the title suggests, the intentionalist view is not proposed in isolation, but rather explicitly within the historiographical framework of ‘intentionalism’ and ‘functionalism’ (that is, ‘structuralism’). In terms of the specifics of the argument, let us take in turn each of the issues outlined above. Firstly, in Bahr’s own words, ‘modernist art, such as expressionism, could never have functioned within Hitler’s cultural policies as some revolutionary factions within the Nazi Party had suggested in 1933/34’. For Bahr, this unequivocal position rests on Hitler’s own consistent and equally unequivocal rejection of Modernist aesthetics, an antipathy as strong and unerring as his anti-Semitism. It is the consistency of this anti-Modernist stance - from the first manifesto of the German Workers’ Party of 1920 to Mein Kampf in 1924, from the Frick administration in Thuringia in 1930 to the rapid implementation of restrictive and exclusionary polices after 1933 - which for Bahr rules out the possibility of Modernism ever operating within official Nazi culture. Secondly, Bahr concedes an initial period of relative ambiguity in relation to Modernist culture, but ‘by September 1934 Hitler defined and set the course of the cultural policies for the years to come’. As a result, ‘in 1935, a phase of generally increasing radicalization set in’, while ‘by August 1937, the definitive Nazi 58 59

44

Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer, 1969), p. 348. For material in this paragraph, see Bahr, pp. 14–17.

cultural politics were in place and enforced in all areas’. The initial ‘openness’ of cultural policy in 1933–1934 is then illusory, gradually and inevitably closed down through 1935–1937. Finally, while conceding the polycracy, chaos even, of governmental structures within the cultural sphere, Bahr sees evidence of Hitler’s firm control at every point. So, for instance: ‘the balance of power between Goebbels and Rosenberg was controlled by Hitler’s firm leadership in matters of cultural politics between 1933 and 1939.’ Hitler’s own personal interest in the arts ensured a high degree of day-to-day intervention, so that ‘nothing was done without Hitler’s approval. The appropriate legislation was issued in the name of the Führer and chancellor of the Reich. [...] Hitler’s signature can be found on the major documents relating to the cultural policies’. Just as a direct path can be traced from the death camps back to Hitler’s earliest speeches condemning the Jews, so the purges of Modernist art symbolised by Entartete Kunst can be traced back to Hitler’s earliest statements on cultural policy. The mechanism of radicalisation is then an intentionalist one: ‘the “cumulative radicalization” of the cultural politics was mainly due to Hitler’s intervention and not the result of the interaction of various agencies.’ There is an obvious intuitive appeal in an analysis of cultural policy which ties Hitler’s world-view so firmly to the implementation of policy. Substantial evidence exists of Hitler’s firm and longstanding rejection of the Modernist cultural direction of the first three decades of the twentieth century. In his recent biography of Hitler, for example, Ian Kershaw describes Hitler’s reactions to the experimental Modernism of Munich before World War I as follows: ‘his cultural taste remained locked in the nineteenth century, closed to modern art forms, hostile to the works of all those for whom Munich before the First World war is renowned.’60 Elaine Hochman, meanwhile, attributes the eventual anti-Modernist direction of Nazi cultural policy almost entirely to Hitler’s own personal tastes and 60

Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 1998–2000), I: Hubris: 1889– 1936 (1998), p. 82.

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interventions.61 As far as the actual workings of policy and Hitler’s day-to-day role are concerned, Jonathan Petropoulos lends weight to an intentionalist view of the Rosenberg/Goebbels rivalry, where Hitler is seen to intervene against the Modernist faction around Goebbels: ‘the appointment [of Rosenberg] appeared to be an effort to counterbalance the growing power of Goebbels: Hitler’s divideand-rule philosophy could not brook the monopoly then held by the propaganda minister in the cultural sphere. Hitler’s views on modern art also ran contrary to those of Goebbels.’62 As regards literary policy, Jan-Pieter Barbian also notes a highly interventionist style on Hitler’s part: ‘nicht nur beim institutionellen Aufbau und der Kompetenzverteilung auf literaturpolitischem Gebiet, sondern auch bei einer Reihe von Einzelentscheidungen ist eine unmittelbare Beteiligung Hitlers nachweisbar.’63 It seems then that cultural policy may well constitute something of an exception to the broader model of Nazi rule, where Hitler’s keen personal interest entails at least some significant role for an intentionalist mechanism of policy development. Nonetheless, an intentionalist explanation alone attributes a level of coherence to the cultural sphere which seems incompatible with the sheer weight of evidence presented above. As Frei indicates, the cultivation of a non-political literary sphere was not just a matter of deliberate policy: Keineswegs alles, was an nicht-nationalsozialistischen Zeitschriften und literarischen Werken weiter erscheinen konnte, verdankte sich rationalem Kalkül. Es gab auch unfreiwillige Machtbegrenzung, resultierend aus der Dürftigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Kulturproduktion, der Ambivalenz der Weltanschauung und widerstreitenden Auffassungen innerhalb der Kulturbürokratie selbst.64

61 62 63 64

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See Hochman, pp. 311–12. Petropoulos, p. 124. Barbian, Literaturpolitik im Dritten Reich, p. 845. Frei, p. 110.

In particular, although the strong evidence of Hitler’s special personal interest, and therefore interventions, cannot be ignored, the view of Rosenberg’s appointment as evidence of a conscious divideand-rule strategy and as a firm resolution to his dispute with Goebbels is contradicted on three counts by Reinhard Bollmus’s detailed study of the Rosenberg Office.65 Firstly, Bollmus refutes the suggestion that Rosenberg’s promotion in 1934 came as a conscious rebuff to the Modernist faction, placing Hitler’s decision instead within the very different context of school curriculum development. Secondly, Goebbels is seen to have continued to manoeuvre in favour of the pro-Modernists and against Rosenberg well into 1935, against the backdrop of a series of cultural-political controversies surrounding the musicians Strauss and Hindemith and the presidents of Kulturkammer. Thirdly, the inter-agency rivalry generated by Rosenberg’s appointment comes about not through a calculated policy, but is rather the ‘Ausdruck tatsächlicher Planlosigkeit’.66 This conclusion fits much more closely with what is now known about Hitler’s style of rule: The chaotic nature of government in the Third Reich was also markedly enhanced by Hitler’s non-bureaucratic and idiosyncratic style of rule. His eccentric ‘working’ hours, his aversion to putting anything on paper, his lengthy absences from Berlin, his inaccessibility even for important ministers, his impatience with the complexities of intricate problems, and his tendency to seize impulsively upon random strands of information or half-baked judgements from cronies or court favourites – all meant that ordered government in any conventional understanding of the term was a complete impossibility.67

It is difficult then to see the fate of German Expressionism under Nazism settled by Hitler’s firm intervention in 1934, not least because Hitler’s Kulturtag address in September of that year rebuffed

65 66 67

See Bollmus, pp. 71–84. Bollmus, p. 250. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 72.

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both Modernist and traditionalist factions.68 If it did set the course of cultural policy, it is not clear what that course was. Similarly, Schäfer’s assessment of the genesis of National Socialism’s antiModernist policy offers little support for Bahr: ‘die Versuche von Gottfried Benn und Teilen des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbundes um Otto Andreas Schreiber, den Futurismus mit der “neuen Macht” zu versöhnen, wurden erst endgültig and demonstrativ durch die Ausstellung “Entartete Kunst” (1937) und das Publikationsverbot Benns (18.3.1938) zugunsten der traditionalistischen Kunstströmung entschieden.’69 Working towards the Führer So, what is the mechanism which best explains the radicalising dynamic of Nazi cultural policy? Here, it is worth returning to the social and political historiography of the Third Reich where the most recent and sophisticated models of Nazi rule have been developed. More specifically, the outcome of Ian Kershaw’s reflections on the nature of Hitler’s charismatic leadership function has been the development of a model which synthesises both intentionalist and functionalist approaches. In this model, it is both the chaotic, overlapping structures of the regime and the indispensable motor of Hitler’s ideological leadership which explain the cumulative radicalisation of Nazi policy. The ‘decisive component’ of Kershaw’s synthesised model is the notion of ‘working towards the Führer’, whereby subordinates competed with one another, either through ideological conviction or careerist self-interest, to carry out what they perceived to be the Führer’s will: 68 69

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Hitler’s speech was made on 5 September 1934 at Nuremberg and appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter, 7 September 1934. See Bahr, p. 15; Taylor, p. 132; Hochman, pp. 229–30. Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation im Dritten Reich’, in Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein, pp. 7–54 (p. 18).

Hitler’s personalized form of rule invited radical initiatives from below and offered such initiatives backing, so long as they were in line with his broadly defined goals. This promoted ferocious competition at all levels of the regime, among competing agencies, and among individuals within those agencies. In the Darwinist jungle of the Third Reich, the way to power and advancement was through anticipating the Führer will, and, without waiting for directives, taking initiatives to promote what were perceived to be Hitler’s aims and wishes.70

Significantly, the evidence presented thus far seems to suggest strongly that both of the key pre-conditions necessary for the operation of this mechanism existed within the cultural sphere: firstly, a strong but vague anti-Modernist policy orientation expressed through Hitler’s charismatic authority at the top; and secondly, multiple, overlapping and competing spheres of authority below. As Petropoulos indicates, ‘in a broader sense, the Nazi leaders’ administration of the arts expressed fundamental characteristics of the regime. Its bureaucratic organisation was dynamic to the point of appearing improvisational; hierarchical and yet at the same time uncoordinated; responsive to Hitler’s policies, while still subject to the whims of subleaders’.71 The theoretical attraction of Kershaw’s synthesised model, particularly in its ability to resolve the ‘tension between a “Führer absolutism” and the “departmental polycracy”’, is clear enough.72 Furthermore, a number of significant events in the development of Nazi cultural policy, such as the book-burnings of May 1933, the Rosenberg/Goebbels rivalry, and the purges of Modernist art, all appear to provide compelling evidence of the operation of this mechanism within the cultural sphere. It is now widely accepted, for instance, that the book-burnings of 10 May 1933 were not initiated by Hitler himself or indeed by any of the highest-ranking officials in

70 71 72

Kershaw, Hitler, I, p. 530. Petropoulos, p. 122. Petropoulos, p. 140.

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the Nazi Party.73 Instead, they were prompted by a non-Nazi student organisation, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, in an attempt to outdo its official National Socialist rival. As Bahr himself points out: ‘it is important to note that non-Nazi organizations, such as the German Students’ Association, were eager to preempt the policies of rival Nazi organizations. [...] In this particular case, the competition between the German Students’ Association and the Nazi Students’ Association may have resulted in a more radical policy than originally planned.’74 Far from being part of a premeditated, centrally-planned implementation of policy, the book-burnings, so symbolic of the Nazis’ cultural barbarism, provide an archetypal instance of a policy radicalisation as a result of rival agencies ‘working towards the Führer’. Indeed, although Bahr finally settles for an intentionalist interpretation of Nazi cultural policy, his analysis of the rivalry between Goebbels and Rosenberg seems to argue against that conclusion and to anticipate Kershaw’s model: The inter-office infighting did not neutralize the negative effects of Nazi cultural politics but radicalized them. [...] This kind of infighting was typical for the evolvement of many Nazi institutions and policies, and the cultural policies were no exception. [...] This radicalization occurred whenever the various competing Nazi agencies fought for positions of power within the system.

That, as a result of his rivalry with Rosenberg, Goebbels eventually abandoned Expressionism and instead embraced a radicalisation of Hitler’s anti-modernistic policy direction again seems to support this approach. Still more significant is Russell Berman’s suggestion that no definitive list of Modernist works to be seized from galleries and museums was ever actually drawn up, leaving officials to act on their own initiative: ‘As was typical of the bureaucratic confusion that characterized the National Socialist dictatorship, there appears to have been no precise administrative guideline as to which works or 73 74

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See, for instance, J. M. Ritchie, ‘The Nazi Book-Burning’, Modern Language Review, 83 (1988), 627–43. Bahr, p. 12. Subsequent reference, pp. 13–14.

artists were to be judged contraband.’75 It is precisely this lack of concrete guidelines which would have encouraged subordinate officials to ‘work towards the Führer’, attempting to anticipate which works should be purged. In this context, Erhard Bahr seems entirely justified in drawing a parallel between the development of racial and cultural policies in the Third Reich. In both cases Hitler consistently enunciated a worldview aimed at the exclusion of an undesirable other, and in both cases this dogmatic world-view drove policy to radicalise over the course of the 1930s. However, to locate these patterns of policy development, as Bahr does, in a monocausal, intentionalist framework is surely inadequate. Consider, for instance, Ian Kershaw’s discussion of the historiography of the Holocaust: Relating [...] the genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ to the polarized ‘Hitlerist’ and ‘structuralist’ interpretations – the one emphasizing a Hitler order as the culmination of a planned long-term programme directed towards extermination, the other stressing a process of permanent improvisation as a way out of self-made administrative difficulties – one would have to conclude that neither model offers a wholly satisfactory explanation, and that some room for compromise is obvious.76

As superficially appealing as it might be, the teleological path from Auschwitz back to Hitler’s earliest statements of anti-Semitism does not do justice to the winding path by which National Socialist racial policies arrived at the ‘Final Solution’. Similarly, the path to Entartete Kunst was not direct and unerring. At the same time, the significance of Hitler’s role in the development of racial and cultural policy cannot be downplayed. Instead, only a model of Nazi government which acknowledges both the chaotic, overlapping structures of the regime and the indispensable motor of Hitler’s ideological leadership can explain the radicalisation of anti-Modernist policies in the Third 75 76

Russell Berman, ‘German Primitivism / Primitive Germany: The Case of Emil Nolde’, in Richard Golsan (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (Hanover NH: University of New England Press, 1992), pp. 56–66 (p. 56). Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 105.

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Reich. Cultural politics can then be placed convincingly within the wider model of National Socialist rule elaborated by Ian Kershaw, drawing on decades of the most involved historiographical debate. Cultural policies in the Third Reich were totalitarian in the sense that a total claim was made on culture on behalf of Nazi ideology, but that total claim could not be, and was not, ever fully realised. The key structural determinants of policy were Hitler’s charismatic leadership and the governmental polycracy which sough to implement his wishes. Existing structures of rule were deformed and policy acquired an increasingly unstoppable, radicalising dynamic.

(Post)totalitarianism in the GDR: bureaucratic, static, and self-reproductive? Ian Kershaw identifies five main features of a post-Stalinist regime, such as the GDR, which set it apart from, in his ‘revised’ terms, an archetypal totalitarian regime, such as the Third Reich: (i) a capacity for self-reproduction in the system; (ii) a loss of revolutionary dynamism; (iii) the absence of any leadership cult; (iv) a sharp reduction in the extent of terror; (v) widespread adjustment and cooperation amongst the population.77 Just as the central features of the National Socialist dictatorship, governmental chaos and radical dynamism, are seen to be products of the charismatic nature of Hitler’s rule, so the absence of this charisma is seen to be the key structural determinant of the SED regime. The essentially bureaucratic, rather than charismatic, nature of the regime explains its ability to reproduce itself. The GDR is post-Stalinist, and post-totalitarian, in the sense that the regime is systematised. Revolutionary dynamism is replaced by ‘“conservative” authoritarianism’. Arbitrary terror is replaced by 77

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See Kershaw, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited’, pp. 29–32. Material in this paragraph from that source.

‘largely predictable’ ‘bureaucratic control’ and even by ‘a limited degree of institutional tolerance’. Active popular support and opposition are replaced by an unenthusiastic acceptance of the settled system and by related patterns of adjustment and conformity. To conclude, ‘the relative stability and the self-reproductive capacity of firm structures of domination in the post-Stalinist era contrast with the upheaval, revolutionary violence, absence of clear norms, and destruction – not stopping short of the pillars of the regime themselves – under Stalin [and Hitler]’. Return of the megamachine? Many post-Wende accounts of East German history seem to provide confirmation of these differences within the GDR system as a whole. Mary Fulbrook, for instance, makes it clear that ‘the notion of charismatic leadership can [...] scarcely be applied to the GDR’.78 The GDR was ‘a system which was capable of reproducing itself: it was not inherently expansionist and ultimately destructive and self-destructive as was the Third Reich’. For Fulbrook, this selfreproductive capacity was a feature of ‘a far more streamlined machine than that of the infinitely more chaotic Nazi state’: There was not an increasingly chaotic, hydra-headed monster in which the only ultimate source of authority and arbitration was the final word of the Führer. The East German state was ordered along far more rational lines, without the overlapping spheres of competence that increasingly characterised the brief history of the Third Reich.79

In a similar vein, Jürgen Kocka perceives ‘auf der Ebene des Herrschaftssytems gravierende Unterschiede’:80 78 79 80

Mary Fulbrook, ‘A German Dictatorship: Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, German Life and Letters, 45 (1992), 376–92, p. 391. Subsequent references, p. 390. Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, pp. 43–44. Kocka, ‘Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem’, p 23.

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Je genauer man hinblickt, je gründlicher man das Herrschaftssystem, die Sozial- und Rechtspolitik, die Minderheitenpolitik, die Sozialgeschichte, das Wirtschaftssystem, den Alltag, die Kultur der beiden Diktaturen untersucht, desto mehr treten ihre tiefgreifenden und vielfältigen Unterschiede hervor.81

Above all, ‘das Charisma Hitlers [blieb] dem Ersten Sekretären der SED grundsätzlich fremd’.82 This fundamental difference in leadership style and function is developed by Monika Kaiser in her analysis of organisational structures and competencies in the SED. Here, she contrasts the pure charisma of Hitler’s rule with the ‘routinised charisma’ of the SED, the latter being founded on ‘Charisma, das nicht an eine Person als solche, sondern an den Inhaber eines Amtes oder an ein institutionelles Gebilde ohne Ansehen der Person geknüpft ist’.83 In Weberian terms, the revolutionary and unstable nature of pure charisma in the Third Reich contrasts with its institutionalised equivalent in the GDR.84 As Kaiser indicates, and in contrast to the Third Reich, ‘die Omnipotenz der SED-Führung ließ keine institutionelle Anarchie zu’. In addition to this ‘wesentlich stärker formalisierte Herrschaftsstruktur’,85 the most recent social historiography of the GDR is increasingly highlighting the nature of the East German dictatorship as ‘eine durchherrschte Gesellschaft’, ‘weil die Institutionalisierung der Parteien und Massenorganisationen immer mehr Menschen in neue Strukturen hineinzog’.86 This shift from a top-down Repressions81 82 83

84 85 86

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Jürgen Kocka, Vereinigungskrise: Zur Geschichte der Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), p. 95. Kocka, ‘Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem’, p 23. Monika Kaiser, ‘Die Zentrale der Diktatur: Organisatorische Weichenstellungen, Strukturen und Kompetenzen der SED-Führung in der SBZ/ DDR 1946–1952’, in Kocka (ed.), pp. 57–86 (p. 59). Subsequent reference, p. 58. On the ‘Veralltäglichung des Charisma’ and particularly the notion of ‘Amtscharisma’, see Max Weber, pp. 142–48. Kaiser, p. 58. Mary Fulbrook, ‘Politik, Wissenschaft und Moral: Zur neueren Geschichte der DDR’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 22 (1996), 458–71 (p. 460). See Jürgen Kocka, ‘Eine durchherrschte Gesellschaft’, in Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen

these towards notions of penetration at an everyday level, with the emphasis on the majority of the population integrated into mass organisations and institutions and conforming to patterns of behaviour determined by the Party, starts to suggest that the SED regime may have come closer to realising its total claim than did the Hitler regime. Bessel and Jessen, for instance, write of the SED’s totalitarian aims as follows: Und die tatsächliche Entwicklung ist diesen Zielen ja in vielem nahegekommen. [...] Wirtschaft, Recht, Verwaltung und Kultur folgten nicht oder nur sehr begrenzt ihren eigenen Regeln, sondern standen unter dem dauernden Entscheidungsvorbehalt der Partei. Abstrakter gesprochen: Die relative Autonomie der gesellschaftlichen Subsysteme war einer fortschreitenden institutionellen Fusionierung und Zentralisierung zum Opfer gefallen; weit mehr übrigens, als dies die Nationalsozialisten in den zwölf Jahren ihrer Herrschaft je geschafft hatten.87

Similarly, Kocka is clear that the SED regime must be considered more ‘totalitarian’ than the Third Reich, if that term describes the extent of influence exercised on society.88 Indeed, when Mary Fulbrook is able to employ the ‘Kraken’ as a metaphor to describe the SED regime, ‘dessen Tentakel sich noch in den letzten Winkel sozialer Existenz erstreckten’,89 it seems we are close to reinstating some form of conventional totalitarianism model to describe the reality of life under the SED regime. The emphasis may have shifted to penetration, rather than repression, to the limitations of dictatorial

87 88 89

Kocka, Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1994), pp. 547–53. See also the notion of ‘Entdifferenzierung’, developed by M. Rainer Lepsius, ‘Die Institutionenordnung als Rahmenbedingung der Sozialgeschichte der DDR’, in Kaelble, Kocka, Zwahr (eds), pp. 17–30 (p. 18). Bessel and Jessen, p. 8, emphasis in the original. Kocka, Vereinigungskrise, p. 187, note 8. See also Sigrid Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft: Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR 1945– 1989 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992). Mary Fulbrook, ‘Methodologische Überlegungen zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, in Bessel and Jessen (eds), pp. 274–97 (p. 291).

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rule, rather than total control, but the similarity to Golomstock’s ‘megamachine’ which efficiently transmits the coherent cultural dogma is clear. The apparent existence of clearer cultural norms in the GDR, more efficiently transmitted through the institutions of cultural policy, may then be a reflection of the SED’s more smoothly functioning, more ‘conventionally’ totalitarian structures. A fundamental contrast may be drawn to the chaotic, inefficient, revised totalitarian structures of the Third Reich. Certainly, Wolfgang Emmerich’s presentation of literary policy in the GDR appears to confirm such a view: Die Literatur der DDR war ‘Planungsliteratur’ par excellence. Das heißt, daß ausnahmslos alle Etappen im Leben eines Literaturwerks gelenkt und kontrolliert wurden (oder werden sollten): Entstehung, Drucklegung und Veröffentlichung, Vertrieb, Literaturkritik, endlich Lektüre und also Wirkung. Für diesen Zweck wurde eine lückenlose Kette von Institutionen geschaffen, deren Kernstück zweifellos das sogennante ‘Druckgenehmigungsverfahren’ war.90

Here, literary policy conforms to Fulbrook’s characterisation of the wider governmental system as a ‘highly organised, smoothly functioning apparatus of power and control’.91 Points of contrast with the Third Reich are only too obvious. Writing of the operation of the censorship office in the mid-1970s, Emmerich makes it clear that the system was characterised by close co-operation between agencies: ‘dabei arbeitete dieses Amt in allen kritischen Fällen mit der Kulturabteilung beim Zentralkommitee der SED oder auch dem für Kultur zuständigen Politbüromitglied Kurt Hager zusammen.’92 Furthermore, the proliferation of Stasi informers, centrally organised and co-ordinated, was a fundamental feature of the literary sphere from the 1960s onwards and offers a marked a contrast to the largely 90 91 92

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Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (Leipzig: Kiepenheuer, 1996), p. 48. Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 286. Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, p. 52. Subsequent references, p. 54 and p. 53.

ad hoc workings of the Gestapo. Drawing on Kershaw’s points of contrast between totalitarian and post-totalitarian regimes, it is also clear that the control of authors did indeed rely on essentially predictable, ‘legal’ and bureaucratic means: ‘diese umfassenden Zensurmaßnahmen wurden durch gesetzliche Sanktionsmöglichkeiten abgesichert.’ Finally, the efficient functioning of censorship mechanisms in the GDR relied not just on straightforward repression but also on the adjustment and cooperation of authors themselves through Selbstzensur: ‘Freilich ist zu berücksichtigen, daß die von den Parteiinstanzen initiierten “Literaturentwicklungsprozesse”, [...] auf Kooperation [...] der Autoren abzielten und sie in sehr vielen, ja: den meisten Fällen auch erreichten.’ The construction phase All the same, we would be mistaken to use the evidence presented above as the impetus to reinstate a conventional, static and monolithic totalitarianism model, such as that of Golomstock. As Fulbrook points out, the conventional totalitarianism model crucially ‘fails to account for the dynamics of change’,93 and over its forty-year history, evolution was a central feature of the GDR system: ‘Das Herrschaftssystem in der DDR war keinesfalls statisch. [...] Während einige Entwicklungen dazu beitrugen, die Diktatur tiefer in der Gesellschaft zu verankern, drohten andere das System zu destabilisieren.’94 Perhaps of greatest interest here is Fulbrook’s distinction between the ‘established phase’ of the GDR (1961−1981), when stability was a central factor, and a ‘period of crystallisation’ (1949− 1961), when greater instability existed:95 93 94 95

Fulbrook, ‘Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, p. 377. Fulbrook, ‘Zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, p. 283. Fulbrook divides the history of the GDR into four periods: 1) the ‘period of crystallisation’ (1949–1961); 2) the ‘established phase’ (1961–80); 3) ‘destabilisation’ (1980–89); and 4) the ‘gentle revolution’ (1989). See Fulbrook, ‘Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, p. 377.

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Der Krake brauchte einige Zeit, um seine Fangarme zu entwickeln. Jede Untersuchung der fünfziger Jahre wird den brüchigen Charakter der politischen Herrschaft aufdecken: Oft mangelte es sogar den Funktionsträgern des Regimes, den SED-Funktionären, den Blockparteien, den Massenorganisationen und den Unterdrückungsapparten an politischer Zuverlässigkeit. [...] Probleme der Parteidisziplin und der Kaderpolitik waren während dieser frühen Jahre ständig Themen.96

Above all, the relative lack of cohesion amongst the ruling elites in the 1950s is evinced in the circumstances which generated the workers’ uprising of June 1953 and in the necessity of significant purges of anti-Ulbricht factions in late-1953, 1956, and 1958. Here, the situation clearly differed from the relative cohesion and stability of the 1960s and 1970s, and it is for this reason that some form of periodisation must be central to any analysis of SED rule. More pertinently for the present study, the existence of factional and polycratic elements during this earliest phase of rule, together with a level of revolutionary dynamism arguably absent in later decades, suggests that this period of crystallisation, or ‘construction phase’, may well be more readily comparable to the unstable, revised totalitarianism of the Third Reich. In the cultural sphere, two recent studies argue in favour of such a view. In the first of these, Peter Davies explores SMAD and early SED cultural policies in the light of Soviet policy on the German question where conflicts between proponents of ‘integrationist’ and ‘all-German’ lines competed to gain advantage against a background of rapidly shifting policy orientations. Rejecting an intentionalist view of Stalin’s power, Davies draws on evidence which suggests that Stalin preferred an all-German resolution to the German question, but was paradoxically reliant on the integrationist SED faction for the implementation of his policy.97 Within this context, Davies is able to show ‘how certain intellectuals were able, within the institutional framework of the Deutsche Akademie der Künste, to create spaces for 96 97

58

Fulbrook, ‘Zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, pp. 291–92. See Wilfried Loth, Stalins ungeliebtes Kind: Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1994).

resistance to the imposition of power structures which accelerated the division of German culture’.98 In Fulbrook’s terms, factional conflict within the initial phase of policy implementation seems to have provided ‘the political space, the “opportunity structure” for exploitation by dissent from below’.99 In this light, further studies which have revealed the East Berlin Academy of Arts as a site of contested cultural policy and significant dissent against the hard-line Ulbricht faction are worthy of note. In particular, both Parker, and Davies and Parker, have explored the disputes in the Academy surrounding the Faustus-Debatte and the reform of the Academy periodical Sinn und Form against the background of policy shifts initiated by Stalin’s problematic succession in the Soviet Union and the workers’ uprising in East Berlin on 17 June 1953.100 Here, in the crystallisation period, outcomes in the cultural sphere demonstrate a degree of incompleteness reminiscent of the Third Reich. The second cultural-political study which highlights a less smoothly functioning governmental apparatus in this early period of SED rule is Siegfried Lokatis’s examination of the publishing sector of the GDR. In its attempt both to make a partisan contribution to the development of socialist and anti-fascist GDR literature and at the same time to contribute to the international standing of the regime, publishing policy is seen to be split by the same central contradiction which characterised the development of cultural policy elsewhere. Although Lokatis identifies a high degree of stability 98

Peter Davies, Divided Loyalties: East German Writers and the Politics of German Division 1945–1953 (Leeds: Maney, 2000), p. 8. 99 Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 31. 100 See Stephen Parker, ‘Sinn und Form, Peter Huchel und der 17. Juni 1953: Bertolt Brechts Rettungsaktion’, Sinn und Form, 46 (1994), 738–51; Peter Davies and Stephen Parker, ‘Brecht, SED Cultural Policy and the Issue of Authority in the Arts: The Struggle for Control of the German Academy of Arts’, in Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone (eds), Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 181–95. See also Ulrich Dietzel and Gudrun Geißler (eds), Zwischen Diskussion und Disziplin: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Akademie der Künste (Ost), 1945/1950 bis 1993 (Berlin: Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste, 1997).

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within publishing policy between 1963 and 1989, policy-development in the pre-1963 phase is revealed to be surprisingly slow and characterised by considerable contradictions and difficulties. ‘Die schwere Geburt des Literaturapparates’ was played out ‘vor dem Hintergrund [eines] durch die Unberechenbarkeit des ZK noch zusätzlich desorganisierten Szenarios’.101 Hence, while Emmerich’s presentation of literary policy, concentrating primarily on developments in the 1960s and 1970s, seems to confirm a stable, established phase, Lokatis’s findings in this initial period seem much more compatible with developments in Nazi literary policy: ‘Auf der Grundlage der Resultate werden Möglichkeiten erörtert, den in den fünfziger Jahren entstehenden Literaturapparat der DDR mit der ähnlich chaotisch funktionierenden nationalsozialistischen Literaturpolitik zu vergleichen.’ In Lokatis’s concluding comments, this comparison is again made explicit: Das Verhältnis zwischen Verlag und ALV in den fünfziger Jahren entwickelte sich der Tendenz nach so, daß das ALV zunächst, etwa bis Anfang 1954, mit vergleichsweise präzisen kulturpolitischen Vorgaben arbeitete, die zwar für alle Verlage galten, aber angesichts der Schwankungen im ZK außerordentlich variierten. Ich vermute, daß ein Verleger, um unter diesen Umständen überhaupt noch kalkulierbar produzieren zu können, sich in vorauseilenden Gehorsam flüchtete, seine Autoren strenger anleitete, als es an sich nötig gewesen wäre, eher politsch anerkannte als literarisch qualifizierte Autoren suchte, Texte mit plakativen ideologischen Versatzstücken garnieren ließ usw., was auf das Niveau der frühen DDR-Literatur nicht ohne Einfluß geblieben sein kann: auf ganz ähnliche Weise vollzog sich auch im ‘Dritten Reich’, in dem Zensur auf vergleichbare Weise chaotisch funktionierte, ein Zusammenbruch des literarischen Formniveaus.

In the similarly chaotic functioning of censorship apparatus, and above all in the manner in which publishers responded to changing SED policy directives by imposing stricter controls on their authors, 101 Siegfried Lokatis, ‘Verlagspolitik zwischen Plan und Zensur: Das “Amt für Literatur und Verlagswesen” oder die schwere Geburt des Literaturapparates der DDR’, in Kocka (ed.), pp. 303–25 (p. 305). Subsequent references, p. 305 and p. 323.

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it seems that early GDR literary policy may even have functioned by virtue of a mechanism analogous to that which radicalised cultural policy in the Third Reich. Indeed, a radicalising dynamic in SED cultural policy, potentially comparable to the cumulative radicalisation in Nazi policy, does seem to be apparent in this initial phase. The relatively liberal policies of the SMAD soon gave way to a policy from 1949 based on the Zhdanov conception of ‘Formalism’. In March 1951, the 5th Plenary officially ratified the ‘Kampf gegen Formalismus’, while the declaration of the ‘Aufbau der Grundlagen des Sozialismus’ at the 2nd Party Congress in July 1952 added additional impetus to a cultural policy where norms were being increasingly rigidly enforced. Indeed, the hard-line crack-downs of 1956 and 1958 make it clear that cultural policy in the crystallisation period rested on a level of repression, even terror, which bears comparison to the Third Reich. Further similarities exist in the way that genuine theoretical and artistic considerations gave way to the arbitrary and abstract condemnation of an undesirable other. Much as in the Third Reich, the constructive and potentially ambiguous discourse of art criticism was replaced by the deployment of the ‘monosemic’ official discourse of the ruling party which sought to uphold binary oppositions between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ art.102 In this friend/foe schema, broad sections of Modernist art had the role of the ‘other’ imposed upon them, much as they had in the Third Reich. Again in the GDR, as in the Third Reich, a politically and ideologically justifiable opposition to abstract and experimental Modernism came to embrace a considerably wider range of artistic and cultural phenomena, to the point where the merest hint of formal experimentation brought heavy censure.

102 See Peter Zima, ‘Der Mythos der Monosemie: Parteilichkeit und künstlerischer Standpunkt’, in Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaften, 10 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971–1979), VI: Einführung in Theorie, Geschichte und Funktion der DDR-Literatur, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (1975), pp. 77–108.

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GDR dynamics: shocks and lulls Much as this cultural development might appear to resemble the cumulative radicalisation inherent in the Nazi system, the absence of charismatic leadership in the GDR precludes a mechanism analogous to the Nazi tendency to ‘work towards the Führer’. Without the force of the Führer’s will, or indeed the prospect of war, to provide a unifying direction, no mechanism existed to drive factional rivalries in the GDR into the radicalisation of a single policy orientation. As Fulbrook indicates, ‘there was no equivalent to these structural and popular functions of a leadership cult in the GDR’.103 Factional rivalry in the crystallisation period of GDR was structurally different from that in the Third Reich, in that factions sought to oppose not one another but the ruling elite itself. Under National Socialism agencies competed with one another, but did not by and large seek to oppose Hitler himself. In fact, it was in their attempts to gain Hitler’s approval that policy radicalised. Furthermore, as Fulbrook suggests, periods of instability in the GDR, such as June 1953, served only to provide the opportunity to eliminate dissenting factions and hence, in the medium-term, strengthen Ulbricht’s grip on power. In this sense, the dynamics of factional conflict actually served as a stabilising influence on Ulbricht’s regime. Hence, despite superficial similarities which encourage some degree of comparability, the unstable initial phase of SED rule is fundamentally different from the instability of Nazi rule. While the instability of the GDR was a temporary and ultimately constructive phase in the implementation of its bureaucratic system, the instability of the Third Reich was an inherent, destructive feature of its charismatic systemlessness. In a further contrast to National Socialist rule, the radicalising dynamic identified above represents only one half of the dynamics of SED cultural policy. Moments of policy-hardening in the GDR seem to alternate with other moments of relative softening, and this alternating dynamic of shocks and lulls seems to be a constant 103 Fulbrook, ‘Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, p. 391.

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throughout the state’s existence. Hence, moments of liberalisation, such as in the immediate aftermath of 17 June 1953, in response to Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, or following Honecker’s accession in May 1971, pull in a different direction to the moments of hardening, such as early 1953 and late 1956, or 1968 and 1976. As Fulbrook writes of the situation in which prominent intellectuals found themselves: ‘in an almost regular cycle, waves of hope and quasi-liberalisation were repeatedly followed by periods of clampdown and censorship.’104 Here, the relative fragility of the GDR’s existence and its lack of popular, national legitimacy mark it out from the Third Reich. This fragility rendered SED cultural policy responsive to both internal and external political events in a way that Nazi policy did not have to be. Hardening of policy in 1956 and 1968, for instance, came about not through fundamental structural factors within the regime, but in response to the political unrest in Hungary and Czechoslovakia respectively. These fluctuations in policy can also be connected to a further policy determinant peculiar to the GDR, namely the conflicting ‘paternalism and paranoia’ of its leaders, identified by Fulbrook as the decisive ‘mentalities of power’ within the SED regime. Paternalism to encourage loyal comrades to contribute to the construction of socialism alternated with paranoia over the fragile existence of the state itself. The increasingly dogmatic attacks of 1952/1953 reflect in large measure the paranoia of a regime which saw its very existence threatened by the possible jettisoning of the East German state by its political masters in Moscow. In Fulbrook’s words, ‘the insecurity of the East German regime both informed and exacerbated the inculcation of a friend/ foe mentality’.105 It was this insecurity which informed the eradication of liberal factions within the SED and the hardening of policy announced at the second Party Congress in July 1952, and it is this insecurity which explains the way in which even committed, loyal artists could fall victim to repression. 104 Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, pp. 78–79. Subsequent reference, p. 22. 105 See Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 26.

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Loss of ideological dynamism If these mechanisms were constants throughout the state’s history, two longer-term developments mark out the ‘established phase’ of the 1960s and 1970s from the crystallisation period of the 1950s. The first of these is the growth and development of mechanisms of control and institutional bureaucracy, the second, the gradual loss of ideological dynamism both within the regime and amongst the population at large.106 As Kershaw writes of post-Stalinist regimes: Gradually, in the 1950s and 1960s, these regimes settled down into repressive and corrupt ‘conservative’ authoritarianism. The revolutionary goals subsided into rhetoric. The main driving-force largely evaporated from a system ideologically held together by the Cold War but bereft of real élan and possessing only limited goals of containment.107

On the SED’s part, ‘the regime to a notable extent gave up the attempts at indoctrination characteristic of the early Ulbricht years. In the 1970s, outward conformity without inner commitment became sufficient’.108 On the part of the people, ‘most East Germans seemed relatively content to grumble and make do’. Perhaps the most notable feature of this settled phase of rule was the dynamic which the bureaucratic apparatus itself developed, as, in an apparent confirmation of Weber’s analysis of bureaucratic rule, a new generation of functionaries sought to maintain the smooth functioning of the system, irrespective of ideological beliefs.109 The result was ‘a smoothly operating system, with functionaries socialized into the rules of the game, focusing primarily on technical efficiency and accepting the price of ideological conformity’.110 Increasingly, the 106 See Kocka, Vereinigungskrise, pp. 111–16. 107 Kershaw, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited’, p. 30. 108 Fulbrook, ‘Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, p. 385. Subsequent reference, p. 386. 109 On the ‘Dauercharakter des Bürokratischen Apparates’, see Max Weber, pp. 668–70. 110 Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 76.

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maintenance of power had become the overriding concern of the governmental apparatus, ahead of the furthering of the original utopian founding goals of the state: ‘wichtige Gruppen, insbesondere die Funktionäre, waren immer mehr bereit, das System funktionsfähig zu halten.’111 Initial ideological dynamism then increasingly gave way to pragmatic coercion. The rapid growth in the cultural bureaucracy in the 1960s and 1970s has already emerged from Emmerich’s analysis of the apparatus of literary control. In particular, the Stasi infiltration of the cultural sphere multiplied spectacularly in these decades, as 1969, for instance, saw the founding of Hauptabteilung XX/7, with around 40 permanent staff and 350−500 IMs, dedicated to the surveillance of culture.112 Lokatis, too, demonstrates how 1963 constituted a turningpoint in the development of policy in the publishing sector. Above all, though, it is in the way that the officially unshakeable aesthetic doctrine of Socialist Realism increasingly became an empty rhetorical formula, subject to substantial modification, that the loss of dynamism of the 1960s and 1970s makes itself apparent in the literary and cultural sphere. Manfred Jäger, for instance, writes of the modification of the norms of Socialist Realism as follows: Die vagen, abstrakten, schlagwortartigen und in sich widersprüchlichen Beschreibungen, die sich als fiktive Kontinuität fortschleppten, erwiesen sich als ungeeignet sowohl für die künstlerische Praxis wie für die kritische Rezeption. Sozialistischer Realismus wurde zur Leerformel.113

Indeed, in the re-negotiation of the stringent aesthetic norms of the 1950s and the re-emergence of more experimental aesthetics through the 1960s and 1970s, it is possible to see evidence both of acceptance and adjustment on the part of artists and of a certain degree of toler111 Fulbrook, ‘Zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, p. 283. 112 See Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, p. 63. For a comprehensive study, see also Joachim Walther, Sicherungsbereich Literatur: Schriftsteller und Staatssicherheit in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Links, 1996). 113 Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR: 1945–1990 (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1995), p. 50.

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ation on the part of the regime. In this respect, cultural policy seems to demonstrate the same loss of dynamism and stabilisation identified by Kershaw as a central feature of the post-Stalinist regime. We might even, as Kershaw does, go as far as to suggest that the SED regime became ‘post-totalitarian’ in the sense that it dropped, at least to some degree, its total claim.114 Pragmatische Willkür: re-asserting the total claim on culture This loss of dynamism notwithstanding, there is little evidence of toleration and acceptance in the relationship between intellectuals and the SED regime in the 1960s and 1970s and even less evidence that the SED had dropped its ‘total’ claim. In the 1960s, tensions between artists and politicians reached unprecedentedly high levels, as figures such as Stefan Heym, Christa Wolf, and Stephan Hermlin publicly protested against the cultural-political dogmatism of the SED.115 In fact, Fulbrook explicitly contrasts much more widespread patterns of acceptance and low-level grumbling amongst the population at large with the active dissent of ‘isolated intellectuals’ in the 1960s and 1970s.116 Furthermore, the SED did not react to the problematic cultural situation through the kind of change or liberalisation which might have signalled a willingness to tolerate dissent. Instead, their response was a clear intensification of repression and a re-statement of their total claim, symbolised by the 11th Plenary of December 1965. Certainly, the early 1970s did offer some easing of the pressure through the replacement of Ulbricht with Honecker and his public declaration of the lifting of taboos. Any liberalisation, however, was largely illusory and temporary, as ‘die vorsichtigen Lockerungen beantwortete ein Teil des Parteiapparates mit ideo114 Kershaw, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited’, p. 32: ‘In contrast to post-Stalinist regimes [...] both the Hitler and the Stalin regimes tried (however unsuccessfully) to win soul as well as body.’ 115 See Jäger, pp. 111–17. 116 Fulbrook, ‘Power Structures and Political Culture in the GDR’, pp. 386–87.

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logisch oder auch sicherheitspolitisch motiviertem Gegendruck’.117 In particular, Biermann’s expatriation in 1976 dealt a huge shock to the expectations of artists. This both provoked further public dissent and signified a further re-imposition of the regime’s total claim. The imposition of a total claim had not then changed, but what may have altered significantly was the nature of that claim. The developing instruments of control and penetration fostered an increasingly pragmatic attitude amongst cultural functionaries, above all the newer wave who had gained positions under Honecker. In the 1970s, the total claim was increasingly being made on behalf of the system itself, not its founding ideology. In this sense, Manfred Jäger’s term is perhaps most fitting. The late 1970s were not so much characterised by predictable, post-totalitarianism as by a ‘pragmatische Willkür’. Charismatic vs bureaucratic totalitarianism To return to Kershaw’s revised totalitarianism model, it is clear that SED cultural policy demonstrates fundamental points of contrast to the charismatic, dynamic, and inherently radicalising nature of cultural politics in the Third Reich. As with the regime as a whole, the cultural sphere in the GDR offers evidence of a substantially more efficient and stable system, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. However, in contrast to the population at large, patterns of cooperation and toleration amongst prominent artists and intellectuals do not seem to match those expected in a settled ‘posttotalitarian’ phase. The 1960s and 1970s continued to see relatively high levels of dissent and, most significantly, the re-statement of the regime’s total claim. In this most fundamental sense, the GDR does remain comparable with the Third Reich, in that both regimes made a comparable total claim on the cultural sphere, even if that claim could not be realised. In this respect, a distinction between the ‘totalitarian’ Third Reich and the ‘post-totalitarian’ GDR does not 117 Jäger, p 139. Subsequent reference, also p. 139.

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seem to be justified. Beyond this, the bare notion of totalitarianism has very limited value in highlighting similarities between cultural policies under the SED and Nazi regimes, since, in terms of their organisation and dynamics, differences preponderated. Instead, some form of differentiation within the ‘totalitarianism’ paradigm is required, and it is here that Jürgen Kocka’s comparative analysis of the two German dictatorships is of particular interest: Ich bezeichne Diktaturen in dem Ausmaß als totalitär, in dem es ihnen gelingt, einen tendenziell totalen Zugriff auf die Individuen und die gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse zu realisieren, also Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Kultur zu steuern und zu kontrollieren, u. a. mit Hilfe von Manipulation und Gewalt. [...] Nach diesen Kriterien kommt [man] zu dem berechtigten Schluß, daß die DDR totalitärer war als die Nazi-Diktatur. - Anders in Anlehnung an Hannah Arendt und Emil Lederer: Diktaturen wird man dann in dem Ausmaß als totalitär bezeichnen, in dem der staatliche Zugriff auf Individuen und gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse mit massenhaftem Terror und permanenter Dynamik, mit Bewegung als Herrschaftsprinzip und letztlich mit Tendenzen zur Dauermobilisierung und Selbstzerstörung verbunden ist. Definiert man so, ist die NS-Diktatur als bei weitem totalitärer als die SEDDiktatur zu beurteilen.118

In terms of revolutionary dynamism, it is the National Socialist regime which must be adjudged to be more ‘totalitarian’. In terms of the extent of control achieved, it is the SED regime which is the more ‘totalitarian’. For these reasons, I would propose to draw a conceptual distinction between the ‘charismatic totalitarianism’ of the Third Reich and the ‘bureaucratic totalitarianism’ of the GDR.119 This distinction retains the single most significant shared feature of the regimes, namely their total(itarian) claim, while at the same time stressing the central and inherent contrasts in their organisation and dynamics. Where the ‘charismatic totalitarianism’ of the Third Reich tended towards instability and radical dynamism, the more ‘bureau118 Kocka, Vereinigungskrise, p. 187, note 8. 119 The allusion to Weber’s distinction between charismatic and bureaucratic rule is conscious, if loosely conceived. See Max Weber, p. 141.

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cratic totalitarianism’ of the GDR tended towards stability and loss of dynamism. However, even to describe the GDR as a system of ‘bureaucratic totalitarianism’ fails to do justice to its own evolutionary dynamics. Instead, if this notion is to be employed productively it requires the application of a limited number of modifying variables which might provide a basis for differentiation within this broad category. From the analysis above, two such parameters present themselves: (i) the varying degree of stability and cohesion within the regime; (ii) the changing level of ideological dynamism within the system. On the former parameter, the relative stability of the middle two decades of the GDR, equivalent to Fulbrook’s ‘established phase’ (1961−1981), contrasts with the relative instability of the first and last decades, Fulbrook’s ‘crystallisation period’ (1949−1961) and ‘destabilisation phase’ (1981−1989). On the latter parameter, the gradual process of ideological atrophy over the course of the GDR’s existence invites a division around the early 1970s when, even allowing for the initial renewal of dynamism engendered by Ulbricht’s replacement through Honecker, the regime’s total claim may be said to have become predominantly pragmatic rather than ideological in nature - equivalent to Jäger’s distinction between ‘pragmatische Willkür’ and ‘ideologische Eindeutigkeit’. Hence, deployed in conjunction with one another, and necessarily employing somewhat simplified cut-off dates, these variables suggest the following periodisation of the GDR’s (bureaucratic) totalitarian rule: (i) 1949−1961 ‘construction phase’: relative instability/ dynamic, ideological claim; (ii) 1961−1971 ‘consolidation phase’: growing stability/ gradual loss of ideological dynamism; (iii) 1971−1981 ‘established phase’: relative stability/ increasingly pragmatic claim; (iv) 1981−1989 ‘destabilisation phase’: growing instability/ decaying pragmatism. Of these four phases it is the first which, substantial structural contrasts notwithstanding, perhaps resembles most closely the charismatic totalitarianism of the Third Reich, since it was only in this period that a relatively ‘polycratic’ governmental apparatus existed at the same time as a relatively high degree of genuine ideological dynamism. 69

Totalitarianism and artistic Modernism For all our attempts to position cultural politics in the German dictatorships within the context of the historicisation of the GDR and the Third Reich, and to elaborate a framework which stresses difference between the two systems, two elements of a conventional model of ‘totalitarian art’ seem to remain stubbornly persistent. The first of these is the total(itarian) claim made by the regimes on the cultural sphere. The second is the shared, broadly anti-Modernist orientation of the cultural dogma on behalf of which that claim was made. The questions to be addressed in this section relate to the connection between these two elements. How did the cultural policy of two non-contemporary regimes with different ideological and governmental structures come to embrace some form of classicist/ realist aesthetic while excluding artistic Modernism? Above all, is the rejection of artistic Modernism primarily a political or aesthetic development? Before proposing answers to these questions, it is worthwhile briefly re-considering the presumed antipathy between National Socialism and artistic Modernism. A double attitude of Modernist anti-Modernism As we have already observed, architectural style provides an example of an area where Modernist aesthetics prospered within the Third Reich. In large part, this can be attributed to non-official production, either in tolerated spaces or as a result of inefficiencies in mechanisms of control. At the same time, the nature of official Nazi aesthetic policy suggests that the assumed antithesis between totalitarianism and artistic Modernism is liable to some re-interpretation. Significant in this context, for example, is Elaine Hochman’s acknowledgement that Hitler did approve of some Modernist styles: ‘According to Speer, Hitler not only expected and approved – but

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actually enjoyed – modern architecture in industrial construction.’120 Brandon Taylor goes further, proposing a fundamental re-appraisal of the presumed dysfunction between Modernism and the official art of the Third Reich: We prefer to regard the events of 1937 as definitive because only there was the contrast between Modernism and ‘true German art’ drawn with extreme simplicity. But, I repeat once more, not only was this antithesis drawn by National Socialist ideologists, whose judgements we do not accept elsewhere, but the very simplicity of the antithesis inevitably disguises a far more complex pattern of relationships between the two aesthetic camps.121

Similarly: Any full account of Modernism shows it to consist of many forms which the Reich itself, at various points, employed [...] The converse also appears to be true - that the art of the Third Reich in its ‘mature’ form of 1936 or 1937 came to employ a host of formal and aesthetic devices which Modernism itself had invented.

The survival of Modernism within the Third Reich was not just a question of unofficial and non-political spaces, whether deliberately cultivated or not. Strands of Modernist aesthetics were also willingly incorporated into the official, mature Nazi aesthetic. Rather than a straightforward anti-Modernism, Hitler’s cultural policy seems to be more accurately characterised by what Taylor and van der Will paradoxically refer to as a ‘double attitude of Modernist anti-Modernism’.122

120 Hochman, p. 236. 121 Taylor, p. 128. Subsequent reference, p. 128. 122 See Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will, ‘Preface and Acknowledgements’, in Taylor and van der Will (eds), pp. vi–viii (p. vii).

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What is Modernism? In fact, the confusion and apparent inconsistencies here stem in no small part from a definitional problem. In none of the accounts of National Socialism’s ‘anti-Modernist’ cultural policies is any attempt made to clarify the definition of ‘Modernism’, so that it is not at all clear precisely which forms of culture the Nazi regime is supposed to have rejected. Indeed, so heterogeneous are the phenomena conventionally subsumed under the term that we should not be at all surprised that the anti-Modernism of Hitler and his regime should reveal inconsistencies. It is only by rendering explicit some of the different elements implied within these ‘Modernism’ definitions that we can begin to clarify the attitude of the regime toward it. In the context of National Socialist cultural policy, three such elements are of particular importance. Firstly, we can distinguish between ‘Modernism’ used as a proper noun – that is, as an umbrella term to denote a broad sweep of historically-specific artistic movements located between around 1890 and 1930 – and ‘modernism’ used more generally to describe a non-historically-specific artistic attitude, typified by the development and deployment of innovative and experimental modes of expression. To distinguish these two elements of ‘modernism’ we might usefully formalise the distinction between upper-case ‘Modernism’ and lower-case ‘modernism’, between ‘Modernist’ cultural output (the high Modernism of 1890–1930) and ‘modernistic’ cultural output (aggressively experimental, avant-gardist art).123 In its third important usage, the term is employed to describe cultural output, typically in architecture or design, which embraces 123 This distinction is already widely implied. See Tony Pinkney, ‘Editor’s Introduction: Modernism and Cultural Theory’, in Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists, ed. by Tony Pinkney (London: Verso, 1989), pp. 1–30 (p. 28, note 3). See also Malcom Bradbury and James McFarlane, ‘The Name and Nature of Modernism’, in Malcom Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds), Modernism: 1890–1930 (Hassock: Harvester, 1978), pp. 19–55. Note the term is restricted here to artistic and cultural phenomena and does not encompass any notion of social ‘modernisation’.

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technological modernisation often by employing technologicallyadvanced materials with an expressly functional purpose. This usage we might further distinguish by referring to ‘modernising’ cultural output. In this way, the terms of the debate are re-aligned into three distinct questions. Instead of the regime’s attitude to a vaguely defined notion of artistic modernism, we are concerned, very specifically, with the attitude to ‘Modernist’ art, to ‘modernistic’ art and to ‘modernising’ art. Posing these three questions, it becomes clear that what Hitler consistently condemned, from his earliest time in Munich through to the early 1930s, was not Modernism as a whole, but rather the most modernistic strands of Modernism. In condemning the ‘Kubisten, Futuristen, Dadaisten u.s.w.’ as ‘Kunstverderber’ in his Kulturtag address in September 1934,124 Hitler was singling out three strands of Modernism which were among the most extreme, experimental, and non-representational trends in Weimar culture. These more modernistic trends offended both his personal tastes and the political need for a turn away from the individualistic decadence of Weimar towards a more collective ‘national’ culture. Importantly, Hitler’s condemnation of these particular artists left room in Nazi culture for more ‘acceptable’ forms of Modernist art, in the shape of the more mature Modernist strands of the mid-to-late 1920s, where Modernist art tended towards the smoothness and universality of ‘classical’ aesthetics and away from fragmentation and subjectivity of a more modernistic posture. In the appropriate context, space was also left for the more functional, modernising strands of architecture and design.125 Hence, this definitional move allows us to describe more accurately the nature of Nazi antiModernism and also the nature of the cumulative radicalisation of cultural policy. In effect, that radicalisation consisted of a shift from an anti-modernistic policy to a much broader anti-Modernist policy. 124 See Hugh Ridley, Gottfried Benn: Ein Schriftsteller zwischen Erneuerung und Reaktion (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990), p. 28. 125 See Taylor, pp. 136–41.

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The rejection of Modernism: totalitarian policy or semi-autonomous cultural development? For Igor Golomstock the apparent rejection of artistic Modernism by different totalitarian regimes is easily explained: ‘From the multiplicity of artistic movements then in existence, the [totalitarian] State selects one movement, always the most conservative, which most nearly answers its needs and declares it to be official and obligatory.’126 In the German dictatorships that movement was a variety of realism; modernistic, and increasingly Modernist, aesthetics were the excluded other. It would be tempting then in this context to posit some kind of fundamental incompatibility between experimental modernism and ‘totalitarianism’, be it of a charismatic or bureaucratic form. After all, we have consistently stressed that, for all their differences, both regimes ‘made similar total claims on individuals; they employed comparable organisational means to try and incorporate people into some wider sense of “national community”’.127 The experimentalism, subjectivity, and abstraction associated with the modernistic posture do not seem to cohere well with the peculiar demands made on art by the modern German dictatorships. The need to produce a collective art, readily accessible to the Volksgemeinschaft, art which might help to (re)educate the masses, does not seem to be best served by the kind of ‘difficult’ works of art produced by a modernistic avant-garde. There is then a certain logical appeal in the thesis which establishes a direct, causal linkage between totalitarian rule and conservative, realist aesthetics. The great danger of such a thesis is that it threatens to rob cultural development in the German dictatorships of all autonomy. This tendency is already only too apparent in conventional accounts of German literary development in the twentieth-century, where periodisation attempts rest largely on the force of key political datebrackets. Hence, literary developments in the Third Reich and in the 126 Golomstock, p. xiii. 127 Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 285.

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GDR tend to be perceived as discrete entities, dependent on narrow, internal political factors and constrained by political boundaries (1933−1945; 1949−1989). And yet, we have already considered a great deal of evidence which points, for instance, to Modernist continuities running into the Third Reich. Above all in architectural production, significant continuities, both historically from the Modernist culture of the Weimar Republic and geographically to contemporary Western cultures, undermine any attempt to draw stark boundaries around German cultural development between 1933 and 1945. In this context, Norbert Frei’s analysis of cultural production under National Socialist rule is of particular significance: Das noch heute anzutreffende Mißverständnis, das deutsche kulturelle Leben und die zeitgenössischen Strömungen der Populärkultur seien im Dritten Reich Gegenstand radikaler Umformung gewesen, ist allenfalls ein Indiz für das hartnäckige Fortwirken nationalsozialistischer Selbststilisierung. Entgegen dem Eindruck, den eine breit angelegte Kontroll- und Lenkungsbürokratie zu erwecken versuchte, entfaltete das Regime auf kulturellem Gebiet nur vehältnismäßig geringe Prägekraft. [...] Weder in der Literatur, noch in der Musik oder in den bildenden Künsten markiert das Jahr 1933 einen völligen Bruch der Entwicklung. Der politisch erzwungene mannigfache Abbruch personeller und institutioneller Kontinuität, der insoweit auch das Ende einer Epoche bedeutete, fällt nicht zusammen mit einer entsprechenden kunsthistorischen Periodisierung.128

In the cultural sphere as elsewhere, the methodological principles increasingly established through the historicisation of the Third Reich and the GDR must be applied. In this instance, that involves acknowledging the limitations of totalitarian rule as elaborated by Bessel and Jessen: ‘eine erste Grenze […] lag in dem, was man als historische Kontinuität bezeichnen kann.’129 No regime is able to simply select and impose an aesthetic. Rather, as Christoph Kleßmann writes of the cultural situation at the moment of political

128 Frei, p. 109. 129 Bessel and Jessen, p. 9.

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change in 1945, ‘das Haus wurde gebaut aus den Steinen, die vorhanden waren’.130 As far as GDR cultural policy is concerned, two sets of historical continuity exist. Firstly, as Kocka points out, continuities exist with the preceding Nazi dictatorship, particularly in terms of the ‘antimodernistischen Instrumentalisierung von Kunst und Kultur’.131 Secondly, in the regime’s dependence on factions exiled in Moscow, obvious continuities also exist with the cultural policies pursued in the Soviet Union during the period 1933−1945. In both cases, these continuities point to the early-to-mid 1930s as the key period in the determination, not only of Nazi aesthetic policies, but also of those of the SED. As the findings of Golomstock, Beyrau, and Taylor and van der Will all indicate, there are striking parallels in the development of Soviet and Nazi anti-modernist policies in this period, and these similarities seem to point to a common factor beyond mere coincidence. A shared total claim is certainly one such common factor, but the timing of these common developments in cultural policy argues strongly against, rather than in favour of, a political explanation. After all, while the imposition of anti-modernistic policies in the Third Reich in the mid-1930s is suggestive of a causal link to the Nazi seizure of power, the official endorsement of Socialist Realism at the Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934, seventeen years after the Bolshevik revolution, is much more difficult to account for in this way. Golomstock, for one, is unable to explain why the process of aesthetic selection should have proceeded so differently under German and Soviet totalitarianism - almost immediately in the former case, over a period of nearly twenty years in the latter case. This lag in implementation of an anti-modernistic policy in the Soviet Union, allied to the Italian Fascist example where the regime enjoyed a positive and long-lived relationship with the Futurist movement, suggests strongly that cultural development under 130 Christoph Kleßmann, ‘“Das Haus wurde gebaut aus den Steinen, die vorhanden waren”: Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Kontinuitätsdiskussion nach 1945’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 19 (1990), 159–77. 131 Kocka, ‘Die Geschichte der DDR als Forschungsproblem’, p. 21.

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totalitarianism is not merely a function of a political selection process. Cultural turning-point: 1930 or 1933? Instead, there is a need to acknowledge the significance of literary and cultural continuities across moments of political rupture, and the most explicit attempt to return autonomy to cultural development in this way is to be found in Hans Dieter Schäfer’s essay ‘Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930’.132 Across the political spectrum, Schäfer sees political uncertainty and economic crisis around 1930 spawning a conservative shift away from experimental and innovative art forms. At the political extremes of communism and National Socialism this shift was programmatic and explicit. Among individual artists and the politically non-aligned, the shift against modernism was more spontaneous. However, regardless of whether it found its expression in the founding of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, in Lukács’s theoretical attacks on Epic Theatre in Linkskurve, or in the nature poetry of the Kolonne circle, two points of the utmost importance emerge about this cultural shift. Firstly, it was not just confined to Nazi Germany. It had parallels in Western, nontotalitarian societies. Secondly, it originated not after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, but rather manifested itself between 1928 and 1932 at the latest. Here, National Socialism appears to have confirmed or radicalised the shift, but not to have initiated it. Indeed, Nazism itself can even be seen as a symptom of the same social and cultural crisis: Zweifellos verstärkten die Schrecken der Diktatur […] den Rückzug auf alte Ordnungen, doch die Krise von 1930 ist - übrigens auch international – das entscheidende Ereignis, das der neuen Epoche die Bahn öffnete. […] Unsere Zeit vergißt meistens, daß eines der Hauptargumente Hitlers, nämlich die Identifikation der extremen Formzertrümmerung mit der Krise der Gesell132 See Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930’, in Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein, pp. 55–71.

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schaft, damals in zahlreichen nichtnationalsozialistischen Kreisen erstaunlich populär war. Die historischen Stile wie Romantik und Biedermeier, der Realismus des 19. Jahrhunderts und vor allem Klassizismus gewannen als Ordnungsfaktoren überall an Boden, denn die Tendenz, in der Kunst Altes und Bewährtes wiederherzustellen, ist kein Ergebnis der Kulturpolitik Hitlers, sondern Produkt ein und derselben geschichtlichen Krise, die auch den Nationalsozialismus zum Sieg geführt hatte.133

The challenge offered by Schäfer’s statement to a narrow, politically determined view of culture in the Third Reich is clear to see, and although Schäfer’s hypothesis is only now being subjected to rigorous, empirical scrutiny, it does find support in the work of other scholars, most notably Frank Trommler.134 In positing a period of cultural restoration between 1930 and 1960 and, hence, allowing for continuities across the boundaries of totalitarian rule, Schäfer’s essay clearly complements the methodological approach elaborated thus far in the present study. Furthermore, in returning some degree of autonomy to art and culture, and in divorcing its development in the 1930s from a rigid dependence on political factors, Schäfer may provide a compelling explanation for the simultaneous marginalisation of M/modernist(ic) culture in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Fascist Italy. Furthermore, there is a host of empirical evidence which seems to support the validity of this posited cultural shift around 1930. Accounts of Weimar culture have long identified the rise of conservative cultural trends, what Peter Gay terms the ‘Revenge of the 133 Schäfer, ‘Zur Perodisierung’, pp. 57–58. 134 See Frank Trommler, ‘Der “Nullpunkt 1945” und seine Verbindlichkeit für die Literaturgeschichte’, Basis: Jahrbuch für deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur, 1 (1970), 9–25, and Frank Trommler, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur: Zum Problem der geschichtlichen Kontinuität’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration: Third Wisconsin Workshop (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 173–97. Schäfer’s thesis is being tested as part of the on-going research project ‘The Modern Restoration: Discourses of style in German literature 1930–1960’, Department of German, University of Manchester.

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Father’, in advance of the Nazi seizure of power.135 John Willett’s notion of a new cultural sobriety in the late 1920s, for example, stresses 1929−1932 as a turning-point, at the same time suggesting that already in the 1920s Modernism no longer fits ‘into the accepted picture of the movement as a series of overlapping, but continually innovatory avant-gardes’.136 In the specific area of lyric poetry, Hermann Korte too points to a paradigm shift towards traditional forms before 1933: ‘Um 1930, also vor der politischen Zäsur des Jahres 1933, [werden] allenthalben bereits Konturen einer rasch um sich greifenden traditionalistischen Gegentendenz sichtbar.’137 Similarly, Anton Kaes writes of the final years of the Weimar Republic as follows: ‘Im Literarischen setzte sich um 1930 ein im Formalen wie Thematischen rückwärtsgewandter Traditionalismus durch, der vor allem der Lyrik zugute kam.’138 Wolfram Wessels is another who identifies this growth in aesthetic conservatism in the final years of the Weimar Republic, viewing new radio guidelines introduced in 1932, for instance, as the expression ‘eines Denkens jener Zeit […], das zudem die gesamte Reform bestimmte. In ihnen spiegelten sich jene deutschnationalen, teilweise völkischen Vorstellungen, die es den Nationalsozialisten so leicht machten, sich des Rundfunks zu bedienen’.139 It is in this context, that Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen asserts

135 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Insider as Outsider (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 125–52. 136 John Willett, The New Sobriety: Art and Politics in the Weimar Period 1917–1933 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 12. 137 Hermann Korte, ‘Lyrik am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Rolf Grimminger, 12 vols (Munich: Hanser, 1979– ) VIII: Literatur der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933, ed. by Bernhard Weyergraf (1995), pp. 601–35 (p. 618). 138 Anton Kaes (ed.), Weimarer Republik: Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur 1918–1933 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983), p. xlv. 139 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 74.

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categorically ‘daß unter solchen Vorzeichen das Jahr 1933 keine einschneidende Zäsur mehr setzt’.140 Towards a model of cultural change If this evidence argues persuasively for an uncoupling of the direct causal linkage between political and cultural change, then it must also be unrealistic to ascribe complete autonomy to aesthetic developments. As Bernd Hüppauf writes of Schäfer’s privileging of aesthetic criteria to the exclusion of significant political factors: Der Faschismus wäre dann nicht nur 1945 gestorben, er hätte auch keinen Anteil an der Konstitution einer literarischen Epoche in Deutschland gehabt, die von ca. 1930 bis 1960 reicht, also die ‘klassische’ Zeit des europäischen Faschismus einschließt.141

Instead, Hüppauf seeks to construct a more complex model, where social, political, and cultural change exist in a reciprocal, multi-causal relationship. This model highlights not only perceived moments of cultural rupture, but also threshold moments of potential cultural change. As such, the crises around 1930, the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, and the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 all acquire an equivalent status as periods of potential cultural change, where existing cultural norms are thrown into question and cultural activity and debate intensify. The net result of Hüppauf’s analysis is to strengthen Schäfer’s thesis, since of these periods of potential cultural change, it is only the period around 1930 at which cultural change is seen to be effected. Here, in the initiation of a period of cultural conservatism, Hüppauf stresses the significance of con140 Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland 1890–1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), p. 22. 141 Bernd Hüppauf, ‘Krise ohne Wandel: Die kulturelle Situation 1945–1949’, in Bernd Hüppauf (ed.), ‘Die Mühen der Ebenen’: Kontinuität und Wandel in der deutschen Literatur und Gesellschaft 1945–1949 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), pp. 47–112 (p. 57).

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temporary periodicals as a site where cultural change is contested and determined, and in this context it is significant that Trommler and Kaes are able to locate a host of programmatic statements in literary journals which offer a synchronic snapshot of this moment of cultural change around 1930.142 Willy Haas, for instance, writes as follows in Die literarische Welt in May 1930: ‘Man spricht überall in Literatenkreisen von der kulturellen und literarischen Reaktion in der letzten Saison. Die radikale Berliner Literatur fühlt den Boden unter den Füßen schwinden.’143 For Hüppauf, as for Schäfer and others, the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 only confirms or radicalises an existing conservative cultural direction. In this respect, there is substantial evidence to posit a period of fundamental cultural and social change around 1930, triggered by the Western economic crises of the late 1920s, and any such cultural shift has significant implications for the study of literary production in the German dictatorships. If we accept that a broad-ranging sense of crisis encouraged a conservative and restorative shift in culture around 1930, then what are conventionally perceived to be the totalitarian, anti-modernistic cultural policies of the Third Reich can no longer be ascribed solely to National Socialist cultural policy. This is not to say that this aesthetic conservatism is entirely unrelated to the Nazi seizure of power. The two phenomena can be viewed as parallel developments, cultural and political manifestations of a reaction to crisis, attempts to engender cultural and political re-birth from that crisis. However, if National Socialism did not solely initiate a conservative shift in culture, but rather plugged into and radicalised a pre-existing cultural trend, and if ‘conservative’ aesthetic production within the Third Reich need not then be seen as a direct product of Nazi rule, a recognition of this cultural shift around 1930 allows us to illuminate the shadow cast by the total claim of the National Socialist regime and reveal previously obscured aesthetic developments. In particular, it may be that the causal relationship 142 See Trommler, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur’, and Kaes, pp. 653–89. 143 Willy Haas, ‘Restauration’, Die literarische Welt, 6 (16 May 1930), 1. See Kaes, p. 659.

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between the literary attitude of ‘inner emigration’ and National Socialism can be weakened somewhat. Joseph Dolan for one views the lyric inwardness of the Kolonne circle of young writers in the early 1930s not as an immediate reaction to Nazi rule, but as a (semi) autonomous aesthetic development of the late 1920s.144 This suggestion will clearly be of direct relevance when considering the writing of Günter Eich, a member of that literary grouping and frequent contributor to the journal of the same name, and disentangling, where appropriate, pre-existing aesthetics of a broadly anti-modernistic nature from the aesthetic conservatism of National Socialism will be one of the principal tasks of chapter four of this study. As far as the GDR is concerned, the connection to this period of cultural change around 1930 is less direct. Nonetheless, Lukács’s ‘conservative’ aesthetic doctrine can likewise be seen as a product the crisis of 1930. As Trommler suggests: Diese Wende [um 1930] - das sei hier vorweggenommen - blieb angesichts der kommunistischen Politik unter Stalin keineswegs ein bürgerliches Phänomen. Die literarischen Wandlungen sozialistisch orientierter Autoren zwischen 1936 und 1941 trugen manche verwandte Züge.145

The subsequent dominance of Lukács’s aesthetic programme within the cultural policies of the SED in the 1950s argues strongly that, in East Germany at least, 1945 represents only a period of potential, not realised, cultural change, and therefore that the restorative, antimodernistic cultural orthodoxy initiated in 1930 persists into the GDR. A change in the trajectory of cultural development did not proceed until the 1960s, and again here this development can be seen to have been largely independent of the political control of German totalitarianism. As Jäger indicates, SED policies sought to catch up with cultural developments which had passed them by: ‘In die steril 144 See Joseph P. Dolan, ‘The Theory and Practice of Apolitical Literature: Die Kolonne 1929–1932’, Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 1 (1977), 157–71. 145 Trommler, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur’, p. 183.

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gewordene Kulturpolitik der sechziger Jahre, an der die tatsächliche Entwicklung der Künste vorbeigegangen war, kam erst wieder Bewegung, als Walter Ulbricht von der politischen Bühne abtrat.’146 As with the restorative shift around 1930, the re-emergence of a more modernistic posture amongst artists in the GDR in the 1960s was not the direct product of political decision-making, but was part of a semi-autonomous cultural development. Hence, a significant shared feature of culture in the German dictatorships is not only its subordination to the total claim of the respective regimes, but also paradoxically its autonomy from that claim. The shared antimodernism of the two regimes may arise in no small measure from their common location in a mid-twentieth-century period of cultural and literary ‘restoration’. Only retrospectively is that anti-modernism subsumed under the total claims of the regimes and its own cultural origins obscured.

146 Jäger, p. 139.

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Chapter Two ‘Ideology’: Towards a comparative paradigm

Fascism may be limited in time and place, it may have a clear beginning and a clear end in public history, it may seem easily defined; but this unity, this definition, was artificially imposed upon it. […] By comparison, communism, its ideological antithesis, […] is clear and definite. Communism leads us back, past all its heresies and deviations, to a single intellectual source. It has a doctrine, or a dogma, which can be stated and whose identity is proclaimed by all its adherents throughout the world. Fascism has no such intellectual rigour, no agreed prophets. Its origins are plural, divergent, imprecise.1

Where conventional organisational paradigms, such as totalitarianism, can be seen to force the two German dictatorships together, conventional ideological paradigms tend to pull the Third Reich and the GDR apart. Notwithstanding the common role played in each of the German dictatorships by a single official ideology, on behalf of which the total claim was made, it is precisely in their ideological dimension, arguably more than any other, that the regimes of the Third Reich and the GDR demonstrate fundamental, unbridgeable points of divergence. As a ‘communist’ or ‘Marxist-Leninist’ regime, the GDR is grouped together with the Soviet Union and its satellites; as a ‘fascist’ regime, the Third Reich is grouped together with a further discrete, if slightly more diverse, set of movements, most notable of which was Mussolini’s Italian Fascist regime. Indeed, such is the opposition between the two ideologies that while German fascism has been

1

Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’, in S. J. Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 19–38 (p. 20).

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analysed as a form of anti-Marxism,2 the Marxist regime of the GDR proudly proclaimed its anti-fascism. While the former sought to construct a national community founded on the timeless laws of race and biology, the utopian vision of the latter was based on the ‘objective’ laws of historical materialism. Furthermore, while the communist paradigm seems to constitute an archetypal example of ideology,3 many scholars go as far as to deny any place for Nazi ideology within existing ideological frameworks. Instead, National Socialism is regarded either as a unique aberration of German irrationalism or as the specific product of its leader, that is, as ‘Hitlerism’.4 On these terms, lacking both a coherent doctrinal system and any positive, utopian vision, Nazi ideology must be seen to contrast so starkly with communist ideology as to fall outside the Friedrich and Brzezinsky definition of totalitarian ideology: Die totalitären Diktaturen besitzen alle folgendes: 1. Eine ausgearbeitete Ideologie, bestehend aus einem offiziellen Lehrgebäude, das alle lebenswichtigen Aspekte der menschlichen Existenz umfaßt und an die sich alle in dieser Gesellschaft Lebenden zumindest passiv zu halten haben; diese Ideologie ist charakteristisch auf einen idealen Endzustand der Menschheit ausgerichtet und projiziert – das heißt, sie enthält

2 3

4

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See, for instance, Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, trans. by Leila Vennewitz (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), p. 20. Consider a simple dictionary definition: ‘the system of ideas at the basis of an economic or political theory (Marxist ideology).’ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, ed. by R.E. Allen, eighth edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 586. On Nazism as an outgrowth of German irrationalism, see Hugh TrevorRoper, The Last Days of Hitler, fourth edition (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 3–5; Georg Lukacs, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962); George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966). On Nazism as Hitlerism, see Karl Dietrich Bracher, ‘The Role of Hitler: Perspectives of Interpretation’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A Reader’s Guide (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp. 211–25 (p. 215).

eine chiliastische Forderung, gegründet auf eine radikale Ablehnung der bestehenden Gesellschaft mit der Eroberung der Welt für die neue.5

Even where it is deemed comparable with the ideology of other movements, as a variety of fascism, this perceived distinction with communism persists. As ‘an ill-sorted hodge-podge of ideas’,6 at best incoherent, irrational, and nihilistic, the perceived ‘anti-ideology’ of National Socialism seems scarcely comparable with the ideological basis of the GDR. In this instance, the conventional totalitarianism model seems not so much to obscure significant differences in content as to seek to compare two essentially non-comparable entities. In the sense that we begin from this underlying assumption of non-comparability, the comparative method in this chapter must proceed in the opposite direction to that of the previous chapter, where the original assumption was one of (near) identity between the organisational features of the regimes. The aim is not to obliterate what genuine differences existed between the two ideologies, but rather to seek points of contact which might place these differences in a more measured context of comparability. This comparative analysis of National Socialist and SED ideologies is structured around three central issues: firstly the extent of convergence and divergence in terms of common structural features and contrasting core political myths; secondly the comparability of the ideologies in terms of their relationship to social and technological modernisation; and thirdly the striking structural similarities in the dominant, ideologically conditioned variety of discourse attached to each of the ideologies.

