The Representation of War in German Literature: From 1800 to the Present (Cambridge Studies in American)

THE REPRESENTATION OF WAR IN GERMAN LITERATURE The history of literature about war is marked by a fundamental paradox: although war forms the subject of countless novels, dramas, poems, and films, it is often conceived as indescribable. Even as many writers strive toward an ideal of authenticity, they maintain that no representation can do justice to the terror and violence of war. Readings of Schiller, Kleist, Ju¨nger, Remarque, Grass, Bo¨ll, Handke, and Jelinek reveal that stylistic and aesthetic features, gender discourses, and concepts of agency and victimization can all undermine a text’s martial stance or its ostensible pacifist agenda. Spanning the period from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to the recent wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq, Elisabeth Krimmer investigates the aesthetic, theoretical, and historical challenges that confront writers of war. e l i s a b e t h kr i m m e r is Associate Professor in the Department of German & Russian at the University of California, Davis.

THE REPRESENTATION OF WAR IN GERMAN LITERATURE From 1800 to the Present

ELISABETH KRIMMER

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521198028 # Elisabeth Krimmer 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2010 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krimmer, Elisabeth, 1967– The representation of war in German literature : from 1800 to the present / Elisabeth Krimmer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-521-19802-8 (Hardback) 1. German literature–History and criticism. 2. War in literature. I. Title. pt148.w3k755 2010 840.90 3581–dc22 2010007113 isbn 978-0-521-19802-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Mark and Henry, my men of peace

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Introduction

1

1

part i the revolutionary and napoleonic wars 2 The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: overview

19

3 War and the sublime: Schiller

27

4 War and terror: Kleist

46

part ii

the first world war

5 The First World War: overview

65

6 War and myth: Ju¨nger

71

7 War and the body: Remarque

88

part iii the second world war 8 The Second World War: overview

107

9 War and victimization: Bo¨ll

114

10 War and accountability: Grass

133

part iv yugoslavia and iraq 11

Yugoslavia and Iraq: overview

151

12

War and peace: Handke

155

vii

Contents

viii 13

War and the media: Jelinek

175

14

Conclusion

197

Notes Bibliography Index

203 226 262

Acknowledgments

The debts of gratitude that I have accumulated in writing this book are significant. I would like to thank the interlibrary loan staffs at Mount Holyoke College, the Staatsbibliotheken in Berlin and Munich, and the University of California, Davis. The University of California at Davis granted generous research stipends that provided much needed time and resources. I am further indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation whose generous support led to a much speedier completion of this project than would otherwise have been possible. Several essays contained in this book have appeared as separate pieces. An earlier version of chapter 3 was first published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction 19.1–2 (2008): 99–123. Chapter 4 first appeared in The German Quarterly 81.1 (2008): 67–86 and chapter 10 is adapted from my article in Seminar 44.2 (2008): 272–90. Many thanks also go to friends and colleagues, who have contributed to the writing of this book. I would like to thank Patricia Simpson, Gail Finney, and Inge Stephan for their helpful suggestions regarding the structure and theoretical frameworks of my project. Special thanks also go to Waltraud Maierhofer, Alice Kuzniar, Susanne Kord, Gail Hart, Ellis Dye, Monika Shafi, Paul Michael Lu¨tzeler, Anton Kaes, Jaimey Fisher, Brad Prager, Raleigh Whitinger, Sara Colvin, and Peter Davies, who have all provided valuable feedback on various sections of this manuscript and/ or have helped me think through the relation between art and war. I owe much to the stimulating discussions with the graduate students in my courses on the representation of war at Georgetown University and at the University of California, Davis. Thanks also go to Linda Bree, my editor at Cambridge University Press, who was instrumental in bringing this project to fruition. Most of all, I would like to thank my husband Mark Nitzberg for his unwavering support and for creating a haven where writing is easy. ix

chapter 1

Introduction

Friktion ist der einzige Begriff, welcher dem ziemlich allgemein entspricht, was den wirklichen Krieg von dem auf dem Papier unterscheidet. (Friction is the only term that corresponds more or less to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper.) (Clausewitz, Vom Kriege 86)

In his memoir Als wa¨r’s ein Stu¨ck von mir (As if it Were Part of Myself, 1966), Carl Zuckmayer discusses the impossibility of writing about war: “Ich habe kein Kriegsbuch geschrieben und keine Kriegsgeschichte erza¨hlt. Mir schien es unmo¨glich, das mitzuteilen – vergeblich, das als Wirklichkeit Erlebte, sei es in einem verkla¨rten, heroischen, kritischen Licht, wiederzugeben oder auch nur sachlich davon zu berichten” (I did not write a book about war or tell a war story. It seemed impossible to communicate this – futile to reproduce what I experienced as real, either in an idealized, heroic, critical light or even to report it in a matter of fact way).1 In his film Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), set during the war in the Balkans, Theodoros Angelopoulos conveys the same topos visually. Instead of exposing us to a scene of cruel butchery, Angelopoulos shows a stark white screen. Like many others before them, Zuckmayer and Angelopoulos suggest that war is ineffable, that no representation can do justice to the violence and terror of war. And yet, flying in the face of this claim to unrepresentability is the fact that war forms the subject of countless novels, dramas, poems, and films. Texts about war are written to work through its trauma, to settle questions of guilt and responsibility, to promote pacifism, to celebrate the intensity of life under duress, or to gain a better understanding of the origin and mechanisms of war. The sheer mass of texts about war hints at a certain repetition compulsion: we keep telling stories about war because we can neither stop wars nor can we fashion a representation of war truly capable of conveying its terror. Carl von Clausewitz used the term “friction” to designate this rift between reality and fiction, claiming that 1

2

Introduction

“Friktion ist der einzige Begriff, welcher dem ziemlich allgemein entspricht, was den wirklichen Krieg von dem auf dem Papier unterscheidet.”2 Of course, Clausewitz was primarily interested in friction on the battlefield. This study, in contrast, turns Clausewitz’s theory on its head by locating the source of friction not in reality but on paper. As we shall see, every representation of war is also a failure to represent war, but it is not the fact of this failure itself that is interesting, but rather its how and why. Thus, this study proposes to investigate the theoretical and historical parameters of “friction,” to explore the formal and thematic aporiae that demarcate the limits of war representations. While this book foregrounds friction as a characteristic of texts about war, a literary scholar might object that “friction” is a much more fundamental problem that does not apply to war literature exclusively but is constitutive of all forms of writing and, generally, all products of signification. In this sense, friction designates the unbridgeable gap between word and world, between signifier and signified. To be sure, friction holds sway in the entire realm of representation, but there are pressing reasons why it acquires particular urgency and assumes specific formations in the context of war. Here, friction not only points to the radical disjuncture between the mortal danger of war and the comforting safety of fiction, but also measures the distance between the pacifist impulse of numerous war novels and the seeming inevitability of future wars. Many authors of texts about war hope to convey the reality of war in order to prevent future wars. It is because of this imperative that the concept of authenticity looms so large in all writing about war: if only we could capture what this war was really like, no more wars would ever be fought. Of course, the failures that plague this idealist agenda and the theoretical reservations that attend it are manifold. First, the notion of a perfect representation in which life and text are completely co-extensive is as seductive as it is illusory. Secondly, the power of literature to shape and change social reality is circumscribed at best. But even if we concede that a text may approximate the reality it represents and, furthermore, that literature does possess the potential to transform the world, there is still the question of complicity. This applies not only to texts that deliberately engage in literary warmongering. As this study will show, many texts that oppose war on some level are complicit with its rationale on another. This ideological unevenness puts in question one of our most dearly cherished assumptions, namely the idea that anti-war texts are apt to pave the way towards peace. Indeed, one might even borrow from Giorgio Agamben and suggest that, in the war novel, the concept of peace represents an

Introduction

3

inclusion by exclusion.3 If we define peace from the vantage point of war, we have little hope of developing the qualities and orientations on which the peaceful collaboration of societies and nations might rest. Texts about war teach us about war. If we want to understand peace, we may require another kind of counsel. It is the goal of this study to gain a precise, accurate, thematic, and theoretical understanding of war texts and of the different forms of friction that define their limits. Based on my readings of Germanlanguage war texts from the eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, I differentiate four forms of friction: metonymic slippage, the content of the form, the dilemma of the body in pain, and gender subtexts. metonymic slippage: the sublime and terror One of the most surprising results of a study of war literature consists in the fact that, quite frequently, texts that ostensibly focus on the representation of warfare are actually concerned with issues of an entirely different nature. Let me give an example. As the title indicates, Friedrich Schiller’s Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, 1801) revolves around an episode in the Hundred Years’ War. On a deeper level, however, the text is not primarily concerned with a historically specific formation of violent conflict, but rather uses warfare as a trope to explore the relation between mind and body. It is my argument that such metonymic slippage, which results in a conflation of different discourses, is likely to produce a structural me´connaissance of war. In other words, a text that is characterized by metonymic slippage is not primarily beholden to the topic of war, but, by employing war as a metaphor or metonymy, it necessarily conveys messages about warfare. After all, in creating links and connections between two different arenas, metaphors and metonymies redefine both. By conflating warfare and the mind–body dichotomy, for example, an author may not only define the relationship to one’s body as combative but also transpose the model of physical disease onto the body politic. As the Schiller example indicates, the most common form of metonymic slippage uses the theme of war to showcase the triumph of mind over body. This is hardly surprising since, in warfare, the soldier’s spiritual and emotional energies are engaged in a constant battle to overcome the fear of physical extinction. According to Margot Norris, war is frequently seen as “coeval with the moment of becoming human . . . because the transition from animal to human required the willingness

4

Introduction

to risk life, to transcend the survival instinct and set immaterial values above material life.”4 The interpretation of warfare as quintessentially human is intimately related to the conflation of warfare and the sublime that dates back to the eighteenth century but is still evident in works by Ernst Ju¨nger and Peter Handke. Like warfare, the concept of the sublime goes to the heart of the relation between body and mind, reason and sensuality. Immanuel Kant, whose philosophy had a defining influence on both Schiller and Heinrich von Kleist, defined the sublime as the moment ¨ berlegenheit der Vernunftbestimmung unserer “welches uns die U Erkenntnisvermo¨gen u¨ber das gro¨ßte Vermo¨gen der Sinnlichkeit gleichsam anschaulich macht”5 (which illustrates the supremacy of the faculty of reason over the greatest power of sensuality). Kant claims that the sublime causes “negative Lust” (165) (negative pleasure) and repeatedly links it to “Gewalt,” which in German encompasses the notion of power but also violence. Interestingly, in Kant’s theory, the link between the sublime and warfare as a historical phenomenon is incidental (see chapter 2) whereas the connection between the sublime and the fiction of war is intimate and insoluble. According to Kant, the true moment of the sublime arises when we imagine danger but are not actually confronted with it: “Man kann aber einen Gegenstand als furchtbar betrachten, ohne sich vor ihm zu fu¨rchten, wenn wir ihn na¨mlich so beurteilen, daß wir uns bloß den Fall denken, da wir ihm etwa Widerstand tun wollten, und daß alsdann aller Widerstand bei weitem vergeblich sein wu¨rde” (184) (But one can consider an object terrible without being afraid of it if we think of it in such a way that we are merely imagining the possibility of wanting to resist it and then that all resistance would be futile). To Kant, only an observer who is safe from actual danger can appreciate the phenomenon of the sublime: “Wer sich fu¨rchtet, kann u¨ber das Erhabene der Natur gar nicht urteilen” (185) (He who is afraid cannot assess the sublimity of nature). Kant’s point is well taken, and yet, as the following chapters will show, the reality of war can and did invite fantasies of transcendence, and the fiction that springs from this experience can, in turn, inspire others to pursue transcendence in war. This study traces the relation between warfare and the sublime from the late eighteenth century to the present. Part i shows that, while Kant laid the theoretical foundation for an association of warfare and the sublime, Schiller’s Wallenstein (1799) and his Jungfrau von Orleans oscillate between condemnations of warfare as slaughter and the celebration of warfare as the practice of man’s most sublime freedom. Although Schiller’s plays are characterized by a great ambivalence toward war, they also toy with the

Introduction

5

notion of war as a moral institution capable of effecting personal and national catharsis. In contrast, the plays of Kleist deconstruct the nexus of warfare and the sublime by embracing it and taking it to extremes. In Kleist’s work, the concept of terror emerges as the dark “Other” of the sublime. In the German-language canon of First World War literature, the works that are most commonly associated with the relation between warfare and the sublime are those of Ernst Ju¨nger. In Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern (Storms of Steel, 1920), in particular, the experience of violence and warfare offers access to a transcendental realm, violence appears as the ultimate reality, and warfare is in close proximity to religion. Finally, parts iii and iv show that, while the sublime recedes into the background in the works of Heinrich Bo¨ll and Gu¨nter Grass, it resurfaces in the Yugoslavia essays of Peter Handke. the content of the form: from the novel of ‘bildung’ to the farce If we compare memoirs, diaries, and letters from the front with war novels, we find that they share many motifs and themes.6 Both types of text convey the chaos of battle, the horror of close proximity to death, the cruelty of captivity, the constant hunger due to scarcity of supplies, the extreme discomfort that arises from lice infestation, sleep deprivation, and exposure to cold and rain, and the suffering caused by injuries and diseases including dysentery, typhoid, and cholera. Both autobiographical documents and literature alternate between patriotism, propaganda, critique, and despair. And both describe the exhilaration of victory, the thrill of adventure, and the excitement of wartime romances. Indeed, the main difference between war literature and the many documents of soldiers and civilians who recorded their experiences of war is not one of content, but of form. One of the most fundamental challenges in any analysis of war literature concerns the congruence of content and form. Again, in this, texts about war are like any other kind of text. What is different, though, is a persistent tendency in secondary literature that deals with war texts to overlook narrative structure and stylistic choices in favor of questions of historical accuracy. Consciously or subliminally, authenticity emerges as the gold standard of war writing. But while such a focus is understandable – after all, a truthful account of events is imperative where human lives are at stake – it is also problematic. Narrowing one’s field of vision in this

6

Introduction

way is apt to produce misreadings since, as Hayden White and others have shown, narrative devices and stylistic idiosyncrasies are themselves carriers of ideological meaning. Departing from this assumption, I argue that an incongruence of content and form introduces its own measure of friction into the representation of war; a friction that relates not only to stylistic, rhetorical, and narrative devices, but also to questions of genre, which, as I will show, have particular purchase on the representation of war. It is not accidental that many prominent eighteenth-century representations of warfare belong to the genre of drama. Unlike the First World War, which is generally perceived to defy meaning and is identified with the erasure of individuality in mass death, eighteenth-century warfare does not preclude an investigation into its origin and rationale. Thus, the eighteenth-century drama, with its emphasis on heroic individuality and its staged negotiation of competing arguments, offers an ideal venue to probe the legitimacy of the goals and methods of war. In contrast, the genres that are most closely allied with representations of the First World War are the novel, the memoir, and the poem. As part ii demonstrates at length, First World War novels frequently draw on the nineteenth-century literary tradition of realism even though, or possibly because, they must deal with the chaos and butchery of modern warfare. In so doing, these novels introduce narrative conventions that impose order, stability, and a teleological trajectory on the subject of war. To put it plainly, many First World War novels rely on a structural and aesthetic heritage that proves incompatible with the horror of twentieth-century warfare. As Evelyn Cobley points out, “if realism can be seen as affirming bourgeois values and modernism as questioning them, then First World War narratives display through their formal choices attitudes to the war which may or may not be confirmed on the thematic or propositional level.”7 Erich Maria Remarque’s and Ju¨nger’s war novels exemplify the contradictions that arise from this disjuncture. Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929) is strongly influenced by the genre of the Bildungsroman. Because of this affinity, Remarque’s novel reintroduces a teleological structure that the thematic focus on the suffering and chaos of war appears to deny. Conversely, Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern is commonly seen as a celebration of the warrior ethos and lifestyle. But even though Ju¨nger stands accused of glorifying war, the numerous disconnected and self-contained episodes that make up In Stahlgewittern bear no trace of any narrative of progress or development and evoke the genre of chronicle. Of course, this is not to say that Ju¨nger’s

Introduction

7

text is truly an anti-war novel. Nor do I mean to imply that there is an ideal form that resolves all ideological dilemmas. As Cobley points out, modernism comes with its own ideological baggage, some of which is equally unsuited to further a pacifist agenda. Clearly, it cannot be the goal of a literary analysis to search for an ideal form. At the same time, it is imperative that we attend to the tensions that riddle these texts if we want to understand how “the content of the form” affects the trajectory of the text and hence our perception of war. The impulse to come to terms with the legacy of the Bildungsroman is evident not only in Remarque’s First World War novel, but also in Heinrich Bo¨ll’s and Gu¨nter Grass’s Second World War texts. Unlike Remarque, who finds comfort and solace in the structure of the Bildungsroman, Bo¨ll and Grass reject its heritage. Heinrich Bo¨ll devised texts that appear in the guise of traditional realism but actually undermine their ostensible moral and narrative simplicity. Bo¨ll’s ruptured chronologies and unreliable narrators introduce a second level of meaning in seemingly conventional texts. Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959), on the other hand, abandons realism altogether in favor of surrealist and picaresque modes of emplotment and turns the journey for Bildung into a farce. The farcical aspects of Grass’s text come into their own in the postmodern war texts of Elfriede Jelinek. In Jelinek’s Sportstu¨ck (A Sport Play, 1989) and Bambiland (2003), her dramatic rendering of the Iraq War, war is a travesty in which we amuse ourselves to death. In this, Jelinek would appear to be the polar opposite of Peter Handke, whose Yugoslavia essays seek to transcend the arena of war into the sphere of myth and poetry. And yet, in spite of their apparent differences, Jelinek and Handke also have much in common. Unlike their predecessors whose texts deal with the experience of war, Jelinek and Handke are primarily concerned with a critique of war representations. Both Jelinek’s and Handke’s war texts have as their point of departure the inalienable distance from and unrecoverable reality of war. In the privileged West, the new wars are media wars, and media criticism has become a privileged form of war writing. the body in pain: victimization and aestheticization In her path-breaking study The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry has drawn attention to the problematic disappearance of the human body from accounts of war. Scarry’s study traces the multiple strategies with which representations of war seek to elide the body in pain and eliminate

8

Introduction

from their surface the facts of wounding and killing.8 Based on this thesis, one might assume that an honest account of injuries and death in battle presents the most powerful challenge to recuperative treatments of war. But, as I will show, reintroducing the body in pain into texts of war is itself fraught with multiple problems. Indeed, representations of the body are as much a source of friction as are the sublime and the content of the form. In recent years, critics have become increasingly wary of the sensationalist implications of war spectacles, arguing that “the meticulously detailed aping of an atrocity is an atrocity . . . the unmediated representation of violence constitutes in itself an act of violence against the spectator.”9 Although this criticism originally stems from film scholarship, it holds equally true for the blood and gore of war novels. Instead of inciting horror, the body in pain may be a source of lurid excitement. Similarly, several scholars have drawn attention to the fact that representations of war run the risk of aestheticizing and anaesthetizing the horror of war, thus turning war into a source of pleasure. As Robert Reimer points out, if images of war are framed in an aesthetically pleasing form, the beauty of the form may overpower the horror of the content.10 Seen in this light, artworks about war do not alert us to the lethal nature of war but rather inoculate us against it. Instead of working against it, they perpetuate the horror of war. In addition to their vulnerability to sensationalist exploitation, representations of the body are heavily, and problematically, invested in conceptualizations of agency and victimization. In the Cartesian hierarchy of body and mind, the body connotes passivity and the mind agency. Consequently, if a text focuses exclusively on the impact of war on the physical side of life, it runs the risk of reducing humans to pure bodies, thus blocking all recourse to rational and political agency. If soldiers are portrayed as body machines, the only subject positions available are those of victimization and reactive violence. Consequently, the representation of the body in pain takes us back to a fundamental incongruence between texts of war and texts of peace. Even if we are prepared to accept that the representation of the wounded and dead effects a powerful critique of war, we would still have to admit that any pacifist agenda must be subtended by concepts of agency. A soldier who is defined exclusively as victim cannot be a political agent. And in a nation of disempowered victims instead of responsible citizens, war is always an option. As parts iii and iv will show, questions of victimization and agency are of particular salience in German texts about the First and Second World Wars.

Introduction

9

The representation of the soldier as victim was already firmly established in novels of the First World War. Although diametrically opposed in almost every other respect, both Remarque’s Im Westen and Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern feature protagonists who lack political agency. While Remarque’s protagonist is defined as a victim in every context, Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern embraces agency in the everyday context of the battlefield, but refuses to accept responsibility in the political realm. In Ju¨nger’s work, history is transformed into myth, and war is but an ineluctable stage in the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. While novels of the First World War address questions of agency as one of many concerns, the categories of victim and perpetrator move to the foreground in literature of the Second World War. In the works of both Bo¨ll and Grass, questions of victimization and agency occupy center stage and even displace the representation of frontlines and battlefields. Of the two, Bo¨ll is more inclined to portray German civilians and soldiers as victims of the war, but his works also explore issues of complicity and guilt. Grass, on the other hand, frequently attacks, mocks, and ironizes what one might describe as a German propensity for self-victimization. Finally, in the postmodern context, the category of the victim is exposed to a radical critique. In Elfriede Jelinek’s works, victimization is no longer identified with innocence, but liable to connote passivity, complicity, and even guilt. Paradoxically, it is perhaps the absence of a specifically Austrian discourse of coming to terms with the past that makes Austrian authors such as Handke and Jelinek particularly attuned to the hypocrisies and distortions inherent in concepts of victimization and agency. In fact, Jelinek characterized Austria’s identity as a “non-identity, based on amnesia” and on “the myth that the Austrians were Hitler’s first victims.”11 It would appear that, because of this national heritage, Austrian authors such as Jelinek and Handke are ideally positioned to question bifurcated categories of victim and perpetrator. war and gender Numerous scholars have pointed out that warfare is one of the most highly gendered arenas of life. This holds true both historically and metaphorically. Joshua Goldstein’s survey of female warriors throughout history concludes that women made up approximately 1 percent of all fighters. Of the soldiers serving in today’s standing armies, approximately 97 percent are male.12 Even when women are hired as soldiers, they are

10

Introduction

frequently deployed in non-combat situations – or in situations that are labeled as non-combat. Relegating women to the sidelines of war is not a historical accident but crucial for the smooth functioning of the institution of war since concepts of masculinity and heroism are routinely employed to enable practices of war. Practices of war may be apt to erode gender roles – one need only think of Rosie the Riveter and the so-called rubble women in post-1945 Germany – but ideologies of war tend to uphold them. Men make war, and war makes real men. It is this link that has led Goldstein to postulate that the key to changes in our attitude to warfare lies in our ideas of gender: “for the war system to change fundamentally, or for war to end, might require profound changes in gender relations.”13 Paradoxically, the more women are absent from the context of war, the more warfare is metaphorically associated with gender, sexuality, and procreation. It is not only the metaphorical conflation of fighting and sexuality,14 evident in the phallic design of many weapons, that suggests an intimate link between war and gender. Since wars take lives and mothers give life, warfare and motherhood are often conceived as complementary. Interestingly, the association of war and maternity goes back to the foundational war text in the Western tradition, the Iliad, in which the pain Agamemnon suffers because of wounds incurred in battle is compared to labor pangs: “but soon as the gash dried and firm clots formed, sharp pain came bursting in on Atrides’ strength – spear-sharp as the labor-pangs that pierce a woman, agonies brought on by the harsh, birthing spirits, Hera’s daughters who hold the stabbing power of birth – so sharp the throes that burst on Atrides’ strength” (Iliad 11.313–18). Unsurprisingly, the complementary nature of soldier and mother was touted by National Socialist ideologues. In his novel Michael (1929), Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, compares war and birth: “Ihn – den Krieg – abschaffen wollen, das ist dasselbe, wie wenn man abschaffen wollte, dass Mu¨tter Kinder zur Welt bringen. Auch das ist schrecklich. Alles Lebendige ist schrecklich”15 (To wish for an end to war is the same as to wish for an end to women bearing children. That too is horrible. Everything that is alive is horrible). Goebbels’s sentiments were shared by the Italian dictator Mussolini, who famously declared that war is to men what motherhood is to women. In his path-breaking study Ma¨nnerphantasien, Klaus Theweleit briefly sums up these various trends when he claims that “die Bewegung hin zu den Soldaten wird als eine Bewegung weg von der Frau dargestellt”16 (the shift toward the soldier is represented as a shift away from woman).

Introduction

11

Given the intimacy of the bond between war and gender, between front and home front, it is hardly surprising that texts about war are riddled with overt and hidden gender messages. Frequently, authors embed their valuations of warfare in conceptualizations of gender and the body. Such gender and body politics are particularly intriguing because they often run counter to the purported message of the text and its portrayal of war. Schiller’s portrayal of Joan of Arc, for example, introduces a critique of war that is not evident in the dominant discourse of the play. Similarly, Bo¨ll’s comparison of the soldier with the prostitute is designed to underline the victimization of the soldier. But gender can also be deployed to counteract a text’s critical stance toward war. In Chapter 4, I show that Kleist blunts his critique of war through the strategic deployment of gender. In conflating the terror of war with the female gender, Kleist’s Penthesilea (1807) suggests that it is the woman warrior, not the practice of war itself, that is likely to spiral out of control. Clearly, in all these cases, and regardless of the text’s stance toward war, gender emerges as a source of friction in the representation of war. While Schiller and Kleist use gender as a metaphor, Gu¨nter Grass uncovers the problematic implications of gender metaphors. His Blechtrommel lambastes the demonization of female figures, be it Niobe or the black cook, in order to draw attention to the displacement of agency and responsibility onto vaguely defined forces of destiny. Finally, while all these authors work with a more or less strictly divided gender dichotomy, recent texts by Elfriede Jelinek question the simplified bifurcation of gender in the context of war. Jelinek draws attention to the fact that, even though most women do not participate in combat operations, they are by no means always innocent victims of war. In Jelinek’s texts, women are complicit in the gender discourses that keep men fighting. They shame men into fighting and look on passively as countries prepare to go to war. german wars, german history, german literature Since there are numerous texts on war, any study of war literature is necessarily marked by omissions. In order to keep the corpus of texts manageable, I decided to focus on the most devastating and epochmaking wars of German history. Thus, there are chapters on the Napoleonic Wars, and the First and Second World Wars, but there is no discussion of representations of the First and Second Schleswig Wars (1848–51 and 1864), the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, or the

12

Introduction

Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. Out of the many violent conflicts of the post-Second World War period, I decided to single out the most recent events because here a recently reunified Germany is called upon to shoulder international responsibility and must confront the call to war from a new position of increased national power. Consequently, the last part centers on Yugoslavia and Iraq, but does not contain a discussion of the German-language reception of the Korean or Vietnam Wars. While there is a certain consensus regarding the importance of specific wars, there is no definitive canon of war literature. For the purposes of this study, I have sought to identify texts whose representations of war had a defining influence on contemporaries and future generations alike. These include authors whose canonical status is indisputable, such as Schiller, Kleist, and Grass. Schiller’s and Kleist’s dramas not only spoke to their own time, but exerted a powerful influence on First World War authors and were among the most performed plays during the Nazi era. Similarly, Gu¨nter Grass’s works ranging from Die Blechtrommel to Im Krebsgang (Crab Walk, 2002) continue to shape the German discourse on Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung (coming to terms with the past) like few others. Secondly, I have included authors whose canonical status remains disputed but whose texts had a broad popular impact, such as Remarque and Bo¨ll. Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues is an unrivalled bestseller of international dimensions. Both Bo¨ll and Remarque extended their audience beyond the traditional cognoscenti of literature and found loyal readers among workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Finally, I have selected authors who are the subject of heated controversies, such as Ju¨nger, Handke, and Jelinek. Ju¨nger’s proverbial glorifications of war not only enraged leftists during his own time but kept the feuilletons busy well beyond his death in 1998. Similarly, few contemporary works have instigated as many heated debates as Handke’s Yugoslavia essays and Jelinek’s dramatic oeuvre. I believe that it is precisely Austria’s lack of a discourse of Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung and its self-definition as Hitler’s first victim as well as the Alpine Republic’s position on the sidelines of a newly reunified and empowered Germany that made these authors particularly attuned to the contradictions of contemporary war discourses. Clearly, many painful omissions remain, and I have attempted to compensate for some of them by supplementing my analyses of the selected writers with references to other important works. For example, there is a brief discussion of Goethe’s Kampagne in Frankreich (Campaign in France, 1822) in the chapter on Ju¨nger, and my interpretation of Im Westen nichts Neues compares Remarque’s novel with texts by other

Introduction

13

First World War writers, such as Edlef Ko¨ppen, Ludwig Renn, Siegfried Sassoon, and Henri Barbusse. Moreover, the introductory chapters to each part cite works that could not be discussed in detail. Still, much remains to be said, and I can only refer to the limited scope of this project to excuse the absence of many notable writers of war. Although all the texts that I have selected deal with the topic of war, they approach their subject in very different ways. Some, such as Remarque and Ju¨nger, portray frontlines and battlefields; others, such as Grass, look at war “sideways,” seeking to understand the factors and motivations that lead to war as well as the devastation of war on the home front, its lasting impact on society and the individual. Finally, the most recent texts by Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke do not seek to render the experience of war but rather dissect media representations of war. It will become evident in the course of this study that this diversity is not merely idiosyncratic, but historically conditioned. The differences between these texts teach important lessons about the evolving nature of war. Since this volume covers texts from the eighteenth to the twentyfirst century, it deals with different forms of warfare, from the war between nation states that characterizes the Napoleonic period to the asymmetrical wars of the present, in which nation states are pitted against sub- and supranational organizations. In the early modern period, wars were fought by foreign mercenaries or forcibly enlisted native poor and led by privately funded entrepreneurs such as Albrecht von Wallenstein, head of the armies of the Habsburg monarchy during the Thirty Years’ War. Since these armies were small and underwent a lengthy period of training, they were regarded as a precious resource, and commanders on both sides had a vital interest in keeping the casualty rate low.17 Consequently, early modern wars were fought “with limited means for limited objectives.”18 The nature of war changed when new military technologies made warfare more expensive, and private entrepreneurs were priced out of the market. Since only states were now able to shoulder the massive cost of war, to furnish the artillery, and supply large numbers of soldiers, war changed its nature in quantitative and qualitative terms. In the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the model of the citizen soldier replaced that of the mercenary. While the condottieri of the previous century benefitted from long-drawn out conflicts of low intensity and from the highly remunerative taking of hostages, eighteenth-century armies strove for concentration of force and sought to achieve decisive victories in large battles.

14

Introduction

In a sense, the development that characterizes the transition from the Thirty Years’ War to the Napoleonic Wars finds its mirror image in the changes that define the trajectory of war in the twentieth century. While the period around 1800 drew a line between soldier and civilian and between front and homeland, the Second World War and the wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries victimized soldiers and civilians alike. The defining moment of these wars is no longer the decisive battle, but the massacre. While both the First and Second World Wars were costly in the extreme, the new asymmetrical wars of the twenty-first century require huge investments on the part of their nation state actors but are run on a shoestring budget by their subnational opponents, who rely on cheap explosive devices, automatic guns, landmines, and pick-up trucks. While, in the eighteenth-century, war became the province of the state, the twentieth century saw the rebirth of privately funded actors such as warlords, terrorist organizations, and companies who rent mercenaries, such as Blackwater. While the eighteenth century, unlike the seventeenth, did not conflate power and religion, our most recent wars are fueled by religious conflicts. Finally, while the actions of warring nation states were measured according to a codex of sanctioned violence, the new wars include formerly criminalized forms of violence, such as torture and the mass slaughter of civilians, in their repertoire. There is, however, one fundamentally important innovation in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century warfare: the intimate nexus between war and the new media. It is this aspect that receives particular attention in Handke’s and Jelinek’s works about the recent wars. Clearly, different historical wars differ vastly in their means and effects. Thus, every interpretation of literary representations of war must take the respective historical context and its specific configurations of war into account. And yet, although the contexts differ, one fundamental dynamic remains unchanged. Irrespective of its specific structures, every war is implicated in an economy of exchange with the society and culture that fights it. In other words, there is always a “continuity between the destructive and the creative impulse.”19 Specific historical wars shape cultures and impact social and cognitive categories. Conversely, literary and philosophical discourses transform the theory and practice of war. Culture produces representations of war and representations of war shape our perception of and willingness to engage in future wars. War is not a spontaneous eruption of primal passion but a “more or less functional institution”20 with close ties to other societal

Introduction

15

institutions. It is not the “Other” of civil society but integrated into its very core. If we begin to understand the links between discourses of war and seemingly unconnected philosophical and cultural concepts, we can perhaps begin to create a culture of peace that does not remain trapped in a simple critique of war.

part i

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

chapter 2

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: overview

When we think of German enthusiasm for total war, the eighteenth century does not spring to mind. After all, the Enlightenment is the Age of Reason, whereas war represents the failure of reason. Tellingly, the foremost philosopher of the time, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), theorized not only man’s release from self-inflicted immaturity but also the possibility of eternal peace. And yet, as I will show, First World War authors such as Ernst Ju¨nger are not the first to use war as a springboard to fantasies of transcendence. Side by side with the debate on eternal peace existed another eighteenth-century tradition that considered war a moral institution and lavished praise on its ennobling features.1 In the following, I will sketch the contours of these positive valuations of warfare and highlight the intimate link between war and the concept of the sublime. In order to explore the nexus between warfare and the sublime, I turn to the works of Kant and Schiller. The following chapter then deals with the somber implications of such a lofty notion of war. In Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht (1808) and Penthesilea (1807), terror emerges as the dark “Other” of the relation between war and the sublime. Like all wars, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are characterized by asymmetries. With their varying coalitions and short-lived peace accords, the wars around 1800 were a patchwork quilt of wide though uneven geographic spread. Armed conflict started on April 20, 1792 when the new French Republic declared war on Austria and ended in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna. When Austria first responded to France’s challenge, Prussia joined its ally in the campaign. By the end of 1794 France had rid itself of its invaders, and the revolutionary troops now resumed the offensive into Germany. In 1795 Prussia signed the Peace of Basle.2 It reentered the fight in 1806, only to suffer another defeat in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt on October 14, 1806. 19

20

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Prussia’s retreat from the war between 1795 and 1806 led to a paradoxical situation. While the war raged on in the rest of Europe, German intellectuals and writers enjoyed a brief period of respite during which they were free to ponder the effects and meaning of war from a safe distance. During this interlude, Germany witnessed a lively debate about the possibility of eternal peace, to which many of the greatest literary and philosophical minds, including Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), Novalis (1772–1801), and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), contributed thought-provoking essays.3 In this debate, peace is often conceptualized as the natural consequence of Enlightenment values. It flows from rationality and mastery over passions and base instincts, is conducive to trade and material wellbeing, and forms a complement of democratic forms of government and cooperation between sovereign states. In spite of this high regard for peace, however, there are also dissenting voices concerned about the supposed effects of peace on man’s character. ¨ ber Theorie und Praxis in Kants Schrift ‘Zum ewigen For example, in “U Frieden’ ” (On Theory and Practice in Kant’s Essay “Perpetual Peace”), a response to Kant’s “Zum ewigen Frieden” (Perpetual Peace, 1795), Ludwig Heinrich Jacob (1759–1827), a professor of philosophy in Halle, wonders if peace makes a nation weak whereas “der Krieg die gute Folge hat, daß der Geist erhoben wird, daß er ru¨stige Affekte erzeugt und allenthalben Gelegenheit schafft, daß sich die scho¨nsten Tugenden zeigen ko¨nnen” (209–10) (war has the good result that the mind is elevated, that it gives rise to robust affects and creates opportunities everywhere so that the most beautiful virtues can show themselves). In his essay “Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen” (Ideas for an Attempt to Define the Limits of the Efficacy of the State), published in 1792, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) was mindful of the same problematic when he called war “eine der heilsamsten Erscheinungen zur Bildung des Menschengeschlechts” (98) (one of the most beneficial phenomena for the education of mankind). Finally, Fichte’s essay “Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publicums u¨ber die franzo¨sische Revolution” (Contribution to the Correction of Public Judgments about the French Revolution, 1793) belabors the same question: Der Krieg, sagt man, cultiviert, und es ist wahr, er erhebt unsere Seelen zu heroischen Empfindungen und Thaten, zur Verachtung der Gefahr und des Todes, zur Geringscha¨tzung von Gu¨tern, die ta¨glich dem Raube ausgesetzt sind, zum innigen Mitgefu¨hl mit allem, was Menschenantlitz tra¨gt, weil gemeinschaftliche Gefahr oder Leiden sie enger an uns dra¨ngen. (v i : 90)

Overview

21

(War, they say, cultivates, and it is true, it elevates our souls to heroic sensations and deeds, to contempt of danger and death, to low regard for goods, which are daily exposed to theft, to deep compassion with everyone with human features because common danger and suffering bind us more closely together.)

Clearly, Fichte too is aware of a tradition that regards war as a source of moral edification, but he proceeds to raise doubts about its validity: Haltet dies ja nicht fu¨r eine Lobrede auf eure blutgierige Kriegssucht, fu¨r eine demu¨tige Bitte der seufzenden Menschheit an euch, doch ja nicht abzulassen, sie in blutigen Kriegen aneinander aufzureiben. Nur solche Seelen erhebt der Krieg zum Heroismus, welche schon Kraft in sich haben; den Unedlen begeistert er zum Raube und zur Unterdru¨ckung der wehrlosen Schwa¨che; er erzeugt Helden und feige Diebe, und welches wohl in gro¨sserer Menge. (v i : 90–1) (Do not consider this a eulogy to your bloodthirsty addiction to war, for a humble plea of sighing mankind not to desist from wiping it out in bloody wars. War elevates only those souls who already possess strength; it inspires an ignoble person to theft and to the oppression of defenseless weakness; it creates heroes and cowardly thieves, and one wonders which will be more numerous.)

While Jacob, Humboldt, and Fichte are concerned with the characterbuilding effect of war, writers and theorists of German Romanticism emphasize its regenerative, even creative, force. Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), for example, attributes to war a poetic quality that holds the power to create a better world: “Im Kriege . . . regt sich das Urgewa¨sser. Neue Weltteile sollen entstehen, neue Geschlechter sollen aus der großen Auflo¨sung anschließen” (114–15) (In war . . . the primal waters stir. New continents shall arise, new dynasties shall follow the great dissolution). Similarly, in his Elemente der Staatskunst (Elements of Statecraft, 1809), the theorist Adam Mu¨ller (1779–1829) denounces the “Eitelkeit eines todten, stillstehenden, faulen Friedenslebens” (86) (the vanity of a dead, stagnant, foul life of peace) and endows war with productive powers.4 Even Friedrich Schlegel’s Universalgeschichte (Universal History, 1805–6) advocates war’s potential to advance the cultural development of humankind: Die eigentliche Geschichte der Griechen ist also sehr kurz: eine große Begebenheit, der persische Krieg, erfu¨llte die ganze Nation mit Enthusiasmus, gab ihr Mut und Heldengeist und hob sie auf eine große Ho¨he, brachte wirklich alles Gro¨ßte, Scho¨nste und Herrlichste hervor, was dies Volk erreicht hat. (62) (Thus, the real history of the Greeks is very short: a great event, the Persian War, filled the entire nation with enthusiasm, gave it courage and heroic spirit and elevated it to a great height, gave rise to everything great, beautiful, and magnificent that this people has achieved).

22

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Somewhat later in the nineteenth century, the same notion of peace as foul was to reappear in Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 1821): Der Krieg, als der Zustand, in welchem mit der Eitelkeit der zeitlichen Gu¨ter und Dinge, die sonst eine erbauliche Redensart zu sein pflegt, Ernst gemacht wird, ist hiermit das Moment, worin die Idealita¨t des Besonderen ihr Recht erha¨lt und Wirklichkeit wird; – er hat die ho¨here Bedeutung, daß durch ihn, wie ich es anderwa¨rts ausgedru¨ckt habe, die sittliche Gesundheit der Vo¨lker in ihrer Indifferenz gegen das Festwerden der endlichen Bestimmtheiten erhalten wird, wie die Bewegung der Winde die See vor der Fa¨ulnis bewahrt, in welche sie eine dauernde Ruhe, wie die Vo¨lker ein dauernder oder gar ein ewiger Friede, versetzen wu¨rde. (492–3) (The war as the condition in which one takes seriously the vanity of all temporal possessions and things, which in other circumstances is an edifying phrase, is accordingly the moment when the ideality of the particular attains its right and becomes actuality – it has the higher significance that, through it, as I have written elsewhere, the moral health of the nations is preserved in its indifference toward the solidification of finite determinacies, just as the movement of the winds preserves the sea from foulness, which a constant calm would produce, just as a permanent or even eternal peace would do for the nations.)