5

6

Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniev Brzezinsky, ‘Die allgemeinen Merkmale der totalitären Diktatur’, in Eckhard Jesse (ed.), Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine Bilanz der internationalen Forschung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999), pp. 225–36 (p. 230). Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’, p. 20.

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Political ideologies in comparative perspective National Socialism as a species of generic fascism In its attempts to locate Nazi ideology within a framework of scholarly comparability, the historiography of generic fascism offers an obvious point of departure for our attempts to subject National Socialism to rigorous comparative analysis. And yet, as the comments of Hugh Trevor-Roper suggest only too clearly, far from locating the ideology of National Socialism within this comparative framework, much of the historiography of generic fascism has served only to reinforce its apparent lack of comparability to other ideological systems. Indeed, the study of generic fascism has been characterised above all by a lack of consensus as to precisely what that entity might be. On the one hand, many scholars have sought the common basis of generic fascism in shared organisational, rather than ideological, elements, not least because the perception remains that fascism has no genuine ideological basis. As Zeev Sternhell summarises: For many years, after all, it was common form to see fascism either as completely wanting in ideological concepts or as having gotten itself up for the sake of the cause in a few rags of doctrine, which therefore need not be taken seriously, nor allowed even the minimal importance that is attached as a rule to the ideas professed by a political movement.7

It is in this context that Roger Scruton’s Dictionary of Political Thought continues to define fascism as ‘an amalgam of disparate conceptions, often ill-understood, often bizarre’, as ‘the form of an ideology, but without specific content’.8 On the other hand, even where the ideological basis of fascism has been granted importance in its own right, the focus has often remained on the negative elements of fascist 7 8

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Zeev Sternhell, ‘Fascist Ideology’, in Laqueur (ed.), pp. 315–76 (p. 316). Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 169.

ideology, on what it sought to oppose and destroy, rather than on the positive vision it sought to promote. Both of these tendencies, that is to define fascism primarily in terms of its organisation or in terms of its negations, are readily apparent in what is normally considered to be the foundation of post-war fascist studies, namely Ernst Nolte’s original six-point ‘fascist minimum’: (i) anti-marxism; (ii) anti-liberalism; (iii) anti-conservatism; (iv) the leadership principle; (v) a party army; (vi) the aim of totalitarianism.9 Similarly, Stanley Payne’s 1980 formulation of his influential ‘typographical description of fascism’ attributes a primary role to the ‘fascist negations’, from which a detailed inventory of features concerning ‘ideology and aims’ and ‘style and organization’ then follows.10 At the same time, the work of academics such as Nolte and Payne in seeking to develop a notion of generic fascism has done much to start to establish fascism as a recognisable ideological entity. Against this background, it is possible to locate a number of accounts which lend fascism both a positive ideological content and a degree of cohesion comparable to other ideologies. Hence, Juan J. Linz considers that ‘fascism was much more than an anti-this or anti-that movement’.11 Similarly for A. James Gregor, ‘Fascism was a far more complex and systematic intellectual product than many of its antagonists […] have been prepared to admit’.12 Nonetheless, granting fascism this degree of ideological rigour has often been at the expense of National Socialism, so that Nazi ideology has tended to be excluded from any emerging fascist paradigm. Gregor’s comments, for instance, relate overwhelmingly to Italian Fascist ideology, while in Sternhell’s opinion, ‘nazism cannot […] be treated as a mere 9 10 11 12

Ernst Nolte, Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen Bewegungen (Munich: Piper, 1968), p. 385. Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1980), p. 7. Juan J. Linz, ‘Some Notes toward a Comparative Study of Fascism in Sociological, Historical Perspective’, in Laqueur (ed.), pp. 3–121 (p. 5). A. James Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (Toronto: Collier–Macmillan, 1969), pp. 26–27.

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variant of fascism: its emphasis on biological determinism rules out all efforts to deal with it as such’.13 Hence, even within the framework of generic fascism, Nazism has often remained an aberration. The mythic core of fascism A fruitful recent approach to this problematic issue of the generic fascist minimum, and with it a potential step forward in terms of establishing the comparability of National Socialist ideology, has been pioneered by Roger Griffin. Rather than setting out to construct a lengthy definition of generic fascism which explicitly includes all the organisational and ideological forms which specific fascist movements have adopted, Griffin seeks to abstract from those various concrete manifestations of the fascist phenomenon a concisely defined ideal-type, predicated on a ‘generic ideological core’.14 Fascism is then defined not in terms of its admittedly ‘plural, diverse, imprecise’ historical forms,15 but in terms of a single core political myth which provided these diverse movements with their revolutionary dynamism and which can be distilled from the programmatic statements of fascism’s own ideologues. As such, Griffin defines ‘fascism’ as ‘a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism’.16 As we shall see, this admirably concise, if somewhat cryptic, formulation has three principal strengths. Firstly, it successfully identifies an ideological core common to all fascist movements, but from which their divergent organisational and stylistic forms can be extrapolated. Secondly, and more importantly for the present study, this definition has both descriptive and explanatory potential when applied to the particular organisational and ideological dynamics of the National Socialist regime. Thirdly, and of greatest significance 13 14 15 16

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Sternhell, p. 317. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 13. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’, p. 20. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, p. 26. Subsequent reference, p. 13.

within the current context, the definition of fascism as a ‘genus of political ideology’ assumes ‘that fascism is broadly on a par with such concepts as “liberalism”, “socialism”, “conservatism” or “nationalism”’. That is to say, fascism acquires a status as a modern political ideology, distinct from, but eminently comparable with, other ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism. Fascism as rebirth It is Griffin’s contention that, despite marked surface differences in style, organisation, and even some ideological features, fascist movements share a common political myth which constitutes their ideological core, namely ‘the conviction that a process of national rebirth (palingenesis) has become essential to bring to an end a protracted period of social and cultural decadence’, this rebirth being achieved through ‘a revolutionary form of integral nationalism (ultranationalism)’.17 This core is both sufficiently specific to exclude other more ‘conservative’ authoritarian and nationalist movements, and sufficiently abstract to allow for considerable national variation in its concrete manifestation, thereby encompassing the diverse phenomena conventionally labelled ‘fascist’. Griffin’s definition builds on the existing historiography of fascism, where scholars such as Nolte, Payne, Sternhell, and Gregor have all identified this palingenetic drive, albeit peripherally, as a common feature of fascism.18 It also stands up to empirical comparison with the programmatic statements of fascist movements stretching from 1920s Italy to the present day.19 More remarkably, the notion of fascism as, at its core, ‘palingentic ultra-nationalism’ seems to have succeeded in generating a previously 17 18 19

Roger Griffin, ‘Fascism’, in Roger Griffin (ed.), International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus (London: Edward Arnold, 1998), pp. 35–39 (p. 35 and p. 36). See Griffin, International Fascism, p. 14. See the collection of texts in Roger Griffin (ed.), Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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unthinkable, if still rather embryonic, consensus amongst scholars of fascism. Certainly, by 1998 Griffin was able to claim that ‘without any formal association between them, several academics concerned with the theory of generic fascism have published analyses over the last few years which are broadly congruent with my approach’.20 In particular, Payne’s 1996 re-formulation of his typology of fascism seems to demonstrate a strong influence from Griffin’s work.21 The positive ideology and aims of fascism now replace its negations at the head of his typological description. More significantly, despite insisting on the need for a lengthy descriptive inventory of features, Payne delivers a single-sentence definition of generic fascism, the initial elements of which should by now be familiar: ‘a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as end as well as means and tends to normalize war and/or the military virtues.’ Significantly for our analysis of National Socialist ideology, Griffin does not deny a place for the Nazi regime in the new paradigm of generic fascism. As a species of fascism, Nazi ideology shares the core fascist myth of ultra-nationalist rebirth. Of course, a number of specific features, such as the particular personality of Hitler and the acute virulence of his anti-Semitism, tend to mark National Socialist ideology out from other fascist movements. In this sense, an emphasis on the generic fascist myth risks failing to give sufficient weight to the specific core of Nazi ideology, namely its ‘racial, eugenic, and social Darwinist values’.22 However, justification 20

21 22

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Griffin, International Fascism, p. 14. See, for instance, R. Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995); Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present, Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 9; Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), pp. 72–73. Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism: 1919–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1995), pp. 3–14. Subsequent reference, p. 14. Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, third edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), p. 145.

for retaining National Socialism within the generic fascist paradigm can be found in the recurrent presence of the core fascist myth of rebirth in the public rhetoric of figures such as Hitler, Goebbels, and Rosenberg.23 The utopian promise of national rebirth from the corrupt decadence of Weimar, from the political and economic crises of the late 1920s, and from the Dolchstoß of 1918, can be seen to be a central element in the genuine popular appeal of Nazi ideology. Furthermore, Griffin describes convincingly how this central myth is a determining factor in the particular dynamics of Nazi policy, considered at length in chapter one. The radicalisation, charismatic systemlessness, and self-destruction of the regime are all shown to follow on from this myth and the difficulties of translating the myth into reality.24 The inherent revolutionary dynamic in the myth of rebirth is not readily liable to stabilisation, but rather rests on the maintenance of a near-constant crisis mentality from which the fascist movement can deliver the nation. In Griffin’s words: Fascism is in its element as an oppositional ideology only as long as the climate of national crisis prevails […]. Since fascism’s mythic power is automatically sapped […] once political stability and relative social harmony are restored, it can only maintain its momentum and cohesion by continually precipitating events which seemed to fulfil the promise of permanent revolution, of continuing palingenesis.

The radical dynamism inherent in the core fascist myth is then a central driving element in the ‘permanent revolution’ of Nazi policy and its almost infinitely radicalising dynamic. In this way, Nazi ideology may be viewed as a specifically racist permutation of the ideal-type of generic fascism, its core myth a biologically determinist form of ultranationalist palingenesis. 23

24

See, for instance, Adolf Hitler, ‘The Place of Art in Germany’s Political Reawakening’; Joseph Goebbels, ‘The Total Revolution of National Socialism’; Alfred Rosenberg, ‘German Rebirth’, in Griffin (ed.), Fascism, pp. 139– 40; pp. 133–35; pp. 131–32. Griffin, Nature of Fascism, pp. 106–10 and pp. 39–44. Subsequent reference, p. 39.

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Shared features of political ideologies Although compelling, this ready applicability of Griffin’s model to the specific case of National Socialism, and its particular political dynamics, is arguably not the most significant aspect of Griffin’s approach. Of even greater value within the context of a comparative analysis of ideology in the Third Reich and the GDR is that part of Griffin’s definition of generic fascism which characterises it as a ‘genus of political ideology’. As Griffin himself writes: A convergence of opinion or ‘common sense’ is beginning to develop among both theorists of generic fascism and specialists working on specific aspects of it, that it is to be treated on a par with other major political ideologies rather than as a special case defined primarily in terms of its negations, organizational forms, and style. In other words, […] fascism is definable as an ideology with a specific ‘positive’, utopian vision of the ideal state of society.25

The broader significance of Griffin’s work, and the consensus which is emerging around it, is that it is able to reinstate fascist ideology, with its own positive, utopian vision for the future, within the kind of conventional definition of ideology employed by Friedrich and Brzezinsky. National Socialist ideology, as a specific manifestation of generic fascism, is also brought within this ideological framework and hence rendered comparable with SED ideology. Indeed, implicit in Griffin’s analysis is a taxonomy of ‘political ideology’, where specific ideological permutations, such as National Socialism, occupy a species position beneath generic ideal-types, such as fascism. Both ideological species and genus are in turn subordinate to the superordinate category of political ideology, and it is this implicit taxonomy which opens up the possibility of genuine comparative analysis between the official ideologies of the Third Reich and the GDR. Just as National Socialist ideology can be analysed as a species of generic fascism, which is in turn a genus of political ideology, so SED ideology can be regarded as a species of generic Marxism25

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Roger Griffin, ‘Preface’, in Griffin (ed.), International Fascism, pp. i–xii (p. x).

Leninism, itself likewise a genus of the broader class of political ideology. As distinct species of a broader ideological class, both are liable to abstraction ideal-typically in terms of a core political myth, and this facilitates a comparative analysis of Nazi and SED ideology in terms of their common structural elements and divergent core myths. Before examining the contrasting ideological dynamics of the regimes - dynamic radicalisation in the Third Reich, loss of radicalism and atrophy in the GDR - which arise from those divergent core myths, let us consider the ten generalised assumptions which underpin Griffin’s conception of ‘political ideology’.26 These assumptions offer points of contact between the structure and functioning of the two ideological systems which start to break down many of the long-standing barriers to a comparison of National Socialist and SED ideology. From this comparative foundation, a contrastive analysis can then be developed around the different nature of their respective core myths, considering above all the implications of these differences for the organisation and dynamics of cultural policy. 1. Rational or irrational? As we have seen, one of the most persistent of these barriers has been the perception that National Socialism was an aberrant ideological phenomenon. With its absence of recognised ideologues and appeal to cultic Germanic traditions, it has been written off as in essence inconsistent, self-contradictory irrationalism, or in TrevorRoper’s words, ‘bestial Nordic nonsense’.27 By comparison, MarxismLeninism appears to be a relatively coherent, rational system of thought founded on an intellectually respectable, theoretical tradition. Point five of Griffin’s model immediately starts to undermine any such distinction:

26 27

See Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, pp. 15–17. References in subsequent paragraphs from this source, unless otherwise stated. Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, p. 3.

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An ideology is intrinsically irrational, for even if it claims to be rational in its selflegitimation and is articulated by some of its carriers or reconstructed by those studying it with a high degree of theoretical coherence, it owes its power to inspire action and provide a sense of reality to the fact that it is rooted in pre-verbal, subconscious feelings and affective drives.

The levelling of this apparent contrast between the two ideologies is buttressed by a further complementary assumption: Ideologies are lived out as truths, being perceived as ideologies only when observed with critical detachment from outside. Their carriers experience them ‘from within’ as an integral part of their world-view and associate them with normality, common sense, reasonableness, convictions, self-evident facts.

Here, judgements concerning the rationality, coherence, or truthvalue of particular ideologies are seen to rest not on the nature and content of the ideas themselves, but on the standpoint from which they are perceived. Clearly, to committed followers of Nazism the ideological principles and core myths expounded charismatically in Hitler’s oratory appeared as reasonable, rational, and true as do the more intellectually expressed writings of Karl Marx to carriers of that particular ideology. In a contrastive analysis of the two ideologies, we may seek to make distinctions concerning the modes of transmission of the two sets of beliefs or the types of intellectual tradition which the regimes sought to draw on, and on these terms clear differences emerge. Where National Socialism made claims for itself as the expression of an instinctive, organic German Geist, MarxismLeninism made claims for its own scientific validity, as an expression of universal reason and Intellekt. The former may be said to have had ‘anti-rational’ dynamics, the latter ‘pro-rational’ dynamics. National Socialism may have been more eclectic in its sources, MarxismLeninism more consistent. However, we are not dealing with one inherently inconsistent and irrational ideological entity and another which is consistent and rational. In the official ideologies of the German dictatorships, we are faced with two intrinsically and 96

comparably irrational constructs, perceived differences between them being often a product of the intellectual and moral standpoint of those analysing them. 2. Inherent heterogeneity If German fascism was indeed a relatively more eclectic, diverse ideological movement in its concrete form, Griffin’s model does not suggest that this relative heterogeneity should disqualify National Socialism as a political ideology. Indeed, for Griffin a feature of ideology is not the consistency of its realisation, but rather the diversity of individual interpretations of what is an abstract, idealtypical core: Ideologies are not homogeneous at a lived level, for every individual will rationalize them in a unique way, emphasize different aspects of the cluster of values and policies which they propound and have a personal elective affinity with them. This leads to the existence of highly nuanced and even conflicting intuitions and conceptions as to what an ideology’s salient principles are and how best to implement them.

Similarly, individuals exhibit varying degrees of attachment to that core and varying motivations for that attachment: There are many levels of commitment to an ideology, ranging from the intensity of activists, leadership and ideologues of a movement at the heart of its propagation to the more passive or pragmatic ‘fellow-travellers’ at the periphery with no deep or lasting involvement with it. The contents of an ideology will become more nuanced and sophisticated towards a movement’s activist core and more simplistic and crudely propagandistic towards the periphery.

Ideology is no longer conceived of as a rigid, monolithic entity, but as a more fluid, fragmentary concept. A consistency of vision operates only at the level of abstraction. At a lived level, ideologies reveal a much messier, heterogeneous reality. As such, National Socialism appears to be less an aberration, and more a prototypical example of this ideological tendency. 97

As well as rescuing Nazism as a comparable ideological entity, perceiving the official ideologies of the Third Reich and the GDR in this way, that is as essentially heterogeneous and fragmented outside their ideal-type abstraction, clearly complements the theoretical and methodological principles elaborated in chapter one of this study. There, the principal methodological procedure was the attempt to submit monolithic, propaganda-induced perceptions of totalitarianism to a process of historicisation. The Alltagsgeschichte approach of historians of the Third Reich, with its emphasis on the shortfall between propaganda and practice and the uneven reality of everyday life under National Socialism, clearly complements assumptions which undermine a monolithic view of the regime’s official ideology. Likewise, the emerging popularity of notions of ideological penetration in the GDR, instead of top-down repression, is much more compatible with a conceptualisation of ideology which rests on individually motivated and individually realised responses to a basic core myth. Above all, the significance within the present study of this more ‘indvidualised’ model of ideology lies in its application to patterns of assent and dissent. As we shall see in the following chapter, the historiography of resistance in the German dictatorships has shifted over the past twenty years away from monumental divisions between victims and perpetrators, conformity and nonconformity, collaboration and resistance, and towards more fluid categories. The application of these fluid categories to the literary sphere is one of the principal aims of this project, and central to this exploration of more ambivalent and individual modes of assenting and dissenting behaviour must be a model of the official ideology which stresses not its monolithic, ‘either/or’ nature, but the nuanced and fluid character of individual responses to it.

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3. Conservative or revolutionary? Scope for divergence in the ideological dynamics of the Third Reich and the GDR starts to emerge in point two of Griffin’s model. Here, he builds on existing theoretical distinctions between the ‘conservative’ and ‘revolutionary’ action of an ideology: Ideology can assume a reactionary, progressive or revolutionary aspect, according to whether it acts in a given situation as (a) a conformist, conservative, hegemonic force, (b) an idealistic, reforming, but ‘systemic’ force or (c) a utopian, subversive, ‘extra-systemic’ one.

At the heart of the distinction drawn in the previous chapter between the ‘charismatic totalitarianism’ of the Third Reich and the ‘bureaucratic totalitarianism’ of the GDR was a perceived difference in the ideological dynamism of the two regimes. While over the course of the Third Reich, the Nazi regime seems to have been able to maintain what Griffin terms a ‘revolutionary aspect’, outside or even at the expense of governmental institutions, the official ideology of the GDR seems to have acted as an increasingly ‘conservative’ or ‘reactionary’ force, the initial revolutionary, utopian vision replaced by the more pragmatic and defensive aim of maintaining the system. These contrasting ideological dynamics – the revolutionary radicalisation of Nazi ideology, on the one hand, and the ideological atrophy of SED doctrine, on the other – are without doubt the most significant points of divergence between the functioning of the ideological systems in the German dictatorships. The question we must address now is the extent to which this contrast can in some sense be predicted by the different nature of the core myths of the two ideologies.

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Core myths of SED ideology If National Socialism is to be defined as a specifically racist, biologically determinist permutation of the core fascist myth of palingenetic ultra-nationalism, then the first step in constructing a contrastive analysis of ideology in the German dictatorships must be to identify the parallel ideological core of SED ideology. In generalised terms, Griffin formulates the nature of this core as follows: Each ideology can be defined ideal-typically in terms of a core of values and perceptions of history. This core underlies its vision of the ideal society, its evaluation of the present one and, if the perceived discrepancy is too great, its strategy for improving or transforming it. […] A generic ideology is one in which a number of distinct political movements or regimes can be shown to share the same (ideally-typically constructed) ideological core.28

For SED ideology, the relevant generic ideology is MarxismLeninism, and, as far as seeking the ideological core of MarxismLeninism is concerned (that is, its ‘core of values and perceptions of history’, ‘its vision of the ideal society’, and ‘its strategy for improving or transforming’ existing society), we are not faced with anything like the lack of consensus which has characterised the study of fascism. Firstly, Karl Marx’s recognisable body of intellectual work provides a number of central political myths concerning the class struggle, the inherent instability of capitalism, and the inevitable progression towards a working-class revolution, the redistribution of the means of production, and the establishment of a communist society. Secondly, in the Leninist variant of the ideology, Marx’s laws of historical materialism are supplemented most importantly by the notion of the proletariat’s ‘false consciousness’ and the need for a vanguard elite to promote communism through the principles of democratic centralism, rather than working-class revolution. Here, Marxist ideology acquires a form where distinct organisational features are programmed into the ideological core. If we define generic Marxism28

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Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, p. 17, emphasis in the original.

Leninism, then, as ‘a democratic centralist form of Marxist historical materialism’, we are able to point towards a recognised body of core ideological principles. What remains is to identify the specific features of the SED variety of this generic ideology. What was unique about the SED variant of Marxism-Leninism was the historical and political situation in which this generic ideology was implemented. That is to say, SED ideology was a particularly German, post-fascist permutation of Marxism-Leninism, and this post-fascist location had fundamental implications for the way in which the generic ideological core of Marxism-Leninism was interpreted in the GDR. Above all, one of the lasting legacies of National Socialism was the highly effective exclusion and destruction of German communism at grass-roots level. As Mary Fulbrook points out, the theoretical considerations of Marxism-Leninism, in particular as they relate to the notion of false consciousness, ‘were given added weight by the experiences of German communists in the turbulent conditions of early and mid-twentieth-century Germany’.29 This served only to heighten the perceived need for the party to play a vanguard role in the construction of Marxism-Leninism in the GDR, and as such SED ideology became a relatively elitist variant, dependent, at least initially, on relatively small groups of exiles to implement communist theories. Furthermore, the immediate German fascist legacy, together with fears of its resurgence, was a central factor in the ‘paranoia [which] lay at the root of many of the measures taken by the state’. It was this post-fascist paranoia which partly informed the hard-line, neo-Stalinist nature of the regime. It was the fascist legacy which ensured that the SED variant of Marxist-Leninist ideology was ‘in practice more centralist than democratic’. On the other side, it was also the post-fascist location of the GDR which gave the official ideology its principal unifying, utopian vision. As Mary Fulbrook points out, the GDR acquired its basic

29

Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 23. Subsequent references, p. 23 and p. 8.

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legitimation from ‘its status as the truly “anti-fascist” state’.30 Or in Kershaw’s words: ‘anti-fascism was from the beginning an indispensable cornerstone of the state’s ideology and legitimacy.’31 Likewise, Jürgen Kocka stresses the genuine ideological attraction of antifascism in the immediate post-war situation and beyond: ‘die Absicht, das Erbe des Faschismus zu überwinden und ein neues, besseres Deutschland zu errichten, diente auch als ehrliche Motivation für viele in SBZ und DDR, sehr lange auch als Kraftquelle der entstehenden DDR.’32 Much of the regime’s initial revolutionary dynamism derived from the central goal of anti-fascism, and at the heart of this ideological core lay a further official political myth. According to Comintern’s official definition, fascism was itself only ‘the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist, and most imperialist elements of finance capital’.33 As such, the ideology of the SED opposed fascism not only in its historical form of National Socialism, but also in the capitalist reconstruction of West Germany, where the de-nazification process was perceived to be entirely inadequate. It was this founding goal, in addition to the principles of Marxism, which provided the utopian vision of the East German zone which attracted so many returning intellectuals. The core of SED ideology might then be summarised as a relatively elite and, above all, anti-fascist permutation of MarxismLeninism.

30 31 32 33

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Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, p. 24. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 10. See also Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism 1890–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 369. Jürgen Kocka, Vereinigungskrise: Zur Geschichte der Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), p. 100. Comintern, ‘The Terrorist Dictatorship of Finance Capital’, in Griffin (ed.), International Fascism, pp. 59–66 (p. 59).

Divergent myths, divergent dynamics At a generic level, clear differences begin to emerge from this analysis of the respective core myths of fascism and Marxism-Leninism. In particular, the core myths of Marxism-Leninism can be seen to be much more rigorously codified and founded on a much more clearly defined theoretical basis than the core myths of fascism, and in this sense SED ideology seems to come much closer to the cohesive body of political theory conventionally demanded of ‘ideology’. As a result of this rigorous codification, the ideological core of MarxismLeninism is elaborated in a significantly more detailed manner, with specific prescriptions as to how its utopian vision might be put into practice and how its ideal society should be structured, both politically and socio-economically. By contrast, the fascist core lacks these prescribed elements, the vagueness of its mythic promise of cultural and organic renewal providing much of its appeal and potency. As Griffin comments in relation to the heterogeneity of fascism’s social support, ‘there is nothing in principle which precludes an employed or unemployed member of the working classes or an aristocrat, a city-dweller or a peasant, a graduate, or someone “educationally challenged” from being susceptible to fascist myth’.34 At the same time, this absence of prescription generates the eclecticism of fascism’s concrete manifestations which is often perceived as a symptom of its ideological inconsistency. In Griffin’s words: The core myth of palingenetic ultra-nationalism is susceptible to so many nuances of interpretation in terms of specific ‘surface’ ideas and policies that, more so even than socialism before Marx, it tends to generate a wide range of competing currents and factions even within the same political culture.35

For Griffin, fascism is ‘inherently syncretic, bringing heterogeneous currents of ideas into a loose alliance united only by the common

34 35

Roger Griffin, ‘General Introduction’, in Griffin (ed.), Fascism, pp. 1–12 (p. 7). Griffin, Nature of Fascism, p. 40.

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struggle for a new order’,36 and so, although both generic ideologies are heterogeneous at a lived level, it may be that generic fascism tends towards greater diversity, both in terms of the social make-up of its support and the concrete manifestations of its core myth. Furthermore, the relative heterogeneity of generic fascism may also start to suggest that its concrete manifestations tend towards greater instability than their Marxist-Leninist counterparts. Equally, the more theoretically rigorous, ‘pro-rational’ dynamics of generic Marxism-Leninism, in particular as they relate to prescribed organisational discipline, seem to suggest more stable, bureaucratic forms of rule. These distinctions are allied to a further observation which Griffin makes about the ideological core of fascism: Fascism radically diverges from liberalism, socialism, conservatism and most religious ideologies by making the revolutionary process central to its core myth to the exclusion of a fully thought-through ‘orthodox’ stage when the dynamics of society settle down.37

The strength of the fascist core myth lies in its potent utopian vision which is able to attract relatively large-scale and diverse populist support. However, this appeal relies in large measure on the vague formulation and concentrated revolutionary promise of the myth of rebirth, and these, at least for Griffin, are structural weaknesses which seem to undermine its ability to stabilise and systematise itself. As a rejection of conventional modes of liberal politics, fascist ideology is, according to Griffin, pre-disposed to charismatic forms of rule. It is pre-disposed to adopt an inherently ‘revolutionary’ aspect, and this starts to point to a profound divergence between the two generic ideologies. The more formal codification of Marxist-Leninist myths, together with the removal of the revolutionary necessity from the Leninist variety of Marxism and its emphasis on party discipline and organisational elements, suggest strongly that Marxist-Leninist ideology is more compatible with stabilisation and systematisation 36 37

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Griffin, ‘General Introduction’, p. 8. Griffin, Nature of Fascism, p. 40.

than is fascism. It seems more liable to adopt a ‘reactionary’ aspect, and in this sense we might wish to posit a causal relationship between the more stable, systematic Marxist-Leninist ideology and the more stable GDR regime, between the more unstable, dynamic fascist ideology and the more unstable, charismatic Nazi regime. Of course, we should remain wary of assuming some form of teleological pre-programming in the respective generic ideologies of which the Nazi and SED regimes were specific manifestations. After all, the Stalinist manifestation of Marxism-Leninism demonstrates that this generic ideology was equally capable of generating a more charismatic, dynamic, and systemless regime. Similarly, it would be incorrect to deny the powerful revolutionary potential of Marxist myths, so clearly demonstrated by the popular appeal of communism in Germany during the crisis periods of 1918 and 1930. MarxismLeninism need not necessarily generate stable regimes; individual fascist ideologies need not be entirely incompatible with stabilisation. At the same time, the Stalinist regime was able to stabilise and reproduce itself in a way in which the Nazi regime was not, and this does seem to point to, at the very least, differing dynamic tendencies within the two generic ideological systems. In particular, the postfascist location of the SED variant of Marxism-Leninism seems to generate a heightened tendency towards stabilisation, away from its revolutionary aspect. In general in the Soviet and European context of post-1945, Marxism-Leninism was a more mature ideology, lacking much of its original revolutionary dynamic. Above all in the German context, the Marxist core myths no longer held the potent popular and dynamic appeal of 1918 or 1930. Instead, their revolutionary dynamism was restricted to a relatively intellectual elite, so that the SED variety of Marxism-Leninism derived what dynamism it had from the core founding myth of anti-fascism. However, after the defeat of German fascism, the revolutionary dynamism of this myth was much less readily sustainable. The strong anti-fascist imperative of the immediate post-war years waned as memories of Nazism faded, as the generation which had suffered at their hands was replaced, and as it became increasingly difficult to brand the capitalist 105

West as a variety of cloaked fascism. This loss of ideological dynamism, tied to the relatively intellectual nature of the SED core myth, must go some way to explaining the loss of dynamism in the GDR system. National Socialism, on the other hand, possessed the inherent radicalising dynamic of the fascist core myth, together with the fascist tendency towards increased heterogeneity at a lived level and charismatic forms of rule. These contrasting dynamics provide at least a partial explanation for the way in which Nazi ideology retained its ‘revolutionary aspect’, spiralling into self-destruction, while SED ideology settled into a more conservative mode. These outcomes may not have been the inevitable products of the contrasting nature of the two regimes’ core ideological myths, but these starkly differing ideological dynamics remain one the most significant contrasts between them.

Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne In our attempt to clarify the ideological nature of National Socialism and to identify elements of comparability with SED ideology, one further aspect which warrants particular investigation is the attitude of these ideologies to the on-going process of social modernisation. This attitude not only acts as a further point of comparison between the two ideologies, it is also a central category for the analysis of much literature and culture produced under the two regimes. What is modernisation? Above all, the relationship of National Socialism and/or fascism to the modernisation process has spawned a vast literature of its own, and even the briefest of considerations of this research makes clear just how problematic an area this has proved to be. The ideological 106

basis of Nazism has been variously characterised as ‘a utopian form of anti-modernism’, as ‘an alternative form of modernism’, or as ‘reactionary modernism’.38 Similarly, while Stanley Payne maintains that ‘fascism was nothing if not modernist’, Russell Berman writes of ‘both a flaunted irrational anti-modernism and an aggressively forced modernization’, and Wolfgang Emmerich and Carl Wege refer to ‘den für das NS-System charakteristischen Durchmischungen von modernen und antimodernen Elementen’.39 In part, this apparently contradictory picture is a product of the characteristic heterogeneity of Nazi ideology at a lived level, so that the picture we are presented with is ‘eine Gemengelage aus fundamentalistisch-regressiven und technisch-avancierten, modernistischen Tendenzen’.40 At the same time, this confusion must also be seen as a terminological issue, deriving from starkly differing conceptions of just what constitutes modernisation, from the absence of an ‘allgemein verbindlichen Begriff der Moderne’.41 One set of criteria for the definition of modernisation is to be found in a tradition of mainly American sociology concerned with ‘modernisation theory’. Here, modernisation typically includes: economic growth with an accompanying increase in the diversity of available goods and services and a specialisation of labour; increased 38

39

40 41

Henry Ashby Turner, ‘Fascism and Modernization’, in Henry Ashby Turner (ed.), Reappraisals of Fascism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), pp. 117–39 (p. 120); Griffin, Nature of Fascism, p. 47; Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP, 1984). Payne, History of Fascism, p. 485; Russell Berman, ‘German Primitivism/ Primitive Germany: The Case of Emil Nolde’, in Richard Goslan (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (London: University of New England, 1992), pp. 56–66 (p. 66); Wolfgang Emmerich and Carl Wege, ‘Einleitung’, in Wolfgang Emmerich und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), pp. 1–14 (p. 8). Emmerich and Wege, ‘Einleitung’, p. 3. Anson Rabinbach, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Moderne: Zur TechnikInterpretation im Dritten Reich’, in Emmerich und Wege (eds), pp. 94–113 (p. 97).

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social differentiation and social mobility; increased participation in decision-making; and increasing institutional regulation of conflicts.42 However, these modernisation theories have proved to be largely unsatisfactory. As Kershaw suggests, even recent theories ‘remain eclectic, imprecise, and open to widely differing subjective weightings attached to some of the fundamental premises and concepts used’.43 Specifically, most of these theories assume, implicitly or explicitly, that there is an ideal type of ‘modern’ society, and predominantly this ideal type is based on liberal, Western democracy. Hence, political liberalisation and democratisation become enshrined as necessary features of a modernised society. As such, modernisation can clearly be of little value in an analysis of ideology under the conditions of dictatorship, since all such regimes must inherently oppose a process of modernisation conceived in these terms. Instead, any productive modernisation category needs to be stripped down to its core as a technological process, and shorn of the peripheral political processes which put a given state on the path towards what is perceived to be a ‘better’ society. As Hans Dieter Schäfer suggests: ‘Aus der Geschichte der Stalin-Diktatur oder aus den jüngsten Ereignissen in China wird deutlich, daß “Parlamentarisierung” und “Emanzipation” nicht als notwendige Begleiterschienungen der Modernisierung zu begreifen sind.’44 In their comparative analysis of the Nazi and Stalin dictatorships, Kershaw and Lewin tread similar ground: The concept of ‘modernisation’ is, of course, highly problematic [...]. But however problematic the concept, it is difficult to avoid it and better to face up to its limitations, but also take into account its advantages, than to dismiss it altogether. ‘Modernisation’ need not have connotations of ‘improving’ society, let alone of democratising it. In sociological, political, and historical writing, it has implied the process of long-term change that transforms a 42 43 44

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See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), pp. 16–17. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 133. Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 199–215 (p. 200).

society resting on agriculture and its related political and social structures and cultures into an industrial society based on technological advancement, secularised culture, bureaucratic administration, and extensive (however shallow) forms of political participation. These changes were compatible with the emergence of quite different political systems – with varying forms of authoritarianism as well as with democracy.45

Within the context of the German dictatorships, modernisation must be defined as a less discriminating process, driven primarily by the relentless motor of technological and scientific innovation, and one which brings with it a number of closely associated core social processes. Both Turner and Payne identify four such core processes, namely industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation, and secularisation, and it is these processes which will form the core of a modernisation definition for the purposes of the present study.46 For the cultural historian, these terminological issues are further complicated by the need to apply the terms ‘modernism’ and ‘modernist’ to refer to aesthetic styles and modes of expression, as well as to describe attitudes to modernisation. Here, we run the risk of conflating socio-political ‘modernism’ with artistic ‘modernism’, so that the cultural ‘anti-modernism’ of the Nazi regime, that is, its opposition to the modernistic artistic posture, may be run together with its perceived political and social ‘anti-modernism’, that is, an opposition to modernisation. Alternatively, the application of the term ‘modernist’ to describe both a social policy stance and a cultural phenomenon risks generating the most opaque and paradoxical of designations, as is apparent when Robert Soucy writes of the ‘modernist anti-modernism’ of French fascism.47 Here, there seems to be little choice other than to restrict the usage of the terms ‘modernist’ and ‘modernism’ to purely artistic and cultural contexts, 45 46 47

Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, ‘Afterthoughts’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. 343–58 (pp. 344–45). See Turner, p. 118 and Payne, History of Fascism, p. 472. Robert Soucy, ‘Drieu La Rochelle and the Modernist Anti-Modernism in French fascism’, Modern Language Notes, 95 (1980), 922–37.

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and to introduce a fresh terminology to describe relationships to modernisation. Any such terminology must cover two distinct elements. Firstly, the perceived ‘(anti)modernism’ of National Socialism in relation to social modernisation describes the effect of the regime on the on-going modernisation process, whether it contributed to it or arrested it. Secondly, this ‘(anti)modernism’ also describes the aims and intentions of the regime with respect to modernisation, whether it sought to actively promote modernisation or sought to slow it down. In terms of the former, it should be possible to determine whether a regime was ‘modernising’ (added to the long-term rate of modernisation), ‘non-modernising’ (did not significantly alter the long-term rate of modernisation), or ‘demodernising’ (slowed or even turned back the long-term process of modernisation). In terms of the latter, we can assess the extent to which a regime was, at an ideological level, ‘pro-modern’ or ‘antimodern’. A ‘pro-modern’ ideology is open to the embrace of technology and aims to be in harmony with on-going modernisation, while an ‘anti-modern’ ideology looks to embrace the past and rejects the core processes of modernisation. In the context of this analysis of ideology in the German dictatorships, it is this latter judgement as to the pro/anti-modern nature of ideologies, rather than the modernising effect of regimes, which will be of primary concern. Soviet power plus electrification This lengthy but necessary terminological preamble finally enables us to make an assessment of the relationship between the regimes of the German dictatorships and modernisation, to ascertain whether the regimes were ideologically pro- or anti-modern and whether there exist points of contact in this area between the two regimes. As far as SED ideology is concerned, it is clear that at the level of generic ideology, Marxism-Leninism was strongly pro-modern. Hans Jonas, for instance, sees in the early Soviet Union ‘ein fast religiöser Glaube an die Allmacht der Technik’, while Frank Trommler identifies ‘jene 110

Fixierung auf die Technik als Machtvorgabe, die seit der Revolution das sowjetische Herrschaftsdenken mindestens so stark geprägt hat wie der Marxismus’.48 Significantly for any analysis of the GDR, the Stalinist embrace of modernity is not seen just as a tactical, pragmatic policy orientation. Rather, ‘der technologische Impuls [ist] in das Grundwesen des Marxismus eingebaut’.49 In this context, Jonas makes particular reference to Lenin’s much-quoted definition of communism as ‘Soviet power plus electrification’, a statement which Zygmunt Bauman also chooses to emphasise in his assessment of the ‘modernity’ of communism: Communism, Lenin would say, is Soviet power together with the ‘electrification of the whole country’: that is, modern technology and modern industry under a power conscious of its purpose in advance and leaving nothing to chance. Communism was modernity in its most determined mood and most decisive posture.50

Although the actual modernising effect of the SED regime must be open to doubt – Emmerich and Wege, for instance, write of ‘ein beispielloser Technikkult, der in keiner Weise dem tatsächlichen Stand der Produktkraftentfaltung entsprach’, reminding us that ‘die DDR (und mit ihr das Sowjetimperium) bis in die sechziger Jahre hinein ein vormodernes Land blieb, dessen Lebenswelt weit weniger durchrationalisiert war als die der westeuropäischen Länder’51 – at the level of ideological intention, the unequivocally pro-modern stance of the generic ideology fed into the specific ideological variant of the GDR regime.

48

49 50 51

Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 276, quoted by Emmerich and Wege, ‘Einleitung’, p 1; Frank Trommler, ‘Amerikas Rolle in Technikverständnis der Diktaturen’, in Emmerich und Wege (eds), pp. 159–74 (p. 167). Jonas, p. 277, quoted by Emmerich and Wege, ‘Einleitung’, p 1. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Oxford: Polity, 1991), p. 267. Emmerich and Wege, ‘Einleitung’, p. 2.

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National Socialism: pro-modern or anti-modern? By contrast, any assessment of the relationship of National Socialist ideology to modernisation is necessarily more equivocal. On the one hand, few historians question that National Socialism achieved some low-level modernising effects, at least in terms of the core processes such as industrialisation.52 On the other hand, in their anti-modern rhetoric, their emphasis on agrarian, Blut-und-Boden culture, and on combating the modern decadence of Weimar culture by reinstating traditional German values, there is substantial evidence that the aims and intentions of National Socialism are best characterised as antimodern. In particular in the world-view of figures such as Rosenberg and Darré, National Socialism appears to have advocated a reversal of modernisation. This is the position maintained by Henry Ashby Turner, for whom Nazism was a fundamentally anti-modern, if admittedly modernising, movement. That is to say, the short-term modernising effects of National Socialism did not match their longterm ideological goals: ‘The Nazis [...] practiced modernization out of necessity in order to pursue their fundamentally anti-modern aims.’53 52

53

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In this particular debate, the full range of opinions, from Nazism as modernising to Nazism as de-modernising, find their expression. Many of the differences here stem from differing interpretations of what constitutes modernisation. See David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution (New York: Anchor, 1967); Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968); Horst Matzerath and Heinrich Volkmann, ‘Modernisierungstheorie und Nationalsozialismus’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers: Forschungsbeispiele und ihre Diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 82–102; Jens Alber, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 41 (1989), 346–65; Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991); Hans Mommsen, ‘Nationalsozialismus als vorgetäuschte Modernisierung’, in Hans Mommsen (ed.), Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1991), pp. 405–27; Norbert Frei, ‘Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 19 (1993), 367–83. Turner, p. 126. Subsequent references, p. 120 and p. 122.

Despite a pragmatic need to industrialise and remilitarise, the genuine ideological intentions of National Socialism were ‘an escape from the modern world by means of a desperate backward leap toward a romanticized vision […] of a world long lost’. For Turner, Nazi Lebensraum policies sought to make possible in the long-term ‘a significant degree of de-urbanization and de-industrialization’. And yet by the same token, much of the rhetoric of National Socialism was strongly pro-modern, so that ‘emphasizing these [antimodern] aspects alone considerably distorts the general perspective’.54 Against the anti-modern ideological visions of figures such as Darré and Rosenberg must be set the pro-modern position of figures such as Goebbels, Ley, Todt, and Speer. Indeed, for Roger Griffin, the anti-modern rhetoric of National Socialism is precisely that, convenient conservative propaganda rather than an expression of genuine ideological intentions. At what Griffin terms ‘the level of ideological intent’, Nazism, as a species of fascism, was ‘genuinely looking for an alternative to liberalism, communism, conservatism and capitalism as the formula for resolving the problems of the modern age’.55 While ‘some forms of fascist myths are radically antiurban, anti-secular and/or draw on cultural idioms of nostalgia for a pre-industrial idyll of heroism, moral virtue or racial purity’, when fascism invokes these myths, it is not, Griffin asserts, as ‘sociopolitical models to be duplicated in a literal-minded restoration of the 54

55

Payne, History of Fascism, p. 473. For a critique of Turner’s thesis, see A. James Gregor, ‘Fascism and Modernization: Some Addenda’, World Politics, 26 (1974), 370–84. Axel Schildt, otherwise strongly sceptical of attempts to characterise Nazism as pro-modern and modernising, points to ‘die ([von Turner] fälschlich angenommene) Großstadtfeindlichkeit Hitlers oder die verfehlte Analogisierung des “Dritten Reichs” mit feudaler Herrschaftspraxis’. Axel Schildt, ‘NS-Regime, Modernisierung und Moderne: Anmerkungen zur Hochkonjunktur einer andauernden Diskussion’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 3–22 (p. 7). On Goebbels’s pro-modern rhetoric, see Herf, Reactionary Modernism, pp. 195–97, or his more recent article, ‘Der Nationalsozialistische Technikdiskurs: Die deutschen Eigenheiten des reaktionären Modernismus’, in Emmerich und Wege (eds), pp. 72–93. Griffin, Nature of Fascism, p. 48. Subsequent references, p. 47.

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past’. Instead, fascism seeks to build rhetorically on the past achievements of more ‘glorious’ periods in the national history only as a strategy ‘to invoke the regenerative ethos which is a pre-requisite for national rebirth’. Here, in a sense, is a reversal of Turner’s position. Where he sees the core of Nazism as essentially anti-modern, yet willing to make use of technology and modernity for those ends, Griffin sees it as essentially pro-modern, yet willing to make propagandistic use of the anti-modern rhetoric of völkisch traditionalism and Germanic tribalism. In this view, Griffin seems to find support from a range of scholars. Detlev Peukert, for instance, writes as follows: Erstens läßt sich der Nationalsozialismus keinesfalls pauschal als ‘antimodern’ charakterisieren. Vielmehr erhöhten oftmals gerade die reichlich verwendeten antiquierten utpoisch-reaktionären oder traditionalistischen Formeln der NS-Ideologie die praktische soziale Akzeptanz der durch sie verbrämten modernen Techniken und Strukturen.56

In a similar vein, Ian Kershaw maintains that ‘the emphasis on antimodernization as the secret of Nazism’s appeal can easily be greatly exaggerated. On the contrary: though Nazism contained obvious archaic and atavistic elements, they often served as propagandistic symbols or ideological cover for wholly “modern” types of appeal’.57 For Payne too, who refutes that the Lebensraum policy involved a planned de-industrialisation of Germany, ‘fascism was nothing if not [pro-modern], despite its high quotient of archaic or anachronistic warrior culture’.58 Clearly, the heterogeneity of Nazi ideology makes it difficult to distinguish between the relative weighting of these pro-modern and anti-modern elements, between core and peripheral features, between genuine intentions and rhetorical dressing. Nonetheless, given the 56 57 58

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Detlev Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde: Anpassung, Ausmerze und Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Bund, 1982), p. 216. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 148. Payne, History of Fascism, p. 485.

centrality of Hitler’s role as ideological motor in the Third Reich, it is significant that many scholars consider these pro-modern values and attitudes to lie at the very heart of Hitler’s world-view. As Payne suggests, ‘it would be absurd to label the Hitlerian revolution as traditional, reactionary, “feudal”, or premodern’.59 Contrary to much received wisdom, ‘Hitler himself was a stern derider of premodern “superstition”’, and while some of his ideas were indeed influenced by late nineteenth-century German nationalism, ‘none of this involved a reversion to traditional, premodern thought’. Likewise, Rainer Zitelmann stresses the admiration of Hitler and other leading National Socialist figures for the modern, technological society of the United States: Hitler ließ sich keineswegs von rückwärtsgewandten Visionen einer mittelalterlichen Gesellschaftsordnung leiten. Sein Vorbild waren in vieler Hinsicht die Vereinigten Staaten. Obwohl er […] die demokratische Ordnung der USA ablehnte, bewunderte er doch den dortigen Stand der technisch-industriellen Entwicklung, die er häufig als vorbildlich auch für Deutschland darstellte.60

In general, the attempts of Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann to portray Hitler as a pro-modern social revolutionary remain highly controversial.61 However, in highlighting the fascination of Hitler and other leading National Socialists for American technology, Zitelmann receives support from scholars such as Detlev Peukert, Hans Dieter Schäfer, and Frank Trommler.62 As Jeffrey Herf asserts with confidence, ‘Hitler was an enthusiast of technical advance’.63 59 60 61

62 63

Payne, History of Fascism, p. 483. Subsequent reference, p. 484. Rainer Zitelmann, ‘Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, in Prinz and Zitelmann (eds), pp. 1–20 (p. 16). See Prinz and Zitelmann (eds), and Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverständis eines Revolutionärs (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987). For a critique of these accounts, see Hans Mommsen, ‘Noch einmal: Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 21 (1995), 391–402. See Peukert, p. 43; Trommler, ‘Amerikas Rolle im Technikverständnis der Diktaturen’; Schäfer, ‘Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich’. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, p. 197.

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Pro-modern but anti-liberal Above all, it is its biologically determinist racism which constitutes the ideological core of Nazism, and here too we find a telling example of what may be a pro-modern ideological stance. While Nazi racial policy clearly offends against definitions of modernness centred on Western liberalism, Payne suggests by contrast that ‘Nazi racism was only conceivable in the twentieth century. [...] The naturalistic racial anthropology of Hitler was purely a modern concept without any premodern parallels’.64 Similarly, Zygmunt Bauman maintains that ‘in this conception of social engineering as a scientifically founded work aimed at the institution of a new, and better, order [...], racism was indeed resonant with the world-view and practice of modernity’.65 As part of a broader project of eugenics and euthanasia and, above all, in the efficient, industrialised, production-line method of their final execution, the racial policies of National Socialism are arguably only an illiberal extension of widespread pro-modern impulses at work in a range of Western societies throughout the twentieth century: There is more than a wholly fortuitous connection between the applied technology of the mass production line, with its vision of universal material abundance, and the applied technology of the concentration camp, with its vision of a profusion of death. We may wish to deny the connection, but Buchenwald was of our West as much as Detroit’s River Rouge.66

Detlev Peukert also sees the racial policies of National Socialism as ‘eine der pathologischen Entwicklungsformen der Moderne’.67 He summarises matters as follows:

64 65 66 67

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Payne, History of Fascism, p. 484. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 68. Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff, The Politics of Hysteria (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 30–31, quoted by Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 9. Peukert, p. 296. Subsequent reference, pp. 295–96.

Der Nationalsozialismus entwarf in konsequenter ideologischer Wendung gegen das Erbe von 1789 eine in ihren Mitteln moderne Gesellschaft ohne die Leitbilder der staatsbürgerlichen Gleichheit, der Emanzipation und Selbstbestimmung und der Mitmenschlichkeit. Er führte den utopischen Glauben an die Allfälligkeit ‘wissenschaftlicher’ Total-Lösungen für gesellschaftliche Probleme bis zu ihrer radikalsten Konsequenz der rassebiologisch begründeten bürokratischen Erfassung.

Nazism, it seems, was not seeking to reverse modernisation, but rather selecting its own inhumane and amoral path towards it. There is then substantial evidence to suggest that at its core National Socialist ideology was essentially pro-modern, both in its racial policies and in the personal philosophy of high-ranking figures within the movement, most notably Hitler himself. This evidence also suggests that anti-modern elements of National Socialism can be judged to some extent peripheral, a product of the heterogeneous interpretations of the core German fascist myths and of attempts to make propagandistic capital out of widespread conservative, antimodern sentiment. If the core of Nazi ideology was in any sense antimodern, then it was not so in terms of an opposition to the narrowly defined technological processes of modernisation, but rather in terms of a rejection of notions of modernisation which rest on a Western norm of democratisation and political liberalisation. This consistently anti-democratic and illiberal, but avowedly pro-modern, ideological position forms the basis of what Zitelman terms ‘die totalitäre Möglichkeit der Moderne’: Die Forschung hat jedoch zu recht hervorgehoben, daß Hitlers eigene Programmatik die wichtigste Rolle in dem Gestrüpp unterschiedlicher ideologischer Visionen spielte. In seiner Weltanschauung verbinden sich höchst moderne Elemente mit einer entschiedenen Ablehnung des demokratisch-pluralistischen Gesellschaftsystems. Beide Komponenten, die modernistische und anti-demokratische, stehen dabei keineswegs zusammenhanglos nebeneinander, sondern verbinden sich in einem Gedankensystem, das ein erstaunlich hohes Maß an innerer Geschlossenheit aufweist. Moderne Visionen müssen also durchaus nicht human orientiert und keineswegs einem

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demokratischen Gesellschaftsverständnis verpflichtet sein. Hitlers Entwurf demonstriert vielmehr die totalitäre Möglichkeit der Moderne.68

Similarly, Herf’s apparently paradoxical notion of ‘reactionary modernism’ seeks to describe ‘the embrace of modern technology by German thinkers who rejected Enlightenment reason’, a causal factor in ‘Germany’s illiberal path toward modernity’.69 As a ‘coherent and compelling ideology’, this anti-rational, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, but determinedly pro-modern, impetus is seen to consistently underlie Hitler’s vision and policies: The paradoxical combination of irrationalism and technics was fundamental to Hitler’s ideology and practices and to National Socialism. [...] This tradition [...] became a constituent component of Nazi ideology from the early 1920s up to 1945. This synthesis of political reaction with an affirmative stance toward technological progress emerged well before 1933 and contributed to the ongoing ideological dynamism of the regime after 1933.

The common factor in what Zitelmann terms ‘die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, in what Herf terms ‘reactionary modernism’, and Peukert a ‘pathology of modernity’ is the recognition of a consistent ideological position which is illiberal and anti-rational, but determinedly pro-modern. The value of this examination of the pro-modern impulses of National Socialist ideology is twofold. Firstly, it helps to further clarify the precise nature of National Socialist ideology. As the coexistence of both pro-modern and anti-modern elements confirms, Nazi ideology must be conceived of as a fundamentally heterogeneous entity, where competing, often contradictory, elements exist side by side. An acknowledgement of the significance of these promodern elements proves particularly significant in the analysis of Günter Eich’s literary output in the Third Reich, where critics continue to employ a more narrow, anti-modern definition of the 68 69

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Zitelmann, ‘Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, pp. 18–19. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, p. 1 and p. 10. Subsequent references, p. 226 and p. 220.

official ideology of the regime. Secondly, the relationship to modernisation provides a further comparative category for the analysis of ideology in the German dictatorships. Zitelmann, for instance, clearly conceives of the modernisation process in this way, perceiving both the Hitler and Stalin regimes as pursuing a ‘totalitarian’, antidemocratic path towards modernisation. Herf, too, introduces a comparative element to his analysis drawing parallels between the Russian and German experiences of technical advancement subordinated to ideological and political demands.70 Most explicitly of all, Zygmunt Bauman draws parallels between the Hitler and Stalin dictatorships in terms of their genocidal modernisation: The most extreme and well-documented cases of global ‘social engineering’ in modern history (those presided over by Hitler and Stalin), all their attendant atrocities notwithstanding, were neither outbursts of barbarism not yet fully extinguished by the new rational order of civilization, nor the price paid for utopias alien to the spirit of modernity. On the contrary, they were legitimate offspring of the modern spirit.71

Clearly, the GDR regime did not pursue the same policies of extermination or social engineering and distinguishes itself starkly from both Stalinism and National Socialism in this respect. Equally, we must remain wary of any re-instatement by the back door of conventional totalitarianism, as is implicit in Zitelmann’s notion of ‘die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’. In this area, very substantial differences existed between the SED and the National Socialists both in practice and in their ideological intentions. In particular, the uniqueness of the extreme amoral and anti-rational nature of the Nazi path of modernisation cannot be downplayed. Nonetheless, in their illiberal pursuit of pro-modern policies, SED and Nazi ideology display a further point of contact which undermines ‘common-sense’ assumptions concerning their fundamental non-comparability. 70 71

Herf, Reactionary Modernism, p. 225–26. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 29. See also Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, pp. 90–93.

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Ideologically conditioned discourse in the German dictatorships Discourse, ideology, and the will to truth Michel Foucault’s inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, subsequently published in English as ‘The Order of Discourse’, presents the most explicit exposition of his theory of the structure and function of discourse and, in particular, of how discourse can be put to work in the maintenance and furthering of institutional power. His central hypothesis reads as follows: In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.72

Foucault identifies three sets of procedures which combine to control the production of discourse: external procedures of exclusion; internal procedures of classification; and the rarefaction of the speaking subject. Within the first of these categories, Foucault identifies three distinct systems of exclusion: prohibition; the division of madness and reason; and the will to truth. Of these three exclusionary procedures, it is what Foucault terms the ‘will to truth’ of a particular discourse, that is, the claim of that discourse for its own inherent truth value, and conversely for the inherent falseness of other discourses, which he treats at greatest length: Certainly when viewed from the level of a proposition, on the inside of a discourse, the division between true and false is neither arbitrary nor modifiable nor institutional nor violent. But when we view things on a different scale, when we ask the question of what this will to truth has been and 72

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Michel Foucault, ‘The Order of Discourse’, trans. by Ian Mcleod, in R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 48–78 (p. 52). Subsequent references, p. 54 and p. 56.

constantly is, across our discourses, this will to truth which has crossed so many centuries of history [...], then what we see taking shape is perhaps something like a system of exclusion, a historical, modifiable, and institutionally constraining system.

For Foucault, the opposition between ‘true’ and ‘false’ operates as a largely unspoken system of exclusion, one which ‘constantly grows stronger, deeper, and more implacable’. ‘False’ discourses are excluded at the expense of the ‘true’, but here truth is no longer an absolute. Rather, it is an arbitrary, institutional, and modifiable concept, the product of an individual’s standpoint within the will to truth of a particular discourse. In this context, Griffin’s assumption concerning the perspective of those located at the core of any political ideology takes on added significance: Ideologies are lived out as truths [...]. Their carriers experience them ‘from within’ as an integral part of their world-view and associate them with normality, common sense, reasonableness, convictions, self-evident facts.73

Although Griffin himself does not make this connection, it is clear that one of the principal features of political ideology is what Foucault refers to as the ‘will to truth’. Ideologies can be understood to possess their own will to truth, so that followers of that ideology believe in the inherent truth of that ideology and, by extension, the falseness of other competing ideologies. Indeed, belief in the truth value of an ideology, or in other words the location of an individual within its will to truth, comes to represent a definition of commitment to that particular ideology. If we take the analysis one step further, each political ideology can be seen to be associated with its own variety of discourse which, in Foucault’s terms, possesses, and at the same time is legitimised and underpinned by, a will to truth. It is this will to truth which plays a central role in the power exercised by that political ideology. As far as the German dictatorships are con73

Griffin, Nature of Fascism, p. 16.

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cerned, power is exercised on behalf of a single official ideology which is associated with a single official variety of discourse. Through the discursive procedures outlined by Foucault, and in particular through the will to truth of this official discourse, the single official ideology seeks to exclude competing ideologies. In this way, any analysis of the ideologies on behalf of which the regimes of the German dictatorships made their total claim must go hand in hand with an analysis of the variety of discourse through which that claim was made, for that total claim was a claim for the truth of both ideology and discourse. Discourse and power in the German dictatorships Against this background, it is particularly significant that three separate studies of cultural politics and cultural production in the GDR have sought to employ a version of Foucault’s discourse model. Peter Zima, in the mid-1970s, together with David Bathrick and Wolfgang Emmerich, each in the early 1990s, have drawn explicitly on ‘The Order of Discourse’ in order to identify a dominant, official variety of SED discourse.74 This dominant discourse operates a system of inclusion and exclusion, reinforced and propagated by Foucaultian discursive procedures. Wolfgang Emmerich, for instance, summarises his analysis as follows:

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See Peter Zima, ‘Der Mythos der Monosemie: Parteilichkeit und künstlerischer Standpunkt’, in Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaften, 10 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971–1978), VI: Einführung in Theorie, Geschichte und Funktion der DDR-Literatur, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (1975), pp. 77–108; David Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 297–312; David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Wolfgang Emmerich, ‘Affirmation – Utopie – Melancholie: Versuch einer Bilanz von vierzig Jahren DDR Literatur’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 325–44.

Der Offizial- oder Leitdiskurs der SED [...] erfüllt alle Kriterien, die Michel Foucault in seiner Diskurstheorie für den Herrschaftsdiskurs benannt hat: Er ist ein Diskurs der Monosemie, der unbefragbaren Eindeutigkeit unterworfen, dem Wahrheitszwang, der mittels unmittelbare Verbote oder Grenzziehungen das Unerwünschte für pathologisch bzw. für ‘Wahnsinn’ (als Gegensatz zur ‘Vernunft’ als Inbegriff von ‘Wahrheit’) erklärt.75

In these analyses, the GDR is revealed to be the archetypal instance of a society where ‘the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures’.76 These procedures, co-ordinated through state institutions, combined to perpetuate and propagate a particular form of official discourse, a form of discourse legitimated and underpinned by the will to truth of Marxism-Leninism and through which power was exercised. This official discourse was inherently ‘true’, while anything outside this discourse was inherently ‘false’. The official discourse was inherently rational, competing discourses excluded as the irrational other. Zima, in particular, describes the distinctive features of this dominant SED discourse. It is a rhetorical, abstract form of discourse, and this tendency to argue at an abstract level allows for the operation of a distinct type of lexical term: Es ermöglicht den Gebrauch von elastischen Sammelbegriffen, die nahezu allen Erscheinungen, Individuen und Theorien dogmatisch aufgepfropft werden können, wodurch deren spezifischen Charakter in schematischen Einteilungen oder Aufzählungen und in willkürlichen Benennungen untergeht. Der DIAMAT macht alles allem kommensurabel: Nietzsche dem Nationalsozialismus, den Imperialismus dem ‘Formalismus’, ebenso wie dem Surrealismus, dem ‘Modernismus’ und der ‘Dekadenz’. [...] Die Ideologen scheren alles über einen Kamm, indem sie positive bzw. negative Konnotationsketten (U. Eco) bilden, auf die das Publikum affektiv reagieren soll (z.B.: Produktivität/ Sozialismus/ Frieden/ Humanität – oder: imperialistisch/ parasitär/ formalistisch/ dekadent).77 75 76 77

Emmerich, ‘Affirmation – Utopie – Melancholie’, p. 332–33. Foucault, ‘Order of Discourse’, p. 52. Zima, p 85.

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David Bathrick, too, highlights the maintenance of the MarxistLeninist ‘will to truth’ through ‘a system of binarisms articulated within a framework that juxtaposed “enlightenment” and “antienlightenment” values’.78 Again, ideologically loaded cover-terms are deployed: Antienlightenment modes of thinking were considered the negative side of the equation and coded variously as ‘irrational’, ‘bourgeois-individualist’, ‘antisocialist’, ‘antihumanist’, ‘objectively reactionary’, or even ‘fascist’ in political orientation.

In this way, official SED discourse is characterised by a series of virtually interchangeable positively loaded terms which oppose a series of equally interchangeable negative terms. In the cultural sphere, the terms ‘realistisch’ and ‘formalistisch’ do not indicate then whether a particular work is realist or formalist in its structure or content, according to fixed and objective criteria. Rather, they operate as elastic cover-terms, approving and including the desirable, condemning and excluding the undesirable.79 The same kind of explicitly Foucaultian analysis has not been systematically applied to the discourse of National Socialism. However, the findings of the extensive linguistic research which has been conducted into the discourse of National Socialism do suggest that it operated using a similar system of evaluatively loaded binaries, and hence that, just like the political ideologies themselves, the two discourses of the German dictatorships share certain structural features. In his account of the impact of National Socialism on the German lexicon, for instance, R. E. Keller points to ‘deliberate semantic shifts in a positive or negative direction’, and this seems to amount to the construction of a comparable binary system involving

78 79

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Bathrick, Powers of Speech, p. 16. Subsequent reference, also p. 16. See Chris Weedon, ‘The Politics of Literature in the GDR: A PostStructuralist Approach’, in Richard Sheppard (ed.), New Ways in Germanistik (Oxford: Berg, 1990), pp. 145–63 (p. 153).

positively and negatively weighted equivalents.80 Likewise, in his account of the discourse of German fascism, Michael Townson views the positive and negative oppositions inherent in the imagery of Nazism as a reflection of the division and rejection of the Nazi world-view, resting ‘on an oppositional (or antagonistic) “friend-foe” schema’.81 In a similar vein, C. J. Wells observes in Nazi discourse the characteristic linguistic effects of political ideology, ‘where words and expressions are used as slogans or catchwords […], their referential or denotative meaning is subordinated to their political function as a rallying cry or focus of abuse’.82 Wells goes on to highlight ‘contrasting pairs of words’ – such as ‘national (+) vs. international (–), Gemeinschaft (+) vs. Gesellschaft (–), geistig (+) vs. intellektuell (–)’ – as well as ‘purely denunciatory terms’, such as ‘Bolschewismus, liberal, Marxismus’. Of particular significance in the light of the elastic cover terms present in SED discourse is the fact that Wells sees negative adjectives such as demoplutokratisch, jüdisch-amerikanisch, kapitalistischbolschewistisch, amerikanisch-bolschewistisch, jüdisch-freimauerisch as ‘often interchangeable’. The replacement of referential denotation by strong evaluative connotation allows these lexical items to function within the kind of negative or positive Konnotationsketten identified by Zima, to act as interchangeable, abstract cover terms within a discursive system of exclusion and inclusion. Indeed, Zima himself draws a parallel between the dominant discourses of the two dictatorships when he cites, as an example of discursive exclusion in the GDR, the attribution of the ‘disqualifying epithet’ bürgerlich to the sociologist Lucien Goldmann: Das negative Adjektiv ‘bürgerlich’ disqualifiziert Goldmann als einen Marxisten und schiebt einer unvoreingenommenen Analyse seines Werkes 80 81 82

R.E. Keller, The German Language (London: Faber, 1978), p. 604. Michael Townson, Mother-Tongue and Fatherland: Language and Politics in German (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 135. C. J. Wells, German: A Linguistic History to 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), p. 406. Subsequent references, p. 406.

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einen Riegel vor. [...] ‘Bürgerlich’ kann als ein auf die Gegenwart bezogenes Signifikans nur eine negative Konnotationskette einleiten (z.B bürgerlich/ modernistisch/ dekadent). In einem bis 1945 herrschenden Diskurs hätte es geheißen: der jüdische Soziologe Lucien Goldmann. Das negative Beiwort hat in beiden Fällen die gleiche stigmatisierende Funktion.83

As with the official SED discourse, language in the Third Reich acts a means of selecting the ‘true’ and rejecting the ‘false’.84 In both German dictatorships, official discourse seems to rest on the same binary structures and the same abstract and elastic cover-terms. Ideological power is exercised through the will to truth of the official discourse. Official SED discourse This analysis allows us to identify two comparable varieties of dominant, ideologically conditioned discourse in the German dictatorships. Both ‘SED discourse’ and ‘National Socialist discourse’ share certain structural features. At the same time, as reflections of their respective ideological cores, these two varieties of discourse display considerable lexical distinctiveness. As a manifestation of the SED ideological core, official discourse in the GDR draws on a relatively discrete and readily recognisable tradition of Marxist vocabulary. As Keller suggests, ideological discourse in the GDR constitutes a specialist Fachsprache, resting on the technical vocabulary of MarxismLeninism, such as ‘Demokratie, Fortschritt, Formalismus, Freiheit, Gesellschaft, Imperialismus, Kapital(ismus), Klasse, Kommunismus’ and so on.85 This discourse is also characterised by a high level of loan transfers and semantic transfers from Russian to describe specific features of communist society, such as Kader or Agrostadt, and by 83 84 85

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Zima, p. 85. See Gerhard Bauer, Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Cologne: Bund, 1988), p. 59. Keller, p. 608.

specific positively loaded terms, such as Aufbau, Errungenschaften, frei, Friede, Kampf, national, neu, Volk, or Wissenschaft.86 In addition to the terminology of Marxism-Leninism, these positively weighted terms also demonstrate the influence of the founding anti-fascist myth of the GDR. In a German state where fascism had been officially overcome, characteristically National Socialist terms, such as Kampf or Volk, could still be employed positively. At the same time, the positive loading of terms such as Friede or Wissenschaft, negatively weighted in National Socialist discourse, evinces the determined effort to oppose the perceived irrationalism of German fascism. In the positive coding of enlightenment values and the negative evaluation of anti-enlightenment terms, SED discourse demonstrates the pro-rational dynamics of its ideology. These distinctive features offer a template for the production of discourse under the total claim of the SED, and what is remarkable is just how close to this template much of the language of cultural politics and cultural criticism came. The following passage, taken from the piece of SED artistic criticism which marked the onset of the Formalism Campaign in January 1951, illustrates the point: Der Kampf gegen jeglichen Einfluß der westlichen Dekadenz und des Kultes des Häßlichen in der Kunst der DDR ist eine wichtige gesellschaftliche Aufgabe. Man darf die Arbeiteraktivisten oder die Menschen, die von der Arbeiterklasse und dem Volk zur Führung des neuen demokratischen Staates berufen worden sind, nicht als mißgestaltet und primitiv darstellen. Man darf sich nicht darauf verlassen, daß die Arbeiter und Bauern ‘alles schlucken’, daß für sie ‘alles gut genug ist’, zumal doch die entartete ‘Kunst’ von den ‘Autoritäten’ der zerfallenden bürgerlichen Gesellschaft sanktioniert ist. Weit richtiger ist die Annahme, daß die Arbeiterklasse und die Werktätigen der DDR vor keinen ‘Autoritäten’ haltmachen und in sich selbst Kraft genug

86

See Keller, pp. 607–08 and Michael Clyne, Language and Society in the Germanspeaking Countries (Cambridge: CUP, 1984), pp. 31–39.

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finden werden, um eine derartige volksfeindliche ‘Kunst’ aus dem Wege zu räumen.87

The abstract argumentation, the deployment of the characteristic terminology of Marxism-Leninism (‘Kampf’, ‘gesellschaftliche Aufgabe’, ‘Arbeiterklasse’), and the use of evaluatively loaded elastic cover-terms (‘westliche Dekadenz’, ‘primitiv’, ‘bürgerlich’) all mark this text out as an archetypal instance of the official SED discourse. Official National Socialist discourse By comparison, it is much more difficult to establish the distinctive features of official National Socialist discourse. At the level of discourse, as at the level of ideology, National Socialism does not draw on a single, relatively discrete source. In the words of C. J. Wells, ‘since the National Socialists lacked any coherent political philosophy they failed to develop a consistent ideological language either, and borrowed from a hodge-podge of sources’.88 Or in the terms of the present study, the eclecticism of Nazi ideology is reflected in the eclecticism of its discourse, so that peripheral rhetorical elements combine with core ideological features, rendering the task of identifying precisely what constituted the official discourse of National Socialism considerably more difficult than is the case for SED discourse. Wells, for instance, identifies the following diverse strands of National Socialist language: dynamic, martial, and heroicising terms; religious terms; pseudo-mystical, mythological, and archaicising language; biological and medical expressions; sporting imagery; technological vocabulary and metaphors; and foreign expressions. Similarly, Keller points to the use of archaisms; the terminology of violence; militarism; emotionalism and idealism; 87 88

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N. Orlov, ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’, Tägliche Rundschau, 20 and 21 January 1951. See Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR: 1945– 1990 (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1995), p. 35. Wells, p. 409. Subsequent reference, p. 414.

religious terms; and metaphors from biology and medicine.89 While Wells and Keller do at least agree on many of the lexical sources of National Socialism, the diversity of these sources means that any definition of Nazi discourse risks being over-inclusive, encompassing a range of non-Nazi discourses. One possible strategy is to return to what we have identified as the ideological core of National Socialism, namely racial rebirth, and define the discursive core of National Socialism in the same terms. The terminology of race and biology, typically involving productive compound formations on Blut-, Rasse-, or Volk-, clearly is a defining feature of Nazi discourse, but such a definition risks being overexclusive, excluding many of the characteristic rhetorical strategies for propagating these core ideological features. A complementary strategy is provided by Jeffrey Herf’s notion of ‘reactionary modernism’, for this term relates not only to a particular ideological strand but also to ‘a coherent and meaningful set of metaphors, familiar words, and emotionally laden expressions’.90 As a hybrid discourse where pro-modern technological elements are combined with the traditional anti-rational discourse of German Volk and Kultur, the discourse of ‘reactionary modernism’ highlights two central features of Nazi discourse. Firstly, as the opposition between the positively evaluated Geist and Gemeinschaft and the negative Intellekt and Gesellschaft makes clear, Nazi discourse inverts the Marxist-Leninist coding of enlightenment values. Rhetorically, instinct is favoured over reason, experience over analysis, soul over mind, feeling over intellect.91 Secondly, it is precisely in this fusion of diverse, often selfcontradictory elements that the distinctiveness of National Socialist discourse lies. In isolation, technological metaphors and images taken from biology and medicine are common discursive elements in a range of societies and ideologies, but in the context of the Third Reich and in combination with the aggressively chauvinistic language 89 90 91

Keller, pp. 605–06. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, p. 1. See Herf, Reactionary Modernism, pp. 226–27.

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of militarism and violence (Kampf, Schlacht, Sturm, brutal), the discourse of race (Art, Blut, Rasse, Volk), and archaic tribalist vocabulary (Gau, Sippe, Mark), these features form a distinct entity which we can term National Socialist discourse. Discourse and resistance In this way, the dominant ideologies of the German dictatorships generate two lexically distinct, but structurally comparable, discursive entities. In both cases referential denotation becomes subordinate to strong evaluative connotation, so that a wide array of lexical items, conditioned ideologically as positively or negatively charged terms, come to participate in Foucaultian procedures of inclusion and exclusion, propagating the will to truth of both ideology and discourse. At the same time, Foucault’s discourse theory does not only concern itself with the controlling and constraining nature of discourse. We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. [...] We must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements. [...] Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it [...] discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy.92

Here, in his later work, Foucault also develops the notion of discourse as a site of micro-level power struggles and resistances, and it is this theoretical step which is of particular interest to an attempt to analyse forms of assent and dissent in literature produced in the German dictatorships. 92

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Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols (London: Allen Lane, 1979– 88), I: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley (1979), pp. 100–01.

Indeed, it is precisely this aspect of Foucault’s work, where discourse acts as a site of multiple small-scale resistances, which Emmerich and Bathrick employ to recuperate a generation of GDR writers otherwise condemned for their inability to actively reject Marxist-Leninist ideology. Although within the broad will to truth of the SED regime, such figures as Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, and Ulrich Plenzdorf were, for both Emmerich and Bathrick, ‘auf den beiden Seiten’,93 insofar as they expressed literary dissent from within the dominant official discourse of the GDR. Here, there is an important distinction to be made between the unity of meaning which the SED regime sought to impose on discourse and the plurality of meaning exploited by these writers in their literary texts. In Bathrick’s words: As an articulation of power, the ‘will to truth’ basic to the official MarxistLeninist binarisms sought above all to prohibit any form of equivocation. [...] Literary dissidence in the GDR often began not as a philosophical or political challenge to the ideological principles of Marxist-Leninism but as a sometimes unintended fall into ‘polysemic’ modes of address that, by virtue of their multiplicity of meaning, were perforce understood and evaluated as negative, that is, as subversive of the official, ‘monosemic’ mode of discourse.94

Given the existence of comparable binarisms within Nazi discourse and comparable attempts to impose monosemic modes of address, the Foucaultian notion of discourse offers a sophisticated methodological tool in the assessment of the assenting and dissenting functions of literary texts in both dictatorships. The two distinctive, yet structurally comparable, varieties of official discourse identified in the Third Reich and GDR are able act as benchmarks for the production of discourse under the two regimes. As a marker of ideological conformity or non-conformity, the degree of participation 93 94

The phrase is Heiner Müller’s. See Heiner Müller, ‘Jetzt ist da eine Einheitssoße’, Der Spiegel, 30 July 1990, p. 141, quoted by Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall’, p. 305. Bathrick, Powers of Speech, p. 16.

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in these ideologically conditioned discourses, that is the extent to which these prototypical features of National Socialist or SED discourse are reproduced in literary production, is able to act as a tool for configuring notions of literary assent and dissent in the GDR and the Third Reich. Within this Foucaultian framework, ideological and discursive conformity or non-conformity becomes not an either/or proposition, but a matter of complex and inter-related patterns of simultaneous participation and challenge.

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Chapter Three ‘Resistance’: Configuring literary assent and dissent in the German dictatorships

In the same way that the terms ‘totalitarianism’, ‘fascism’, and ‘modernisation’ have acted as catalysts for long-running historiographical debate, so the historiography of the term ‘resistance’ has been characterised by much of the dispute and terminological confusion which seems to lie at the heart of the academic study of the German dictatorships. The central aim throughout the first part of this study has been to elaborate a comparative framework in which to analyse literary production within these dictatorships. More specifically, a theoretical and methodological framework is being constructed in which to describe and analyse the position of individual writers in relation to the regimes of the Third Reich and the GDR, the ideology of those regimes, their cultural policies, and the total claim made on their behalf. Above all, the aim is to configure a model which satisfactorily measures the extent to which opposition to, or indeed support for, the respective regimes was expressed by these writers. In this respect, the historiography of resistance offers a substantial body of existing research which has sought to describe the relationship of individuals and their actions to these regimes in an increasingly sophisticated fashion. Furthermore, it is one aspect of research into the German dictatorships which has proved a particularly fruitful area of cross-fertilisation between the study of the Third Reich and the GDR, and it is in this body of research that new tools will be identified to act as the framework for a comparative analysis of literary assent and dissent in the German dictatorships. Elaboration of this framework will consist of three steps: the exposition and evaluation of existing approaches to ‘literary resistance’; an examin133

ation of new approaches to social and political resistance initiated in the 1970s; and finally the application to the literary sphere of the methodological insights offered by these approaches.

Literary approaches: Widerstandsliteratur and innere Emigration The most concerted attempts to construct a theoretical framework to describe and differentiate the legally produced, non-official literature of the Third Reich have been those developed primarily during the 1970s which employ in tandem the terms innere Emigration and Widerstandsliteratur. These existing approaches to ‘literary resistance’ are outlined and evaluated below. Inner emigration and resistance literature Writing originally in 1970, the GDR scholar Wolfgang Brekle deploys the term ‘inner emigration’ as an umbrella term for all legallyproduced, non-Nazi writing in the Third Reich: Zur Literatur der inneren Emigration wird die Literatur gezählt, deren Autoren wie die Schriftsteller des Exils von der Nazi-Ideologie nicht beeinflußt waren, humanistische Werke schrieben und sich von der faschistischen Politik nicht gleichschalten ließen.1

Within this broad band of writing Brekle identifies two distinct entities: (i) what he terms ‘innerdeutsche antifaschistische Literatur’ or ‘Widerstandsliteratur’, that is, all those works written ‘als Mittel des antifaschistischen Widerstandes oder als Ausdruck antifaschistischer Haltung’; (ii) what he terms ‘nichtfaschistische Literatur’, that 1

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Wolfgang Brekle, ‘Die antifaschistische Literatur in Deutschland’, Weimarer Beiträge, 16.6 (1970), 67–128 (p. 71). Subsequent references, p. 71.

is, literature which neither actively supported nor opposed National Socialist ideology. In this respect, Brekle’s GDR perspective makes its presence felt, since it is the former category, ‘anti-fascist’ writing as opposed to the merely ‘non-fascist’, which constitutes for him both the ‘aktivster’ and the ‘wertvollster’ component part of inner emigration. This tendency to heroicise anti-fascist resistance literature at the expense of works adjudged to be merely non-fascist clearly hinders any objective analysis of the full range of non-Nazi literary production in the Third Reich. At the same time, this significant distinction, between that which is deemed worthy of analysis and that which is not, is not drawn with any certainty. Brekle fails to elaborate on the precise criteria which distinguish anti-fascist from non-fascist writing, relying on the inherently problematic assessment of authorial intention. As Brekle himself concedes, ‘die Grenze zwischen antifaschistischer und nichtfaschistischer Literatur kann nicht immer eindeutig gezogen werden’.2 A work of ‘inner emigration’ which treats historical themes may, for example, be categorised as an active counterpoint to fascist ideology, in which case it merits the label antifaschistische Widerstandsliteratur. Alternatively, it may be dismissed as ‘ein Ausweichen vor Zeitproblemen’, that is, nichtfaschistische Literatur.3 A direct response to Brekle’s analytical model is provided by Reinhold Grimm, a West German scholar working in the United States. Grimm strongly rejects any attempt to pigeonhole works as ‘anti-fascist’ or ‘non-fascist’. Instead, he advocates treating the nonNazi literary production of the Third Reich in terms of a sliding scale of behaviour: Ebensowenig bewährt sich der an sich sehr einleuchtende Vorschlag, ‘innere Emigration’ als Oberbegriff zu verwenden und durch die zwei Unterbegriffe ‘innerdeutsche antifaschistische Literatur’ (für den literarischen Widerstand) und ‘innerdeutsche nichtfaschistische Literatur’ (für das Schrifttum, das sich 2 3

Wolfgang Brekle, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand 1933–1945 in Deutschland (Berlin: Aufbau, 1985), p. 18; Brekle, ‘Die antifaschistische Literatur’, p. 72. Brekle, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand, pp. 18–19.

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dezidiert abseits hielt) zu gliedern. […] Mir scheint daraus zwingend hervorzugehen, daß demnach das Phänomen als solches keine scharfe begriffliche Trennung erlaubt. Wenn irgendwo, so hat man sich bei der Betrachtung der ‘inneren Emigration’ von jeglichem Schubladendenken freizumachen und stets eine gleitende Skala im Auge zu behalten, die vom aktiven Widerstand bis zur passiven Verweigerung reicht. Jener gipfelt in der Tat, während diese im gänzlichen Verstummen endet.4

Grimm’s continuum of inner emigration behaviour, extending from aktiver Widerstand to passive Verweigerung, seems to offer a more appropriate analytical tool than do Brekle’s binary categories, particularly given Brekle’s own scepticism concerning the fuzziness of boundaries between anti-fascist and non-fascist literary production. As Michael Philipp rightly observes, ‘die Problematik des Lebens und Schreibens unter einem diktatorisch-repressiven Regime ist zu vielschichtig, als daß sie in einem Schwarz-Weiß-Raster erfaßt werden könnte’.5 At the same time, the erasure of distinct categories within ‘inner emigration’ leaves only this single imprecise term to cover a very broad spectrum of behaviour. It is not clear which intermediate positions might lie between Grimm’s two poles, nor which precise criteria might be employed for positioning a work on this sliding scale. Still more problematic is the type of behaviour which Grimm excludes from his scale. For Grimm, ‘nur eine Gegenhaltung, die erkennbar war, verdient den Namen “innere Emigration”’.6 Mirroring Brekle’s distinction between ‘anti-fascist’ 4

5

6

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Reinhold Grimm, ‘Innere Emigration als Lebensform’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 31–73 (pp. 48–49), and Reinhold Grimm, ‘Im Dickicht der inneren Emigration’, in Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (eds), Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich: Themen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), pp. 406–26 (p. 411). Michael Philipp, ‘Distanz und Anpassung: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Inneren Emigration’, in Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.), Aspekte der künstlerischen inneren Emgration 1933–1945 (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1994), pp. 11–30 (p. 13). Grimm, ‘Innere Emigration als Lebensform’, p. 49. See also Herbert Wiesner, ‘“Innere Emigration”: Die innerdeutsche Literatur im Widerstand 1933–

and ‘non-fascist’ literature, Grimm distinguishes between ‘oppositional’ and ‘non-oppositional’ behaviour, excluding the latter from any anlysis of ‘inner emigration’. To further cloud the issue, Grimm seeks to make a distinction between writing which was ‘nichtfaschistisch’ (oppositional) and that which was ‘nicht faschistisch’ (nonoppositional), between those writers who exhibited an oppositional silence and those who engaged in a non-oppositional silence.7 Needless to say, such a distinction seems neither clearly drawn nor analytically practicable, and again raises the question of which objective criteria might be employed to distinguish different types of non-Nazi writing. Synthesis of the Brekle and Grimm models comes from Wolfgang Emmerich.8 On the one hand, Emmerich follows Brekle in seeking to differentiate between actively anti-fascist literature and merely non-fascist literature. He also employs a comparable definition of ‘resistance literature’: Als im Wortsinne antifaschistische oder Widerstandsliteratur wird solche Literatur verstanden, die ihrer erklärten Absicht und/oder realen Wirkung nach als Mittel im antinazistischen Widerstand fungiert hat und die von ihrem gesellschaftlich-politisch Gehalt her als eindeutig antifaschistisch (also nicht nur: nichtfaschistisch) zu qualifizieren ist.9

On the other hand, Emmerich shows his awareness of the value of Grimm’s sliding scale of non-Nazi literary production: Grimm hat zum Teil recht: Das Spektrum der nichtfaschistischen, legal erschienenen Literatur ist durch mannigfache Schattierungen und Übergänge gekennzeichnet, die vom eindeutigen Widerstand bis nahe an den Faschismus

7 8 9

1945’, in Hermann Kunisch (ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur, 3 vols (Munich: Nymphenburg, 1970), II, pp. 383–408 (p. 386). Grimm, ‘Innere Emigration als Lebensform’, p. 49. Wolfgang Emmerich, ‘Die Literatur des antifaschistischen Widerstandes in Deutschland’, in Denkler and Prümm (eds), pp. 427–58. Emmerich, ‘Die Literatur des antifaschistischen Widerstandes’, p. 429. Subsequent references, p. 450 and p. 431.

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heranreichen; dies kann jedoch kein Grund dafür sein, von den Mühen der Differenzierung zwischen antifaschistischer Widerstandsliteratur und derjenigen, der dieses Etikett zu Unrecht aufgeklebt wurde, Abstand zu nehmen.

Emmerich presents a composite model where ‘inner emigration’ is viewed as a continuum of behaviour, within which the significant distinction between the actively anti-fascist and the passively nonfascist is retained. Where Emmerich significantly develops Brekle’s model is in his explicit attempt to employ detailed textual analysis in order to differentiate between the two entities and, importantly, in his acknowledgement of the equal role played in this task by the ‘erklärte Absicht und/oder reale Wirkung’ of the text. In pointing to this need for detailed textual analysis of individual works and the requirement to consider both the effect of the work and its author’s intentions, Emmerich starts to hint at an escape from the uncritical categorisation of texts from this period, towards a more workable analytical method. And yet, difficulties remain in Emmerich’s composite model. Emmerich does not fully escape the binary categories of Brekle’s model, nor the implied assumption that anti-fascist literature is more valuable than its non-fascist counterpart. In particular, in continuing to define this legal anti-fascist literature as Widerstandsliteratur Emmerich perpetuates two misleading assumptions of the Brekle model. Firstly, by excluding non-fascist literature from the scope of Widerstandliteratur it is implied that this substantial body of literary work possessed no oppositional function within the Third Reich. Secondly, the legally produced anti-fascist literature of inner emigration is put on a par with very different, illegal and organised types of oppositional literary activity. Indeed, Emmerich and Brekle both identify five sub-types of Widerstandsliteratur which differ fundamentally in terms of the conditions under which they were produced and distributed: (i) literature both illegally written and distributed in Germany; (ii) literature written in Germany, then published abroad; (iii) literature written abroad, then illegally distributed in Germany; (iv) literature written in Germany, but not distributed; (v) literature 138

both legally written and distributed in Germany.10 Of these, only the final two types belong amongst the literature of inner emigration, and in remaining in the private sphere or being published legally, these inner emigration categories of Widerstandsliteratur must have expressed a very different form of ‘resistance’ than did the other three illegal and inherently dangerous forms of literary activity. As Philipp emphasises: Die Betonung des demonstrativen und oppositionellen Aspektes [...] verkennt, daß die Gegnerschaft der Inneren Emigration oft genug nur partiell war und bisweilen nur mit einer bis zur Unkenntlichkeit reichenden Subtilität geäußert wurde bzw. werden konnte. Darüber hinaus sind vielfach ideologische Übereinstimmungen mit Teilen der NS-Ideologie zu verzeichnen und schließlich gilt, daß alle geduldete Literatur eine Funktion innerhalb der nationalsozialistischen Gesellschaft ausübte.11

Any literature which was suitable for publishing under the prevailing conditions of institutional control is likely to have been subject to compromise of some nature. Even a disguised attack on the Nazi regime must be shaped by the conditions of dictatorship and must, in the very act of publication, offer some element of support to that regime. It is in the inflexibility of a terminology which levels out these differences and in an inability to deal with the equivocation of a simultaneous position of opposition and support, that the principal weaknesses of these models lie. Some of the inflexibility of the binary anti-fascist/non-fascist model is resolved by what is the most sophisticated of the models based on Widerstandsliteratur and innere Emigration, namely that of the West German academic Ralf Schnell.12 For Schnell, ‘inner emigration’ 10 11 12

Brekle, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand, p. 19; Emmerich, ‘Die Literatur des antifaschistischen Widerstandes’. Philipp, p. 13. Ralf Schnell, ‘Innere Emigration und kulturelle Dissidenz’, in Richard Löwenthal and Patrick von zur Mühlen (eds), Widerstand und Verweigerung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin: Dietz, 1984), pp. 211–25. Subsequent reference, p. 222.

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does not operate as a cover term for all legally produced anti-fascist and non-fascist writing within the Third Reich. Instead, the term denotes a particular stance of ‘kulturelle Dissidenz’, a label which only acquires its value ‘sowohl im Verhältnis zur gleichzeitig erscheinenden nicht-faschistischen – aber auch nicht dissidenten – Literatur als auch zur Widerstandsliteratur im engeren Sinne’. In this way, Schnell’s model rests on a tri-partite categorisation consisting of: resistance literature in the strict sense; inner emigration (cultural dissidence); and non-fascist, non-dissident literature. In delimiting Widerstandsliteratur from innere Emigration in terms of its illegality, inherent risk, and well-developed organisational basis, Schnell draws a fundamental distinction absent in the binary distinction between anti-fascist and non-fascist literature. However, although the distinction between resistance literature proper and inner emigration is drawn relatively clearly here through these functional criteria (legality, risk, organisation), the distinction within legally produced literature between that which was dissident and that which was non-dissident raises difficulties common to all these models concerning the absence of clearly defined criteria for classification. Even accepting the principle of Emmerich’s detailed analysis of individual texts, much is left to the subjective interpretation of the reader, and, as Eberhard Lämmert points out, with that reader there will always remain doubt, ‘ob er [oder sie] in solche Texte zu viel hineinhört oder am Ende überhört, was zwischen den Zeilen liegt’.13 Indeed, what the reader interprets from a text may openly contradict authorial intention. In the case of Werner Bergengruen’s Der Großtyrann und das Gericht, for example, Schnell himself highlights the divergence between the author’s oppositional intent and the enthusiastic reception of the text in the official Party press.14 What is clear is that both of these factors, authorial intention and textual effect, must be taken into account in the analysis of such texts, but what is less clear is the precise way in which these factors might interact with one another. 13 14

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Eberhard Lämmert, ‘Beherrschte Prosa: Poetische Lizenzen in Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1945’, Neue Rundschau, 86 (1975), 404–21 (p. 407). Schnell, ‘Innere Emigration und kulturelle Dissidenz’, pp. 218–19.

How useful is the notion of ‘inner emigration’? Perhaps the greatest obstacle to clarity in these approaches to the literary production of the Third Reich is the retention, even in Schnell’s tri-partite scheme, of the term ‘inner emigration’. As Brekle points out, the term has at least four overlapping and potentially selfcontradictory ‘Bedeutungsvarianten’: (i) ‘innere Emigration als geistige Distanzierung von faschistischer Politik bzw. Kulturpolitik durch Schreiben nichtfaschistischer Werke’; (ii) ‘als passiver Widerstand, als geistige Opposition’; (iii) ‘als Flucht nach innen, in die Innerlichkeit’; (iv) ‘als Oberbegriff für alle Schattierungen nichtfaschistischer Werke, einschließlich der aktiven Widerstandsliteratur’.15 It is not at all clear whether the term is an aesthetic one, denoting the tendency towards Innerlichkeit within a text, or a socio-political one, denoting the oppositional function of that text. Indeed, with evidence from scholars such as Hans Dieter Schäfer pointing to a conservative aesthetic reaction to the prevailing mood of crisis within Germany around 1930, many of the common aesthetic markers of inner emigration may be attributable not to humanist opposition to National Socialism but to a pre-existing cultural movement.16 Similarly, Joseph Dolan’s analysis of this pre-1933 tendency towards lyric inwardness suggests strongly that inner emigration should be considered an aesthetic rather than a political term.17 Even if employed to describe its socio-political function, the term attracts two selfcontradictory interpretations. As Lämmert summarises: Die Autoren der sogenannten inneren Emigration hätten mit dem bloßen Weiterschreiben unwillentlich das Prestige des NS-Staates vermehrt und oben drein ihre Leser zum Selbstbetrug über die Verhältnisse verführt – oder diese 15 16 17

Brekle, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand, p. 37. See also Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Zur Periodiserung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930’, in Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), pp. 55–71. Joseph P. Dolan, ‘The Theory and Practice of Apolitical Literature: Die Kolonne 1929–1932’, Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 1 (1977), 157–71.

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Autoren hätten es vermocht, dem NS-Staat mutigen, ja heroischen Widerstand mit dem ‘Wort’ entgegenzusetzen.18

Although it may retain some usefulness in denoting an aesthetic stance of Innerlichkeit, the ambiguity of the term ‘inner emigration’ argues strongly against its retention as a term to denote the sociopolitical function of literature written in the Third Reich. If the term ‘inner emigration’ is largely unsuitable to describe the function of writing in the Third Reich, then this is doubly so for the literary production of the GDR. Any comparative terminology for describing the attitudes of individual works and writers to the regimes of the Third Reich and the GDR clearly needs to break away from historically specific aesthetic and political labels towards a more generally applicable vocabulary. Schnell’s labels, Widerstandsliteratur and kulturelle Dissidenz, may offer this kind of terminology. However, any attempt to parallel the analysis of Third Reich literature, by applying labels such as ‘anti-Marxist’ or ‘non-Marxist’ to legal oppositional writing in the GDR, illuminates a fundamental blindspot in these conceptualisations of ‘resistance’ literature. The majority of oppositional writing in the GDR arose not from an anti-Marxist or even non-Marxist perspective. Many writers were able to maintain their commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology, while at the same time expressing dissidence against individual aspects of the SED regime. Similarly, opposition to National Socialism need not have originated from an anti-Nazi, or even a non-Nazi, position, but rather was possible from a more generically pro-fascist standpoint. Indeed, partial rejection of individual Nazi policies is conceivable even from a pro-Nazi position. The existing terminology of ‘literary resistance’, particularly as it relates to the inherently paradoxical nature of legal ‘resistance’, is insufficiently fluid to deal with these examples of partial and ambivalent opposition. For this reason, our search for an appropriate terminology of literary opposition must take us to the recent historiography of ‘resistance’ in the social and political spheres of the Third Reich and the GDR, for it is here that 18

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Lämmert, p. 407.

these issues of partial and ambivalent ‘resistance’ have already been subject to rigorous academic scrutiny.

Social and political approaches: Widerstand and Resistenz Notable in the existing approaches to Widerstandsliteratur outlined above is the unreflected nature of the definition of Widerstand. For both Emmerich and Brekle, ‘resistance literature’ is that literature which contributed to ‘resistance’, the term being assumed to be sufficiently transparent as not to warrant any further elaboration. And yet, the term Widerstand is far from being unproblematic and universally accepted, having undergone a radical transformation in the last thirty years. In this time, the Alltagsgeschichte approach towards the history of the Third Reich has seized the term and shifted its application away from elite, organised, and heroic attempts to bring down the regime and towards more everyday, individual, and often entirely non-heroic actions which in some sense obstructed the enforcement of the regime’s total claim. Academic interest has shifted away from 20 July 1944 and towards individuals’ refusal to make the Hitler salute or their continuing enjoyment of proscribed jazz music. This broadening of the field of enquiry to encompass a host of everyday actions has brought with it increasingly sophisticated typologies of ‘resistance’ behaviour, in relation to both the Third Reich and the GDR. The Bavaria Project The primary role in the re-definition of concepts of ‘resistance’ has been played by researchers at the so-called ‘Bavaria Project’, founded in 1973, and directed through the 1970s and 1980s by Martin Broszat at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. Conceptually, the attempts of 143

Broszat and his colleagues to shift the emphasis away from heroic, monumental concepts of resistance towards more minor, everyday acts of opposition involved two important moves. Firstly the scope of the term Widerstand was broadened so that it encompassed ‘jedes aktive oder passive Verhalten [...], das die Ablehnung des NSRegimes oder eines Teilbereichs der NS-Ideologie erkennen läßt und mit gewissen Risiken verbunden war’.19 As this definition makes clear, both active and passive forms of behaviour which fully or only partially rejected the regime or its ideology were brought under the heading of resistance. Furthermore, definition as resistance can be seen to rest not on whether a particular action could be proved to have been intended as a rejection of National Socialist norms, but only on whether it could be construed as such. The second conceptual move made by Broszat was to complement the existing term Widerstand with a new term, Resistenz, an item of medical terminology denoting ‘immunity to infection’. The notion of Resistenz – ‘wirksame Abwehr, Begrenzung, Eindämmung der NS-Herrschaft oder ihres Anspruches, gleichgültig von welchen Motiven, Gründen und Kräften her’20 – further shifted the emphasis towards minor and passive forms of behaviour which proved themselves to be effectively ‘resistant to infection’ by Nazi ideology. The focus in the Third Reich was no longer on organised, elite attempts to combat the Nazi regime and bring it down, but on the way individuals engaged in their own, sometimes very personal and apparently insignificant, conflict with the dominant Nazi ideology. Instead of emphasising the intentions of oppositional groups, the Bavaria Project sought only to

19

20

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Harald Jaeger and Hermann Rumschöttel, ‘Das Forschungsprojekt “Widerstand und Verfolgung in Bayern 1933–1945”: Ein Modell für die Zusammenarbeit von Archivaren und Historikern’, Archivalische Zeitschrift, 73 (1977), 209–20 (p. 214). Martin Broszat, ‘Resistenz und Widerstand: Eine Zwischenbilanz des Forschungsprojekts’, in Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich, A. Grossmann (eds), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, 6 vols (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1977–1983), IV: Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt: Teil C (1981), pp. 691–711 (p. 697).

measure the effect and function of behaviour in a morally neutral way. Such a radical shift in emphasis has been far from uncontroversial.21 In particular, the notion of Resistenz has attracted criticism for relativising the nature and significance of resistance activity.22 Nonetheless, the undoubted value of this broadening of the scope of resistance can be read from Broszat’s own words: The long-standing, exclusive definition of resistance focusing only upon exceptional cases of fundamental and active opposition has produced an idealized and undifferentiated picture of German resistance. […] As a consequence, scholars have largely ignored the primacy of change within resistance and the interdependence between it and the Nazi regime, and the relationship between the two has been falsely presented as both static and clearly antagonistic. A revised definition that includes the less heroic cases of partial, passive, ambivalent, and broken opposition – one that accounts for the fragility of resistance and the inconsistency of human bravery – may in the end inspire a greater intellectual and moral sensitivity toward the subject than a definition that includes only the exceptional greatness of heroic martyrdom.23

The broadening of the scope of Widerstand, together with the focus on Resistenz, highlights the fluid and often highly ambivalent nature of much opposition to the Nazi regime. Furthermore, this new configuration of the territory of resistance has been taken on board by a number of historians who have further increased the scope and 21 22

23

For a summary and evaluation of the historiography of ‘resistance’, see Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, third edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), pp. 150–79. See, for instance, the comments of Walter Hofer in Jürgen Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach, ‘Diskussionen zur Geschichte des Widerstands: Ein Tagungsresumee’, in Jürgen Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach (eds), Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich: Piper, 1994), pp. 1118–58 (pp. 1122–23). Martin Broszat, ‘A Social and Historical Typology of the German Opposition to Hitler’, in David Clay Large (ed.), Contending with Hitler: Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), pp. 25–33 (p. 25).

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flexibility of the terminology. Hans Mommsen and Peter Steinbach, in particular, have focused on what Broszat terms ‘the primacy of change within resistance’, introducing the idea of ‘resistance as process’ in order to describe how oppositional positions could develop over time.24 What culminated in acts of fundamental resistance often originated in more minor oppositional behaviour or even in initial support for the regime. Furthermore, oppositional behaviour did not necessarily involve a rejection of the core myths of German fascism, only a rejection of one specific policy or ideological element. In this case, any definition of ‘resistance’, or indeed ‘ideology’, needs to be sufficiently fluid to deal with these individual, often paradoxical relationships to the regime and its ideological claim. ‘Resistance’ and the total claim The most significant element to emerge from the Bavaria Project’s re-definition of resistance is to be found in Peter Hüttenberger’s somewhat opaque definition of the term as ‘jede Form der Auflehnung im Rahmen asymmetrischer Herrschaftsbeziehungen gegen eine zumindest tendenzielle Gesamtherrschaft’.25 For Hüttenberger, resistance is a feature of society only where an asymmetry of rule applies, that is, where the balance between the rulers and the ruled is weighted heavily in favour of the former. As Kershaw explains: Die Art der Herrschaft bestimmt die Art des Widerstands; und je umfassender der Herrschaftsanspruch, desto mehr, nicht weniger Widerstand ist die Folge, denn das Regime selbst verwandelt Verhalten und Aktionen in Widerstand, die unter ‘normalen’ Bedingungen [...] häufig überhaupt keine politische Bedeutung beanspruchen könnten.26 24 25 26

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See Steinbach, ‘Diskussionen zur Geschichte des Widerstands’, pp. 1122–23. Peter Hüttenberger, ‘Vorüberlegungen zum “Widerstandsbegriff”’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers: Forschungsbeispiele und ihre Diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 117–34 (p. 126). Ian Kershaw, ‘Widerstand ohne Volk: Dissens und Widerstand im Dritten Reich’, in Schmädeke and Steinbach (eds), pp. 779–98 (p. 781).

Within the Third Reich, where the claim of the regime was total and the asymmetry of rule extreme, resistance became much more widespread, since that total claim politicised minor acts of passive, even unintentional, non-conformity into acts of low-level resistance. To thwart that total claim, in no matter how minor or unintentional a way, was to oppose in some sense the regime. In the GDR, too, a comparable asymmetry of rule existed and the nature of resistance reflected this system of rule: Wie für den Nationalsozialismus gilt deshalb auch für die DDR, daß Widerstand Produkt und Reflexion des Herrschaftssytems zugleich war [...] Ein politisches oder ideologisches Postulat konnte eine Haltung oder Handlung, die für sich genommen gar nicht gegen das System gerichtet waren (zum Beispiel der Besuch eines Gottesdienstes oder das Tragen langer Haare), als Widerspruch erscheinen lassen.27

As Hubertus Knabe indicates, there is a striking parallel between the way in which minor acts could be politicised into oppositional behaviour in both the Third Reich and in the GDR. In this respect, the absolute centrality of retaining some form of totalitarianism paradigm makes itself clear. For all their organisational differences, both the National Socialist and SED regimes made a comparable total claim on society, and it was this total claim which shaped the nature of resistance in the two societies. As Ian Kershaw suggests, the ‘notion of the “total claim” of a regime on its subjects could prove heuristically useful in a comparative analysis of behavioural patterns – acclamatory and oppositional – in quite differently structured societies and political systems’.28 Resistance in this form, characterised by the politicisation of non-conformist behaviour, becomes an inherent structural feature of a society where an extreme asymmetry of rule exists in the form of a total claim. In this way, this notion of ‘resistance’ functions as a further comparative 27 28

Hubertus Knabe, ‘Was war die “DDR-Opposition”? Zur Typologie des politischen Widerspruchs in Ostdeutschland’, Deutschland Archiv, 29 (1996), 184–98 (pp. 186–87). Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 33.

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category for the analysis of the German dictatorships. Indeed, in the post-Wende historicisation of the GDR, the sophisticated analyses of resistance behaviour in its full range of forms in the Third Reich have been increasingly exploited as a fruitful point of departure for the study of forms of behaviour under the SED.29 As Rainer Eckert indicates: ‘Die Ergebnisse der Erforschung des Widerstandes gegen Hitler und sein Reich könnten als heuristisches Modell für die Analyse von Widerstand, Opposition und kollektiven Verhaltensweisen der Bevölkerung in der DDR angewandt werden.’30 Scales and typologies of resistance Above all, this comparability of dissident behaviour within the two German dictatorships has manifested itself in attempts to configure systematic typologies of resistance or opposition, where a range of different types and degrees of ‘resistance’ can be classified. The work of figures such as Gerhard Botz, Richard Löwenthal, and Detlev Peukert in classifying resistance phenomena in the Third Reich has been used as a methodological model by a host of scholars of the GDR.31 Hence, while Botz seeks to differentiate between three types 29

30 31

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See Rainer Eckert, ‘Die Vergleichbarkeit des Unvergleichbaren: Die Widerstandsforschung über die NS-Zeit als methodisches Beispiel’, in Ulrike Poppe, Rainer Eckert, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (eds), Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Anpassung: Formen des Widerstands und der Opposition in der DDR (Berlin: Links, 1995), pp. 68–84; Christoph Kleßmann, ‘Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland: Was kann die künftige DDR-Forschung aus der Geschichtsschreibung zum Nationalsozialismus lernen?’, Deutschland Archiv, 25 (1992), 601–06; Christoph Kleßmann, ‘Opposition und Resistenz in zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland’, Historische Zeitschrift, 262 (1996), 453–79; Peter Steinbach, ‘Widerstand: aus sozialphilosophischer und historisch-politologischer Perspektive’, in Poppe, Eckert, Kowalczuk (eds), pp. 27–67. Eckert, p. 69. Gerhard Botz, ‘Methoden und Theorien der historischen Widerstandsforschung’, in Helmuth Konrad and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds), Arbeiterbewegung-Faschismus-Nationalbewußtsein (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1983), pp. 137–

of activity in the Third Reich – ‘abweichendes Verhalten’ (such as workers’ absenteeism); ‘sozialer Protest’ (spreading anti-Hitler rumours or jokes, listening to foreign broadcasters); and ‘politischer Widerstand’ (sabotage, conspiracy against the regime) – Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk identifies four basic forms of ‘resistance’ in the GDR: ‘gesellschaftliche Verweigerung’; ‘sozialer Protest’; ‘politischer Dissidenz’; and ‘Massenprotest’.32 While Löwenthal distinguishes between ‘politsche Opposition’, ‘gesellschaftliche Verweigerung’, and ‘weltanschauliche Dissidenz’, Erhart Neubert draws distinctions between ‘Opposition, Widerstand, und Widerspruch’ (based primarily on the legality of means and extent of intentions involved), and Christoph Kleßmann between ‘Opposition’ (organised), ‘Dissidenz’ (conscious, but partial), and ‘Widerstand’ (fundamental).33 While Peukert draws up a scale which extends across four sub-categories – ‘NonKonformität, Verweigerung, Protest, Widerstand’ – Eckhard Jesse employs ‘Opposition’ as a cover term for the sub-terms ‘Widerstand, Resistenz und Dissidenz’.34 Hubertus Knabe, meanwhile, goes as far as to draw up a ten-point scale to classify forms of oppositional

32 33

34

51; Richard Löwenthal, ‘Widerstand in totalen Staat’, in Löwenthal and von zur Mühlen (eds), pp. 11–24; Detlev Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde: Anpassung, Ausmerze, Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Bund, 1982). Botz, pp. 145–47; Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, ‘Von der Freiheit, Ich zu sagen: Widerständiges Verhalten in der DDR’, in Poppe, Eckert, Kowalczuk (eds), pp. 85–115 (p. 97). Löwenthal, p. 14; Erhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949– 1989 (Berlin: Links, 1998), p. 29; Christoph Kleßmann, ‘Opposition und Dissidenz in der Geschichte der DDR’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 41 (1991), 52–62 (pp. 52–53). Peukert, p. 97; Eckhard Jesse, ‘Artikulationsformen und Zielsetzungen von widerständigem Verhalten in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik’, in Deutscher Bundestag (ed.), Materialien der Enquete-Kommission: ‘Aufbearbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland’, 9 vols (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), VII: Möglichkeiten und Formen abweichenden und widerständigen Verhaltens und oppositionellen Handelns, die friedliche Revolution im Herbst 1989, die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands und Fortwirken von Strukturen und Mechanismen der Diktatur, pp. 987–1030 (p. 997 and p. 1000).

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behaviour in the GDR: ‘Resistenz, partielle Kritik, sozialer Protest, passiver Widerstand, neue soziale Bewegeungen, politischer Protest, Dissidenz, politische Opposition, aktiver Widerstand, Aufstand’.35 The sheer proliferation of these typological models of resistance renders the terminological apparatus somewhat bewildering. The term Widerstand itself may be used variously as a cover term for all the forms of behaviour included (Kowalczuk), as a specific term for the most active and fundamental form of oppositional behaviour (Kleßmann, Neubert), or even in both of these senses simultaneously (Peukert). Kleßmann has even shifted his own usage, so that elsewhere he employs Widerstand as a synonymous co-term to Opposition, both of which contrast with Resistenz.36 Across the typologies, there exists a confusion of different types of term, some of them describing the relationship between the individual and the regime (Widerstand, Opposition), others the type of behaviour under consideration (Non-Konformität, Verweigerung, Aufstand). Knabe, in particular, mixes a range of different kinds of term which have no clear or necessary relation to one another. Again, the question of just how to draw boundaries between categories of behaviour is a vexed one. In some cases differentiating criteria are vague, so that even where examples of the type of behaviour included under certain headings are provided, as in Botz’s model, the boundaries seem far from clearcut. In particular, the relationship between intention and effect in determining the function of an action remains unclear. Nonetheless, some of the models do provide a number of objective functional criteria for distinguishing between, on the one hand, those acts of opposition which were more serious and less widespread and, on the other, those which were less serious and more widespread. Above all, Detlev Peukert’s model rests on two clearly defined, complementary criteria: (i) the scope of the criticism (from ‘partiell’ to ‘generell’); (ii) the sphere in which the behaviour took place (from ‘privat’ to ‘staatsbezogen’).37 Similarly, Neubert differentiates between Opposition 35 36 37

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Knabe, p. 197. See Kleßmann, ‘Opposition und Resistenz in zwei Diktaturen’, p. 45. Peukert, p. 97.

and Widerstand in terms of the legality of means employed, while Knabe defines his scale as extending from those acts which are ‘relativ risikoarm, partiell, privat, und passiv’ to those which are ‘relativ risikointensiv, global, öffentlich, und aktiv’.38 Whichever specific terminology is employed, actions are positioned on a scale of behaviour according to their scope, their sphere of influence, their legality, their inherent risk, and their active or passive nature. Hence, while the principle of a typological model which employs these differentiating criteria to distinguish within the broad spectrum of oppositional behaviour offers a step forward, if we are to gain any practical analytical benefit from these methodological advances, some rationalisation of this conceptual and terminological confusion is required. In this respect, a distilled, three-point model developed by Ian Kershaw for application to the Third Reich – extending from the broadest band of ‘dissent’, down to the narrower band of ‘opposition’, and finally down to a hard core of ‘resistance’ – may offer a ready-made solution.39 Within this model, conceptualised below in the form of three concentric circles, a ‘broad gulf’ separates the core of ‘resistance’ from the wider band of ‘opposition’, while a rather fuzzier boundary exists between ‘opposition’ and the broadest band of all, ‘dissent’. While ‘resistance’ is defined as ‘organised attempts to work against the regime with the conscious aim of undermining it or planning for the moment of its demise’, ‘opposition’ also includes ‘many forms of actions with limited aims, not directed against Nazism as a system and at times deriving from individuals or groups at least partially sympathetic towards the regime and its ideology’, and ‘dissent’ extends to encompass ‘passive “oppositional” feeling which did not necessarily result in any action, and the voicing of attitudes often spontaneous, at all critical of any aspect of Nazism’.

38 39

Knabe, p. 197. See Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, pp. 170–71. All references from this source.

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Figure 1: Bands of dissent (derived from Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, pp. 170–71)

Here Kershaw resolves the ambiguity of the term ‘resistance’ by returning to it its original, narrow and exclusive sense of active, political resistance. Instead, ‘dissent’, as the broadest band of behaviour, also becomes the umbrella term for all oppositional behaviour, roughly equivalent in scope to Broszat’s extended conception of resistance, and defined as ‘all forms of behaviour which deviated from the norms demanded by the regime and opposed – perhaps even restricted – its total claim’. Each of the three terms in Kershaw’s model – ‘resistance’, ‘opposition’, and ‘dissent’ – describes the relationship and attitude of the individual to the regime, as expressed through his or her behaviour, and each has an intuitive relationship to one another. The great attraction of this model is the way in which it concentrates the variables from other models, such as Peukert’s, and integrates them into a rationalised typology. Both intention and effect, for instance, are used as criteria, but in relatively strictly delimited terms. Only a dissenting effect, often entirely unintentional and generated only by the claim of the regime, is necessary to define an act of ‘dissent’, whereas both intention and effect are required for acts of ‘opposition’ or ‘resistance’. In ‘opposition’, the intention may be only partial or may be held back by some degree 152

of ideological sympathy. In ‘resistance’, that intention is of an altogether different magnitude and, significantly, is qualitatively different, consciously seeking to undermine the whole regime.

Patterns of literary assent and dissent Literary dissent The implications of this re-appraisal of notions of ‘resistance’ for analysing the literary production of the Third Reich and the GDR are considerable. Above all, the extreme asymmetry of rule and the politicising total claim within the two dictatorships lend literary production, in common with all other forms of behaviour, a highly politicised social function absent under more symmetrical conditions of rule. In the literary sphere, as in the social sphere, the boundaries of what constitutes resistance in the broad sense must be extended to encompass more ambivalent and partial instances of oppositional writing. Indeed, it is proposed to establish and employ the notion of ‘literary dissent’, a category applicable to both the Third Reich and the GDR by virtue of the regimes’ common total claim on culture. In keeping with Kershaw’s definition of ‘dissent’, this category is a broadly conceived one and encompasses ‘all forms of [literary] behaviour which deviated from the norms demanded by the regime and opposed – perhaps even restricted – its total claim’.40 The emphasis is shifted here away from only a judgement of the author’s oppositional intent, to embrace also the objective functional effect of a text, to assess whether it blocked, intentionally or non-intentionally, the attempts of the regimes to enforce their total claim. This notion of literary dissent broadens the scope of what is conventionally termed ‘resistance literature’, allowing for the study of literary output 40

Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 170.

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which demonstrates what Broszat terms ‘die Prozeßhaftigkeit, Phasenveränderung und Interdependenz von Herrschaft und Widerstand’.41 The conventional perception of a ‘static and clearly antagonistic’ relationship between oppositional writing and the two regimes is swept away, replaced by ‘a revised definition that includes the less heroic cases of partial, passive, ambivalent, and broken [literary] opposition’.42 Above all, the comparable conditions of rule in the two dictatorships allow this functional category to be applied to the literary production both of the Third Reich and of the GDR. Having set the parameters of any comparative study of literary dissent in the Third Reich and the GDR, we can draw further on the social historiography of resistance in order to locate more precise analytical tools to apply within those broad boundaries. In particular, the typologies of resistance behaviour developed in the social history of both the Third and Reich and the GDR supply tools to differentiate different types of literary dissent. More specifically, a framework within which to explore literary production in the Third Reich and in the GDR can be established by means of a sliding scale of behaviour which employs the categories developed within Ian Kershaw’s configuration of dissent. This revised model consists of a scale split not into ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘non-fascist’ (or ‘anti-Marxist’ and ‘non-Marxist’), but into ‘literary dissent’, ‘literary opposition’, and ‘literary resistance’, employing as closely as possible the definitions and distinctions outlined by Kershaw. This scale carries with it the advantage of having a more subtle and differentiated means of classification, three categories compared to two, which seeks not to divine the fundamental intention of a work, but rather to describe more objectively its relationship to the norms of the regime. The literary activity included on this scale extends from the broadest band of dissent (low-level dissenting effect, often passive, spontaneous, and sometimes even unintentional in origin), across a fuzzy boundary to a narrower band of opposition (intentional oppositional writing 41 42

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Martin Broszat, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte des deutschen Widerstands’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 34 (1986), 293–309 (p. 295). Broszat, ‘Social and Historical Typology of Opposition’, p. 25.

with limited aims or tempered by some degree of ideological sympathy), and then over a broad gulf to a hard core of resistance proper (writing which consciously, and in an organised fashion, sought to bring down the regime). Valuable in helping to place individuals and their works on this fluid continuum of dissenting literary activity will be those functional differentiating criteria developed by historians such as Peukert and Knabe. Towards the dissent end of the scale lie those works which are legal, private, lowrisk, passive in intent, and partial in scope; at the resistance end of the scale lie those works which are illegal, public, high-risk, active in intent, and global in scope.43 Furthermore, the notion of ‘resistance as process’ suggests that individual writers would not necessarily occupy a fixed, static position on the continuum, but would rather be liable to move along it over time. How this model might start to work in practice and how it might offer a more flexible terminological and conceptual framework than existing approaches to the literary production of the dictatorships can be illustrated through a brief consideration of the five categories of work analysed as Widerstandsliteratur by Brekle.44 While that designation levels out any differences between these types of literary production, the proposed scale of literary dissent allows for a more differentiated analysis, where different types of work will occupy different positions on the scale. Only the first three types - literature illegally written and distributed in Germany or abroad - could possibly occupy a position of resistance (used here in the narrow, fundamental sense). Applying our criteria, it is the illegal, high-risk nature of the activity and the degree of organisation required which position this behaviour towards the resistance or opposition end of the scale, although the precise classification of any work would clearly depend on the precise aims and ideological position of the writers concerned and the extent of organisation involved. These primarily illegal activities could not be categorised merely as dissent. 43 44

Schnell’s analysis partially anticipates these criteria. See Schnell, ‘Innere Emigration und kulturelle Dissidenz’, p. 223. Brekle, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand, p. 19.

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More likely to occupy such a position is Brekle’s fourth category of writing, those works written privately and not intended for publication. Being restricted to the private sphere and being of an individual, passive nature, such works must be positioned further down the scale, some distance from a position of resistance, or even opposition. Again, the precise circumstances of the work involved are liable to shift it along the continuum, but in general terms this category of literary production would tend to occupy a position somewhere within the broadest band of dissent. Resistenzliteratur? Above all, it is the study of the fifth category of ‘resistance literature’, the legally published literature of the Third Reich, which is transformed by the notion of literary dissent. Here, the non-fascist, nondissident writing, excluded by Brekle, Grimm, Emmerich, and also Schnell from conventional frameworks of Widerstandsliteratur and innere Emigration, is re-evaluated as a legitimate object of analysis. Under the heading of literary dissent, the boundaries of analysis are extended from the conventionally narrow scope of actively oppositional Widerstandsliteratur to encompass also what we might term Resistenzliteratur, that is, that writing which passively, and often ambivalently, resisted infection by Nazi ideology. Indeed, the kind of approach advocated here is not without precedent. Brekle himself unwittingly provides a justification for viewing non-fascist writing in this way: ‘so bewahrten sie doch die deutschen Menschen vor der Infizierung durch die faschistische Ideologie.’45 More conscious in this approach are Jan-Pieter Barbian, who has applied the term Resistenz to writing in the Third Reich, although without any overt methodological reflection, and Michael Philipp, who draws an explicit parallel between Broszat’s definition of Resistenz and the

45

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Brekle, ‘Die antifaschistische Literatur’, p. 117.

literature of so-called inner emigration.46 Resistenz, like inner emigration, is a form of opposition which ‘keineswegs immer politisch motiviert war und häufig allein [...] der Aufrechterhaltung der Autonomie im [...] geistig-kulturellen, [...] oder im sonstigen beruflichen oder privatlichen Lebensbereich diente’.47 Also notable in this context is Philipp’s acknowledgement of the importance of the total claim of the Nazi regime in politicising literary activity: ‘Die Berechtigung für die Ausdehnung des Begriffs Innere Emigration zur Beschreibung einer Haltung der Resistenz ergibt sich aus den umfassenden totalitären Ansprüchen des NS-Regimes. Wer sich der staatlichen Indienstnahme der Literatur verweigerte, behauptete eine Differenz zum NS-Regime.’48 As Philipp concludes: Die Innere Emigration ist in erster Linie ein sozialgeschichtliches Phänomen, das eine Reaktion auf die totalitären Ansprüche des NS-Regimes darstellt. Sie ist eine nicht-nationalsozialistische Haltung im Sinne der von Martin Broszat beschriebenen Resistenz, die sich bei fließenden Grenzen und mancherlei Übergängen zwischen Widerstand und Kooperation bewegt.

As such, the historiography of resistance in the social sphere points to a fundamental paradigm shift in the analysis of ‘resistance literature’. The focus switches from active oppositional intent to embrace writing which occupies a much more ambivalent position between the regimes of the German dictatorships and fundamental opposition to them. Whereas the illegally produced and distributed works of literary dissent can be unproblematically positioned towards the resistance end of the scale, and the privately written and non-disseminated texts towards the dissent end, this final category of works legally produced and published within Germany is much more difficult to locate. 46

47 48

Jan-Pieter Barbian, ‘Die vollendete Ohnmacht? Das Verhältnis der Schriftsteller zu den staatlichen und parteiamtlichen “Schrifttumsstellen” im “Dritten Reich”’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 20.1 (1995), 137–60 (pp. 155–59). See also chapter 3, note 5 above. Broszat, ‘Sozialgeschichte des Widerstands’, p. 300, quoted by Philipp, p. 14. Philipp, p. 15. Subsequent reference, p. 27.

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Indeed, it is conceivable that such works might occupy a position within any one of the three available categories. If a published work could be shown to have actively sought to undermine the regime and, further, could be shown to have had a demonstrable effect towards that end, then it could justifiably be adjudged a work of resistance, particularly given the very public and high-risk nature of any dissent expressed. However, much more likely is that these published texts would possess only a partial dissenting intent, perhaps because they originate from a position of ideological proximity to the regime, and that they would therefore occupy a position lower down the scale. This type of work is particularly important in the GDR, where much literary dissent came from writers who were firmly attached to the core myths of the GDR and its regime. Indeed, in both dictatorships it may be that access to the public sphere is dependent on at least some degree of ideological conformity, so that the vast majority of legally published works will only express at most a low-level and partial form of dissent. Also included amongst this category of very low-level dissent may be many legally published works which expressed dissent without any discernible intent. In contrast to ‘antifascist/non-fascist’ models, no such proof of intention is necessary for works to be categorised as literary dissent. Instead, any divergence from prescribed aesthetic norms is sufficient to constitute dissent under the politicising total claim of the regime. At the same time, if a dissenting intention can be demonstrated then the combination of both dissenting effect and dissenting intention necessitates a categorisation within opposition. What this demonstrates above all is that judgements cannot be generalised across texts, but must be made on an individualised basis, according to the available textual and contextual evidence, concerning both intention and effect. This complements both the approach outlined by Detlev Peukert in the social sphere and that of Michael Philipp in the literary sphere. As Peukert indicates, ‘es wird jeweils im Einzelfall zu prüfen sein, auf welcher Seite innerhalb der Felder abweichenden Verhaltens

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eine bestimmte Aktivität anzusiedeln ist’.49 For Philipp, meanwhile, the fluidity of boundaries between dissent and conformity within inner emigration suggests that, ‘die Abgrenzungen nach beiden Richtungen müssen im Einzelfall mit Untersuchungen der jeweiligen individuellen Lebens- und Werkgeschichte ermittelt werden’.50 Assent and dissent These works of literary dissent which were published legally raise one highly significant criticism which was levelled at earlier models, and which has yet to be addressed within the framework proposed here. The extent to which a work of literature might dissent against the regime represents only one half of the picture. We need also to account for the possibility that a text, or an individual writer, may also give assent to the regime, or indeed assent and dissent simultaneously. As Neubert suggests, such an ambiguous position is not unusual, but rather is the norm for opponents of the German dictatorships: ‘Dabei haben in beiden Diktaturen die Gegner stets auch bestimmte und unterschiedliche Teile der Voraussetzungen des politischen Systems akzeptiert.’51 This is particularly the case for that literature legally published under the dictatorships, where simply being published implies some form of assent, be that in the form of conscious compromise, the unintentional adoption of ideologically loaded discourse, or bolstering the prestige of the regime through the act of publication itself. Gerhard Bauer, for example, is clear about the necessary simultaneity of discursive assent and dissent: Selbst die mutigsten, selbst die listigsten und beweglichsten Gegner des NS mußten sich dem gängigen Sprachgebrauch anpassen, mußten Mittel, Vorstellungen, Worte gebrauchen, die von der Übermacht ihres Gegners geprägt

49 50 51

Peukert, p. 98. Philipp, p. 27. Neubert, p. 27.

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waren und die durch ihren massenhaften Gebrauch diese Dominanz verstärkten.52

What is vital in the study of this production is, in Philipp’s words, ‘die Betonung des ambivalenten Grundcharakters dieser Literatur mit ihrer paradoxen Gleichzeitigkeit von Dissens und Konsens, von Distanz und Anpassung, die eine Alternative von Apologie und Verurteilung überwindet’.53 In the cultural and literary sphere, as elsewhere, ‘the story of dissent, opposition, and resistance in the Third Reich is indistinguishable from the story of consent, approval, and collaboration’.54 In some sense an awareness of these assenting functions is built into the model of literary dissent as it has already been outlined. The oppositional potential of a work is often tempered by a degree of assent which positions it lower down the scale, as dissent rather than opposition. But it remains open to question whether this implicit recognition, simply moving a work lower down the scale of dissent, places sufficient emphasis on the potential assenting function of apparently dissenting works. To categorise a work simply as dissenting, no matter how careful and nuanced that judgement might be, is to be in danger of slipping, at least superficially, into a onesided analysis which overstates and even perhaps falsely heroicises the behaviour of artists and intellectuals. To fully appreciate and recognise the potential ambivalence of the position of many writers, it is necessary to make a more explicit recognition of these supportive functions, to construct a scale of ‘assent’ to mirror that of dissent already drawn up. Such a scale would comprise three positions – ‘assent’, ‘support’, and ‘collaboration’ – which, applied in combination with the dissent scale, would provide six basic positions to describe the full range of literary activity in the Third Reich and the GDR in terms of the relationship of an individual or a literary 52 53 54

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Gerhard Bauer, Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Cologne: Bund, 1988), p. 10. Philipp, p. 28. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship, p. 179.

work to the regime: resistance, opposition, dissent; assent, support, collaboration. Broadly the same defining criteria can be applied to the assent side of the scale as have been applied to the dissent side. The scope of ‘assent’, like that of ‘dissent’, is broad and covers non-intentional acts of assent which arise from the politicising claim of the regime concerned. Just as unintended, ‘non-oppositional’ divergence from the norms of the regime can be politicised into an act of dissent, so conformity with those norms can be politicised into an act of assent, whether or not this carries a supportive intent. It is in this way that the very act of publishing as a writer under the conditions of ‘totalitarianism’, or a largely unintentional coincidence of aesthetic procedures between a writer and the prescribed norms of the regime, can come to automatically constitute an act of assent towards that regime. The literary activity described within this broad category would range from a very wide band of ‘assent’ (passive and/or unintentional voicing of approval), down across a fuzzy boundary to ‘support’ (intentional, but partial in scope), and then across a broad gulf to a hard core of ‘collaboration’ (organised, public, and global in its support for the aims of the regime). Hence, the scale of assent is in general terms a mirror-image of the scale of dissent, although a number of salient differences may apply. Principal among these is the assumption that assent encompasses a larger number of acts, everyday and otherwise, than does dissent. Indeed, under conditions of political repression, it seems reasonable to work from the assumption that assent is the norm, dissent the exception. As Mary Fulbrook maintains with reference to the GDR, ‘the capacity to conform, without enquiring too closely, the capacity to live within apparently immutable parameters, is less difficult to explain than the emergence of a willingness to think differently, […] and to dare to mount an active challenge to the rules of the game’.55 This seems to have been particularly the case for the professional classes where ‘professional55

Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 85. Subsequent reference, p. 84.

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ism took precedence over risk-taking’. In simply fulfilling their professional duties, many individuals gave passive assent to the regime. In pursuing a literary career under the conditions of dictatorship, professional writers likewise granted assent, willingly or not, to the respective ‘totalitarian’ regimes. Finally, we are left with the issue of how these two scales might interact with one another and how we might best conceptualise that interaction. In addition to the six basic positions already outlined, we must also allow for the possibility of more complex composite positions, where texts or individuals occupy a position on both scales simultaneously. Hence, it cannot be a matter of simply placing the two scales end to end. Instead, the overlapping of the scales of assent and dissent may be conceptualised in the form of the diagram below, where only the respective fundamental cores of ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’ are not capable of generating a composite position.

Figure 2: Overlapping scales of assent and dissent

As the diagram indicates, assent is assumed to be more commonplace than dissent, while dissent is assumed to be frequently accompanied by some measure of assent. A position of simultaneous assent and dissent is extremely likely (above all in writing which is not overtly political), but so too is the expression of assent from a basic position 162

of opposition and the expression of dissent from a basic position of support (for example for the exile generation in GDR). In theory, this schematic representation provides nine possible positions to assist in the analysis of individual texts and their authors under the German dictatorships: collaboration, support, support with dissent, assent, assent and dissent, dissent, opposition with assent, opposition, resistance. This figure is not intended to act as a rigid model, claiming to reveal in itself a hidden truth about the nature of an individual text. Rather, it is designed to act as a conceptual tool which might help to configure more detailed analyses of individual texts and the nature of their relationship to the regimes of the German dictatorships. Of importance will not be the individual location of a particular work within this model, something which will remain a largely subjective exercise, but the relative location of a number of works or a number of writers in relation to one another. In particular, this model offers a means of conceptualising the progression of a single writer over a period of time, where a number of works might show a shift from one side of the scale to another. Some methodological principles In summary, the following present themselves as methodological principles which inform an assessment of the extent and nature of assent and/or dissent expressed by a text in the Third Reich or GDR: 1. Textual conformity/non-conformity The starting-point for any such assessment is an analysis of the text itself, and more specifically, the extent of textual conformity and/or non-conformity to the norms of the official varieties of ideology, aesthetics, and discourse propagated by the Nazi or SED regimes. Particularly important here is the location of the text in relation to 163

the will to truth of Nazi or SED ideology, defined in terms of core political myths and historical narratives and propagated through the dominant ideologically-conditioned variety of discourse. Clearly this is not an either/or proposition. Rather, we would expect discursive conformity and non-conformity, conceived in Foucaultian terms, to be realised in more complex patterns of confirmation and partial challenge. Dissent need not be expressed only in the outright rejection of official discourse but also in a tendency towards textual polysemia which undermines and exposes official attempts to impose a unity of meaning. 2. Functional criteria To this initial assessment of textual conformity or non-confomity can then be applied the kind of functional criteria which emerge from the more recent socio-political scales of ‘resistance’ behaviour. Five principal sets of criteria present themselves: publicness (private public); scope (partial - general); attitude (active – passive); risk (low risk - high risk); and legality (legal - illegal). The nature of the literary act described in terms of these criteria is a central factor in determining the extent of assent or dissent expressed by any given level of textual conformity or non-conformity. Non-conformity which is public, general in scope, active, high-risk, and illegal expresses a greater degree of dissent than that which is private, partial in scope, passive, low-risk and legal. Likewise, conformity which is public, active, and general in scope expresses a greater degree of assent than that which is private, passive, and partial in scope. 3. Intention and effect Applying the Bavaria Project methodology to literary texts would remove entirely the sphere of intention from any assessment of assent or dissent. This methodological move has a strong initial attraction, not least because it provides a seemingly objective resolution to the often intractable issues surrounding the interpretation of 164

authorial intention. Indeed, this social-historical approach offers a striking parallel to the widespread literary-critical move away from author-centred criticism which has tended to bracket out, or even kill off, the author and the importance of his/her intentions. Textual analysis founded on a strict Foucaultian notion of discourse would also have little or no interest in the intention of the author, constraining discursive procedures being granted the principal role in shaping the production of discourse. All this points to a very significant function being assigned to the assenting or dissenting effects of a text, effects which are often achieved independent of, or contrary to, authorial intention. And yet, in the study of social and political resistance, the notion of intention retains a central role, both in the functional criteria of ‘attitude’ and ‘scope’ and in the distinctions between ‘dissent’, ‘opposition’, and ‘resistance’ outlined by Kershaw. There is a significant and necessary distinction to be drawn between non-intentional literary dissent generated solely by the politicising effect of the total claim acting on textual non-conformity and literary dissent which arises from a deliberate undertaking to oppose the regime through the contravention of aesthetic and ideological norms. At the same time, further important distinctions exist in the nature of these intentions. Assent and dissent may be motivated by ideological or pragmatic factors, and this motivational context adds a significant extra level of analysis. Thus, in assessing the behaviour of individual writers in dictatorship, this study will employ a methodology which combines an analysis of textual effect and discursive function, where the author is provisionally bracketed out, with an analysis of all available evidence which may illuminate the intentions and motivations which lie behind that activity. 4. Text and context The text itself stands at the centre of this analytical procedure, not only offering evidence of potential contemporary effect through the available readings of the relationship between text and regime, but also allowing for inferences concerning the intentional or non165

intentional nature of that conformity and non-conformity. At the same time, contextual evidence must also have a very significant role to play in any assessment of the assenting and/or dissenting function of the text. Central in terms of effect must be any available evidence of the contemporary reception of the text, in particular by the regime itself. As far as intention is concerned, available contextual evidence may be able to illuminate the circumstances of composition of the text and also the preceding and subsequent aesthetic and ideological trajectory of the author. Positioning any text in such a trajectory, which may extend across the boundaries of dictatorship, and above all identifying continuities or discontinuities is a significant element of the analytical method. As such, detailed textual analysis must be allied to an examination of such sources as contemporary reviews, correspondence, and diary-material. Only through this rigorous investigation of the full range of available sources will a balanced assessment of the relative levels of assent and dissent expressed by writers under the conditions of dictatorship be made possible.

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Part Two

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Chapter 4 Forms of literary assent and dissent under National Socialism: Günter Eich

In the first part of this study, the analysis of literary assent and dissent in the German dictatorships has operated primarily at a macro level. Broad theoretical categories have acted as focal points for a discussion which has embraced the political, social, and cultural spheres throughout the existence of both the Third Reich and the GDR. In this second part, the focus shifts to an examination of specific literary phenomena within the context of the theoretical and methodological framework elaborated in part one. Specifically the writing of Günter Eich under National Socialism and Bertolt Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR act as case studies for an investigation of the nature of assent and dissent expressed by writers under the conditions of dictatorship. Individually, new light will be shed on the output of these two writers in the Third Reich and GDR respectively, the nature of their relationship to the National Socialist and SED regimes, their motivations for their writing, and not least the extent of assent and/or dissent expressed by them. Comparatively, common and divergent elements in these expressions of assent and dissent will be drawn out in an attempt to come closer to a judgement as to the comparability of writing experiences at, and within, the margins of the German dictatorships. As far as Günter Eich is concerned, attention rests above all on his prodigious radio output during the Third Reich and the extent to which the majority of this output, originally dismissed as harmless, can be seen to express assent towards central elements of Nazi ideology and aesthetic policy. In terms of dissent, the years 1936– 1938 stand out as a crisis period when Eich’s work seems to be

shaped by a tone of melancholy and negativity, centred on a sense of poetic self-prostitution. Important questions here relate above all to the nature of the crisis undergone by Eich in these years - moral or artistic - and the extent to which any such crisis is directly related to National Socialism. The essential starting-point for this examination of Eich’s writing under National Socialism paradoxically lies outside dictatorship, in the contributions made by Eich to Die Kolonne, the literary journal edited by Martin Raschke and Artur Kuhnert and published in Dresden between 1929 and 1932. This material is central to the subsequent analysis, because it offers insight into Eich’s literary theory and practice in the immediate pre-history of the Third Reich, thereby allowing for the investigation of continuities and discontinuities into his later work under National Socialism. The story of Eich’s assent and dissent to the Nazi regime - at once the story of the enforced betrayal of the autonomous and idealistic Kolonne poet by the dependent and pragmatic radio author - is one where the precise extent of the determining role played by the conditions of dictatorship requires very careful questioning.

Die Kolonne: aesthetics and ideology before 1933 In his study of Eich’s writing career under National Socialism, Glenn Cuomo highlights the significance of the Dresden literary periodical Die Kolonne, and Eich’s contributions to it, for an understanding of the poetological and ideological stance which informed Eich’s early writing: Eich wrote numerous essays and reviews as a Kolonne member. These comments on contemporary works and tendencies are invaluable for the study of his early period since they make it possible to ascertain Eich’s poetological and ideological stance during the declining years of the Weimar Republic. His views are consistent with the editorial thrust of Die Kolonne on all major issues,

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and at times he even appears in the role of a spokesman for the journal’s policy.1

It is above all in the nature of Eich’s Kolonne output, where essays and reviews outnumbered purely literary pieces, and its historical location, in the final years of the Weimar Republic, that the significance of these contributions for the study of Eich’s subsequent writing in the Third Reich lies. These review articles and poetological statements offer unmediated access to Eich’s voice and hence direct insight into his poetological and ideological stance. The opportunity to identify this stance in advance of 30 January 1933 allows for the investigation of continuities and discontinuities across that moment of political rupture, and this may in turn have a profound bearing on any analysis of the forms of assent or dissent expressed by Eich under National Socialism. Any conformity to the norms of National Socialist ideology and policy which can be shon to have arisen out of the pursuit of pre-existing aesthetic and/or ideological principles must be evaluated differently from that which comes about through the adjustment of those principles in the light of the experiences of Nazi rule itself. The same must also apply to divergence from those norms. Here, two principal sets of questions arise in relation to Eich’s involvement with the Kolonne Circle. Firstly, what was the ideological and aesthetic position defined in the Kolonne programme and how far were Eich’s own contributions representative of that position? And secondly, how closely can this position be associated, both aesthetically and politically, with that of National Socialism?

1

Glenn R. Cuomo, Career at the Cost of Compromise: Günter Eich’s Life and Work in the Years 1933–1945 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), p. 14.

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Aesthetic conservatism Just what constituted the ‘editorial thrust’ of Die Kolonne can be read from two statements made by one of the journal’s co-editors, Martin Raschke. The first of these statements opened the inaugural issue of the journal in December 1929: Allein der Angst, den Anschluß an eine Wirklichkeit zu verlieren, die aus sich einer gelobten Zukunft zuzustreben scheint, ist das Entstehen einer Sachlichkeit zuzuschreiben, die den Dichter zum Reporter erniedrigte und die Umgebung des proletarischen Menschen als Gefühlsstandard modernen Dichtens propagierte. Und es fanden genügend Stimmen, die überall das Dichten als leicht erlernbaren Beruf ausschrieen, spottend über Intuitionen und Gnade [...]. Aber noch immer leben wir von Acker und Meer, und die Himmel, sie reichen aber auch über die Stadt. Noch immer lebt ein großer Teil der Menschheit in ländlichen Verhältnissen, und es entspringt nicht müßiger Traditionsfreude, wenn ihm Regen und Kälte wichtiger sind als ein Dynamo, der nie das Korn reifte.2

The second is an essay entitled ‘Über die Aufgabe der Kolonne’ which appeared in 1932: Die Kolonne wird polemisieren gegen Schreibende, die sich an Stimmungen der Massen und die Moden ihrer Zeit verschenken, weil sie nicht mehr im schöpferischen Grunde des Lebens verankert genug sind und die sich ängstlich mit Auge und Ohr anstatt nach dem Herzen orientieren.3

As these pieces make clear, the Kolonne project is to be understood as a reaction against contemporary Modernist literary trends, such as Neue Sachlichkeit, which tended to focus on urban life and the proletariat, increasingly in the mode of a reporter rather than as a poet. The search for renewed relevance away from journalistic objectivity took the Kolonne contributors back to the perceived high2 3

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Die Kolonne, 1 (1929–1930), 1. Anton Kaes attributes this anonymous piece to Martin Raschke. See Anton Kaes (ed.), Weimarer Republik: Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur 1918–1933 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983), p. 675. Martin Raschke, ‘Über die Aufgabe der Kolonne’, Die Kolonne, 3 (1932), 32.

points of German lyricism from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In other words, this is an aesthetically conservative move back towards what Joseph Dolan terms an aesthetic posture of ‘lyric inwardness’.4 As such, the timeless nature symbolism of Die Kolonne can be seen to rest on three central principles: ‘the essential timelessness of the inner life, the notion of the genius as representative of his age, and the religious function of art.’ How Eich’s own approach to writing related to this editorial position becomes clear in two programmatic statements of his own. Invited in the second issue of Die Kolonne in 1930, ‘in möglichst aphoristischer Form über die Tendenzen ihres Schaffens Auskunft zu geben’, Eich defended his conception of poetry as ‘innere Dialoge’, divorced from the contemporary world around him: Ich finde es gänzlich unter meiner Würde, mich für meine Gedichte zu entschuldigen und mich vor Leitartikeln zu verbeugen, und werde immer darauf verzichten, auf mein ‘soziales Empfinden’ hinzuweisen, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, die Sympathie von Linksblättern nicht zu erringen und selbst auf die noch furchtbarere Gefahr hin, nicht für ‘heutig’ gehalten zu werden. (GW, 4, p. 457)

With a pointed reference to Left-wing journals, Eich ‘sets out in embryonic form [his] theory of romantic aestheticism in opposition to the utilitarian art forms characteristic of the committed poets of the Weimar Republic’.5 In his own words in the same piece: ‘Und Verantwortung vor der Zeit? Nicht im geringsten. Nur vor mir selber.’ Eich’s belief in a fundamental incompatibility between poetry and politics and his view of lyric production as an act free of utility and free of the poet’s own will are further confirmed in an impassioned defence of the lyric approach which he represented, entitled ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’ and published in Die Kolonne in 4 5

See Joseph P. Dolan, ‘The Theory and Practice of Apolitical Literature: Die Kolonne 1929–1932’, Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 1 (1977), 157–71. Subsequent reference, p. 158. Larry L. Richardson, Committed Aestheticism: The Poetic Theory and Practice of Günter Eich (New York: Lang, 1983), p. 20.

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1932. In this essay, ‘Eich’s most definitive prewar essay on poetic theory’,6 Eich responds as follows to an essay by Bernhard Diebold which had taken the young generation of poets to task for their failure to address contemporary issues: Eine Entscheidung für die Zeit, d.h. also für eine Teilerscheinung der Zeit, interessiert den Lyriker als Lyriker überhaupt nicht. [...] Der Lyriker entscheidet sich für nichts, ihn interessiert nur sein Ich [...], für ihn existiert nur das gemeinschaftslose vereinzelte Ich. Und gerade weil er sich für nichts entscheidet, fängt er die Zeit als Ganzes in sich auf und läßt sie im ungetrübten Spiegel seines Ichs wieder sichtbar werden. (GW, 4, p. 459)

Here, Eich strongly echoes Raschke’s own programmatic editorial statements, steadfastly placing the creative subjectivity of the poet above more popular, politicised literary trends. Eich clearly acts ‘in the role of spokesman for the journal’s policy’, defending not only his own poetological position but also that of the Kolonne Circle as a whole.7 What is remarkable about Eich’s poetological stance in Die Kolonne is its sheer consistency. Indeed, it is this consistency of approach and language which makes it possible, with a relatively high degree of certainty, to attribute to Eich the pieces of literary criticism which appear in the journal under the pseudonym Georg Winter. Winter’s 1932 review of an anthology of Großstadtdichtung, entitled Um uns die Stadt, for instance, takes up themes familiar from Eich’s ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’. The former’s criticism of the superficiality of this modern poetry, which fails to treat the city ‘als selbstverständliches Phänomen’ (GW, 4, p. 555) and which mistakes the simple use of modern vocabulary for genuine poetic creativity (‘Gestaltung’), echoes Eich’s following response to Diebold: Die Wandlungen des Ichs sind das Problem des Lyrikers. Das wird im formalen die Folge haben, daß er im allgemein Vokabeln vermeidet, die ein zeitgebundenes, also ein ihn nicht direkt interessierendes Problem in sich 6 7

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Richardson, p. 25. Cuomo, p. 14.

schließen. Ja, ich meine, der Lyriker muß ‘alte’ Vokabeln gebrauchen, die, selbst problemlos geworden, ihre neue Bedeutung erst durch das Ich gewinnen. An Vokabeln wie ‘Dynamo’ oder ‘Telefonkabel’ hängen soviele zeitlich bedingte Assoziationen, daß sie die reine Ichproblematik des Gedichtes durch ihre eigene Problematik zumeist verfälschen. Wenn solche Vokabeln überhaupt in Gedichten verwendet werden können, so höchstens als reine Gegebenheiten, als ein schlichtes räumliches Dasein, als selbstverständlich und problemlos, also ohne ‘zeitliche’ Beziehung und Bedeutung. (GW, 4, p. 459)

The superficiality of more prosaic and historically specific writing is consistently contrasted in Eich’s Kolonne reviews with the universal applicability of the experiences of genius poets, such as Villon, Eichendorff, Rimbaud, Mörike, Rilke, Flaubert, and even the young Brecht. Such is the power of Villon’s poetry, for instance, ‘daß wir uns fragen, ob es heute überhaupt noch möglich ist, solche Dichtung ohne Ressentiment, nur aus der Kraft des gelebten Lebens heraus zu schaffen. Noch vor einigen Jahrzehnten konnte es Rimbaud. Ob es heute noch Brecht kann ist zweifelhaft, denn die Lockung der Zivilisation scheint stärker zu sein, als die Stimme des Blutes’ (GW, 4, p. 546). Ideological conservatism? This final comment, with its striking opposition between ‘Blut’ and ‘Zivilisation’, forces us to address the issue of whether an ideologically ‘conservative’ position can be inferred from Eich’s antimodern, zivilisationskritisch poetological stance. That is to say, how far was this conservative aesthetic position compatible with the political conservatism which in part fed into National Socialist ideology? As the pointed reference to ‘Linksblätter’ in Eich’s ‘[Innere Dialoge]’ suggests, Left-wing committed literature played a fundamental role as a catalyst and counterpoint for Eich and Die Kolonne in the very early 1930s. Indeed, Eich published his own strongly critical review of Johannes R. Becher’s epic poem ‘Der große Plan’ in Die Kolonne in 175

1931 (GW, 4, p. 551–52). Referring to the last-minute decision to publish this review under Eich’s own name, Cuomo concludes that ‘given the harshness of his attack on the tendency Becher represented, the decision to be publicly associated with this review indicates Eich’s conservative ideology’.8 While Cuomo does not expand upon his understanding of the term ‘conservative’, the implication seems clear. This implication is made explicit when Cuomo discusses the hypothetical survival prospects of the journal after 1933: Were it not for its financial problems there is every reason to believe that Die Kolonne would have weathered the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich as smoothly as Eich, its former editors Raschke and Kuhnert, and most of its contributors were able to do. For as Joseph Dolan points out in an insightful analysis of the apolitical views expressed in Die Kolonne, the most fitting overall characterisation of the journal would not be liberal or progressive, but conservative. The test of conservatism Dolan utilizes in support of his contention is convincing. Not only did the journal vehemently reject the radical Left, but it also never demonstrated overt support for the Weimar Republic.

Not just aesthetically, but also politically, Cuomo views Die Kolonne and its contributors as ‘conservative’. For Cuomo, Eich’s reaction against Becher is not just a poetological one, but also an ideological one. This is a central plank in an argument which starts to establish the conservative political credentials of both Eich, individually, and the Kolonne Circle, collectively.9 Cuomo not only refutes Schafroth’s misplaced suggestions that the failure of Die Kolonne to survive past 1933 was attributable to political opposition to National Socialism, but, more importantly, he also re-assesses the opinions of Marion Mallmann and Fritz Schlawe that the journal was as critical of Rightwing influences on literature as it was of the Left-wing influences

8 9

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Cuomo, p. 15. Subsequent reference, p. 19. See Cuomo, pp. 16–18.

represented by Becher.10 Here, Raschke’s 1931 essay ‘Man trägt wieder Erde’ is re-read by Cuomo as a less clear-cut criticism of ‘conservative’ literary trends, while the fact that ‘the possibility of literature’s abuse by the political Right is never mentioned directly in Raschke’s and Eich’s essays’ is contrasted with their readiness to openly criticise the Left.11 Finally, Otto Merz’s direct criticism of National Socialism in his essay, ‘Die verratene Dichtung’, is dismissed by Cuomo as follows: ‘Significantly, the Merz essay remains an isolated occurrence in Die Kolonne. The issues he raised are not taken up in any form by the editors, nor do similar criticisms of National Socialism ever appear again.’12 The value to Cuomo of establishing Eich’s political conservatism within a thesis which for the first time reveals the true extent of his compromises in the Third Reich is obvious enough, even more so when Eich’s application to join the Nazi Party in 1933 and his use of the compromised figure of Gottfried Benn as a referee in his application to join the Reichsverband Deutscher Schriftsteller start to imply a genuine ideological trajectory for Eich’s subsequent involvement in the Nazi propaganda machinery. Indeed, the status of Gottfried Benn as an intellectual authority for Eich and the Kolonne circle cannot be in doubt. As Cuomo and Dolan indicate, despite a very peripheral role in the journal itself, Benn was a pivotal figure for the Kolonne circle.13 Raschke, for instance, openly identified the journal and its contributors with Benn: ‘Gottfried Benn sind auch wir.’14 As far as Eich himself is concerned, ‘Benn’s influence can be traced to his earliest poetry, and as Eich recounted towards the end of his life to Peter Horst Neumann, 10

11 12 13 14

See Heinz Schafroth, Günter Eich (Munich: Beck, 1976), p. 16; Fritz Schlawe, Literarische Zeitschriften, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1961–62), II: 1910–1933 (1962), p. 20; and Marion Mallmann, ‘Das Innere Reich’: Analyse einer konservativen Kulturzeitschrift im Dritten Reich (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978), p. 92. See Martin Raschke, ‘Man trägt wieder Erde’, Die literarische Welt, 7 (1931), 5 and Martin Raschke, ‘Man trägt wieder Erde’, Die Kolonne, 2 (1931), 47–48. See Otto Merz, ‘Die verratene Dichtung’, Die Kolonne, 2 (1931), 61. See Cuomo, p. 19 and Dolan, p. 160. Martin Raschke, ‘Gottfried Benn’, Die Kolonne, 1 (1929–1930), 35–36 (p. 35).