Related to the notion that peace weakens the moral character of the individual and the nation and hampers creativity and artistic production is the idea of war as a privileged arena for man’s transcendental striving. Paradoxically, Kant, whose “Zum ewigen Frieden” sparked the debate on eternal peace and who called war the source of all evil and corruption, also suggested a nexus between warfare and the sublime. In Kant’s chapter on the dynamically sublime in nature in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment, 1790), the sublime, which causes “negative Lust” (165) (negative lust), is repeatedly linked to “Gewalt,” which in German designates both power and violence. But it is not just the proximity to “Gewalt” that establishes an affinity between warfare and the sublime. Rather, the strongest conceptual link consists in the fact that, in the character of the ideal soldier as in the concept of the sublime, the mind reigns supreme over the body.5 As Kant explains, the sublime manifests ¨ berlegenheit der Vernunftbestimmung itself when we experience “die U unserer Erkenntnisvermo¨gen u¨ber das gro¨ßte Vermo¨gen der Sinnlichkeit” (180) (the supremacy of the faculty of reason over the greatest power of sensuality). This superiority of mind over sensuality is coupled with disdain for all forms of worldly possessions so that the sublime allows us to regard “das, wofu¨r wir besorgt sind (Gu¨ter, Gesundheit und Leben),

Overview

23

als klein” (86) (that about which we care (possessions, health, and life) as small). It is this indifference to earthly goods that links the sublime to freedom, but also to the concept of terror. Although Kant provides us with a vocabulary that places warfare in proximity to the sublime,6 his theory appears to contain a fail-safe against an all too intimate association of violence and transcendence. After all, it is the imagination of danger that gives rise to the sublime, but never actual danger: “es ist unmo¨glich, an einem Schrecken, der ernstlich gemeint wa¨re, Wohlgefallen zu finden” (185) (it is impossible to take pleasure in a horror that is meant seriously). Thus, we might conclude that an imagined war may be sublime, whereas actual warfare never is. Kant suggests as much when he claims that admiration for the warrior is predicated on an aesthetic judgment: “daher mag man noch so viel in der Vergleichung des Staatsmanns mit dem Feldherrn u¨ber die Vorzu¨glichkeit der Achtung, die einer vor dem andern verdient, streiten: das a¨sthetische Urteil [author’s emphasis] entscheidet fu¨r den letztern” (187) (thus, when comparing the statesman with the general, much as one may argue about the preferred respect that one deserves more than the other: the aesthetic judgment decides in favor of the latter). And yet, in spite of such cautionary clarifications, there is a passage in Kant’s chapter on the sublime that specifically links the sublime with war as a historical fact: Selbst der Krieg, wenn er mit Ordnung und Heiligachtung der bu¨rgerlichen Rechte gefu¨hrt wird, hat etwas Erhabenes an sich und macht zugleich die Denkungsart des Volks, welches ihn auf diese Art fu¨hrt, nur um desto erhabener, je mehreren Gefahren es ausgesetzt war und sich mutig darunter hat behaupten ko¨nnen: dahingegen ein langer Frieden den bloßen Handelsgeist, mit ihm aber den niedrigen Eigennutz, Feigheit und Weichlichkeit herrschend zu machen und die Denkungsart des Volkes zu erniedrigen pflegt. (263) (Even war, if it is conducted in an orderly fashion and with respect for the sanctity of citizens’ rights, has something sublime about it and at the same time makes the mind of a people, which carries it on in this way, all the more sublime the more numerous the dangers to which it was exposed and which it was able to meet with courage: in contrast, a long-lasting peace tends to bestow dominance on a mere commercial spirit and with it the basest egotism, cowardice and effeminacy and to degrade the mind of the people.)

To be sure, although this passage reads like a panegyric to war, it remains a rather isolated statement in the context of Kant’s works. Since war, as Simpson points out, plays only a marginal role in Kant’s Critique, a full evaluation of his thinking about war is hardly possible. The only other

24

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

passage in the Critique of Judgment that contains similar praise of warfare does not make any reference to the sublime, but rather wonders whether war may be necessary for the evolution of mankind: . . . ist der Krieg . . . so wie er ein unabsichtlicher (durch zu¨gellose Leidenschaften angeregter) Versuch der Menschen, doch tief verborgener vielleicht absichtlicher der obersten Weisheit ist, Gesetzma¨ßigkeit mit der Freiheit der Staaten und dadurch Einheit eines moralisch begru¨ndeten Systems derselben, wo nicht zu stiften, dennoch vorzubereiten, und ungeachtet der schrecklichsten Drangsale, womit er das menschliche Geschlecht belegt, und der vielleicht noch gro¨ßern, womit die besta¨ndige Bereitschaft dazu im Frieden dru¨ckt, dennoch eine Triebfeder mehr ist (indessen die Hoffnung zu dem Ruhestande einer Volksglu¨ckseligkeit sich immer weiter entfernt), alle Talente, die zur Kultur dienen, bis zum ho¨chsten Grade zu entwickeln. (391–2) (. . . is war . . . as it is an unintended attempt of human beings (stimulated by rampant passions), and yet deeply hidden perhaps purposeful attempt of supreme wisdom to prepare, if not found, legitimacy along with the freedom of states and thereby the unity of a morally justified system, and in spite of the most horrible tribulations which it imposes on mankind, and the perhaps even bigger tribulations which the constant readiness for war imposes during times of peace, is one more driving force (while the hope for a calm state of national happiness moves further and further into the distance) to develop all talents, which serve culture, to the highest degree.)

Since Kant’s italicizing of the word vielleicht suggests that he retains doubts about the salutary effects of war, the Critique hardly qualifies as a eulogy to war. But it does provide a conceptual framework that allowed later generations to discuss warfare in relation to the sublime; a framework that proved of great importance in the response to the Napoleonic occupation of Germany. In 1813, when French troops occupied Germany and national feelings ran high, Fichte’s previous reservations about war were supplanted by a passionate celebration of the German fight for freedom. Fichte not only joined the citizen militia in spite of a partial paralysis of one arm and one ¨ ber den leg due to a neurological disorder, he also drafted a lecture “U wahrhaften Begriff des Krieges” (On the Truthful Concept of War, 1813). Here, the link between warfare and transcendental freedom, evident in Kant’s writing, finds its most poignant formulation: Freiheit ist das ho¨chste Gut. Alles Andere nur das Mittel dazu, gut als solches Mittel, u¨bel, falls es dieselbe hemmt. Das zeitliche Leben hat darum selbst nur Werth, inwiefern es frei ist: durchaus keinen, sondern es ist ein Uebel und eine Qual, wenn es nicht frei seyn kann. Sein einziger Zweck ist darum, die Freiheit fu¨rs erste zu brauchen, wo nicht, zu erhalten, wo nicht, zu erka¨mpfen; geht es in

Overview

25

diesem Kampfe zu Grunde, so geht es mit Recht zu Grunde, und nach Wunsch; denn das zeitliche Leben – ein Kampf um Freiheit. (i v : 410–11) (Freedom is the highest good. Everything else is only a means to freedom, good as such a means, bad if it inhibits. This temporal life is valuable only insofar as it is free: no value at all but rather it is an evil and agony if it cannot be free. Its only purpose is first to use freedom, if not that, to maintain it, if not that to fight for it; if it perishes in this fight, it perishes rightly and according to our wishes; because temporal life – a fight for freedom.)

As Mu¨nkler explains, Fichte’s advocacy for total war in the service of freedom is tempered by the fact that he believed this to be the last war that heralds the transition to everlasting peace.7 Similarly, Kant’s appreciation of the virtues that war engenders is predicated on the belief that wars can be conducted in a rational and orderly fashion (“mit Ordnung und Heiligachtung der bu¨rgerlichen Rechte”). However, as the European war raged on, the notion that wars can be easily controlled and contained became increasingly doubtful and was finally discounted altogether in the works of Carl von Clausewitz. Although Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means – “der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel”8 (war is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means) – might be seen to confirm the idea of an orderly war, it is actually concerned with the unpredictability of war. Thus, Clausewitz’s statement, which has often been interpreted as cynical, constitutes an attempt to control that which is inherently uncontrollable. The famous theoretician of war is as acutely aware of war’s tendency to spiral out of control – “nie kann in der Philosophie des Krieges selbst ein Prinzip der Erma¨ßigung hineingetragen werden, ohne eine Absurdita¨t zu begehen” (28) (one can never introduce a principle of moderation in the philosophy of war without committing an absurdity) – as he is determined to contain its force. According to Clausewitz, such containment is possible because war consists of three parts: “aus der urspru¨nglichen Gewaltsamkeit seines Elementes, dem Haß und der Feindschaft, die wie ein blinder Naturtrieb anzusehen sind, aus dem Spiel der Wahrscheinlichkeiten und des Zufalls, die ihn zu einer freien Seelenta¨tigkeit machen, und aus der untergeordneten Natur eines politischen Werkzeugs, wodurch er dem bloßen Verstande anheimfa¨llt” (46) (the original violence of its element, hatred and enmity, which are to be considered a blind natural drive, the play of probability and accident, which turn it into a free activity of the soul, and the subordinate nature of a political instrument, which puts it in the domain of mere reason). Clausewitz’s

26

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

seminal work Vom Kriege (On War, 1832) is designed to subjugate war as a blind force of nature to the reign of reason and politics. In his desire to subjugate blind nature to the rule of reason, Clausewitz’s thought resembles that of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). Moreover, like Clausewitz, Schiller is acutely aware of war’s tendency to elude rational control. His thinking about war, like that of Kant, is characterized by ambivalence. In Schiller’s dramas, war is both a sordid reality and a transcendental endeavor. As I will show, this metonymic slippage from warfare as inhumane slaughter to warfare as the practice of man’s most sublime freedom produces an amalgamation of metaphysical aspiration and national politics that leaves a potentially explosive legacy in the history of German representations of war.

chapter 3

War and the sublime: Schiller

schiller’s wars To the young Schiller, warfare and the military formed an integral part of everyday life. Schiller’s father, Johann Kaspar Schiller (1723–96), was a surgeon and captain in the Wu¨rttemberg army, and his godfather Philipp Friedrich Rieger (1722–82), who was to become the director of the Hohenasperg prison, first secured Duke Carl Eugen’s favor by substantially enlarging the Duke’s army through his brutal recruitment methods. Schiller himself was educated in the Karlsschule, an institution that imposed military discipline on its students. After his graduation, he worked as a regimental doctor, but does not seem to have taken to military life. Determined to become a writer, Schiller broke with his sovereign Carl Eugen who did not look kindly on his subject’s artistic aspirations. When Schiller later drafted a letter of reconciliation, the request for permission to wear civilian clothing was listed right along with the wish to publish and travel without restrictions.1 During his lifetime, Schiller’s eventual home, the duchy of Weimar, was largely spared by the war, although its sovereign Duke Carl August possessed considerable military ambition. Carl August participated in the first campaign of the war, the invasion of France in August of 1792, and called upon his friend and servant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to accompany him on this venture. Goethe, who followed Carl August much to his own dislike, witnessed the defeat and catastrophic retreat of the allied forces, but did not record his experiences until almost thirty years after the event. Schiller’s attitude toward war is influenced by the indirect nature of his experience. As an intellectual and writer who took an active interest in current affairs, he could not help but be affected by the pervasive and unending nature of contemporary warfare. His letters frequently express his worries about his family in Swabia, one of the theaters of war, and note the impact of warfare on authors and publishers. On April 15, 1790, for 27

28

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

example, Schiller wrote to his friend Ko¨rner, “Die politische Welt interessirt mich jetzt. Ich zittre vor dem Kriege, denn wir werden ihn an allen Enden Deutschlands fu¨hlen” (Werke xxvi: 16) (The political world interests me now. I tremble in anticipation of the war for we will feel it everywhere in Germany). In a letter to his publisher Go¨schen from March 15, 1793, Schiller exclaims: “Der fatale Krieg! Er wird uns Schriftsteller zwingen nichts mehr als Zeitungen zu schreiben . . . Die Grazien haben zwar in unserm Calender den Mars ausgezogen, aber der grobe Mars ko¨nnte sich leicht einfallen lassen, die Grazien wieder auszuziehen und zu plu¨ndern” (Werke xxvi: 232) (This fatal war! It will force us writers to produce nothing but newspapers . . . The graces have shed Mars in our calendar, but it may very well occur to truculent Mars to undo and ravage the graces). As an academic, Schiller devoted several years to the study of warfare. Both his Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung (The History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands against Spanish Rule, 1788), in particular “Beilage ii: Belagerung von Antwerpen,” and his Geschichte des Dreißigja¨hrigen Kriegs (History of the Thirty Years’ War, 1793) detail the course and effects of prolonged military endeavors. Both texts reflect Schiller’s ambivalence about war. In accordance with eighteenth-century philosophy, Schiller differentiates between just (bellum iustum) and unjust wars. His praise of Gustav Adolf, for example, is founded on the fact that the Swedish king never succumbed to the seduction of the “zweydeutige Ruhm eines Eroberers, das Blut seiner Vo¨lker in ungerechten Kriegen zu verspritzen; aber ein gerechter wurde nie von ihm verschma¨ht” (Werke xviii, ii: 99) (conqueror’s ambivalent glory of spilling the blood of his peoples in unjust wars; but he never spurned a just one). Repeatedly, Schiller celebrates the soldier of freedom who dies a glorious death for his fatherland and expresses his admiration for heroic leaders who laugh death in the face – sentiments that appear rather ahistorical in the context of seventeenth-century warfare and its soldiers for hire but closely echo contemporary calls for the citizen soldier.2 In spite of such praise for the ennobling aspects of war, Schiller is acutely aware of the devastation that war wreaks on society and insists that cruelty and corruption form an integral part of every war. In order to make sense of this contradiction, Schiller seeks to subordinate war to the teleology of history: Schrecklich zwar und verderblich war die erste Wirkung . . . Aber Europa ging ununterdru¨ckt und frey aus diesem fu¨rchterlichen Krieg, in welchem es sich zum erstenmal als eine zusammenha¨ngende Staatengesellschaft erkannt hatte; und

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diese Theilnehmung der Staaten an einander, welche sich in diesem Krieg eigentlich erst bildete, wa¨re allein schon Gewinn genug, den Weltbu¨rger mit seinen Schrecken zu verso¨hnen. (Werke xv ii i , i i : 10) (Horrible and destructive was the first effect . . . But Europe emerged unoppressed and free from this terrible war in which it had seen itself for the first time as a coherent community of states; and this cooperation of the states, which really came into being during this war, was in itself ample reward and reconciled the citizen of the world with its terror.)

And yet, even as Schiller proclaims the benefits of warfare, his accounts of specific battles and trespasses, most notably his description of the sack of Magdeburg, are infused with deeply felt awareness of the abject suffering of ordinary citizens and do not tally with his professed belief in the teleology of war. Rather, Schiller’s account of the Thirty Years’ War demonstrates that wars develop a dynamic of their own that is no longer subject to political authority and ethical imperatives: “Der Krieg war ihr Zweck, gleich viel, fu¨r wessen Sache sie kriegten” (Werke xviii, ii: 106) (War was their purpose, no matter for whom they fought).3 More often than not, corruption and abuse are exacerbated by the fact that soldiers do not receive proper pay but live off the land, “dem Grundsatze gema¨ß, daß der Krieg den Krieg erna¨hren mu¨sse” (xviii, ii: 117) (according to the principle that the war must feed the war). The soldier who plunders, rapes, and wreaks havoc on friend and foe alike is a recurring motif in the text, and Schiller frequently expounds on the inability of commanding officers, even the Emperor himself, to keep their soldiers in check. In Schiller’s mind, the notion of warfare was as intimately associated with actual historical events as it was with the spiritual battle of ideas. Perhaps because he was never directly exposed to battles or sieges,4 war at times functioned as a free-floating trope in Schiller’s work. Tellingly, Schiller employed war metaphors to describe his opposition to competing opinions or philosophies. In a letter to Goethe dated June 25, 1799, he famously declared that warfare is the only relation with the public that does not evoke regret: “Das einzige Verha¨ltniß gegen das Publicum, das einen nicht reuen kann, ist der Krieg” (Werke xxx: 64) (The only relationship with the public that one does not repent is war). Similarly, he claims that he waged a war against Schelling because of some remarks in the latter’s transcendental philosophy (to Goethe, March 27, 1801, Werke xxxi: 24).5 In another letter to Goethe dated November 23, 1795, he encourages his co-contributor to Die Horen to use his piece as a declaration of war: “Vielleicht haben Sie auch Lust, in diesem Stu¨ck

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den Krieg zu ero¨fnen . . . bei welcher Gelegenheit Wieland einen kleinen Streifschuß bekommt” (Werke xxviii: 111) (Perhaps you feel like declaring war with this piece . . . on which occasion Wieland may receive a grazing shot). To Schiller, war was an important trope in conceptualizing the fight of competing theories and philosophies, but it also served as a metaphor for his dealings with an enemy of an entirely different nature. Schiller may have referred to public discourse as warfare, but he fought the bloodiest battles against the grave illness that made pain a constant companion of his life. Safranski has appropriately characterized Schiller’s relation to his own body as combative.6 It is well known that Schiller’s struggle to finish his essay on the Thirty Years’ War required a war against illness and pain. In a letter to Go¨schen from February 10, 1792, Schiller declared: “Es scheint, meine Natur wird noch eine Zeit lang gegen ihren innerlichen Feind zu ka¨mpfen haben, ehe sie ihn vo¨llig besiegt oder unterligt” (Werke xxvi: 132) (It seems my nature will have to fight against its inner enemy for quite some time before it will conquer him completely or be defeated). In light of this affliction, it is hardly surprising that the triumph of mind over body forms an important subtext of Schiller’s most impassioned discussions of warfare. Both Schiller’s Max Piccolomini and his Johanna are transcendental soldiers whose strength of mind forces their bodies into submission. However, in Wallenstein, the notion of transcendental warfare pales against the wreckage of military conflict and sordid politics. In Wallenstein, transcendental warfare coexists with and is eventually crushed by the bloody clash of political ambition. In Die Jungfrau von Orleans, in contrast, national and transcendental warfare enter a troubling alliance. It is this amalgamation of national and transcendental warfare that represents Schiller’s most problematic legacy. ‘wallenstein’ Schiller’s famous Wallenstein trilogy (1799), consisting of Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp), Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini), and Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein’s Death), is a play about the nature of power and freedom, but it is also a play about the effects of war on society.7 Both the prologue and Wallenstein’s Lager paint in great detail the devastation resulting from a prolonged state of war.8 Sixteen years into the Thirty Years’ War, all civic life – economy, culture, and public morality – lies in shambles.

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Sechzehn Jahre der Verwu¨stung, Des Raubs, des Elends sind dahingeflohn, In tru¨ben Massen ga¨ret noch die Welt, Und keine Friedenshoffnung strahlt von fern. Ein Tummelplatz von Waffen ist das Reich, Vero¨det sind die Sta¨dte, Magdeburg Ist Schutt, Gewerb und Kunstfleiß liegen nieder, Der Bu¨rger gilt nichts mehr, der Krieger alles, Straflose Frechheit spricht den Sitten Hohn, Und rohe Horden lagern sich, verwildert Im langen Krieg, auf dem verheerten Boden. (Wallensteins Lager 8–90)9

(Sixteen years of devastation, Of plunder and of misery are past, The world is restless with its cheerless masses, No hope of peace is shining from afar. The land, a place for martial exercises, The cities desolated, Magdeburg In ruins, trade and industry are gone, The common man means nothing, soldiers all. Unpunished insolence mocks the old ways, And vulgar troops, grown wild in the long war, Have been encamped upon the ravaged land. Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 10)10

More committed to maintaining its own power base than protecting the fatherland, the army feeds off the land that it is supposed to defend. Like a consuming fire, Wallenstein’s troops do not differentiate between friend and foe, but lay waste to everything in their path. Honest work has become pointless since soldiers waste in an instant what peasants take pains to produce in months of hard labor.11 The necessity to defend oneself against brute force has deformed the character of the ordinary citizen and bred a desire to resort to fraud and cunning. Gamblers and con artists carry the day as the new mobility of the army dissolves traditional bonds of loyalty, order, and common decency. War as it is portrayed in Wallenstein is a pyramid scheme of extortion. In order to feed themselves, the soldiers steal from the peasants who, in turn, are reduced to poverty and have no recourse but to become soldiers themselves: “Der Krieg erna¨hrt den Krieg. Gehn Bauern drauf, / Ei, so gewinnt der Kaiser mehr Soldaten” (Die Piccolomini 136–7) (The war will live on war / If peasants fail / The Emperor will then acquire more soldiers, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 51). In order to sustain itself, the army must continue to expand. If it shrinks, the entire system will collapse.