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during the 1930s Gottfried Benn possessed a very “special, personal authority for him”’.15 The poetological stance expressed in ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’ also carries strong echoes of the poetological position of Gottfried Benn, a figure who for Dolan constitutes ‘the prime exponent of timeless lyric inwardness’.16 Richardson, too, sets Eich firmly within the context of Benn’s poetics: Paralleling Benn’s poetological stance, Günter Eich defended an antiutilitarian concept of absolute art against left-wing criticism. In so doing, he developed his own theory of poetry, a romantic aestheticism emphasising the primacy of aesthetics over politics, the individual over society, intuition over ratio, nature over civilization.17

Both these parallels to Benn and this poetological stance of ‘aesthetic romanticism’ tend to be confirmed by Eich’s early poetic practice in Die Kolonne and elsewhere. Richardson, for example, draws an explicit parallel between Benn’s 1913 poem ‘Gesang I’ and the desire for human re-integration with nature expressed in Eich’s ‘Verse an vielen Abenden’, while Joachim Storck notes Benn’s influence in the poem ‘Among my souvenirs’.18 Further poems from Eich’s first collection, such as ‘Tango’ and ‘Der Mann im Monde’, share a yearning for mystical re-integration with organic nature, while ‘Verse an vielen Abenden’ can also be seen to introduce the central Kolonne theme of timelessness.19 As Richardson summarises in relation to Eich’s early poetry: ‘his theory of lyric poetry – timeless, inner dialogues using traditional poetic diction – and its function – aesthetic entities without purpose, without message – does not deviate substantially from his poetic expression.’

15 16 17 18 19

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Cuomo, p. 19, quoting Peter Horst Neumann, Die Rettung der Poesie im Unsinn: Der Anarchist Günter Eich (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1981), p. 38. Dolan, p. 160. Richardson, p. 18. Richardson, pp. 35–36; Joachim W. Storck, Günter Eich, Marbacher Magazin 45 (Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1988), p. 16. See Richardson, pp. 36–39. Subsequent reference, p. 34.

At the same time, the conflation of poetological proximity to Benn with ideological proximity is a dangerous one. In this context, we must reconsider the test of political conservatism applied to Die Kolonne which Cuomo finds so convincing. According to Dolan: The specifically political conservatism of this apparently apolitical journal is implicit in at least two ways. The first is the lack of overt support for the Weimar Republic, opposition to the forms of liberal democracy being one of the key elements of German conservatism. [...] Raschke voices this view in his argument with Thomas Mann about the spirit of liberalism. [...] The second implicit indication of political conservatism is the conspicuous lack of Jewish contributors to the journal.20

The Raschke essay to which Dolan refers here is ‘Eine kleine Chronik, einige Zitate und eine Antwort an Thomas Mann’, published under the pseudonym Otto Merz in 1930.21 At first sight, the fact that Raschke can be identified as the author of this piece appears to lend even more weight to Cuomo’s argument concerning the political conservatism of the journal, since this politically conservative standpoint now becomes an editorial view, not just the view of an isolated contributor. Unfortunately, at the same time, the identification of Merz as Raschke rather undermines Cuomo’s earlier dismissal of Merz’s attack on National Socialism in the essay, ‘Die verratene Dichtung’.22 Clearly the suggestion that this essay expressed views ‘not taken up in any form by the editors’ is no longer a tenable one.23 Similarly, Cuomo’s re-assessment of Mallmann’s and Schlawe’s analysis is also largely undermined. Raschke’s views expressed as Merz in 20 21 22

23

Dolan, p. 167. Otto Merz, ‘Eine kleine Chronik, einige Zitate und eine Antwort an Thomas Mann’, Die Kolonne, 1 (1929–1930), 47–48. Anton Kaes attributes the essay to Raschke. See Kaes, p. 680. It is unclear why Cuomo fails to attribute Merz’s contributions to Raschke. With reference to ‘Antwort an Thomas Mann’, Cuomo (himself mistakenly) notes that ‘Dolan mistakenly attributes this piece to Raschke’. See Cuomo, p. 143, note 53. Cuomo, p. 18.

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‘Die verratene Dichtung’, in conjunction with the criticism of conservative approaches to literature contained in ‘Man trägt wieder Erde’ and generalised criticism of the use of literature by mass movements in ‘Über die Aufgabe der Kolonne’, start to suggest that Die Kolonne was consistent in defending literature against both Right-wing and Left-wing influences.24 If attacks on the committed political approach to literature favoured by the Left far outweighed attacks on the Right, the very preponderance of that approach in Left-wing literature seems a more likely cause than any necessary ideological sympathy with the Right. Indeed, it seems to make little sense to identify ‘lack of overt support for the Weimar Republic’ as an indicator of the political conservatism evinced by Die Kolonne.25 After all, in Dolan’s words, Die Kolonne was ‘a strictly literary journal, and there were no references to current political or social events in it whatever’. As we have seen, the overriding principle of the journal was the defence of the apolitical sphere of literature, and so to infer a political stance from its failure to intervene in a contemporary political controversy seems rather perverse. In any case, lack of overt support does not necessarily imply opposition, and, even if it did, opposition to the Weimar Republic was not just the prerogative of conservatives, or even of the politically committed. It may be that a number of contributors to Die Kolonne can be placed somewhere within the broad sweep of political conservatism, and it may be that the absence of Jewish contributors is circumstantial evidence to support this contention. However, this falls a long way short of establishing links between the ideological position of the Kolonne Circle and that of the radical Right and völkisch movements, and it is here that the label ‘politically conservative’ is apt to confuse the issue. Indeed a characterisation of the journal’s

24 25

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The same point is made by Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Naturdichtung und Neue Sachlichkeit’, in Wolfgang Rothe (ed.), Die deutsche Literatur in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974), pp. 359–81 (p. 367). Dolan, p. 167. Subsequent reference, pp. 158–59.

political stance as ‘liberal’ or ‘bourgeois’ may be equally tenable.26 Above all, what emerges from a reading of Die Kolonne is not the defence of a particular political position but the consistent and unshakeable defence of literature from all political influences. Here, Schäfer’s analysis seems particularly apposite: Auch diejenigen Schriftsteller, die weder in der marxistischen noch in der völkischen Heilslehre eine Alternative zur gesellschaftlichen Misere sahen, taten wenig zur Verteidigung der demokratischen Traditionen und kapselten sich enttäuscht von den politischen und künstlerischen Strömungen des Weimarer Staates ab. Ein programmatisches Dokument für diese [...] Gruppe ist die Dresdner Zeitschrift die Kolonne.27

Although the journal may be labelled broadly ideologically or aesthetically ‘conservative’, the label ‘politically conservative’ implies an engagement with contemporary political issues which simply was not present within the journal. A closer examination of Eich’s own contributions to the journal suggests strongly that the public position he maintained within Die Kolonne complements the overall characterisation of the journal as ‘non-political’ rather than ‘conservative’. In particular, Eich’s objections to Becher’s ‘Der große Plan’ are resolutely poetological, not ideological: Es ist schwer, über Bechers ‘Großen Plan’ zu sprechen ohne zwecklose politische Auseinandersetzungen. Aber diese Schwierigkeit deutet auch den entscheidenden Mangel des Buches an: [...] Die Forderung der Einheit von Dichtung und politischer Propaganda ist auch hier nicht Wirklichkeit geworden, und sie wird es auch anderswo nie werden. Propaganda [...] wirkt durch die vorgebrachten Tatsachen. Dichtung aber ist ihrem Wesen nach 26

27

The term ‘bürgerlich’ is employed by Frank Trommler, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur: Zum Problem der geschichtlichen Kontinuität’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 173–97 (p. 179). Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930’, in Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), pp. 55–71 (p. 58).

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indirekt, nie kann ein ‘Gedicht’ über den Fünfjahresplan konkurrieren mit der Wirkung von Statistiken und kühlen Feststellungen. [...] Wer glaubt, daß nur das auf der Welt Wert habe, was als Waffe im Kampf für eine Idee gebraucht werden kann, der sei konsequenterweise ein Gegner der Kunst überhaupt und überlasse das Verseschreiben denen, für die es kein Wollen ist. (GW, 4, p. 551–52)

Eich’s interest in Marxism is not so much as a political opponent, but as a poet seeking universal modes of representation. This poetological objection to Marxism becomes still clearer in his response to Bernhard Diebold: Wer von uns aber weiß schon heute, wohin wir uns verändern; wer erkennt schon heute, in welchen Gedanken, in welchen Dingen sich unsere Zeit am deutlichsten ausdrückt? Wenn man verlangt, die Lyrik solle sich zu ihrer Zeit bekennen, so verlangt man damit höchstens, sie solle sich zum Marxismus oder zur Anthroposophie oder zur Psychoanalyse bekennen, denn wir wissen gar nicht, welche Denk- oder Lebenssysteme unsere Zeit universal repräsentieren, wir wissen nur, daß jede Richtung und jede Bewegung von sich behauptet. (GW, 4, p. 458)

Marxism is not categorised by Eich as a political ideology, but merely a system of thought, like psychoanalysis, which has yet to prove itself timeless and universal. As Schafroth observes: ‘Eich hat allerdings auf die linke Literatur seiner Zeit mit Mißtrauen reagiert. Nicht aus politischen, sondern ästhetischen Gründen.’28 Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that Eich’s attacks on the Left were poetologically, and not politically, motivated is provided by his review of Gottfried Benn’s Fazit der Perspektiven, entitled ‘Die Vermischung der Formen’ (GW, 4, p. 549–50) and published under the pseudonym Georg Winter in 1931. The poetological stance expressed here is again remarkably consistent with Eich’s other contributions to the journal. Eich again criticises Tendenzdichtung which fails to maintain the essential indirectness of poetry, but on this occasion his target is not the committed literature of the Left. 28

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Schafroth, p. 14.

Instead Eich criticises Benn, a figure whose political conservatism is not in doubt and whose considerable influence on the Kolonne Circle, as we have noted, is repeatedly highlighted by Cuomo and Dolan.29 The specific details of the criticism in this review are strongly reminiscent of the criticism of Becher for attempting to reconcile poetry with more didactic writing: So scheint mir beispielsweise Gottfried Benns wichtiges Buch Fazit der Perspektiven im Formalen einen solchen Mangel zu haben: Die Vermischung der Formen von Aufsatz und Dichtung. Benn will überzeugen, bald mit Logik, bald mit Musik der Sprache. [...] So hat er sich halb zum Gedicht, halb zur logischen Darstellung entschieden, zu einer Mischform, in der die beiden Elemente sich nicht zur doppelten Wirkung addieren, sondern sich aufheben. [...] die Aussage eines Gedankens in der Dichtung ist anderer Art, ist indirekt [...] Tendenzdichtung mit ihrer direkten Ideenaussage beraubt sich selbst der Wirkung. [...] Geworben wird in diesem Fall nur durch Statistiken und durch kühle Überlegungen. [...] Auch ein Buch wie Fazit der Perspektiven ist Tendenzdichtung, auch wenn es Ideen propagiert, die nicht populär sind. (GW, 4, p. 549–50)

Cuomo himself acknowledges the obvious similarities between the Becher review and the Benn review, but what he fails to recognise is the significance of these similarities for an assessment of Eich’s overall stance in his Kolonne contributions.30 Cuomo’s analysis relies on Eich’s objections to Becher being ideological, but those to Benn being strictly aesthetic. That Eich is prepared to criticise Benn, given their own poetological proximity and given that Benn was promoting ideas complementary to those of Die Kolonne as a whole, certainly demonstrates the strength of Eich’s poetological principles, but it also indicates strongly that Eich is not concerned with the ideological content of Becher’s or Benn’s work, but purely with the literary approach which they represent. Hence, these reviews do not so much indicate Eich’s ‘conservative ideology’ as his politically uncommitted 29 30

See Dolan, p. 160 and Cuomo, p. 19. Cuomo, p. 16. Cuomo cites the similarities as proof of the authorship of the Winter pieces.

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approach to literature. They do not indicate political conservatism but rather only aesthetic conservatism. Public poet vs private individual What emerges from Eich’s contributions to Die Kolonne is a remarkably consistent, steadfast defence of the autonomy of lyric production from the more superficial elements of contemporary society, politics included. In Schafroth’s words, ‘die apolitische Position Eichs war programmatisch’.31 In terms of Eich’s subsequent relationship with National Socialism, and in particular the patterns of assent and dissent demonstrated by his behaviour in the Third Reich, the implications of this apolitical position are considerable. It has been widely assumed, for instance, that this public poetological stance allows us to directly infer Eich’s private political stance, that is, that Eich was by nature a romantic aesthete who preferred to stand aloof from contemporary politics. In this case, Eich’s position outlined in ‘[Innere Dialoge]’ would not only be a poetological one but also an ideological one: ‘Und Verantwortung vor der Zeit? Nicht im geringsten. Nur vor mir selber’ (GW, 4, p. 457). Or in the words of Axel Vieregg: ‘Die Angst vor der heillosen Unordnung der Moderne, die Suche nach romantischen Inseln der Flucht und Zuflucht und die Angst um deren Zerstörung – das waren Eichs eigentliche Zentralthemen gewesen, sei es im Konkreten von Natur und Ländlichkeit oder im Absoluten des Seins.’32 On the one hand, this assumption has been central to attempts to deny any involvement on Eich’s part in the Nazi propaganda machinery, as is clear from Hermann Kasack’s statement to the Allied authorities, made on 30 August 1946 and quoted by both Cuomo and Vieregg: 31 32

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Schafroth, p. 16. Axel Vieregg, ‘“Mein Raum und meine Zeit”: Antimodernismus und Idylle beim frühen Günter Eich’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-Eich-Debatte (Amsterdam; Rodopi, 1996), pp. 3–27 (p. 24).

[Eich] hat die nationalsozialistische Ideologie stets abgelehnt. Er ist seinem Wesen nach ein Mensch, der auf Grund seiner lyrischen Weltanschauung allen politischen Fragen naiv und uninteressiert gegenüber steht. Mir ist weder in seinen Gedichten noch seinen Dramen und Hörspielen für den Rundfunk irgendeine Zeile bekannt geworden, die politisch oder gar nazistisch gewesen ist. Es handelt bei ihm um reine Dichtung.33

On the other hand, the perception of Eich as a naive young nature poet with no experience of political issues has more recently been employed not to deny Eich’s involvement in the Nazi radio industry, but to reconstruct the motivations behind it.34 Indeed, this naivety does nothing to rule out some form of conformity, or assent, to National Socialism. It may rather render it more easily explicable. At the same time, an alternative thesis regarding Eich’s private ideological position also presents itself. The following distinction made by Eich in his ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’, between the poet ‘als Lyriker’ and the poet ‘als Privatmann’, suggests that he does not rule out active political engagement as a private individual, as long as it does not encroach into the apolitical sphere of his lyric persona: ‘Eine Entscheidung für die Zeit [...] interessiert den Lyriker als Lyriker überhaupt nicht. (Was nicht ausschließt, daß er als Privatmann sich z.B. zu einer politischen Partei bekennt)’ (GW, 4, p. 459). Such a statement tends to undermine an analysis of Eich’s behaviour in the Third Reich which automatically identifies his lyric persona of apolitical inwardness with his private persona, hinting instead at a distinction between the politically disinterested nature poet and the more politically and historically aware student of economics. For Richardson too, there is more to Eich than apolitical nature poetry: Despite the essentially romantic character of his theory and poetry, it would be a distortion merely to classify the prewar Eich as a romantic aesthete, a nature poet who always stood aloof from the realities of this world. There is another side to his thought and art which his poetological essays and poetry 33 34

Cuomo, p. 136; Axel Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet: Günter Eichs Realitäten 1933–1945 (Eggingen: Edition Isele, 1993), p 9. See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet.

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do not directly reveal. From the very beginning, Günter Eich’s life and art were shaped by his determination to take his own path, to seek truth through art, to oppose dehumanizing forces in modern society.35

Richardson stops short of positing any kind of radical disjunction between Eich the poet and Eich the private individual, but he does at least suggest a degree of engagement with modern society on Eich’s part. More specifically, Richardson identifies in Eich a socially critical, anti-modern stance. Axel Vieregg has also pointed to Eich’s maintenance of an emphatically anti-modern stance. Significantly, in addition to Eich’s public criticism of modern, urban life in his statements and reviews in Die Kolonne and the rejection of pro-modern values in his poetry, Vieregg is also able to draw on evidence from correspondence and from contemporaries which seems to attest to these anti-modern attitudes on the part of Eich ‘als Privatmann’: Mit seiner Zurückweisung des Heute und Moderne, der Ablehnung von Bewußtsein, Vernunft und Fortschrittsgedanken, der Ablehung von linken, gesellschaftlich engagierten Positionen und der Ablehnung [...] auch des Urbanen, in einem Wort: mit seiner Rückwärtsgewandtheit, stand Eich jenen kulturkonservativen und zivilisationskritischen Strömungen in Deutschland nahe, die man später [...] als ‘konservative Revolution’ bezeichnete.36

Hence, even if Dolan and Cuomo fail to prove conclusively the political conservatism of the journal, it may be that outside the apolitical lyricism of the Kolonne contributors, ‘it is still possible to group them all together under that amalgamation of political, cultural, and philosophical views known as conservatism’.37 For Dolan, drawing on Martin Greiffenhagen, ‘conservatism’ can be defined in terms of the following set of values: ‘Religion, authority, morality, homeland, family, the people, the soil; and: tradition, continuity, becoming, growth, nature, history; and finally: being, 35 36 37

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Richardson, pp. 44–45. Vieregg, ‘Mein Raum und meine Zeit’, p. 24. Dolan, p. 167.

organism, life, eternity.’38 In this sense, there can be little doubt that that the members of the Kolonne Circle do belong within such a broad range of conservative values. The importance of values such as ‘tradition, continuity, becoming, growth, nature, history’ and ‘being, organism, life, eternity’ within the literary project of Die Kolonne is clear. Indeed, in the anti-modern attitude of Eich and Die Kolonne, in the focus on nature and the land, and in the belief in cultural renewal through tradition, Die Kolonne does seem to share many conservative values often associated with the tenets of National Socialism. Eich, for example, is rich in his praise for Georg von der Vring’s ‘Volkslieder’ and for his closeness to Mörike ‘in seinem Hang zum Idyllischen, in seiner Liebe zu den kleinen Dingen, zum Ländlichen, zum Garten, den er mit Gladiolen, mit Rittersporn, mit Akelei und Fuschia besingt’ (GW, 4, p. 556). This is precisely the kind of nature idyll which Cuomo later identifies in Eich’s radio work and prose texts as evidence of the influence of Nazi Blut-und-Boden ideology.39 Similarly, the poetic desire for mystical re-integration with nature and for a reversal of the modernisation process might be read as further evidence of ideological parallels to National Socialism. Even if he did not commit himself politically in public, there is plenty of evidence which may point towards areas of broader cultural and ideological affinity between Eich and Nazism. And yet, we must surely maintain a broad gulf between the cultural conservatism of Die Kolonne and that of National Socialism, both before 1933 and even after that date. Two important points need to be made in this context. Firstly, Eich’s anti-modern position, apparently expressed through his poetry and literary criticism in Die Kolonne need not be read as an ideological position. Rather, this can again be read as primarily a poetological position. Dolan, for instance, convincingly highlights ‘one of the reasons for peculiar resonance between the apolitical attitude and nature: the non-urban 38 39

Dolan, p. 167. Martin Greiffenhagen, Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland (Munich: Piper, 1971), p. 66. See Cuomo, pp. 80–88.

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setting does not force social issues on the poet’.40 Furthermore, the scant biographical details available concerning Eich seem to confirm that the anti-modern aesthetic stance of Eich the poet may not have been entirely shared by Eich the private individual. His decision to live in Berlin and Paris and his decision to study economics do not seem to complement the image of an anti-modern aesthete. Even in terms of his literary persona, Eich’s keen embrace of the new technological medium of radio does not cohere well with a position which opposes ‘the dehumanizing forces of modern society’.41 If anything, it seems that a more radical distinction may have to be drawn between Eich’s public lyric persona in Die Kolonne and his actions as a private individual. Secondly, there was considerably more to Nazi ideology than the kind of conventional conservative values identifiable in Die Kolonne. Indeed, as as has already argued in the present study, the core of Nazi ideology can be identified as racial rebirth with a strongly pro-modern, yet illiberal, impulse. This was entirely absent from Die Kolonne. Undoubtedly the cultural conservatism of Die Kolonne was one possible manifestation of some of the strands of conservative thought which fed into, and were fed on by, National Socialism, and both were reactions to the political and economic crises of the 1920s, but there existed no necessary connections between the two. Cultural restoration at 1930 The same can be said for the relatively conservative aesthetic stance maintained by Eich and Die Kolonne. The Kolonne Circle clearly looked back to existing literary forms for their inspiration and rejected modernistic and modernising experimentation. We have already noted, for instance, their direct rejection of Neue Sachlichkeit. Eich seems to make his own position clear in his review of Benn’s Fazit der Perspektiven: ‘Ich glaube, daß die Wirksamkeit aller Kunst am größten 40 41

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Dolan, p. 163. Richardson, p. 45.

ist innerhalb der Grenzen ihrer Form und daß die Versuche zu neuen Formen, wenn sie den Kreis aller Möglichkeiten durchlaufen haben, wieder münden in die reine ursprüngliche Beschränkung’ (GW, 4, p. 550). Eich’s poetry too shows a strong turn towards traditional and conventional form around 1930. However, this aesthetic conservatism should not be allowed to be submerged under the aesthetic conservatism of a figure like Alfred Rosenberg. In contrast to a genuinely völkisch attitude to culture, the Kolonne writers maintained a relatively elitist attitude to art. According to Dolan, for example, Raschke and Eich believed ‘that poetry is a matter only for the select few and that the genius [...] is not doing his job if he strives for popular success’.42 Eich himself consistently warned against underestimating the reader’s intelligence, as, for example, in his review of Emil Belzner’s, Marschieren: nicht träumen: ‘Es ist nicht nur Belzners Fehler, daß er seine Leser für dümmer hält als sie sind und ihnen auf jeder zweiten Seite erklärt, was er eigentlich will. Das tun heute fast alle Romanschriftsteller’ (GW, 4, p. 553). The Kolonne writers were not afraid of providing difficult literature and steadfastly argued against literature for the masses. Their rejection of a modernistic approach was not then borne out of an attempt to appeal to the collective. Instead, the aesthetic position of Die Kolonne must be seen within the context of the kind of cultural shift identified by Hans Dieter Schäfer and Frank Trommler around 1930. Trommler, for instance, quotes both Eich’s ‘[Innere Dialoge]’ and ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’, while Schäfer is unequivocal in his assessment of the part played by Kolonne in this posited period of cultural change: ‘die Rolle der Kolonne dabei nicht hoch genug eingeschätzt werden.’43 The programmatic statements made by Raschke and Eich must be seen as an attempt to participate in and influence the future direction of literary culture in Germany, and as evidence of the role played by Die Kolonne in this 42 43

Dolan, p. 163. Trommler, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur’, p. 178; Schäfer, ‘Zur Periodisierung’, p. 59.

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aesthetically conservative cultural shift away from modernism and towards more traditional forms.44 Both the Kolonne circle and the völkisch nationalists of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur gained impetus from the economic and political crises around 1930. Both sought order and renewal in broadly conservative aesthetic phenomena. However, the existence of a parallel turn amongst writers of the extreme Left, exemplified in literary practice by Johannes R. Becher and in literary theory by Georg Lukács, breaks any necessary conjunction between aesthetic and political conservatism. Indeed, the debt of the Kolonne writers to German Expressionism clearly indicates how their aesthetic conservatism needs to be retained distinct from that of the völkisch groupings. In this way, aesthetic similarities between Die Kolonne and subsequent Nazi cultural policies are neither surprising nor entirely coincidental. Both Die Kolonne and National Socialism can be viewed as products of, and participants in, a fundamental shift in culture. Both were reactions to the same economic and political crisis. And yet, despite occasional points of contact, the trajectory of the nonpolitical group of young writers was entirely divorced from the trajectory of German fascism up to 1933. After 1933, however, their paths coincided, and the public actions of figures such as Gottfried Benn and Horst Lange ably demonstrate how an alignment between the Kolonne stance and that of the National Socialist ‘revolution’ was possible.45 Just what Eich’s reaction to the Nazi seizure of power was, and how he aligned himself with Nazi cultural policy through

44

45

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See also Kaes, pp. 674–89 and Hermann Korte, ‘Lyrik am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Rolf Grimminger, 12 vols (Munich: Hanser, 1979– ), VIII: Literatur der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933, ed. by Bernhard Weyergraf (1995), pp. 601–35 (pp. 615–35). See, for instance, Gottfried Benn, ‘Die neue Staat und die Intellektuellen’, in Gottfried Benn, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Gerhard Schuster, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1986–1991), IV: Prosa 2: 1933–1945 (1989), pp. 12–22 and Horst Lange, ‘Landschaftliche Dichtung’, Der weiße Rabe, 2 (1933), 21–26.

his literary production, will form the subject matter of the following sections.

Forms of assent Dissenting inner emigré? Wo die Dokumente fehlten, konnten sich die Leerräume mit Vermutungen und Behauptungen füllen, die von dem einen Extrem von Beiträgen Eichs an die SS bis zu dem anderen Extrem einer antifaschistischen Widerstandshaltung reichten. In ihrer Mehrheit neigte sich die Diskussion der zweiten, als der von Eich einzig zu erwartenden Position zu und verdichtete sich zu folgenden, manchmal qualifizierten, aber in ihrer Essenz doch stets wiederholten Grundaussagen: 1. Eich habe aus Opposition gegen den Nationalsozialismus nach 1933 die Zahl seiner Veröffentlichungen stark eingeschränkt. 2. Seine Rundfunkarbeiten seien in keiner Weise vom Geist der Zeit infiziert [...] und als harmlose Unterhaltung zu vergessen. 3. Eich habe [...] zu einem exemplarischen Vertreter der ‘Inneren Emigration’ werden können.46

Following the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Günter Eich did not join the wave of German intellectuals expressing their dissent by leaving Germany. As a largely unknown writer, who was both racially and politically non-controversial, Eich had neither the need nor the means to go into exile. Having chosen to remain in the Third Reich, the primary form of literary dissent available to him was the adoption of a position of so-called ‘inner emigration’. He could either withdraw from the public sphere and cease writing and/or publication altogether, or he could restrict himself to writing and publishing only ‘harmless’, non-political texts which did not deal with external political realities. As Vieregg suggests, in the absence of clear documentary evidence relating to Eich’s Third Reich biography, and 46

Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 9.

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no doubt influenced by Eich’s iconic status as a post-war nonconformist, critics have in the past attributed both of these dissenting ‘inner emigration’ positions to Eich. Within the terms developed in the present study, Eich’s dissent would take two forms. Firstly, conventional accounts of Eich’s work identify a virtual abandonment of lyric poetry during the Third Reich. Writing in 1972, for instance, Susanne Müller-Hanpft draws an explicit connection between Eich’s presumed inability to write poetry and the ‘totalitarian’ conditions under the Nazi regime: ‘Das Schreiben von Gedichten aber war Eich nicht mehr möglich. Offenbar waren ihm die eigenen Prämissen der frühen Gedichte selbst untauglich und suspekt erchienen, so daß er in einer Zeit der totalitären Herrschaft seine individualistischen Naturgedichte nicht mehr schreiben konnte.’47 More unequivocal is Egbert Krispyn who writes of the ‘poet’s supreme sacrifice of self-imposed silence’.48 Although relatively insignificant in terms of effect, given Eich’s unknown status, any conscious reduction in output acquires a low-level dissenting function as an intentional reaction to the onset of Nazi rule. Important in tracing the dynamic of this dissent is the timing of any such reduction in output. Müller-Hanpft identifies a reduction in lyric output immediately after the Nazi seizure of power: ‘1932 wurden noch einmal vier Gedichte in dem Sammelband Neue lyrische Anthologie veröffentlicht. Als Lyriker verstummte Eich dann bis zum Kriegsende.’49 Krispyn on the other hand locates a lyric silence between 1935 and 1945.50 This view seems to find encouragement in Eich’s own testimony, where he contrasts an enforced ten-year silence with renewed optimism in the immediate post-war situation: ‘Der dumpfe Druck ist vorbei. Nachdem ich zehn Jahre lang kaum einen Vers geschrieben habe, ist es mir, als sei ich noch einmal acht-

47 48 49 50

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Susanne Müller-Hanpft, Lyrik und Rezeption: Das Beispiel Günter Eich (Munich: Hanser, 1972), p. 31. Egbert Krispyn, Günter Eich (New York: Twayne, 1971), p. 41. Müller-Hanpft, p. 20. Krispyn, p. 40.

zehn Jahre alt und voller Mut, Lust und Erwartung.’51 In the former view Eich’s dissent is immediate. In the latter it emerges as part of a more gradual dissenting dynamic, mirroring, by chance or intention, the radicalisation in Nazi policies in the late 1930s. Secondly, those texts which Eich did produce and which did make their way into the public sphere during the Third Reich have often been viewed as harmless and trivial, untouched by Nazi ideology. Of these texts, broadcast through the National Socialist radio apparatus, Müller-Hanpft writes: ‘Sie zeichneten sich durch extreme Harmlosigkeit aus, beschäftigten sich mit den Tieren und Vögeln des Waldes, mit den Jahreszeiten, wie die im Buch erhaltenen “Monatsbilder des Königswusterhäuser Landboten” und waren, wie Eich heute aussagt, reine Routinearbeiten ohne persönliches Engagement.’52 Such a view has proved remarkably resilient, not least because of Eich’s own claims that his radio plays ‘sind damals kaum beachtet worden’.53 Kasack’s 1946 statement, for instance, ‘mir ist weder in seinen Gedichten noch seinen Dramen und Hörspielen für den Rundfunk irgendeine Zeile bekannt geworden, die politisch oder gar nazistisch gewesen ist’, differs little from Wulf Segebrecht’s assessment of the revised 1991 edition of Eich’s works, that not a single line of Eich’s Third Reich output could be read ‘als Zugeständnis oder gar Einverständnis mit der damals herrschenden Ideologie’.54 Within the terms of the present study any such texts can be ascribed a passive Resistenz quality, having proved themselves ‘resistant’ to infection by Nazi ideology. Hence, in terms of both a 51 52 53 54

Letter to Kurt Georg Schauer, 26 June 1946, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 7. Müller-Hanpft, p. 31. Letter to H.G. Funke, 28 June 1961, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 23. Hermann Kasack, statement to Allied military authorities 30 August 1946, quoted by Cuomo, p. 136; Wulf Segebrecht, ‘Kann man noch mehr sein als Stein: Günter Eichs Gesammelte Werke in revidierter Ausgabe’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 October 1991, pp. 21–22, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 23.

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reduction in output and the production of harmless, apolitical texts, conventional approaches to Eich’s literary output under National Socialism suggest it is best characterised in terms of dissent, albeit low-level and largely passive. Or eager conformist? In the last twenty years, however, the image of Eich as a dissenting ‘inner emigré’ has been piece-by-piece dismantled by the recognition of the true nature of his output under National Socialism. In particular, the first thesis, that Eich reduced his literary output as a reaction to National Socialist rule, is refuted by all available empirical evidence. If anything, as Cuomo points out, the opposite holds true: ‘In Eich’s case the fact of the matter remains that the onset of Germany’s fascist regime coincided with the start of the most lucrative phase thus far in his writing career, thanks to his involvement with the production of texts for the National Socialist radio system.’55 Vieregg too highlights the fact that ‘die Anfänge von Eichs Rundfunkkarriere und die Anfänge des Dritten Reiches auf fatale Weise zusammenfallen’.56 Not only was Eich’s productivity for the radio system higher than previously estimated, but the decline in Eich’s lyric output was also not nearly as great as had been thought. In fact, Eich published both poetry and prose works in a number of literary periodicals in the Third Reich, including Die literarische Welt, Die neue Rundschau, Das innere Reich, Der weiße Rabe, Der Bücherwurm, and Die Dame. Furthermore, Eich’s letters seem to confirm that any decline in lyric output can be attributed to the demands of his radio work rather than to any conscious dissent.57 The fact that Cuomo estimates the number of broadcast radio texts written or co-written by Eich at one hundred and sixty and that Vieregg identifies thirty55 56 57

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Cuomo, p. 23. Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 18. See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 22.

three poems and eight prose texts published or broadcast between 1933 and 1945 ‘proves that contrary to many claims Eich was just as active – if not more active – as an author during the Nazi era as he was during the Weimar Republic or the postwar years’.58 In this instance, Eich’s own post-war statement to Willi Fehse is more reliable than most: ‘In den Aufsatz “Das heimliche Deutschland” passe ich nicht recht herein. Ich habe dem Nationalsozialismus keinen aktiven Widerstand entgegengesetzt.’59 Eich’s response to the Nazi takeover not only seems to betray an absence of dissent, but it also appears to provide evidence of active support for the new regime. Vieregg’s analysis of Eich’s correspondence from the early years of the Third Reich reveals for the first time just how active and enthusiastic his courting of the new regime’s radio system was. In a series of letters to the former Kolonne editor, and his soon-to-be radio co-writer, Martin Raschke, Eich writes of the growing importance of the, in Vieregg’s words, ‘zum Hauptpropagandainstrument gleichgeschalteten Deutschlandsender’.60 He met there with Gerd Fricke and Ottoheinz Jahn, the Party officials charged with putting Nazi radio programming guidelines into practice, and on 2 May 1933 in a letter to Raschke Eich recorded the enthusiastic reception he had been given: ‘Der Deutschlandsender ist von unheimlicher Liebenswürdigkeit. Herr Jahn empfing mich als hätte er seit Monaten auf mich gewartet.’61 Eich was deliberately seeking out Nazi activists within the radio system, and in this context it is hardly surprising that both Vieregg and Cuomo draw a connection to the actions of Gottfried Benn who had made his now infamous radio broadcast, ‘Die neue Staat und die Intellektuellen’, in which he appealed to German intellectuals to assist the National Socialist revolution, just a few days earlier on 24 April 1933.62 A 58 59 60 61 62

Cuomo, p. 25. Letter to Willi Fehse, 1 November 1947, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 10. Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 19. See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 19. See Cuomo, pp. 21–22 and Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, pp. 21–22.

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variety of factors - the timing of Eich’s first visit to the Deutschlandsender on the day following Benn’s broadcast; Eich’s own visit to Benn in early 1933 to discuss the new political situation; Benn’s presence as a referee on Eich’s application to join the Reichsverband Deutscher Schriftsteller in July 1933; and, not least, Benn’s status as an intellectual authority for Eich and the Kolonne Circle before 1933 render parallels between Benn’s active support for the new regime and Eich’s own response to the Nazi seizure of power very alluring. As Cuomo and Vieregg indicate, there seems to be no evidence to confirm Neumann’s suggestion of a split in early 1933 between Eich and Benn over the latter’s involvement with the Nazi regime.63 Indeed, given the existence in the Berlin Document Centre of an NSDAP application card in the name of Günter Eich, dated 1 May 1933, the available evidence ‘suggest[s], on the contrary, that in some ways Eich emulated Benn’s awkward accommodation to the Hitler regime’.64 Thus, the bare facts of Eich’s publication record in the Third Reich largely undermine an image of dissenting non-conformity. It will remain to be seen what, if anything, of that dissenting reputation can be saved, whether initial enthusiasm turned to disillusionment, whether Eich pursued a trajectory of rising dissent. In the meantime, the focus here is primarily on the nature of Eich’s initial assent to the Nazi regime. In particular, how far did Eich’s position really emulate that of Benn? While the facts of Eich’s literary output are not open to doubt, the interpretation of the texts themselves, in terms of the extent of their conformity to National Socialist ideology and the extent to which they furthered the total claim of the regime, leaves greater room for critical debate. Central here must be the monthly radio serial co-written with Martin Raschke, ‘Deutscher Kalender: Monatsbilder vom Königswusterhäuser Landboten’ (‘KWL’), which ran from October 1933 to May 1940, and which provides for Cuomo 63 64

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See Neumann, p. 38. Cuomo, p. 20. The date and Eich’s membership number are crossed out and the card stamped ‘Aufn[ahme] nicht ausg[eführt.] Sch[ei]n z[u]r[ü]ck’.

and Vieregg persuasive evidence of Eich’s conformity to the expectations of Nazi cultural policy. If it can be shown that this output provides evidence of assent to the National Socialist regime, then key questions surround the manner in which this assent was coloured by Eich’s intentions and motivations. Was Eich’s a passive assent, politicised by the conditions of dictatorship? Or was it a more active attempt to support or even collaborate with the new regime? In this respect, it will be important to distinguish between continuities and discontinuities with Eich’s pre-1933 poetological stance, as outlined in the previous section, and to seek to account for the ideological and/or pragmatic motivations behind any such discontinuities. A final important area of analysis surrounds the extent to which Eich’s assent might shed light on the mechanisms by which writers granted assent to the National Socialist regime. The country postman and the promotion of Nazi ideology Gottfried Benn’s public expressions of support for the National Socialist regime, broadcast on the radio and published in the press in the spring of 1933, were largely unequivocal. His propagation of the generic core myth of fascism, namely nationalist rebirth, and his consistent participation in the National Socialist discourse of race can be read relatively easily from his direct, unmediated voice: Verstehen Sie doch endlich dort an Ihrem lateinsichen Meer, daß es sich bei den Vorgängen in Deutschland gar nicht um politische Kniffe handelt, die man in der bekannten dialektischen Manier verdrehen und zerreden könnte, sondern es handelt sich um das Hervortreten eines neuen biologischen Typs, die Geschichte mutiert und ein Volk will sich züchten.65

65

See Gottfried Benn, ‘Antwort an die literarischen Emigranten’, in Gottfried Benn, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Gerhard Schuster, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1986–1991), IV: Prosa 2: 1933–1945 (1989), pp. 24–32 (p. 27).

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The same does not hold true for Eich’s radio broadcasts. He made no such direct, public statement of support on the radio, or elsewhere. Indeed, Eich made no political or cultural-political statements of any kind during the Third Reich. His cultural output between 1933 and 1945 was almost entirely restricted to mediated, literary texts. Not only that, but these literary texts, at least up until 1937, did not deal with any contemporary political issues. Instead, this output tended towards the kind of apolitical and ahistorical material which made up the ‘KWL’ serial. Identifying support for the regime in this kind of literary text, conventionally dismissed as ‘harmlos-hübsch’,66 is clearly a more problematic task than establishing Benn’s position as expressed in overtly political statements. In Eich’s case, an assenting political function needs to be ascribed to what are superficially apolitical texts. It must be shown that these texts make an active contribution to furthering the ideological claim of the regime. First of all, let us consider how Cuomo and Vieregg have succeeded in ascribing just such an assenting function to the ‘KWL’ serial. The first step in establishing the assenting political role of the apparently harmless country scenes depicted in the ‘KWL’ serial is an acknowledgement of the political function acquired by even the most resolutely apolitical literary production under the conditions of dictatorship. In the sense that the total claim of the Nazi regime rendered all published, or in this case broadcast, material political, the ‘KWL’ serial assented to that claim, irrespective of the authors’ intentions. Cuomo goes one step further. He identifies for ‘harmless’ entertainment such as the ‘KWL’ an active supportive function within the aims of Nazi radio policy.67 ‘Non-political’ entertainment played an important role in the attempt to forge a Volksgemeinschaft, drawing listeners from around Germany, and indeed beyond, into a collective experience. This same entertainment served as bait in encouraging the widespread dispersal of cheap radio sets and in 66 67

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Heinz Schwitzke, Das Hörspiel: Dramaturgie und Geschichte (Cologne: Kiepenheuer, 1963), p. 182. See Cuomo, pp. 54–58.

attracting listeners who could then be delivered more overtly propagandistic programming. Wessels too stresses the fundamental importance of entertainment within the propagandistic aims of the Nazi radio industry.68 In all these senses, the contemporary reception of the ‘KWL’ serial suggests that it served these purposes well. As Cuomo suggests, the longevity of the serial, its special anniversary celebrations, a separate publication, Das festliche Jahr, to mark the serial’s third year, and even personal appearances by the country postman and his dog all attest to a high degree of popularity: ‘As quaint as the “KWL” was, it had great success on the Nazi radio scene. The constant praise the series received from contemporary observers proves the broadcasts were by no means merely “tolerated” as innocuous. On the contrary, the “KWL” was singled out as the model radio program in the Third Reich.’69 This positive reception was by no means restricted to the listening audience at large. There is considerable evidence to suggest that its popularity extended to official Party sources and that such popularity derived from some degree of ideological proximity to National Socialism. On 23 February 1935, the official Party organ, the Völkischer Beobachter, published an article praising the first eighteen months of the serial for its representation of idyllic, rural life. Vieregg makes clear how such a reception undermines conventional accounts of Eich’s Third Reich radio output: Ein ähnliches Lob erschien gleichzeitig in dem von Goebbels persönlich herausgegebenen NSDAP-Hetzblatt Der Angriff. Der ‘Deutsche Kalender’ hatte also den im Sinne der Machthaber rechten Ton getroffen: Volksgemeinschaft, Idylle, Blut und Boden. Der Artikel belegt noch einmal, daß zweierlei nicht zutrifft: daß Eichs Hörspiele ‘damals kaum beachtet’ wurden und daß er mit keiner Zeile Zugeständnisse an die herrschende Ideologie gemacht habe. ‘Bäuerliches Brauchtum’, die Bindung an den ‘bäurischen 68 69

See Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich: Zur Institutionen-, Theorie- und Literaturgeschichte (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985), pp. 146–76. Cuomo, p. 80, emphasis in the original. See Martin Raschke and Günter Eich, Das festliche Jahr: Lesebüchlein vom Königswusterhäuder Landboten (Berlin: Stalling, 1936).

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Boden’, der Volkstumsgedanke und das Verlogene des idyllischen Giebelstübchens, das Technik- und Zivilisationsfeindlichkeit impliziert, sind die immer wiederkehrenden Versatzstücke des ‘Königswusterhäuser Landboten’. Sie verbinden sich in zahlreichen Sendungen mit anderen ebenfalls vorgegebenen Ideologemen zu exemplarischen Illustrationen einer rückwärtsgewandten ‘Deutschen Ideologie’, wie sie von den Nazis auf die Spitze getrieben wurde.70

In a similar vein, Cuomo stresses the ideological affinities between the country postman serial and statements made by Rosenberg and Darré concerning the importance of promoting the agrarian and rural sphere within the Third Reich: All these various aspects of the Blut-und-Boden ideology are reflected in excerpts from the ‘KWL’. In their portrayal of country life, Eich and Raschke give German peasants precisely that ‘respectable image’ which Rosenberg promised would come in the Third Reich. True to Darré’s ideal of Nazi agrarian culture, the ‘KWL’ scenes present homogenously Germanic farm communities. Eich and Raschke’s figures exist in a harmonious society where modern technology and industry have not yet created a ‘disinherited class’ of proletarians. Since the majority of the ‘KWL’ scenes treat holiday celebrations and pleasant tavern gatherings after the day’s work has been accomplished, the actual drudgery in the fields and a host of related hardships that marked life in the pre-industrial age are not there to cloud the joys of gaining one’s sustenance from the soil. In short, the essential aspects of the Blut-und-Boden utopia are represented in the available excerpts from the ‘KWL’.71

Cuomo is in no doubt as to where the ‘KWL’ texts stand in relation to National Socialist cultural and social policies. He points to the start-date of the serial, just three days after the newly instituted Erntedankfest, and to the serial’s pre-occupation with pagan and folk customs and rituals. He draws parallels to Grimm’s Volk ohne Raum, explaining how Nazi propagandists drew on myths concerning the 70 71

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Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 31. Cuomo, p. 81 and p. 83. Subsequent references, pp. 80–87.

German agrarian past to support militaristic and expansionist policies, and he ties the idyllic and anachronistic representation of the countryside in ‘KWL’ to the kind of visual art promoted by the authorities and exhibited in the Haus der deutschen Kunst as a counterpoint to Entartete Kunst. Finally, Cuomo refutes suggestions made by Krispyn that ‘barbs hidden deep’ in ‘KWL’ constitute ‘a constant element of subdued encouragement to hope patiently for better times to come’, or in Richardson’s words, ‘passive resistance’.72 Instead, passages from Das festliche Jahr, such as ‘Die Mithochzeiter’, with their emphasis on ‘Ahnen’, ‘Sippen’, and ‘Sitten’, clearly betray a participation in and propagation of National Socialist discourse.73 In a similar vein, Vieregg is able to analyse the fiftieth episode of the serial as a secular völkisch parable, as ‘ein Musterstück nationalsozialistischer Erbauungsliteratur’.74 These analyses, tied to the contemporary reception of the work, leave no doubt that the ‘KWL’ serial actively furthered the aims and goals of the National Socialist regime. Blut-und-Boden prose? In this way, there seems to be little question that the ‘KWL’ serial possessed an objective supportive effect vis-à-vis the Nazi regime. However, important questions remain concerning the precise relationship between the serial and Nazi cultural policies and Eich’s role within it. One suggestion, immediately rebutted by Cuomo, is that the more overtly pro-National Socialist elements in the ‘KWL’ serial are attributable to Raschke’s authorship alone.75 Cuomo’s rebuttal hinges on two extant short stories written by Eich in the mid-1930s – Katharina, originally published in Das innere Reich in 1935,

72 73 74 75

Krispyn, p. 37; Richardson, p. 47. Raschke and Eich, Das festliche Jahr, pp. 63–64. Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 34. Cuomo, p. 87.

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and ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, published in Die Dame in 1936.76 Cuomo’s analysis of Katharina is particularly worthy of note here, since this analysis seeks to establish an identity between the central themes and concerns of that text and those of the ‘KWL’ serial. Firstly Cuomo draws attention to Mallmann’s presentation of the characteristic features which the text shares with other prose texts published in Das innere Reich: ‘Bezeichnend ist, daß das Leben in der Stadt, in der Industrie oder in den intellektuellen Kreisen nirgends berücksichtigt wird.’77 For Cuomo, in this failure to deal ‘with any relevant social, intellectual, or political issues’ and absence of metropolitan or industrial setting, Katharina ‘has features that are characteristic of Blut-undBoden literature’.78 Just like the country postman scenes, the anachronistic description in Katharina of the rural village where the narrator has come to spend time with his grandparents ‘contains many of the of the Blut-und-Boden motifs that were prevalent elsewhere in artworks promoted under the Hitler regime. [...] Eich’s reader is thus transferred – just as the “KWL” listener was – to a world far removed from the reality of the Third Reich’. Katharina is particularly significant, since it is also prominent in Axel Vieregg’s thesis concerning Eich’s retreat into a timeless, antimodern realm. Indeed, Vieregg quotes in his essay exactly the same description of the rural village, identified as Eich’s grandparents’ home in Oettingen, as does Cuomo.79 For Vieregg, this is evidence of a deep-seated attitude on Eich’s part which helps to explain the affinities between the ‘KWL’ serial and Nazi cultural policies. Katharina is one manifestation of the timeless, inward approach perceptible in Die Kolonne, but Vieregg considers this approach to be more than just a literary stance. Eich’s fundamental nature is seen to 76

77 78 79

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See Günter Eich, Katharina, GW, 4, pp. 226–74, first published, Das innere Reich: Literarische Monatsschrift, 2 (1935), 934–80; and Günter Eich, ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, GW, 4, pp. 276–86, first published, Die Dame: Illustrierte Modenzeitschrift, 63 (1936), 10 and 56–61. Mallmann, p. 102. Cuomo, p. 87. Subsequent reference, p. 88. Vieregg, ‘Mein Raum und meine Zeit’, pp. 20–21.

carry with it a desire to turn inwards from rationality, technology and, crucially, contemporary political events. This ‘philosophisch begründete (und den “Deutschen Kalender” durchweg prägende) Innerlichkeit, die ihm den Blick auf die ihn umgebende politische und gesellschaftliche Realität verstellte’, this ‘Gleichgültigkeit, ja Verantwortungslosigkeit gegenüber allem Gesellschaftlichen und Politischen’, becomes for Vieregg a key factor in explaining Eich’s susceptibility to conformity within the Third Reich, as does the now familiar parallel to Gottfried Benn: ‘Einen Ausweg aus Rationalismus, Funktionalismus, zivilisatorischer Erstarrung’ habe er in der nationalsozialistischer Erhebung gesehen, bekannte Benn später in Doppelleben. [...] Eich lag also mit seiner Ablehnung der Vernunft, dem Wunsch nach einer Verschmelzung mit dem Ganzen im Tod, seinem antizivilisatorischen Affekt und seiner, zumindest im ‘Deutschen Kalender’ bekundeten Vorliebe für eine hierarchisch strukturierte Volksgemeinschaft gegenüber einer demokratischen Gesellschaft ‘voll im Trend’ der antiwestlichen, anti-rationalistischen und anti-republikanischen Strömung im Deutschland der dreißiger Jahre.80

What both these analyses of Katharina achieve is an identification of Eich with the ideological position expressed in the ‘KWL’ serial. Hence, the apparent ideological proximity between ‘KWL’ and National Socialism ultimately becomes a proximity between Eich and National Socialism. Further, the serial’s support for National Socialism becomes Eich’s support for National Socialism, so that through his literary production Eich is seen to mirror in some sense Benn’s public support for the regime.

80

Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, pp. 38–39 and p. 42.

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Literary continuities: Eich’s éducation sentimentale As our analysis of Eich’s Kolonne output might suggest, this reading of Katharina demands a degree of modification. In particular, Cuomo’s application of the term Blut-und-Boden is somewhat suspect, in that he seeks to apply it to any broadly positive, backward-looking depiction of rural culture. In this way, the description of the narrator’s arrival in Oettingen apparently ‘contains many [...] Blut-und-Boden motifs’,81 but, while there can be no doubt that this is an anachronistic, idyllic even, description, what it lacks is any reference, no matter how indirect, to Nazi racial theory, any reference to Blut. The same holds true for the remainder of the text which is pre-occupied not even with an idyllic return to a pre-industrial mode of living, but rather with a painful, intensely personal experience. In this respect, Katharina seems out of place in the Blut-und-Boden tradition, at the core of aggressive, chauvinistic Nazi ideology. Instead, the text fits much more comfortably within Eich’s own poetological stance outlined in Die Kolonne. Katharina observes a key feature of the Kolonne approach to literature by, in Dolan’s words, ‘using the frame of reference of childhood experience, an archetypal, ritualised event’ in order to avoid making an historically engaged social comment.82 Indeed, in the child narrator’s unrequited love for the older Katharina and in the negative outcome of the story, Katharina seems to owe much to a text reviewed by Eich in Die Kolonne in 1932, namely Flaubert’s Éducation Sentimentale. Katharina must be seen less as an attempt to promote themes compatible with National Socialism and more as an attempt to emulate Flaubert’s representation of a powerful individual fate grown out of the poet’s own experience, or according to Eich in that review, ‘die Gestaltung und Deutung des großen und in seiner Strenge beispielhaften Lebens ihres Schöpfers selbst’ (GW, 4, p. 562). The continuing resonance of Flaubert’s text for Eich is demonstrated by a book review of Stifter’s Witiko, published by Eich 81 82

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Cuomo, p. 88. Dolan, p. 164.

in the Neue Leipziger Zeitung in January 1935, at the time Eich was composing Katharina. Eich’s chosen title for this review, ‘Erziehung des Herzens’, matches his own preferred translation of the title of Flaubert’s novel, and as Eich wrote of Stifter’s text so he could also have written of his own semi-autobiographical text: Wir haben heute keinen Mangel an wertvollen unterhaltenden Büchern und auch nicht an solchen, die uns zu politisch brauchbaren Menschen erziehen können. Hier aber ist eines, dessen wir bedürfen [...], eines, das die zeitlose Erziehung des Herzens nicht vergißt.83

Katharina presents Eich’s own childhood ‘Erziehung des Herzens’, and as such it has its genesis not in Nazi rule but in Eich’s own literary pretensions and aspirations pre-dating 1933. In this sense, Cuomo’s reading of Katharina is an over-politicised one. Certainly the story’s contemporary popularity and its subsequent publication in a war-time Feldpostausgabe indicate that it matched to some extent National Socialist concerns and that it achieved an assenting effect. But its roots in Eich’s pre-1933 poetological stance suggest strongly that this assent is restricted to these politicised effects, rather than being supplemented by an active supporting intention on the part of the author. The Kolonne consciousness: soil without blood To a certain extent this must also be true of the ‘KWL’ serial. While the Blut-und-Boden label can be more appropriately applied to the country postman scenes than to Katharina, it would be misleading to analyse the ‘KWL’ texts solely from this perspective. As with 83

Eich, ‘Erziehung des Herzens’, GW, 4, p. 566, emphasis in the original. See also Eich, ‘Zu Flauberts Education Sentimentale’, GW, 4, p. 563: ‘Daß dieser große Roman in Deutschland viel weniger bekannt ist als Madame Bovary, mag zum Teil an den abschreckenden Titeln liegen, die man ihm im Deutschen gegeben hat […]. Als gute Übertragung sei die […] genannt, die unter dem Titel Die Erziehung des Herzens […] erschienen ist.’

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Katharina, continuities with the apolitical Kolonne stance also emerge. Wessels, for one, points out the importance of the shared 1930 Kolonne consciousness, as distinct from a Blut-und-Boden position, for an analysis of the country postman scenes: An ihnen läßt sich sehr genau jenes Krisenbewußtsein nachweisen, das geprägt war von Zivilisationskritik und Sehnsucht nach unverfälschtem, natürlichem und ganzheitlichem Leben. Sie verherrlichten eine harmonische, idealisierte, bäuerliche Gesellschaft, die es zwar längst nicht mehr gab, die aber dennoch oder gerade deswegen der nationalsozialistischen Ideologie entgegenkam.84

Similarly, Schäfer ties the four-line rhyme which normally concluded episodes of the serial - ‘Verachtet, liebe Freunde, nicht,/ Der Bauern Herz und Hand!/ Er nährt, was euer Stolz auch spricht,/ euch und das ganze Land’ - not to Nazi ideology, as do Cuomo and Vieregg, but to the foreword to the first edition of Die Kolonne: ‘noch immer leben wir von Acker und Meer, und die Himmel, sie reichen auch über die Stadt.’85 Cuomo too shows an awareness of the continuities between Eich’s Kolonne stance and that maintained in ‘KWL’, drawing parallels to Eich’s 1930 poem ‘Verse an vielen Abenden’. In this instance, Cuomo seems to maintain the kind of distance between Eich’s own literary themes and concerns and those of the Blut-und-Boden movement which is lacking elsewhere in his analysis: The longing to return to the soil and to an uncomplicated life on the land has a direct relationship to the central topos in Eich’s lyrics and radio plays: mankind’s alienation from nature and the attempt to re-establish a ‘paradisiac’ unity with all existence. In his treatment of this topos, Eich builds upon a

84 85

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Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 450. Die Kolonne, 1 (1929–1930), 1. See Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation im Dritten Reich’, in Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein, pp. 7–54 (p. 40); Cuomo, pp. 81–82; Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 27.

tradition which goes back to German Romanticism and earlier, and out of which the Blut-und-Boden movement also originated.86

Just as it was necessary in the previous section to maintain a careful distinction between a conservative political stance and Kolonne’s ‘conservatism’, despite common origins, so it is necessary here to maintain a distinction between the National Socialist Blut-und-Boden aesthetic and Kolonne’s own conservative aesthetic, even though both trends gained common impetus from the prevailing mood of crisis around 1930. The fundamental difference between Eich’s Kolonne nature aesthetic and that developed in ‘KWL’ is not so much an intrinsic one, as one which relates to their external political context. After 1933 the National Socialist regime was making a ‘total’ cultural claim which swept up this type of anti-modern aesthetic and politicised it into assent to its own cultural policies. In this respect, Eich’s assent in ‘KWL’ stems in large part from a National Socialist appropriation of non-political, non-Nazi literary concerns, and not from a deliberate conformity on Eich’s part with National Socialism. This same analysis can be applied to the range of literary adaptations which Eich undertook during the Third Reich. While Cuomo is right to be wary of attributing profound motives to what may well have been pragmatically determined choices, some of the source material for Eich’s literary adaptations can be shown to complement his own literary and aesthetic tastes as expressed in his literary reviews for Die Kolonne.87 Here, Cuomo himself acknowledges the affinities between Eich’s own literary stance and the themes prominent in Eichendorff’s Die Glücksritter which Eich adapted for both the stage and radio. Similarly, one of Eich’s most successful radio adaptations, ‘Lustiges Lumpenpack’, based on Hebel’s Schatzkästlein, complements the tradition pursued by Eich in Die Kolonne, while critics have noted in Katharina echoes of both Eichendorff and Keller.88 Here, the Nazi appropriation of this same literary tradition is 86 87 88

Cuomo, p. 88. See Cuomo, p. 68–70. See respectively Storck, Günter Eich, p. 24 and Cuomo, pp. 87–88.

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liable to heighten the degree of perceived assent expressed in Eich’s literary production. In Cuomo’s words: ‘When Eich’s sources in German literature are examined from the perspective of National Socialist cultural politics, his selections appear to have been anything but arbitrary. He adapted works by authors who were not merely tolerated due to their lack of political relevance, but actively exploited by proponents of ethnic/racial chauvinism.’89 Contemporary reception of Eich’s ‘Lustiges Lumpenpack’ - as ‘ein wahrhaft ideales Werk’, ‘einen absoluten Höhepunkt’ - attests to its assenting effect within the norms of Nazi cultural policy.90 However, in terms of Eich’s intentions in selecting this material, there is a significant distinction to be maintained between the appropriation by National Socialism of Eich’s own literary traditions, on the one hand, and any appropriation by Eich of the emerging Nazi ‘tradition’, on the other. Discontinuities: populism and the radio At the same time, significant areas do exist where Eich’s Third Reich radio output, exemplified by the ‘KWL’ serial and his literary adaptations, demonstrates substantial points of divergence from his pre-1933 Kolonne stance. As we were able to establish in the previous section, the Kolonne poetological stance was an elitist one, founded on the notion of the poet-genius. As Dolan suggests, the Kolonne poets believed ‘that poetry is a matter only for the select few and that the genius [...] is not doing his job if he strives for popular success’.91 Similarly, Eich had himself argued in his Becher review for poetry to be left to those ‘für die es kein Wollen ist’ (GW, 4, p. 552). Such a view seems difficult to reconcile both with the demands of the popular, mass-market radio industry in general, and with the particular expectations of Nazi radio policy outlined by Cuomo below: 89 90 91

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Cuomo, p. 67. ‘Lustiges Lumpenpack’, Die Sendung, 10 (1933), 1139, quoted by Cuomo, p. 67. Dolan, p. 163.

When it came to broadcast material of a less universal appeal than music, such as the radio play, writers were expected to cater to the tastes of the largest listener group, the unsophisticated masses, for whom the radio played a prominent role in leisure-time activities. That is, the new trend was characterized by anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism. Plebeian entertainment and popular ‘enlightenment’ were given priority over the more cultured interests of the middle and upper classes.92

Difficult to reconcile too is the actual nature of many of Eich’s broadcasts. As Cuomo writes of Eich’s radio output: ‘The most striking feature is the banality of these broadcasts, which is not restricted to the children’s radio plays, where it would be expected.’ In the ‘KWL’ serial and many of Eich’s adaptations, he was clearly willing to sacrifice the literary principles so resolutely maintained in Die Kolonne. In terms of Eich’s Third Reich output, it is this stark discontinuity, and not the areas of philosophical continuity emphasised by Cuomo and Vieregg, which is perhaps of greatest significance. In this respect, it is no longer possible to talk of a coincidence between Eich’s pre-existing literary concerns and Nazi cultural policy, nor of an appropriation by National Socialism of the Kolonne stance. Instead, Eich can be seen to be actively adjusting his output in an apparent attempt to meet the requirements of Nazi cultural policy. One further area of divergence with Eich’s pre-1933 literary position is in the broadcast medium of the ‘KWL’ serial and the majority of his other Third Reich output. The functionalist, pragmatic view of literary production implied by Eich’s own discussion of the difficulty of finding a form for Hebel’s Schatzkästlein which is ‘funkgemäß’ (GW, 4, p. 463) illustrates a considerable divergence from the standpoint of the anti-modern Kolonne aesthete who resolutely defended his right to write timeless lyric poetry. It is in this respect, in the simple fact of its broadcast on the radio, that the ‘KWL’ serial differs strongly from Katharina and that analysis of the serial proposed by both Cuomo and Vieregg is liable to further 92

Cuomo, p. 55. Subsequent reference, p. 45.

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modification. In identifying the ‘KWL’ serial so closely with Nazi ideology, Cuomo and Vieregg present a somewhat unreflected view of that same ideology. Certainly, the idyllic, anachronistic representation of German agrarian culture complemented one part of National Socialist ideology, and this kind of rhetoric was a significant aspect of Nazi cultural policy. However, in concentrating on Rosenberg and Darré and on ‘einer rückwärtsgewandten “Deutschen Ideologie”, wie sie von den Nazis auf die Spitze getrieben wurde’,93 both Cuomo and Vieregg fail to take into account the important technocratic elements within the Nazi hierarchy of values and the extent to which the core of Nazi ideology constituted not a simple backward-looking, zivilisationskritisch yearning, but a fusion of both Zivilisation and Kultur, of a mythic Germanic past with a modern technological future. If the ‘KWL’ scenes are exemplary illustrations of Nazi ideology, then it is not in the folksy nature idyll alone. Rather, it is in the way the backward-looking elements of the Rosenberg faction of the Party are fused with the technocratic impulses embodied by a figure like Goebbels, in the way the antimodern rhetoric is employed on the most modern of media, to further the development and reach of the Nazi radio project. Here, Eich’s radio work, and in particular the ‘KWL’ serial, coheres with the core of National Socialist ideology in a manner that has not been appreciated to date. It is this active divergence from Eich’s Kolonne stance, together with the very public, long-lived, and widespread effect of the broadcasts, which grants these texts an assenting function significantly greater than Katharina. In this case, Eich’s texts betray active support, rather than politicised assent.

93

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Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 31.

Pragmatic or ideological motivations? At this point we must return to the question of whether this active literary support, as with Eich’s application to join the Party, was primarily ideologically or pragmatically motivated. In any analysis of literary production in the Third Reich, it is difficult to escape the powerful politicising effect of the events of 30 January 1933. In particular, it is difficult not to view discontinuities in output around this date within the context of Hitler’s seizure of power, and this holds true for the discontinuities in Eich’s literary production which seem to hinge on this pivotal political date. There is no doubt that the most productive phase in Eich’s writing career coincided with the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 and that, as Vieregg points out, his output for the radio between February and December 1933 far exceeded that for the years 1930, 1931, and 1932 put together.94 And yet, as we have already seen, there are also significant continuities in Eich’s output which run across and beyond that moment of political change. In this context, it is important not to allow the shadow cast by Hitler’s seizure of power to obscure the origins of that rapid rise in productivity in the final months of the Weimar Republic. Eich had taken the decision to earn his living as a professional writer in 1932.95 Indeed, his correspondence now confirms that, even before 1933, he intended to exploit the opportunities provided by the radio industry, so that by December of that year he was confident enough to write to the Kuhnerts as follows: ‘Wenn alles klappt, saniert mich die Funkstunde für das ganze Jahr 33.’96 It is not clear how much of this work survived the political upheaval of early 1933, but the demonstrable continuity with his Kolonne work exhibited by Eich’s early texts for the Nazi radio system suggest that much of this early output had been arranged before the National Socialists came to power. February 1933, for 94 95 96

Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 18. Letter to Erhard Göpel, 26 March 1932, quoted by Storck, Günter Eich, p. 19. See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 18.

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instance, saw Eich reading from his own prose fragments, previously published in Die Kolonne, as well as the rebroadcast of his first radioplay, ‘Das Leben und Sterben des großen Sängers Enrico Caruso’, co-written with Raschke in 1929 and first broadcast as early as 1931.97 This is not to say that the political events of January 1933 had no bearing on Eich’s literary output. As we have seen, his correspondence with Raschke during April 1933 makes it clear that Eich went out of his way to approach Party officials in the new radio system. However, what emerges from this correspondence is not an ideological imperative to help further the National Socialist revolution, but a professional imperative to secure his burgeoning career. As he wrote to Raschke: ‘Im Augenblick ist es wohl das Sicherste, mit Hoffmann zu arbeiten, der fest im Sattel sitzt.’98 In fact, as Vieregg’s research reveals, the most significant event for Eich in January 1933 was arguably not the Nazi seizure of power, but his own decision to purchase a plot of land in Poberow on credit. This debt heightened the pragmatic imperative to overcome any threat posed by political change and to find a regular source of work. The link between the house he had built on that land and his radio writing in the Third Reich, the financial dependence which motivated that writing, and the first signs of privately expressed dissent all emerge in a letter of 25 November 1933 to Artur Kuhnert: ‘Den “Königswusterhäuser Landboten” mache ich übrigens mit Martin. […] Ich habe es so satt und will für mich arbeiten. O diese verfluchte Villa an der Ostsee!’99 Of course, the political upheaval of 1933 did not only pose a threat to the radio career he had already started to build. The exclusion of many Left-wing and Jewish writers also provided an opportunity for Eich. A letter to Raschke, dated 26 April 1933, suggests that Eich was enthusiastically seizing that opportunity, and not only to cover existing financial liabilities: ‘Wenn all die Aus97 98 99

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See GW, 2, pp. 780–85. Letter, Günter Eich to Martin Raschke, 24 April 1933, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 19 and p. 20. See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 24.

sichten, die ich jetzt habe, sich realisieren, kaufe ich mir im Sommer einen Mercedes.’100 To a large extent the coincidence of the Nazi Machtergreifung and Eich’s success as a radio author was just that, a coincidence. He had already made the decision to embrace the radio as a source of income, and in all likelihood had already conceded the necessity of adjusting his output accordingly. In this sense, the post1933 discontinuities with his Kolonne output owe as much to personal and professional circumstances as they do to political events. The same pragmatic motivation seems to apply to Eich’s abortive application to join the NSDAP. In Eich’s extant writings, there exists no private expression of enthusiasm for Hitler’s seizure of power, no sense that Eich shared an optimism for cultural rebirth, let alone a public expression of support in the mould of Benn. Indeed, Eich’s scarce private references to the Nazi Party and to Hitler are characterised by a matter-of-fact, detached, sceptical and, ultimately, ironic tone. Two letters to the Kuhnerts, written a year apart on 2 May 1933 and 1 May 1934 respectively, illustrate the point: ‘Sonst nichts Neues, außer daß ich in die NSDAP eingetreten bin. Heil Hitler! Günter’; ‘Eigentlich sollte ich nun heute mit dem RDS marschieren. Tja… Heil Hitler und viele Grüße.’101 There is simply no contextual evidence pre- or post-1933 to suggest that Eich’s motivations for joining the Nazi party were ideological and political in nature. Equally, there is no evidence to indicate that the subsequent halting of that application in November 1933 may have arisen, as Vieregg at least suggests, as an intentional act of dissent in protest at Nazi book-burnings and the prohibition of the volume which contained his first publications, Anthologie jüngster Lyrik. More likely is either that Eich’s application fell victim to the Party’s own block on new applicants in the autumn of 1933 or that Eich himself had realised that joining the Party would not after all be necessary to secure his career.102 In any case, significant here is not the fact that 100 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 19. 101 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 15. Subsequent reference, p. 17. 102 See Cuomo, p. 22.

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the application was terminated, and that Eich’s defenders can with no little relief place him officially in the binary category ‘non-Nazi’, but rather the fact that Eich made the application in the first place, that he seems to have been prepared to actively support the Nazi regime if it was necessary to advance his career. Mechanisms of assent A considerable weight of evidence then points to Eich’s active assent to the Nazi regime being motivated by pragmatic opportunism rather than ideological conviction. The final aspect of this assent which warrants investigation is the extent to which it can illustrate the mechanisms of National Socialist cultural policy which operated on writers and the mechanisms by which these writers assented. Some of the harmony between Eich’s radio texts and the norms of Nazi cultural policy can be attributed to continuities in Eich’s literary development. However, where we are dealing with active discontinuities and the deliberate adjustment of output to match those norms, the question remains as to the extent to which these originated from Eich himself and the extent to which direct interventions from the Nazi officials are responsible. For Vieregg, there is little doubt that Eich’s output was guided from above. He points, for instance, to evidence in Eich’s correspondence from 1935 which demonstrates ‘wie sehr Eich und Raschke nach den Direktiven der Rundfunkverantwortlichen zu arbeiten hatten’.103 In particular, Vieregg sees figures such as Helmut Hansen prescribing the content of the ‘KWL’ scenes. This view complements Cuomo’s original assumption that Hansen, a long-time Party and SA member, ‘saw to it that the broadcasts adhered to party principles’.104 Vieregg cites the following letter from Eich to Raschke, dated 17 April 1939:

103 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 26. 104 Cuomo, p. 80.

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also: Der Landbote soll im Mai einer KdF Wandertruppe begegnen. Da an der Besprechung auch zwei Herren vom Amt für Reisen, Wandern und Urlaub teilnehmen, vermute ich, daß es sich um einen Wunsch von höherer Stelle handelt. Folgende Hinweise wurden mir gegeben: [...] Folgende Punkte wären besonders zu berücksichtigen: 1. Der Gegensatz Stadt-Land soll durch die KdF-Wanderungen gemildert werden. 2. Diszipliniertes Wandern im Gegensatz zum ‘Horden-Wandervogel’. 3. Gemeinschaftsbildende Kraft der KdF-Wanderbewegung. 4. Vielseitigkeit des Wanderns und des KdF-Wanderwartes: Heimatkunde, Naturkunde, Geschichte, Kunst, Brauchtum usw. usw.105

In this passage, Vieregg sees clearly illustrated the mechanisms by which Eich’s contributions to the ‘KWL’ serial were determined. He draws an explicit connection between production on the ground and the ideological pronouncements of figures such as Goebbels: ‘Ganz deutlich werden Einflußnahme und detaillierte Vorgaben der Partei – speziell auch im Sinne des Goebbels-Zitats.’106 Rebellion in der Goldstadt It is in this context that Eich’s most notorious act of potential assent, the war-time radio play Rebellion in der Goldstadt, is of particular interest.107 First broadcast on 8 May 1940, the play’s significance is unquestioned in Vieregg’s eyes: ‘Die Umstände des Zustandekommens und der Inhalt von der Rebellion in der Goldstadt lassen keinen Zweifel mehr daran, daß Eich sich als Teil der NS105 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, pp. 28–29. 106 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, pp. 27–28. Vieregg refers here to Goebbels’s presentation of his aims for the Nazi radio system made on 23 March 1933: ‘Damit ist der Rundfunk wirklicher Diener am Volk, ein Mittel zum Zweck, und zwar einem sehr hohen und idealen Zweck, ein Mittel zur Vereinheitlichung des deutschen Volkes in Nord und West, in Süd und Ost, zwischen Katholikern und Protestanten, zwischen Proletariern und Bürgern und Bauern’, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 26. 107 Günter Eich, Rebellion in der Goldstadt: Tonkassette, Text und Materialien, ed. by Karl Karst (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997).

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Propagandamaschinerie sah und daß er als solcher von offizieller Seite sehr geschätzt wurde.’108 Since its remarkable discovery in 1993, however, critical interpretations of Eich’s final Third Reich radio play have, to say the least, differed widely. For some critics, most notably Karl Karst, editor both of the radio plays in the revised Eich edition and the subsequent published transcription of Rebellion in der Goldstadt, three principal factors temper its assenting function.109 Firstly, the pragmatic motivations behind Eich’s writing of the play, both as a necessary source of income and as a temporary escape route from military service, weaken the intentional element of the play’s assent. Secondly, the ordering of scenes and Eich’s return to the army almost three weeks before the play’s broadcast suggest that the most propagandistic elements of the work, specifically scene 1a, were added after Eich’s involvement had ended: Die Veränderung des Hörspiels erfolgte nach Fertigstellung der Produktion und damit zu einem Zeitpunkt, an dem Günter Eich aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach wieder unter Aufsicht der Wehrmacht stand. Das Hörspiel Rebellion in der Goldstadt ist demnach nicht in jener Form gesendet worden, in der Eich es ursprünglich geschrieben hat. 110

Finally, the entire nature of the play is seen to be altered by the bracketing out of this supplementary scene: ‘ohne diesen Zusatz hat Eichs Stück eine verhalten sozialkritische, antikapitalistische, aber nicht unbedingt antibritische Stoßrichtung.’111 This element of social criticism, reminiscent of Eich’s dissenting radio plays from 1936 and 108 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 53. 109 See Karl Karst, ‘Einführung’, in Eich, Rebellion in der Goldstadt, pp. 7–12. For a considered response to such arguments, see Justus Fetscher, ‘Das Empire bläst zum Angriff Saxophon: Text und Kontext von Günter Eichs Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, Weimarer Beiträge, 45 (1999), 584–97. 110 Karl Karst, introductory essay to Rebellion in der Goldstadt, Norddeutsche Rundkunk, quoted by Wolfram Wessels, ‘Zum Beispiel Günter Eich: Von der schuldlosen Schuld der Literatur’, in Vieregg (ed.), pp. 137–54 (pp. 139–40). 111 Christof Siemes, ‘Ein kleiner Stachel: Nach 53 Jahren ist ein Hörspiel Günter Eichs wieder aufgetaucht’, in Vieregg (ed.), pp. 109–11 (p. 110).

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1937, can then be tied to Eich’s own statement, made in correspondence with Artur Kuhnert, that the play deals with themes which ‘ich mit entsetzt gerungenen Händen ablehnte, wär ich Propagandaministerium’.112 As such, the assenting function of Rebellion in der Goldstadt is not only seen to be weakened, but is reversed, so that remarkably the play acquires ‘generell subversive Züge’: ‘Selbst eine Auftragsarbeit wie die Rebellion in der Goldstadt kann die Forderungen der Geldgeber und die (Vor-) Urteile der Interpreten unterlaufen.’113 Given the existence of entirely opposing assessments of the text, that it embodied, for instance, ‘die antidemokratische und rassistische Hetze der Nazis in Hörspielform’,114 Rebellion in der Goldstadt clearly illustrates the difficulties presented by what remains an essentially subjective exercise of textual interpretation, particularly where a text is employed as a retrospective justification of pre-formed, polarised positions. Certainly the issues of race, imperial capitalism, and workers’ protest which surround the 1922 miners’ uprising in South Africa do not necessarily allow themselves to be brought into simple conformity with Nazi ideology and policy, and it is this which in part makes such opposing interpretations of Eich’s treatment of this material conceivable. However, there exists no means of determining the authorship of individual scenes. By contrast, if we return to the first principles of assent and dissent, what is rather less ambiguous is the objectively identifiable function of the play in terms of its contemporary reception and the context in which it was broadcast. Both Wessels and Fetscher tellingly outline the organised campaign of anti-English material within which Rebellion in der Goldstadt was broadcast.115 Similarly, preview and review articles of this play carry 112 Letter to Artur Kuhnert, 13 March 1940, quoted by Karl Karst, ‘“Honoraris causa”: Materialien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Hörspiels Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, in Eich, Rebellion in der Goldstadt, pp. 51–79 (p. 60). 113 Siemes, p. 109 and p. 111. 114 Frank Olbert, ‘Strammstehen für Goebbels, Geld und Urlaub: Mit Gustav Knuth gegen England - Günter Eichs wiederentdecktes rassistisches Hörspiel Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, in Vieregg (ed.), pp. 117–19 (p. 117). 115 See Wessels, ‘Zum Beispiel Günter Eich’, p. 145 and Fetscher, pp. 588–90.

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none of the equivocation implied in Eich’s own comment to Kuhnert nor that which was applied to his 1936 radio plays, ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’. These contemporary review articles make clear both the function ascribed to Rebellion in der Goldstadt and Eich’s own status within the propaganda machinery: In jedem Fall hat Eich nicht nur die politischen Hintergründe klar und eindringlich gezeichnet, sondern er verband sie mit Menschen von Fleisch und Blut, deren Erlebnisse der Hörer mitempfindet.116 Welche furchtbaren Methoden britische Plutokraten anwendeten, um aus den südafrikanischen Goldminen höhere Erträge zu pressen, das schildert Günter Eich in seinem groß angelegten Hörspiel, das der Deutschlandsender am Mittwoch, dem 8. Mai, um 21 Uhr sendet.117 Die Reihe zeitbezogener Hörspiele, die wir im Laufe der letzten Zeit hören, wird durch Eichs neues Werk wesentlich bereichert.118

Even if these reviews are distortions of Eich’s text, that can do nothing to negate their significance as markers of the play’s contemporary reception. Indeed, given the transitory nature of the listening experience, it is this strongly supportive effect, rather than any textual ambivalences, which are likely to have remained with listeners. This strongly supportive, even collaborative, effect can only be mildly weakened by the intentional background behind the text. Eich’s correspondence makes clear that his motivations were mundanely pragmatic, and so there can be no question of generalised, ideological collaboration. Nonetheless, Rebellion in der Goldstadt clearly indicates that Eich, like many of his contemporaries, was drawn into 116 ‘Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, Nationalsozialistische Rundfunk-Korrespondenz, 24 April 1940, 8–9, quoted by Karst, ‘Honororis causa’, p. 67. 117 ‘Was die Sende-Woche bringt: Rebellion in der Goldstadt Mittwoch, 8. Mai, 21 Uhr, Deutschlandsender’, Berlin hört und sieht, 8 May 1940, quoted by Karst, ‘Honororis causa’, p. 66. 118 ‘Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, Nationalsozialistische Rundfunk-Korrespondenz, 24 April 1940, 8–9, quoted by Cuomo, p. 77.

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active, if pragmatic, assent within an institutional, directly steered programme of propaganda. In this respect, the original verdicts of Cuomo, Wessels, and Vieregg as to the assenting nature of Rebellion in der Goldstadt, made only on the basis of contextual evidence, require little revision. Further, once divorced from the often fruitless debates about the text itself, these analyses can be seen to shed additional light on the mechanisms of Eich’s literary assent. Cuomo, for instance, pieces together the circumstances of the play’s composition and broadcast, tying it to a two-day conference of radio authors held in Berlin in January 1940.119 Here, ‘the direct solicitation of anti-English themes’ was initiated ‘as part of Goebbels’ move to employ the radio play in the war effort’. Hence, ‘there is no longer any question that Eich’s Rebellion in der Goldstadt had been conceived for the 1940 propaganda campaign’. Similarly, drawing on the contemporary reception of the play Wessels stresses its ‘eindeutige antienglische Tendenz’: ‘Mit Sicherheit muß [Rebellion in der Goldstadt] auch im Zusammenhang mit der antienglischen Propaganda-Kampagne von 1940 gesehen werden. Daß es sich dabei um eine Auftragsproduktion handelte, ist nicht auszuschließen.’120 The circumstances of the play’s composition within the context of this campaign are further illuminated by Eich’s correspondence with Kuhnert, first presented by Vieregg. In a letter of 13 March 1940, Eich refers explicitly to the list of suitable material drawn up at the Berlin conference and reports on his failed attempts to have broadcast treatments of material relating to Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton.121 Instead, and in return for much-needed leave from the army organised by Gerd Fricke, Eich opted to work on the 1922 miners’ uprising in South Africa. In Vieregg’s words: ‘Es ist Eichs Beitrag zu der von Goebbels auf der am 22./23. Januar 1940 im Berliner Funkhaus abgehaltenen Konferenz von den Rundfunkautoren geforderten Anti-England-Kampagne, Eichs letztes Hörspiel 119 Cuomo, p. 75. Subsequent references, p. 75. 120 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 448. 121 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 51. Subsequent reference, p. 51.

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unter Hitler, die Rebellion in der Goldstadt.’ As such, Rebellion in der Goldstadt provides the clearest manifestation of the kind of direct, intentionalist mechanism of assent also visible in sections of the ‘KWL’ serial. Working towards the Führer: ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ If this provides substantial evidence to support an interventionist view of Eich’s literary assent, danger exists in employing such an analysis as the sole mechanism of assent, particularly in the early stages of Nazi rule before any immediate pre-war and war-time radicalisation of policy. Such a view tends to offer an unreflected ‘totalitarian’ view of the structures of Nazi cultural policy: Nazi officials exercised total control over radio production; Eich produced texts for the Nazi radio system; therefore Eich’s texts must have been subject to direct control from above. Such a view is at least implicit in Cuomo’s presentation of radio policy, where he stresses Goebbels’s ‘complete authority over the radio system’ already at a very early stage in 1933, claiming that Goebbels ‘demanded ideological homogeneity within the rank and file of all persons working for the industry’.122 In both Vieregg’s and Cuomo’s analyses, their insistence on citing statements by high-ranking cultural officials such as Goebbels and Rosenberg, and Eich’s conformity to them, risks establishing an overly simplistic intentionalist mechanism for Eich’s assent, not least because it fails to take account of the significant factional dispute between these two senior cultural-political figures. As the present study has sought to demonstrate, such a model does not match the realities of Nazi cultural policy, and, as Wessels’s account suggests, radio policy seems to have been no different to other areas of the Nazi regime in conforming to a charismatic model of totalitarian rule, where policy objectives failed to be efficiently transmitted from above: 122 Cuomo, p. 48.

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Zu bedenken ist, daß die ‘Richtlinien’ […] sich keineswegs immer in Form von Erlassen, Verordnungen o.ä. ausdrückten, vielmehr mußten die Rundfunkmitarbeiter vom Reichsendeleiter bis zum Intendanten ein großes Geschick beweisen, um aus den Reden und Äußerungen des Propagandaministers seine jeweiligen Absichten zu entnehmen. […] Es scheint aber ebenso einleuchtend, daß es unmöglich war, alle Sendungen gleichermaßen auf die Einhaltung dieser ‘Richtlinien’ zu überwachen. Also kann angenommen werden, daß den Sendern durchaus weniger kontrollierte ‘Freiräume’ blieben.123

Apolitical spaces within the radio system need not necessarily be seen as a deliberately propagated element of radio policy ‘which reflected the National Socialists’ cunning as propagandists’.124 Instead, they can also be seen to derive from lapses in ‘total’ control. As such, these spaces and the absence of specific output guidelines on the ground have profound implications for Eich’s Third Reich radio output. On the one hand, they leave open the possibility of dissent and this is an area which will be tackled in the following section. On the other, they suggest that assent was not always carefully orchestrated from above and that it may well have originated in part from the writer’s own initiative. That we need to look beyond a simple intentionalist and interventionist model of assent is supported by another of Eich’s prose texts from the mid-1930s, namely ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ (GW, 4, pp. 276–86). For Cuomo, writing before the discovery of the recording of Rebellion in der Goldstadt, this is the most extreme extant example of Eich’s conformity to Nazi ideology. However, it comes not in a radio broadcast but in a short story written for a Berlin women’s magazine, Die Dame. Cuomo’s analysis of the text is unequivocal: Eich achieves a unique synthesis of his nature symbolism and Prussian chauvinism. [...] Eich describes what amounts to a mystical revelation with a nationalistic fervor that is not found in any other of his extant works. Indeed

123 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 132. 124 Cuomo, p. 56.

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the use of archaic forms [..] and the chorus crescendo evoke a pathos reminiscent of National Socialist choral pieces and SA poetry.125

While Cuomo might again be said to be a little heavy-handed in his reading of the text, which lacks the immediate violence and primacy of biological determinism at the heart of National Socialist ideology and discourse, there can be no doubt that the text possesses an edge absent from much of the ‘KWL’ serial and entirely absent from Katharina. Cuomo rightly identifies both ‘the irrational appeal and nationalistic thrust’, as well as ‘the necessary didactic function’, expected by Nazi cultural policy. Cuomo draws significant conclusions from both the text’s existence and its publication in Die Dame: To say the least, ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ has important ramifications for the study of Eich’s prewar writing. If Eich wrote like this for Die Dame, a journal which managed to stay relatively aloof from Nazism, what were his broadcasts like for the Berlin and Deutschlandsender stations, which were part of a radio system with the declared programming principle to promote the ruling ideology? Eich’s nonextant historical broadcasts might very well have been blatant examples of his conformity to party doctrine. Moreover, the passages from ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ [...] lend strong support to the thesis that there were affinities between Eich’s personal philosophy and aspects of National Socialist ideology. If his theme of nature alienation could coalesce with obvious tenets of the Blut-und-Boden cult in this short story, it probably did so elsewhere too.126

Publication of the text in Die Dame rules out any possibility of direct steering by National Socialist officials, and for Cuomo this leads to the speculative assumption that other non-extant texts written for the Nazi radio system – for Cuomo ‘probably the most tightly controlled medium of artistic expression under the Hitler regime’ and therefore subject to this direct intervention – may well have lent even more explicit support to Nazi ideology. While this may be true, if entirely 125 Cuomo, pp. 72–73. Subsequent reference, p. 74. 126 Cuomo, p. 74. Subsequent reference, p. 47.

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unverifiable, a more pressing question in the context of the current study is how this text, outside the direct mechanisms of Nazi control, came to express its assent with the norms of Nazi cultural policy. The first possibility, and the one proposed by Cuomo, is that the text’s affinities with National Socialist cultural policies stem from genuine affinities between Eich’s own philosophical beliefs and Nazi ideology, or at least the particular backward-looking strands of that ideology. Certainly, Eich’s broadly conservative, anti-modern philosophy may be a starting-point for the text’s conformity, but, given the absence of nationalistic, political elements elsewhere in Eich’s work, this seems to be at best only a partial explanation. What is needed in this instance, in the absence of the interventionist mechanism which Vieregg is able to invoke in relation to the ‘KWL’ serial, is an alternative mechanism which accounts for the coalescence of Eich’s own nature aesthetic with the Blut-und-Boden aesthetic. Two further possibilities present themselves. Firstly, the text’s similarities with the dominant discourse of National Socialism could be attributed to Foucaultian discursive mechanisms at work in the public sphere controlling cultural production. In this case, Eich’s assent would be largely non-intentional, the product not of physical, institutional mechanisms of control, but rather of the kind of indirect discursive procedures identified by Foucault to be at work even outside the conditions of dictatorship. The second possibility is to view Eich’s participation in National Socialist discourse not as the result of external mechanisms acting upon him, but as the result of his own conscious choice to adopt a tactical position of assent. In this case, Eich’s assent is active and intentional. It is impossible to identify and therefore to quantify the precise role played by unconscious and intangible discursive procedures in determining literary output. Nonetheless, it does not seem implausible in this instance to ascribe some role for such a mechanism in determining the assent expressed in ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, particularly given Eich’s initial discursive proximity to the Blut-und-Boden aesthetic. The shift from Katharina to ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ is after all a relatively small one. At the same time, the financial opportunism 223

which drove Eich’s initial enthusiasm to work with Party figures such as Fricke, Jahn, and Hansen suggests it would be perverse to rule out a similar consciously motivated background on this occasion. In this case, it may well be significant that one of the strongest examples of Eich’s assent is to be found in a text where Eich was actually free of specific guidelines. Here, Eich’s literary production may well serve to illustrate one of the central mechanisms of Nazi rule, namely that mechanism which Ian Kershaw has identified as ‘working towards the Führer’: The notion of ‘working towards the Führer’ could be interpreted, too, in a more indirect sense where ideological motivation was secondary, or perhaps even absent altogether, but where the objective function of the actions was nevertheless to further the potential for implementation of the goals which Hitler embodied. Individuals seeking material gain through career advancement […] were all, in a way, ‘working towards the Führer’.127

Eich was one such individual, not ideologically committed to the National Socialist cause, but undoubtedly seeking to build a career within the framework of National Socialist cultural policy. In writing ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, Eich was not working according to specific guidelines but was aiming to produce a text which could be published and which would, presumably, find some resonance in the prevailing social and political conditions. In this way, the importance of ‘Die Schattenschlacht’ may lie not in any hint it offers of potentially greater assent elsewhere, but in its illustration of the mechanism by which writers, like individuals in any other sector of society, assented on their own initiative by striving to match vague policy orientations, rather than by means of specific, carefully laid-down guidelines imposed from above. Furthermore, Wessels’s presentation of the structures of the Nazi radio system suggests strongly that this 127 Ian Kershaw, ‘“Working towards the Führer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. 88–106 (pp. 104–05).

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mechanism was also at work within the radio industry, operating both on individual authors such as Eich and also on producers such as Pleister and Hansen. Günter Eich: Forms of assent Hence, Eich’s literary assent to the National Socialist regime can be seen to have taken three principal forms. Firstly, in its weakest form, Eich’s assent originated in continuities with his pre-1933 Kolonne output. In Katharina, in many of his literary adaptations for the radio, and even in parts of the ‘KWL’ serial, Eich’s literary output under National Socialism followed a trajectory which did not differ significantly from that already underway in the final years of the Weimar Republic. As such, the assenting function of this output is largely restricted to the politicising effects of the ‘total’ claim of the Nazi regime which swept up the conservative aesthetic elements of the Kolonne approach. To read these continuities differently is to provide an over-politicised interpretation. Secondly, in its strongest form, Eich’s assent also came about through the direct intervention of figures within the Nazi radio industry, both to determine the content of ‘KWL’ episodes and, most overtly, in the commission to write Rebellion in der Goldstadt as part of an institutionalised propaganda campaign. In these instances, Eich’s assent acquires an active supporting intention. At the same time, the pragmatic motivational background for this active support, and hence the absence of a generalised, ideological intention, prevents Eich from crossing the gulf into collaboration. Between these two extremes, much of Eich’s assent was neither entirely passive and coincidental, the result of literary continuities, nor active and conscious, the result of intervention from above. Instead, we must leave room for a third form of assent, consisting of discontinuities from the Kolonne stance which were not directly steered from above. In much of his banal radio work and in a story such as ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, Eich was not true to the position he had so resolutely maintained in Die Kolonne. 225

Consciously or unconsciously, Eich ‘worked towards the Führer’, so that his literary output was undoubtedly more palatable within the Third Reich than it otherwise might have been. In this respect, Eich’s behaviour differed little from that of many Germans. In his pragmatic, yet often active assent he took advantage of an opportunity to protect, secure, and advance his career in the wake of the Nazi seizure of power, both conforming to specific interventions from above and working towards the perceived norms of Nazi policy on his own initiative. Where Eich differed significantly was that he was a writer. His professional assent occurred in the public sphere, and, hence, he lent public support to the regime where other professionals merely assented in private.

Forms of Dissent? Wenn unsere Arbeit nicht als Kritik verstanden werden kann, als Gegnerschaft und Widerstand, als unbequeme Frage und als Herausforderung der Macht, dann schreiben wir umsonst, dann sind wir positiv und schmücken das Schlachthaus mit Geranien.128

Given the political function of much of Eich’s writing under National Socialism and, in particular, that of the ‘KWL’ radio serial, there can be little question of Eich’s public literary output as a whole in the Third Reich meeting the dissenting requirements which he subsequently attributed to his work in the 1950s. Rather than offering any challenge or opposition to the National Socialist regime, this output was generally characterised by assent, and often even by active support, in relation to Nazi cultural policies. In his own terms, Eich was doing little more than decorating the slaughter-house with flowers. Nonetheless, while this output did not provide evidence of 128 Günter Eich, ‘Rede zur Verleihung des Georg-Büchner-Preises’, GW, 4, pp. 615–27 (p. 627).

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publicly expressed dissent, it was possible to identify in Eich’s private correspondence a certain amount of unwillingness to continue to write such texts for the National Socialist radio system. Now, the terms of enquiry shift to the potential for dissent in Eich’s work between 1933 and 1945 and the extent to which that private unwillingness may have made its way into the public sphere in the years following Eich’s initial assent to the regime. In particular, the focus shifts to the mid-to-late 1930s when Nazi policy started to radicalise in all areas, closing off many of the previously available apolitical spaces. Much has been made already of parallels between Eich’s initial assent and that of Gottfried Benn. In this section, we shall consider the extent to which Eich’s relationship to the Nazi regime may have mirrored that of Benn in a very different sense, namely in the way that Benn’s initial support was tempered by a realisation of the excesses of Nazism, giving way to a form of passive dissent and even active opposition. Eich himself did not reduce the extent of his output in the second half of the 1930s. If anything, the years 1936–1938 constituted his most productive of all the Third Reich, and so his dissent cannot be said to have taken the form of a conscious reduction in public output.129 Nonetheless, a significant empirical basis does exist for identifying dissent in Eich’s output in this period. In particular, research to date has focused on three radio plays first broadcast in 1936 and 1937 which have been grouped together because of a common tone of negativity and resignation. Analysis in this section will centre on these three texts, ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, and ‘Radium’, together with a small number of nature poems from the 1930s which seem to share this sense of negativity.130 129 For a listing of Eich’s radio output in this period, see GW, 2, pp. 790–94. 130 See Günter Eich, ‘Weizenkantate: Fragment’, GW, 2, pp. 121–26, first broadcast 11 May 1936; Günter Eich, ‘Fährten in der Prärie: Ein Spiel aus der untergehenden Welt Old Shatterhands und Winnetous’, GW, 2, pp. 127–56, first broadcast 11 July 1936; Günter Eich, ‘Radium: Nach Motiven des Romans von Rudolf Brunngraber’, GW, 2, pp. 157–94, first broadcast 22 September 1937.

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Particular attention will be paid to the presence in two of these plays of prostituted poet figures, widely read as Eich’s self-portraits, one of which has been seen by Vieregg as evidence of a profound moral and artistic crisis which Eich underwent in this period.131 Here, the textual basis for these claims must be investigated in an attempt to determine the nature and extent, if any, of the dissent expressed by Eich in these texts. The dissenting function of the texts within the context of the Third Reich can be seen to depend on two elements: firstly, the extent to which the texts can be seen to have achieved a genuine dissenting effect; and secondly, the extent to which the texts provide evidence of an active dissenting intention on Eich’s part. All the time, any such dissenting function must be related to the ongoing assent of Eich’s work within the framework of National Socialist cultural policy. Socially critical radio-plays (1936-37) A number of factors, such as their recording on to disk at the time of broadcast and their survival and rebroadcast after 1945, have set ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, and ‘Radium’ apart from the remainder of Eich’s radio output from the years 1933-1940. Above all, it is common thematic and stylistic features that have caused a succession of critics to group these three plays together. According to Cuomo, the three plays prove to be ‘atypical for the overwhelming majority of his broadcasts in this period’.132 They stand out as ‘Eich’s most artistically pretentious prewar radio plays’, ‘with a common message and stylistic features that separate them from the rest of his prewar writing’. Wessels, too, notes Eich’s divergence in these plays, ‘seine drei beachtenswertesten’, from the majority of his Third Reich output exemplified by ‘KWL’.133 Where those texts failed to engage 131 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 49. 132 Cuomo, p. 45. Subsequent references, p. 45 and p. 95. 133 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 451. Subsequent reference, p. 451.

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in any explicit way with contemporary, social issues, Wessels sees in these three plays ‘eine herbe Zivilisations- und Fortschrittskritik’. Schafroth also identifies a stark discontinuity in Eich’s approach in ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’: ‘Mit der Sprache ist auch die Thematik neu. Eich befaßt sich […] zentral oder am Rande mit wirtschaftlichen und zivilisatorischen Fragen. Er könnte Brecht kennengelernt haben.’134 Schafroth’s allusion to Brechtian, socially engaged writing clearly suggests a significant move away from Eich’s pre-1933 poetological tenets, and, for Richardson, such a discontinuity in approach seems to constitute some form of dissenting response to the horrors of Nazism: It is clear that, during the prewar years of the Third Reich, Günter Eich no longer insisted only on art for art’s sake. Still eschewing political art, Eich began dealing broadly with social issues such as poverty, capitalism, and technological change. It appears that his aloofness toward contemporary society had been shattered by the Nazi experience.135

Similarly, Cuomo suggests that there may be some element of dissent in this turn away from ahistorical themes. The idyllic tone of ‘KWL’ has been replaced by ‘misery and social injustice’, by ‘an omnipresent tone of negativism which does not harmonize with National Socialist ideology’.136 Ideological conformity: ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ At the same time, it would be misleading to characterise this shift towards more contemporary material as entirely incompatible with National Socialist ideology. Eich’s approach to this more socially aware subject-matter can be placed comfortably within the amalgam of conservative philosophical themes which Cuomo and Vieregg 134 Schafroth, p. 25. 135 Richardson, pp. 47–48. 136 Cuomo, p. 95.

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identify in the ‘KWL’ serial. In that analysis, such themes, a product of Eich’s own personal intellectual development and stemming from his reading of Benn and Hamsun, are seen as harmonious with the Nazi world-view. In this context, the origins of ‘Weizenkantate’ in Gottfried Benn’s 1932 essay, ‘Gebührt Carleton ein Denkmal?’, which outlined the negative social consequences of the pioneering work of American cerealist Mark Alfred Carleton, suggest a continuity of thought with that same ‘in der Kolonne formulierten Fortschrittsfeindlichkeit’ which is liable to coalescence with Nazi ideology.137 Indeed, as early as 1975, Christian Hörburger had identified in ‘Weizenkantate’ ‘jene antizivilisatorischen Affekte, die sich objektiv durchaus mit den Ideologemen der nationalsozialistischen Propaganda in Einklang bringen ließen’.138 Stefan Bodo Würffel develops these affinities in his own essay published three years later, seeing Eich programmatically asserting a specifically German, conservative opposition towards industrialisation and urbanisation and integrating in the self-sacrificing figure of Carleton central elements of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft ideology.139 In this context, the fourth of the play’s opening ‘Sprüche’ seems to carry particular resonance: Unserm Fortschritt fehlt es an Religion. Er löst die Materie aus ihrer innigen Verbindung mit dem Ganzen des Lebens und ahnt nicht, daß diese Abtrennung alle seine Segnungen zum Fluche machen kann. (GW, 2, p. 123)

137 Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation’, p. 39. Schäfer was the first to point out the connection to Benn’s essay, p. 210, note 227. See also Gottfried Benn, ‘Gebührt Carleton ein Denkmal?’, in Gottfried Benn, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Gerhard Schuster, 6 vols (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1986–1991), III: Prosa 1: 1910–1932 (1987), pp. 404–12. 138 Christian Hörburger, Das Hörspiel der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1975), p. 108. 139 Stefan Bodo Würffel, ‘“Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland”: Anmerkungen zum Hörspiel im Dritten Reich’, in Ralf Schnell (ed.), Kunst und Kultur im deutschen Faschismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978), pp. 129–55 (pp. 144–45).

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In Wessels’s words: ‘Mit dieser Feststellung befand sich Eich noch in völligem Einklang mit den Grundlagen auch der nationalsozialistischen Ideologie.’140 In a similar vein, Cuomo is able to build on Würffel’s analysis, highlighting militaristic metaphors and ‘a profusion of Blut-und-Boden motifs’ in Carleton’s statements of his goals.141 In fact, this passage seems to constitute a notable fusion of the Kolonne nature topos with the aggressive discourse of National Socialism: CARLETON:

Es ist nicht um ihretwegen, sondern weil ich im Geheimen einen großen Krieg führe. Verstehst du es? Mein Herz hängt an den Schollen der Erde in wunderlicher Lust, an dem schwarzen Grunde voll Fruchtbarkeit. Es ist Haß, was mich erfüllt gegen Wind und Frost und Dürre, gegen alles, was dem Acker und dem Menschen das Leben schwer macht. Mein Kampf geht um das Glück, und mein Sieg über alle Unbill der Erde ist jene Ähre, die die Felder von Kansas fruchtbar macht. (GW, 2, p. 124)

The same discursive elements are present in a choral piece which follows Carleton’s statement. Again, nature imagery appears to coalesce with the militaristic, but this time in a form typical of the National Socialist radio play. With massed voices ‘elevat[ing] the researcher into the realm of myth’, Cuomo is able to draw parallels between Eich’s presentation of his hero Carleton and what he terms the ‘Führer topos’ in Third Reich visual art. 142 In a similar fashion, the subject-matter of Eich’s ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, loosely based on Karl May’s work, is also liable to harmonisation with strands of National Socialist ideology. Würffel suggests of the play, ‘daß ihre primäre Aussage gegen die vorrückende Zivilisation gerichtet ist, als deren Charakteristika moderne Technik, inhumane Produktionsmethoden und Pervertierung menschlichen Verhaltens erschienen. Dem verlorenen Paradies wird in krasser Schwarz-Weiß-Technik die Natur und Menschen mordende Zivili140 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 451. 141 Cuomo, p. 98. 142 Cuomo, p. 99

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sationsbewegung gegenübergestellt’.143 He points to the heroic martyrdom of Winnetou, who had nobly opposed the inhuman modernising forces of the railway, with its mythic Germanic overtones. Würffel goes on to identify conscious conformity on Eich’s part to the norms of National Socialist discourse in the following passage which expresses ‘die darwinistisch fundierte Geschichtsphilosophie der Faschisten, wobei der zeitgemäße Sprachstil wohl bewußt gewählt worden ist’: PATT Die Indianer verkommen und dezimiert, eine vergangene Rasse, museumsreif. Die Zeit der Maschinen ist rasch über sie hinwegegangen. [...] Sie halten die Geschichte für ein junges Mädchen [...]. Irrtum, Mister Shatterhand, – es ist eine Barbarin, tückisch und grausam, vielleicht auch gütig bisweilen und zärtlich. [...] Aber ich ahne in den bittersten Stunden die Ankunft harter und fordernder Götter. Die Tiefen der Welt, Mister Shatterhand, hören nicht auf zu rauschen und zu gebären; Liebe und Haß steigt auf, die Triebe zum Leben und die Triebe zum Tod. Die Welt bleibt nicht stehen und ist doch immer dieselbe. Horchen Sie auf den Klang von Schienen und Rädern: Wenn Sie wollen, hören Sie das Ende darin; wenn Sie wollen: die Zukunft. (GW, 2, p. 156)

Cuomo, too, points to a number of speeches in an earlier 1946 manuscript version of the play which seem to propagate chauvinistic and racial ideology.144 Shirwood, for instance, invokes the rights of the ‘weissen Rasse’ to seize land from the native American population, while Winnetou presents the following arguments redolent of Nazi discourse: ‘Wir werden kämpfen bis zum Untergang. […] Immer wird die Sache siegen, die gerecht ist. […] Wir kämpfen für unsere Jagdgründe, für unsere Wälder, unsere Steppen.’ For the first time in ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, Eich’s literary output can be seen

143 Würffel, p. 147. Subsequent reference, p. 149. 144 Cuomo, p. 105, quoting from Günter Eich, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, typescript version, 1946, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, p. 18. The latest Eich edition uses the 1959 re-broadcast version of the text and makes no reference to the earlier typescript version. See GW, 2, p. 792.

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to propagate the very core myths of National Socialist ideology, namely those concerning race. Heroes and endings: resignantion and ambiguity In ‘Radium’ Eich also presents an idealistic pioneer, George Purvis, who seeks to nobly battle the inhuman forces of capitalism in the form of Belgian radium tycoon, Pierre Cynac. Thematically this text seems to pick up the anti-modern, anti-capitalist concerns first raised in ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and may again be linked to the anti-modern strands of National Socialist ideology. At the same time, the ending of the play, where Cynac is seen to triumph and Purvis dies, defeated, does not provide the expected positive outcome. Würffel makes the same point in relation to ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’: Die Schlüsse der beiden Eichschen Hörspiele relativieren die Propagandafunktion einiger Passagen dieser Stücke, indem sie mit dem Gestus der Melancholie auf das verweisen, was, unwiederbringlich, anders war. Das subversive Moment, das ihnen dadurch innerhalb der NS-Literaturszene zweifellos eigen ist, wird allerdings wesentlich gemildert durch die Fülle antizivilisatorischer und volksmythologischer Ideologeme, die ihnen vorausgehen und beide Rundfunkarbeiten genau in den zeitgenössischen Erwartungshorizont eingepaßt haben.145

Within the thematic assent of the two plays, Würffel identifies a ‘subversive moment’ in their outcomes. In particular, Würffel suggests that the final non-extant section of ‘Weizenkantate’, where Eich seems to have had Carleton pronouncing his own guilt for the social problems triggered by his work, may very well have undermined his earlier presentation as a noble, heroic figure. According to this analysis, the outcomes of the plays provide a low-level dissenting

145 Würffel, p. 150. Subsequent reference, p. 146.

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function, constrained all the time within a broad framework of ideological support. Cuomo again builds on Würffel’s work to draw out the potentially problematic and paradoxical elements of these plays. In addition to the dissenting implications of any negative representation of Carleton, Cuomo also highlights the problematic characterisation of the principal figures in ‘Fährten in der Prärie’.146 Here, the potential for dissent lies in the fact that Shirwood, the ultimately victorious representative of the white race and prime exponent of racial Darwinism, is presented as ‘a despicable figure with no redeeming qualities. The white race seems to win out for all the wrong reasons’. The counterpoint to the victorious, yet ‘despicable’, Shirwood is the defeated, yet ‘flawless’, native American chief, Winnetou. We have already noted Würffel’s integration of the heroic martyrdom of Winnetou into National Socialist ideology and Cuomo expands upon this to suggest that ‘Eich went so far as to make Winnetou into a type of Führer figure by having this Indian chief exhibit many of the leadership qualities the Nazis admired’. For Cuomo, the paradoxical representation of Shirwood and Winnetou has significant dissenting implications: On the one hand, it was not appropriate that a member of an ‘inferior’ race should prove to be such an impeccable hero. On the other, it was just as inappropriate that a cause espoused by anyone as noble and valorous as Winnetou should be defeated by such an unworthy opponent as the treacherous Shirwood, even though the concept of racial Darwinism dictates that the Indians be vanquished by the wave of European emigration.

Wessels, too, draws out the ambivalent relationship between the themes and outcomes of these two plays and National Socialist ideology. Significantly, he also draws a parallel to ‘Radium’, commenting of the play, ‘daß es sich ähnlich zwiespältig zu den nationalsozialistischen Ideologemen verhielt, und ebenfalls in Resig-

146 Cuomo, pp. 106–07. Subsequent references to this source.

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nation gegenüber dem Voranschreiten des technischen Fortschritts endete’.147 Contemporary effects In all three of these texts there exists then some form of dissenting potential. However, any assessment of the plays’ actual dissenting effect must take into account the philological problems associated with them. As far as ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’ are concerned, the earliest extant texts have post-1945 origins, so that potential dissent expressed in them cannot be conclusively attributed to their first broadcast in the Third Reich. Meanwhile, although existing textual fragments of ‘Weizenkantate’ do date from the 1930s, the final section of the text, ‘Von der Schuld’, where the potential for dissent lies in Carleton’s pronouncement of guilt, has not been retained. Again, any assessment of dissent within the text is reliant on a certain amount of supposition. However, in this case, the contemporary reception of Eich’s radio play is able to provide confirmation of the dissenting potential of the text. A review of ‘Weizenkantate’ published in Hör mit mir makes it clear that the play’s ending did pose problems: Dieser Schluß ist inhaltlich leider durchaus unbefriedigend. Ein Mensch, der wie Carleton uneigennützig das Beste für seine Mitmenschen gewollt hat, kann auch dann nicht schuldig gesprochen werden, wenn sein Schaffen zum Unsegen ausschlägt, und zwar infolge der Unvollkommenheit eines Wirtschaftssystems, das in seiner großkapitalistischen Einseitigkeit der Lage nicht gewachsen ist. Und Gott werden wir in diesem Fall auf der Seite dessen suchen, der sich strebend bemüht hat!148 147 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, p. 453. 148 ‘Segen wurde zum Fluche! “Die Weizenkantate”: Ein neuartiger Hörspielversuch des Deutschlandsenders’, Hör mit mir, 7.21 (1936), 9, quoted by Cuomo, p. 161, note 15. Würffel quotes the same review but dates it to 1935. This is implausible given the date of the play’s first broadcast in May 1936. See Würffel, p. 146 and p. 155, note 44.

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A further review article in the Völkischer Beobachter provides additional evidence of a dissenting effect attributable to ‘Weizenkantate’. Of Eich’s re-telling of Carleton’s biography, the reviewer clearly states: ‘Wir mußten sein letztes Hörspiel (“Weizenkantate”, Deutschlandsender), das dichterisch hevorragend war, wegen der Problematik ablehnen.’149 The same review, meanwhile, raises similar objections to ‘Fährten in der Prärie’: Obgleich die Problematik in der neuesten Sendung von Gunther Eich [sic] einleuchtet und die tieferen Gründe des Untergangs der roten Rasse aufzeigt, hört man doch, allerdings nach sehr kritischen Erwägungen, daß hier die Schwäche des Dichters liegt.

No such review of ‘Radium’ exists, but this play did share with ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ a surprising absence of repeat broadcasts. Cuomo attributes this absence of repeats at least in part to the problematic status in the Third Reich of Karl May and Rudolf Brunngraber on whose work ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’ were based, and it seems likely that this was a further source of the plays’ low-level dissenting effect.150 In any case, the plays’ reception provides significant evidence that the potential for dissent identified by Würffel and Cuomo in these two plays was indeed translated into a genuine, objectively identifiable dissenting effect. At the same time, it is clear that any genuine dissent generated by Eich in ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’ does not effect a shift from what is a fundamentally assenting position. The same review which takes issue with the ‘Problematik’ of Eich’s plays is in no doubt as to his talents as a writer for the Nazi radio industry: ‘Gunther [sic] Eich ist ein guter Dichter, der zugleich mit den Voraussetzungen eines funkgerechten Hörspiels vertraut ist. Seine Sendungen sind kleine Funkereignisse, die sich aus dem üb149 Leu, ‘Funk in der Kritik: “Fährten in der Prärie”’, Völkischer Beobachter, 18 July 1936, p. 11, quoted by Cuomo, pp. 102–03. 150 See Cuomo, p. 95, p. 104, and pp. 114–15.

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lichen Tagesprogramm herausheben.’151 Similarly, reviews of Eich’s 1940 radio play Rebellion in der Goldstadt make specific reference to these supposedly dissenting texts: ‘Denken wir an die “Weizenkantate”, und “Radium” […]. Eich beherrscht die Vielfältigkeit der funklichen Formen besonders vollkommen, und so ist es erfreulich, daß er […] die Möglichkeit fand, ein neues Hörspiel zu schreiben.’152 As further evidence of Eich’s on-going assent, Cuomo is also able to point to the contract drawn up for ‘Weizenkantate’ at the manuscript stage where official appreciation of Eich’s text is readily apparent: ‘Günther [sic] Eich hat eine der bedeutendsten Dichtungen geschrieben, die bisher im Rundfunk vorgelegt wurden. Da dieses Werk nur für den Rundfunk gestaltet wurde, und nirgends sonst eine Verwendungsmöglichkeit finden kann, schlagen wir ein Honorar von mindestens RM 900 vor.’153 Not only did Eich receive this ‘unusually high’ fee of RM 900 for ‘Weizenkantate’, but both that play and ‘Radium’ received official recognition in the Völkischer Beobachter and Nationalsozialistische Rundfunk-Korrespondenz as two of the best radio plays broadcast between 1933 and 1939.154 This level of official approval for Eich’s work substantially relativises the dissenting effect of the plays, their contemporary reception indicating that any dissenting effect was accompanied by a considerable degree of assent. Revising interpetations: Nazi ideology and modernisation The contradictory nature of the plays’ reception may be attributable in large measure to the often contradictory nature of Nazi ideology itself. Both Cuomo and Würffel use as their benchmark for National Socialist ideology an essentially anti-modern, backward-looking 151 Leu, p. 11, quoted by Cuomo, p. 103 and Würffel, pp. 146–47. 152 ‘“Aufstand in der Goldstadt”: Das neue Hörspiel von Günter Eich im Deutschlandsender am Mittwoch, 8. Mai, 21.00 Uhr’, Funk-Wacht. Mein Funk. Nordfunk, 5–11 May 1940, quoted by Karst, ‘Honororis causa’, p. 64. 153 Cuomo, p. 160, note 2. 154 Cuomo, pp. 95–96.

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entity, and as such, measuring the ‘acceptability’ of Eich’s texts becomes a relatively simple task. Eich’s overt criticism of the modernisation process and his exposition of its adverse social effects must be characterised as broadly assenting. And yet, as has been consistently argued in the course of this study, there is substantial evidence to suggest that aggressively pro-modern elements occupied a significant position in the Nazi hierarchy of values and that the extent to which National Socialism sought to harness the modernisation process in order to further the core myths of National Socialism should not be underestimated. Of particular significance in relation to Eich’s socially aware, anti-modern radio plays of 1936–37 is Hans Dieter Schäfer’s 1994 essay, ‘Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich’, in which he seeks to move away from more conventional ‘Blut-und-Boden-Bilder’ of the regime.155 Instead, Schäfer emphasises the importance of American Taylorist rationalisation and Hitler’s own attempts ‘die Modernisierung ungehemmt voranzutreiben’. Indeed, in the same year in which ‘Weizenkantate’ and ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ were broadcast, Schäfer identifies the following policy initiatives: ‘1936 […] polemisierte [das Regime] gegen “Maschinenfeindlichkeit” und propagierte neue Rationalisierungsmaßnahmen, “um möglichst alle Kenntnisse des wirtschaftlichen Fortschritts zur Hebung des Lebenstandards […] zu verwerten”.’ These pro-modern, and even pro-American, policy impulses must then be taken into consideration alongside the regime’s anti-modern Blut-und-Boden rhetoric. In this light, any attempt to measure the ideological acceptability of Eich’s texts becomes rather more problematic than Cuomo’s analysis suggests, since Nazi ideology itself can be seen to constitute such a problematic mix of both pro-modern and anti-modern elements. Nonetheless, the identification of a pro-modern policy orientation in the mid-to-late 1930s may lend weight to an un155 Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 199–215 (p. 200). Subsequent references, p. 200.

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developed suggestion contained within Würffel’s analysis, namely that in the opening two mottos of ‘Weizenkantate’ Eich was expressing ‘Kritik am nationalsozialistischen Arbeitsbeschaffungsund Wirtschaftsprogramm’.156 In this way, Eich’s Zivilisationskritik is liable to become criticism of the pro-modern policies of the National Socialist regime itself. Würffel sees any potential criticism nullified in the last two mottos which reflect too closely ‘das zyklisch-organologische Weltbild, in dem die Konservative Revolution befangen war und das im Rahmen einer kritisch angelegten Hörspielkonzeption fehl am Platze wäre’. However, this apparent harmony with Nazi ideology is also liable to re-interpretation as a dissenting call, if not to de-modernise, then at least to integrate modernisation with a greater degree of humanity and spirituality. In this context, any negative judgement of Carleton in ‘Weizenkantate’ offends even more starkly against the norms of National Socialism, since Carleton can be seen as an archetypal embodiment of technological progress fused with a more völkisch consciousness. Similarly, the positive depiction of Winnetou and the negative depiction of Shirwood in ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ may also acquire a greater dissenting potential, since Shirwood embodies the very modernising, American forces which strands of Nazi policy sought to emulate, while Winnetou seeks to oppose them. In both cases, Eich’s ‘anti-zivilisatorische und speziell antiamerikanische Haltung’ no longer coheres so wholeheartedly with National Socialism.157 Instead, the stance is in danger of contradicting at least some significant elements of Nazi policy and ideology. At the same time, Cuomo’s reading of Shirwood as a negative figure is open to substantial re-appraisal. Cuomo himself acknowledges the support for National Socialist ideology in some of Shirwood’s statements, such as the following response to Winnetou’s question, ‘was hat die weißen Männer hergeführt?’: Die Geschichte, die Macht, die die Tempel von Ninive zerstörte, die tausendjährigen. Sie sehen ihren schwarzen Mantel über Karakorum und Babylon – 156 Würffel, p. 146. Subsequent reference, p. 146. 157 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 38.

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die Macht, die Völker wegwischt wie Staub. Sie hat, Mister Winnetou, diesmal den Schatten für sie, für uns aber hellere Fahnen und brausende Musik. Im Krachen der Gewehre, im Rauschen der Lokomotiven sind schon die Instrumente gestimmt für die Feier unseres Sieges! (GW, 2, p. 141)158

However, in Shirwood’s expression of unsentimental, pro-modern impulses – ‘das einzige Recht, was gilt, ist der Fortschritt. Eine Eisenbahnschiene ist mehr wert als ein altes Gefühl’ – Cuomo sees ‘a good indication of the play’s problematical side, because Shirwood’s racism is now coupled with a materialistic attitude devoid of all sentiment, which could only have been interpreted negatively by the listeners’.159 To a certain extent this may be true, but, when Cuomo refers to Shirwood as ‘a despicable figure with no redeeming qualities’, he does so from a liberal democratic standpoint, not from within the National Socialist will to truth. In fact, the aggressive fusion of racial chauvinism and technological progress embodied by Shirwood and by the unstoppable march of the railway tracks is easily brought into harmony with the illiberal but pro-modern impulses of Nazi policy which Rainer Zitelmann has termed ‘die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’: ‘Moderne Visionen müssen also durchaus nicht human orientiert und keineswegs einem demokratischen Gesellschaftsverständnis verpflichtet sein. Hitlers Entwurf demonstriert vielmehr die andere, die totalitäre Möglichkeit der Moderne.’160 Cuomo’s reading of the characterisation of Shirwood may well cohere closely with Eich’s intentions, insofar as they can be read from his consistently anti-modern standpoint. However, within the framework of National Socialist ideology, Shirwood represents a positive modernising figure, colonising and civilising the West on behalf of the white race, much as the National Socialist regime sought to colonise and civilise the Slavic East. Intentionally or not,

158 See Cuomo, p. 105. 159 Cuomo, p. 105. Subsequent reference, p. 106. 160 Rainer Zitelmann, ‘Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, in Prinz and Zitelmann (eds), pp. 1–20 (p. 19).

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Eich propagates in the figure of Shirwood core elements of Nazi ideology. The prostituted poet Any dissent expressed in these three plays must then be tempered by the strongly assenting discursive and ideological framework in which Eich continues to operate. In particular, regardless of the nuances of plot and characterisation, Eich furthers a world-view predicated on racial determinism allied to technological progress, and in this sense grants support to the National Socialist regime which goes beyond that expressed in ‘KWL’ or indeed ‘Die Schattenschlacht’. In this context, it is of particular interest that ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’ appear to offer evidence of Eich’s own awareness of the compromising nature of his literary assent. In one of Shirwood’s employees, the drunken poet Patt, critics have long identified a form of authorial self-inscription, not least because of his expression of an anti-modern stance, compatible with Eich’s own point of view.161 Patt’s reluctant assent to Shirwood can be seen to mirror Eich’s reluctant assent to Nazism. Patt’s resigned despair can be seen to match the dominant tone of Eich’s three socially engaged radio plays. Above all, it is in the lament sung by the prostitute Kitty, and omitted from later versions of the play, that Cuomo sees an expression of the poet’s guilt and an apology for his role in furthering the brutality of Shirwood and, by extension, National Socialism: It is tempting to see a correspondence here between Patt’s and Kitty’s resignation in the face of an evil greater than themselves and Eich’s own compromising role during the Nazi era. [...] Eich’s association of Patt’s role, and by extension of his own, with Kitty’s profession seems to be a quite deliberate allusion to the poet’s ‘prostitution’.162

161 See Schafroth, p. 20 and Cuomo, pp. 107–08. 162 Cuomo, p. 109. See GW, 1, pp. 245–46.

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These allusions become more explicit in ‘Radium’ where the professional poet Chabanais is prepared to write ‘Propaganda’ slogans in praise of radium in an attempt to pay for medicine for his dying wife. As Cuomo suggests, in light of the ‘not so subtle parallel between Chabanais’s compromising situation and the role of authors under National Socialism’, together with possible parallels between Elisa, Chabanais’s wife, and Else Burk, Eich’s future wife, it is difficult not to read the poet in ‘Radium’ as a meditation on Eich’s own professional compromises in the Third Reich.163 Not only do the figures of Patt and Chabanais emerge here as authorial self-inscriptions, but this reading also attributes a significant dissenting potential to the two texts, since the poet figures involve a negative assessment of the author’s relationship with National Socialism. In particular, the figure of Chabanais forces us to address the question of how far Eich himself, in writing ‘Radium’, was mirroring the actions of his own character who, in writing an overtly critical, but unpublished, text and in fleeing to the African jungle, was making a deliberate, but ultimately ineffectual, gesture of dissent. The issue of Eich’s intentions is a matter we shall tackle shortly. In the meantime, we must consider how far the dissenting potential identified by Cuomo in the figures of Patt and Chabanais could reasonably be presumed to have been translated into a dissenting effect readily apparent to the plays’ listeners. In an academic study of this nature, biographical knowledge of Eich’s career is able to draw out of the texts parallels to his own ‘prostitution’, while close textual study is able to identify Patt and Chabanais as positive figures, and Shirwood and Cynac not only as negative figures but also, crucially, as in some sense representative of National Socialism. By contrast, ignorance of the identity, let alone the biography, of the plays’ author, together with the transitory nature of the listening experience, suggests that contemporary listeners would not be likely to have identified the dissenting potential of the poet figures Patt and Chabanais in ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’. This, combined with the 163 Cuomo, p. 112.

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philological problems associated with the extant texts, argues against attributing the characterisation of Patt and Chabanais any significant dissenting effect. In this case, it is the consistent, assenting propagation of the Nazi discourse of race, for which no extra-textual knowledge or interpretative analysis were necessary, which is likely to have had the more significant and widespread effect on contemporary listeners. Problems of interpretation In this way, these texts illustrate the difficulties inherent in seeking to retrospectively infer dissenting potential into a text. Any such inference rests on subjective critical interpretation which need not necessarily match that of contemporary readers or listeners. Indeed, there is often substantial disagreement amongst scholars as to the disenting potential of a text. Hans Dieter Schäfer, for instance, reads Patt not as a dissenting authorial self-inscription, but as a veiled tribute to Gottfried Benn.164 Such interpretational problems are exacerbated when we consider Eich’s lyric output from this same period and its potential for dissent. Of particular significance in this context is the poem ‘Der Tag im März’ which was published in Philobiblon in 1938, since it seems to by characterised by the same tone of negativity present in the three radio plays discussed above. Consider, for example, the final stanza: So geht der Tag im März zu seinem Ende. Ein Rinnsal Glück reicht für ein ganzes Leben aus. Das Wasser dunkelt, dunkeln Aug und Hände. Ist es genug? Es führt kein Wort hinaus. (GW, 1, p. 200)

Making particular reference to the final three stanzas of the poem, Vieregg classifies the poem as ‘eines der pessimistischen der dreißiger 164 Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation’, pp. 39–40.

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Jahre – ein dunkler Abgesang auf das, was für ihn einmal die Lyrik und die Existenz als Lyriker bedeutet hatte’.165 In a similar vein, Stephen Parker draws an direct parallel between this poem and Peter Huchel’s 1935 radio play ‘Die Herbstkantate’ with its ‘profound sense of melancholy and inner conflict’ and its demonstration of ‘the poet’s torment and guilt at the compromises he was entering into’.166 In this same category of lyric we might also place two of Eich’s earlier Nazi-era poems, ‘Schlaflied am frühen Abend’, first published in Die literarische Welt in 1933, and ‘Weg durch die Dünen’, published in 1935 in a poetry supplement to Die Dame.167 Both poems are analysed by Schäfer, and in both cases he identifies a notable pessimistic tone.168 ‘Schlaflied am frühen Abend’ is read as a consoling meditation on themes of nature and the ‘Verlorenheit der Menschen’. Of ‘Weg durch die Dünen’, meanwhile, Schäfer writes as follows: Das Gedicht zeigt, daß nicht das Kriegserlebnis, sondern vielmehr die Krisenphilosophie für die Umwertung der Naturzeichen zur negativen Signatur verantwortlich zu machen ist. In den Kreisen des Strandhafens und den Spuren der Vögel im Sand entziffert das Ich die ‘tödliche Unendlichkeit’.169 165 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 48. 166 Stephen Parker, Peter Huchel: A Literary Life in Twentieth-Century Germany (Bern: Lang, 1998), p. 194. 167 See Günter Eich, ‘Schlaflied am frühen Abend’, GW, 1, p. 192, first published, Die literarische Welt, 9 (1933), 4; and Günter Eich, ‘Weg durch die Dünen’, GW, 1, p. 60, first published in Almanach der Dame: Fünfzig auserwählte Gedichte (Berlin: Ullstein, 1935), pp. 26–27. 168 Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation’, pp. 46–47. Subsequent reference, p. 47. 169 Hans Dieter Schäfer, ‘Die nichtfaschistische Literatur der jungen Generation im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland’, in Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (eds), Die deutsche Literatur in Dritten Reich: Themen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976), pp. 459–503 (p. 486). In the later version of the essay published in the collection Das gespaltene Bewußtsein, Schäfer replaces ‘die Krisenphilosophie’ with ‘ein nicht näher bestimmbares Angstgefühl’. See Schäfer, ‘Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation’, p. 47.

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Placed in their historical context, the negativity of all three poems is liable to be read as a dissenting response to National Socialism, and this is certainly Cuomo’s reading of Schäfer’s analysis: ‘Schäfer claims there is a correspondence between Eich’s imagery and the historical context. He considers the poem typical for a category of Nazi-era lyrics in which Günter Eich […] integrated into the natural realm the “problems of existential guilt and of the terrors of the time” as a reaction to developments under the Hitler regime.’170 While Cuomo’s reading of Schäfer’s analysis of ‘Weg durch die Dünen’ – that it expresses terror at ‘developments under the Hitler regime’ and therefore intentional dissent – is one valid reading of the text, not only do further possible readings of the poem emerge, but further readings of Schäfer’s analysis are also possible. Indeed, Cuomo presents what amounts to a substantial misreading of Schäfer’s analysis, when he identifies the ‘Krisenphilosphie’ to which Schäfer refers as a product of Nazi rule. Much more consistent with Schäfer’s overall thesis, and with the dating of the poems in the early years of the Third Reich, would be to equate this mood with a preexisting sense of crisis which can be traced back to the political and economic crisis of 1929–1930. It is this ‘Krisenphilosophie’, and not terror inspired by the Nazi regime, which Schäfer sees as the most important shaping factor in German literary production in the 1930s, and it is this sense of crisis which Schäfer sees expressed in Eich’s poetry. Read in this way, the poem no longer possesses a deliberate dissenting intention against the Nazi regime, although potential exists for a low-level dissenting effect. By contrast, Cuomo’s own analysis of the poem actually attributes to it an overt assenting function. Pointing to an absence of negativity and terror elsewhere in the poem, Cuomo ascribes to ‘die tödliche Unendlichkeit’ ‘a positive role as the moment when an individual human being is re-integrated into the totality of all existence’.171 Furthermore, if this poem and other ahistorical lyrics composed by Eich during the Third Reich are to be 170 Cuomo, p. 123. 171 Cuomo, p. 124. Subsequent reference, p. 124.

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related directly to their historical context, it is their ‘lack of criticism and their lack of historical relevance’, rather than any pessimism, which Cuomo views as their defining features: ‘That [Eich] continued to present such poetry to the public at a time when even the most naive Germans could no longer close their eyes to the abuses of the Hitler regime demonstrates a disturbing indifference to the events around him.’ Author or text? In this way, ‘Weg durch die Dünen’ demonstrates how the production of seemingly ahistorical nature poetry can be interpreted as either an assenting or dissenting act, depending on the attitude of the critic concerned. Where Eich apologists are able to invoke the essential autonomy of poetic discourse and thus its opposition to National Socialist power, a ‘revisionist’ agenda, such as that of Cuomo, stresses the assenting nature of the poet’s failure to engage critically with the times. One possible response to this kind of interpretative uncertainty, and the often fruitless critical disputes inspired by it, is to bracket out the biography of the author altogether and concentrate instead on the discursive function of the text. This is the approach taken by Holger Pausch and Marianne Herzog in their 1995 essay, ‘Vergessene Texte, Schrift und Sprache: Beobachtungen zur Günter-Eich-Kontroverse’, in which they seek to release Eich’s Third Reich texts from the constraining influence of both his authorial biography and the ideological standpoint of the critic.172 Adopting Barthes’s ‘death of the author’ and a Foucaultian view of history as a network of discourses, Pausch and Herzog explain the implications of their approach for a study of Eich’s output in the 1930s. 172 Holger A. Pausch and Marianne Herzog, ‘Vergessene Texte, Schrift und Sprache: Beobachtungen zur Günter-Eich-Kontroverse’, Wirkendes Wort, 46 (1995), 133–50. Subsequent references, p. 142 and p. 144.

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Denn für die Eich-Kontroverse [...] bedeutet [diese Perspektive], daß alle äußeren Motive, die ihn zur Niederschrift der Hörspiele veranlaßt haben, Opportunismus, Geldsorgen oder der Wunsch nach einer Karriere, außerhalb des Diskurses seiner Biographie belanglos sind. Über die Sprache der in den Hörspielen enthaltenen Vielfalt von Diskursformen, -abhängigkeiten und intertextuellen Kontakten in der Vernetzung des umfassenden Diskurses der Macht zur Zeit der Niederschrift sagen sie nichts aus.

Using the example of ‘Weg durch die Dünen’, Pausch and Herzog illustrate how Eich’s nature symbolism is subordinate to the dominant political discourse of National Socialism, thereby refuting what they refer to as an unchallenged axiom of post-War poetological debate, ‘daß die Sprache der Dichtung der politischen Verwaltung widersetzt. Der herrschenden Macht diene sie nicht und lasse sich auch nicht von ihr vereinnahmen’. The following conclusions reached by Pausch and Herzog have significant implications for the present study, both in terms of Eich’s work in particular and in terms of literary production under the conditions of dictatorship in general: Es ist [...] anzunehmen, daß der Mythos der naturmystischen Sprache Eichs durch den herrschenden Diskurs der Macht (im Sinne Foucaults), der in den Jahren zwischen 1933 und 1945 in den die gesamte Gesellschaft durchwuchernden vielfältigen Vernetzungen herrschte, insofern ermöglicht und initiiert wurde, indem der Mythos Eichs ein systemstabilisierendes Bild der Macht entwarf, das dem Machtdiskurs entsprach und von ihm gefördert wurde. In diesem diskurstheoretischen Blickwinkel ist dann auch das Verhältnis zwischen Macht und Kunst zu sehen, wo in der Dynamik herrschender Diskurse die Vorstellung einer unabhängigen Kunst nur noch als Illusion zu entlarven ist. Die Frage nach Eichs persönlicher Verwicklung im Nationalsozialismus ist damit nur noch für den Biographen interessant. Die Mythe seiner Texte hingegen zeigen, daß es nicht möglich ist, den herrschenden Diskursen einer Zeit inmitten des Flusses ihrer Tätigkeiten zu entkommen, die niemals ‘Sand’ in ihrem ‘Getriebe’ dulden, der mit einem Katalog möglicher Strategien immer zu neutralisieren oder bestenfalls zu isolieren ist.173

173 Pausch and Herzog, pp. 147–48.

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Such an analysis makes a useful contribution in overcoming unproductive generalisations regarding the essential dissenting nature of poetic discourse. Furthermore, Pausch and Herzog highlight the need to divorce, at least temporarily, a text from its author and his/ her intentions in order to assess the nature of its relationship to the discursive norms of the regime. Such an approach corresponds to the emphasis in the present study on the assenting and/or dissenting effect of a text, irrespective of authorial intention. Since any author loses control of the meaning of his/her text once it has entered the public sphere, the author’s intentions are largely irrelevant to an assessment of its effect. This is particularly the case for Eich’s nature lyrics, where the ambiguity of their poetic discourse leaves them free to operate independent of the author. In a dictatorship, once the text has been released into a public sphere on which a total claim is being made, the meaning of that text is subordinate to the politicising nature of that claim, and in this sense, Pausch and Herzog are correct to see autonomous art under the conditions of dictatorship as an illusion. All legally published texts are, in some sense, essentially assenting, and given the appropriation of a conservative literary discourse by National Socialism, Eich’s nature poetry grants a passive form of assent to the regime irrespective of his intentions. However, the approach adopted by Pausch and Herzog has two significant blind-spots. Firstly, they fail to leave any room for discursive dissent in Eich’s output during the Third Reich. While it may be impossible in Foucaultian terms to escape the generalised flow of the dominant discourse, this does not mean to say that this flow cannot be blocked or diverted at individual, localised points. This is arguably what occurs in ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, and ‘Radium’ where, even bracketing out authorial intention, the overall discursive harmony of the texts is undermined by their resigned tone and ambivalent outcomes. Secondly, in allowing the author to be killed off outright, Pausch and Herzog deny themselves the additional dimension which may be provided by authorial intention. Just as an entirely author-centred approach excludes the network of discursive influences which act on a text, so an entirely 248

discourse-based model excludes what must be a highly significant element of a text’s assenting or dissenting function. Clearly, difficulties in establishing authorial intention contribute in large part to the appeal of a text-centred approach. Contextual evidence may not be available, and where it is available, it is not necessarily any less ambiguous than the texts themselves. At the same time, the essentially assenting nature of public literary production under the conditions of dictatorship renders authorial intention all the more significant. Where little or no objective dissenting effect can been attributed to a text, that same text may still acquire a dissenting function from its author’s intentions. Equally, its discursive assent may be reinforced by evidence pointing to an active assenting intention on the part of the author. In both cases, the author’s biography is of more than passing importance. Eich in crisis: 1936-38 As far as the texts under discussion in this section are concerned, and their potential for dissent, biographical information is able to make a significant contribution. Where correspondence highlighted in the previous section was able to indicate a certain amount of private dissent on Eich’s part in the very early years of the Third Reich, letters written by Eich in the mid-to-late 1930s demonstrate that this private dissatisfaction with his radio work had not evaporated. If anything, this dissatisfaction seems to have broadened into a more fundamental questioning of his writing as a whole in the Third Reich. On 18 June 1936, for instance, Eich wrote to Artur Kuhnert as follows: Ich sehe ein, daß meine Bemühungen ein Schriftsteller zu sein, d.h. ein brauchbares Glied der menschlichen Gemeinschaft, vergeblich sind. Ich meine nicht des Geldes oder des Erfolges wegen, – das habe ich ja beides bis zu einem gewissen Grade gehabt und kann es weiter haben. Aber ich werde nie und nimmer glücklich sein in dieser Rolle, das Verbogene in diesem Lebenszustand hält mich ewig in schlechtem Gewissen, jegliche undichteri-

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sche Betätigung nehme ich mehr oder weniger nicht ernst. Also werde ich mit blauem Augenaufschlag und leicht flatterndem Haar auf den Parnaß meiner Jugend zurückkehren.174

Two months later, Eich seemed to have carried out his promise to turn his back on the success of his radio career when he asserted to Raschke: ‘ich will mich nun an den Landboten-Sendungen nicht weiter beteiligen.’175 However, by the time ‘Radium’ was broadcast, one year later, the purchase of a flat in Berlin had tied Eich once more to the income he derived from the country postman serial. He was, like his literary creation Chabanais, prostituting his poetic talents, and significantly Vieregg is able to point to Eich’s own use of the word ‘Chabanais’, a French slang term for ‘brothel’, in correspondence dating from the July 1936, the time of the first broadcast of ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and its prostitute-poet Patt. In this way, biographical evidence appears to confirm Cuomo’s reading of the prostituted poet figures in ‘Fährten in der Prärie’ and ‘Radium’. In Vieregg’s words: ‘Eichs Selbstporträt in “Radium”, der Dichter Chabanais [...], der sich prostituiert hat, entspricht exakt der tatsächlichen Situation, in der Eich zu dieser Zeit befand, nämlich Werbung zu schreiben für ein verbrecherisches Regime.’176 Vieregg goes further, seeing in Chabanais evidence of a double crisis into which Eich falls between 1936 and 1938: Die Krise, die Eich ab 1936 geriet, war also eine doppelte: eine moralische, das Bewußtsein, sich des Gelderwerbs wegen an eine Macht verkauft zu haben, die das Böse war. Für dieses Bewußtsein steht wohl am ehesten die Figur des Chabanais mit ihrem Satz: ‘die Kälte kriecht mir ins Herz, der eisige Zweifel, ob es das Göttliche war, wofür ich schrieb.’ Und es ist eine künstlerische Krise, das verlorene ‘Glück des Schöpferischen’ – nicht nur als Folge des durch die

174 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 46. 175 Letter to Martin Raschke, 17 August 1936, quoted by Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 24. 176 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 25.

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verhaßten Rundfunkarbeiten bedingten Zeitmangels, sondern als innere Beschädigung.177

Where Chabanais provides evidence of Eich’s ‘moral’ crisis, it is the poem ‘Der Tag im März’ which for Vieregg exemplifies Eich’s ‘artistic’ crisis, a realisation of the betrayal ‘durch den Rundfunkautor Eich, der er eigentlich gar nicht sein wollte, an dem Lyriker Eich, als der er sich allererst verstand’. Early manifestations of the crisis to come can be seen in Eich’s early dissatisfaction with the ‘KWL’ serial, expressed ironically in his correspondence with Raschke and quoted in the previous section. By 1938, the Eich who wrote texts for the Nazi radio industry was no longer compatible with the elitist nature aesthete who had established such an unshakeable poetological stance in Die Kolonne. As Vieregg summarises: [1938] hat die ‘zweckhafte’ Welt des Faktischen, von Eich lange Zeit als uneigentliche Scheinwelt der eigentlichen Welt des ‘Seins’ nachgeordnet, ein erdrückendes Übergewicht gewonnen. Für den Bereich des Faktischen jedoch hatte Eich zu diesem Zeitpunkt weder ein lyrisches Sensorium noch sprachliche Ausdrucksmittel entwickelt. […] Für Eich gibt es keine ‘Fluchten’: er findet sich von der Macht des Faktischen so heftig bedrängt, daß seine innere Welt und damit seine lyrische Ausdrucksfähigkeit, so wie er sie bis dahin verstanden hatte, ersticken. So trauert ‘Der Tag im März’ einem verlorenen lyrischen Territorium nach, ohne schon ein neues besetzen zu können.

The significance of this double crisis lies in its potential to provide evidence of an active, deliberate dissenting intention on Eich’s part, expressed publicly through his literary production, both in the prostituted poet figures Patt and Chabanais and in the pessimism of his nature lyrics. Regardless of the broadly assenting effect achieved by the texts and the absence of any significant dissenting effect, this intention would lend the texts an important dissenting function.

177 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 49. Subsequent references, p. 43 and p. 49.

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Moral or artistic crisis? However, the nature and extent of this dissenting function depend largely on the extent to which this twin crisis can, on the one hand, be attributed unambiguously to National Socialism or the extent to which it is, on the other hand, conceivable even outside the conditions of the Nazi dictatorship. A considerable weight of critical opinion certainly perceives the crisis to be a specific product of Nazi rule. After all, so unshakeable and consistent was the poetological stance maintained by Eich in Die Kolonne that its betrayal by Eich’s radio output in the Third Reich seems more than just a coincidence of timing. As Larry Richardson asserts, Eich’s ‘aloofness towards contemporary society had been shattered by the Nazi experience’.178 This is Vieregg’s view, too, when he makes a direct connection between the rising political pressures of the mid-to-late 1930s and Eich’s ‘crisis’: Wegen des zunehmenden politischen Drucks war Eich nicht mehr in der Lage, das sorgsam austarierte Gleichgewicht zwischen der ‘Welt der anderen’ und seiner eigenen aufrechtzuerhalten, die Selbstentfremdung wird ihm schmerzlichst bewußt.179

If Eich seems here to be following the trajectory of Benn, that is one of rising dissent to match the radicalisation of Nazi policy, further corroboration of this thesis seems to be provided by the example of another Kolonne nature poet employed in the Nazi radio industry, Peter Huchel. Parker identifies in Huchel a similar ‘moral and artistic crisis in late 1935’ from which he draws an explicit parallel to Eich and ‘Der Tag im März’: ‘Like Huchel, Eich can no longer maintain an identity as a poet founded on an essentially Romantic idiom of nature poetry whose magic had been stripped of its integrity and credibility by the rapacious demands of the Nazi radio system.’180 In this 178 Richardson, p. 48. 179 Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 45. 180 Parker, Peter Huchel, p. 195.

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analysis, there can be no doubt that it is National Socialist cultural policy which is the decisive factor in triggering a crisis in the two poets. In Vieregg’s terms, it is the specific context of the Third Reich which has brought about the decisive split in Eich’s persona between ‘das Glück des Schöpferischen’ and ‘die Welt des Faktischen’, between the nature poet and the radio author. It is National Socialism against which Eich expresses his dissent. However, there is an important distinction to be made here between the moral and artistic dimensions of Eich’s ‘crisis’. While the former implies a broad rejection of Nazi ideology and policy, and therefore a generalised dissenting intention, the latter implies a considerably more partial dissenting intent. At most, an artistic crisis would involve only a rejection of the National Socialist cultural policies which forced Eich to produce banal radio texts and which closed off his realm of lyric expression by appropriating conservative poetic discourse. In this context, it is noticeable that in all the private correspondence quoted by Vieregg there is no statement which indicates an active rejection of National Socialism. Eich makes no reference to the extreme ideology and policies of the National Socialist regime which would be expected to have driven his moral crisis. Indeed, Eich’s complaints in his private correspondence relate almost exclusively to artistic and professional concerns, rather than moral and political matters. This holds true both for early statements from 1933–1934 and those made around the time of the crisis in 1936–1938. To Raschke on 1 May 1934, for instance, Eich wrote as follows: Das ist der dümmste Auftrag, den ich je bekommen habe. [...] Wenn man doch von Gedichten leben könnte! Dieser elende Funk, bis hierher verfolgt er einen. Meine Sendung am Sonnabend habe ich nicht gehört, da glücklicherweise das Radio kaputt war.181

More tellingly, in the letter to Kuhnert 3 June 1936 in which Eich mentions the Parisian bordello ‘Chabanais’, it is not in connection 181 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 45.

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with moral reservations relating to the Nazi regime, but rather with financial and literary concerns: ‘Nicht aber beglücken mich die Dinge des Lebens, die mir nur erreichbar sind, wenn ich Operettensongs schreibe. Man muß alles bezahlen.’182 There is little evidence, then, of a moral dimension to Eich’s crisis. The poet Chabanais who sells himself to a corrupt organisation seems to be more a symbol of the prostitution of Eich’s literary principles than of his moral principles. In terms of Eich’s dissent, it is not possible to identify a generalised oppositional intention against the policies and ideology of National Socialism. If Eich was dissenting against Nazi rule, then this dissent seems to have been restricted to the cultural-political sphere and, more specifically, to the radio industry alone. And yet, while it would be perverse to deny any role for National Socialism in generating Eich’s crisis, particularly when the total claim of the regime made very particular demands on individuals working in the radio system, it would be unwise to allow the shadow cast by the dictatorship to obscure other factors which were at work. At this point, we must take issue with Vieregg’s central thesis concerning Eich and his relationship to National Socialism. As we have already noted, Vieregg sees Eich’s Kolonne stance as an expression of Eich’s fundamental personal beliefs. The lyric persona is indivisible from the wider self: Die Angst vor der heillosen Unordnung der Moderne, die Suche nach romantischen Inseln der Flucht und Zuflucht und die Angst um deren Zerstörung – das waren Eichs eigentliche Zentralthemen gewesen, sei es im Konkreten von Natur und Ländlichkeit oder im Absoluten des Seins.183

Hence, continuity in Eich’s output with the anti-modern aestheticism of the Kolonne circle is ‘schon von seinem Wesen her prädisponiert’. The divergence from this path from 1933 onwards and the split in Eich’s personality which it caused must therefore be products of Nazi rule. However, what this analysis fails to acknowledge is that 182 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, p. 47. 183 Vieregg, ‘Mein Raum und Meine Zeit’, p. 24. Subsequent reference, p. 3.

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such a split can clearly be seen to pre-date the Nazi seizure of power. It was in 1932 that Eich took the decision to become a professional writer and to seek work in the Weimar radio industry, relying on adaptations of existing work and commissions, rather than his own spontaneously produced, original pieces. Already outside the conditions of dictatorship, the demands of making a living from writing generated a tension with the Kolonne poet for whom literary production should have been a spontaneous action, free of any will. Indeed as we have already noted, Eich himself had highlighted in his 1932 essay ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’ the need to draw a distinction between the poet ‘als Lyriker’ and the poet ‘als Privatmann’ (GW, 4, p. 459). In Eich, this distinction manifested itself in the consistent pragmatism and materialism which informed his professional choices both before and during the Nazi period and which runs counter to the principles and aspirations of the Neuromantiker identified by Vieregg. The Eich who studied economics in Paris in 1929, who was the only one of his circle to run a car, who chose to work in the modern medium of radio, and who bought a holiday home on credit, was not the same Eich who outlined his poetological stance in Die Kolonne, and this distinction was not generated by the onset of Nazi rule, but rather pre-dated it. How the pragmatic materialism of Eich ‘als Privatmann’ increasingly threatened the autonomy of Eich ‘als Lyriker’ from 1933 onwards is most clearly demonstrated in a letter from Eich to Artur Kuhnert of 21 April 1937. Here, having gone back on his vow to no longer contribute to the ‘KWL’ serial, Eich explains his reasons: Mein alter Wunsch, eine eigene Wohnung, ließ sich bei der Gelegenheit auch verwirklichen und ich bin sehr froh darüber. Ich habe nun zwei Zimmer mit Küche, mit Zentralheizung und warmem Wasser, im alten Westen, nahe dem Lützowplatz, ein paar Schritte von meinem innig geliebten Landwehrkanal. Leider Gottes hat mich die ganze Sache völlig bankrott gemacht und obwohl ich schon horrende Schulden habe, fehlen mir immer noch einige Möbel, die Vorhänge und viele Kleinigkeiten, die zusammen eine Menge Geld kosten. So

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werde ich mich die nächsten Monate intensiv dem Rundfunk widmen müssen.184

What emerges from this passage is not a neo-Romantic wrestling with moral objections to National Socialism in order to make a necessary living. Instead, Eich reveals the materialistic streak which sits so uncomfortably with the image of an unworldly lyric poet. Undoubtedly the peculiar pressures of National Socialism acted as a constraining influence which exacerbated Eich’s existing internal conflict. However, the split which generated a personal crisis was not primarily a product of Nazi rule and, for this reason, there is strong evidence to ascribe to the crisis expressed in the figure of Chabanais and the poem ‘Der Tag im März’ a much more personal motivational background. Rather than an intentional expression of dissent against National Socialism as a whole, or even its cultural policies, these texts can be read as an expression of regret at the pragmatic motives which shaped Eich’s career path independent of Nazism, at his own inability to match his poetic aspirations and pretensions.185 Here, the betrayal of the lyric poet by the radio author may indeed be conceivable outside the specific conditions of dictatorship.

Conclusion By way of a conclusion, both to this discussion of Eich’s possible dissent and to the assessment of Eich’s writing as a whole under National Socialism, the following comments made by Wolfram Wessels in relation to the three ‘dissenting’ radio plays act as a useful focus: 184 See Vieregg, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet, pp. 24–25. 185 These frustrated literary aspirations are expressed in a letter to Ursula Kuhnert, dated 18 April 1935, in which he writes of ‘Weizenkantate’: ‘Damit will ich meinen Ruhm als Dichter endlich befestigen’. See GW, 2, p. 790.

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Diesen Arbeiten entnehmen zu wollen, daß Eich sich auf dem Weg in die Innere Emigration befunden habe, halte ich trotz deren teilweiser Distanz zur herrschenden Ideologie für nicht gerechtfertigt. Dagegen sprechen die kontinuerliche Arbeit am ‘Königswusterhäuser Landboten’ und seiner Verherrlichung einer verflossenen vorindustriellen Idylle […]. Es wäre aber ebenso unrichtig, von einem Kompromiß Eichs mit dem Nationalsozialismus zu sprechen, oder vom Opportunismus. Die Kontinuität seines Denkens, das sich bereits in der Kolonne zeigte, bis zu den oben besprochenen Hörspielen, offenbarte ein Krisenbewußtsein, das dem der Zeit, und dem auf das sich die nationalsozialistische Ideologie berufen konnte, in weiten Teilen entsprach, das aber andererseits nicht so weit ging, die Zivilisationskritik, die rückwärtsgewandte Sehnsucht nach Einheit und verfälschtem Leben um den Preis ihrer Erfüllung in der traumhaften Wirklichkeit, aufzugeben.186

Given the nature of Eich’s on-going assent, Wessels must be correct to deny the application of the term ‘inner emigration’ to Eich’s writing under National Socialism, at least if that term is taken to signify the expression of dissent. Significant here is not only Eich’s on-going participation in the ‘KWL’ serial highlighted by Wessels, but also the relative levels of assent and dissent generated by ‘Weizenkantate’, ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, and ‘Radium’ themselves. In terms of contemporary effect, the philological problems associated with the three socially aware radio texts considerably hamper any definitive assessment of their dissent, so that their dissenting potential must remain largely that, unconfirmed potential. What does exist is evidence of some degree of official disapproval of all three radio plays in their reviews and a surprising absence of repeat broadcasts. At the same time, the evidence which exists of a positive official reception of the plays largely counteracts any objectively identifiable dissenting effect. Indeed, in all cases the level of assent achieved by these radio plays and by Eich’s nature poetry is substantially greater than their dissent. These assenting effects do not only derive from the total claim of the regime which politicised all officially tolerated literary production. The texts are also characterised by considerable discursive assent to the norms of National 186 Wessels, Hörspiele im Dritten Reich, pp. 453–54.