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Given the damnability of war in the play, our evaluation of Wallenstein and the opposing party depends to a large extent on whom we credit with the ability to institute peace – a question that is by no means easy to resolve. If we are to believe Max Piccolomini’s youthful enthusiasm, it is the Emperor who seeks to prolong the war in order to acquire as much territory as possible while Wallenstein is concerned with peace and the welfare of the entire nation. Max reproaches the Emperor’s emissary Questenberg: “Ihr seid es, die den Frieden hindern, ihr! / Der Krieger ist’s, der ihn erzwingen muß” (Die Piccolomini 565–6) (You are the ones obstructing peace, it’s you! / The soldier must bring it about by force, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 63). Similarly, the citizens of Eger see in Wallenstein “einen Friedensfu¨rsten / Und einen Stifter neuer goldner Zeit” (Wallensteins Tod 3217–18) (the prince of peace / And bring about a new and golden age, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 229). Even Max’s father Octavio confirms Wallenstein’s credentials as a peacemaker, but gives them a different spin. According to Octavio, Wallenstein will use the people’s hopes for peace to outmaneuver the Emperor: “was er von uns will, / Fu¨hrt einen weit unschuldigeren Namen. / Nichts will er als dem Reich den Frieden schenken; / Und weil der Kaiser diesen Frieden haßt, / So will er ihn – er will ihn dazu zwingen” (Die Piccolomini 2331–5) (and what he wants from us / Can bear a name that is more innocent / His wish is but to give the Empire peace; / And since the Emperor disdains this peace, / He wants to force him – force him – to accept it, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 119). Octavio predicts accurately that Wallenstein’s defection may signal the end of the war against the external enemy, but will fan the flames of civil war.12 Wallenstein likes to cast himself in the role of a leader who is dedicated to establishing a peaceful society and claims that the Emperor, interested in land not peace, stands in the way of ending the war. Yet, when put to the test, Wallenstein prizes his power and reputation above everything else.13 He has no intention to further a peace accord that will be credited to anybody but himself.14 Indeed, there are reasons to assume that it is not just a peace of somebody else’s making that is anathema to Wallenstein, but rather any kind of peace at all. When Wallenstein shrinks from the thought of becoming a traitor and seeks a way out of his predicament, his sister advises him to abandon his military trade and retire to his estate. Countess Terzky suggests this plan because she wants to strengthen Wallenstein’s resolve to defect, and she could not have chosen a more effective strategy. A peaceful and quiet life dedicated to the duties of the landlord is abhorrent to Wallenstein.

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Interestingly, Wallenstein’s unsuitability for private life and his inability to respect the wishes of others are presented as professional deformations. It is Wallenstein’s great talent as a military leader that disqualifies him as a citizen of a republic.15 The army, guided by the principle of unconditional obedience, breeds absolutist rulers, but a peaceful republic needs leaders who respect the freedom of all citizens: “nur die Fahnen za¨hlt der schnelle Blick / Des Feldherrn, er bemerkt kein einzeln Haupt, / Streng herrscht und blind der eiserne Befehl, / Es kann der Mensch dem Menschen hier nichts gelten” (Wallensteins Tod 1895–8) (The quick glance of commanders only can / Perceive the companies, not single men, / His orders must be strong and strict and blind, / No single man can matter to the whole, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 188). In Schiller’s play, war destroys the body politic and deforms its leaders. Throughout the entire play, Schiller’s protagonist personifies the ever accelerating expansion of the war machine. If Wallenstein, “des Lagers Abgott und der La¨nder Geißel” (Prologue 95) (The idol of the camp and scourge of states, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 10), were to remain in power, the total militarization of society would ensue: “Aufgelo¨st / Sind alle Bande, die den Offizier / An seinen Kaiser fesseln, den Soldaten / Vertraulich binden an das Bu¨rgerleben. / Pflicht- und gesetzlos steht er gegenu¨ber / Dem Staat gelagert, den er schu¨tzen soll” (Die Piccolomini 2347–52) (Unraveled are / The ties that fasten to the Emperor / Each officer and intimately bind / Each simple soldier to civilian life. / So, lacking law and duty, he is placed / In opposition to the state he should / Protect, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 119). Wallenstein stands for a way of life in which the military trumps all else. His army is subordinate to no other purpose but its own glorification and growth. The situation of the peasants cannot improve until Wallenstein is removed from power. The tragedy of Schiller’s play is twofold. Wallenstein, the only one who is powerful enough to enforce a peace treaty, is a dictator by nature and profession.16 The Emperor, on the other hand, is no shining alternative. The imperial emissary Questenberg presents the Emperor’s design to contain Wallenstein as an attempt to check the expansion of the military and strengthen the civilian sector – “Fu¨r jeden Stand hat er ein gleiches Herz, / Und kann den einen nicht dem andern opfern” (Die Piccolomini 195–6) (For every class he must have like esteem / And cannot sacrifice one to the other, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 53) – but numerous other remarks throw doubt upon the purity of the political system he personifies. The Emperor employs spies, achieves his goals through intrigues and deceit, and is remiss in his obligations to his soldiers. His fatal weakness

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made Wallenstein an overpowering tyrant who now threatens to eclipse his master. Even more disturbing than these faults, which, after all, originate in the need to defend his empire, is the Emperor’s lack of respect for the autonomy of his subjects. The Emperor abolished Bohemia’s freedom and condoned Wallenstein’s trespasses as long as they served his own interests. Wallenstein is not the man to bring peace, but neither is the Emperor.17 Max, on the other hand, the only character in the play who embodies both democratic rule – his soldiers elected him as their leader – and a desire for peace, falls victim to Wallenstein’s all-consuming ambition. Max Piccolomini is an idealized figure, who exhibits supreme courage in battle, a burning passion for peace and justice, and an infinite capacity for tender love and care. Interestingly, unlike Wallenstein, Octavio Piccolomini, Questenberg, and the Emperor, Max is not based on a historical person; rather, he is the personification of an ethereal ideal that does not derive from history nor can it survive in it. Max may be a transcendental soldier, who is capable of renouncing all earthly desires, but he fights in a bloody war fueled by greed and ambition. His ideals have no power to transform the sordid reality that surrounds him. Schiller’s idealized portrayal of Max contrasts with, and finds an echo in, other soldier characters in the play. On the one hand, the soldier in Wallenstein is the very image of easy consumption, immaturity, and irresponsibility. His freedom is lawlessness and his credo scorn and contempt for a life of quiet productivity: Flott will ich leben und mu¨ßig gehn, Alle Tage was Neues sehn, Mich dem Augenblick Frisch vertrauen, Nicht zuru¨ck, auch nicht vorwa¨rts schauen – Drum hab’ ich meine Haut dem Kaiser verhandelt, Daß keine Sorg mich mehr anwandelt. (Wallensteins Lager 242–7) (I’ll live a gay life and at my leisure, And every day enjoy some new pleasure, I’ll trust what each moment has to give. In the past or the future I’ll not live. I gave to the Emperor hide and hair For a life completely free of care. Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 20)

Most soldiers in Wallenstein are mercenaries. Since they are members of a multinational force, their allegiance is determined not by love for the fatherland, but by material rewards. They abandon the leader who expects discipline and follow the one who provides more money, food, and alcohol.

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This negative image contrasts with the representation of the soldier as self-made man who takes full advantage of the social mobility possible in the army. Wallenstein’s camp holds up the promise of a society in which personal courage and merit, not birth, determine a man’s standing.18 In this sense, the army is a model republic, and the ideal soldier is a free citizen who values his honor above his life and demands respect because he knows his own strength.19 Free from the shackles of home and hearth and from all desire for material possessions, the soldier embodies complete transcendence of earthly rewards. He is free because he has conquered death itself: Wohl auf, Kameraden, aufs Pferd, aufs Pferd! Ins Feld, in die Freiheit gezogen. Im Felde, da ist der Mann noch was wert, Da wird das Herz noch gewogen. Da tritt kein anderer fu¨r ihn ein, Auf sich selber steht er da ganz allein. ... Der dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann, Der Soldat allein ist der freie Mann. ... Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein. (Wallensteins Lager 1052–7, 1064–5, 1106–7)

(Come on, comrades, to horse, to horse! To the field we’ll ride to be free! On the battlefield each man is a force, In the scales there his courage will be. He cannot be helped there by anyone, He depends on himself there alone ... He is free who does not fear to die, The soldier alone looks death in the eye. ... For to wager your life is what you must do, Or your life will never belong to you. Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 44–5)

In Wallenstein, soldiers are irresponsible mercenaries as well as courageous defenders of the fatherland and embodiments of supreme freedom and transcendence of earthly desires. Schiller’s drama presents lofty ideals in the context of sordid realities. Instead of suggesting solutions, Wallenstein sows doubt, forcing its readers to reevaluate the relation between means

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and ends, between history and morality. In Max Schiller creates an ideal character, both courageous warrior and earnest advocate of peace. But the ideal of transcendence that Max embodies is undermined by his futile death in battle. Although Max’s willingness to give his life constitutes a supreme act of self-determination, his demise is no transcendental experience that ushers in a new realm, but marks the end of all that is worth living for.20 Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy is a masterpiece of dialectic sleight of hand. Instead of clear principles, it offers ambivalence and contradiction. The army both defends and destroys the fatherland. It is a model republic that rewards individuals according to their merit and an absolutist regime that shows no respect for human dignity. Soldiers are irresponsible mercenaries and sublime freedom fighters. Even warfare, which, throughout the play, is represented as a plague on society, briefly appears to be no more than an organic principle that bears the costly fruit of peace (“die teure Frucht,” Lager 73). Wallenstein is a play that feels the weight of the body but continues to suppress its needs. Max’s death both confirms and negates Wallenstein’s lofty idea that it is “der Geist, der sich den Ko¨rper baut” (Wallensteins Tod 1813) (It is the spirit that creates the man, Wallenstein and Mary Stuart 185). The overpowering force of the material world and its mistress history crushes the individual, but even this defeat signals the triumph of a will that would rather be crushed than bent out of shape. Wallenstein begins with a lengthy depiction of the social and economic misery of the masses, but it abandons this plea for compassion and ends with reflections on the legitimacy of visiting death upon a great man and tyrant. It invites us to admire Wallenstein’s power and cut-throat strength, but it also ponders the merits of the slow and crooked paths of diplomacy. Schiller’s trilogy shows an Emperor who cannot want peace because he has too much to gain from war, a general who cannot end war because it is his raison d’eˆtre, and a citizen soldier who is capable of peace but dies in battle. Wallenstein celebrates the nobility of the transcendental warrior even as it shows his complete impotence in the face of history’s sordid realities. Wallenstein’s catchphrases turn warfare into a transcendental endeavor – “Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, / Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein” (For to wager your life is what you must do, / Or your life will never belong to you) – but its sense for historical complexity forces us to engage in a continuous process of reflection and interrogation. Schiller’s trilogy offers no solutions, only hard choices.21

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‘die jungfrau von orleans’ Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801) has often been ridiculed for its fanciful portrayal of the story of Joan of Arc.22 Friedrich Hebbel, for example, claimed that Schiller “das Naı¨ve ihrer Natur in einem See von Sentimentalita¨t ertra¨nkte”23 (drowned Joan’s naı¨ve nature in a sea of sentimentality) ¨ berpinseln der Wahrheit mit and denounced the drama for its “hohlen U 24 idealer Schminke” (hollow covering of truth with idealistic make-up), and George Bernard Shaw declared that Schiller’s Johanna “has not a single point of contact with the real Joan, nor indeed with any mortal woman that ever walked this earth.”25 Such criticism notwithstanding, numerous details in Schiller’s text testify to the author’s extensive and careful study of historical sources.26 Joan’s testimony during her trial contains many events and motifs that are also prominent in the drama, such as the Fairies Tree near Johanna’s home, the hidden sword of whose whereabouts she was magically aware, the attempt to fool her into mistaking one of the king’s men for the king himself and her easy identification of the actual king, Johanna’s cross-dressing, and the wound incurred at Orleans. Given such faithful adherence to established historical truth in some respects, the changes Schiller chose to introduce stand out all the more. The most striking of these alterations are Johanna’s death in battle as opposed to the historical Joan’s martyrdom at the stake, her love for Lionel, and the fact that Schiller’s Johanna, unlike her historical model, does not limit herself to carrying her banner but is an active participant in battle, who fights and kills. Schiller’s Johanna is no figurehead but a true warrior. War is both Johanna’s calling and the subject that informs every action of the play. By introducing a woman warrior, Schiller created a play in which the construction of gender is intricately connected with the representation of war. In other words, our analysis of gender in the play conditions our reading of war. Consequently, we must ask whether Schiller’s virginal heroine functions as a buffer who concentrates and absorbs the deleterious impact of the carnage and violence of war, or whether her gender transgression is indicative of the perverted nature of warfare itself. Schiller’s play contains both a glorification and a critique of war, or, at the very least, an attempt to contain warfare within clearly delineated limits. First of all, the war Schiller has in mind is a defensive one, fought against an enemy who has invaded the fatherland in a bold act of aggressive conquest; a fact that Schiller considered to be so important

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that he addressed it in the opening lines of the play: “Ja, liebe Nachbarn! Heute sind wir noch / Franzosen, freie Bu¨rger noch . . . / Wer weiß, wer morgen u¨ber uns befiehlt” (1–4) (Neighbors, and friends: yes, we are / Frenchmen still, free citizens . . . / Who knows what masters we shall have tomorrow, Five Plays 621).27 If the English invaders prevail, they will enslave the men, rape the women, and take possession of the conquered land. A war of legitimate national self-defense, the conflict in the play is clearly designed to evoke the Napoleonic conquest of Europe.28 In order to impress upon his readers the inevitability of the fight, Schiller pitches Johanna’s commitment to go to war against her father’s belief that France should simply wait it out: Wir ko¨nnen ruhig die Zersto¨rung schauen, Denn sturmfest steht der Boden, den wir bauen. Die Flamme brenne unsre Do¨rfer nieder, Die Saat zerstampfe ihrer Rosse Tritt, Der neue Lenz bringt neue Saaten mit, Und schnell erstehn die leichten Hu¨tten wieder! (377–82) (Indifferent to destruction at the hand Of war, the earth remains: ours is the land. Let flames devour our villages, and let The warhorse trample down the ripening grain: With a new spring new seed is born again: Houses can be rebuilt. Five Plays 630)29

Thibaut would rather accept bondage than fight for his freedom, but the play intends to prove him wrong. Johanna’s father professes that the spoils of war are limited to material damages, which can easily be recovered. Schiller’s play, on the other hand, emphasizes the irredeemable loss of life in warfare, which cannot be prevented unless one is willing to kill the killer. Repeatedly, Die Jungfrau von Orleans laments the dire losses that warfare carries in its wake: “Doch, die das Opfer eures Zwists gefallen, / Die Toten stehen nicht mehr auf ” (1999–2000) (But those who were the victims of your fatal quarrel, / The dead, will not rise up again, Five Plays 680). However, awareness of the necessary sacrifices and the danger inherent in the self-perpetuating dynamic of warfare – “Loslassen / Kann der Gewaltige den Krieg, doch nicht / Gelehrig . . . gehorcht / Der wilde Gott dem Ruf der Menschenstimme” (2007–11) (The hand of the mighty may unleash a war: the savage god, though, is not trained to come . . . he will not come when called, Five Plays 680) – only strengthens the sense of urgency with which war is presented as the only possible solution.

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Die Jungfrau von Orleans does not celebrate war for war’s sake, but its tropes frequently occlude the destruction and havoc of war even as its rhetoric seems to profess it. While some passages call death by its name, many more shroud the human cost of war in similes, thus introducing a subtext that minimizes and embellishes warfare. Schiller’s soldiers do not die in agony, they sink nobly (“sank der edle Held,” 583) or fail to return to the home gate (“wen’ge sehn die Heimatpforte wieder,” 566). There are no severed body parts and no gushing wounds. Rather, death is represented as necessary and productive. Repeatedly, warfare is compared to a harvest. As such, it is not only a recurring element in the cycle of life, but the natural completion and consummation of a season of preparation and growth.30 Johanna is likened to the worker whose sickle will cut the seeds of the enemy: Vor Orleans soll das Glu¨ck des Feindes scheitern, Sein Maß ist voll, er ist zur Ernte reif. Mit ihrer Sichel wird die Jungfrau kommen Und seines Stolzes Saaten niederma¨hn. (304–7) (Before Orleans the enemy’s luck will founder: His cup is full, now it is harvest time. The virgin with the sickle in her hand Will mow him down in his pride. Five Plays 628)

Johanna’s military life does not represent a break away from her life as a shepherdess. Rather, fighting in a war is but a different way of tending to her flock: Zerstreuet euch, ihr La¨mmer auf der Heiden, Ihr seid jetzt eine hirtenlose Schar, Denn eine andre Herde muß ich weiden, Dort auf dem blut’gen Felde der Gefahr. (395–8) (Scatter yourselves, my lambs, and take your ways To wander shepherdless upon your heath For I have now another flock to graze Upon the field of danger, blood and death. Five Plays 630)31

Throughout the play, Schiller’s description of warfare takes recourse to the wholesome images of harvesting and animal husbandry. Moreover, in likening his heroine to a shepherdess, Schiller endows Johanna’s fight with religious overtones. When Johanna defeats the tiger wolf and saves the lamb (197), the biblical symbolism associated with these images bestows the nobility of the Christian mission upon Johanna’s fight for

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the fatherland. “Was ist unschuldig, heilig, menschlich gut,” Schiller asks, “Wenn es der Kampf nicht ist ums Vaterland” (1782–3) (If anything is innocent, good and holy, / Is it not surely fighting for one’s country? Five Plays 672). Conversely, a nation that does not sacrifice its all for honor is despicable and base: “Nichtswu¨rdig ist die Nation, die nicht / Ihr alles freudig setzt an ihre Ehre” (847–8) (The nation is not worthy of the name, / That will not risk its all to save its honour, Five Plays 643). Schiller’s choice of tropes transforms warfare into an experience that is as natural as nature herself, as passing and ethereal as a cloud, and as fruitful, albeit stinging, as a swarm of bees: Unermeßliches Geschu¨tz ist aufgebracht von allen Enden, Und wie der Bienen dunkelnde Geschwader Den Korb umschwa¨rmen in des Sommers Tagen, Wie aus geschwa¨rzter Luft die Heuschreckwolke Herunterfa¨llt und meilenlang die Felder Bedeckt in unabsehbarem Gewimmel, So goß sich eine Kriegeswolke aus Von Vo¨lkern u¨ber Orleans’ Gefilde (213–21) (Artillery Is being brought in from all sides in countless Quantities, and like a swarm of bees Darkening the hive in summer, or a cloud Of locusts falling from the darkened sky And covering the fields for miles around, A swarm of soldiers poured into the plains Five Plays 626) Around Orleans.

Schiller’s nature imagery obscures human agency and turns war into an uncontrollable blight thrust upon mankind by higher powers. By likening war to a plague of locusts, Schiller insinuates that wars are divinely ordained. Locusts have no commerce with political conflicts between nations; they are signs of God’s wrath sent to descend upon those who oppose him. Schiller’s play not only obfuscates human agency, it also contains a different, and possibly more harmful, legacy. In Schiller’s Die Jungfrau, war is predominantly an inner experience. It is the warrior’s own self that poses the greatest challenge, whereas the quality and quantity of one’s equipment has no part in determining the outcome of a military conflict. Once Johanna has conquered the enemy in her own breast, defeating the actual opponent is but an afterthought. Courage is the crucial ingredient

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that makes or breaks an army: “Nicht Englands und Burgunds vereinte Macht, / Dich stu¨rzt der eigne Kleinmut von dem Thron” (854–5) (Not all the might of Burgundy and England, / But your own cowardice costs you your throne, Five Plays 644). Thus, it is only consistent that Schiller’s Johanna does not die at the stake. The representation of Johanna’s trial and subsequent condemnation as a heretic would imply an irredeemable conflict between the individual and society. But the central conflict in Schiller’s play is processed in Johanna’s own heart and mind. In order to fulfill her mission, Johanna must be a pure spirit (“gleichwie die ko¨rperlosen Geister,” 1609), a consuming flame (“wie die Brunst des Feuers,” 1556) that has no commerce with the desires of the flesh.32 Once Johanna has conquered the desire for Lionel in her own breast, the iron chains that tie her down pose no obstacle. Liberated from the inside out, she tears them apart as though they were cobwebs and rejoins the fight. Even Johanna’s death is “a consummate act of freedom”33 chosen willingly by the heroine herself. In Die Jungfrau von Orleans, the morale of every individual decides the outcome of a battle, but average soldiers will not exhibit courage unless inspired to do so by their leaders. Supreme courage is the property of leaders only while simple soldiers are like sheep in a flock, afraid of the wolf: Wie sich die Schafe bang zusammen dra¨ngen, Wenn sich des Wolfes Heulen ho¨ren la¨ßt, So sucht der Franke, seines alten Ruhms Vergessend, nur die Sicherheit der Burgen. (280–3) (Like sheep that huddle fearfully together At the howling of the wolf, all Frenchmen now, Regardless of their former reputation For valour, seek the safety of their castles. Five Plays 628)

Schiller’s account of war emphasizes the importance of some few outstanding individuals who are willing to give their lives for the good of the nation. The tragic necessity depicted in Schiller’s play consists in the fact that one person has to die so that the people may live.34 Through Johanna’s death, war assumes the qualities of a sacrifice. Johanna is the sacrificial lamb whose noble renunciation safeguards the welfare of the nation. Seen in this light, war is but a backdrop to “the idea of a soul being purified and ennobled through suffering.”35 In Die Jungfrau, war is both a historical event and a metaphor that describes the relation between reason and emotion.36 To Schiller, whose every text is proof of a battle

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won against his own body, the triumph over oneself ranks as the most valiant of all. His appreciation for the power of mind over body gave rise to the ideal of the transcendental soldier. But in Die Jungfrau, the conflation of transcendental and national warfare creates an explosive mixture that corrodes the liberating potential of the text. Since it is a woman who fights for the survival of her nation, the portrayal of warfare in Schiller’s play is inseparable from the representation of gender. Unlike Schiller’s Johanna, the historical Joan of Arc insisted during her trial that she refrained from killing even amidst the throng of battle: “I loved my banner forty times better than my sword. And when I went against the enemy, I carried my banner myself, lest I kill any. I have never killed a man.”37 To Schiller’s Johanna, in contrast, killing is not just an inevitable by-product of her mission, but a sacred obligation in and of itself: Doch weggerissen von der heimatlichen Flur, Vom Vaters Busen, von der Schwestern lieber Brust, Muß ich hier, ich muß – mich treibt die Go¨tterstimme, nicht Eignes Gelu¨sten – euch zu bitterm Harm, mir nicht Zur Freude, ein Gespenst des Schreckens, wu¨rgend gehn, Den Tod verbreiten und sein Opfer sein zuletzt! (1658–63) (Yet, torn away from all the places of my homeland, My father’s arms, my sisters’, I must here, I must – The voice of Heaven drives me on, not my own will – Rage like an angry spirit, to do you bitter harm, No joy to me, dealing out death, and at the last, Five Plays 668) Falling myself a victim to him.

It appears as though Johanna fails not when she kills but when she refuses to kill. When she first beholds Lionel and is unable to kill him, she wonders “Und bin ich strafbar, weil ich menschlich war? / Ist Mitleid Su¨nde?” (2567–8) (Must I be punished then, for being human? / Is pity sinful? Five Plays 698). In light of such cruel demands, it is hardly surprising that, throughout most of the play but most pronouncedly in the scene with the mysterious Black Knight, there is an air of uncertainty regarding the nature and legitimacy of Johanna’s mission. Is Johanna a pure devotee of the Virgin Mary or a follower of barbaric heathen customs symbolized by the oak tree? Is she guilty because she turned away from the natural realm of womanly activity and from woman’s primary task of nurturing and caring and became an abomination of nature, “eine schwere Irrung der Natur” (62) (some serious error in nature, Five Plays 622)?

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Or is she guilty because she, like Saul who failed to kill every Amalekite, “man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15:3), failed to eradicate every single one of her enemies? In other words, is Johanna guilty because she killed or because she did not kill enough? Or is she to be pitied because she lived during times so out of joint that they could only be set right by the abhorrence of a virgin killer? Evidently, an answer to this question has implications for the valuation of warfare in the drama. If Johanna is an abomination of nature, so is warfare. Conversely, if Johanna’s mission is sacred, warfare, and the merciless slaughter of every enemy, partakes of its holy sheen. Interestingly, in Die Jungfrau von Orleans, the Hundred Years’ War originates not primarily in the expansionist aggression of Henry V and the dissension among French nobles, but rather results from the unnatural and lecherous desires of a woman.38 In Isabeau, Schiller portrays a queen who, discontent with her marriage to a deranged king, is determined to enjoy life with her lovers. When her son endeavors to punish her for her affairs, she turns against him and enters a pact with the enemies of France. Johanna transgresses against the laws of “natural” gender by becoming a warrior, but Isabeau’s violations exceed Johanna’s by far. Isabeau not only kills her enemies but is intent on killing the one to whom she gave life: “Dem ich das Dasein gab, will ich es rauben . . . Ich darf ihn hassen, ich hab ihn geboren” (1416–24) (I gave him life and I can take it back . . . I am allowed to loathe him – he is my son, Five Plays 661). Isabeau’s inability to contain her own sexuality and her desire to kill the fruit of her own womb upset the natural order of both family and state. Her gender transgressions spread like a virus and turn the king into an effeminate milksop: “Der Mutter unnatu¨rlich rohe Tat / Hat meines Ko¨nigs Heldenherz gebrochen” (772–3) (My King’s heroic spirit has been broken / by the vile acts of his unnatural mother, Five Plays 641). Instead of leading his country in arms, Karl delights in song and jest and spends his time in the company of his mistress Agnes Sorel. It is Karl’s inaction that prompts Johanna’s fight. Where kings have taken to tending sheep (“magst du / Mit deinem Ko¨nig Rene´ Schafe hu¨ten,” 504–5) (be a shepherd, like your friend King Rene´, Five Plays 634), the virgin shepherdess must take to the battlefield.39 Because of Isabeau’s sins, the times are out of joint, and it takes an unnatural saint to set them right.40 Because Isabeau perverted the natural order for her own pleasure, Johanna must now renounce her own better nature for the good of her country. In Schiller’s play, two wrongs make one right. One woman heals what another has broken. By waging a war against both the desire in her own heart and the enemies of France,

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Johanna restores the kingdom to health. But this restoration cannot be completed unless the last vestige of unnatural disorder, namely Johanna herself, is eliminated as well.41 Schiller’s valuation of warfare is embedded in his conceptualization of gender, but, as it turns out, both are double-edged swords. We may judge that warfare is as unnatural and perverted an activity as Johanna’s manly exploits. But we might also conclude that warfare is as sacred and necessary a sacrifice as Johanna’s participation in it. And then again, we might feel that, although the holiness of Johanna’s goal is confirmed by the play, the means she had to resort to remain as questionable in the end as they were in the beginning. However we turn and twist it, though, war in Die Jungfrau von Orleans is the product of a world gone topsy-turvy, a world in which women wear the pants. Isabeau initiates the war, and Johanna responds to her challenge. Visions of peace, of a life devoted to love and the arts, and an unwillingness to shed blood for power are attributed to male rulers, namely Rene´ and Karl himself.42 In the beginning of the play, the “natural” gender order is inverted. The ancient tenet that “das Weib / Bedarf in Kriegesno¨ten des Beschu¨tzers” (21–2) (in times like these, women need our protection, Five Plays 621) no longer holds true. Rather, Johanna, a woman, acts as protector. In the end, however, the old order is restored as a band of brothers musters its troops to free the virgin in distress.43 In Schiller’s play, men are the guarantors of peace while mothers not only fail to sustain life but actively seek to destroy it: “Dem ich das Dasein gab, will ich es rauben” (1416) (I gave him life and I can take it back, Five Plays 661).44 In order to find freedom and peace, Johanna must first triumph over the body and its desires. But this triumph is a self-defeating enterprise. Johanna, whose earthly mother is replaced by the virgin mother Mary, crushes the power of death by throwing herself willingly into its arms. conclusion When Schiller wrote Wallenstein and Die Jungfrau von Orleans, war was both an ever-present and elusive aspect of his life. In keeping with this dual nature, war in Schiller’s works is both a sordid reality and a freefloating trope. In Wallenstein, war is a trope of transcendence and an illness that afflicts the body politic; in Die Jungfrau von Orleans, warfare is the result of a perverted gender order as well as a dire necessity and noble sacrifice. In Die Jungfrau von Orleans, the fatherland has fallen victim to an

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invading army that must be repelled at all cost. In Wallenstein, the Swedes represent a threat, but the play’s ethics and power dynamics are complex and murky. Wallenstein is a Gedankenstu¨ck that ponders the relation between power and law and between warfare and politics. Die Jungfrau von Orleans is a call to action that portrays war as both a perversion of nature and a moral institution that facilitates personal growth. Wallenstein carries its critique of warfare on the surface, whereas in Die Jungfrau von Orleans all doubts about the legitimacy of warfare are buried in the representation of gender. One might wonder if these conceptual changes are brought about by the author’s increasing pessimism with respect to the contemporary political situation. When Schiller wrote Wallenstein, he appears to have harbored some hope that the dark times of the past (“die du¨str Zeit” 76) might give way to a happier present (“Und blicket froher in die Gegenwart” 77). By the time Schiller wrote Die Jungfrau von Orleans, these hopes had been dashed. His poem “Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts” (Beginning of the New Century), published in 1801, the year of the Lune´ville peace accord, which Schiller regarded with skepticism, opens with dire predictions: “Edler Freund! Wo o¨ffnet sich dem Frieden, / Wo der Freiheit sich ein Zufluchtsort? / Das Jahrhundert ist im Sturm geschieden, / Und das neue o¨ffnet sich im Mord” (Werke ii: 363) (Dear Friend! Where is a haven for peace / Where for freedom? / The century has left in a storm / And the new one begins with murder). It is perhaps Schiller’s changed perception of the political situation that caused the shift in focus and emphasis. Wallenstein’s rhetoric does not argue the necessity of war, but paints war as the antithesis of civil society. Die Jungfrau von Orleans, on the other hand, contains warnings against the destructive force of warfare, but its tropes taken from the realms of agriculture and religion serve to lessen the threat of war. In Wallenstein, the notion of transcendental warfare is drowned in a sea of ambition and greed. In Die Jungfrau von Orleans national and transcendental warfare enter a happy alliance, an alliance born from the uneasy marriage of virgin and warrior and of propaganda and fairytale. Both plays bear traces of Schiller’s ambivalence toward war, but it is only Die Jungfrau von Orleans that paints a portrait of war as a moral institution capable of effecting personal and national catharsis.

chapter 4

War and terror: Kleist

Unlike Schiller, who wrote his Wallenstein and Die Jungfrau von Orleans without the benefit of military experience, Kleist was born into a family of officers and destined for a career in the Prussian army. From age 15 to 22, he was stationed with a regiment in Potsdam and was present at the siege of Mainz in 1793. But military life did not agree with Kleist and in 1799 he decided to quit. In a letter to Christian Ernst Martini, dated March 19, 1799, he calls the army a “lebendiges Monument der Tyrannei” (a living monument to tyranny) and explains that “der Soldatenstand, dem ich nie von Herzen zugetan gewesen bin, weil er etwas durchaus Ungleichartiges mit meinem ganzen Wesen in sich tra¨gt, [wurde mir] so verhaßt, daß es mir nach und nach la¨stig wurde zu seinem Zwecke mitwirken zu mu¨ssen . . . immer zweifelhaft war, ob ich als Mensch oder als Offizier handeln mußte; denn die Pflichten beider zu vereinen, halte ich bei dem jetzigen Zustande der Armeen fu¨r unmo¨glich” (ii: 479) (the profession of soldier, which I have never truly loved because it contains in itself something wholly incompatible with my entire being, [became so] hateful to me that it became more and more onerous to have to further its purpose . . . was always doubtful whether I had to act as a human being or as an officer; for I consider it impossible to reconcile the obligations of both in the current state of the armies).1 Unsurprisingly, Kleist left the army and became a civilian, but he remained close to Ernst von Pfuel and Otto Ru¨hle von Lilienstern, whom he met in the Potsdam regiment, and continued to take an active interest in military affairs, as evidenced by numerous letters that discuss the course of recent campaigns. Shortly before his suicide, Kleist attempted to rejoin the Prussian army. Given this background, it is hardly surprising that war plays a prominent role in almost all of Kleist’s works. Like Schiller’s dramas, Kleist’s texts respond to the recuperative war discourse of his time, to the notion of war as an ennobling endeavor and creative power, to the possibility of warfare 46

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as a rational and containable activity, and to the relation between warfare and the sublime.2 However, while Schiller allows for an intimate relation between warfare and transcendence, Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht (1808) and Penthesilea (1807) perform striking critiques of such positive valuations of war. Kleist’s drama Die Hermannsschlacht has often been read as a call to arms. The most produced play in Germany in 1933 and 1934,3 it was popular with National Socialists, but it has also been claimed by the political left and hailed as “Modell eines Befreiungskrieges”4 (model of a war of liberation). And yet, even though Die Hermannsschlacht has been interpreted as a fanfare for war, it does not portray war as ennobling and creative. Rather, in Die Hermannsschlacht, the concept of terror emerges as the dark “Other” of the nexus of war and the sublime. Similarly, Penthesilea’s imaginary investment in savagery and inhuman cruelty is designed to deconstruct the notion of war as a rational and political act. Unlike Clausewitz, whose seminal work Vom Kriege (1832) seeks to subjugate war as a blind force of nature to the reign of reason and politics, Kleist believes that all attempts to contain war are doomed to failure. Clearly, Kleist’s plays express powerful critiques of war, but this is not to say that we can draw on them to lend support to a pacifist agenda. First, although Kleist’s plays paint a vivid portrait of the terror of war, they also show that war is not the “Other” of civil society, but integrated into its very core. In Kleist’s texts, wars are all but inevitable because society is itself the continuation of war by other means.5 Secondly, both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea are highly ambiguous constructs permeated by a spiral of competing subtexts. In particular, I will show that Kleist’s representation of gender confounds and undercuts his critique of war even if it cannot ultimately contain it. ‘die hermannsschlacht’ An imperialist superpower seeks to gain control of a territory rich in resources and ruled by warring ethnic tribes whose constant feuds leave their country vulnerable. Under the pretext of protection, the superpower invades the alien territory and begins to exploit its natural resources. It justifies its actions in the name of universal law and claims to respect local religion and customs. However, once in the country, the self-proclaimed defenders of morality pillage, rape, burn, and murder in pursuit of their true goal: hegemony in a capitalist system of exchange. In order to fight

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back the tribes resort to terrorist, even suicidal tactics. They would rather destroy their own villages than see them occupied by the enemy, rather see their own wives and children dead than subjugated. The play that describes this war is Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht. The superpower in question is Rome, the threatened territory that of the Germanic tribes, and the coveted natural resources the blond hair and pearly teeth of Teutonic women. Although Die Hermannsschlacht appears highly pertinent to our present situation of asymmetrical warfare that pits the remaining superpower against terrorist organizations,6 it is actually a testimony to Kleist’s intellectual engagement with contemporary military challenges and reform movements.7 Composed between June and December of 1808 and first published by Ludwig Tieck in 1821, the play is, as Kleist famously stated, “fu¨r den Augenblick berechnet” (ii: 821) (designed for the moment). According to Kittler, Die Hermannsschlacht contains Kleist’s “Traum von der staatlich organisierten Insurrektion der preußischen Bevo¨lkerung gegen das Heer Napoleons”8 (dream of an insurrection of the Prussian people organized by the state against Napoleon’s army). The play advocates the total mobilization of civilian and military resources and the total annihilation of the enemy, whom it depicts as animal, vermin, and demon. Indeed, Die Hermannsschlacht is so intent on proving that the inferiority of the Romans is an inalienable ethnic trait that, in a manner bordering on caricature, it portrays Romans as degenerate miscreants, who are forced to steal Germanic hair and teeth to make up for their own deficiency. In his letters, Kleist is very clear that the Romans are a stand-in for the contemporary French enemy: “Wir sind die unterjochten Vo¨lker der Ro¨mer. Es ist auf eine Ausplu¨nderung von Europa abgesehen, um Frankreich reich zu machen” (ii: 771) (We are the subjugated peoples of the Romans. It is their design to exploit Europe in order to make France rich).9 In its representation of the enemy, Die Hermannsschlacht echoes Kleist’s political pamphlet “Katechismus der Deutschen abgefasst nach dem Spanischen, zum Gebrauch fu¨r Kinder und Alte” (Catechism of the Germans Based on the Spanish Intended for Children and Old People). Just like Hermann, Kleist’s “Katechismus” preaches unconditional hatred for the enemy: Wer sind deine Feinde mein Sohn? a n t w o r t : Napoleon, und solange er ihr Kaiser ist, die Franzosen. f r a g e : Ist sonst niemand, den du hassest?

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Niemand, auf der ganzen Welt. (ii: 352)

(Who are your enemies my son? an swe r : Napoleon, and as long as he is their emperor, the French. q ue st i on: Is there nobody else whom you hate? an swe r : Nobody, in the entire world.)

In its defense of total war, “Katechismus” delineates the same contempt for worldly treasures that Kant associates with the sublime: f r a g e : Warum also mag das Elend wohl, das in der Zeit ist, u¨ber sie gekommen, ihre Hu¨tten zersto¨rt und ihre Felder verheert worden sein? a n t w o r t : Um ihnen diese Gu¨ter vo¨llig vera¨chtlich zu machen und sie anzuregen, nach den ho¨heren und ho¨chsten, die Gott den Menschen beschert hat, hinanzustreben. . . . f r a g e : . . . Also auch, wenn alles unterginge, und kein Mensch, Weiber und Kinder mit eingerechnet, am Leben bliebe, wu¨rdest du den Kampf noch billigen? a n t w o r t : Allerdings, mein Vater. f r a g e : Warum? a n t w o r t : Weil es Gott lieb ist, wenn Menschen, ihrer Freiheit wegen, sterben. (ii: 356 and 360) (q u e st i o n : Why were they afflicted by the misery that exists now, their huts destroyed, their fields ravaged? an swe r : To make them despise these possessions completely and to incite them to strive for the higher and highest that God has bestowed upon man. . . . q ue st i on: . . . Even if everything were destroyed, and no human being, women or children included, survived, you would still approve of the fight? an swe r : Indeed, my father. q ue st i on: Why? an swe r : Because God is pleased if human beings die for their freedom.)