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Socialist policy and ideology, and in the propagation of the discourse of race and ‘illiberal modernisation’, the radio plays occupy a position at the core of Nazi ideology. Given the publicness of the medium, these plays, along with ‘KWL’ and Rebellion in der Goldstadt, lend significant support to the regime. By contrast, the potential for dissent in their ambivalent outcomes is unlikely to have achieved any significant effect. In terms of intention, Cuomo and Vieregg make a convincing case for reading Chabanais as a dissenting self-portrait, which, together with the mournful tone of ‘Der Tag im März’ and Eich’s private expressions of dissatisfaction, constructs a picture of a writer in crisis in the mid-to-late 1930s. Here, there must be some element of active dissent against National Socialism. However, what is noticeable is that this ‘crisis’ period of 1936–1938 did not act as a steppingstone in the development of an increasingly dissenting position. Eich’s ‘crisis’ was not sufficient to prevent him from continuing his work for the Nazi radio industry. Indeed, Eich’s radio writing under National Socialism was brought to an end not on his own initiative, but only by the cessation of radio-play production in the Third Reich in 1940, and this year saw his most active expression of support for the regime in Rebellion in der Goldstadt. Eich may not have emulated Benn’s unmediated, public expression of ideological support, but equally he did not emulate Benn’s subsequent withdrawal of that assent. Also highly significant in terms of intention are those continuities in Eich’s literary output across 1933 which are liable to be obscured by the shadow cast by the Third Reich. As Wessels suggests, the ‘crisis consciousness’ stemming from 1930, and first expressed by Eich in Die Kolonne, has a significant role to play here. Continuities with the Kolonne stance help to relativise both the levels of assent and dissent expressed by Eich under National Socialism, since the perceived assent of a text like Katharina and the perceived dissent of Eich’s nature poetry arise largely from a pursuit of preexisting aesthetic and cultural concerns, rather than from a conscious re-adjustment towards either conformity or non-conformity with National Socialism. The same analysis is also applicable to what 258

appear to be stark discontinuities from Eich’s Kolonne position located at 1933. Eich’s active courting of the National Socialist radio apparatus and his abandonment of the Kolonne principles of the poetgenius in return for material gain undermine Wessels’s rejection of the charges of opportunism and compromise. However, this need not be seen as a direct response to National Socialism. The politicising force of ‘totalitarianism’ invites a reading of Eich’s literary prostitution as a direct product of those same ‘totalitarian’ conditions. And yet, Eich the pragmatic materialist had already begun to betray Eich the lyric poet before 1933. Dictatorship only exacerbated another on-going trend in Eich’s literary development. In this sense, a recognition of the limitations of the conditions of dictatorship in shaping literary production is perhaps the most significant methodological principle to emerge from this analysis. Paradoxically, an overtly political, socio-functional approach to this writing has served to expose previously over-politicised approaches and to re-instate personal and artistic continuities independent of dictatorship.

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Chapter Five Forms of literary assent and dissent in the GDR: Bertolt Brecht

Even if consensus is otherwise difficult to locate, many scholars treating Bertolt Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR are at least in agreement that this area offers a contradictory mixture of what must be described, in the terms of the present study, as assenting and dissenting impulses. In the afterword to the most recent version of his Brecht biography, for instance, Werner Mittenzwei expands upon his presentation of Brecht’s time in the GDR: ‘Ich hatte die DDRPhase bewußt sehr ausführlich dargestellt, um die Widersprüche im Leben Brechts herauszuarbeiten: seine Verteidigung der DDR und die rigorose Ablehnung ihrer Kulturpolitik.’1 Referring also to Brecht’s relationship with the SED regime, James K. Lyon similarly highlights what he terms ‘this tension between dissent and conformity’.2 What is rather less clear is what the relative weighting between these assenting and dissenting impulses might be. As Manfred Jäger points out, any attempt to assess the balance between these contradictory tendencies is often eschewed in favour of a heavily politicised analysis: ‘Diese widersprüchliche Einheit von Zustimmung und scharfer Kritik ist offenbar schwer zu beschreiben. Je nach der

1 2

Werner Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht: Oder der Umgang mit den Welträtseln, 2 vols (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 1997), II, p. 745. James K. Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany: Dissident Conformist, Cultural Icon, Literary Dictator’, in James K. Lyon and Hans-Peter Breuer (eds), Brecht Unbound: Presented at the International Bertolt Brecht Symposium held at the University of Delaware February 1992 (London: Associated University Press, 1995), pp. 76–88 (p. 78).

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politischen Position des Chronisten wird jeweils eine Seite absolut gesetzt.’3 Presenting these same contradictory assenting and dissenting impulses, evaluating the precise function and nature of them, and attempting to assess their relative weighting, will be the principal tasks of the analysis in this chapter. An attempt will be made to assess the assenting and/or dissenting function of Brecht’s cultural output in the GDR, based on both the intention and effect attached to this output and drawing on both textual and contextual evidence. Clearly the sheer extent of Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR precludes an examination of this work in its entirety. Instead, focus will rest in turn on three individual areas of Brecht’s activity – namely at the Berliner Ensemble, in cultural-political interventions, and as a poet. In each instance, individual case studies of a broader applicability will act as the object of analysis, rather than the full extent of Brecht’s activity in these areas between 1949 and 1956. For the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht’s 1953 production of Erwin Strittmatter’s Katzgraben acts as this case study. The significance of this production lies in the combination of its partisan nature with its timing at the height of the pressure being applied to Brecht in 1953. Despite its relative neglect in Brecht scholarship outside the GDR, its capacity to illustrate the nature of Brecht’s relationship to the SED regime and the motivations behind his assent lends the production an exemplary value within Brecht’s cultural output in the GDR. As far as Brecht’s cultural-political interventions are concerned, the focus will rest on direct statements published in the literary periodical of the East Berlin Academy of Arts, Sinn und Form. In particular, the role played by Brecht’s ‘Notizen zur Barlach Ausstellung’ as a dissenting response to the 1951 Formalism Campaign and his contributions, including the ‘Thesen zur Faustus-Diskussion’, to the double issue of Sinn und Form which appeared in the wake of the workers’ uprising of 17 June 1953 will be subject to detailed analysis. The consideration of 3

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Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945–1990 (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1995), p. 67.

Brecht’s poetic output in the GDR will be confined primarily to the cycle of poems known as the ‘Buckower Elegien’, written in the summer of 1953. In both these analyses, the examination will focus on the nature and extent of assent and dissent expressed by Brecht around the pivotal events of 17 June. The dynamics of Brecht’s assent and dissent will be charted all the time against the dynamics of SED cultural policy.

Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble For James K. Lyon, the contradictory impulses in Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR do not exist in equilibrium. Rather, assenting tendencies are seen to outweigh the dissenting. In Lyon’s own words: In contrast to the oppositional stance of earlier years, [Brecht] now sought the acceptance and approbation of authority figures in the East German state. Further, he went to previously unthinkable lengths to conform his works and activities to prevailing political and aesthetic norms. While he never completely sublimated his inclination to dissent, this professional contrarian of the past became what one might call a dissident conformist, with the emphasis on the ‘conformist’.4

Significantly for any analysis of Brecht’s work at the Berliner Ensemble, as examples of Brecht’s ‘uncharacteristic propensity to conform’ Lyon cites almost exclusively Berliner Ensemble productions, not instances from other spheres of activity. Hence, the choice of Puntila over Die Tage der Kommune for the Ensemble’s opening night in November 1949, the rapid withdrawal of Urfaust in 1952, the staging of Becher’s Winterschlacht in early 1955, and the production of Farquar’s Pauken und Trompeten in September of the same year are seen to exemplify a tendency not just restricted to the 4

Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, p. 76. Subsequent references, pp. 76–79.

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specific context of the Berliner Ensemble. Instead, they act as ‘examples of conformity or self-censorship’ representative of a consistent pattern of behaviour throughout Brecht’s work from this period. In a similar vein, Lyon draws attention to the contributions made by Brecht to Sinn und Form. These Lyon characterises as ‘noncontroversial “safe” pieces that revealed little about his notions of “epic theater”’. One particular production at the Berliner Ensemble, overlooked by Lyon, offers a notable fusion of these two assenting strands. Not only does Erwin Strittmatter’s Katzgraben constitute, in the words of Carl Weber, one of Brecht’s few attempts ‘to prepare a dish that might please [the SED’s] palate’,5 but Brecht also published an accompanying essay in Sinn und Form in the late summer of 1953. This essay stands out not for its dissenting nature, but for the sheer extent of discursive assent granted by it to the SED regime. Brecht and Strittmatter’s Katzgraben6 In his essay, ‘Erwin Strittmatters Katzgraben’ (BFA, 24, pp. 437–41), Brecht succeeds in producing an article which conforms entirely to the norms of what we have identified as the dominant partisan discourse of the SED. From the subject matter of Strittmatter’s play, which Brecht praises fulsomely, it is already clear that Katzgraben adheres to the norms of Socialist Realism, as a peasant village is seen to overcome larger landowners with the help of the Party, its agricultural science, and its tractors. According to Brecht, it is ‘das erste Stück, das den modernen Klassenkampf auf dem Dorf auf die 5 6

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Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and Communism: Clear-sighted Ambiguity or Blurred Vision?’, in Lyon and Breuer (eds), pp. 19–28 (p. 22). Material in this section first appeared in Matthew Philpotts, ‘“Aus so prosaischen Dingen wie Kartoffeln, Straßen, Traktoren, werden poetische Dinge!”: Brecht, Strittmatter, and Sinn und Form’, German Life and Letters, (56) 2003, 56–71, and is reproduced by kind permission of Basil Blackwell Publishers.

deutsche Bühne bringt. Es zeigt Großbauer, Mittelbauer, Kleinbauer und Parteisekretär nach der Vertreibung der Junker in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik’. Brecht seems to go out of his way to praise in Katzgraben precisely those aspects which conform to the cultural dogma of the SED, in the process coming precariously close to parody: ‘Aus so prosaischen Dingen wie Kartoffeln, Straßen, Traktoren, werden poetische Dinge!’ Perhaps more significantly, Brecht does not restrict his support to artistic policy but rather extends it into social policy. It is one of the notable achievements of the SED regime that Strittmatter has been given the opportunity to rise from his position as a farmer’s son to that of a successful writer. Indeed, ‘ohne die Deutsche Demokratische Republik wäre er nicht nur nicht der Schriftsteller geworden, der er ist, sondern vermutlich überhaupt kein Schriftsteller’. In his concluding comments, Brecht removes any lingering doubts as to the position he is representing: Das Stück zeigt nicht nur. Es zieht den Zuschauer mächtig in den großen Prozeß der produktiven Umwandlung des Dorfes, angetrieben durch den Dynamo der sozialistischen Partei der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Es erfüllt ihn mit dem Geist des kühnen Fortschreitens.

Brecht positions himself here at the heart not only of a generalised Marxist-Leninist will to truth, but of a specifically GDR will to truth. The BFA informs us rather matter-of-factly that ‘den Artikel schreibt Brecht, um Erwin Strittmatter, der bisher nur durch Prosa bekannt ist, auch als Dramatiker vorzustellen’ (24, p. 591). More specifically, the origins of the essay are to be found in the minutes of a meeting of the literary section of the Academy of Arts held on 20 March 1953 (BBA, 1486/55-58). Under item three, ‘Patenschaften der Sektionsmitglieder für junge Autoren’, members agreed not only to a programme of supervision for young GDR authors under the auspices of the Academy, but also to publish a series of articles in Sinn und Form which would introduce the new literary talent they were seeking to promote. Abusch would write an introductory article, followed by individual contributions from Brecht, Hermlin, and Huchel. Brecht’s contribution would be a piece about Erwin Stritt265

matter. However, the significance of the Katzgraben essay reaches far beyond its immediate context as part of an Academy programme to promote new GDR writers. Indeed, the fact that Brecht’s article was the only one of the planned contributions ever to find its way into the pages of Sinn und Form argues strongly that the motivations for its publication lie elsewhere.7 In the broader context of Brecht’s work at the Berliner Ensemble and the cultural-political climate of the early 1950s, and as a reaction to the intense pressure he was under at the time, such a public statement of support for the policies and objectives of the SED regime, so openly couched in the language of the ruling elite, must have a profound bearing on our understanding of Brecht’s relationship with the SED regime. The specific circumstances surrounding the production of Katzgraben indicate the importance of the play within Brecht’s cultural output in the GDR. Not only did rehearsals run for four months from February to May 1953, occupying the majority of Brecht’s time in this period, but the timing of these rehearsals is also extremely significant, encompassing a number of key events in GDR cultural politics. These events, such as the Stanislavsky Conference of April 1953 and the Faustus-Debatte, came to represent a very real threat to the continued existence of the Berliner Ensemble. In addition to the timing of this first production of the play, the fact that Brecht staged a second, revised version, which premiered a year later in May 1954, is further evidence of the importance the play held for him. A further indicator of this importance are the ‘Katzgraben-Notate’ (BFA, 25, pp. 399–490), the extensive rehearsal notes which relate to the first production of the play. According to Carl Weber, ‘the number of comments [Brecht] wrote during the rehearsal process exceeded those of any other Ensemble production’, evidence for Weber of the significance Brecht attached to the play and of the ‘energy and 7

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Neither Abusch’s general introductory piece, nor Huchel’s article on Lori Ludwig, nor Hermlin’s on August Hild appeared. See Elmar Faber and Franz Greno (eds), Sinn und Form: Die ersten zehn Jahre, reprint edition (E. Berlin: Rütten und Loening; Nördlingen: Greno, 1988), 10 vols, supplementary volume: Sonderhefte/Register, pp. 1–76.

invention’ which he devoted to it.8 In a similar vein, Hecht, Bunge, and Rülicke comment of the rehearsal process: ‘Brecht hätte auf die Inszenierung eines eigenen Stückes nicht mehr Sorgfalt verwenden können als auf das Strittmatters.’9 Meanwhile, the discovery in Elisabeth Hauptmann’s estate of a set of rehearsal notes, bound, paginated, and apparently being prepared for publication, only lends more weight to the suspicion that Katzgraben was a production of the utmost importance for Brecht. In Werner Hecht’s words: ‘Mit dieser Textsammlung erhalten die “Katzgraben-Notate” eine ganz andere Bedeutung innerhalb der theoretischen Schriften und Theatermodelle.’10 The notes are unique amongst Brecht’s dramatic models in that they represent not the end result of the rehearsals, but the detailed course of that very rehearsal process. Perhaps above all these factors, though, it is the fact that this was the only contemporary East German play staged by Brecht, and that this is in turn an area where Brecht himself is perceived to have failed as a playwright, which gives this production such an important position within Brecht’s work in the GDR. Tactical manoeuvring? It is surprising then that both the Katzgraben essay, published in the highly significant dissenting 1953 double issue of Sinn und Form, and the production itself should have been largely overlooked in the copious scholarship which Brecht’s activities in the GDR have

8 9 10

Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble: The Making of a Model’, in Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), pp. 167–84 (p. 176). Werner Hecht, Hans-Joachim Bunge, Käthe Rülicke-Weiler, Bertolt Brecht: Sein Leben und Werk (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1971), p. 251. Werner Hecht, ‘Grund der Empörung über eine “ganz unerträgliche Behandlung”: Brechts Stanislawski-Studium 1953’, Maske und Kothurn, 33.3/4 (1987), 75–87 (p. 82).

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attracted.11 Neither Mittenzwei in his biography of Brecht nor Uwe Schoor in his account of Peter Huchel’s editorship of Sinn und Form makes any mention of the Katzgraben essay, although both writers make much of more dissenting contributions such as the ‘BarlachNotizen’ or the ‘Faustus-Thesen’.12 Perhaps the Katzgraben article simply does not fit their respective presentations of Brecht’s behaviour in the GDR where a primary focus is on his dissent against cultural policy. And yet, even Lyon who seeks to emphasise Brecht’s conformity fails to include this particular example of Brecht’s orthodoxy in his list of examples of Brecht’s ‘propensity to conform’ in the GDR.13 Elsewhere, following the lead of the original Hecht edition of Brecht’s Schriften zum Theater, the Katzgraben essay has tended to be bundled together with the Katzgraben rehearsal notes, obscuring both the fact of its separate publication in Sinn und Form and the potential cultural-political significance of that same fact.14 Similarly, many of the most influential recent biographies of Brecht make little or no mention of Katzgraben, despite Brecht’s own direction of the production and his active part in Strittmatter’s revision of the text. Martin Esslin, for one, makes no mention of either Strittmatter or Katzgraben, while John Fuegi’s sole reference to Strittmatter relates to a conversation with Brecht against the background of Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956.15 Werner Mittenzwei restricts himself to a number of indirect anecdotal references and Klaus Völker to

11 12 13 14 15

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For discussion of the genesis and content of this issue of Sinn und Form, see Stephen Parker, ‘Sinn und Form, Peter Huchel und der 17. Juni 1953: Bertolt Brechts Rettungsaktion’, Sinn und Form, 46 (1994), 738–51. Uwe Schoor, Das geheime Journal einer Nation: Die Zeitschrift ‘Sinn und Form’ Chefredakteur Peter Huchel 1949–1962 (Berlin: Lang, 1992), pp. 99–105; Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 440–43 and pp. 465–81. Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, pp. 76–78. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Katzgraben-Notate’, in Bertolt Brecht, Schriften zum Theater, ed. by Werner Hecht, 7 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1963–1964), VII (1964), pp. 69–186 (pp. 71–77). Martin Esslin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils (London: Methuen, 1980); John Fuegi, The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht (London: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 590.

only a single paragraph.16 In fact, it is only relatively recently, with the discovery of the pre-publication version of the ‘Katzgraben-Notate’, that a small number of articles have begun to deal in any depth with Brecht’s production of Katzgraben.17 However, it is primarily an interest in dramatic theory and Brecht’s relationship to the Stanislavskian theatrical method, rather than an explicitly cultural-political perspective, which informs these articles. Where the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Katzgraben has been discussed in relation to GDR cultural policy, it has often been seen as an example of Brecht’s shrewd tactical manoeuvring in his dealings with the restrictive cultural policies of the SED, as an attempt to buy time by staging a play whose Socialist Realist nature could not fail to please the authorities. The clearest statement of this kind is to be found in Ronald Hayman’s biography of Brecht: Brecht still believed that ‘the most infallible sign that something is not art, or that someone does not understand art is boredom’. Even when directed by Brecht, Katzgraben was boring, but he understood the art of survival: if the play about the stove fitter [Garbe] was not going to materialize, he must make an alternative gesture of support for the regime. Katzgraben presented an optimistic view of East Germany’s agriculture when it was not easy to be optimistic. [...] Though Brecht visited a village in Lausitz with Strittmatter and members of the Ensemble, looking at relevant farms, they both turned their backs on the prevalent social reality.18

It is clear that Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble were coming under increasing pressure in the first half of 1953, and in this sense the timing of Katzgraben is at least suggestive. In his own diary during the 16 17

18

See Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 388 and p. 402; and Klaus Völker, Bertolt Brecht: Eine Biographie (Munich: Hanser, 1976), p. 390. See Hecht, ‘Grund der Empörung’; Meg Mumford, ‘Brecht Studies Stanislavsky: Just a Tactical Move?’, New Theatre Quarterly, 11 (1995), 241–58; and Werner Hecht, ‘“Der Pudding bewährt sich beim Essen”: Brechts “Prüfung” Stanislawskis 1953’, in Ingrid Hentschel, Klaus Hoffmann, Florian Vaßen (eds), Brecht und Stanislawski und die Folgen: Anregungen bei der Theaterarbeit (Berlin: Henschel, 1997), pp. 57–71. Ronald Hayman, Brecht: A Biography (New York: OUP, 1983), p. 362.

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Katzgraben rehearsals, for instance, Brecht had struck the following distinctly beleagured note: ‘unsere Aufführungen in Berlin haben fast kein Echo mehr’ (BFA, 27, p. 346). Similarly, a hand-written letter from Rülicke to Brecht describing the atmosphere in the audience at the Katzgraben premiere, where no-one dared to laugh, offers ample evidence of the precarious position of the Ensemble at this time: ‘Schlimm war, daß keiner mit der Absicht gekommen war, sich zu unterhalten, sondern man wollte dabei sein bei einem Skandal’ (BBA 635/46-47). There was clearly good reason for Brecht to make a tactical gesture of support for the regime at this time by staging Katzgraben. In a more subtle variant of this argument, it is less the staging of Katzgraben itself which represents this tactical gesture of support than Brecht’s decision to use the production as an opportunity to test out some of Stanislavsky’s dramatic methods. As Mumford points out, ‘the Katzgraben production notes, taken by an entire crew of directors’ assistants, seem to reflect a Stanislavskian influence’.19 For Jäger, this is undoubtedly a tactical concession to win time amid continued attempts to impose the Stanislavskian system on Brecht, and again the timing of the production, which coincided with the Stanislavsky Conference, is suggestive. Jäger views this latter event as an attempt ‘Brecht zu isolieren und zur Zurücknahme einiger seiner “theoretischen Marotten” zu bewegen’.20 In response, ‘Brecht setzte, [...] mit gutem Erfolg, auf Zeitgewinn’. This is a view shared by Hecht who sees already in Brecht’s 1952 essay, ‘Was unter anderem vom Theater Stanislawskis gelernt werden kann’ (BFA, 23, pp. 167–68), ‘ein [...] taktisch bemerkenswertes Zugeständnis gegenüber früher geäußerten Meinungen’.21 Brecht’s renewed Stanislavsky study, applied in February 1953 to the Katzgraben rehearsals, it seems, is to be viewed in a similar light, ‘as an act of tactical self-defence’ in response to the State Art Commission’s decision in January 1953 to call a Stanis19 20 21

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Mumford, p. 243. Jäger, p. 62. Subsequent reference, p. 62. Hecht, ‘Der Pudding bewährt sich beim Essen’, p. 59.

lavsky Conference.22 In this context, John Willett is undoubtedly correct when he maintains in relation to Katzgraben that ‘play, production and notes are evidence of a considerable effort on Brecht’s part to meet the requirements of the official aesthetic policy of the day’.23 The same must also apply to the Katzgraben essay published in Sinn und Form. What is considerably more open to question is the motivation which lay behind this effort. Was this a short-term effort made out of expediency against his genuine beliefs? Or was Brecht in Katzgraben expressing genuine, ideological support for the SED regime? Such questions go to the heart of the nature of Brecht’s relationship to the SED regime. Longer-term interest An investigation of the genesis of the Ensemble’s Katzgraben project starts to suggest that this was not just a matter of short-term expediency. As well as the rehearsal period which coincided with increasing pressure on Brecht and the Ensemble, entries in Brecht’s journal make it clear that he spent a considerable amount of time in Buckow in the summer of 1952 working with Strittmatter on the revision of his original text for the play (BFA, 27, p. 333). Indeed, this work stretched from early June to September of that year.24 That Brecht had already accepted Katzgraben for production at the Ensemble by mid-June 1952 is clear from a letter written by Brecht to Fritz Lange on 17 June 1952 (BFA, 30, p. 129). Unfortunately, precisely when Brecht first took an interest in Strittmatter’s play is slightly less clear. According to Hecht, it was Hans Marchwitza who first drew Brecht’s attention to Strittmatter and his agricultural drama

22 23 24

Mumford, p. 242. Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 251. See Werner Hecht, Brecht-Chronik: 1898–1956 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), p. 1017.

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on a trip to Poland in late February 1952.25 This is also the version of events presented by Martin Reso in his study of Strittmatter, namely that Brecht heard through Marchwitza of Strittmatter’s original version, ‘Die neue Straße von Katzgraben’, which had been rejected by a jury at the third World Youth Festival in 1951.26 While it still seems likely that Brecht did not hear of the play until February 1952, this mention of the World Youth Festival held in Berlin in July 1951, in which Brecht was actively involved, raises the possibility that Brecht may have come across the play in some capacity during this event. Certainly Strittmatter himself implies a link between his submission of the play to the Festival and Brecht’s and Weigel’s subsequent interest in it, although he provides no timings.27 Carl Weber adds to this suspicion when he asserts that ‘Brecht had come upon the text when he was a member of a jury for a playscript competition. Strittmatter’s comedy did not win, yet Brecht invited the author to develop it further for the company’.28 Whether this jury is the 1951 Festival jury is not clear, but what is clear is that Brecht’s interest in the play stretched back at least a year from the beginning of the rehearsal process, possibly longer. This does not in itself rule out Brecht’s interest in the play being a tactical gesture, since the Formalism Campaign was already well underway at that stage. Furthermore, the specific decision to move to the rehearsal and production stage in early 1953 could still be seen in this light, no matter how long-term Brecht’s interest in the play had 25 26

27 28

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Hecht, Brecht-Chronik, p. 1017. This is the version given in the new Brecht edition too. See BFA, 25, p. 542. Martin Reso, ‘Der Dichter und die wirklichen Dinge: Einführung in Leben und Werk’, in Erwin Strittmatter, Leben und Werk: Analyse, Erörterungen, Gespräche (Berlin: Das europäische Buch, 1984), pp. 9–35 (p. 17). See also Jan Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch: Eine widersprüchliche Ästhetik, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980–1984), I: Theater (1980), p. 462: ‘Durch die Vermittlung von Marchwitzka [sic] wurde Brecht auf das Stück aufmerksam.’ See Erwin Strittmatter, ‘Gesellenjahre bei Brecht’, in Walther Victor (ed.), Brecht: Ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit (Weimar: Volksverlag, 1958), pp. 20–27 (pp. 20–21). Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble’, p. 176.

been. Nonetheless, establishing a pre-history for the project beyond the immediate context of early 1953 starts to hint at a more genuine commitment to it on Brecht’s part. In this context, Brecht’s letter of June 1952 to Lange, an official at the Zentrale Kommission für staatliche Kontrolle, takes on added significance. Brecht’s primary purpose in the letter is to thank Lange for some documentary material lent to him: ‘die Akten über die Untersuchung einiger Dörfer waren mir sehr nützlich. Das Berliner Ensemble hat ein Stück von Strittmatter über den Klassenkampf auf dem Dorf angenommen, und die Kenntnis, die ich aus den Akten habe, hilft mir sehr viel bei der Bearbeitung des Stückes’ (BFA, 30, p. 129). No letter exists recording Brecht’s initial request for this offical material relating to village life in the GDR, so the date of this request remains uncertain. However, the original covering letter sent to Brecht with the ‘versprochene Material über landwirtschaftliche Angelegenheiten’ does exist, along with a receipt for the material, in the Brecht Archive in Berlin (BBA 972/116 -18).29 The datings of this letter and receipt, 27 December and 19 December 1951 respectively, indicate that, whether or not he already knew of Katzgraben, Brecht was considering some project concerning the portrayal of contemporary rural GDR society in the latter months of 1951 and that this interest was sufficiently serious to warrant an application for official classified documentation relating to the matter. This letter proves that the origins of what was to become the Katzgraben project extend back into 1951, and this in itself already argues against a short-term interpretation of the subsequent production in 1953. This argument is further strengthened by a proposal made by Brecht in a meeting of the literary section of the Academy on 6 November 1951. The minutes of this meeting, whose main topic of discussion was Sinn und Form, read as follows: Um die kulturpolitische Wirkung, die durch eine Verbreitung von Sinn und Form in Westdeutschland erzielt wird, zu vertiefen, schlug Herr Brecht vor, einigen Schriftstellern [...] den Auftrag zu erteilen, literarische Reportagen 29

See also BFA, 30, p. 531.

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über die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Entwicklung in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, hauptsächlich auf dem Lande, für die Zeitschrift zu schreiben. (BBA 1486/24-26)

This call for increased topicality in the journal, and more particularly for a portrayal of economic development in the countryside, coincides pointedly with Brecht’s gathering of the material, on precisely this topic, which he would later find so useful in the production of Katzgraben. Still more significantly, this proposal in November 1951 was not a one-off. ‘Darstellung der Errungenschaften’ As Schoor points out in reference to that meeting of 6 November 1951, Brecht made a consistent and prolonged attempt to introduce more topical and partisan articles into Sinn und Form in order to demonstrate the achievements of the GDR to a Western readership.30 Particularly important in relation to the Katzgraben essay is criticism made by Brecht at a meeting of 2 July 1953 regarding the make-up of Sinn und Form: ‘Wir brauchen Beiträge, die die großen Errungenschaften der DDR beschreiben, so daß die Leute in Westdeutschland und in der DDR sie wirklich als sachlich aufnehmen und verstehen können. Die Fakten sind überwältigend.’31 This tallies with a handwritten note from around 1954 under the heading ‘Sinn und Form’, in which Brecht apparently lists three suggested areas for future Sinn und Form articles: ‘1 Darstellung der Errungenschaften [...] 2 Die Sowjetunion [...] 3 Kritik der Bundesrepubli[k] (zunehmende Faschisierung)’ (BBA, 1518/08).32 These proposals in relation to Sinn und Form are significant for two main reasons. Firstly they demonstrate a continuity of thought on the part of Brecht and his desire to see what he perceived as the genuine achievements of the GDR represented in 30 31 32

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Schoor, p. 133. See Schoor, p. 133 and Parker, ‘Sinn und Form und der 17. Juni’, p. 749. See Schoor, p. 135.

the pages of Sinn und Form. This continuity of thought provides a long-term background for the Katzgraben essay above and beyond the specific decision of March 1953 to present new literary talent to the public. Secondly, these proposals made after 17 June demonstrate that those events only served to increase the urgency in Brecht’s mind for this kind of article. If the Katzgraben production in general, and the Sinn und Form essay in particular, had been motivated by the growing pressure on Brecht to drop his unorthodoxy, then the easing of this pressure, which came with the new political course from Moscow in early June and workers’ uprising a week later, would have removed the need to make this gesture of support. That Brecht went ahead with the publication of the essay, written at the height of this pressure on 3 June, in an unamended form after 17 June, is compelling evidence that this pressure was not the motivating factor behind the article. It is not difficult to find further evidence in Brecht’s writings and statements of a continuity of thought with the Katzgraben essay. In a literary section meeting of 28 May 1953, for instance, it is decided in accordance with Brecht’s suggestions to recommend Strittmatter for a National Prize ‘für sein Gesamtwerk, insbesondere für seine Komödie Katzgraben, die die Entwicklung auf dem Lande in unserer DDR widerspiegelt.’ (BBA, 1486/72). The echo of Brecht’s proposal from November 1951 is unmistakable. In the same way, the full text of Brecht’s recommendation of Strittmatter for the National Prize, again written after 17 June 1953, and published for the first time in the new Brecht edition (BFA, 23, pp. 255–56), echoes both his call for more partisanship in Sinn und Form and the Katzgraben essay itself: ‘Ich beantrage, Erwin Strittmatter für seine Komödie Katzgraben einen Nationalpreis zu verleihen. Das Werk zeigt die Errungenschaften der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik im Dorf während der Jahre 1947 bis 1950.’ It is a play which ‘nirgends anderswo als in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik hätte geschrieben werden können’. This weight of evidence points clearly towards this being a genuine belief on Brecht’s part rather than a tactical position, and yet 275

it could still be argued that in these statements, made within the institutional framework of GDR cultural policy, Brecht is deliberately maintaining a safe, orthodox Party line. What seems like final proof that this is not the case is to be found in Brecht’s contributions to discussions held at the Berliner Ensemble to debate the events of 17 June 1953 and the lessons to be drawn from those events. Overall, the discussions are characterised by openness and frankness, with contributors not afraid to discuss Stasi surveillance or to openly criticise the regime. Here, if not elsewhere, Brecht was able to express his own genuine views: Man sollte erklären, was Sozialismus ist, das hat man überhaupt nicht getan. Man hat sozialistische Einrichtungen geschaffen, ungeheure Leistungen vollbracht, die ganz wenigen bewusst sind. Das ist ein grosses Versagen, man hat die grossen Verdienste zwar ständig in Art von Lobhudeleien und Phrase zur Sprache gestellt, aber nicht wirklich bekannt gemacht. Da kann die Kunst sehr viel helfen. Sie muss offen versuchen, die Wurzeln des Nazismus und Kapitalismus, die in einer spezifischen deutschen Weise da sind, in einer unglücklichen und schmutzigen Geschichte weit zurückgehend aufdecken, behandeln, klären und zu gleicher Zeit wirklich erklären, was neu gemacht wird. Diese grossen Umwälzungen auf dem Lande, Vertreibung der Junker, Vernichtung des Monopols für Bildung, für eine kleine herrschende Klasse, Übernahme der Betriebe, Lenkung, Plan neuer Schulung. Das sind alles grosse Sachen, sie sind aber nicht wirklich ins Bewusstsein gebracht worden.33

In these statements, the significance of the Katzgraben essay becomes clear. It was not important to Brecht to introduce Strittmatter to a wider public merely for artistic reasons. To Brecht’s mind, Strittmatter’s success as a writer demonstrated one of the genuine achievements of the GDR, namely the opening up of education and culture beyond a narrow class, and, above all, his work had a fundamental role to play in attempting to re-educate the population of the GDR, to communicate to them achievements in the rural 33

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Minutes of discussions held at Berliner Ensemble, 24 June 1953, BBA 1447/08, spelling as in the original. See also Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 503.

economy, whose existence, contrary to Hayman’s analysis, Brecht genuinely believed in. Again, a demonstrable continuity of thought exists here. In a short letter to Günther Strupp, dated 18 January 1952, Brecht refers four times to the ‘Umwälzung’ taking place in the GDR, praising in particular ‘die Verjagung der preußischen Junker und die Aufteilung ihres Grund und Bodens, die Vernichtung des bürgerlichen Bildungsmonopols und die Schulung der proletarischen Jugend, die Planung und Produktionssteigerung in der Industrie’ (BFA, 30, p. 107). Eighteen months later, in his much-quoted letter to Peter Suhrkamp of 1 July 1953, Brecht writes of the gains made by the workers as a result of the ‘Vertreibung der Junker, die Vergesellschaftung der Hitlerischen Kriegsindustrie, die Planung der Produktion und die Zerschmetterung des bürgerlichen Bildungsmonopols’ (BFA, 30, p. 183). In this respect, Hecht is surely mistaken to assert that the events of 17 June lessened the importance of the Katzgraben production and the rehearsal notes which arose from it.34 The purpose of supporting the SED regime and re-educating the people did not lose its urgency with the easing of pressure on Brecht after the 17 June but rather had it re-affirmed, as those events offered proof to Brecht of the continued presence of a Nazi mindset in the GDR population at large. As Brecht wrote to Suhrkamp: Lieber Suhrkamp, machen wir uns nichts vor: Nicht nur im Westen, auch hier im Osten Deutschlands sind ‘die Kräfte’ wieder am Werk. [...] Die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands hat Fehler begangen [...]. Aber ich respektiere viele ihrer historischen Errungenschaften, und ich fühlte mich ihr verbunden, als sie - nicht ihrer Fehler, sondern ihrer Vorzüge wegen - von faschistischem und kriegstreiberischem Gesindel angegriffen wurde. Im Kampf gegen Krieg und Faschismus stand und stehe ich an ihrer Seite. (BFA, 30, pp. 184–85)

34

Hecht, ‘Der Pudding bewährt sich beim Essen’, p. 69: ‘Die Veröffentlichung des Probenreports mußte ihm in dieser neuen Situation völlig unwichtig erscheinen.’

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It was for these reasons, and not out of short-term expediency, that Katzgraben became such an important production for Brecht, and it was surely for these reasons, and not as part of the Academy’s programme to promote new talent, that Brecht published his Katzgraben essay in the post-17-June edition of Sinn und Form. Conventional methods for new circumstances Even if the production and the Sinn und Form essay can be shown to be the product of genuine long-term artistic and political commitment on Brecht’s part, this does little to refute the thesis that Brecht’s decision to use Katzgraben as a forum to explore Stanislavsky was motivated by the immediate circumstances and little more. Indeed, it would be perverse, given the cultural-political climate of spring 1953 and given Brecht’s polemical anti-Stanislavsky stance of the 1930s, not to see the intensive Stanislavsky study as, in some sense, a protective measure against the threat posed to the Berliner Ensemble. Nonetheless, recent research suggests that we should be wary of assuming a fundamental opposition between Brecht and Stanislavsky. Hecht, for instance, acknowledges that the increased availability of Stanislavskian texts in German translation in the early 1950s, particularly later texts originating after 1917, enabled Brecht to modify his 1930s stance and to find genuine points of contact between the two theatrical methods.35 In this context, Hecht points to the use of fictional dialogues in the Katzgraben rehearsal notes and finds, when compared to Stanislavsky’s writings: ‘die Ähnlichkeit ist verblüffend.’ Indeed, Hecht concedes that the discovery of a new version of the ‘Katzgraben-Notate’ necessitates something of a change of view: ‘So kann vielleicht erst jetzt mit der ersten Veröffentlichung des ursprünglichen Textkonvoluts das wirkliche Ausmaß des echten Interesses an dem System Stanislawski erkannt werden.’

35

278

See Hecht, ‘Grund der Empörung’. Subsequent references, p. 83 and p. 87.

Meg Mumford goes one step further. Not only does she highlight a range of Stanislavskian influences in the Katzgraben production, such as the high level of naturalistic detail, an increased use of empathy, and increased individualised characterisation, but, significantly, she also sees the application of these methods to Katzgraben as a conscious, artistically motivated choice, rather than a mere coincidence of timing between the conference and the Katzgraben production. Mumford’s contention is that here in a contemporary play, which presented unfamiliar rural characters and sought to make a contribution to the Socialist development of the nascent GDR society, Brecht required different tools from those he used in staging his own plays which mainly concerned themselves with criticising stereotypes of bourgeois capitalist society, and it was ‘some of Stanislavsky’s methods [which] could be easily adapted to suit the new demands’.36 This is a point also made by Mittenzwei drawing on evidence provided by Käthe Rülicke: ‘Es handelte sich für Brecht jetzt nicht mehr nur um Kritik der dargestellten Gesellschaft, sondern auch um die Darstellung des positiven Helden – ein Problem, das auch Stanislawski bis zuletzt beschäftigte.’37 As Mumford comments: ‘Given the historical context [...], it is easy to describe the production as mainly a tactic designed to protect the Ensemble from the ire of party-line socialist realists. Yet the rehearsal notes also illuminate affinities between the two practitioners, particularly in the realm of carefully organized staging and attention to detail. They also amplify Brecht’s desire to support the new community through the production of a contemporary play, and how Brecht found many of Stanislavsky’s methods useful for this task.’38 We should remain wary of unquestioningly accepting Mumford’s argument. She is perhaps a little too eager to accept the apparent synthesis between Stanislavsky and Brecht developed in East 36 37 38

Mumford, p. 246. Werner Mittenzwei, ‘Der Methodenstreit: Brecht oder Stanislawski’, in Werner Hecht (ed.), Brechts Theorie des Theaters (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 246–68 (p. 262). Mumford, p. 256.

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German Brecht criticism. Jan Knopf, for instance, unhesitatingly dismisses such a synthesis as ‘eine Erfindung der DDR-BrechtForschung’.39 Similarly, Mumford’s contention, based on Käthe Rülicke’s recollections of the Stanislavsky Conference, that ‘Brecht was not overly threatened by political pressure and that he was able to maintain a critical stance’40 is clearly at odds with much existing evidence relating to Brecht’s position at the time, not least Hecht’s suggestion about the impending liquidation of the Ensemble to which Mumford refers earlier in her essay.41 Nonetheless, she is able to point to evidence that Brecht’s interest in Stanislavsky both predated the peak of the Stanislavsky wave and continued beyond it, when the necessity of tactical assent was absent. In this context, the fact of the publication of the Katzgraben essay in Sinn und Form after 17 June, a fact actually overlooked by Mumford, supports her concluding comments about Brecht’s Stanislavsky study: ‘Had Katzgraben been mainly a political tactic, the subsiding of the conferenceyear furore would probably have been followed by a rapid waning and eventual end of Brecht’s experimentation with Stanislavsky’s system. However, right up until the mid ’fifties Brecht continued his studies, applying some of the methods even to works that, unlike Strittmatter’s play, were not in the socialist realist mode.’42 Again, it is from writings after 17 June that we can most clearly infer the expression of genuine belief on Brecht’s part, and in this context it is worth noting the emphasis, in the Sinn und Form essay and in the citation for Strittmatter’s National Prize, on what is a Stanislavskian use of individualised characterisation in Katzgraben: ‘Die Gestalten des Stücks sind voller Individualität, mit köstlichen 39 40 41 42

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Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch, I, p. 466. Mumford, p. 243. See Hecht, ‘Grund der Empörung’, p. 86 and Käthe Rülicke-Weiler, ‘Brecht and Weigel at the Berliner Ensemble’, trans by Karin Littau, New Theatre Quarterly, 7 (1991), 3–19 (p. 15). See Werner Hecht, ‘Das Vergnügen an einer ernsten Sache: Ein Leben im Dienste Brechts – Erinnerungen von und an Käthe Rülicke’, Der Tagespiegel, 3 November 1992, p. 17, cited by Mumford, p. 242. Mumford, p. 256.

Einzelzügen’ (BFA, 24, p. 437); ‘Völlig neu für die deutsche Bühne sind die realistisch und großzügig gezeichneten Bauern, welche die Merkmale ihrer Klasse tragen und zugleich sehr lebendige und widerspruchsvolle Einzelpersönlichkeiten sind’ (BFA, 23, pp. 256). Meanwhile, as late as 1955 and written purely for private consumption, Brecht’s autobiographical notes written on his trip to Moscow to collect the Stalin prize seem to indicate a genuine, rather than ironic, admiration for Stanislavsky’s contribution to theatre: ‘Im Künstlertheater Ostrowskis Heißes Herz mit enormem Vergnügen gesehen. Die ganze Größe Stanislawskis wurde sichtbar’ (BFA, 27, p. 365). It may indeed be that the later theories of Stanislavsky and his emphasis on the Überaufgabe made possible some sort of synthesis between Brechtian and Stanislavskian theory and that the conciliatory position maintained by Brecht in ‘Nicht gegen Stanislawski’ and other writings from this period (see BFA, 23, pp. 232–36) was a genuine one. There may be more than just an element of truth in Mumford’s view: ‘Brecht capitalized upon the new opportunities available for exploring the two theatre practitioners’ affinities and differences, and began to view himself more as Stanislavsky’s progressive successor than his staunch opponent.’43 Some broader implications It should be clear by now that Katzgraben occupies a highly significant position within Brecht’s work in the GDR and that some of the present approaches to the work are in need of substantial reappraisal. In particular, it sems misjudged to interpret Brecht’s actions only within their immediate political context, that is, as short-term, tactical manoeuvres to appease the SED regime. As is the case for much of Günter Eich’s writing under National Socialism, there appears to be evidence here of an over-politicised, over-interpreted approach to cultural production under the conditions of dictatorship. This is an 43

Mumford, p. 257.

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approach which allows itself to be coloured by the politicising total claim made by the SED and National Socialist regimes, so that cultural activity is always seen in that specific ‘totalitarian’ context and no other. Direct causal links are established between cultural production and cultural policy where no such necessary connections exist. This is not to say that Brecht’s cultural activity, in the Katzgraben production and elsewhere, is not politically motivated. In contrast to Eich, where the danger of an over-politicised approach is to attribute political motivations to what are non-political, artistic and professional decisions, Brecht’s avowedly political approach to art does not allow the artistic and professional to be divorced from the political. However, what the analysis of Katzgraben indicates is the danger of over-politicising longer-term political motivations, which are largely autonomous of SED cultural policy, into shorter-term political motives, entirely determined by the GDR regime. While assent in the latter case is only transitory and pragmatic, in the former case it is consistent and ideological. While in the latter case a position of dissent may be the norm, in the former any dissent can only constitute a deviation from the norm. As this analysis has shown, the Katzgraben project offers ample evidence of Brecht’s long-term, selfmotivated commitment to the East German socialist project. Indeed, it is Brecht’s position as expressed in the Katzgraben essay which is the fundamental one for understanding his actions in the GDR, and this is not a position primarily of dissent but one of support, a consistent, public, and generalised support for the aims and policies of the SED regime. The genesis of the Katzgraben project, together with Brecht’s private and public statements relating to it, also suggest strongly that this consistent position of support arose from ideological, not tactical and pragmatic, motives. In this sense, the Katzgraben project proves to be exemplary for the remainder of Brecht’s activity at the Berliner Ensemble in three significant respects.

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1. Longer-term principles rather than short-term tactics Firstly, the Katzgraben analysis presented above, where longer-term ideological and artistic principles act as motivating factors beyond the short-term political context, may be applied to other Berliner Ensemble productions. As we have seen, both the opening Ensemble production of Puntila in 1949 and the later production of Becher’s Winterschlacht in 1955 are seen by Lyon as characteristic acts of conformity on Brecht’s part.44 In identifying a sacrifice of artistic principles to short-term assent, Lyon’s approach to Winterschlacht echoes strongly existing approaches to Strittmatter’s Katzgraben. Of Becher’s play Lyon writes as follows: [Winterschlacht was] a play that no one, least of all Brecht, would have chosen on the basis of its artistic qualities. This appears to be one of the several cases where he overlooked artistic standards in order to demonstrate his theater’s commitment to supporting and promoting the new socialist state and, in the process, to ingratiate himself with those in power.

A similar tactical interpretation of the Winterschlacht production comes from Theo Buck: ‘Immer wieder galt Brecht da geradezu als mißliebiger Störenfried. Geschickt bemühte er sich, diesen Eindruck zu korrigieren durch taktische Maßnahmen scheinbaren Entgegenkommens wie etwa [...] die Inszenierung von Bechers staubtrockenem Stück Winterschlacht.’45 Likewise, Lyon sees Brecht’s decision to substitute his preferred opening production, Die Tage der Kommune, for a comedy, Puntila, as a further tactical concession to the regime, made because of the controversial subject-matter of the former play.46 In Ronald Hayman’s biography of Brecht, we again find one of the most extreme expressions of this argument:

44 45 46

Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, pp. 76–77. Subsequent reference, p. 77. Theo Buck, ‘Brecht und Becher’, in Walter Delabar and Jörg Döring (eds), Bertolt Brecht: 1898–1956 (Berlin: Weidler, 1998), pp. 119–40 (p. 134). See Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, p. 78.

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[Brecht] had been underestimating the nervousness of the regime about revolutionary plays which might have made it look undemocratic, and this was not the moment for a production [...] He opted for Puntila, which had no direct bearing on current political issues but drew on folk stories to discredit the old class system. It was a safe play for the opening production, and Brecht made it still safer by writing in a servant who is a Party member.47

Klaus Völker proposes a slightly milder version of the same thesis, describing Die Tage der Kommune as ‘unzeitgemäß’ and ‘ein für die DDR politisch viel zu brisantes Thema’.48 On the substitution for Puntila, Völker is clear about Brecht’s motivation: ‘Weil eine Komödie viel weniger “controversial” war, erschien ihm dann Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti für den Beginn geeigneter.’ As with Katzgraben, Brecht is seen to be compromising artistic principles in a short-term attempt to placate the GDR regime. And yet, as far as Winterschlacht is concerned, Brecht arguably had little reason to stage a tactically motivated production in 1955, when the touring success of the Ensemble had all but assured its position. Furthermore, it is clear from Brecht’s own statements that Winterschlacht, as with Katzgraben, fulfilled a genuinely important role for him in the post-fascist education of the GDR population. As he wrote in a private note and continued to stress elsewhere: ‘Bechers Stück hat eine in unserer Nachkriegsliteratur vernachlässigte und für die politische Erziehung in der DDR wichtige Funktion: die ideologische Abrechnung mit der Nazizeit. Sie gehört zum Fundament, auf dem das neue Haus gebaut werden soll’ (BFA, 24, p. 444).49 In this instance, Völker seems to summarise matters accurately: Daß Brecht nach dem Kreidekreis in seinem Theater das Schauspiel Winterschlacht von Johannes R. Becher inszenierte, war keine opportunistische 47 48 49

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Hayman, p. 339. Völker, p. 372 and p. 371. Subsequent reference, p. 371. See also Bertolt Brecht, ‘1968: An Emil Frantisek Burian, Berlin, 20. September 1954’, BFA, 30, p. 270 and ‘Über Auführungen des Berliner Ensemble (1955)’, in Werner Hecht (ed.), Brecht im Gespräch: Diskussionen und Dialoge (Berlin: Henschel, 1979), pp. 175–87 (pp. 176–80).

Huldigung an den Kulturminister, sondern Folge politischer Überlegungen: Wichtig an der Winterschlacht schien ihm die Art und Weise, wie hier ideologisch mit der Nazizeit abgerechnet wird. Das war ein in der DDR bisher vernachlässigtes Thema, über das zudem von der Partei gerne schweigend hinweggesehen wurde.50

Similarly, although it would be perverse to deny some importance for the immediate cultural-political context in the choice of Puntila, it would be a blinkered view which saw only short-term political motivations at work in this instance. Brecht’s political approach to culture notwithstanding, we again need to grant to artistic decisions some degree of freedom from the politicising conditions of dictatorship. Brecht was opening a new artistic project in November 1949 and, regardless of its location, other professional and artistic considerations would always have played an important role. Werner Mittenzwei suggests, for instance, that it was not political considerations which prompted Brecht to drop Die Tage der Kommune. Rather, ‘im gegenwärtigen Zustand schien es ihm sicher noch zu unfertig, um es aufzuführen. So entschloß er sich die Saison mit [Puntila] zu eröffnen’.51 Carl Weber points to a combination of factors, not least the desire for popular and critical success, which informed Brecht’s decision: ‘Copyright problems [...] and the predictable ideological reservations of the party made Brecht opt for Puntila, which also seemed to be a likelier crowd-pleaser.’52 The problematic political factors associated with Die Tage der Kommune cannot be entirely dismissed, but they also need to be placed alongside the practical issues of copyright and popular success which would have applied both inside and outside dictatorship. As with many of Eich’s artistically or personally motivated decisions, we need to be aware here of the powerful politicising effect of the dictatorship, with its ability to obscure other non-political factors. In the case of Puntila, as with Katzgraben and Winterschlacht, a causal relationship is established be50 51 52

Völker, p. 410. Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 365. Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble’, p. 170.

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tween short-term political issues and artistic decisions where no such necessary relationship exists. Just how liberating the removal of these politicising blinkers can be is demonstrated by the remainder of Weber’s analysis, where Puntila is placed not within its short-term political context, but within what Weber terms Brecht’s ‘master-plan for his company’.53 Here, he identifies three specific theatrical traditions which Brecht sought to pursue with the Ensemble: ‘drama that presented the agenda and history of social revolution’; ‘plays from the classic and modern repertory which critically probed class society, to be staged in new radical readings’; ‘comedies from the German and international theatre to establish a tradition which, in comparison to other cultures, the German theatre was lacking.’ It is impossible to deny that Brecht had a political agenda here. To a large extent his aim was to offer support for the new socialist state and its regime. However, at the same time Brecht was also pursuing his own artistic agenda, providing ‘a model for a rebuilding of German theatre culture from its ruins’. Brecht’s interest in developing a German comic tradition, already evinced by his decision to stage Puntila in Zurich and Hamburg the previous year, provides an artistic context for the Berlin Puntila production, over and above the political considerations attached to Die Tage der Kommune. This same interest also lends a broader context to the Katzgraben production, since Strittmatter’s play offered Brecht a further opportunity to develop a German comic tradition, as well as to promote new East German talent and to demonstrate the perceived economic achievements of the regime. Any consistent, artistically driven programme for the Ensemble only becomes visible if the productions are freed from the constraints of dictatorship which encourage a reading as short-term tactical acts. In any case, in these instances Brecht’s own artistic and political motivations largely matched those of the SED regime, and thus tactical considerations are rendered superfluous. 53

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Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble’, p. 170. Subsequent references, p. 170.

2. Active, consistent, and genuine ideological support This active support on Brecht’s part for the founding goals of the GDR is the second exemplary feature to emerge from our analysis of the Katzgraben production. If the ideological position expressed in the Katzgraben essay, far within the will to truth of the core myths of the SED, is taken to be a genuine and consistent one, then many of the ambivalences surrounding Brecht’s position in the GDR may at least partially be resolved. Above all this applies to speculation concerning the precise nature of Brecht’s relationship to communism and to the SED and to his decision to return to East Berlin in the first place. As Manfred Jäger suggests, Brecht was both ‘weit mehr als ein Sympathisant, aber in gewisser Hinsicht weit weniger als ein SEDMitglied’.54 In this context, certain actions – such as his apparent courting of Salzburg and Munich as alternative venues for his postwar theatre project, his application for an Austrian passport, his lodging of copyright with Peter Suhrkamp outside the GDR, and his failure to join the Party – have been read as markers of ideological uncertainty with regard to East German communism and as indicative of the primacy of pragmatic motivations in Brecht’s deliberations. Esslin, for instance, sees in Brecht’s dealings with Suhrkamp evidence that Brecht ‘still had some doubts as to the advisability of moving too far into Soviet orbit’, as an example of Brecht taking precautions ‘in his characteristically sly and circumspect manner’.55 Carl Weber, meanwhile, embodies the contradictions of critics’ views on these matters when he claims, on the one hand, that ‘first and last, [Brecht] wanted to sustain his theater, and he found the philosophical and political justifications as he needed them’ and, on the other, that ‘the chance to participate in the building of a first socialist state on German soil must have been irresistible to the Marxist playwright’.56 On this fraught issue, it is Jäger who is perhaps best able to point 54 55 56

Jäger, p. 63. Esslin, p. 78 and p. 79. Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and Communism’, p. 27 and Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble’, p. 168.

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towards resolution: ‘Die Beschreibung, was für eine Art Marxist oder Leninist Brecht war, muß von den Texten ausgehen und darf nicht vom Besitz dieses oder jenes Mitgliedsbuchs abgeleitet werden.’57 In this respect, the texts relating to the Katzgraben production make clear the nature of Brecht’s consistently partisan GDR position throughout 1952 and 1953. As far as the period preceding Brecht’s establishment of his theatre company in East Berlin is concerned, it is ‘Kleines Organon für das Theater’ (BFA, 23, pp. 65–97), the programmatic statement of intent for Brecht’s new project, planned in the United States and completed in Switzerland in the summer of 1948, which is the central text which most clearly expresses both Brecht’s artistic and his ideological position. Just as Carl Weber points to Theaterarbeit, Brecht’s account of the Berliner Ensemble’s first six productions, as evidence that Brecht ‘certainly did not have in mind a theater based on the tenets of socialist realism’ and, by extension, that the GDR was in no sense the natural home of such a project,58 so a similar argument might be made out for the ‘Organon’. After all, its publication in a special issue of the literary journal Sinn und Form in 1949 had, in Mittenzwei’s words, ‘den eklatanten Gegensatz der Methode Brechts zu der Stanislawskis sichtbar gemacht’,59 and it was this stark opposition which was subsequently to offer a convenient target for Brecht’s fiercest critics at the Stanislavsky Conference of April 1953. As Mittenzwei enquires: ‘wie würde Brecht in eine Theaterlandschaft passen, die die faschistische Beeinträchtigung durch Besinnung auf die klassischen Traditionen und die sowjetische Stanislawski-Schule zu überwinden suchte?’ In this context, the ‘Organon’ can be understood, even at this early stage, as the first of Brecht’s intentionally dissenting interventions against SED cultural policy, defending his position against imminent attack from an orthodox Stanislavskian position. This is certainly the position of 57 58 59

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Jäger, p. 58. Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and Communism’, p. 22. Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 446–47. Subsequent reference, p. 218.

Uwe Schoor who highlights the following comments made by Hans Mayer, someone who had worked closely with Brecht on another contribution to that first special issue of Sinn und Form: ‘Die Arbeit war wichtig, denn es galt, diese neue Theaterarbeit […] auch gegen die sowjetische Theaterkonzeption einer Nachfolge des Naturalismus aus der Schule Stanislawskis abzusichern.’60 However, this form of argument crucially fails to differentiate between different phases in SED cultural policies and to recognise that the cultural-political climate of 1948 and 1949 was very different from that of early 1953.61 Certainly it was already clear that some important figures had adopted positions opposed to Brecht’s dramatic theory, but what was not at all clear was that these positions would crystallise into irreconcilable poles, with one extreme, a version of the Stanislavskian system, dogmatically imposed and rigidly applied across East German theatres in opposition to Brecht’s own theatrical methods. As Mittenzwei himself points out in his essay on Brecht and Stanislavsky, even as late as 1951, use of the Stanislavskian method was largely restricted to a small experimental circle in Weimar.62 Only from 1951–1953 was the method more intensively and officially propagated. With cultural policy still to some extent in flux in the Soviet zone in 1949, it is difficult to justify a reading of the ‘Organon’ which sees it opposing that as yet unfixed policy. In the context of the late 1940s, it is not the position of the ‘Organon’ within a cultural-political controversy which had yet to really begin which is of importance, but rather its position within the broader East/West political climate. In this context, the ‘Organon’ must be analysed not in terms of its discourse of literary and dramatic theory, but rather in terms of its 60 61

62

Hans Mayer, Ein deutscher auf Widerruf: Erinnerungen, 2 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), II, p. 147, quoted by Schoor, p. 137. Mittenzwei himself identifies 1951 as the key turning-point away from the ‘großzügigen, anregenden, und fördernden sowjetischen Kulturpolitik des ersten halben Nachkriegsjahrzehnts’. Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 453. Mittenzwei, ‘Brecht oder Stanislawski’, pp. 246–47.

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political discourse. From this perspective, the ‘Organon’ is revealed as an unavowedly Marxist-Leninist essay. In his description of the process of industrialisation in paragraphs 15 to 19, for instance, Brecht shows himself to be firmly within the Marxist-Leninist will to truth, clearly demonstrating the stark pro-modern impulses at the heart of the ideology, while also involving himself in the language of the class-struggle, condemning the exploitation of one class by another (BFA, 23, pp. 71–73). His discussion of science in this section is couched all the time in the discourse of Marxism So ist die neue Wissenschaft, die sich mit dem Wesen der menschlichen Gesellschaft befaßt und die vor etwa hundert Jahren begründet wurde, im Kampf der Beherrschten mit den Herrschenden begründet worden. Seitdem gibt es etwas vom wissenschaftlichen Geist in der Tiefe, bei der neuen Klasse der Arbeiter, deren Lebenselement die große Produktion ist.

Similarly in paragraph 55, Brecht makes clear where an actor’s responsibilities lie: ‘Will der Schauspieler nicht Papagei oder Affe sein, muß er sich das Wissen der Zeit über das menschliche Zusammenleben aneignen, indem er die Kämpfe der Klassen mitkämpft’ (BFA, 23, p. 86). As such an overt statement of a partisan Marxist-Leninist position, the ‘Organon’, in combination with the texts relating to Katzgraben, argues very strongly for a privileging of genuine ideological motivations, rather than tactical pragmatism, in the assent granted by Brecht to the SED regime in his activities with the Berliner Ensemble. As Peter Brooker points out, there is indeed something in the common-sense view that the natural home of Brecht the Marxist playwright was in the Marxist zone of Germany.63 Again, in those attempts to attribute less straightforward motives to Brecht’s return to East Berlin, the conditions of dictatorship can be seen to encourage an over-interpreted reading of actions which were not necessarily tactically motivated.

63

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Peter Brooker, Bertolt Brecht: Dialectics, Poetry, Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 207–08.

3. Non-intentional dissent The final respect in which the Katzgraben production can be shown to be exemplary is in the way that it illuminates the mechanisms by which dissent could be generated by Brecht in the GDR. As we have seen, the Katzgraben project cohered both politically and aesthetically with the Party line, and, in the West at least, Brecht’s strongly supportive intention was matched by the effect of the play. That Der Spiegel wrote the production off as ‘das längst erwartete Brechtsche Propaganda-Drama, voll von halben Wahrheiten und ganzen Lügen’, for instance, testifies to the collaborative effect attributed in the West to Brecht’s work in the GDR.64 And yet, the official Party press in the East did not share this view. The ideological and aesthetic orthodoxy of the production did not spare it from a negative critical reaction.65 Indeed, in his response to the criticism of Katzgraben, the resigned tone of Brecht’s journal-entry of 4 March 1953 became rather more aggressive. In a letter of 16 September 1953 written to the editorial board of Theater der Zeit, and copied to the Academy of Arts and State Art Commission, Brecht objected to their superficial and amateurish criticism and questioned the qualifications of their reviewers (BFA, 30, pp. 204). In this way, what had been an intentional act of support for the regime and a genuine attempt to contribute to the development of Socialism in the GDR, using many of the tools prescribed by the SED, actually generated a dissenting effect. Similarly, the Winterschlacht production, singled out by Lyon as an act of conformity, elicited a comparably negative reaction, while even Die Mutter, Brecht’s Gorky adaptation with its partisan finale in praise of dialectics, attracted the ire of the SED Central Committee in March 1951 for its aesthetic non-conformity.66 In this sense, 64 65 66

See Hecht, ‘Grund der Empörung’, p. 87. See BFA, 25, pp. 559–60. See in particular Lily Leder, ‘Katzgraben von Erwin Strittmatter am Deutschen Theater: Berliner Ensemble’, Theater der Zeit, 8 (1953), 57–60. The extent of the criticism of Winterschlacht is apparent from a dialogue text written by Brecht in response to that criticism. See Bertolt Brecht, ‘Einige

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Katzgraben exemplifies two significant elements of the dissent expressed by Brecht’s work with the Berliner Ensemble. Firstly, this dissent can be seen to arise from aesthetic, rather than political, nonconformity and is as such non-intentional in nature. Secondly, this dissent is less an internal and intentional feature of a work and more the external product of critics and politicians. Certainly in the case of these Ensemble productions, dissenting effects were generated not by Brecht, but by this latter group of figures, not all of whom need necessarily have actually seen the source of their objections. How far dissent is a product of factors external to the work of art, and how the extent of that dissent exists in a positive and proportional relationship with the total claim of the regime, can be further demonstrated by the contrasting reception of two pairs of Berliner Ensemble productions. Firstly, the dissenting effects generated by Die Mutter contrast strongly with the Mutter Courage production with which Brecht marked his return to Berlin. While in the former case, aesthetic unorthodoxy became a matter worthy of discussion by the Central Committee, in the latter case objections to Brecht’s dramatic method remained largely confined to a cultural context.67 Secondly, the Ensemble’s productions of both Lenz’s Hofmeister and Goethe’s Urfaust provoked noticeably contrasting reactions. In both of these productions, Brecht sought to pursue one of the central aims of his Ensemble project, namely to develop radical readings of the German classical tradition. Both were aesthetically unorthodox in that they failed to pursue the appropriate strand of the German classical heritage and both raised the vexed

67

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Irrtümer über die Spielweise des Berliner Ensemble’, BFA, 23, pp. 323–38. For examples of the criticism which Brecht was reacting against, see BFA, 23, p. 581. For criticism of Die Mutter, see ‘68: 5. Tagung des ZK der SED, 15.– 17. März 1951’, in Joachim Lucchesi (ed.), Das Verhör in der Oper: Die Debatte um die Aufführung ‘Das Verhör des Lukullus’ von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau (Berlin: BasisDruck, 1993), pp. 127–77 (p. 173). On reaction to Mutter Courage and the subsequent debate between Fritz Erpenbeck and Wolfgang Harich, see Hecht, Brecht-Chronik, pp. 848–52 and Jäger, pp. 52–54.

notion of deutsche Misere. Nonetheless, while in the former case reception of the production was broadly positive with Brecht able to defend himself in what remained essentially a cultural debate, the production of Urfaust had to be withdrawn, as Brecht became caught up in a cultural-political controversy which threatened his very existence in the GDR.68 The contrasting dissenting function of the two sets of productions, Die Mutter and Urfaust, on the one hand, as opposed to Mutter Courage and Hofmeister, on the other, was generated not by a difference in intention on Brecht’s part, nor by a significant internal difference in the nature of the productions themselves. What had changed between Mutter Courage in early 1949 and Die Mutter in early 1951, and between Hofmeister in April 1950 and Urfaust in the spring of 1952, was the external cultural-political climate in which Brecht’s work generated its effect. The onset of the Formalism Campaign in 1951 and the burgeoning Stalinisation of the Party in 1952/1953, allied to the increasing precariousness of the regime itself within the context of Soviet policy on the German question, led to the ever more rigid application of a set of cultural norms which Brecht’s work at the Berliner Ensemble contravened. In the context of the growing total claim of the regime, this aesthetic contravention was increasingly viewed as political dissent. Indeed, that even a politically and aesthetically orthodox production such as Katzgraben was able to achieve a dissenting effect by virtue of its mere association with Brecht is a powerful indicator of the capacity of the regime’s claim to generate dissent where none was intended. Partial and non-intentional it may have been, but there can be no doubt that Brecht was expressing some form of dissent against the SED regime in these productions.

68

On reception of Hofmeister, see BFA, 8, pp. 572–76 and Hecht, Brecht-Chronik, pp. 918–19. On Urfaust, see Hecht, Brecht-Chronik, pp. 1013–14 and pp. 1049– 51, and Deborah Vietor-Engländer, Faust in der DDR (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1987). On Brecht’s role in the subsequent Faustus-Debatte, see Hans Bunge, Die Debatte um Hanns Eislers ‘Johann Faustus’: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1991).

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This, above all else, is what emerges from a consideration of Brecht’s work at the Berliner Ensemble – the generation of nonintentional dissent from a position of support. Brecht did not put on plays which sought to undermine the regime politically in any sense. In this respect, his plays were orthodox and, in terms of intention, sought to support or even collaborate with the regime. Reaction to these productions in the West manifests their potential to achieve this effect. At the same time, the overall supportive function of his work at the Berliner Ensemble was restricted both by its relatively indirect nature, at least in comparison to unequivocally political statements or actions, and by Brecht’s perceived aesthetic unorthodoxy. The public statement and increasingly dogmatic, if inconsistent, enforcement of the regime’s total claim on cultural production in the years 1951–1953 ensured that this unorthodoxy was politicised into dissent. The supportive function of Brecht’s theatrical productions must then be tempered by a recognition of this dissent. Nonetheless, the Katzgraben productions seem to demonstrate that Lyon is correct to place Brecht’s assenting impulses ahead of the dissenting. What they also clearly demonstrate is the orthodox nature of Brecht’s ideological position in the GDR, tied as he was through a continuing belief in the threat of fascism to the core founding myths of the SED. As far as Brecht’s activities with the Berliner Ensemble are concerned, this ‘straightforward’ motivational background, rather than any more complex tactical considerations, seems to have been paramount in determining his actions. Furthermore, in terms of the public expression of Brecht’s attitudes through the work of the Berliner Ensemble, the events of 17 June, far from freeing Brecht to express outright opposition to the regime, only reinforced this attachment to the will to truth of the GDR. Any dissent in this area of Brecht’s GDR activities remained partial and non-intentional.

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Cultural-Political Interventions in Sinn und Form Up to this point in our analysis of Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR, we have not been dealing primarily with the direct and open expression of support and/or opposition to the SED regime. Although the intention of Brecht’s work may well have been very strongly assenting, seeking to support the global aims of the SED regime and thereby coming close to crossing the broad gulf into collaboration, there is a clear limit to the assenting effect which can be achieved by a piece of theatre, no matter how politically motivated. Equally, any dissenting function attached to theatrical productions at the Berliner Ensemble has been shown to have been restricted to non-intentional, politicised effects. At the same time, the analysis of the Ensemble’s Katzgraben productions points to a further dimension of Brecht’s activities in the GDR where the expression of assent or dissent is potentially of a much more direct nature. In unmediated statements, such as the Katzgraben essay published in Sinn und Form, Brecht sought to intervene directly in cultural, culturalpolitical, and even political, issues of the day. Such interventions are clearly of great significance in any analysis of Brecht’s assent and dissent, not least because the unmediated nature of Brecht’s voice in these statements offers the potential for a higher level of assent or dissent than that expressed indirectly in specifically literary texts. The relative absence of ambiguity in such unmediated texts allows for a clearer reading of Brecht’s intentions. This less ambiguous expression of intention, and the necessarily more widespread and uniform effect on readers which accompanies it, generates the heightened potential for assent or dissent in such statements, and it is in this area of cultural-political activity that the highpoints of Brecht’s assent and dissent lie.

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Brecht and Sinn und Form More specifically, the Katzgraben essay signals the importance of the literary periodical Sinn und Form as a platform for these kinds of intervention. That essay appeared in the same issue as two other cultural-political statements: the ‘Thesen zur Faustus-Diskussion’ (BFA, 23, pp. 246–49), Brecht’s public intervention in the longrunning controversy over Hanns Eisler’s Faustus libretto; and the ‘Erklärung der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’ (BFA, 23, pp. 253– 55), the Academy’s recommendations for cultural reform, in whose composition Brecht had played a central role. The sheer volume of contributions Brecht made to Sinn und Form in his lifetime, twentythree in all, including first publications such as the ‘Buckower Elegien’, confirms that Werner Mittenzwei has identified a potentially fruitful area of research when he describes Sinn und Form as ‘für Brecht die wichtigste literarische Plattform, von der aus er die Öffentlichkeit in sorgfältiger Weise mit neuen oder bereits im Exil entstandenen Arbeiten bekannt machte. Seit 1950 erschien in fast jedem zweiten Heft Beiträge von ihm. Eine solche kontinuierliche Veröffentlichungspolitik betrieb in der Zeitschrift kaum ein anderer Schriftsteller des Landes’.69 And yet, with only ten of those contributions of a strictly literary nature, it is clear that the Academy periodical served as much more than just a literary platform for Brecht. In publishing such a large number of political and culturalpolitical statements, it operated as a significant site of both intentional assent and dissent. Significant in terms of dissent is the thesis developed by Mittenzwei that Brecht saw in the East Berlin Academy of Arts a forum in which he could intervene against what he perceived to be errors in the nascent cultural policies of the GDR.70 Recent research has built 69 70

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Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 379–80. Brecht published six of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ in the final edition of 1953. See Bertolt Brecht, ‘Gedichte’, Sinn und Form, 5.6 (1953), 119–21. Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 378 and p. 379: ‘In der Akademie sah er ein Gremium, das gegen Mißstände und Fehlentwicklungen auf künstleri-

on this thesis and exposed the Academy as an important site of dissent. More specifically, the central role of the academy periodical Sinn und Form and its editor Peter Huchel as a focus for this dissent has also emerged.71 Uwe Schoor in particular has sought to apply Mittenzwei’s thesis to Brecht’s contributions to Sinn und Form: Wie [Brecht] die Akademie als ein Forum verstand, [...] zu dessen wesentlichen Aufgaben er zählte, ‘darüber zu wachen, daß die neuen politischen Aufgaben nicht dazu führten, das Künstlerische links liegen zu lassen’ so behandelte er auch Sinn und Form als Organ eines Gremiums, das nach seiner Auffassung ‘gegen Mißstände und Fehlentwicklungen aufzutreten’ hatte. Aus diesem Grunde war die Zeitschrift der geeignete Ort, an dem Brecht seine vom Neuen Deutschland zurückgewiesenen ‘Notizen zur Barlach-Ausstellung’ publizieren konnte .72

As an organ of the Academy, edited by a sympathetic non-Party figure, Sinn und Form seems to have offered Brecht an invaluable channel to make dissenting interventions. As Schoor indicates, this was a channel which remained open to Brecht in early 1952 for his ‘Notizen zur Barlach Ausstellung’ (BFA, 23, pp. 198–202), when Party-controlled channels were blocked. The same point is made by Jäger in relation to Brecht’s defence of Hanns Eisler eighteen months later: ‘Brecht, dem immer die von Peter Huchel geleitete Zeitschrift der Akademie der Künste, Sinn und Form offenstand – sonst hätte er

71

72

schem Gebiet aufzutreten habe’; ‘Die Akademie verstand er als ein Forum, das Einfluß auf die Geschmacksbildung des Publikums gewinnen mußte. Zu ihren wesentlichen Aufgaben zählte Brecht, darüber zu wachen, daß die neuen politischen Aufgaben nicht dazu führten, das Künstlerische links liegenzulassen’. See Parker, ‘Sinn und Form und der 17. Juni’; Peter Davies, Divided Loyalties: East German Writers and the Politics of German Division 1945–1953 (Leeds: Maney, 2000); Peter Davies and Stephen Parker, ‘Brecht, SED Cultural Policy and the Issue of Authority in the Arts: The Struggle for Control of the German Academy of Arts’, in Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone (eds), Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 181–95. Schoor, pp. 136–37, quoting Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 379–80.

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für seine Interventionen oft kein öffentliches Forum gehabt – versuchte dort im Juli 1953 ein gutes Wort für Eisler einzulegen.’73 Above all, it is these two articles, the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ and the ‘Faustus-Thesen’, both of which intervened against the emerging SED orthodoxy in cultural matters, which establish the thesis that Brecht was able to exploit Sinn und Form as an outlet for dissent. Indeed, these two contributions by Brecht have acquired a pivotal, possibly even exaggerated, importance within Schoor’s broader analysis of Huchel’s editorship of the journal. It is Schoor’s central thesis that Huchel’s editorial technique is best characterised by ‘das Prinzip einer bewußten Widersprüchlichkeit’ and, further, that in defending this principle Huchel found an enthusiastic ally in Brecht.74 Similarly: Widersprüchlichkeit [war] zum Prinzip erhoben. […] Die Kontrastierungsverfahren reichen dabei vom offenen Nach- und Nebeneinander gegensätzlicher Meinungen, wie etwa in der Faustus-Debatte vorgeführt, über Beiträge, die ihren Charakter als ‘Gegenrede’ erst im Bezug auf aktuelle Vorgänge in der Kulturlandschaft offenbaren (Brechts ‘Notizen zur BarlachAusstellung’).75

In this way, the two Brecht interventions come to represent a justification of Huchel’s entire editorship, as Schoor seeks to appeal to Brecht’s authority in his defence of Huchel. Unfortunately, this focus on the dissent expressed in the Barlach and Faustus interventions is liable to overshadow the assenting function both of these same interventions and other considerably more partisan statements made in Sinn und Form. As the genesis of the Katzgraben project showed and as Schoor himself acknowledges, Brecht made consistent and prolonged calls for increased partisanship in the journal. The Katzgraben essay formed part of a broader assenting intention on 73 74

75

298

Jäger, pp. 67–68. Schoor, p. 138: ‘Im Dankbrief für das erste Sonderheft hatte [Brecht] sich vom “großen Plan” der bis dahin vorgelegten Hefte begeistert gezeigt, das Prinzip einer bewußten Widersprüchlichkeit entsprach in vielem seinem eigenen Vorgehen.’ For the letter itself, see BFA, 29, pp. 539–40. Schoor, p. 67.