Both “Katechismus” and Die Hermannsschlacht portray war as an opportunity for spiritual growth, but the radical way in which the texts illustrate this kind of Bildung serves as much to ironize and undermine their ostensible agenda as it does to uphold it. Kleist’s protagonist Hermann endeavors to convince his fellow countrymen that, in order to win their freedom, they have to embrace the total destruction of everything they hold dear:10 “das eben, Rasender, das ist es ja, was wir in diesem Krieg verteidigen wollen! hermann abbrechend: Nun denn, ich glaubte, eure Freiheit wa¨r’s” (H 385–6) (this, raving man, is the very thing we want to defend in this war! hermann interrupting: Well then, I thought it was

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your freedom). Paradoxically, Hermann calls on his followers to accept defeat – “weil alles zu verlieren bloß die Absicht ist” (H 277–8) (since it is our intention to lose everything) – in order to gain victory. Moreover, Die Hermannsschlacht ups the ante in that the call to sublimate the desire for earthly goods includes even the fatherland itself. While Shakespeare’s Fortinbras wages war for an eggshell, Hermann has done away with the concept of territory altogether: “Cheruska schirmen! Was! Wo Hermann steht, da siegt er, Und mithin ist Cheruska da” (H 1854–5) (to protect Cheruska! What! Wherever Hermann stands, he wins. And that is where Cheruska is). According to this logic, the leader who still hopes to save home and family will court compromise and sell out. Only he who has nothing left to protect and defend can fight effectively. Die Hermannsschlacht raises the stakes by thinking little not only of Kant’s “Gu¨ter, Gesundheit und Leben” (possessions, health and life) but also of the fatherland, and, in doing so, unveils the problematic implications of the concept of transcendental freedom. Kleist’s text reveals that, taken to extremes, freedom is equivalent to total emptiness.12 It is hardly surprising that Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht concludes with the vision of a “schwarze Fahne von seinem o¨den Tru¨mmerhaufen” (H 2635–6) (a black flag from a bleak pile of rubble). In Kleist’s play, a black void is the ultimate form of freedom. Instead of the sublime, we face terror. Instead of the transcendental soldier, we encounter the suicidal terrorist. It is impossible to decide if Hermannsschlacht is driven by cynical nihilism – in a letter to Ulrike von Kleist from May 1, 1802, Kleist declares that “das Leben hat doch immer nichts Erhabeneres, als nur dieses, daß man es erhaben wegwerfen kann” (ii: 725) (life really has nothing sublime about it except that we can throw it away in a sublime manner)13 – or by philosophical clairvoyance. Irrespective of his motivations, though, Kleist’s insights into the nexus between the sublime and terror remain relevant even today. Although Die Hermannsschlacht casts the Romans as aggressors and the Germanic tribes as defenders of the fatherland, the war in which they are engaged, far from ennobling anybody’s character, corrupts both sides. The Romans maintain a thin veneer of morality and claim to obey the laws of war (H 1161), but act according to the principle of “might is right.”14 The play informs us of the murder of women and children and the desecration of sacred oaks and displays an acute awareness of the contradictions between Roman rhetoric and practice. When the Roman commander Septimius is taken prisoner and demands to be treated according to the laws of war, an enraged Hermann dismisses his request

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with a reference to the unlawfulness of the Roman occupation of Germanic territory: “Du weißt was Recht ist, du verfluchter Bube, Und kamst nach Deutschland, unbeleidigt” (H 2216–17) (You know what is right, you cursed knave, and came to Germany unprovoked). Craftier than their intended victims, the Romans had hoped to exploit and manipulate a supposed German penchant for honesty and rely on the principle of “divide et impera.” Where they cannot hope to prevail by force, they bribe and betray. Consequently, the Germans’ only chance to defeat their superior opponent is to outdo them in treachery and cruelty, to disregard all moral standards, every “Gefu¨hl des Rechts, in deines Busens Bla¨ttern aufgeschrieben” (H 2214–15) (feeling of right, written on the sheets of your bosom). Thus, when the Romans relent in their efforts to pillage and murder, Hermann disguises his own troops as Romans and sends them out to commit atrocities in the name of the enemy. He exaggerates Roman misconduct, tells lies, and breaks his word. Although the play endorses Hermann’s actions in the service of a higher goal, it also suggests that the victim turned victimizer pays a price – but it does so in a highly gendered manner. Whereas Hermann and his troops’ atrocities leave no psychological scars, Hermann’s wife Thusnelda suffers irrevocable harm. The Thusnelda–Ventidius subplot suggests that violence not only destroys the life of the victim, but has serious repercussions for the perpetrator as well. In the figure of Thusnelda, Die Hermannsschlacht uses gender to both reveal and contain the devastating impact of war. Once Thusnelda graduates from Hermann’s seminar of cruelty, she brutally avenges the Roman legate Ventidius’s mistreatment of her. After Ventidius’s “Liebestod,”15 Thusnelda faints and wakens a shadow of her former self. This validates her servant Gertrud’s warning that violence leaves its imprint on all who come under its sway: Die Rache der Barbaren sei dir fern! Es ist Ventidius nicht, der mich mit Sorg erfu¨llt; Du selbst, wenn nun die Tat getan, Von Reu und Schmerz wirst du zusammenfallen.

(H 2317–20)

(The revenge of the Barbarians be unknown to you! It is not Ventidius that fills my heart with sorrow But you yourself when now the deed is done Will collapse with remorse and pain.)

The Thusnelda subplot illustrates that those who choose to fight fire with fire are themselves destroyed by the violence they inflict.16 Drawing attention to numerous animal metaphors in reference to Thusnelda,

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Kennedy claims that “Hermann’s metaphorical dehumanization of Thusnelda results in her literal transformation into a beast.”17 In Die Hermannsschlacht, war is anything but ennobling since even the victors emerge morally and emotionally corrupt. And yet, the fact that it is Thusnelda who cannot cope with the aftereffects of violence, whereas Hermann, the instigator of Thusnelda’s, and everybody else’s, cruelty, shows no emotional battle scars, limits the acuity of Kleist’s critique. Die Hermannsschlacht portrays the terror of war, but its representation of gender keeps the omnipotence fantasy embodied by its eponymous hero intact. As the Ventidius–Thusnelda plot indicates, Die Hermannsschlacht repeatedly compares war to a relationship between the sexes that purports to be romance but is actually rape and even murder. The play not only likens the relationship between Ventidius and Thusnelda to that between the Romans and the Germanic tribes, it also portrays Hermann as an ardent lover who (falsely) promises to throw himself into Ventidius’s arms (H 485). This melding of love and war is in line with Hermann’s concept of total war, which requires that all separation between public and private, between love and politics, be left behind. Rejecting Thusnelda’s plea not to use her as an instrument in his campaign against the Romans, Hermann instead treats her like a prostitute on loan to Ventidius. The Roman general Varus, too, seeks to enlist Thusnelda by presenting her with “weapons,” namely jewelry and oils – “Ein kleines Ru¨stzeug . . . erlauchte Frau, bewaffnet deine Scho¨nheit” (H 1201–2) (A few tools . . . dear lady, to arm your beauty) – and encourages her to wield these weapons in order to seduce Hermann to friendship with the Romans. Clearly, the conflation of courtship and conquest shows that, in Die Hermannsschlacht, there is no realm apart from the hell of war and terror. War infiltrates and infects every arena of life, but, as Die Hermannsschlacht suggests and Penthesilea illustrates drastically, it could not do so if civil life did not already contain the germs of war. If Die Hermannsschlacht is designed as a call to arms, its refusal to whitewash or embellish war may very well produce the opposite effect. Moreover, Kleist’s choice of hero does little to celebrate soldierly virtues. As Seeba points out, the play’s protagonist is a talker who hardly ever fights and who loses the one fight he does engage in.18 Marbod’s army beats the Romans and Fust kills Varus, while the charismatic figure who carries the Germans to victory is the only character in the play who does not know how to fight. Die Hermannsschlacht demands total war, but it idolizes a hero whose strength lies not in violence, but in strategy, vision, and poetry.

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Hermann is an intellectual’s omnipotence fantasy come to life. His words mobilize or rather program his Volk to fight the invaders so that “eines Wilden Witz” (H 2464–5) (a wild man’s wit) causes the demise of Rome’s mighty empire. Guided not by emotion but by ideals, Hermann is an early form of Schreibtischta¨ter.19 But Hermann is also the logical consequence and illustration of Kleist’s conviction that language is a weapon. Repeatedly, Kleist’s letters and essays speak of language as an instrument of war. In Pho¨bus, for example, Kleist describes the relationship between his and other journals as a figurative arms race: “Aber wie wir selbst bewaffnet sind, werden wir keinen andern Unbewaffneten oder auch nur Leichtbewaffneten auf dem Kampfplatz, den wir hierdurch ero¨ffnen, neben uns leiden” (ii: 447) (But just as we ourselves are armed, we will not tolerate anybody who is unarmed or even lightly armed on this ¨ ber die allma¨hliche Verferbattlefield which we hereby inaugurate). In U tigung der Gedanken beim Reden (On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking), Kleist compares words to troops. “Und u¨berhaupt wird jeder, der, bei gleicher Deutlichkeit, geschwinder als sein Gegner spricht, einen Vorteil u¨ber ihn haben, weil er gleichsam mehr Truppen als er ins Feld fu¨hrt” (ii: 323) (And anyway, everybody who speaks faster than his opponent while enunciating as clearly will have an advantage over him so to speak because he leads more troops into battle). Because words are ideal weapons, Hermann the talker wields more power than Fust the fighter. This, however, does not imply that the pen is mightier than the sword. Rather, Kleist suggests that the pen is always also a sword. The fact that language can be employed as an instrument of warfare, propaganda, and deception constitutes a radically destabilizing potential that undermines the foundation of all societal transactions. When words can no longer be trusted, the body becomes the object of inscriptions with lethal effects.20 In The Body in Pain, the eminent literary scholar Elaine Scarry claims that wars begin when words have failed. According to Scarry, to fight a war means to offer your body for the truth of your cause. Die Hermannsschlacht too seeks truth in the body. When Hermann wants to convince Marbod of the truthfulness of his letter, he offers the lives of his two sons and a dagger. Similarly, when he wants to prove the treachery of the Romans and thus legitimize warfare, he again relies on the body.21 In order to reveal to all the utter degradation of the Roman occupation, Hermann makes strategic use of the dead body of Hally, who was gang-raped by Roman soldiers. In Die Hermannsschlacht, writing on the body means writing in blood. But again, there is a crucial difference: while Hermann’s sons

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survive their ordeal, the female objects of inscription die. Throughout the play, to be conquered by Rome is tantamount to total objectification, and objectification of the conquered is played out on the female body. By projecting his worst fears about war onto the female body, Kleist again blunts the edge of his critique.22 To the Romans, the Germanic Barbarian is little more than a collection of spare parts useful only insofar as it can be subjected to their mercantile logic: Thusnelda, who is tricked out of her hair; the Ubian woman who is brutally robbed of her hair and teeth; Hally, who is raped and whose face is then covered by a piece of cloth, all signify the transformation of the conquered body into a thing stripped of all personality, ready to be used and sold to the highest bidder. It is telling that, although the fate of objectification threatens both genders, it befalls only women. Whenever Kleist’s play shows that violence corrupts victim and perpetrator alike and whenever it depicts war’s devastating effects on the individual, it chooses to highlight female victims. Women and enemies are dismembered while the German hero, whole and in control, disposes of the parts.23 Thus, Die Hermannsschlacht, a Janus-faced drama, offers its readers a choice: abhorrence at the bleakness of Hermann’s vision or admiration for the triumph of his strategic mastery. If Die Hermannsschlacht has been read as a drastic how-to guide to total warfare and an oblique warning against it,24 it is because Kleist’s construction of gender confounds his critique of war. Repeatedly, the tipping point between propaganda and critique, between depraved savagery and heroic fight for the fatherland, between warfare as transcendental endeavor and as sheer terror, is played out in the representation of gender and the body. And yet, while Kleist’s gender politics compromises his critique of war, it cannot completely undo it. For there are moments in the play when the dark implications of Kleist’s body politics infect male territory. This occurs when the rationale that grounds truth in the body becomes the founding principle of Hermann’s new state. Characteristically, Germania originates not in a constitution or declaration of independence but comes into being through the beheading of a traitor to the German cause: “Fu¨hrt ihn hinweg und werft das Haupt ihm nieder! . . . marbod halblaut, zu Wolf : Die Lektion ist gut. fust: Was gilts, er weiß jetzt, wo Germanien liegt?” (H 2618–21) (Take him away and decapitate him! . . . marbod softly to Wolf : This lesson is good. fust: Why, he now knows where Germania is located?). Since Hermann’s vision of Germania is empty, it requires the constant reaffirmation of its reality through sacrifice. Rather than promising that war will cede to the reign of peace,

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the play suggests that the laws of war will replicate themselves in the order of the new state. Kleist’s society truly is the continuation of war by other means. Consequently, Die Hermannsschlacht demonstrates that, although the Germans are the defenders of the fatherland and are as such engaged in a legitimate war, they too, if given half a chance, will embark on an imperial war.25 Significantly, the play is framed by two visions of Germanic conquest. In the very beginning, Hermann declares his intention to take the war to Rome, “nach Rom . . . wenn mir das Glu¨ck ein wenig gu¨nstig ist” (H 366–7) (to Rome . . . if luck favors me at all). In the end, he confirms his plan: “und dann – nach Rom selbst mutig aufzubrechen!” (H 2630) (and then – decamp for Rome itself courageously). What had started out as legitimate self-defense is revealed as desire for total annihilation, “vom Erdenrund vertilgen” (H 1602) (to annihilate from the face of the earth), of the opponent. While Die Hermannsschlacht deconstructs the notion of warfare as an ennobling or transcendental endeavor, Kleist’s drama Penthesilea puts paid to the notion that war is a creative force and to the idea that it could ever be conducted “mit Ordnung und Heiligachtung der bu¨rgerlichen Rechte.” Penthesilea shows how a war that started out as a continuation of politics by other means is replaced by an inhuman fight to the death that eludes control and defies rational objectives. ‘penthesilea’ Much like Die Hermannsschlacht deconstructs the nexus of warfare and the sublime by embracing it, Penthesilea, completed in the fall of 1807, dismantles the notion of war as the father of all things by taking it seriously and pushing it to its limit. Quite literally, the ultimate goal of an Amazon campaign is not to kill, but to give birth. Where traditionally men have the power to take and women the power to give life, the Amazons have arrogated both realms to themselves. In the Heraclitean sense of the term, wars are literally deadly but figuratively generative. In contrast, Kleist’s war is literally generative, but ultimately destructive. It does not initiate a new time and “neue Geschlechter,” but brings forth inhuman cruelty and merciless butchery. The fact that Penthesilea introduces a female army produces a category confusion that manifests itself in the apparent incomprehensibility of the Amazon war. The Greeks are at a complete loss as to the motivations and rationale of their opponents’ “sinnentblo¨ßten Kampf ” (P 211) (fight devoid of meaning) and wonder “was wollen diese Amazonen uns?” (P 13) (what do

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these Amazons want from us). They initially assumed that the Amazons would join the Trojans and were confounded when they attacked the presumed ally instead. But when the Greeks then expect the Amazons, now proven enemies of their enemies, to join their side, their hopes are dashed again. The Amazon Queen Penthesilea, in particular, defies expectations.26 Odysseus finds Penthesilea utterly unpredictable and laments that “niemand kann, was sie uns will, ergru¨nden” (P 156) (nobody can fathom what she wants from us). Even Achilles fails to comprehend Penthesilea’s actions and believes that she attacked him “unbeleidigt” (P 1879) (unprovoked), “so unbegriffner Wut voll” (P 1882) (filled with incomprehensible rage). Kleist underlines the incomprehensibility of Penthesilea’s elemental force with numerous weather and nature metaphors. Penthesilea is “wie Sturmwind” (P 35) (like a storm), “wie ein Gewitter” (P 142) (like a thunderstorm), and her rage overwhelms the Greeks “mit eines Waldstroms wu¨tendem Erguß” (P 120) (with the raging gushes of a forest river). Clearly, the figure of the woman warrior not only disrupts gender categories but the very conditions that make the world knowable and war containable.27 In spite of their apparent incomprehensibility, however, there is a sense in which the Amazon wars are as purposeful and logical as those of the Greeks. Both Amazons and Greeks wage war as a form of politics by other means: the Greeks to defend and conquer territory, the Amazons to propagate their own kind and hence secure the continued existence of their state. The only ones who have lost sight of all political goals are the two protagonists of the play, Penthesilea and Achilles. Tellingly, Penthesilea is a mystery not only to the Greeks but also to her fellow Amazons. Moreover, to Odysseus’s great grief, Penthesilea’s mad rage has infected Achilles as well. Thinking only of his passion for the Amazon Queen, he has become oblivious of the Greek cause: Wenn die Dardanerburg, Laertiade, Versa¨nke, du verstehst, so daß ein See, Ein bla¨ulicher, an ihre Stelle tra¨te; Wenn graue Fischer, bei dem Schein des Monds, Den Kahn an ihre Wetterhahne knu¨pften; Wenn im Palast des Priamus ein Hecht Regiert’, ein Ottern- oder Ratzenpaar Im Bette sich der Helena umarmten: So wa¨rs fu¨r mich gerad so viel, als jetzt. (P 2518–26) (If the palace of the Dardans, son of Laertes, Sank, you understand, so that a lake, bluish one, took its place

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If gray fishermen, in the light of the moon Tied their boat to its weathervane; If in the palace of Priamus a pike Reigned, a pair of otters or rats Embraced each other in Helen’s bed It would be all the same to me.)

Whereas both the Amazons and Greeks pursue wars that are, in the Clausewitzian sense of the term, political acts, Achilles and Penthesilea are engaged in a war of passion. To Achilles, the only empires that matter are those on Penthesilea’s cheeks, the “Reiche[n] dieser Wangen” (P 1628) (empires of these cheeks). Thus, both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea depict wars that lose sight of their initial objectives. In Die Hermannsschlacht, the defense of the fatherland turns into an imperialist war of conquest that seeks the complete annihilation of the enemy. In Penthesilea, the Trojan War, a war with political objectives, and the Amazon war, a war that seeks to rejuvenate the state, are replaced by a savage fight to the death, in which violence is no longer a means to an end but manifests itself as pure terror. Kleist’s war is not Kant’s “Krieg, wenn er mit Ordnung und Heiligachtung der bu¨rgerlichen Rechte gefu¨hrt wird” (war if it is conducted with order and respect for civil rights) nor does it follow the Clausewitzian dictum that “Krieg kein Akt blinder Leidenschaft ist, sondern der politische Zweck darin vorwaltet”28 (war is no act of blind passion, but a political purpose prevails). Rather, in Penthesilea, war develops a dynamic of its own that eludes control and defies rational objectives. In Penthesilea, the two different ways of waging war are not those of Amazons and Greeks, but rather the Greek/Amazon way of waging war versus that of Penthesilea and Achilles. The first is a political act that obeys rules and seeks to accomplish a purpose. It is strategic and limited, and there is room for heroes and valor. Penthesilea and Achilles’s war, on the other hand, results in abhorrent savagery and madness. Penthesilea, who turns completely insane after the killing of Achilles, is portrayed as somewhat demented from the start. She is a “Schwindelnde(n)” (P 289) (dizzy), “Rasende(n)” (P 296) (raving) and “wie beraubt des Urteils” (P 314) (as though robbed of her power of judgment). In pursuit of her lover, Penthesilea degenerates into a “Hu¨ndin” (P 2553) (she dog), who sinks her teeth into Achilles’ throat.29 Again, it is the heroine, not her male counterpart, who cannot hold up under the strain of battle.30 In its conflation of savagery and femininity, Penthesilea draws on the contemporary discourse of women as “Hya¨nen” (Stephan). In its investment in

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woman’s sadistic cruelty, it resembles Kleist’s “Germania an ihre Kinder” (Germania to her Children).31 Where Penthesilea eats the defeated enemy herself, Germania’s enemies are cudgeled to death and their blanched bones fed to the fishes. In “Germania,” the warriors are men, but Germania, who exhorts them to withhold all mercy, is imagined as a woman. Thus, in “Germania” as in Penthesilea, the dehumanizing effect of total warfare becomes a function of gender. But to suggest that war turns into butchery only when women infiltrate a realm that is not rightfully theirs is to maintain a fantasy that there is a proper, orderly, masculine way of war. In other words, if it is indeed the mad warrior Queen who spoils the otherwise clean, good world of war, the “große Welt des heitern Krieges” (P 2177) (the big world of gay war), then Kleist’s critique of war as terror is again undercut by his representation of gender.32 And yet, in Penthesilea’s spiral of competing subtexts, nothing is as simple as it seems. For while the representation of gender confounds the critique of war, the persistent gender blending of the play disrupts the conflation of femininity and savagery. Any interpretation of Penthesilea that relies on stable gender categories is riddled with the fact that, in Kleist’s drama, gender metaphors run wild. Achilles is compared to a dove, a lion, a dog, a doe (P 2631–2; P 1767–70), whereas Penthesilea is likened to a stag (P 214), a hyena (P 331), and a panther (P 346). In Kleist’s letters, gender is a clear-cut category, but in Penthesilea it is a highly unstable concept. More importantly, as I will show, Kleist’s play is much more interested in the problematic nature of desire itself than in the particular aberrations of its heroine. While Die Hermannsschlacht investigates the relation between war and language, Penthesilea negotiates the nexus of war and desire. Not just in its famous lines, but throughout, Kleist’s play conflates “Ku¨sse” and “Bisse” (P 2987) (kisses and bites), thus suggesting that war and desire are very much alike.33 The play does not stop at exploring conflicts between state and individuality, rational order and passion,34 but rather problematizes the notion of desire itself; and it is perhaps in this sense that Penthesilea contains what Kleist referred to as the “ganze Schmutz zugleich und Glanz meiner Seele” (ii: 797) (the entire filth and splendor of my soul simultaneously). In Penthesilea, love is not a bed of roses but a chain stronger than iron (P 1832) and a consuming fire, a “Flammenlohe” (P 71) (blaze); desires are wild dogs (P 1219); Penthesilea’s arrows are “Brautwerber” (P 596) (envoys of the groom); and her wishes take the form of “Todgeflu¨ster” (P 598) (whispers of death). Conversely, to Achilles, making Penthesilea his bride and dragging her through the street are one