Brecht’s part, and this attempt to use the journal’s international profile as a propaganda medium, what Schoor refers to as ‘Brechts Forderung nach Darstellung der neuen Gesellschaft’, clearly stands in stark contrast to Schoor’s earlier thesis regarding dissenting interventions.76 In fact, Sinn und Form offers a paradigm for the contradictory assenting and dissenting impulses which characterise Brecht’s activities in the GDR. Inside the GDR, the journal’s status as an organ of the Academy, relatively free from SED control, made it a suitable outlet for dissenting interventions. At the same time, the readership and respect which this status won for the journal in the West made it an equally suitable outlet for more partisan, propagandistic even, statements. It is this paradigmatic nature of Brecht contributions to Sinn und Form which makes an analysis of those same contributions such a necessary part of this overall assessment of Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR. Central here must be the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ and the ‘Faustus-Thesen’, not only as the most obvious instances of dissent, but also in terms of the assent they simultaneously granted to the regime. In particular, the nature and relative weighting of assent and dissent expressed by Brecht in these interventions and others in Sinn und Form acts as a barometer of Brecht’s responses to the changing cultural-political situation in the years 1951 to 1953. ‘Notizen zur Barlach Ausstellung’ On 14 December 1951, an exhibition of Ernst Barlach’s sculpture opened at the Academy of Arts in East Berlin. In the weeks that followed, the exhibition attracted two particularly notable reviews in the Party press, the first written by Kurt Magritz in Tägliche Rundschau on 29 December 1951, the second by Wilhelm Girnus a week later in

76

Schoor, p. 133.

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Neues Deutschland.77 Magritz and Girnus couched their attacks in precisely the kind of discourse which typified SED artistic criticism. Theirs was abstract criticism reliant on semantically elastic and empty cover-terms which attached a string of anti-Enlightenment values to Barlach’s work in the style typical of SED discourse. According to Magritz, Barlach’s work was ‘stark beherrscht von antidemokratischen Tendenzen’. It was ‘ihrem Inhalt nach mystisch und ihrer Form nach antirealistisch’. Above all, ‘die Wahrheit ist die, daß Barlach sowohl seinen Ideen als auch seinem Schaffen nach im Wesentlichem zum Formalismus des beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts gehört’. Similarly, Girnus could see only animalistic primitivism in Barlach’s sculptures and nothing which pointed to the future of progressive Socialist art: ‘Die progressive Kraft, die die Bauernklasse unter der Führung der Arbeiterklasse im Kampf für eine bessere Gesellschaft entfalten kann, ist in seinen Gestalten nicht andeutungsweise spürbar.’ While the nature of the attacks may have been typical, the nature of their target was not. The criticism of Barlach, essentially a realist rather than an abstract artist, who had himself fallen victim to the Nazi art purges of 1937, signalled a significant hardening in the on-going Formalism Campaign. For Schoor, Brecht’s response to Magritz and Girnus constitutes an archetypal instance of ‘Gegenrede’, ‘ein Beitrag, in dem Huchel die Stimme der Akademie so überzeugend und zur rechten Zeit artikuliert sah, daß er sie immer wieder als Beispiel zitierte’,78 and a contextual analysis of this public intervention seems to confirm this view. The circumstances surrounding the composition of the notes offer clear evidence that this was a direct and intentional act of dissent against Magritz and Girnus.79 On 13 January 1952, one month after the opening of the exhibition, Gustav Seitz visited 77

78 79

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Kurt Magritz, ‘Ein merkwürdiges Vorwort’, Tägliche Rundschau, 29 December 1951, quoted in BFA, 23, p. 512; Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Ernst-Barlach-Ausstellung in der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’, Neues Deutschland, 4 January 1952, quoted in Jäger, p. 36. References in this paragraph taken from these sources. Schoor, p. 136 and p. 137. See BFA, 23, pp. 511–13.

Brecht in Berlin and shared with him his concerns over the negative press reaction. As a direct consequence of Seitz’s visit, Brecht visited the exhibition, dictated his impressions to Käthe Rülicke, and, between 27 and 30 January, completed the ‘Notizen zur BarlachAusstellung’. In Mittenzwei’s words: ‘Er empfand diese Artikel als ein Alarmzeichen. [...] Eine Entgegnung hielt Brecht schon deshalb für notwendig, weil gegen Barlach mit Forderungen argumentiert wurde, die die gesamte Kunst betrafen.’80 This sense of a direct and very deliberate response is mirrored in Brecht’s own comments in his journal on 1 February 1952: Die Barlachausstellung der Akademie der Künste wurde in der Täglichen Rundschau und im Neuen Deutschland heftig angegriffen, so daß die wenigen verbliebenen Künstler in Lethargie geworfen wurden. Ich machte mir Notizen dazu, die Werte und das Exemplarische des Werks konkret ins Licht zu setzen gegen eine völlig abstrakte Vernichtung mit gesellschaftskritischen Waffen. (BFA, 27, p. 329)

Furthermore, Girnus’s refusal to print the notes in Neues Deutschland can only be interpreted in this context as at once a recognition and expression of their dissenting potential. With the publication of the notes, first of all in the February 1952 issue of Sinn und Form and subsequently in the form of abridged reprints in the Berliner Zeitung later in the same month and in the Düsseldorf periodical Heute und Morgen the following year, the nature of Brecht’s dissenting intention became twofold. The clear and deliberate intention on his part to oppose the Party line on Barlach was now allied to a defiance of Girnus’s decision not to publish his response. This double intention, and the degree of risk to his position in the GDR associated with it, marks out this intervention as a potentially oppositional act. In terms of the effect of the notes, their publication both in the East and the West and both in the daily and literary press ensured a broad circulation. Above all, though, it is the negative reaction of the SED authorities – the ‘Ärger, den sein Eintreten für Ernst Barlach aus80

Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 441.

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löste’ and the censure received by Huchel – which provides the most telling indication of the dissenting effect achieved by Brecht in this intervention.81 A textual analysis of the article itself (BFA, 23, pp. 198–202) seems to confirm to some extent the oppositional status conferred upon the notes by the contextual factors outlined above. It is noticeable, for instance, that Brecht does not shy away from making explicit reference to ‘die Diskussionen’ which have provoked the article. In fact, in the introductory paragraph - ‘mir mißfällt auch der ungeduldige und eifernde Ton einiger Äußerungen’ - he comes close to a public expression of the private dissent found in his journalentry of 1 February. Clear statements in praise of Barlach’s work further mark the notes out as a conscious counter-point to the Magritz and Girnus articles: ‘Ich halte Barlach für einen der größten Bildhauer, die wir Deutschen gehabt haben. Der Wurf, die Bedeutung der Aussage, das handwerkliche Ingenium, Schönheit ohne Beschönigung, Größe ohne Gerecktheit, Harmonie ohne Glätte, Lebenskraft ohne Brutalität machen Barlachs Plastiken zu Meisterwerken.’ Within the binary system of SED discourse, it is also significant that Brecht sees in Barlach’s work not ‘formalism’, but rather ‘das Merkmal des Realismus’. Brecht openly attributes to Barlach’s work the positively loaded term of the binary discursive pair. At the same time, both Brecht’s criticism of the discussion surrounding the exhibition and his praise for Barlach are tempered by a degree of equivocation. The ‘discussions’ about Barlach’s work, as Brecht euphemistically describes the one-sided articles in the Party press, are not condemned out of hand. Instead, they are seen as a healthy product of the GDR system: ‘Die Diskussionen darüber müssen als Zeichen für die Bedeutung gewertet werden, welche der Kunst in der DDR beigelegt wird. [...] die Diskussion mag noch nicht 81

302

Buck, p. 134. See also BFA, 23, p. 513. In Huchel’s own words: ‘Also wurde ich zu Becher zitiert, der mich beschimpfte.’ See Stephen Parker, Peter Huchel: A Literary Life in Twentieth-Century Germany (Bern: Lang, 1998), p. 312.

die Gründlichkeit und Allseitigkeit haben, die anzustreben ist, [...] aber Barlachs Werk ist noch nie für ein so großes Forum diskutiert worden.’ Indeed, Brecht goes further and makes significant concessions to Magritz and Girnus. He agrees, for instance, that some of the sculptures have ‘etwas Mystisches’ about them, and ‘daß unser künstlerischer Nachwuchs nicht aufgefordert werden sollte, von solchen Werken zu lernen’. It is even possible to locate what seems to be an accusation of ‘formalism’: ‘Ich notiere hier nichts über die Werke, die mir weniger gefallen (wie “Der Rächer”, “Der Zweifler”, “Die Verlassenen” usw.), da bei ihnen die Formung, wie mir scheint, eine Deformierung der Wirklichkeit bedeutet.’ Irrespective of whether we choose to interpret such concessions as a tactical move to make his criticism more palatable or as a genuine reflection of his views, such an open expression of agreement with the attacks which had preceded Brecht’s own intervention clearly neuters to some extent the dissenting potential of this same intervention. That Brecht did not launch an all-out polemic against Magritz and Girnus in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ is acknowledged by Mittenzwei: Aufschlußreich wiederum ist, daß er nicht mit einer Polemik auftrat, einer Form, in der er hätte brillieren können. Vielmehr nutzte er die gesellschaftskritischen Waffen, die die Kritiker der Täglichen Rundschau und des Neuen Deutschland gegen Barlach ausspielten, jetzt für Barlach. Er machte einige Notizen zu einzelnen Werken des Künstlers, indem er das Exemplarische der Barlachschen Kunst hervorhob, das, was ein Sozialist und Marxist an Barlach schätzen mußte.82

Instead of simply rebutting the attacks of Magritz and Girnus outright, Brecht seeks instead to engage with SED artistic criticism on its own terms. In this way, not only does he make concessions to Magritz and Girnus, but he also adheres closely to the orthodox discourse of Marxism-Leninism, concerning himself with Barlach’s relationship to central concepts such as Gesellschaft, Klasse, Kampf, Volk and Humanismus. While this approach does not entirely negate 82

Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 441.

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Brecht’s dissent, it does betray his continuing refusal to in any sense question the will to truth of the SED’s ideological claim. Any movement along the scale of dissent remains within the boundaries of support for the wider aims and goals of the regime. While the scope of this support remains broad and generalised, any dissent is apparently narrowly-targeted and partial. Nonetheless, this role which Brecht plays in affirming and propagating official SED discourse is not entirely straightforward. Here, Schoor’s analysis points to significant distinctions between Brecht’s participation in Marxist-Leninist discourse and that of Magritz and Girnus: ‘Obwohl sich die Notizen kurz fassen, gelingt ein differenziertes Urteil. Klar markiert Brecht, wo er im Jahre 1952 Leistungen, Anregendes und weniger Bedeutsames in Barlachs Werk sieht.’83 Where the SED version of Marxist-Leninist art criticism tries to suppress a plurality of meaning, Brecht’s offers a differentiated verdict. In this sense, the very concessions which Brecht makes to the official line become evidence of his more balanced and sophisticated mode of criticism. Where SED discourse makes a claim for its own truth, Brecht explicitly undermines any such claim on his behalf. Indeed he openly invites the reader to correct his assessment of the ‘Melonenschneider’: ‘Habe ich unrecht? Ich bin dankbar für Belehrung.’ Here, Brecht clearly undermines the claim for monosemia made by SED discourse. Further, where Magritz and Girnus have recourse to a formulaic and abstract form of discourse, Brecht presents a specific and concrete artistic analysis. This approach is expressed in the very form of the article, where individual paragraphs deal with individual sculptures in the most immediate and detailed manner. In his analysis of the 1919 work ‘Der Blinde und der Lahme’, for example, it becomes clear that ‘realism’ is not for Brecht an abstract elastic category which exists only to oppose its undesirable binary other, ‘formalism’. Instead it is a relatively concrete entity with identifiable and justifiable features. Similarly, and most significantly, Brecht stops short of attaching the empty label ‘formal83

304

Schoor, p. 101.

ist’ to Barlach’s more formally abstract works. When Brecht writes of ‘eine Deformierung der Wirklichkeit’, he is referring to a concrete reality, not applying an abstract category. In Brecht’s concluding comments, the true target of his intervention becomes clear: ‘Jedoch geht es nicht an, diese Werke mit den anderen in einen Topf zu werfen, besonders dann, wenn weder die einen noch die andern konkret behandelt werden. Eine abstrakte Kritik führt nicht zu einer realistischen Kunst.’ What Brecht is dissenting against is not the specific criticism of Barlach but rather the entire method and style of art criticism in the GDR. He seeks to undermine the formulaic and unambiguous binarisms of official SED discourse, making no claim for the unequivocal truth of his own discourse. Instead, he makes room for plurality of meaning, expressing the kind of dissent identified by Bathrick and Emmerich only in later phases of the GDR’s existence.84 In this sense, the dissent expressed in the notes is less partial and more generalised than might at first appear the case. It is in this double ‘Widersprüchlichkeit’, contradicting Magritz and Girnus outside the text while at the same time allowing for contradiction inside his own text, that the dissenting function of Brecht’s Barlach intervention lies. At the same time, discursive contrasts to SED artistic criticism notwithstanding, Brecht’s participation in the discourse of MarxismLeninism and continued propagation of its will to truth substantially vitiates the dissenting function of this intervention. As the Katzgraben analysis showed and as the following analysis of Brecht’s behaviour throughout 1951 will further attest, Brecht’s participation in SED discourse is not the unintentional result of some kind of Foucaultian discursive procedure. Rather it is a deliberate expression of ideological support.

84

See David Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 297–312; Wolfgang Emmerich, ‘Affirmation – Utopie – Melancholie: Versuch einer Bilanz von vierzig Jahren DDR Literatur’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 325–44.

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The Formalism Campaign (1951): private dissent and public assent At this point it is worth broadening the analysis to encompass the wider cultural-political context of 1951 and the SED’s on-going Formalism Campaign. As Mittenzwei notes: ‘Da zwei so verschiedene Menschen wie Brecht und Barlach kaum denkbar sind, entsteht die Frage, warum sich Brecht so für Barlach einsetzte.’85 After all, Brecht seems to have shown little interest in, let alone affection for, Barlach’s work prior to Seitz’s visit.86 The evidence presented above and the identification of the broader purpose behind Brecht’s intervention, as a defence of art criticism rather than a defence of specifically Ernst Barlach, goes a long way to answering the question of why he intervened here on Barlach’s behalf. However, what is rather more difficult to answer is not so much why Brecht intervened in the Barlach controversy, but rather why he did not intervene earlier in the Formalism Campaign when it touched him much more directly in the criticism both of the Ensemble’s production of Die Mutter and of his collaborative project with Paul Dessau, Das Verhör des Lukullus.87 The apparent contrast between Brecht’s very public response here in early 1952 and his more restrained response throughout 1951 is a notable one, and one which carries a potentially much broader significance for understanding Brecht’s behaviour in the GDR. The first point to note about Brecht’s behaviour in the course of 1951 is that the absence of a public intervention did not stem from indifference as regards the developing course of SED cultural policy. His unpublished writings from 1951 reveal a pre-occupation with the notion of ‘formalism’. In this context, we can identify a range of short notes and longer essays – such as ‘Zur Formalismusdebatte’, ‘Was ist Formalismus?’, ‘Formalismus und neue Formen’, or ‘Der unkosmopolitische Kosmopolitismus’ (see BFA, 23, pp. 134–47) – 85 86 87

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Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 441. See Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 441–42. See Lucchesi, Das Verhör in der Oper.

which respond directly to the key texts of the Formalism Campaign, namely Orlov’s ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’ and Lauter’s Der Kampf gegen den Formalismus.88 Of particular note in the light of his attack on the discourse of SED art criticism in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ is the short essay ‘Notizen über die Formalismusdiskussion’ (BFA, 23, pp. 141–42). Here, Brecht takes issue with the method of art criticism which employs medical metaphors rather than concrete analysis: ‘Anstatt nachzuweisen, bei dem und dem Kunstwerk handle es sich um etwas gesellschaftlich Unnützes oder Schädliches, behauptet man, es handle sich um eine Krankheit.’ Similarly, a short note written in January 1951 after the premiere of Die Mutter anticipates the critique of the abstract criticism carried out in the Barlach intervention a year later: ‘Damit die Kunst kritisiert werden kann, muß die Kunstkritik kritisiert werden. Manche unserer Kritiker sind so darauf aus, allgemeine und drohende Sätze aufzustellen, daß sie jede Berührung mit der Wirklichkeit verlieren’ (BFA, 23, p. 134). These writings have a twin significance. Firstly, the dissent which is expressed in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ can already be seen to be apparent throughout 1951. Secondly, this dissent remains confined to the private sphere. Further evidence of this purely private expression of dissent is to be found both in conversations from 1951, recorded by Käthe Rülicke, and in unpublished writings reacting to the Lukullus controversy. In a note held in the Brecht Archive, Rülicke reports on a series of conversations held in early 1951. Brecht’s dissatisfaction with the Orlov articles and with the SED’s abstract critical discourse are evident: Der Orlow-Artikel hat viele Diskussionen ausgelöst, recht dumme meist, wie der undialektische Artikel von Girnus u.a. [...] recht interessant war das Gespräch vom Anf. Februar 51 mit Eisler, Fischer, Brecht, Gegenstand neben dem Orlow-Artikel und Fischers (Wien) Vortrag der Stand der heutigen 88

See N. Orlov, ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’, Tägliche Rundschau, 20 and 21 January 1951 and Hans Lauter, Der Kampf gegen den Formalismus: Für eine fortschrittliche deutsche Kultur (Berlin: Dietz, 1951).

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Malerei überhaupt. [...] Was ist überhaupt Formalismus? Girnus schreibt darüber 4 Seiten, ohne einmal eine Definition zu geben, nur kämpfen sollen wir dagegen. (BBA, 1340/45)

As far as the Lukullus controversy is concerned, a number of short notes exist dealing with the accusation of ‘formalism’ in music which had been levelled at Paul Dessau (see BFA, 23, p. 137–38). Perhaps most notable amongst Brecht’s writings dealing with Lukullus is a set of five numbered theses, written in March/April 1951, directly addressing the criticism of both Lukullus and Die Mutter (BFA, 23, pp. 135–37). In its form and content, the article pre-empts the Faustus contribution. However, significantly, and in contrast to the ‘Faustus-Thesen’, this article remained unpublished at the time. A short text, drafted as a recommendation of the Academy and dating from April 1951, also exists, in which the decision to suppress the Lukullus opera is described as a ‘diktatorisch administrativer Akt’ (BFA, 23, p. 138). Again it is critics who become the focus for Brecht’s dissatisfaction: ‘Wir müssen unsere Musikfachleute dahin beeinflussen, daß sie kameradschaftliche Kritik üben. Kameradschaftlichkeit bedeutet [...] konstruktive Kritik, bedeutet Vorschläge, bedeutet konkrete Mitarbeit, bedeutet also letzthin Fleiß.’ Brecht’s strong and direct criticism of the Formalism Campaign, again recorded by Rülicke – ‘Formalismus-Diskussion helfe nicht nur nichts, sondern grober politischer Fehler, da sie die Spaltung vertieft’ – remains privately expressed dissent, rather than publicly expressed opposition.89 Instructive in this respect are the statements which Brecht did choose to have published in Sinn und Form in 1951. In the final two issues of 1951, Huchel published, respectively, Brecht’s open letter in support of a government resolution calling for pan-German cooperation and against West German re-militarisation, ‘Offener Brief an die deutschen Künstler und Schriftsteller’ (BFA, 23, pp. 155–56), and his 1938 essay, ‘Über reimlose Lyrik mit unregelmäßigen Rhyth89

308

‘54: Tagebuchnotiz von Käthe Rülicke, 12. März 1951’, in Lucchesi, Das Verhör in der Oper, p. 78.

men’ (BFA, 22, p. 357–64), which had first appeared in the exile journal Das Wort in 1939. While it is difficult not to read the publication of this latter essay, twelve years after it had first appeared within the context of the Expressionism Debate, as some kind of dissenting intervention in the Formalism Campaign, albeit a very indirect and anachronistic one, its dissenting effect is minimal compared to the effect achieved by the open letter, published in the previous issue. In addition to its publication in Sinn und Form, the open letter was reproduced across the entire front page of Neues Deutschland. It was sent to prominent personalities, distributed in its thousands as a flyer, and its pithy, epigrammatic concluding sentences read on the radio by Helene Weigel. In Mittenzwei’s words: Die Wirkung war ungeheuer. Die Schlußsätze sagten sich die Leute auf der Straße. Die Reden, die in den folgenden Wochen gehalten wurden, endeten mit dem Zitieren der Brechtschen Sätze von dem großen Carthago [sic], das drei Kriege führte. So erwies sich der ‘Offene Brief’ als eine Flugschrift vom stilistischen und politischen Format des Hessischen Landboten, politisch nur unendlich wirkungsvoller.90

Alongside the laudable Cold War appeal for peace, the open letter constituted a partisan intervention on behalf of Grotewohl and the Volkskammer. Its call for freedom of expression in the West conveniently glossed over restrictions in the East and tied Brecht to the core, founding GDR myth of peace-seeking anti-fascism. Made in the name of the East German state, the considerable effect of this intervention marks it out as an act of the strongest possible support, even collaboration. The following observation made by James K. Lyon does much to bring this mixture of assent and dissent into focus: ‘Privately or in closed sessions [Brecht] would sometimes dissent or defend principle, but generally he attempted to represent himself as a loyal supporter of the state.’91 Above all in the Lukullus controversy, 90 91

Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 569. Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, p. 79.

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Brecht’s preference for private expressions of dissent and behindthe-scenes manoeuvring contrasts sharply with what Lucchesi refers to as ‘eher beschönigenden öffentlichen Äußerungen’ and what Lyon terms his ‘eager conformity’ in making alterations to the text of the opera.92 While the dissent expressed in the act of addressing a letter to Ulbricht on 12 March 1951 is not to be underestimated (BFA, 30, pp. 57–58), it is the public expressions of support which have the more powerful and long-lasting effect. In this context, the significance of the Barlach intervention becomes clear, because here the firm resolution to confine dissent to the private sphere, which had survived the difficulties of 1951, was broken. Perhaps the attack on a more ‘realist’ artist simply proved one attack too many, although there had already been plenty of attacks on artists Brecht considered to be realists. Perhaps it compromised the external image of GDR harmony less to intervene on behalf of a sculptor who had died thirteen years earlier. Above all, it was surely the fact that Barlach had also fallen victim to Nazi art purges which so provoked Brecht. After all, he had earlier in the year been moved to pose himself the question: ‘was ist der Unterschied zwischen entarteter Kunst und volksfremder Kunst?’ (BFA, 23, p. 143). And yet, as a discursive analysis of the Barlach intervention shows, even the repetition by the self-proclaimed anti-fascist state of the cultural policies of German fascism was not enough to prevent Brecht from continuing to attempt, in Lyon’s words, ‘to represent himself as a loyal supporter of the state’. Of course, as the Katzgraben production demonstrates, such attempts stemmed not least from the fact that Brecht was a loyal supporter of the state.

92

310

Joachim Lucchesi, ‘Macht-Spiele: Die Kontroverse um die Lukullus-Oper’, in Delabar and Döring (eds), pp. 315–23 (p. 317); Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, p. 77.

‘Thesen zur Faustus-Diskussion’ Although compromised by its partial and often indirect nature, the dissent expressed in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ was for the first time both intentional and public. Up to then, any intentional dissent expressed by Brecht had remained private, any public dissent unintentional. Furthermore, the direct nature of this dissent clearly sets it apart from that expressed by Eich under National Socialism. The question to be addressed now is the position occupied by this intervention within the broader dynamic of Brecht’s dissent. Did the Barlach notes constitute a one-off, the peak of Brecht’s dissent? Or is it possible to trace a more consistent, rising trend in this dissent, from low-level private expressions in 1951, to that first significant public intervention in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’, and then on to a further heightening of dissent in the cultural-political controversies of 1953? At the peak of such a trend, which would mirror the strengthening claim of the regime, would stand Brecht’s contributions to the dissenting double issue of Sinn und Form, published in the late summer of 1953. Here, we need to explore how the nature of the dissent expressed in these contributions, namely the ‘Faustus-Thesen’ and the ‘Erklärung der DAK’, compares to that expressed in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ and how far this dissent may also have been softened by an assenting function. Contextual evidence relating to the dissenting function of the ‘Faustus-Thesen’ pulls in two contradictory directions. On the one hand, it is clear that Brecht was making a direct intervention in the long-running and often fierce cultural-political controversy which had raged since the publication of Eisler’s libretto in the final edition of Sinn und Form of 1952, along with Ernst Fischer’s controversial essay, ‘Doktor Faustus und der deutsche Bauernkrieg’.93 As we have seen, Jäger interprets this intervention as an attempt by Brecht to exploit the channel offered by Sinn und Form in order to put a good 93

Hanns Eisler, ‘Aus: Doktor Faustus’, and Ernst Fischer, ‘Doktor Faustus und der deutsche Bauernkrieg’, Sinn und Form, 4.6 (1952), 23-58 and 59–73.

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word in for his friend Eisler.94 Similarly, for Schoor it is one of the archetypal instances which justifies his ‘interventionist’ hypothesis about Brecht’s publication policy in Sinn und Form.95 Just as the Barlach essay acts as an explicit counterpoint to articles by Magritz and Girnus, so the Faustus article responds directly to both an article by Alexander Abusch which appears alongside it and an article by Girnus which had appeared in Neues Deutschland.96 Indeed, for Schoor the juxtaposition of Brecht’s theses with Alexander Abusch’s apparently opposing views heightens the potential for dissent: ‘Daß Huchel Abuschs Aufsatz dann so brachte, daß Brecht faktisch das letzte Wort erteilt wurde, dürfte die Auseinandersetzung verschärft haben.’97 On the other hand, it is vitally important to distinguish contextually between the publication of the ‘Faustus-Thesen’ in Sinn und Form and their initial presentation at the Mittwochgesellschaften at the Academy of Arts on 27 May 1953.98 While their publication took place after 17 June when the Faustus battle had been all but won by the Brecht faction, their initial composition and presentation occurred at the height of the pressure on Brecht. Acknowledging this fact means downplaying the dissenting function of the published theses in two principal respects. Firstly, in terms of the context in which the text was published, Schoor is mistaken to point to a heightening of the controversy, since by then that controversy was over, the claim of the regime softened, and any dissenting function lessened. Secondly, the text itself shows the signs of the pressure Brecht was under at the time of its composition, and this, as we shall see, constrains its dissenting potential. Textually, as well as contextually, the Faustus contribution (BFA, 23, pp. 246–49) carries strong similarities to the Barlach intervention. 94 95 96 97 98

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Jäger, p. 67. Schoor, pp. 102–05. Alexander Abusch, ‘Faust: Held oder Renegat in der deutschen Nationalliteratur?’, Sinn und Form, 5.3/4 (1953), 179–94; Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Die klassische Faust-Konzeption’, Neues Deutschland, 14 May 1953. Schoor, p. 104. For the transcript of the meeting, see Bunge, pp. 137–79.

In the opening and closing paragraphs, Brecht defends and praises Eisler’s work. It is ‘ein bedeutendes literarisches Werk durch sein großes nationales Thema, durch die Verknüpfung der Faust-Figur mit dem Bauernkrieg, durch seine großartige Konzeption, durch seine Sprache, durch seinen Ideenreichtum’. Eisler ‘hat einen positiven Beitrag zum Großen Faust-Problem geliefert, dessen sich die deutsche Literatur nicht zu schämen braucht’. In between these positive assessments of Eisler’s work, Brecht offers what seems to be a similarly balanced and equivocal analysis to that found in his interpretation of Barlach’s sculpture. He accepts some of Girnus’s and Abusch’s views, and refutes others. While point 12, for instance, considers but ultimately rejects their opinions, Brecht’s concluding comments give substantial ground to Eisler’s critics: 12. Hat Eisler vesucht, unser klassisches Faustbild völlig zu zerstören (ND)? Entseelt, verfälscht, vernichtet er eine wunderbare Gestalt des deutschen Erbes (Abusch)? Nimmt er den Faust zurück (Abusch)? Ich denke nicht. [...] Mit den Kritikern Eislers stimme ich darin überein, daß die deutsche Geschichte nicht als Negativum dargestellt werden darf, sowie darin, daß die deutsche Dichtung, zu deren schönsten Werken Goethes Faust gehört, nicht preisgegeben werden darf, sondern nunmehr ernstlich zum Eigentum des Volkes gemacht werden muß.

In this article, as in the Barlach intervention, Brecht again seems to offer a more concrete and differentiated approach to cultural criticism than do SED officials. Equally, this approach once more remains firmly rooted within a Marxist-Leninist framework. And yet, the tone in the theses is noticeably more defensive than that of the Barlach notes, and this is where the circumstances of their composition and presentation make themselves felt. Given that Brecht himself had played a part in writing the Faustus libretto, the contrast between the restrained praise for Eisler and the outright

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appreciation of Barlach’s abilities is a significant one.99 Brecht seems almost over-eager to give ground, unconditionally accepting Girnus’s assumptions in point 8: ‘Wir müssen unbedingt ausgehen von der Wahrheit des Satzes: “Eine Konzeption, der die deutsche Geschichte nichts als Misere ist, und in der das Volk als schöpferische Potenz fehlt, ist nicht wahr” (ND).’ In point 10, he rejects Fischer’s nonorthodox interpretation of Eisler’s text, referring not to Fischer’s essay itself, but rather to the official Neues Deutschland interpretation of Fischer’s argument. Most significantly of all, given his earlier private statements, Brecht unquestioningly adopts in point 2 the abstract, threatening vocabulary of SED artistic criticism: ‘Bei all diesen Eigenschaften könnte das Werk abgelehnt werden, wenn es asozial oder antinational wäre.’ Here, there is no concrete definitional clarity brought to these terms, and Brecht’s failure to question this terminology, as he had done in earlier writings, is a clear indication of a more conciliatory tone. The form of the article, too, as a series of numbered theses, betrays its origins as a discussion piece for the Mittwoch-Gesellschaften rather than as a polemical essay.100 In this context, Lyon’s assessment of Brecht’s contributions to those meetings applies also to the ‘Faustus-Thesen’: Absent in these discussions are the witty sarcasm and mordant polemics at which he excelled. In uncharacteristically conciliatory language that cites Marxist writings and consciously uses some of the bureaucratese current in the GDR, he restrains himself and, for the most part, remains unusually diplomatic.101

What Lyon notes here is both Brecht’s conciliatory, defensive tone and his consistent participation in the discourse of Marxism99

Bertolt Brecht, Arbeitsjournal, 25 August 1952–30 August 1952, BFA, 27, p. 333: ‘Eisler hier mit seinem Faust. Wir gehen das Ganze durch, straffen, bringen alles so gut wie möglich in Fokus.’ 100 The minutes of a meeting of the Academy’s literary section on 30 January 1951 record Brecht’s call for presentations to be formulated ‘in Thesen [...] um so zur Diskussion anzureizen’. BBA, 1486/8. 101 Lyon, ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany’, p. 76.

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Leninism and SED criticism. As Davies and Parker point out, it is this ‘ideologised view of circumstances’ which sets the limits ‘on his discourse of opposition’.102 As in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’, Brecht’s seemingly unshakeable faith in the dialectic convinces him that such controversies represent constructive discussion, not stage-managed attempts to force dissenting intellectuals into a recantation of their unorthodoxy. This equivocation also bears witness to the unfavourable pre-17-June context of the article’s composition. Published out of this context, after 17 June, this conciliatory tone is exposed and much of the dissenting potential of the contribution lost. After 17 June 1953: recommendations for change By contrast, the extent of the dissent which was possible in the post17-June context is demonstrated by the ‘Erklärung der DAK’, published at the back of the summer double-issue as ‘Vorschläge der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’ (BFA, 23, pp. 253–55). Admittedly, both the introductory paragraph and point 10 represent a clear statement of support for the regime, couched in archetypal SED discourse: In dem Bestreben, die Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik bei ihrer Aufgabe zu unterstützen, die nationale Einheit Deutschlands herzustellen und den Frieden zu sichern, erklärt die Deutsche Akademie der Künste: [...] 10. Die Ereignisse des 17. Juni haben bewiesen, daß der Kampf gegen den Faschismus in allen seinen Erscheinungen auch von den Künsten mit gesteigerter Kraft wieder aufgenommen werden muß.

Nonetheless, the remainder of the statement constitutes a direct confrontation of the regime, making recommendations to them for the reform of their cultural policies. Consider point 1, for example, 102 Davies and Parker, p. 190.

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with its strong and direct modal auxiliary and its characteristic emphasis on the errors of bureaucratic functionaries: ‘Die staatlichen Organe sollen [...] sich aber jeder administrativen Maßnahme in Fragen der künstlerischen Produktion und des Stils enthalten.’ In a similar vein, points 7, 8, and 9 make direct recommendations concerning, respectively, the award of National Prizes to non-GDR citizens, the editorship of cultural journals, and the dissolution of the Volksbühne. The recommendation in point 3 is particularly striking, as a previously troublesome institution, which the regime had been trying to bring fully under its control for eighteen months, now publicly suggested that it should be consulted on all cultural matters: ‘Die Deutsche Akademie der Künste schlägt der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vor, sie bei allen die Kunst betreffenden Verordnungen und Gesetzen als Gutachter und Berater hinzuzuziehen.’ Just how dissenting these recommendations were perceived to be is made clear by the reaction of the regime to attempts to publish them. On 18 June, Brecht had been elected into a commission of Academy members whose task was to draw up recommendations for the development of cultural policy in the light of the events of 17 June.103 On 30 June, the ten points were approved in a plenary meeting of the Academy, and on 2 July it was decided to deliver the recommendations to the government immediately and have them published the next day. However, as a number of notes in the Brecht Archive show, a series of blocking manoeuvres by the regime ensured that the recommendations were not published until ten days later (see BBA, 1493/38-39, 40, 41). In particular, a note dated 9 July 1953 records three telephone calls made on that day. In the first, Paul Wandel is seen to have objected to several of the Academy’s recommendations, describing ‘einige Punkte in ihrer Formulierung 103 See BBA, 1493/14–15. See also Hecht, Brecht-Chronik, p. 1065. As Davies and Parker note, the BFA remarkably, and misleadingly, ascribes the impetus for the commission to the government’s introduction of the New Course a week earlier and not to the uprising of 17 June. See Davies and Parker, p. 195, note 32 and BFA, 23, p. 549.

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als überspitzt’. A second telephone call from the editors of Neue Zeit reports more direct government intervention: ‘das Presseamt beim Ministerpräsidenten der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik hat die Redaktion angerufen, dass die von der Akademie zur Veröffentlichung gegebenen 10 Punkte nicht zu veröffentlichen seien.’ Above all, it appears to be point 5 of the recommendations, relating to radio policy and, in particular, the use of the radio on 17 June, which provoked the government’s objections: Der Rundfunk hat als ein entscheidendes Instrument der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung versagt. Er hat die Information und Beeinflussung der Bevölkerung den irreführenden gegnerischen Sendern überlassen. Nur eine grundlegende Reorganisation - auch auf künstlerischem Gebiet - kann den Rundfunk in die Lage versetzen, das Interesse und das Vertrauen der Hörer wiederzugewinnen und den Einfluß der gegnerischen Sender zurückzudrängen. (BFA, 23, p. 254)

The third telephone call made on 9 July makes clear that the government is seeking a twenty-four hour delay to publication precisely because of objections to point 5. Indeed, eventual publication in Neues Deutschland on 12 July 1953 only followed interventions by Becher on behalf of the Academy to Grotewohl, and in one such letter Becher can be seen to object directly to requests to make point 5 ‘positiver’ (BBA, 1493/40). More significantly for our purposes, a further note exists recording a telephone conversation between Becher and Grotewohl on 10 July 1953, in which it is suggested that Brecht had to be dissuaded from resigning from the Academy over this same issue of radio policy (BBA Z 37/76). This tallies with evidence that Brecht offered the services of the Berliner Ensemble to broadcast on 17 June, and that the failure to take up this offer was one of Brecht’s primary concerns in the wake of the day’s events.104 The significance of the dissent expressed in point 5 is then twofold. Firstly, it demonstrates that this was an 104 See Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 488–89, and Parker, ‘Sinn und Form und der 17. Juni’, p. 745.

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instance when Brecht translated his genuine private concerns into a public expression of dissent. Secondly, it once again demonstrates how this dissent could not break free from Brecht’s ideologised view of events. The radio’s failure had been to allow itself to be defeated in the propaganda battle by ‘den irreführenden gegnerischen Sendern’ of the West. What is particularly significant about the ‘Erklärung der DAK’ is the way that Brecht’s private dissatisfaction is translated in this way into public dissent, not only on one very specific cultural-political issue, but across the full range of art and culture. Further, the breadth of this dissent accurately reflects Brecht’s private comments and writings. For instance, the specific assertion in point 1, that it is juries made up of artists which should be responsible for art exhibitions, can be traced directly to a complaint made by Brecht during the discussions held at the Berliner Ensemble after 17 June.105 In these discussions, Brecht’s exasperation with cultural functionaries and critics, together with his determination to effect change, is evident: In der Akademie war eine Besprechung mit der Leitung der Staatlich. Kunstkommission. Dabei wurde festgestellt, dass die Referenten nahezu keine Fachkenntnis haben auf Gebieten, auf denen sie sehr diktatorisch handeln. Hier muss etwas geschehen. [...] Wir haben eine Reihe solcher Eingriffe schärfster Art, die überhaupt nicht mit Künstlern diskutiert wurden. Diese Angriffe erfolgten gegen Künstler, die vom Staat wegen ihrer künstlerischen Tätigkeit in die Akademie berufen worden sind und dadurch vom Staat anerkannt waren. [...] Niemand kann sich wundern, dass die Künstler einen enormen Druck empfinden, von dem sie nicht wissen, wo er herkommt. Diese Dinge müssen abgestellt werden. (BBA, 1447/22)106

105 The minutes of the Ensemble’s discussions on 25 June 1953 read as follows: ‘Man hat z.B. für die Dresdner Kunstausstellung eine Jury von 30 Leuten gewählt. 29 waren gegen die Annahme eines bestimmten Bildes, der Direktor war dafür, das Bild wurde ausgehängt. Das ist unerträglich, indiskutabel.’ BBA, 1447/22. 106 Also quoted in Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 504–05.

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This determination to achieve changes manifested itself in considerable manoeuvrings within the context of the Academy: ‘Nach dem 17. Juni spielte Brecht eine überragende Rolle in den Akademiediskussionen. Er nutzte die Krise, um sich gegen dogmatische Einengungen zur Wehr zu setzen.’107 In particular, Brecht’s interventions on 26 June on behalf of Huchel and Eisler attest to a considerable degree of dissent, overturning the previous decision to relieve Huchel of the editorship of Sinn und Form.108 In this context, Brecht’s successful efforts to have the State Art Commission abolished are also of great significance, as is a letter from Wolfgang Langhoff to Hans Lauter, dated 1 October 1953, which complains bitterly of the continuing dissent of a sizeable grouping around Brecht in the Academy: Felsenstein äußerte, man müsse sofort emigrieren, denn der neue Kurs würde in keiner Weise durchgeführt. [...] Ernst Busch will Nationalpreis und alle Ämter niederlegen und Holzhauer wegen Verleumdung verklagen. [...] Die Palucca will ebenfalls nach Westdeutschland auswandern, wenn ihr Fall nicht zufriedenstellend gelöst wird. [...] Es ist hohe Zeit, daß hier eine Änderung eintritt. Die Gruppe um Brecht (Seitz, Ihering, Felsenstein, Busch u.a.) droht wirklich mit einer offenen Fehde. (BBA, Z 37/82)109

Although these actions were not always public, the changes in policy which Brecht was able to effect, albeit with the aid of external events, constitute a highly significant blocking of the regime’s claim and hence acquire a significant dissenting function. Further strong evidence of the dissent expressed by Brecht in this post-17-June period comes in a letter from Girnus to Ulbricht, dated 27 July 1953. Here, Girnus, in his official role as Brecht’s shadow, reports a conversation held between himself and Brecht two days earlier.

107 Parker, ‘Sinn und Form und der 17. Juni’, p. 751. 108 See Davies and Parker, p. 191. 109 Letter, Wolfgang Langhoff to Hans Lauter, 1 October 1953.

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[Brecht] überreichte mir einen Artikel zur Veröffentlichung, in dem [...] der Standpunkt vertreten wird, daß unsere gesamte bisherige Kunstpolitik, basierend auf den Beschlüssen des V. Plenums falsch war. [...] Bei dieser Gelegenheit gab es eine ausführliche Auseinandersetzung mit Brecht über einige Punkte im Zusammenhang mit seiner Kritik des V. Plenums. Brecht stellte fest, seiner Meinung nach sind die Beschlüsse völlig falsch, von Anfang bis zum Ende, und zwar unter anderem deshalb weil das, was Genosse Schdanow seinerzeit zu diesen Fragen in der Sowjetunion gesagt hat, für uns absolut nicht in Frage kommen kann. [...] Besonders heftige Angriffe richtete Brecht gegen unsere Auffassung von der Volksverbundenheit der Kunst. [...] Kampf gegen Formalismus und Dekadenz sei eine nazistische Sache. (BBA, Z 37/38)110

That the article referred to in this letter, ‘Kulturpolitik und Akademie der Künste’ (BFA, 23, pp. 256–60), was published in Neues Deutschland on 13 August 1953 indicates not only that Brecht intervened behind closed doors but also that he ensured that his dissent made its way into the public sphere. This sustained campaign of dissent in the wake of 17 June, broad in its scope (directed in Girnus’s words against ‘unsere gesamte bisherige Kunstpolitik’), often public in its expression, and also organised in its nature within the institutional framework of the Academy, marks this period out as one of direct opposition on Brecht’s part to the SED regime. The dynamics of dissent By way of an evaluation of the evidence presented in this section, it may be worth returning at this point to the broader perspective of the nature of dissent in the German dictatorships. In this context, Brecht’s case offers further evidence of the intimate relationship between the expression of dissent and the nature of the ‘total’ claim being made by the regime. This relationship operates on two levels. Firstly, there is clear evidence that Brecht conforms to the kind of common dissenting dynamic whereby a shift over time away from 110 See also Europäische Ideen, 97 (1996), 22–23.

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purely assenting forms of behaviour to encompass more dissenting actions can be seen to correspond in large measure to the strengthening of the regime’s claim and its stricter imposition. The analysis of Brecht’s public interventions and statements, particularly in Sinn und Form, seems to reveal a pattern which matches these shifts. As the relatively less restrictive early phase of GDR cultural policy gives way to the launch of the Formalism Campaign and the public statement of the government’s claim in 1951 which is in turn superseded by the radical hardening of policy in 1952–1953, so Brecht’s dissent cam be seen to become increasingly widespread, direct, intentional, and public. In Sinn und Form, ‘Über reimlose Lyrik’ gives way to the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ which are superseded by the ‘Faustus-Thesen’ and the ‘Erklärung der DAK’. This is not a question of the same type of act being politicised to a greater extent by a more extensive claim, but of a qualitative shift in the type of behaviour being undertaken, in its scope, and in its publicness. Here, parallels may well exist to the behaviour of a small number of intellectuals in the Third Reich, such as Gottfried Benn, Ernst Jünger, and even to a certain extent Günter Eich, whose relationship to the regime demonstrates a rising dissenting dynamic in parallel to the radicalisation of Nazi policies. At the same time, in accordance with the theoretical principles developed by members of the Bavaria Project, Brecht’s interventions demonstrate how the changing nature of the regime’s claim can affect the nature of the dissent expressed through the same type of act. As we have already noted, ‘die Art der Herrschaft bestimmt die Art des Widerstands; und je umfassender der Herrschaftsanspruch, desto mehr, nicht weniger Widerstand ist die Folge’.111 However, as far as Brecht’s dissenting interventions in Sinn und Form are concerned, it is not the rise in the nature of the regime’s claim between 1949 and mid-1953, but rather the relative easing of the claim that accompanied the upheavals of June 1953 which is the significant 111 Ian Kershaw, ‘Widerstand ohne Volk: Dissens und Widerstand im Dritten Reich’, in Jürgen Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach (eds), Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich: Piper, 1994), pp. 779–98 (p. 781).

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factor. Had the ‘Faustus-Thesen’ been published at the time of their composition and initial presentation in late May 1953, their dissenting function would have been considerably greater than it was in their subsequent post-17-June publication, just as the risk associated with that act would have been greater. This must be an important consideration in our evaluation of the broad campaign of dissent initiated by Brecht in the wake of the events of 17 June. The very fact that such interventions were possible without adversely affecting Brecht’s position is an indication of the easing of the regime’s claim. The oppositional function of this campaign is still considerable, but the relaxation of the regime’s claim is one factor which argues against a categorisation of this behaviour as ‘resistance’. Above all though, it is Brecht’s continuing expression of assent to the regime throughout the period of our analysis which vitiates the dissenting potential of his interventions. Against the scope, organisation, and, not least, effectiveness of his dissent must be weighed Brecht’s continued refusal to put into question the core myths of SED ideology. As much as the reality of SED cultural policy may have pushed Brecht into dissent, there can be no doubt that in his public interventions Brecht’s attachment to the broader will to truth of the regime remains intact. These public dissenting interventions, significant as they are, remain the exception. In Sinn und Form, the dissent of mid-1953 is never repeated. Instead, it is assenting statements, such as Brecht’s acceptance speech for the Stalin Peace Prize (BFA, 23, pp. 345–47) or his protest against the Paris Treaties (BFA, 23, p. 320), which persist. Furthermore, the promotion of these statements through the institutional machinery of the GDR ensured an effect which the dissenting statements could never match. The degree of dissent expressed by Brecht in these statements does not, for instance, approach the degree of assent expressed in the open letter of 1951. Indeed, even the ‘dissenting’ interventions betray assent in their conformity to the norms of SED discourse, so that, although the scope of the dissent expressed against cultural policy does become general, it is never extended to encompass the wider assumptions of SED ideology. As the analysis of the Katzgraben essay 322

demonstrated, this was not merely a tactical granting of assent to facilitate the public expression of dissent. Rather, this was a consistent position of genuine ideological support, and one which the events of 17 June only served to strengthen. In his cultural-political statements and interventions, it was this seemingly unshakeable attachment to the Marxist-Leninist will to truth which held Brecht back from crossing the gulf to fundamental ‘resistance’.

The ‘Buckower Elegien’ In terms of the dynamic of Brecht’s dissent in the GDR, it has been possible to trace a rising trend, characterised by both increasing scope and publicness, through 1951 and into 1953. The importance of the events of 17 June 1953 as a catalyst for the expression of opposition to SED cultural policies was also apparent. Yet, for all the direct and public dissent expressed in Sinn und Form and elsewhere and for all the genuine effectiveness of his private interventions in the Academy of Arts, the constraints of Brecht’s ideological support for the regime ensured that the scope of his dissent remained within the parameters of cultural policy. Furthermore, although this dissent could not have been expressed without the crisis initiated by 17 June and Brecht’s ability to exploit it, the events of 17 June did not actually generate that dissent. Rather, they only freed dissatisfaction with developments in the cultural sphere which far pre-dated 17 June 1953. The questions which are to be addressed now relate to the capacity of 17 June to generate a new kind of dissent in Brecht’s behaviour. In particular, how far did the workers’ uprising and its suppression with Soviet tanks effect a shift in Brecht’s attitude to the broader issues of SED rule and the construction of Socialism within the GDR? That is to say, did the events of 17 June succeed in pushing Brecht’s dissent beyond the partial parameters of cultural policy and into a more generalised sphere? 323

Response to 17 June 1953 Certainly any such shift is difficult to identify in the public sphere. In terms of a public reaction to the events of the 17 June, the publication in Neues Deutschland on 21 June of the final sentence of Brecht’s letter to Ulbricht, ‘es ist mir ein Bedürfnis, Ihnen in diesem Augenblick meine Verbundenheit mit der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands auszudrücken’ (BFA, 30, p. 178), achieved a powerful collaborative effect. The extent of this effect is readily discernible from the organised attempts to boycott Brecht’s work in the West. Although in private Brecht expressed his anger at the treatment of his letter, he did little in public to correct the impression of solidarity which had been given.112 In any case, the full text of the letter and the text Brecht did have published in Neues Deutschland on 23 June, ‘Dringlichkeit einer großen Aussprache’ (BFA, 23, p. 250), cannot be said to have expressed generalised dissent against the regime. Indeed, the heading given by Neues Deutschland to this latter contribution, ‘Für Faschisten darf es keine Gnade geben’, makes it clear that Brecht’s publicly-represented position was an orthodox one. Nonetheless, Carl Weber maintains that outside the public sphere this more generalised dissent did exist: ‘In private conversation he didn’t hide his misgivings; in his journal and his most private mode of self-expression, the poems not intended for publication, he clearly stated his disgust with the aberrations he saw.’113 If the 17 June did initiate a more generalised shift in Brecht’s dissent, then it is in the private sphere and, in particular, private poetry where we might expect to locate it.

112 In an internal memo to Walter Ulbricht, dated 7 July 1953, Gustav Just reports a conversation held with Brecht two days earlier: ‘Dabei äußerte Bertold [sic] Brecht, er sei empört über die Behandlung seines Briefes, den er nach den Ereignissen des 17. Juni an den Generalsekretär des ZK der SED, Genossen Walter Ulbricht, geschickt habe.’ BBA, Z 37/72. 113 Carl Weber, ‘Brecht and Communism’, p. 22.

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In this context, the opening statement in Brecht’s journal-entry of 20 August 1953, the first after 17 June, seems to hint at just such a fundamental shift: Buckow. ‘Turandot’. Daneben die ‘Buckower Elegien’. Der 17. Juni hat die ganze Existenz verfremdet. In aller ihrer Richtungslosigkeit und jämmerlicher Hilflosigkeit zeigen die Demonstrationen der Arbeiterschaft immer noch, daß hier die aufsteigende Klasse ist. (BFA, 27, p. 346)

The clear suggestion here, in contrast to his public statements, is that the events of 17 June did cause Brecht to question his existence in the GDR in some fundamental way. This suggestion, tied to the genre designation ‘Elegien’ with its associations of lament, focuses the attention firmly on the cycle of just over twenty poems written in Buckow in the late summer of 1953 and collected under the heading ‘Buckower Elegien’.114 Given that only six of the poems which make up the cycle were published during Brecht’s lifetime and that Brecht apparently left express intentions to withhold some of the remainder of the poems, this collection clearly offers itself as a potential site for the kind of private dissent alluded to by Weber.115 Problems of interpretation Where Brecht’s cultural-political statements offered access to his unmediated voice, and therefore high levels of assent and dissent, the ambiguity of the poetic voice in the ‘Buckower Elegien’ makes any assessment of the assenting and and dissenting function of these texts much more problematic. On the one hand, the subjective nature of readers’ reactions to the texts points to diverse and inconsistent contemporary effects, both assenting and dissenting. On 114 Bertolt Brecht, ‘Buckower Elegien’, BFA, 12, pp. 305–15. Here twenty-two poems are collected as ‘Buckower Elegien’. ‘Der Hund’ and ‘Die Kelle’, often brought under this heading, are excluded. See BFA, 12, pp. 445–46. 115 See BFA, 12, p. 447.

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the other, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint the intentions behind the composition of the poems. Indeed, this subjectivity of response finds its expression in the vast range of presumed intentions which critics have attributed to Brecht in writing the elegies. Jan Knopf summarises this diversity of interpretations: Die Forschung hat die Vielschichtigkeit der lyrischen Gebilde dadurch bestätigt, daß sie inzwischen eine breite Palette von verschiedensten Deutungen vorgelegt hat. Daß die Gedichte den Rückzug des Dichters zum Inhalt hätten, läßt sich ebenso plausibel machen, wie der Ausdruck von Resignation, daß es sich um Naturgedichte handele ebenso wie ihre prinzipielle Subjektivität. Daß sie privat seien, ist ebenso behauptet worden wie, daß sie politische Gedichte seien; und die, die sie für politische Gedichte halten, finden ebenso Gründe dafür, daß sich in den Gedichten heftigste Kritik an der DDR, am Marxismus formulierte, wie umgekehrt andere Gründe dafür finden, daß die Kritik lediglich bestimmten Auswüchsen gelte und die Gedichte ansonsten ganz auf dem Boden des sich entwickelnden DDR-Sozialismus bewegten.116

As Knopf suggests, the full range of interpretations, from private to political, from politically assenting to politically dissenting, exists. This textual ambiguity is compounded by the publication history of the cycle. In addition to any assent and/or dissent generated by Brecht in the composition of the texts, a second layer of assent and dissent derives from Brecht’s decisions to publish or withhold certain elegies. Making a judgement as to the assenting or dissenting function of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ requires making a careful distinction between the elegies published during Brecht’s lifetime and those withheld, between the function of the texts themselves and the function of their (non-)publication. In this way, the only six elegies published during Brecht’s lifetime, those which appeared under the title ‘Gedichte’ in Sinn und

116 Jan Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch: Eine widersprüchliche Ästhetik, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980–1984), II: Lyrik, Prosa, Schriften (1984), p. 200.

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Form in 1953, offer their own interpretative problem.117 The apparently apolitical representation of nature in, for instance, ‘Der Blumengarten’ seems to constitute an obvious shift in direction within Brecht’s lyrical output, away from the overtly political and towards the private. As such, these six elegies pose questions not often associated with Brecht’s output in the GDR, but eminently familiar from the study of literary production in the Third Reich, and that of Günter Eich in particular. Specifically, we are faced with the issue of just how to interpret, within the context of the dictatorships, what appears to be the adoption of a position of lyric inwardness, what was perceived in the GDR ‘als Rückzug des Dichters in die Natur’.118 One possibility, and that consistently stressed in the present study as a corrective to conventional, over-politicised approaches, is to loosen ties to the narrow political context and stress the non-politically motivated dimension of the work. In this instance, the six published elegies can be viewed simply as the expression of a more mature lyric style, as, in Knopf’s words, ‘typische Alterslyrik’.119 This is also a suggestion put forward by Wolfgang Emmerich, for whom the shift away from overtly political output need not be attached irrevocably to the events of 17 June, but rather can be attributed to a longer term process affecting Brecht’s lyric output throughout the 1950s: In den Gedichten der letzten fünf, sechs Lebensjahre Brechts tritt das Nützlichkeitskalkül immer weiter zurück, die Kategorie der Schönheit dagegen [...] spielt eine immer größere Rolle. [...] Ist der Zyklus ‘Neue Kinderlieder’ (1950) noch ein Werk des Übergangs, so sind endgültig die ‘Buckower Elegien’ [...] ein Beispiel der neuen Schreibart.120 117 These six are: ‘Der Blumengarten’; ‘Gewohnheiten, noch immer’; ‘Rudern, Gespräche’; ‘Der Rauch’; ‘Heisser Tag’; ‘Bei der Lektüre eines Sowjetischen Buches’. See Bertolt Brecht, ‘Gedichte’, Sinn und Form, 5.6 (1953), 119–21. 118 BFA, 12, p. 447. 119 Jan Knopf, ‘Nachwort zur Edition’, in Bertolt Brecht, Buckower Elegien, ed. by Jan Knopf (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 121–25 (p. 121). 120 Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (Leipzig, Kiepenheuer, 1996), pp. 164–65.

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At the same time, it is impossible to divorce the elegies entirely from their heavily politicised context: ‘[Brecht] flieht die Politik [...]. Naturlyrik entsteht; Der Dichter weigert sich angesichts der Ereignisse des 17. Juni, Stellung zu beziehen, und flüchtet ins Gespräch über Bäume.’121 The proximity of the events of 17 June to the composition of the poems and above all the direct link in Brecht’s journal between those events and the elegies invites a politicised reading of what might appear to be apolitical poems. In this case, as with the output of ‘inner emigration’ in the Third Reich, two possibilities present themselves. On the one hand, the retreat from the political sphere may be viewed as some form of abdication of responsibility which unintentionally grants assent to the regime, as a withdrawal of dissent. On the other hand, the same retreat can also be perceived as a form of passive Resistenz, dissent in the form of a withdrawal of overt assent. Viewed in isolation, as a discrete set of poems, the six published elegies are open to either of these politicised readings. The interpretative problem posed by the published poems is to establish which of these readings most closely matches their actual function, that is to say, their effect and intention. Active dissent: ‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’ One obvious starting-point for an interpretation of the published elegies is the remaining group of unpublished elegies, of which at least two poems, ‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’, seem to escape much of what Knopf refers to as the ‘interpretatorische Ergiebigkeit’ of the collection as a whole.122 ‘Die Lösung’ is an unequivocally political poem which takes as its impetus Kurt Barthel’s condemnation of the workers’ actions on 17 June which appeared in Neues Deutschland on 20 June 1953. That Brecht was 121 Jan Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik: Brechts “Buckower Elegien” und der 17. Juni’, in Jean-Mari Valentin and Theo Buck (eds), Bertolt Brecht (Bern: Lang, 1990), pp. 53–66 (p. 53). 122 Knopf, ‘Nachwort zur Edition’, p. 121.

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criticising the then Secretary of the Writers’ Union is in no doubt. More open to question is whether Brecht’s dissent extended to encompass the regime as a whole. For Knopf, Brecht’s representation of Kuba in the poem, having flyers distributed rather than writing in the Party Press, locates the target of the poem’s satire away from the Party as a whole and towards the specific actions of a single individual.123 Equally, the distribution of flyers in the Stalinallee, where the uprising began, could be seen to lend the poem a much more generalised applicability to the events of 17 June. Furthermore, with Kuba mentioned only by his institutional position, the striking and memorable inversion in the final question of the poem is liable to become a savage satire on the authoritarianism of the GDR state as a whole: ‘Wäre es da/ Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung/ Löste das Volk auf und/ Wählte ein anderes?’ (BFA, 12, p. 310). Horst Jesse for one reads the poem in this way: ‘In diesem Gedicht drückt er seine Opposition zum DDR-System nach den Gesichtspunkten der liberalen, parlamentarischen Demokratie aus: Auflösung der Regierung, Neuwahlen. Brecht stellt sich auf die Seite der Arbeiter und unterstützt ihre Forderung an die Regierung.’124 That this was Brecht’s intention is, as we shall see, doubtful in the extreme. Nonetheless, the posthumous effect of the poem, ‘als Aufruf zur Revolution’,125 cannot be overlooked. In this sense, the poem has acquired a much broader and more generalised dissenting function in the years since its composition. Indeed, the much-quoted satirical solution Brecht offers has acquired a status comparable perhaps only to the epigrammatic final paragraph of the ‘Offener Brief’ of 1951. Comparable in dissenting intention, if not in effect, is ‘Die neue Mundart’. This poem, whose manuscript was specifically marked ‘wollte Brecht nicht veröffentlicht haben’ and which was first published in 1980, seems to support Carl Weber’s observation concerning the expression of dissent in poems not intended for 123 Jan Knopf, ‘Zu den Buckower Elegien’, in Brecht, Buckower Elegien, pp. 33–120 (p. 50). 124 Horst Jesse, Brecht in Berlin (Munich: Das freie Buch, 1996), p. 260. 125 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 54.

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publication.126 Here, Brecht criticises the incomprehensible language of the ruling elite: Jetzt Herrschen sie und sprechen eine neue Mundart Nur ihnen selber verständlich, das Kaderwelsch Welche mit drohender und belehrender Stimme gesprochen wird. (BFA, 12, p. 311)

Brecht’s criticism of the empty and threatening discourse of SED art criticism is familiar from 1951. However, in establishing a connection in this poem between the language of the ruling elite and the conditions of hardship for the population at large - ‘Dem, der Kaderwelsch hört/ vergeht das Essen’ (BFA, 12, p. 311) - Brecht extends and sharpens his attack on the functionaries who consistently acted as the focus for his dissatisfaction in the immediate aftermath of 17 June. The overt dissenting intent expressed in ‘Die neue Mundart’ and ‘Die Lösung’, together with their direct connection to 17 June, can now be employed as a key to unlock the meaning of other more open and symbolic poems from the rest of the cycle. In Jesse’s words: Die politischen Ereignisse des 17. Juni 1953 haben Brecht in seiner optimistischen Haltung gegenüber dem Sozialismus tief verletzt. Zeugnis davon gibt Brechts Gedichtsammlung ‘Buckower Elegien’. […] In weiteren Gedichten verhandelt er traumatisiert auf symbolische Weise die gesellschaftspolitischen Ereignisse und ihre Bedeutung.127

In this way, ‘Eisen’ and ‘Die Kelle’ become coded dream-poems expressing the trauma caused by 17 June, while ‘Beim Lesen des Horaz’ and ‘Der Radwechsel’ are seen to express depression, impatience and impotence.128 Philip Thomson shares this view of 126 BFA, 12, p. 449. The poem was first published along with ‘Lebensmittel zum Zweck’ by Gerhard Seidel, ‘Vom Kaderwelsch und vom Schmalz der Söhne McCarthys’, Sinn und Form, 32 (1980), 1087–91. 127 Jesse, p. 260. 128 Jesse, pp. 260–62.

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‘Der Radwechsel’, seeing it as an expression of ‘the disappointment and disillusionment that the GDR, and [Brecht’s] public role in it, engendered’.129 In terms of the cycle as a whole, Thomson sees Brecht’s public support for the suppression of the uprising and ‘the conflicts and anguish created by this’ as the shaping factors. In this analysis, ‘Böser Morgen’ is a key poem: ‘It begins with a series of images conveying the poet’s depression: the Buckow landscape, usually a source of pleasure for him, has lost its appeal. […] Brecht’s torment at being seen by the ordinary people as a traitor who sided with the Stalinist authorities is clearly expressed here.’ This analysis of the ‘unpublished’ elegies, as the expression of a strong and generalised dissenting intention, is potentially highly significant. If such an analysis holds true, then Brecht would be for the first time extending the scope of his dissent to question his previously unshakeable support for the SED and its method of government. This same analysis would also provide an important clarifying context for the six published, ‘apolitical’ elegies. Within this context of generalised dissent in the remainder of the cycle, Brecht’s retreat from the political sphere in the published elegies must surely be viewed in the same light, that is, as a public expression of that same dissent in the form of a withdrawal of overt support. However, the conventional reading of the published elegies, in the West at least, does not complement the overt dissent of the unpublished elegies, but rather contradicts it: ‘Entsprechend lautete das Verdikt bei uns im Westen: Brecht zeigte sich nicht in der Lage, das Unrecht beim Namen zu nennen.’130 Thomson in particular offers this potentially self-contradictory view of the published elegies, where the ‘resignation and tiredness’ engendered by dissatisfaction with the GDR does not preclude an assenting abdication of responsibility: None of these critical poems was published at the time, and Brecht seems increasingly to have sought refuge from the turmoil surrounding his public 129 Philip Thomson, ‘Brecht’s Poetry’, in Thomson and Sacks (eds), pp. 201–17 (p. 216). Subsequent references, p. 215. 130 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 53.

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role in simple verse of a purely personal and non-controversial nature such as ‘The Flower Garden’. […] This uncharacteristic escape into the private domain indicates as clearly as anything the resignation and tiredness which overtook Brecht in the last years of his life. However satisfying these little poems are with their evocation of quiet beauty and peacefulness, they nevertheless represent, in the turbulent context of 1953, a kind of withdrawal, almost an abdication, from the active involvement in the social and political sphere that had been part of Brecht’s raison d’être.131

In a similar vein, John Fuegi seizes on Brecht’s failure to publish ‘Die Lösung’: ‘this brilliantly ironic poem was not published in his lifetime. He gave it to friends, enhancing his status as a liberal. But by not publishing it (as he could easily have done in the West), he again failed to back the population of the GDR.’132 Here, it is the assenting function of Brecht’s publication policy, putting forward the ‘apolitical’ elegies but withholding the overtly dissenting, which provides a puzzling contrast with the apparently global dissenting intention identified in the composition of the cycle as a whole. Not meant that way These contradictions in the assenting and dissenting functions of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ – apparently global and active dissent in their composition, but assent in their (non-)publication – is all the more puzzling given Brecht’s willingness to express effective and public dissent elsewhere in the wake of 17 June. It is difficult to understand why the dissent expressed in ‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’ needed to be withheld in the private sphere while that in, say, the essay ‘Kulturpolitik und Akademie der Künste’ could be expressed openly. Indeed, Brecht’s post-17-June dissent was not confined to the prose interventions discussed in the preceding section. It also took the form of two satirical, oppositional poems in the mode of 131 Thomson, pp. 215–16. 132 Fuegi, p. 549.

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‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’ which were published in midJuly 1953 in the Berliner Zeitung and subsequently in the August issue of Neue Deutsche Literatur. Both ‘Nicht feststellbare Fehler der Kunstkomission’ (BFA, 15, pp. 267–68) and ‘Das Amt für Literatur’ (BFA, 15, p. 268) fit comfortably into the campaign of dissent against SED cultural-political institutions which played a significant role in the abolition of these institutions and the setting-up of the Ministry for Culture under Johannes R. Becher in January 1954. The editorial note attached to the publication of ‘Nicht feststellbare Fehler’, for instance, ties the poem firmly to point one of the ‘Erklärung der DAK’ and Brecht’s criticism of the treatment of the jury for the Dresden art exhibition.133 Both the institutions attacked in the poems had been frequent targets of Brecht’s criticism in plenary meetings of the Academy of Arts both before and after 17 June. Both institutions had also been criticised by Brecht in private notes and letters (see BFA, 23, pp. 260–61; BFA, 30, pp. 201–02). That this dissent found its way into the public sphere, while that in the ‘Buckower Elegien’ did not, seems to confirm an interpretation of the published elegies as a somewhat puzzling withdrawal of dissent. Of pivotal importance in this context is a further poem written in the summer of 1953, entitled ‘Nicht so gemeint’. As Knopf indicates, this poem is a direct response to reception in the West of the actively dissenting ‘Nicht feststellbare Fehler’ and ‘Amt für Literatur’.134 Brecht strongly resented the ‘Beifallsgeklatsche von jenseits der Sektorengrenze’ which accompanied these poems and was eager to avoid the misinterpretation of his partial dissent against SED cultural policies as generalised dissent against the regime as a whole. As the concluding lines of the poem make clear, of his two apparently contradictory positions in the GDR, it was that as a partisan apologist, rather than that as a dissenting intellectual, which Brecht wished to present to the West: 133 The note reads: ‘Vor einem Gremium der Akademie der Künste kamen Fakten wie die Überrennung der Jury bei der Dresdener Kunstausstellung zur Sprache.’ See, BFA, 15, p. 472. 134 Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch, II, p. 186.

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Selbst die schmalsten Stirnen In denen der Friede wohnt Sind den Künsten willkommener als jener Kunstfreund Der auch Freund der Kriegskunst ist. (BFA, 15, pp. 270–71)

What Knopf stops short of pointing out is that this poem, and the fundamentally partisan GDR position that it represents, surely also explains the non-publication of ‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’. Furthermore, ‘Nicht so gemeint’ suggests strongly that the dissent expresed in these latter two elegies remains partial, constrained by on-going support. In this way, ‘Nicht so gemeint’ has important implications for any interpretation of the remaining ‘Buckower Elegien’. Brecht’s may have been a dissenting voice within the context of GDR cultural policy, but in terms of Cold War ideological positions his was an orthodox SED stance which clearly equated the regeneration of capitalism in the West with the rebirth of fascism. As well as being a publicly expressed position, this was also both a privately and consistently expressed one, and therefore presumably a genuine one. It was the same position that he had expressed in relation to Strittmatter’s play Katzgraben and the same that he had expressed in the discussions held at the Berliner Ensemble on 24 June 1953. Brecht’s maintenance of this position, together incidentally with his own continuing use of ‘Kaderwelsch’, is exemplified in his letter to Peter Suhrkamp of 1 July 1953: Die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands hat Fehler begangen [...]. Aber ich respektiere viele ihrer historischen Errungenschaften, und ich fühlte mich ihr verbunden, als sie – nicht ihrer Fehler, sondern ihrer Vorzüge wegen – von faschistischem und kriegstreiberischem Gesindel angegriffen wurde. Im Kampf gegen Krieg und Faschismus stand und stehe ich an ihrer Seite. (BFA, 30, pp. 184–85)

In this context, the most significant part of that journal-entry of 20 August 1953 relating to the ‘Buckower Elegien’ comes not at the beginning but at the end: ‘Deshalb empfand ich den schrecklichen 334

17. Juni als nicht einfach negativ. In dem Augenblick, wo ich das Proletariat [...] wiederum ausgeliefert dem Klassenfeind sah, dem wieder erstarkenden Kapitalismus der faschistischen Ära, sah ich die einzige Kraft, die mit ihr fertig werden konnte’ (BFA, 27, p. 347). It is Brecht’s position expressed in ‘Nicht so gemeint’, and not that expressed in the two openly dissenting elegies, which offers the key to the ‘Buckower Elegien’. Seen in this light, Jesse’s interpretation of ‘Die Lösung’ as an expression of Brecht’s opposition to the GDR system from a liberal, parliamentary-democratic perspective becomes untenable.135 Similarly, it is much more difficult to justify an interpretation of ‘Böser Morgen’ as a clear expression of ‘Brecht’s torment at being seen by the ordinary people as a traitor who sided with the Stalinist authorities’, as a ‘self-accusation’.136 As Mittenzwei suggests, such a view simply goes against Brecht’s repeatedly stated position with regard to 17 June: Eine Interpretation, die das Gedicht als eine Art Selbstkritik Brechts an seinem Verhalten am 17 Juni deutet, geht am philosophischen Gehalt wie an der Struktur des Gedichts völlig vorbei. Ganz abgesehen davon, daß eine solche Aussage allen sonstigen Erklärungen Brechts zum 17. Juni widerspräche.137

Within the elegies themselves, the poem ‘Lebensmittel zum Zweck’, with its reference to the West German authorities as ‘die Söhne Mac Carthys’ (BFA, 12, p. 312), luring the East German population with promises of food, seems to further define Brecht’s continued partisanship. As Knopf writes: ‘Dieses Gedicht macht es endgültig unmöglich, die “Buckower Elegien” als poetischen Ausdruck der Verzweiflung über die politische Lage in der DDR und über den 135 Jesse, p. 260. In his journal on 12 September 1953, Brecht reports a conversation with Klempner. Brecht’s answer to Klempner’s suggestion, ‘Nötig sind freie Wahlen’, is unequivocal: ‘Ich sagte: Dann werden die Nazis gewählt.’ BFA, 27, p. 347. 136 Thomson, p. 215 and Hayman, p. 372. 137 Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, pp. 535–36.

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Marxismus sowie Selbstverzweiflung des “ehemalig gläubigen” Marxisten zu deuten.’138 In the same vein, Brecht’s high level of activity within the Academy of Arts, his prolific letter-writing, and his engaged response to the New Course do not seem to be the actions of a disillusioned and depressed figure. The spectre of fascism This considerable weight of evidence argues persuasively that the events of 17 June did not then effect a fundamental shift in Brecht’s position to one of generalised dissent against SED rule and that Brecht did not ever question the will to truth of the SED regime in the ‘Buckower Elegien’ or elsewhere. In fact, as Brecht’s letter to Suhrkamp and the analysis of the Katzgraben project demonstrate, the events of 17 June re-affirmed the need to make a partisan public contribution towards the fight against fascism in the West. In large measure, Brecht adopted an orthodox SED position, that it was fascist insurgents from the West who sparked the uprising. At the same time, as Knopf suggests, Brecht’s private attitude to the threat posed by fascism was also a profoundly unorthodox one, and this is where the true dissenting significance of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ may lie.139 In his letter to Suhrkamp, for instance, Brecht made it clear that it was not just in the West that he saw the threat of rising fascism: ‘Lieber Suhrkamp, machen wir uns nichts vor: Nicht nur im Westen, auch hier im Osten Deutschlands sind “die Kräfte” wieder am Werk’ (BFA, 30, p. 184). At the discussions held at the Berliner Ensemble on 24 June 1953, Brecht drew a potentially significant connection between his criticism of SED cultural policy and this internal fascist threat: 138 Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch, II, p. 200. 139 Jan Knopf, ‘Elegische Warnungen vor dem “eigenen” Faschismus: Bertolt Brecht’, in Karl Deiritz and Hannes Krauss (eds), Verrat an der Kunst?: Rückblicke auf die DDR-Literatur (Berlin: Aufbau, 1993), pp. 81–88.

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Dieses Berlin ist in einem geistigen Zustande, in dem es anscheinend in der Nazizeit war. Da sind noch ungeheure Rückstände geblieben. Es ist einer der Hauptfehler der SED – nach meiner Meinung – und der Regierung, dass sie diese Nazielemente in den Menschen und in den Gehirnen nicht wirklich beseitigt hat. Es ist ein Fehler, wir wissen das von unserem Kunstgebiet, daß es ein Tabu war, ein Verbot, von der Nazizeit zu sprechen. Es wurden Bücher am Herauskommen gehindert, wenn darin davon gesprochen wurde. (BBA 1447/7)140

Brecht’s pre-occupation with fascism was not a rhetorical position which deployed ‘fascism’ as another elastic, abstract term in the discursive battle with the West. Instead, his concern with fascism was a very real and concrete one. In the process, Brecht was questioning one of the core founding myths of the GDR, that it was, by definition, an anti-fascist state. Of particular significance in relation to the ‘Buckower Elegien’ is the foreword to Brecht’s play Turandot oder der Kongreß der Weißwäscher, also written in Buckow in the summer of 1953. Here, Brecht considers the influence the events of 17 June had on him as he worked on both the elegies and Turandot: Zu Beginn des Sommers, in dem ich das vorliegende Stück schrieb, hatte ein schreckliches Ereignis jeden denkenden Menschen in der Republik tief erschreckt. Seit dem Ende des Hitlerkrieges [...] hatten sozialistische Maßnahmen wie die Vertreibung der kriegerischen Junker, die Übernahme vieler Fabriken in die öffentliche Hand und die Zulassung der Arbeiter- und Bauernkinder zum Studium eine gewaltige Veränderung der Lebensweise bewirkt. Eine ebenso große Veränderung der Denkweise zu bewirken, war freilich nicht gelungen. [...] Überall wurden Fehler gemacht, Menschen geschädigt oder gekränkt, kostspielige Umwege oder kostspielige kürzeste Wege begangen, immer wieder wurde verordnet anstatt überzeugt. [...] Es ist, zumal im Chaos eines verlorenen Krieges, in einem hochzivilisierten Gemeinwesen mit hochgradiger Arbeitsteilung unmöglich, auf einen Staatsapparat zu verzichten, aber schwierig, einen völlig neuen aufzubauen. Unter neuen Befehlshabern setzte sich also der Naziapparat wieder in Bewegung. Ein solcher Apparat kann durch Kontrolle von oben nicht mit neuem Geist erfüllt werden; er benötigte Kontrolle von unten. Unüberzeugt, aber feige, 140 See BFA, 23, pp. 546–47. See also Mittenzwei, Das Leben des Brecht, II, p. 502.