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and the same (P 613–15). The twin themes of love and war are not only Kleist’s most important topics, as Neumann suggests,35 they are practically interchangeable.36 In Penthesilea, love and objectification, desire and violence are portrayed as synonymous. The relationship of the sexes is a war, and war is a battle of the sexes. While Die Hermannsschlacht presents Thusnelda’s murder of Ventidius precisely when we expect the battle of Romans and Germans, Penthesilea shows the deadly duel of Achilles and Penthesilea when we expect to see the Trojan War. Thus, the question that needs to be asked is whether Kleist intends to show that the relationship between the sexes is always already a war, or whether he means to show that war emerges from the very emotions that are supposed to undergird civil society. In order to understand how Kleist defines the relation between war, love, and sexuality, we must turn to the origin of the Amazon state. The Amazon state came into being when the Ethiopians invaded the territory of the Scythians, killed all male citizens, and raped the women. Rising against their oppressors, the tormented Scythian women murdered their occupiers and created the Amazon state. In Penthesilea as in Die Hermannsschlacht, victimization does not ennoble the victims, but rather forces them to adopt the brutal methods initially directed against them. Victims turned victimizers, the Amazons wage wars for the sole purpose of using their prisoners as breeders, and kill all male offspring. Instead of the rape of the female civilian, we now have the ravishing of the male soldier. However, if their lives as warriors have deformed the Amazons’ better (natural?) instincts, it is the world of male war, the initial act of brutal aggression that made them what they are. Wars, it would seem, produce female victims, who either perish like Hally or, like Thusnelda and the Amazons, become avengers themselves. The main difference consists in the fact that Thusnelda submits to Hermann’s agenda, whereas the Amazons are guided by their own objectives. Either way, Kleist’s plays conceive of history as a vicious circle: wars engender female and male monsters intent on waging war. Both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea portray war as a vortex, an ungovernable dynamic apt to eradicate every feature of civil society. Civil society, on the other hand, is itself the continuation of war by other means. Both plays show that the constitutive elements of civil life are also the prime movers and instruments of war. In Die Hermannsschlacht, language is a weapon. In Penthesilea, love and desire, normally conceived as integral to peaceful communality, are themselves infected with and inseparable from violence and war. Kleist’s Penthesilea is neither an affirmation of individual needs

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in the face of an oppressive state nor does it contain even a faint vision of future reconciliation.37 Rather, Penthesilea is a sophisticated analysis of the interrelation of war and desire and of its dire implications for the possibility of peace. In both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea, the symbolic, the language of propaganda and of desire, is inextricably linked with the world of war. But only Penthesilea explores the possibility of a happier existence in the pre-symbolic realm. In Die Hermannsschlacht, the alternative to language, the body, is itself implicated in the economy of war. Penthesilea, on the other hand, seeks to escape the world of war by transcending language. When Achilles asks for her name, the Amazon Queen, longing for a world beyond the split of signifier and signified,38 refuses to give it and demands to be known by the lines of her face (P 1815). However, in Penthesilea, when body speaks directly to body, such as Odysseus’s upper lip to Achilles’ fist (P 2497–9), the result is not intimacy but violence. In the end, in Penthesilea as in Die Hermannsschlacht, the price for the authenticity of corporeal conversation is death. Tellingly, Penthesilea’s suicide is effected through the materialization of language – she literally speaks herself to death.39 Thus, Kleist’s drama truly reveals an aporia. The pre-symbolic world for which Penthesilea longs is not a world of wordless understanding but of mute violence. But the symbolic realm of the Greek and Amazon empires offers no happy alternative. It is not accidental that, in Penthesilea, both protagonists are injured from the start: Penthesilea bears the sign of the self-mutilation that forms the foundation of the Amazon state, and Achilles enters the scene as an already wounded warrior. Their wounds and the proliferation of images of falling and entanglement throughout the play speak to their entrapment in an order that defies every form of self-realization. And yet, even if they were not hampered by a repressive system, they would be undone by the agonistic nature of their own psyche. conclusion Both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea present analyses of war. Where Kant is willing to entertain the possibility of an orderly, dignified war, Kleist’s dramas show that wars develop a dynamic of their own that cannot be controlled. Die Hermannsschlacht depicts a seemingly legitimate war that spins out of control, whereas Penthesilea features a war that is all the more savage – “des einen Zahn im Schlund des anderen” (P 11) (the tooth of the one in the throat of the other) – because violence is no longer instrumental but has become an end in and of itself. While Kant imagined

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the possibility of a world without war, both Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea conceive of history as an endless succession of wars. Both plays locate the roots of war in the constitutive elements of civil life, thus suggesting that civil society always already contains the germ of war. Unlike Humboldt, Kant, and Hegel, Kleist does not conceive of war as an event that elevates the mind, fortifies the emotions, or gives rise to the most beautiful virtues. Although Die Hermannsschlacht embraces the notion of war as an education of a nation, it also pushes the goal of this Bildung, freedom, into perilous proximity to total terror. To be sure, Die Hermannsschlacht blunts its critique of war through its strategic deployment of gender, but it cannot fully contain the monstrous core of its male omnipotence fantasy. Similarly, Penthesilea flirts with the idea that war spirals out of control only when women are involved, but simultaneously undermines this proposal. Kleist’s plays offer powerful critiques of any recuperative approach to, or idealist conceptualization of, warfare, but they do not offer a vision of a world beyond war. In Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea, war is terror, and terror and war are never far from home.

part ii

The First World War

chapter 5

The First World War: overview

As the last part has shown, the twentieth century was not the first to endow war with sublime qualities. However, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the notion that war is ennobling and fortifying does not form the core of discourses about war and peace nor was it developed into a fully formed theory. By the end of the nineteenth century, in contrast, the celebration of war no longer occupies the fringes of a discourse on peace, but becomes a historical force in its own right. The philosopher whose name is most associated with the glorification of war is Friedrich Nietzsche. In Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morality, 1887), Nietzsche identifies war with a heightened form of life, whereas peace is a symptom of decline (“Symptome des absinkenden Lebens,” v: 403).1 In Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883–5), war is not only meaningful in and of itself, it is also capable of endowing the world with meaning: “Ihr sagt, die gute Sache sei es, die sogar den Krieg heilige? Ich sage euch: der gute Krieg ist es, der jede Sache heiligt” (iv: 59) (You say it is the good cause that sanctifies even war? I tell you: it is the good war that sanctifies every cause). Nietzsche proclaims that war is man’s true purpose on earth: “Der Mann soll zum Kriege erzogen werden und das Weib zur Erholung des Kriegers: alles Andere ist Thorheit” (iv: 85) (Man is to be educated for war and woman for the relaxation of the warrior: everything else is foolishness). War teaches manly virtues, encourages sacrifice, develops physical and moral strength, and injects life into an increasingly barren and lifeless society: “dass eine solche hoch cultivirte und daher nothwendig matte Menschheit, wie die der jetzigen Europa¨er, nicht nur der Kriege, sondern der gro¨ssten und furchtbarsten Kriege – also zeitweiliger Ru¨ckfa¨lle in die Barbarei – bedarf” (ii: 312) (that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily lax humanity, as is that of today’s Europeans, is in need not only of war, but of the biggest and most terrible wars – that is, temporary relapses into barbarity). 65

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And yet, although Nietzsche defines war as invigorating and purposeful, he also criticizes every attempt to camouflage aggressive impulses with a moral sheen. Inverting Clausewitz, Nietzsche argues that war is not a vehicle of politics but rather uses politics for its own ends: “Der Fu¨rst, welcher zu dem gefassten Entschlusse, Krieg mit dem Nachbarn zu fu¨hren, einen casus belli ausfindig macht, gleicht dem Vater, der seinem Kinde eine Mutter unterschiebt, welche fu¨rderhin als solche gelten soll” (ii: 340–1) (The ruler who attributes a casus belli to his already made decision to make war against the neighbor resembles the father who foists a mother on his child who is supposed to pass for the real one in future). Clearly, Nietzsche’s glorification of war is surpassed only by his determination to unveil the political lies and subterfuges that serve to justify war. In that sense, Nietzsche’s theories informed both the right-wing warriors of steel and the left-wing critique of war. But, of course, although Nietzsche does provide a model of “Ideologiekritik,” he, unlike the pacifist writers of the post-First World War period, does not hold out any promise that there will ever be a time without war. Nietzsche’s pessimism regarding the possibility of lasting peace was shared by Sigmund Freud. In his essay “Zeitgema¨sses u¨ber Krieg und Tod” (Thoughts for the Time on War and Death, 1915),2 written approximately six months after the beginning of the First World War, Freud comments on the surprise felt by many that a war of such cruelty and bloodthirstiness could be possible in civilized Europe. The point of the essay, however, is precisely that there is nothing surprising about it. According to Freud, human behavior is determined by drives, including aggressive and destructive drives. The effects of such drives can be temporarily redirected, repressed, or controlled, but they cannot be eradicated completely: “In Wirklichkeit gibt es keine Ausrottung des Bo¨sen” (41) (In reality, there is no extermination of evil). Thus, culture is a thin veneer – there are “ungleich mehr Kulturheuchler als wirklich kulturelle Menschen” (44) (far more cultural hypocrites than truly cultural humans) – and war represents a return of the repressed that is bound to haunt mankind’s present and future. That Freud’s early pessimism is not a spontaneous response to the outbreak of war but expressive of a lasting conviction is evident in his response to Albert Einstein’s invitation, extended in 1933, to discuss the possibility of liberating mankind from the yoke of war. Freud’s answer, entitled “Warum Krieg?” (Why War?), does not share Einstein’s faith in the redeeming power of education and knowledge. Although Freud describes forces that counteract war, he also asks: “warum empo¨ren wir uns so sehr

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gegen den Krieg, Sie und ich und so viele andere, warum nehmen wir ihn nicht hin wie eine andere der vielen peinlichen Notlagen des Lebens” (284) (why do we take such offense at war, you and I and so many others, why do we not accept it as one of the many distressing exigencies of life). As Freud’s writings indicate, the First World War represents a watershed event that left its contemporaries with deep doubts and even despair about the possibility of human progress. In spite of the far greater carnage of the Second World War, the First World War remains to this day the foundational war of modernity, and our notions of war literature remain shaped by the vast body of texts that sought to come to terms with the experience of the Great War. In the following chapters, I will offer readings of Ernst Ju¨nger’s (1895–1998) In Stahlgewittern (In Storms of Steel, 1920) and Erich Maria Remarque’s (1898–1970) Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929) to exemplify some of the challenges and choices with which war writers have to contend. Ju¨nger, a proponent of the political right, has often been reviled for his glorification of war and his affinity to Nazi ideology. Remarque, whose novel featured prominently during the infamous Nazi book burning of 1933, is celebrated as a pacifist icon, and Im Westen is included in many school curricula. Clearly, in many ways, Remarque and Ju¨nger are polar opposites. And yet, a simple classification of their texts as belligerent and pacifist respectively does not even begin to address the structural and thematic complexities and paradoxes of texts about war. Departing from a reading of Ju¨nger’s and Remarque’s works, I argue that a text’s opposition to war can manifest itself in vastly different and mutually contradictory ways. For example, a text may oppose war thematically and expressis verbis, but affirm its meaning through its narrative and structure. Conversely, a text may proclaim the glory of war, while its structure and the bleakness of its factual details convey a sense of meaningless slaughter. Consequently, the following readings of Ju¨nger and Remarque seek to challenge one of our most dearly cherished assumptions about war and peace, namely the idea that a text that opposes war in pronounced and powerful terms must necessarily succeed in promoting peace. As I will show, opposition to war tends to highlight victimization, while peace is built on agency. To be sure, agency and victimization are not mutually exclusive categories. But the portrayal of victimization in the Materialschlacht of the First World War evinces a tendency to occlude agency that makes it impossible for First World War texts to transcend the representation of war towards a grammar of peace.

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To the generation that fought it, the First World War constituted a radical break with the past. New technologies and tactics, including trench warfare, the use of tanks, poison gas, machine guns, flamethrowers, aircraft, and submarines, led to carnage on an unprecedented scale. It has often been pointed out that the escalation of violence on the battlefield shattered nineteenth-century beliefs in progress, ever-lasting peace, and ever-increasing prosperity. In the context of First World War novels, this rupture manifests itself as a rejection of nineteenth-century realism in favor of a modernist aesthetics. Several scholars, including Samuel Hynes and Evelyn Cobley, have drawn attention to the fact that the well-ordered forms of nineteenth-century literary realism are ill suited to represent the chaotic butchery of modern warfare. In different ways, both Hynes and Cobley alert us to the importance of the “content of the form” (Hayden White), that is, to the fact that an anti-war novel is not made by content alone. Rather, narrative devices and stylistic idiosyncrasies are themselves carriers of ideological meaning. For example, if a novel about the First World War relies on nineteenth-century literary traditions, it introduces narrative conventions that impose order, stability, and a teleological trajectory on the subject of war. This, however, runs counter to the defining features of the First World War, which, as Hynes explains, “was not an adventure or a crusade, but a valueless, formless experience that could not be rendered in the language, the images, and the conventions that existed. To represent the war in the traditional ways was necessarily to misrepresent it, to give it meaning, dignity, order, greatness.”3 Hynes is certainly right to claim that the conventions of realism cannot do justice to the messiness and senseless slaughter of the First World War, but he neglects to mention that it is precisely these traditional forms that allowed those afflicted by the war to comprehend and cope. As Jay Winter explains in his excellent study Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, “traditional modes of seeing the war, while at times less challenging intellectually and philosophically, provided a way of remembering which enabled the bereaved to live with their losses, and perhaps to leave them behind.”4 Seen in this light, a novel of war is faced with a choice: it can make sense of the war in order to heal and provide closure, or it can unsettle and seek to induce action in the reader by keeping the wounds open. Or it can, as Remarque’s novel does, attempt to do both. As I will show, Im Westen nichts Neues is marked by a fundamental tension between content and form that confounds its representation of war. The novel portrays the horror of war through its relentless depiction

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of the body in pain, and it provides comfort and coherence through its reliance on nineteenth-century narrative traditions, in particular the genre of the Bildungsroman. Remarque’s Im Westen goes out of its way to denigrate the ideal of Bildung. At the same time, the text’s structure evinces a great affinity to the nineteenth-century novel of Bildung. Similarly, Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern is deeply beholden to German Classical literature, to Schiller’s idealism, and to the notion of the sublime. But Ju¨nger’s determination to conjure these forces in order to contain the trauma of the front is as fierce as his struggle to rid himself of this heritage. Ju¨nger knows that, however much he calls on the German classics, these wellworn traditions will fail to impose meaning on his experience. Again, this is particularly evident in the text’s narrative structure. Although Ju¨nger, unlike Remarque, is intent on portraying personal growth, the tradition of the German Bildungsroman did not leave its mark on his text. Ju¨nger’s representation of war is not shaped as a narrative arc, but as a linear progression of interchangeable battles. There is no climax, no beginning, no midpoint, no end, only an endless succession of the ever same. Even in its revised form, Ju¨nger’s account of war remains beholden to the form of the diary and lacks the kind of closure and teleological trajectory that the novel offers. Aesthetically, Ju¨nger’s text is more apt to give expression to the meaningless slaughter of the First World War than Remarque’s novel. Moreover, although Ju¨nger is known for his exalted portrait of war, his text does not downplay its horrors. In Stahlgewittern is filled with casualty lists and details all the devastating injuries that war inflicts on the human body. Such honesty about injuries and death is crucial because it holds the potential to counteract glorifications of war. In her path-breaking study The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry has drawn attention to the multiple strategies with which texts about war seek to elide the body in pain and eliminate from their surface the facts of wounding and killing.5 To Scarry, such strategies are suspicious because they serve to obfuscate the horror of war. Conversely, one might conclude that careful attention to the body and its various discomforts and sufferings may constitute a powerful antiwar message. However, as I will show, attention to the body in pain is not in itself a sufficient guarantee of a text’s pacifist potential. Ju¨nger’s text, for example, never shies away from the suffering of war, but it is also steadfast in its belief in a cosmic order that endows the slaughter of the First World War with a transcendental meaning. It is this mythical view of the war that absolves the individual soldier from political responsibility.

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Paradoxically, Ju¨nger, who insists most forcefully on the possibility of individual agency in the everyday theater of war, conceives of war itself as part of a cosmic cycle of death and rebirth wholly removed from the realm of human influence. While Ju¨nger embeds suffering and death in a redemptive framework, Remarque insists on their utter lack of meaning. And yet, although Remarque’s body politics constitute a powerful denunciation of war, his novel cannot imagine a world beyond war. Im Westen fails to formulate a grammar of peace because its potentially productive balance of comforting and warning is destabilized by a pervasive victim discourse. Paradoxically, the very feature that constitutes the most effective critique, namely the portrayal of the effect of war on the body, simultaneously helps to undermine the text’s quest for political agency. It would seem that Remarque’s pacifist agenda is undone by a problematic dialectic inherent in the representation of the body. If a text subscribes to the Cartesian hierarchy of body and mind while focusing exclusively on the physical side of life, it drastically limits the scope of agency. To be sure, the representation of the body in pain does not necessarily imply the erasure of agency. Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (1958), for example, combines the depiction of extreme physical suffering with a fierce determination to carve out niches of agency. However, if a text reduces humans to the body, the only subject positions available to them are those of the victim or the beast. Remarque’s novel cannot transcend the arena of war because it combines careful attention to the body in pain with an exclusive focus on the soldier as victim of war and politics. In joining war and victim narratives, Im Westen reinscribes a paradigm that has shaped German war discourse to this day. Clearly, the representation of soldiers as victims describes an important aspect of life in the trenches, but an overemphasis on victimization produces a non-identity of soldier and citizen that undercuts all attempts to promote peace. For peace, if it is to become political reality, must be subtended by concepts of agency.

chapter 6

War and myth: Ju¨nger

Few authors have incited as much controversy as Ernst Ju¨nger. From his early journalism in the Weimar Republic to the Goethe Prize in 1982 up until his hundredth birthday on March 25, 1995, when he received visits by then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and former French President Franc¸ois Mitterrand, Ju¨nger kept the feuilletons busy. Repeatedly, Ju¨nger was branded as an intellectual precursor of the Nazis. In a letter to Agnes E. Meyer, dated November 4, 1945, Thomas Mann called him “ein geistiger Wegbereiter und eiskalter Wollu¨stling der Barbarei”1 (an intellectual trailblazer and ice cold voluptuary of barbarism), while Helmut Heissenbu¨ttel saw in Ju¨nger the “Goethe der CDU.”2 Others, referring to his novel Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs, 1939), see in him a representative of Germany’s inner emigration, if not outright opposition to National Socialism. Decker calls him an “Aufkla¨rer u¨ber die Illusionen der Aufkla¨rung”3 (one who enlightens about the illusions of the enlightenment). Ju¨nger is a recipient of the Goethe and Schiller Prize as well as a favorite with neo-Nazi groups. Botho Strauß went so far as to identify Ju¨nger as the most important German author of the post-Second World War period.4 Ju¨nger was actively engaged in frontline fighting during the entire First World War, was wounded thirteen times, and awarded the Pour le Me´rite, the highest military honor of the Wilhelmine empire. From 1920 to 1922, Ju¨nger worked for the Reichswehrministerium (ministry of defense) in Berlin, drafting tactical manuals and guidelines for conduct in battle. He wrote several books and long essays about the First World War, including Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (The Battle as Inner Experience, 1922), Sturm (Storm, 1923), Das Wa¨ldchen 125 (Copse 125, 1924), Feuer und Blut (Fire and Blood, 1925), and Feuer und Bewegung (Fire and Movement, 1930). Ju¨nger also published frequently in right-wing journals, including Die Standarte (The Banner), Arminius, Die Kommenden (The New Generation), and Der Vormarsch (Progress), opposing liberalism, 71