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feindlich, aber sich duckend, begannen verknöcherte Beamte wieder gegen die Bevölkerung zu regieren. (BFA, 9, pp. 409–10)

Brecht’s continuing belief in the achievements of Socialism in the GDR is clear, but it is also clear that Brecht saw the renewed threat of fascism not only on the streets, but also amongst the governmental apparatus itself. With this realisation, the fact that Knopf is able to trace the satirical question posed in ‘Die Lösung’ back to the original 1930s Turandot fragments establishes an uncomfortable connection between Nazism and sections of the SED regime.141 In Knopf’s words, ‘in diesem Gedicht werden Grundlagen erschüttert […]. Das Thema Faschismus ist plötzlich ganz nahe’.142 This connection between state and municipal officials and Nazism, which was perhaps first noticeable as the impulse for the Barlach intervention, seems to have crystallised through the events of 17 June and found its expression in many of the unpublished elegies. Most striking in this context is the elegy ‘Der Einarmige im Gehölz’. The orthodox GDR reading of the poem, as an optimistic representation of Nazism now denuded in East Germany, one-armed and powerless against nature, cannot be sustained in the light of the Turandot foreword. As Knopf indicates, ‘“Der Einarmige im Gehölz” läßt sich jedoch ganz anders lesen und es läßt damit zeigen, daß Brecht […] einer der wenigen war, die die “unerledigte Vergangenheit” im eigenen Land sahen und dadurch eine Fehlentwicklung des Sozialismus in der DDR konstatieren konnten. […] Der Mann sammelt kein Holz für die Feuerung seines Ofens, er sammelt Holz für die nächste Brandschatzung’.143 In this way, the Nazi fire-raisers 141 See Bertolt Brecht, Turandot oder der Kongreß der Weißwäscher, BFA, 9, p. 169: ‘Gogher Gogh: Was heißt das: das Volk muß sich doch sein Regime wählen können? Kann sich etwa das Regime sein Volk wählen? Es kann nicht. Würden Sie sich etwa gerade dieses Volk gewählt haben, wenn Sie die Wahl gehabt hätten?’ See Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 56. The editorial apparatus of the BFA confirms the connection to ‘Die Lösung’. See BFA, 9, p. 414. 142 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 57. 143 Knopf, ‘Elegische Warnungen’, p. 85.

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present in ‘Nicht so gemeint’ and the letter to Suhrkamp seem to become a menacing presence in the elegies, even finding their way into one of the published elegies, ‘Der Rauch’. In the same vein, the black floods in ‘Beim Lesen des Horaz’ can be seen to indicate the continuing threat of fascism, while the reference to the ‘Kalb’ in ‘Lebensmittel zum Zweck’ introduces a further Brechtian echo of Nazism.144 For Knopf, it is the misplaced hope that fascism had been overcome in East Germany which finds its expression in the misplaced hope of the Trojans in ‘Bei der Lektüre eines spätgriechischen Dichters’: ‘gemeint ist der überwunden geglaubte Faschismus; die Erledigung der Vergangenheit, die Brecht immer wieder gefordert und für die er seine Kunst gemacht hatte, hat nicht stattgefunden.’145 The source of Brecht’s elegiac lament, the source of his Buckow Verfremdung, is not then disillusionment with Marxism, but a recognition of the threat posed by fascism within the supposedly anti-fascist state. Reading an elegy like ‘Böser Morgen’ in this way, that is as a realisation of the continuing fascist threat in the GDR and the need to combat it, clearly complements rather than contradicts all Brecht’s other statements in relation to 17 June, and it is in this sense that the unpublished elegies can be justifiably read as an act of intentional, if partial, dissent against the GDR government and an element of its core founding myth. Similarly, it is this dissenting impulse which can be seen to inform the melancholic depiction of nature in the published elegies. Indeed, such an interpretation is lent support if the published elegies are contrasted not with the unpublished poems of the cycle, but with Brecht’s earlier lyric output in the GDR. Before 17 June 1953, it is possible to identify a number of instances where Brecht used poetry as a medium of public, institutionalised partisanship. In October 1949, for instance, Brecht composed ‘An meine Landsleute’ to commemorate Wilhelm Pieck’s entry into office as the first President of the GDR, sending the poem personally to Pieck with a letter of 144 See BFA, 12, p. 449. 145 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 61.

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congratulation. Reaction on either side of the German-German border bears witness to the assenting function of a series of poems published in the next two years. The BFA, for instance, summarises the reception of the Soviet-influenced ‘Tschaganak Bersijew oder Die Erziehung der Hirse’, which appeared both in Neues Deutschland and Sinn und Form, in the West as ‘Dienst gegenüber den diktatorischen Machthabern in der DDR’, in the East as ‘ein produktiver Beitrag zum “Aufbau des Sozialismus”’.146 Likewise, critical reaction in the West dismissed Brecht’s ‘Kinderlieder’ as ‘propagandistische Parteilyrik’, while in the GDR the poems rapidly established themselves in the education system.147 One of the lyrics, ‘Kinderhymne’, was even sung to commemorate Wilhelm Pieck’s 75th birthday in January 1951. A similar supportive, even collaborative, function can be ascribed to the ‘Herrnburger Bericht’. Composed for the FDJ and the World Youth festival held in Berlin in the summer of 1951, the Kantate is written off by Esslin as ‘one of the most blatant pieces of propaganda hack-work of [Brecht’s and Dessau’s] careers’.148 In this way, it is difficult not to see the shift to apparently harmless nature poetry in the published elegies as a shift away from Brecht’s earlier more partisan GDR poetry, with the events of 17 June and an associated re-appraisal of his position in the GDR, as expressed in the journal-entry of August 1953, constituting the trigger for such a shift.

146 BFA, 15, p. 450. Further evidence of the partisan nature of the poem is provided by Suhrkamp’s decision to leave the poem out of his edition of Brecht’s collected poems and by Huchel’s use of the poem to defend his editorship against Hager’s accusations that it was insufficiently committed to the GDR cause. See Schoor, p. 108. 147 BFA, 12, p. 440. 148 See Esslin, pp. 164–65.

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Brecht and Stalin More difficult to substantiate with reference to Brecht’s other writings is Knopf’s suggestion that Brecht was also establishing a link between fascist rule and Stalinism, that it was Stalin and Stalinism which Brecht also sought to criticise in the elegies. For Knopf, ‘the iron one’ in the elegy ‘Eisen’ constitutes a direct reference to Stalin: ‘Angesprochen ist Stalin, der Stählerne, und mit ihm der Stalinismus. Der Stalinismus, der angeblich Garant war für den Aufbau des Sozialismus in der DDR, dient diesem Aufbau nicht, sondern verhindert ihn.’149 In the dream of the poem, the storm tears down the rigid iron scaffolding of Stalinist dogma, while more flexible and yielding structures endure and continue to support the construction of Socialism within the GDR. Alongside this apparently generalised critique of Stalinist policies, Knopf identifies specific criticism of Stalinist artistic and architectural policies in, respectively, ‘Die Musen’ and ‘Große Zeit, vertan’. Of the former, for instance, Knopf comments as follows: Prostitution und Zuhälterei sind bekannte Themen aus Brechts Werk, um Ausbeutung des Menschen und zugleich faschistische Methoden zu brandmarken. Das Gedicht bezieht sich unmißverständlich auf den Stalinismus der DDR und die Rolle der Kunstdoktrin des sozialistischen Realismus, der Brecht seine Verfremdungskunst entgegenzusetzen suchte.

While it is not difficult to find evidence of dissent against dogmatic ‘Stalinist’ cultural policies within Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR, there is little contextual evidence from the summer of 1953 to support Knopf’s reading of ‘Eisen’. Brecht’s most overt ‘anti-Stalin’ texts, a cycle of four poems (BFA, 15, 300–01) and a short prose text, ‘Über die Kritik an Stalin’ (BFA, 15, pp. 417–18), date from July 1956 and have as their impetus Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at

149 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 58. Subsequent reference, p. 60.

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the beginning of that year.150 At the very most, the echo in ‘Über die Kritik an Stalin’ – ‘Die Liquidierung des Stalinismus kann nur durch eine gigantische Mobilisierung der Weisheit der Massen durch die Partei gelingen’ – of the elegy ‘Große Zeit, vertan’ – ‘Was sind schon Städte, gebaut/ Ohne die Weisheit des Volkes?’ (BFA, 12, p. 311) – allows us to identify the early emergence of this anti-Stalinist position around the time of the composition of the elegies. Whether or not we choose to accept the full extent of the dissenting intention identified by Knopf, this discussion of potential anti-Stalinist dissent does point to one of the more consistent tendencies identifiable in Brecht’s relationship to the Communist authorities, and one embodied by the ‘Buckower Elegien’. In seeking a solution to Brecht’s enigmatic relationship to Stalinism, Peter Borman notes the contrasting nature of Brecht’s published and nonpublished ‘Stalin’ texts: Der auffällige Gegensatz zwischen den veröffentlichten und den unveröffentlichten Texten kann uns daher der Lösung vielleicht doch näher bringen. Angesichts der oft scharfen Kritik an Stalin und dem Stalinismus, die Brecht gegenüber Benjamin, in seinem Arbeitsjournal und dem ‘Met-ti’ [sic] äußerte, wirken der Optimismus und die Kritiklosigkeit in den veröffentlichten Texten fast erschütternd. Man fragt sich, warum Brecht die Stalinistische Politik nicht in aller Öffentlichkeit kritisiert hat.151

Michael Rohrwasser, too, describes ‘das Doppelbild von einem privaten Antistalinisten Brecht und einem zurückhaltend öffentlichen Verteidiger der sowjetischen Politik’,152 while Hecht notes a consistent reluctance on Brecht’s part to criticise the Party line in public: 150 See James K. Lyon, ‘Brecht und Stalin: des Dichters “letztes Wort”’, in Thomas Koebner, Wulf Köpke, Joachim Radkau (eds), Exilforschung: Ein internationales Jahrbuch (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1983), pp. 120–29. 151 Peter Borman, ‘Brecht und der Stalinismus’, in John Fuegi, Reinhold Grimm, Jost Hermand (eds), Brecht-Jahrbuch 1974 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975), pp. 53–76 (p. 55). 152 Michael Rohrwasser, Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten: Die Literatur der Exkommunisten (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991), p. 167.

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‘Bereits in den zwanziger Jahren und später im Exil hatte Brecht häufig Zweifel an politischen Maßnahmen der Kommunisten (und an deren Bevormundung der Kunst). Er hat daran in Briefen, Schriften und Gesprächen heftig Kritik geübt, aber schon damals die öffentliche Auseinandersetzung gemieden.’153 In this sense, Brecht’s active decision not to publish the most dissenting of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ seems to fit within a much broader tendency: Nicht ohne Grund hat Brecht seine ‘Buckower Elegien’ nur in Auszügen publiziert, Gedichte, die gemessen an denen, die der Nachlaß enthielt, harmlos, versöhnlerisch klingen, zumal in dieser Zusammenstellung, die mit dem ‘Blumengarten’ beginnt und mit ‘Bei der Lektüre eines sowjetischen Buches’, mit dem in die Sowjetunion verlegten gelingenden Aufbau des Sozialismus, endet. Die brisanten Gedichte blieben ausdrücklich unveröffentlicht. Und als sie veröffentlicht wurden, hatten sie ihre Brisanz verloren. Es gehört zu den Widersprüchen Brechts, daß er einerseits radikal Stellung nahm – ich erinnere mich an die Auseinandersetzungen mit Lukács 1938 – andererseits diese Stellungnahmen nicht an die Öffentlichkeit brachte, wo sie hin gehörten.154

The function of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ is informed by a central contradiction. In their composition, Brecht’s intention was clearly a dissenting one. In some cases, such as ‘Die Lösung’ and ‘Die neue Mundart’ this was more active and more explicit, though never global in scope. In other cases, such as ‘Der Blumengarten’, this dissent was expressed through little more than an absence of overt political support. However, in the (non-)publication of the elegies, Brecht’s intention was clearly an assenting one, the most actively dissenting poems being withheld. Most significantly of all, these publication decisions rob the elegies of all contemporary dissenting effect. Because of this, and dissenting intentions notwithstanding, in the overall function of the ‘Buckower Elegien’ assenting tendencies outweigh the dissenting. In the final analysis, the elegies constitute a 153 Werner Hecht, Am Wasser des Schermützelsees: Bertolt Brecht in Buckow (s.l., 1994), p. 15. 154 Knopf, ‘Lyrik der Politik’, p. 64.

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failure to express public dissent, since, in terms of their objective effect in blocking the regime’s total claim, it is simply not possible to ascribe to them any significant dissenting function.

Conclusion To return finally to the observations made at the beginning of this chapter, we are now in a more informed position to assess the relative weighting of the assenting and dissenting impulses in Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR. In particular, this tension between private and public output, exemplified by the ‘Buckower Elegien’, is a central thread of Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR. As the elegies demonstrate, Brecht tended to withhold dissent in the private sphere, so that any unequivocal dissent remained unpublished, and any published dissent remained equivocal. As such, Lyon seems to be justified in privileging Brecht’s conformity (assent) over his dissidence (dissent), or as Jäger writes of the politicised interpretations of Brecht’s GDR output: ‘dabei scheint die Tatsache, daß die radikalsten kritischen Stellungnahmen Brechts zu seinen Lebzeiten nicht publiziert wurden, den westlichen Autoren recht zu geben.’155 In terms of the objective function of Brecht’s writing in the GDR, the tendency to withhold dissent in the private sphere while adopting an assenting position in public makes it impossible to privilege dissent over assent. At the level of both intention and, above all, effect, Brecht must have furthered the ideology and policies of the SED regime to a greater degree than he blocked them. Certainly, Jäger is correct to go on to highlight the potential for dissent, to effects which emerge only later, and in this respect ‘Die Lösung’ is exemplary. Nonetheless, the contemporary effect of Brecht’s public

155 Jäger, p. 67.

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expression of solidarity in the wake of 17 June far outweighs the function of any such posthumous dissent. Of course, Brecht did express public dissent during his lifetime, most notably and most directly in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’, ‘FaustusThesen’, and ‘Erklärung der DAK’. The publicness, effectiveness, and active intentional nature of the dissent in these statements must be acknowledged, as must the significant effect achieved by Brecht after 17 June in blocking the total claim of the regime in the cultural sphere. Indeed, in this narrow cultural sphere Brecht’s oppositional contribution is considerable. At the same time, the function of this dissent must be denuded by the relative relaxation of the regime’s total claim after 17 June. Further, this dissent never became global in scope but was directed all the time at the specifics of cultural policy and the functionaries involved in its implementation. Again, the events of 17 June and Brecht’s reaction to them are central in this respect. In the discussions at the Berliner Ensemble, in his letter to Suhrkamp, and in the poem ‘Nicht so gemeint’, Brecht himself makes clear which of the two tendencies, assenting and dissenting, was dominant in his own approach. Whether it was non-intentional and politicised aesthetic non-conformity at the Berliner Ensemble, whether it was intentional but resolutely private as in the Lukullus affair, or even public and intentional as in the summer of 1953, Brecht’s dissent did not match the extent of his assent, nor was it ever expressed outside the assenting framework of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the core founding myth of anti-fascism. Many critics persist in viewing much of Brecht’s assent as tactical manouvering, and this is a view which suits both those wishing to condemn Brecht and those who seek to defend him. The former are able to point to Brecht’s readiness to sacrifice principle in return for acclaim and material gain. The latter are able to hold up a dissenting position as the norm in Brecht’s activities and to maintain his reputation as a shrewd tactician, a step ahead of the forces of totalitarianism. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that Brecht’s location in this will to truth was not short-term and tactical, but consistent and ideological. In this respect, the reality of Brecht’s 345

cultural activities in the GDR is perhaps more straightforward than is often supposed. Brecht, like many GDR intellectuals, both of the exile generation and the second younger generation, sought to oppose the restrictive cultural policies of the SED. However, this dissent was restricted by what Günter Kunert has termed the ‘antifascist bonus’, as the GDR system was protected from these figures by their ‘deeply internalised tie to an anti-fascism defined in Marxist terms’.156 And yet, for Brecht this ‘bonus’ operated in both directions. On the one hand, his dissent was unable break free from the genuine belief in the need to combat resurgent fascism, and this explains why 17 June only served to reinforce his generalised assent to the SED regime. On the other hand, it was the assent embodied in this consistently and publicly expressed anti-fascism which gave Brecht the opportunity to achieve effective dissent from within the institutional framework of the GDR. Assent may have remained the norm in Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR, dissent the exception, but in the complex inter-relation between these two tendencies it was precisely the former which to a large degree facilitated the latter.

156 Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall’, p. 306.

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Conclusion Writing in the margins of dictatorship: Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht

This study has sought to adopt an explicitly comparative approach to culture produced in what one might term the ‘margins of dictatorship’. But what precisely is meant by this notion of margins, and how might it further our understanding of the literature of the Third Reich and the GDR? On one level, these margins are to be understood simply as literary spaces, but these literary spaces are at the same time peripheral spaces, spaces of assent and dissent occupied by those writers neither entirely at the ideological and political centre of the dictatorships, nor entirely excluded. In this way, both Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht are writers who worked in, or perhaps better at, the margins of dictatorship, and it is hoped that the framework of literary assent and dissent developed in this study has allowed for a more measured and balanced assessment of the nature of Eich’s writing under National Socialism and Brecht’s cultural activities in the GDR, free from entrenched and highly polarised judgements of unequivocal condemnation or approbation. Through individual analyses, we have been able to move closer to an appreciation of the true nature of Eich’s relationship to National Socialism and Brecht’s to the SED system, and of the relative levels of assent and dissent expressed by them. At the same time, these margins can also be understood as the boundaries – political, geographical, and historical – which de-limit the periods of rule of the National Socialist and SED regimes. In this connection, a central question addressed throughout the course of this study has been the degree of comparability demonstrated by these regimes and their societies. Put another way, where do we set the margins of dictatorship? Do these 347

margins mark the specific boundaries of the Third Reich and the GDR, against one another as well as other states? Or are these margins shared boundaries, de-limiting these two German states together against other types of society? Central here is the capacity of the case studies in part two of the study to illuminate a number of substantial similarities between the writing experiences of these two individuals which may be of a broader significance for the analysis of literary production within the German dictatorships. Firstly, it is only too clear that in both cases the output of these writers is best characterised not purely in terms of dissent, nor simply assent, but rather in terms of a much more complex combination of these two contradictory tendencies. This observation confirms both the necessity of a model which is able to cope with both tendencies simultaneously and the need to subject the precise inter-relationship between assent and dissent to further detailed scrutiny. As far as this latter point is concerned, a second similarity to emerge from the empirical study in this second part of the study is that, in the case of both Eich and Brecht, the relative weighting of these assenting and dissenting tendencies is tipped strongly in favour of assent. In Eich’s radio output in the Third Reich and in Brecht’s work at the Berliner Ensemble, his cultural-political interventions, and poetry, the granting of assent is quantitatively more widespread and more consistent than the expression of dissent. Furthermore, even in those instances when their dissent was at its height, such as in Eich’s radio plays of 1936 and 1937 and in Brecht’s interventions in Sinn und Form following 17 June 1953, this dissent was vitiated all the time by ongoing assent. In this respect, the specific examples of Eich and Brecht may illustrate more general principles concerning the relationship between literary assent and dissent under the conditions of dictatorship. For writers, as for other professionals, it is assent to the total claim of the regime, rather than dissent against it, which seems to be the norm. Furthermore, the consistent presence of assent, as opposed to the relatively transitory nature of dissent, suggests strongly that in published literary output the inter-relationship between assent and dissent is such that the former is a pre-condition 348

for the expression of the latter. Whereas all forms of assent, including support and collaboration, can be expressed in the absence of dissent, any form of literary dissent which is to make its way into the public sphere appears to be reliant on an accompanying expression of assent. Substantial contrasts also exist between the forms of assent and dissent expressed by Eich and Brecht, but these too may allow us to make further progress in clarifying the nature of the relationship between literary assent and literary dissent. In almost all instances, the assenting function of Brecht’s texts is of a greater magnitude than is the case for those of Eich. At the level of effect, Brecht’s higher status and his institutional position within the GDR, considerable ambiguities notwithstanding, lend any assent greater efficacy than that of Eich. This effect is buttressed at the level of intention by Brecht’s active ideological motivation to promote the core founding myths of the GDR. By contrast, while often active and intentional, Eich’s assent remained pragmatic in nature. Furthermore, his status as a young, largely unknown writer denudes the effect of the assent he was able to express. In the ‘KWL’ series, for instance, a number of factors point to a high assenting effect, but that support was not publicly attributed to Eich in the way that Brecht’s theatrical work or poetry was directly associated with him. Similarly, Brecht’s higher status put him in a position to make direct, unmediated statements, such as his open letter of 1951, which were assured of an effect inconceivable for Eich within the Third Reich. This contrast in the level of assent expressed by Eich and Brecht has two principal sources. Firstly, it arises in large measure from the substantial differences in the biographical circumstances of the two writers. Both may have been working under ‘totalitarian’ conditions, but the two were at very different stages in their careers and had very different ideological starting-points in their relationships to the respective regimes. Secondly, Brecht’s stronger expression of assent may also arise in part from differences in the totalitarian systems in which Eich and Brecht were working. The bureaucratic totalitarianism of the SED system allowed Brecht to operate in an 349

institutional context arguably absent in the charismatic totalitarianism of the Third Reich, and this institutional context supported his furthering of the regime’s ideological claim. Perhaps more significantly, these same factors which heighten the extent of Brecht’s assent also allow for the generation of a more powerful dissenting function in Brecht’s actions. As a direct result of his status in the GDR and through the institutional channels open to him in the Academy of Arts, Brecht was able to obstruct the total claim of the regime more effectively and more publicly than was Eich. Indeed it is difficult to imagine that Eich, or perhaps even any writer in the Third Reich, could have expressed as direct and effective dissent in the cultural sphere as Brecht did in the wake of 17 June 1953. Furthermore, the ideological nature of Brecht’s assent may also have rendered him more liable to intervene and express dissatisfaction at cultural and political developments in the GDR, while Eich’s overwhelmingly pragmatic motivations did not generate the same impetus to dissent against the cultural policies of National Socialism. Both Brecht’s assent and his dissent were consistently more public, more organised, more active, more general in scope, and ultimately more effective than those of Eich, and this suggests that we need to conceive of literary assent and dissent in terms of more than just a relationship of passive co-existence. In the literary sphere, where the effectiveness of dissent is reliant on its public expression, and under the conditions of dictatorship, where access to the public sphere is restricted, dissent exists in a curiously symbiotic relationship with assent. Paradoxically, a higher level of assent seems to facilitate a higher level of dissent. A further significant shared feature to emerge from this study lies in the dynamic of the dissent expressed through Eich’s and Brecht’s literary output. Although the peak of Brecht’s dissent was of a far greater magnitude than that of Eich, it is possible in both cases to chart a rising dissenting dynamic, as initial private dissatisfaction grew to find active, public expression. The contrast between Brecht’s private notes and conversations at the onset of the Formalism Campaign in 1951 and his direct interventions of 1952 and 1953 350

finds an echo in Eich’s development from low-level grumbling in his private correspondence of 1933-1934 to the published, if profoundly ambivalent, dissent of ‘Radium’ and ‘Der Tag im März’ in 19361937. As such, we find confirmation of the validity of the notion of dissent as process and of the primacy of change within dissent. Also largely confirmed is the assumption that the dynamics of dissent are closely dependent on the changing dynamics of the total claim made by the regime. The methodological principles established in chapter three predict that the greater and more insistent the claim made by the regime, the greater the magnitude of dissent expressed. Not only does the same act acquire a greater dissenting effect, but the more tightly imposed claim generates a greater pressure to express dissent. These assumptions are most clearly borne out in Brecht’s cultural output, where growing private dissent in the context of the Formalism Campaign of 1951 finally finds its active and public expression in the ‘Barlach-Notizen’ published at the beginning of 1952, while the peak of Brecht’s dissent follows the peak of the SED’s claim in June 1953. Similarly, the growth in Eich’s dissent between 1933 and 1937 seems to match the radicalising dynamic in Nazi cultural policy. In both cases too, this dissent does not rise to cross the gulf to fundamental resistance, but soon gives way to renewed assent in subsequent years. However, while in this respect Brecht’s dissent follows the pattern of hardening and softening identified in the dynamics of SED cultural policy in chapter one, in Eich’s case the dynamics of his dissent diverge here from those of the National Socialist regime. While the dynamic of the Nazi regime and its total claim continued to radicalise, particularly in the build-up to war, Eich’s dissent fades away, so that his final public contribution to the literary sphere of the Third Reich is the strongly supportive Rebellion in der Goldstadt. Here again, the pragmatism of Eich’s dissent may play a significant role, since his public dissent can be shown to have been primarily a product of professional and artistic factors rather than moral and ideological elements. The motivations behind Eich’s dissent are more readily conceivable outside the conditions of

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dictatorship, and so that dissent is less closely tied to the total claim of the regime than is Brecht’s. This dissent, expressed by Eich largely as a result of an artistic crisis the origins of which are already discernible before 1933, illustrates perhaps the single most significant feature to emerge from the empirical analysis in the second half of the study. In a number of contexts, the dissent expressed by Eich and Brecht was not active and intentional. In many of Brecht’s productions at the Berliner Ensemble, dissent arose from aesthetic non-conformity, politicised by the total claim of the regime. In Eich’s case, the pessimistic mood of his ‘dissenting’ poetry and radio plays may not have been directed at National Socialism but at his own aesthetic development. In this sense, dissent lies as much outside a text, in its reception, as within it, and the contemporary dissenting function of much of Brecht’s work was determined less by its own nature than by the readiness of his opponents to read it as such. An acknowledgement of the manner in which the total claim of the National Socialist and SED regimes was able to politicise behaviour which would not otherwise have possessed a political function is essential to an appropriate understanding of the nature of literary production within the German dictatorships. Effects, both assenting and dissenting, exist independent of authorial intention, and it is the role of the total claim in politicising literature in this way which is the defining feature of writing under the conditions of dictatorship. It is the common total claim made on the cultural sphere in the Third Reich and the GDR, together with the effects which this claim generates, which renders cultural practice in the two societies comparable. Furthermore, the capacity of totalitarianism to impose such politicised effects onto literary production persists far beyond the immediate reception of these texts and indeed beyond the existence of the regimes themselves. All too often critical approaches to the work of Eich and Brecht merely perpetuate over-politicised interpretations, and this is apparent not only in crudely moralising binary categorisations. Even attempts at more measured analyses can fail to cast off the politicising claim of the regimes to control all aspects of 352

culture, so that artistic and professional decisions with a personal motivational background are interpreted only within the narrow political context. Exemplary in this respect is Eich’s short story Katharina, where critics are over-eager to identify Blut-und-Boden motifs at the expense of the strong continuities in the conservative, but non-Nazi, aesthetic pursued by Eich in Die Kolonne before 1933. A causal relationship is established between aesthetic conformity to the norms of Nazi cultural policy and Eich’s location within the Third Reich. The politicised effects of this conformity are imported into the sphere of intention, so that political motivations are ascribed to what are, at the level of intention, non-political actions. Indeed, Eich’s motivations are often revealed to be mundanely pragmatic and far removed from the total claim of National Socialism. This politicisation is particularly apparent in Eich’s predominantly nonpolitical approach, but can also be identified in Brecht’s much more overtly political output. Here, the strongest tendency is not to attribute political motivations to texts which lack that intentional dimension. Brecht’s output does not allow for the same clear distinction between personal and political motivation. However, as the production of Erwin Strittmatter’s Katzgraben demonstrates, shortterm motivations from within the narrow political context are attributed to artistic decisions whose motivation often lies elsewhere in longer-term aesthetic and political principles. The kind of polarised judgements outlined at the very outset of this study arise from an inability, or unwillingness, to divorce the act of literary analysis from the political context in which the texts were produced. By supplying a set of more objective, value-free analytical tools, the methodology elaborated in this study may go some way to overcoming the persistence of such approaches. And yet, the act of analysis remains a profoundly subjective exercise. The assenting or dissenting function of a text may be assessed relatively objectively in terms of its identifiable contemporary effects. Much more problematic is the assessment of the intentions and motivations lying behind those effects, and it is here that the politicising effects of the National Socialist and SED total claims remain most stubbornly 353

persistent, colouring critics’ views of those intentions. What Eich’s and Brecht’s writing shares above all is not any internal feature but a common tendency to attract over-politicised and often simply overinterpreted approaches. What has been proposed through this study is to highlight and acknowledge the inherently political function of all writing under the conditions of dictatorship, but at the same time not to allow the acknowledgement of that function to obscure the nonpolitical elements which often lie at the heart of the motivations behind that writing. In granting a significant role for these continuities which often cut across the boundaries of dictatorship, it should be clear that the margins of dictatorship need to be viewed as porous and flexible, rather than impermeable and unyielding. As assent may be necessary to generate dissent, so the overtly political approach of this study may be necessary to free the writing of the German dictatorships from that same persistent politicisation.

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Gay, Peter, Weimar Culture: The Insider as Outsider (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) Golomstock, Igor, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China, trans. by Robert Chandler (London: Collins Harvill, 1990) Golsan, Richard (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (Hanover NH: University of New England Press, 1992) Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Jürgen Kocka, ‘Historischer Vergleich: Methoden, Aufgaben, Probleme. Eine Einleitung’, in Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (eds), Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansätze und Ergebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1996), pp. 9–45 Hirschfeld, Gerhard and Lothar Kettenacker (eds), Der ‘Führerstaat’: Mythos und Realität (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981) Hochman, Elaine S., Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York: Fromm, 1990) Hüppauf, Bernd, ‘Krise ohne Wandel: Die kulturelle Situation 1945–1949’, in Bernd Hüppauf (ed.), ‘Die Mühen der Ebenen’: Kontinuität und Wandel in der deutschen Literatur und Gesellschaft 1945–1949 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), pp. 47– 112 Hüttenberger, Peter, ‘Nationalsozialistische Polykratie’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2 (1976), 417–42 Jarausch, Konrad H., ‘Die Versuchung des Totalitären: Intellektuelle, Diktatur und Demokratie’, in Therese Hörnigk and Alexander Stephan (eds), Rot = Braun? Brecht Dialog 2000: Nationalsozialismus und Stalinismus bei Brecht und Zeitgenossen (Berlin: Theater der Zeit:, 2000), pp. 25–46 Jesse, Eckhard, ‘War die DDR totalitär?’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 40 (1994), 12–23 Jesse, Eckhard (ed.), Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine Bilanz der internationalen Forschung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999) Kaelble, Hartmut, Jürgen Kocka, Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1994) Kaes, Anton (ed.), Weimarer Republik: Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur 1918–1933 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983) Kaiser, Monika, ‘Die Zentrale der Diktatur: Organisatorische Weichenstellungen, Strukturen und Kompetenzen der SED-Führung in der SBZ/DDR 1946– 1952’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien (Berlin: Akademie, 1993), pp. 57–86 Kater, Michael, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–1945: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974) Kater, Michael, ‘Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich’, American Historical Review, 94 (1989), 11–43

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Kater, Michael, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) Kershaw, Ian, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933– 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, third edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1993) Kershaw, Ian, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited: Nazism and Stalinism in comparative perspective’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 23–40 Kershaw, Ian, ‘Widerstand ohne Volk: Dissens und Widerstand im Dritten Reich’, in Jürgen Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach (eds), Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich: Piper, 1994), pp. 779–98 Kershaw, Ian, ‘“Working towards the Führer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. 88–106 Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 1998–2000) Kershaw, Ian and Moshe Lewin, ‘Afterthoughts’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. 343–58 Kershaw, Ian and Moshe Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP, 1997) Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland 1890–1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976) Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, ‘Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reichs und Ansätze zu ihrer Interpetation’, Text und Kontext, 8 (1980), 217–42 Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, ‘Probleme einer gegenwärtigen Forschung zur “Literatur des Dritten Reiches”’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 64 (1990), 707–25 Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, Literatur und Drittes Reich (Schernfeld: SH-Verlag, 1992) Kleßmann, Christoph, ‘“Das Haus wurde gebaut aus den Steinen, die vorhanden waren”: Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Kontinuitätsdiskussion nach 1945’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 19 (1990), 159–77 Kleßmann, Christoph, ‘Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland: Was kann die künftige DDR-Forschung aus der Geschichtsschreibung zum Nationalsozialismus lernen?’, Deutschland Archiv, 25 (1992), 601–06 Kocka, Jürgen, ‘Eine durchherrschte Gesellschaft’, in Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1994), pp. 547–53 Kocka, Jürgen, Vereinigungskrise: Zur Geschichte der Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995)

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Schäfer, Hans Dieter, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), pp. 55–71 Schäfer, Hans Dieter, ‘Die nichtfaschistische Literatur der jungen Generation im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland’, in Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (eds), Die deutsche Literatur in Dritten Reich: Themen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976), pp. 459–503 Schnell, Ralf (ed.), Kunst und Kultur im deutschen Faschismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978) Schoenbaum, David, Hitler’s Social Revolution (New York: Anchor, 1967) Schoeps, Karl-Heinz, Deutsche Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen 3: Literatur im Dritten Reich (Bern: Lang, 1992) Schubbe, Elimar, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur-, und Kulturpolitik der SED (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1972) Schuster, Klaus-Peter (ed.), Die ‘Kunststadt’ München 1937: Nationalsozialismus und ‘Entartete Kunst’ (Munich: Prestel, 1987) Staritz, Dietrich, Geschichte der DDR 1949–1985 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985) Strothmann, Dietrich, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik: Ein Beitrag zur Publizistik im Dritten Reich (Bonn: Bouvier, 1960) Taylor, Brandon, ‘Post-Modernism in the Third Reich’, in Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (eds), The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1991), pp. 128–143 Taylor, Brandon and Wilfried van der Will, ‘Aesthetics and National Socialism’, in Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (eds), The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1991), pp. 1–13 Thamer, Hans-Ulrich, Verführung und Gewalt: Deutschland 1933–1945 (Berlin: Siedler, 1986) Thunecke, Jörg, ‘NS-Schrifttumspolitik: Am Beispiel der vertraulichen Mitteilungen der Fachschaft Verlag (1933–1945)’, in Jörg Thunecke (ed.), Leid der Worte: Panorama des literarischen Nationalsozialismus (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), pp. 133–52 Travers, Martin, ‘Politics and Canonicity: Constructing Literature in the Third Reich’, in J. Milfull (ed.), The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), pp. 253–72 Trommler, Frank, ‘Der “Nullpunkt 1945” und seine Verbindlichkeit für die Literaturgeschichte’, Basis: Jahrbuch für deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur, 1 (1970), 9–25 Trommler, Frank, ‘Emigration und Nachkriegsliteratur: Zum Problem der geschichtlichen Kontinuität’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration: Third Wisconsin Workshop (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 173–97 Walther, Joachim, Sicherungsbereich Literatur: Schriftsteller und Staatssicherheit in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Links, 1996) Weber, Hermann, Die DDR: 1945–1986 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988)

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2. Ideology and discourse Alber, Jens, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 41 (1989), 346–65 Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and Ambivalence (Oxford: Polity, 1991) Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1989) Bathrick, David, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 297–312 Bathrick, David, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995) Bauer, Gerhard, Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Cologne: Bund, 1988) Clyne, Michael, Language and Society in the German-Speaking Countries (Cambridge: CUP, 1984) Eatwell, R., Fascism: A History (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995) Eley, Geoff, ‘What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist State’, Politics and Society, 12 (1983), 53–82 Emmerich, Wolfgang, ‘Affirmation – Utopie – Melancholie: Versuch einer Bilanz von vierzig Jahren DDR Literatur’, German Studies Review, 14 (1991), 325–44 Emmerich, Wolfgang und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995) Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols (London: Allen Lane, 1979–1988) Foucault, Michel, ‘The Order of Discourse’, trans. by Ian Mcleod, in R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 48–78

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Frei, Norbert, ‘Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 19 (1993), 367–83 Gregor, A. James, ‘Fascism and Modernization: Some Addenda’, World Politics, 26 (1974), 370–84 Gregor, A. James, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (Toronto: Collier–Macmillan, 1969) Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993) Griffin, Roger (ed.), Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Griffin, Roger (ed.), International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus (London: Edward Arnold, 1998) Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP, 1984) Herf, Jeffrey, ‘Der Nationalsozialistische Technikdiskurs: Die deutschen Eigenheiten des reaktionären Modernismus’, in Wolfgang Emmerich und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), pp. 72–93 Jonas, Hans, Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984) Keller, R.E., The German Language (London: Faber, 1978) Laqueur, Walter, Fascism: Past, Present, Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) Laqueur, Walter (ed.), Fascism: A Reader’s Guide (London: Wildwood House, 1976) Linz, Juan J., ‘Some Notes toward a Comparative Study of Fascism in Sociological, Historical Perspective’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A Reader’s Guide (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp. 3–121 Lukács, Georg, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962) Matzerath, Horst and Heinrich Volkmann, ‘Modernisierungstheorie und Nationalsozialismus’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers: Forschungsbeispiele und ihre Diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 82–102 Mommsen, Hans, ‘Nationalsozialismus als vorgetäuschte Modernisierung’, in Hans Mommsen (ed.), Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1991), pp. 405–27 Mommsen, Hans, ‘Noch einmal: Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 21 (1995), 391–402 Mosse, George, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966) Neocleous, Mark, Fascism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997) Nolte, Ernst, The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, trans. by Leila Vennewitz (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965)

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Nolte, Ernst, Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen Bewegungen (Munich: Piper, 1968) Payne, Stanley Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1980) Payne, Stanley A History of Fascism: 1919–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1995) Prinz, Michael and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991) Rabinbach, Anson, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Moderne: Zur Technik-Interpretation im Dritten Reich’, in Wolfgang Emmerich und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-Stalin-Ära (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), pp. 94–113 Schäfer, Hans Dieter, ‘Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 199–215 Schildt, Axel, ‘NS-Regime, Modernisierung und Moderne: Anmerkungen zur Hochkonjunktur einer andauernden Diskussion’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 3–22 Sternhell, Zeev, ‘Fascist Ideology’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A Reader’s Guide (London: Wildwood House, 1976), pp. 315–76 Stillman, Edmund and William Pfaff, The Politics of Hysteria (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) Townson, Michael, Mother-Tongue and Fatherland: Language and Politics in German (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992) Trevor-Roper, Hugh, The Last Days of Hitler, fourth edition (London: MacMillan, 1971) Trevor-Roper, Hugh, ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’, in S. J. Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 19–38 Trommler, Frank, ‘Amerikas Rolle in Technikverständnis der Diktaturen’, in Wolfgang Emmerich und Carl Wege (eds), Der Technikdiskurs in der Hitler-StalinÄra (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), pp. 159–74 Turner, Henry Ashby, ‘Fascism and Modernization’, in Henry Ashby Turner (ed.), Reappraisals of Fascism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), pp. 117–39 Weedon, Chris, ‘The Politics of Literature in the GDR: A Post-Structuralist Approach’, in Richard Sheppard (ed.), New Ways in Germanistik (Oxford: Berg, 1990), pp. 145–63 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975) Weitz, Eric D., Creating German Communism 1890–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) Wells, C. J., German: A Linguistic History to 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987) Woolf, S. J. (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981)

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Zima, Peter, ‘Der Mythos der Monosemie: Parteilichkeit und künstlerischer Standpunkt’, in Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaften, 10 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971–1979), VI: Einführung in Theorie, Geschichte und Funktion der DDR-Literatur, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (1975), pp. 77–108 Zitelmann, Rainer, ‘Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991), pp. 1–20

3. Social and literary resistance Broszat, Martin, ‘A Social and Historical Typology of the German Opposition to Hitler’, in David Clay Large (ed.), Contending with Hitler: Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), pp. 25–33 Broszat, Martin, ‘Resistenz und Widerstand: Eine Zwischenbilanz des Forschungsprojekts’, in Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich, A. Grossmann (eds), Bayern in der NS-Zeit, 6 vols (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1977–1983), IV: Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt: Teil C (1981), pp. 691–711 Broszat, Martin, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte des deutschen Widerstands’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 34 (1986), 293–309 Brekle, Wolfgang, ‘Die antifaschistische Literatur in Deutschland’, Weimarer Beiträge, 16.6 (1970), 67–128 Brekle, Wolfgang, Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand 1933–1945 in Deutschland (Berlin: Aufbau, 1985) Botz, Gerhard, ‘Methoden und Theorien der historischen Widerstandsforschung’, in Helmuth Konrad and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds), Arbeiterbewegung-Faschismus-Nationalbewußtsein (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1983), pp. 137–51 Eckert, Rainer, ‘Die Vergleichbarkeit des Unvergleichbaren: Die Widerstandsforschung über die NS-Zeit als methodisches Beispiel’, in Ulrike Poppe, Rainer Eckert, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (eds), Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Anpassung: Formen des Widerstands und der Opposition in der DDR (Berlin: Links, 1995), pp. 68– 84 Emmerich, Wolfgang, ‘Die Literatur des antifaschistischen Widerstandes in Deutschland’, in Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (eds), Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich: Themen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), pp. 427– 58 Grimm, Reinhold, ‘Innere Emigration als Lebensform’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration: Third Wisconsin Workshop (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 31–73

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Grimm, Reinhold, ‘Im Dickicht der inneren Emigration’, in Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (eds), Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich: Themen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), pp. 406–26 Grimm, Reinhold and Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration: Third Wisconsin Workshop (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972) Hüttenberger, Peter, ‘Vorüberlegungen zum “Widerstandsbegriff”’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers: Forschungsbeispiele und ihre Diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 117–34 Jaeger, Harald and Hermann Rumschöttel, ‘Das Forschungsprojekt “Widerstand und Verfolgung in Bayern 1933–1945”: Ein Modell für die Zusammenarbeit von Archivaren und Historikern’, Archivalische Zeitschrift, 73 (1977), 209–20 Jäger, Manfred, Kultur und Politik in der DDR: 1945–1990 (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1995) Jesse, Eckhard, ‘Artikulationsformen und Zielsetzungen von widerständigem Verhalten in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik’, in Deutscher Bundestag (ed.), Materialien der Enquete-Kommission: ‘Aufbearbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland’, 9 vols (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), VII: Möglichkeiten und Formen abweichenden und widerständigen Verhaltens und oppositionellen Handelns, die friedliche Revolution im Herbst 1989, die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands und Fortwirken von Strukturen und Mechanismen der Diktatur, pp. 987–1030 Kleßmann, Christoph, ‘Opposition und Dissidenz in der Geschichte der DDR’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 41 (1991), 52–62 Kleßmann, Christoph, ‘Opposition und Resistenz in zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland’, Historische Zeitschrift, 262 (1996), 453–79 Knabe, Hubertus, ‘Was war die “DDR-Opposition”? Zur Typologie des politischen Widerspruchs in Ostdeutschland’, Deutschland Archiv, 29 (1996), 184–98 Kowalczuk, Ilko-Sascha, ‘Von der Freiheit, Ich zu sagen: Widerständiges Verhalten in der DDR’, in Ulrike Poppe, Rainer Eckert, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk (eds), Zwischen Selbstbehauptung und Anpassung: Formen des Widerstands und der Opposition in der DDR (Berlin: Links, 1995), pp. 85–115 Krohn, Claus-Dieter (ed.), Aspekte der künstlerischen inneren Emigration 1933–1945 (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1994) Lämmert, Eberhard, ‘Beherrschte Prosa: Poetische Lizenzen in Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1945’, Neue Rundschau, 86 (1975), 404–21 Large, David Clay (ed.), Contending with Hitler: Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP, 1991) Löwenthal, Richard, ‘Widerstand im totalen Staat’, in Richard Löwenthal and Patrick von zur Mühlen (eds), Widerstand und Verweigerung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin: Dietz, 1984), pp. 11–24 Löwenthal, Richard and Patrick von zur Mühlen (eds), Widerstand und Verweigerung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin: Dietz, 1984)

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4. Günter Eich and National Socialism Cuomo, Glenn R., ‘Günter Eichs Rundfunkbeiträge in den Jahren 1933–1940: Eine kommentierte Neuaufstellung’, Rundfunk und Fernsehen, 32 (1984), 83–96 Cuomo, Glenn R., Career at the Cost of Compromise: Günter Eich’s Life and Work in the Years 1933–1945 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989) Dolan, Joseph P., ‘Die Rolle der Kolonne in der Entwicklung der modernen deutschen Naturlyrik’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1976) Dolan, Joseph P., ‘The Theory and Practice of Apolitical Literature: Die Kolonne 1929–1932’, Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 1 (1977), 157–71 Eich, Günter, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Karl Karst and Axel Vieregg, 4 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991) Eich, Günter, Rebellion in der Goldstadt: Tonkassette, Text und Materialien, ed. by Karl Karst (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997)

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Fetscher, Justus, ‘Spuren eines Spurlosen: Trauerarbeit im Schreiben Günter Eichs’, in Justus Fetscher, Eberhard Lämmert, Jürgen Schutte (eds), Die Gruppe 47 in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1991), pp. 218–38 Fetscher, Justus, ‘Das Empire bläst zum Angriff Saxophon: Text und Kontext von Günter Eichs Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, Weimarer Beiträge, 45 (1999), 584–97 Greiffenhagen, Martin, Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland (Munich: Piper, 1971) Hörburger, Christian, Das Hörspiel der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1975) Karst, Karl, ‘Einführung’, in Günter Eich, Rebellion in der Goldstadt: Tonkassette, Text und Materialien, ed. by Karl Karst (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 7–12 Karst, Karl, ‘“Honoraris causa”: Materialien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Hörspiels Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, in Günter Eich, Rebellion in der Goldstadt: Tonkassette, Text und Materialien, ed. by Karl Karst (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 51–79 Karst, Karl, ‘“Mein Lebensziel war es, Kutscher zu werden”: Günter Eich und die Anfänge des Rundfunks in Deutschland’, LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 28 (1998), 44–56 Mallmann, Marion, ‘Das Innere Reich’: Analyse einer konservativen Kulturzeitschrift im Dritten Reich (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978) Müller-Hanpft, Susanne, Lyrik und Rezeption: Das Beispiel Günter Eich (Munich: Hanser, 1972) Neumann, Peter Horst, Die Rettung der Poesie im Unsinn: Der Anarchist Günter Eich (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1981) Olbert, Frank, ‘Strammstehen für Goebbels, Geld und Urlaub: Mit Gustav Knuth gegen England - Günter Eichs wiederentdecktes rassistisches Hörspiel Rebellion in der Goldstadt’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die GünterEich-Debatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 117–19 Parker, Stephen, Peter Huchel: A Literary Life in Twentieth-Century Germany (Bern: Lang, 1998) Pausch, Holger A. and Marianne Herzog, ‘Vergessene Texte, Schrift und Sprache: Beobachtungen zur Günter-Eich-Kontroverse’, Wirkendes Wort, 46 (1995), 133– 50 Richardson, Larry L., Committed Aestheticism: The Poetic Theory and Practice of Günter Eich (New York: Lang, 1983) Schäfer, Hans Dieter, ‘Naturdichtung und Neue Sachlichkeit’, in Wolfgang Rothe (ed.), Die deutsche Literatur in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974), pp. 359–81 Schafroth, Heinz, Günter Eich (Munich: Beck, 1976) Schwitzke, Heinz, Das Hörspiel: Dramaturgie und Geschichte (Cologne: Kiepenheuer, 1963)

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Siemes, Christof, ‘Ein kleiner Stachel: Nach 53 Jahren ist ein Hörspiel Günter Eichs wieder aufgetaucht’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-Eich-Debatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 109–11 Storck, Joachim W., Günter Eich, Marbacher Magazin 45 (Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1988) Storck, Joachim W., ‘“Im Grenzbereich von Groteske und Infamie”: Streit um Günter Eichs Vergangenheit - eine Antwort auf Axel Viereggs Kritik an dem Dichter’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-EichDebatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 57–58 Vieregg, Axel, Der eigenen Fehlbarkeit begegnet: Günter Eichs Realitäten 1933–1945 (Eggingen: Edition Isele, 1993) Vieregg, Axel, ‘“Mein Raum und meine Zeit”: Antimodernismus und Idylle beim frühen Günter Eich’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-Eich-Debatte (Amsterdam; Rodopi, 1996), pp. 3–27 Vieregg, Axel (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-Eich-Debatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996) Wessels, Wolfram, ‘Zum Beispiel Günter Eich: Von der schuldlosen Schuld der Literatur’, in Axel Vieregg (ed.), ‘Unsere Sünden sind Maulwürfe’: Die Günter-EichDebatte (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 137–54 Würffel, Stefan Bodo, ‘“Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland”: Anmerkungen zum Hörspiel im Dritten Reich’, in Ralf Schnell (ed.), Kunst und Kultur im deutschen Faschismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978), pp. 129–55

5. Bertolt Brecht in the GDR Borman, Peter, ‘Brecht und der Stalinismus’, in John Fuegi, Reinhold Grimm, Jost Hermand (eds), Brecht-Jahrbuch 1974 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975), pp. 53–76 Brecht, Bertolt, Schriften zum Theater, ed. by Werner Hecht, 7 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1963–1964) Brecht, Bertolt, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1974) Brecht, Bertolt, Buckower Elegien, ed. by Jan Knopf (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986) Brecht, Bertolt, Werke: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, Klaus-Detlef Müller, 30 vols (Berlin: Aufbau; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988–1998) Brooker, Peter, Bertolt Brecht: Dialectics, Poetry, Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1988)

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Buck, Theo, ‘Brecht und Becher’, in Walter Delabar and Jörg Döring (eds), Bertolt Brecht: 1898–1956 (Berlin: Weidler, 1998), pp. 119–40 Bunge, Hans, Die Debatte um Hanns Eislers ‘Johann Faustus’: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1991) Davies, Peter and Stephen Parker, ‘Brecht, SED Cultural Policy and the Issue of Authority in the Arts: The Struggle for Control of the German Academy of Arts’, in Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone (eds), Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 181–95 Deiritz, Karl and Hannes Krauss (eds), Verrat an der Kunst?: Rückblicke auf die DDRLiteratur (Berlin: Aufbau, 1993) Delabar, Walter and Jörg Döring (eds), Bertolt Brecht: 1898–1956 (Berlin: Weidler, 1998) Dietzel, Ulrich and Gudrun Geißler (eds), Zwischen Diskussion und Disziplin: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Akademie der Künste (Ost), 1945/1950 bis 1993 (Berlin: Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste, 1997) Esslin, Martin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils (London: Methuen, 1980) Faber, Elmar and Franz Greno (eds), Sinn und Form: Die ersten zehn Jahre, reprint edition, 10 vols (E. Berlin: Rütten und Loening; Nördlingen: Greno, 1988) Fuegi, John, Reinhold Grimm, Jost Hermand (eds), Brecht-Jahrbuch 1974 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975) Fuegi, John, The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht (London: Harper Collins, 1994) Giles, Steve and Rodney Livingstone (eds), Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998) Hayman, Ronald, Brecht: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) Hecht, Werner, ‘Grund der Empörung über eine “ganz unerträgliche Behandlung”: Brechts Stanislawski-Studium 1953’, Maske und Kothurn, 33.3/4 (1987), 75–87 Hecht, Werner, Am Wasser des Schermützelsees: Bertolt Brecht in Buckow ([s.l.], 1994) Hecht, Werner, ‘“Der Pudding bewährt sich beim Essen”: Brechts “Prüfung” Stanislawskis 1953’, in Ingrid Hentschel, Klaus Hoffmann, Florian Vaßen (eds), Brecht und Stanislawski und die Folgen: Anregungen bei der Theaterarbeit (Berlin: Henschel, 1997), pp. 57–71 Hecht, Werner, Brecht-Chronik: 1898–1956 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997) Hecht, Werner (ed.), Brecht im Gespräch: Diskussionen und Dialoge (Berlin: Henschel, 1979) Hecht, Werner (ed.), Brechts Theorie des Theaters (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986) Hecht, Werner, Hans-Joachim Bunge, Käthe Rülicke-Weiler, Bertolt Brecht: Sein Leben und Werk (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1971) Hentschel, Ingrid, Klaus Hoffmann, Florian Vaßen (eds), Brecht und Stanislawski und die Folgen: Anregungen bei der Theaterarbeit (Berlin: Henschel, 1997)

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Hörnigk, Therese and Alexander Stephan (eds), Rot = Braun? Brecht Dialog 2000: Nationalsozialismus und Stalinismus bei Brecht und Zeitgenossen (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2000) Jesse, Horst, Brecht in Berlin (Munich: Das freie Buch, 1996) Knopf, Jan, Brecht-Handbuch: Eine widersprüchliche Ästhetik, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980–1984) Knopf, Jan, ‘Nachwort zur Edition’, in Bertolt Brecht, Buckower Elegien, ed. by Jan Knopf (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 121–25 Knopf, Jan, ‘Zu den Buckower Elegien’, in Bertolt Brecht, Buckower Elegien, ed. by Jan Knopf (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 33–120 Knopf, Jan, ‘Lyrik der Politik: Brechts “Buckower Elegien” und der 17 Juni’, in Jean-Mari Valentin and Theo Buck (eds), Bertolt Brecht (Bern: Lang, 1990), pp. 53–66 Knopf, Jan, ‘Elegische Warnungen vor dem “eigenen” Faschismus: Bertolt Brecht’, in Karl Deiritz and Hannes Krauss (eds), Verrat an der Kunst?: Rückblicke auf die DDR-Literatur (Berlin: Aufbau, 1993), pp. 81–88 Leder, Lily, ‘Katzgraben von Erwin Strittmatter am Deutschen Theater: Berliner Ensemble’, Theater der Zeit, 8 (1953), 57–60 Lucchesi, Joachim, ‘Macht-Spiele: Die Kontroverse um die Lukullus-Oper’, in Walter Delabar and Jörg Döring (eds), Bertolt Brecht: 1898–1956 (Berlin: Weidler, 1998), pp. 315–23 Lucchesi, Joachim (ed.), Das Verhör in der Oper: Die Debatte um die Aufführung ‘Das Verhör des Lukullus’ von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau (Berlin: BasisDruck, 1993) Lyon, James K., ‘Brecht und Stalin: des Dichters “letztes Wort”’, in Thomas Koebner, Wulf Köpke, Joachim Radkau (eds), Exilforschung: Ein internationales Jahrbuch, (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1983), pp. 120–29 Lyon, James K., ‘Brecht in Postwar Germany: Dissident Conformist, Cultural Icon, Literary Dictator’, in James K. Lyon and Hans-Peter Breuer (eds), Brecht Unbound: Presented at the International Bertolt Brecht Symposium held at the University of Delaware February 1992 (London: Associated University Press, 1995), pp. 76–88 Lyon, James K. and Hans-Peter Breuer (eds), Brecht Unbound: Presented at the International Bertolt Brecht Symposium held at the University of Delaware February 1992 (London: Associated University Press, 1995) Marsch, Edgar, Brecht: Kommentar zum lyrischen Werk (Munich: Winkler, 1974) Mayer, Hans, Ein deutscher auf Widerruf: Erinnerungen, 2 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988) Mayer, Hans, Erinnerung an Brecht (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996) Mittenzwei, Werner, Wer war Brecht: Wandlung und Entwicklung der Ansichten über Brecht im Spiegel von ‘Sinn und Form’ (Berlin: Das europäische Buch, 1977)

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Mittenzwei, Werner, ‘Der Methodenstreit: Brecht oder Stanislawski’, in Werner Hecht (ed), Brechts Theorie des Theaters (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 246–68 Mittenzwei, Werner, Das Leben des Brecht: Oder der Umgang mit den Welträtseln, 2 vols (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 1997) Mumford, Meg, ‘Brecht Studies Stanislavsky: Just a Tactical Move?’, New Theatre Quarterly, 11 (1995), 241–58 Parker, Stephen, ‘Der Fall von Peter Huchel und Sinn und Form: Dokumente’, Sinn und Form, 43 (1992), 739–822 Parker, Stephen, ‘Sinn und Form, Peter Huchel und der 17 Juni 1953: Bertolt Brechts Rettungsaktion’, Sinn und Form, 46 (1994), 738–51 Philpotts, Matthew, ‘“Aus so prosaischen Dingen wie Kartoffeln, Straßen, Traktoren, werden poetische Dinge!”: Brecht, Strittmatter, and Sinn und Form’, German Life and Letters, (56) 2003, 56–71 Reso, Martin, ‘Der Dichter und die wirklichen Dinge: Einführung in Leben und Werk’, in Erwin Strittmatter, Leben und Werk: Analyse, Erörterungen, Gespräche (Berlin: Das europäische Buch, 1984), pp. 9–35 Rohrwasser, Michael, Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten: Die Literatur der Exkommunisten (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991) Rülicke-Weiler, Käthe, ‘Brecht and Weigel at the Berliner Ensemble’, trans by Karin Littau, New Theatre Quarterly, 7 (1991), 3–19 Schartner, Irmgard, Hanns Eisler, ‘Johann Faustus’: Das Werk und seine Aufführungsgeschichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1998) Schoor, Uwe, Das geheime Journal einer Nation: Die Zeitschrift ‘Sinn und Form’ Chefredakteur Peter Huchel 1949–1962 (Berlin: Lang, 1992) Seidel, Gerhard, ‘Vom Kaderwelsch und vom Schmalz der Söhne McCarthys’, Sinn und Form, 32 (1980), 1087–91 Strittmatter, Erwin, ‘Gesellenjahre bei Brecht’, in Walther Victor (ed.), Brecht: Ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit (Weimar: Volksverlag, 1958), pp. 20–27 Strittmatter, Erwin, Leben und Werk: Analyse, Erörterungen, Gespräche (Berlin: Das europäische Buch, 1984) Thomson, Philip, ‘Brecht’s Poetry’, in Philip Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), pp. 201–17 Uhlmann, Petra and Sabine Wolf (eds), ‘Die Regierung ruft die Künstler’: Dokumente zur Gründung der Deutschen Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akadeimie der Künste, 1993) Valentin, Jean-Mari and Theo Buck (eds), Bertolt Brecht (Bern: Lang, 1990) Victor, Walther (ed.), Brecht: Ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit (Weimar: Volksverlag, 1958) Vietor-Engländer, Deborah, Faust in der DDR (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1987) Völker, Klaus, Bertolt Brecht: Eine Biographie (Munich: Hanser, 1976) Weber, Carl, ‘Brecht and Communism: Clear-sighted Ambiguity or Blurred Vision?’, in James K. Lyon and Hans-Peter Breuer (eds), Brecht Unbound:

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Index

Abusch, Alexander, 265, 312, 313 Academy of Arts, East Berlin cultural-political institution, 265-66, 273-74, 299, 350 site of dissent, 59, 296-98, 308, 312, 316-17, 319-20, 333, 336 assent and dissent interaction between, 162–63 methodological principles, 163–66 Arendt, Hannah, 22, 24, 26, 68 Barlach, Ernst, 28, 299-305, 306, 310, 313, 314 Barthel, Kurt, 329 Bavaria Project, 37, 143–45, 146, 164, 312 Becher, Johannes R. in GDR, 263, 283-84, 317, 333 in Weimar, 175–77, 181, 183, 190, 208 Benn, Gottfried influence on Eich, 177–78, 182–83, 188, 196, 203, 227, 230, 243 relationship with National Socialism, 42, 48, 190, 195, 197–98, 227, 258, 321 Bergengruen, Werner, 140 Biermann, Wolf, 67 Brecht, Bertolt Berliner Ensemble Hofmeister, 292–93 Katzgraben, 262, 264–81, 281-94, 310, 334, 336 Die Mutter, 291, 292–93, 306, 307, 308 Mutter Courage, 292–93 Pauken und Trompeten, 263

Puntila, 263, 283–85, 286 Die Tage der Kommune, 263, 283–85 Urfaust, 263, 292–93 Winterschlacht, 263, 283–85, 291 ‘Buckower Elegien’ ‘Bei der Lektüre eines spätgriechischen Dichters’, 339 ‘Beim Lesen des Horaz’, 330, 339 ‘Der Blumengarten’, 327, 332, 343 ‘Böser Morgen’, 331, 335 ‘Der Einarmige im Gehölz’, 338–39 ‘Eisen’, 330, 341 ‘Große Zeit, vertan’, 341 ‘Die Kelle’, 330 ‘Lebensmittel zum Zweck’, 335–36, 339 ‘Die Lösung’, 328–29, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 338, 343, 344 ‘Die Musen’, 341 ‘Die neue Mundart’, 328, 329–30, 332, 333, 334, 343 ‘Der Radwechsel’, 330–31 ‘Der Rauch’, 339 contributions to Sinn und Form ‘Erklärung der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’, 296, 311, 315– 18, 321, 333, 345 ‘Erwin Strittmatters Katzgraben’, 264–81, 295, 298, 322, 353 ‘Kleines Organon für das Theater’, 288–90 ‘Notizen zur Barlach-Ausstellung’, 262, 268, 297-98, 299–305, 307, 310-11, 312-15, 321, 338, 345, 351

373

‘Offener Brief an die deutschen Künstler und Schriftsteller’, 308– 09, 322 ‘Thesen zur Faustus-Diskussion’, 262, 268, 296, 298, 299, 308, 311–15, 321, 322, 345 ‘Über reimlose Lyrik mit unregelmäßigen Rhythmen’, 308–09 GDR poetry ‘Das Amt für Literatur’, 333 ‘An meine Landsleute’, 340 ‘Herrnburger Bericht’, 340 ‘Kinderlieder’, 340 ‘Nicht feststellbare Fehler der Kunstkommision’, 333 ‘Nicht so gemeint’, 333–34, 335, 339, 345 ‘Tschaganak Bersijew oder Die Erziehung der Hirse’, 340 ‘Kulturpolitik und Akademie der Künste’, 320, 332 Lukullus controversy, 306, 307-08, 309–10, 345 responses to 17 June, 276-78, 294, 324–25, 334, 336–38, 350 responses to Formalism Campaign, 306–10, 350, 351 Stanislavsky study, 266, 269-71, 27881, 288-89 ‘Vorwort zu Turandot’, 337–38 Broszat, Martin, 38, 143–44, 145, 146, 152, 154, 156, 157 Brzezinsky, Zbigniev, 23, 25, 31, 86, 94 cultural policy, Nazi architecture, 30-31, 34-35, 39, 7071 cumulative radicalisation, 42-43, 4445, 48-52 Entartete Kunst, 42, 45, 48, 51, 127

374

inefficiencies and polycracy, 37-42, 43, 45, 46-47, 48-52, 221 intentionalist vs structuralist explanations, 43-48, 48-52 jazz music, 39-40 literary policy, 40-42 working towards the Führer, 48-52, 224, 226 cultural policy, SED inefficiencies in early phase, 58-61 literary policy, 56-57, 59-61, 65 loss of ideological dynamism, 64-66 periodisation of, 69 re-assertion of total claim, 66-67 shocks and lulls, 62-63 Darré, Walter, 112, 113, 200, 210 Dessau, Paul, 306, 308, 340 discourse mechanism of power, 121–22 official Nazi variety, 124–25, 128– 30 official SED variety, 122–24, 126–28 site of resistance, 130–32 dissent definition and scale, 151–53 Eich, Günter Kolonne essays ‘Bemerkungen über Lyrik’, 173–75, 182, 185, 189, 255 ‘Innere Dialoge’, 173, 184, 189 Kolonne reviews Becher, ‘Der große Plan’, 175–76, 181–82, 183, 208 Belzner, Marschieren – nicht träumen, 189 Benn, Fazit der Perspektiven, 182–83, 188–89 Flaubert, Éducation Sentimentale, 204 Um uns die Stadt, 174

Villon, 175 von der Vring, Verse, 187 crisis in Third Reich, 249–56 early poems, 178, 206 reluctance to work for Nazi radio, 212, 249–50, 253–54 response to Nazi seizure of power, 177, 191–194, 195–96, 211–14 Third Reich poetry ‘Schlaflied am frühen Abend’, 244– 45 ‘Der Tag im März’, 243–44, 251, 252, 256, 258, 351 ‘Weg durch die Dünen’, 244–45, 246, 247 Third Reich prose Katharina, 201, 202–03, 204–05, 207, 209, 222, 223, 258, 353 ‘Die Schattenschlacht’, 202, 221– 24, 225, 241 Third Reich radio plays ‘Fährten in der Prärie’, 218, 227, 228–29, 231–33, 234, 235–37, 238–40, 241–43, 248, 250–51, 257 ‘Königswusterhäuser Landbote’, 196, 198–203, 205–07, 208–10, 212, 214–15, 222, 223, 225, 226, 229, 241, 257, 349 ‘Radium’, 227, 228–29, 233, 234– 35, 235–37, 241–43, 248, 250–51, 257 Rebellion in der Goldstadt, 11, 215–20, 225, 237, 258, 351 ‘Weizenkantate’, 218, 227, 228–29, 230–31, 233–34, 235–37, 238–40, 248, 257 Third Reich reviews Stifter, Witiko, 204–05 Eichendorff, 175, 207 Eisler, Hanns, 296, 298, 308, 312-14, 319

fascism as anti-ideology, 85-86, 88–89 core myth, 90, 91–92 eclectic appeal, 97, 103–04 generic definitions, 88-90, 94 Fascism, Italian, 21, 22, 76, 78, 85, 89 Foucault, Michel History of Sexuality, 130 ‘Order of Discourse’, 120–21, 122 will to truth, 120–22, 123, 124, 126 Fricke, Gerd, 195, 219, 223 Friedrich, Carl Joachim, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31, 86, 94 Girnus, Wilhelm, 300-05, 308, 312, 313, 314, 319-20 Goebbels, Joseph dispute with Rosenberg, 39, 45-47, 49, 50, 220 ideology, 93, 113 radio policy, 215, 219, 220 support for Expressionism, 42 Golomstock, Igor, theory of totalitarian art, 22-25, 31-32, 74 critique of, 30-31, 33-35, 37-38, 7475, 76-77 value of, 26-28 Grotewohl, Otto, 309, 317 Haas, Willy, 81 Hager, Kurt, 56, 340 Hermlin, Stephan, 66, 265, 266 Heym, Stefan, 66 Hindemith, Paul, 47 Hitler, Adolf attitude to Modernism, 43, 44-46, 47-48, 70-71, 73, 77 attitude to modernisation, 115, 116, 117-19, 238, 240 charismatic rule, 32, 36, 52-53, 54

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ideology, 86, 92, 93, 96 role in Nazi cultural policy, 23, 25, 27, 30, 33-34, 38, 43-52, 78 Honecker, Erich, 63, 67, 69 Huchel, Peter, Sinn und Form editor, 265, 268, 297– 98, 300, 302, 308, 312, 319 Third Reich crisis, 244, 252 ideology, Nazi anti-rational dynamics, 96 attitude to modernisation, 106–07, 112–18, 238, 240 core myths, 92–93, 100 non-comparability of, 86–87, 88 radicalising dynamic, 93, 106 as species of fascism, 92–93, 94 tendency to instability, 103–04 ideology, political, 94-100 ideology, SED attitude to modernisation, 110-11 core myths, 100–02 loss of dynamism, 69, 99, 105–06 pro-rational dynamics, 96, 104 tendency to stability, 104–05 inner emigration as aesthetic phenomenon, 82, 141 models and definitions, 134–40 as Resistenz, 156–57 usefulness of term, 141–42

Kuhnert, A. Artur, Kolonne editor, 170, 176, correspondence with Eich, 211, 212, 217, 218, 219, 249, 253, 255 Lange, Horst, 190 Lenin, 111 Ley, Robert, 113 literary assent scale and definition, 160–62 literary dissent scale and definition, 153–55 Lukács, Georg, cultural authority in GDR, 34, 82 Die Linksurve, 77, 82, 190 Magritz, Kurt, 300-05, 312 Marx, Karl, 96 Modernism definitions of, 72-73 relationship to totalitarianism, 70, 7477, 82-83 cultural shift away from, 77-80, 81, 82, 188-89 survival in Third Reich, 30, 42, 7071, 73, 75 modernisation definition of, 107–09 relationship to totalitarianism, 117119 Mussolini, 23, 85

Jahn, Ottoheinz, 195, 223 Jünger, Ernst, 321

Pieck, Wilhelm, 340

Kasack, Hermann, 184, 193 Kollwitz, Käthe, 28 Die Kolonne editorial programme, 172–73, 177, 179–81, 187–88 role in 1930 cultural shift, 82, 188– 90

Raschke, Martin, correspondence with Eich, 195, 212, 214, 250, 251, 253 Kolonne editor, 170, 172, 174, 176, 177, 179 co-writer with Eich, 196, 200, 201, 212, 214

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resistance re-definition of, 144–45, 146 relationship to total claim, 146–48, 320–21 scales and typologies of, 148–53 Resistenz advantages/disadvantages, 145 application to literature, 156–57 definition, 144 Rosenberg, Alfred ideology, 93, 112, 113, 189, 200, 210, 220 see also Goebbels Rülicke, Käthe, 267, 270, 279, 280, 301, 307-08 Sinn und Form see Brecht see Huchel Socialist Realism, 24, 28, 33, 65, 76, 264, 269, 279, 288 Speer, Albert, 70, 113 Stalin attitude to social modernisation, 108–09, 111, 118-19 style of rule, 32-34, 36, 53, 58, 59, 82 role in cultural policy, 25, 27 Stanislavsky, Constantine, 34 see also Brecht

Strauss, Richard, 47 Strittmatter, Erwin, see Brecht, Katzgraben Todt, Fritz, 113 totalitarianism charismatic vs bureaucratic varieties, 22, 67-69, 99 conventional models applicability to GDR, 53-56 critique of, 28-30, 32-33, 68 theories, 22, 23, 24, 31, 55-56, 86– 87 value of, 25-26 see also Golomstock revised model non-applicability to GDR, 52-53, 62 theory, 35-37, 42, 52-53, 56 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 88, 95 Ulbricht, Walter, 58, 59, 62, 64, 66, 69, 83, 310, 319, 324 Weigel, Helene, 272, 309 Widerstandsliteratur models and definitions, 134–40 Wolf, Christa, 12, 66 Zhdanov, Andrei, 61

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Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur

Nr. 1 Geoffrey Perkins: Contemporary Theory of Expressionism, 1974. 182 S. Nr. 2 Paul Kussmaul: Bertolt Brecht und das englische Drama der Renaissance, 1974. 175 S. Nr. 3 Eudo C. Mason: Hölderlin and Goethe, 1975. 145 S. Nr. 4 W.E. Yates: Tradition in the German Sonnet, 1981. 98 S. Nr. 5 Rhys W. Williams: Carl Sternheim. A Critical Study, 1982. 282 S. Nr. 6 Roger H. Stephenson: Goethe’s Wisdom Literature, 1983. 274 S. Nr. 7 John Hennig: Goethe and the English Speaking World, 1983. 288 S. Nr. 8 John R.P. McKenzie: Social Comedy in Austria and Germany 1890–1933, 1992. 262 S., 2nd Edition 1996. Nr. 9 David Basker: Chaos, Control and Consistency: The Narrative Vision of Wolfgang Koeppen, 1993. 352 S. Nr. 10 John Klapper: Stefan Andres. The Christian Humanist as a Critic of his Times, 1995. 188 S. Nr. 11 Anthony Grenville: Cockpit of Ideologies. The Literature and Political History of the Weimar Republic, 1995. 394 S. Nr. 12 T.M. Holmes: The Rehearsal of Revolution. Georg Büchner’s Politics and his Drama Dantons Tod, 1995. 214 S. Nr. 13 Andrew Plowman: The Radical Subject. Social Change and the Self in Recent German Autobiography, 1998. 168 S. Nr. 14 David Barnett: Literature versus Theatre. Textual Problems and Theatrical Realization in the Later Plays of Heiner Müller, 1998. 293 S. Nr. 15 Stephen Parker: Peter Huchel. A Literary Life in 20th-Century Germany, 1998. 617 S. Nr. 16 Deborah Smail: White-collar Workers, Mass Culture and Neue Sachlichkeit in Weimar Berlin. A Reading of Hans Fallada’s Kleiner Mann – Was nun?, Erich Kästner’s Fabian and Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen, 1999. 236 S. Nr. 17 Ian Roe and John Warren (eds.): The Biedermeier and Beyond. Selected Papers from the Symposium held at St. Peter’s College, Oxford from 19– 21 September 1997, 1999. 253 S. Nr. 18 James Trainer (ed.): Liebe und Trennung. Charlotte von Ahlefelds Briefe an Christian Friedrich Tieck, 1999. 235 S. Nr. 19 Anthony J. Harper and Margaret C. Ives (eds.): Sappho in the Shadows. Essays on the work of German women poets of the age of Goethe (1749– 1832), with translations of their poetry into English, 2000. 280 S. Nr. 20 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Poetry, 2000. 218 S. Nr. 21 Rachel Palfreyman: Edgar Reitz’s Heimat. Histories, Traditions, Fictions, 2000. 237 S. Nr. 22 Meg Tait: Taking Sides. Stefan Heym’s Historical Fiction. 2001. 208 S.

Nr. 23 Fred Whalley: The Elusive Transcendent. The Role of Religion in the Plays of Frank Wedekind, 2002. 204 S. Nr. 24 Philip Ward: Hofmannsthal and Greek Myth: Expression and Performance, 2002. 295 S. Nr. 25 Florian Krobb and Jeff Morrison (eds.): Poetry Project. Irish Germanists Interpret German Verse, 2003. 276 S. Nr. 26 Forthcoming. Nr. 27 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Drama, 2002. 244 S. Nr. 28 W. E. Yates, Allyson Fiddler and John Warren (eds.): From Perinet to Jelinek. Viennese Theatre in its Political and Intellectual Context, 2001. 290 S. Nr. 29 Hannah Burdekin: The Ambivalent Author. Five German Writers and their Jewish Characters, 1848–1914, 2002. 338 S. Nr. 30 Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby: Models of Wholeness. Some Attitudes to Language, Art and Life in the Age of Goethe. Edited by Jeremy Adler, Martin Swales and Ann Weaver, 2002. 271 S. Nr. 31 Martin Kane (ed.): Legacies and Identity. East and West German Literary Responses to Unification, 2002. 209 S. Nr. 32 Peter Hutchinson and Reinhard K. Zachau (eds.): Stefan Heym: Socialist – Dissenter – Jew; Stefan Heym: Sozialist – Dissident – Jude, 2003. 220 S. Nr. 33 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Short Prose, 2003. 208 S. Nr. 34 Matthew Philpotts: The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht, 2003. 377 S.