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capitalism, and the new democracy. Ju¨nger’s conservatism, hostility to the new democracy, and fascination with war are indisputable, and his early writings may well have helped to lay the foundation for the Nazis’ assumption to power. But after 1930 his stance toward National Socialism and toward Hitler was increasingly critical.5 Moreover, as Alfred Andersch and others have pointed out, there are significant differences between Ju¨nger’s early works and their fascination with violence and excess and his later works which show appreciation for the values of compassion and love. In the following, I will analyze Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern in the context of German literary history. I believe that Ju¨nger’s conceptualization of warfare appealed to many because its radically new propositions are developed against a foil of literary and military traditions ranging from German Classicism to the history of specific regiments. My reading emphasizes Ju¨nger’s indebtedness to German Kulturgut and shows that both the commitment and resistance to this heritage are enormous. Secondly, I want to suggest that the investment in Germany’s literary tradition constitutes an effort to contain the trauma of war, but this effort remains largely unsuccessful. In In Stahlgewittern, trauma is highly visible.6 Ju¨nger’s First World War memoir, which was based on his diaries, retains traces of a raw honesty, while his theoretical works after the war, in particular Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt (The Worker: Dominion and Gestalt, 1932), transform trauma into theory and fear into ideology. Ju¨nger was nineteen years old when he enlisted in the reserve battalion of Hanover’s Seventy-Third Regiment. In late December of 1914, he was dispatched to France. Unlike Remarque, Ju¨nger soon underwent training as an officer and became a storm troop leader. He remained involved in frontline fighting until the end of the war. In Stahlgewittern shows Ju¨nger’s progression from green soldier to admired officer. The first few chapters repeatedly refer to his inexperience and his inability to make sense of what is happening to him. He does not yet know how to differentiate different types of weapons and plays with a hand grenade because he mistakes it for a lantern. Aside from his brief stint with the Foreign Legion, the war was Ju¨nger’s first and longest formative experience. Although Ju¨nger likes to represent himself and is perceived as the born soldier, trauma takes many forms and his much maligned detached coldness is certainly one way to deal with the enormous stress of frontline warfare. Statements such as “Zwischen den großen und blutigen Bildern herrschte eine wilde, ungeahnte Heiterkeit” (S 27)7 (a wild, unforeseen serenity prevailed between the great and bloody images) are often

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attributed to Ju¨nger’s inhuman passion for battle, but they might just as well be read as symptoms of shell shock. Similarly, Ju¨nger’s most problematic legacy, his infamous mythologization of war, might be interpreted as a reaction formation to the unbearable experience of constant proximity to death. tradition and trauma Ju¨nger’s representation of war is both deeply rooted in the German literary tradition and radically innovative. Ju¨nger theorized warfare in the industrial–technological age, but his work also contains strong links to the German literary heritage. He was intimately familiar with German Classicism, not only because of his schooling but also through his mother, a devotee of Schiller and Goethe, who embarked on yearly pilgrimages to Weimar. In his essay on Ju¨nger’s Arbeiter, Jost Hermand points out that the relevance of the German literary heritage for Ju¨nger’s work is often underestimated: “As is so often the case in literature written by bourgeois intellectuals, experiences which are purely a matter of education and acculturation are passed off here as chthonian, ‘primeval’ experiences.”8 Hermand’s point is well taken. Although accounts of the young Ju¨nger often emphasize the author’s hostility to the bourgeois world and its institutions of Bildung 9 – in particular, Ju¨nger’s Der Arbeiter is read as a diatribe against the bourgeoisie –, In Stahlgewittern is filled with literary allusions and citations that embed the text in the tradition of German Classicism. While Hermand draws attention to the importance of Nietzsche, In Stahlgewittern also contains many references to Schiller. The chapter on the battle of Cambrai, for example, is introduced with a transmogrified line from Don Carlos: “Die scho¨nen Tage von Tourcoing waren bald vorbei” (S 229) (The beautiful days of Tourcoing were almost over). When Ju¨nger is under attack, a conversation with a fellow soldier reminds him of the tower scene in Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans (S 318). When he meets a young Frenchwoman named Jeanne, he decides to call her Jeanne d’Arc. When he calls on her, the representation of his visit blends several Goethe’s poems into one (“Es war ein Maiabend, wie geschaffen fu¨r einen solchen Ritt,” S 76) (It was a May evening, as though made for such a ride). Schiller and Goethe are not the only luminaries on whom Ju¨nger relies to frame his experience. He cites Magister Laukhard (S 20), whose Begebenheiten, Erfahrungen und Bemerkungen wa¨hrend des Feldzuges gegen Frankreich (1796) was one of Goethe’s sources for the Kampagne

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in Frankreich. In addition, Ju¨nger mentions Grimmelshausen’s Simplizissimus (S 23, 300), Laurence Sterne (S 312), Karl May (S 79), Homer (S 117), Ariosto (S 193), the Bible (S 294), and Richard Wagner (S 292). It would seem that Ju¨nger’s citation compulsion is meant to evoke a horizon of meaning that is otherwise lacking in his experience of war. And yet, the random and even forced nature of the comparison – when his soldiers go fishing with hand grenades, he names the product “Hecht a` la Lohengrin” (S 230) (pike a` la Lohengrin) – reveals precisely what these citations are supposed to hide: the resistance of the Great War to traditional narratives and forms of meaning. While Der Arbeiter imagines a new language capable of describing fighter planes in the same way Homer described chariots (188), In Stahlgewittern records the absence of such language. Indeed, Ju¨nger’s repetition compulsion evident in unrelenting efforts to endow his experience of war with meaning and his continual search for patterns and forms of order amidst the chaos of battle – “Im Stu¨rzen sah ich die weißen, glatten Kiesel im Lehm der Straße; ihre Anordnung war sinnvoll, notwendig wie die der Sterne und verku¨ndete große Geheimnisse” (S 283) (Falling down I saw the white smooth pebbles in the clay-lined street; their order was meaningful, necessary like that of the stars and heralded great secrets) – is more apt to conjure what it is designed to conceal: the complete absence of meaning and order in the experience of the First World War. Ju¨nger’s attempt to link his representation of war to the tradition of German literature is but one of several strategies to connect his experience to a larger context that offers meaning and stability. Another strategy consists in the effort to situate the First World War in the history of warfare. Ju¨nger mentions that his regiment goes back to the eighteenth century (S 22), explains that a tactical maneuver he uses was already employed by Frederick the Great (“Taktik des Alten Fritzen,” S 192) (tactics of old Fritz), and that the victims of the current war are buried next to the fallen of 1870–1 (S 215). But even as he establishes links to specific wars, Ju¨nger also emphasizes the timeless nature of warfare as such. Thus, he refers to “jener ahnungsvollen Stimmung, von der die Krieger aller Zeiten zu erza¨hlen wissen” (S 25) (this ominous mood familiar to warriors of all times) and proclaims “Das war kein Krieg mehr; es war ein uraltes Bild” (S 170) (this was no longer war; it was an ancient image). Seen in this light, the First World War is but the latest manifestation of a primal urge that is as old as mankind, and the individual soldier is never alone but always integrated into a brotherhood of warriors of all times. Although Ju¨nger is acutely aware of the revolutionary technology that changed the nature of war, he frequently employs analogies and

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metaphors that deny the impact of these changes. Ju¨nger compares warfare to hunting, speaks of conduct appropriate for a knight (S 237), praises the worthiness of his opponents, calls his servant his liege (“Lehnsmann,” S 287), and likens the throwing of hand grenades to fencing (S 241). Clearly, Ju¨nger’s desire to portray the First World War as the latest link in a long military tradition is meant to comfort and reassure. But instead of soothing the trauma of war, the anachronistic nature of his references and comparisons points to a radical disjuncture between past and present. Ultimately, neither literary tradition nor military history is apt to explain or contain the revolutionary newness of the First World War. Ju¨nger has often been called to task for his aestheticization of war. Most famously or infamously, his description of an air raid over Paris, standing on the roof of the hotel Raphael with a glass of champagne in his hand (Strahlungen II 264–5), has been subject to severe criticism. And yet, although it has caused an inordinate amount of outrage, this aspect of his writing is also firmly rooted in the German literary tradition. Ju¨nger’s ability to transform death into a spectacle and to remain at a distance from the carnage around him has a template in Goethe’s substitution of “Kunstaugen” (eyes of art) for “Soldatenblick” (the soldier’s gaze) in his Kampagne in Frankreich (486). In Stahlgewittern repeatedly compares battles to theatrical performances (87, 121), describes the landscape of war as a set (137), and transforms sites of carnage into aesthetically pleasing still lives. The faces of dead soldiers are said to resemble black vellum, and a wall of fire is a sight upon which Ju¨nger gazes in astonishment (257). Similarly, in Goethe’s account of the Kampagne in Frankreich, burning villages are judged according to their aesthetic appeal: “Einige Do¨rfer brannten zwar vor uns auf, allein der Rauch tut in einem Kriegsbilde auch nicht u¨bel” (431) (To be sure, some villages burnt in front of us, and yet, smoke does not look too badly in an image of war), and the flashing bayonets of soldiers who descend from a steep hill are transformed into the aesthetically pleasing spectacle of a cascading waterfall. Finally, where Ju¨nger focuses on his “subtile Jagden,” his entomological studies, in the midst of warfare, his Olympian predecessor was preoccupied with his theory of color. Both Goethe’s and Ju¨nger’s tendency to treat war like a spectacle has been interpreted as cold indifference to human suffering. But one could also read it as a symptom of trauma. Aestheticization affords imaginary distance, and distance grants safety. He who stands apart from the terror of war is not exposed to its danger. Ju¨nger’s references to Lohengrin are empty shells that cannot diminish the terror of war. Goethe’s Kampagne,

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in contrast, a text that he was most certainly familiar with but never cites directly,10 and Ju¨nger’s In Stahlgewittern share an elective affinity. Both texts, however inadequately or unethically, strive to achieve a measure of control in the chaos of war. Ju¨nger’s aestheticism is evident in the transformation of death into a spectacle, but also in the lyrical tone of his narrative. At times, this lyricism conveys the incongruous coexistence of springtime flowers and artillery fire, but there are also moments when an artillery barrage appears itself as an elegant dance. In Ju¨nger’s text, the front has its own melody (S 7). Artillery fire is singing (S 11). Shrapnel is a white ball gently dissolving in the grey December sky (S 7) or a white snowflake slowly melting away (S 44), and the trenches are like white snakes in the night (S 11). When he happens upon horribly mummified bodies, Ju¨nger describes them as engaged in a dance of death (“Totentanz,” S 29). All these images, comparisons, and metaphors speak to his desire to force the experience of the war into known and innocuous parameters and thus create an aesthetic distance from the horror of war. Inevitably, however, Ju¨nger’s lyrical interludes are interrupted and deconstructed by the description of brutal injuries, of bloody bodies in agonies of pain (e.g., S 8–9). Much as he tries, the aesthetic traditions Ju¨nger calls on cannot subdue the terror of war. The dynamic of trauma and tradition also lies at the heart of one of the most jarring contradictions in Ju¨nger’s text, namely the unreconciled juxtaposition of orgiastic bloodlust with a pedestrian appreciation of “Grabenklatsch” (gossip) and “Gemu¨tlichkeit” (coziness) in the trenches. On the one hand, Ju¨nger speaks of the excitement – the German term “Erregung” (S 11) is sexually connoted – and secret lust of killing (“geheimer Wollust,” S 11). He repeatedly describes how the “u¨berma¨chtige Wunsch zu to¨ten beflu¨gelte meine Schritte” (S 261) (overpowering desire to kill inspired my steps) and how he felt satisfaction (“Genugtuung,” S 168) after the kill. In language that blends sexuality, religion, and violence, Ju¨nger portrays the act of killing as both sexual release and existential redemption: “Schnell, nur schnell, jetzt muss geto¨tet werden! Jetzt gibt es nur eine Erlo¨sung, eine Erfu¨llung und ein Glu¨ck: das fliessende Blut” (Feuer und Blut 139) (Fast now, fast, now killing must be done! Now there is only one kind of redemption, a fulfilling happiness: streams of blood). It has often been pointed out that Ju¨nger’s orgiastic bloodlust is meant to effect a catharsis, a purge of bourgeois decadence. And yet, at the same time as it describes how battles spiritualize the warrior – “schmolz das Feuer ein immer reineres, ein immer ku¨hneres Kriegertum heraus” (S 159)

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(the smelting fire produced an ever purer, ever braver kind of warrior) – In Stahlgewittern is filled with references to bourgeois coffee-and-cake Gemu¨tlichkeit. The deprivations of trench life and the terror of war call forth a desire for, and heightened pleasure in, the accoutrements of a bourgeois existence, ranging from fresh linen and chairs upholstered in silk to newspapers, mulled wine, and breakfast in a garden bower. Ju¨nger enjoys his afternoon coffee served in porcelain cups: “Die Stunde des Nachmittagskaffees kann manchmal recht gemu¨tlich sein . . . zwei Porzellantassen schimmern auf der Tischdecke aus Sandsacktuch” (S 55) (The hour of afternoon coffee can at times be very cozy . . . two porcelain cups gleam on the tablecloth made from burlap) and indulges in trench gossip (“Grabenklatsch,” S 55). Indeed, the adjectives “behaglich” (snug) and “gemu¨tlich” (cozy) appear with amazing frequency. Ju¨nger declares that artillery fire increases one’s sense of “Gemu¨tlichkeit” (S 56), enjoys many “gemu¨tliche Stunden” (S 71) (comfortable hours), delights in the “behagliche Gemu¨tlichkeit” (S 57) (cozy comfort) of his dugout, indulges in a “gemu¨tliche Plauderstunde” (S 138) (comfortable chat) while sitting on hand grenades, finds “gemu¨tliche Quartiere” (S 160) (cozy quarters) in a new village, spends a lot of time “gemu¨tlich lesend am Kaffeetisch” (S 301) (reading cozily at the coffee table), and tends to drink his coffee “behaglich” (S 69) and his wine with Gemu¨tlichkeit (S 131). Clearly, bloodlust and Gemu¨tlichkeit are not mutually exclusive but rather condition each other. Much like the references to literary and military traditions, the rituals of Gemu¨tlichkeit are not alien elements in Ju¨nger’s account of war, but rather treasured practices designed to lessen the trauma of war. Although Ju¨nger constantly marshals the force of tradition to contain the trauma of the front, the traditions he calls forth may afford some distance but ultimately fail to impose meaning on his experience. This is particularly evident in the text’s narrative structure. Although Ju¨nger relies heavily on literary allusions and citations, he does not take recourse to proven narrative structures. His work is intent on portraying personal growth, but the structure of the German Bildungsroman, so influential in Remarque’s Im Westen, has not left its mark on Ju¨nger’s novel. Ju¨nger’s representation of war is not shaped as a narrative arc, but as a linear succession of interchangeable battles. There is no climax, no beginning, no midpoint, no end. Paradoxically, the fact that Ju¨nger never fails to specify time and locale of individual actions or to provide exact information about regiments and weapons only serves to reinforce the impression of a repetition of the ever same. Although peppered with literary

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references, Ju¨nger’s text lacks the leitmotifs that endow Remarque’s text with meaning and coherence. Even in its revised form, Ju¨nger’s account of war remains beholden to the form of the diary and rejects the kind of closure and teleological trajectory that the genre of novel offers. Germany’s literary heritage, military traditions, and bourgeois conventions are omnipresent in Ju¨nger’s account of the First World War. But this omnipresence does not signal a triumph; rather, it attests to the utter inadequacy of this heritage when faced with the trauma of industrial warfare. war and myth Ju¨nger’s aestheticization of war, his proverbial de´sinvolture and unbeteiligte Ku¨hle (detached coolness) have rightly been criticized, but it is what Walter Benjamin called Ju¨nger’s “Mystizismus des Krieges” (mysticism of war)11 that constitutes the most problematic legacy of this controversial writer. While much secondary literature is concerned with Ju¨nger’s mythologization of war, little attention has been paid to the link between war as myth and war as a sublime event. And yet, both Ju¨nger’s concept of war as myth and the notion of war as sublime relate warfare to a transcendental realm, and both are invested in spiritual transformations at the expense of earthly possessions and physical wellbeing. If the perception of war as a sublime event is an important German tradition, as my analysis of Schiller and Kant suggests, Ju¨nger is its most prominent heir. Throughout In Stahlgewittern, Ju¨nger relies on the rhetoric of the sublime in order to endow war with a transcendental dimension. To him, war is “das Große, Starke, Feierliche” (S 7) (the great, strong, solemn). War calls for an attitude of reverence and awe (“Ehrfurcht,” S 7), inspires a holy terror (“erschauern,” S 7), and is capable of unlocking hidden layers of the psyche, “dem dunklen Land, das hinter dem Bewußtsein liegt” (S 10) (the dark land that lies behind our consciousness). War possesses a transformative power that grants access to a higher form of being and initiates the individual consciousness into cosmic truths. Ju¨nger not only interprets his own survival as preordained – “derartiges sieht man nicht als Zufall an” (S 131) (one does not think of such events as accidental) –, he also emerges from the war with the somewhat fragile yet vociferously pronounced conviction that his life is part of a bigger whole and that death is but a transition to a new and higher form of being: “Hier dra¨ngt sich auch dem einfachen Gemu¨t die Ahnung auf, daß sein Leben tief eingebettet und daß sein Tod kein

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Ende ist” (S 161) (Here, a presentiment impresses itself even on the simple soul that one’s life is deeply embedded and that one’s death is not the end). From a psychological point of view, it is hardly surprising that Ju¨nger experienced his own survival as miraculous. For four years, Ju¨nger was in the thick of battle and had innumerable close encounters with death. Moreover, Ju¨nger not only survived the war himself, but managed to save his beloved brother Fritz through a complicated and serendipitous combination of circumstances. And yet, while it is understandable that Ju¨nger attributes meaning to his own survival, it is the transsubstantiation of his personal experience into a cosmic condition along with the transformation of eternal truth into social necessity that makes his text deeply problematic. Ju¨nger’s determination to attribute an ulterior meaning to the war conditions his perception of everyday life on the front. His much-cited stereoscopic vision, as Carsten Strathausen explains, allows Ju¨nger “to combine in one and the same picture the minute description of material reality with the metaphysical realm beyond mere appearances.”12 Ju¨nger aims for an oceanic feeling of oneness with the cosmos and conceives of war as a privileged experience that allows the individual to pierce the surface and perceive an all-encompassing layer of meaning.13 War, because it brings the individual into constant proximity to death, functions as a link between the ephemeral and the eternal realm.14 Thus, war is embedded in a teleological scheme that perfects the individual soldier by raising him to a higher level of consciousness.15 Characteristically, Ju¨nger remarks on the deep equanimity of the soldier who is “vom Feuer ausgeglu¨ht” (S 104) (tempered by fire). Faced with the carnage of battle, Ju¨nger is able to say that “eine tiefe Vera¨nderung in mir vor[ging]” (S 9) (a deep change occurred within me). Consequently, Ju¨nger concludes that nonparticipation in the First World War constitutes a loss on the national and personal level: “Hier nicht teilgenommen zu haben, bedeutet einen Verlust, der bereits heute von der Jugend der neutralen La¨nder wohl empfunden wird” (Arbeiter 159) (Not to have participated here signifies a loss that is felt already today by the youth of all neutral countries). Seen in this light, Ju¨nger’s repeated references to Die Jungfrau von Orleans acquire a new significance. While Ju¨nger’s concept of war as myth relates back to the notion of war as sublime, his perception of war as catharsis echoes the inner transformation of Schiller’s heroine.16 In In Stahlgewittern, war relates to a metaphysical sphere but is completely removed from the realm of politics and history.17 To Ju¨nger

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it is the fight itself that matters, not what one is fighting for: “Dabei ist ¨ berzeugung alles” (“Der Kampf als inneres die Sache nichts und die U Erlebnis,” Essays I 100) (In this, the object is nothing and conviction everything).18 Walter Benjamin has called this the “hemmungslose ¨ bertragung der Thesen des L’Art pour l’Art auf den Krieg”19 (transU lation of the principles of art for art’s sake to war itself ). Similarly, in his insightful study Reactionary Modernism, Jeffrey Herf argues convincingly that in In Stahlgewittern war is portrayed as a natural force wholly independent from political processes and human agency.20 Over and over again, Ju¨nger likens war to a thunderstorm (S 7, 69, 91, 143, 196), a sea of flames (S 103), and a “Naturschauspiel” (S 88) (natural spectacle). Shrapnel is compared to snowflakes (S 44), hand grenades to snowballs (S 243), airplanes to vultures (S 112, 123) and butterflies (S 39), projectiles to a swarm of bees (S 100, 199), tanks to elephants (S 293) and giant insects (S 294), and artillery fire to beasts of prey (S 297). Ju¨nger’s war is “ein Naturgesetz” (“Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis,” Essays I 40) (natural law). It has no context, no social causes, and no political goals. Rather than the continuation of politics by other means, war is a mythical spectacle and a catalyst of personal growth. War tears off the veil of deception so that the soldier, no longer “geblendet durch die Gewalt der Erscheinungen” (S 292) (blinded by the power of appearances), comes to realize “mein Leben in seiner innersten Gestalt” (S 317) (my life in its innermost form). Again, it is not surprising that Ju¨nger resorts to myth to make sense of the experience of war. After all, myth like war is “nearly always rooted in the experience of death and the fear of extinction.”21 Myths, Mircea Eliade argues, are created in order to give meaning and value to life.22 In a mythical universe, the First World War can be endowed with meaning, whereas in the context of German history and politics, such meaning is much harder to come by. Although Ju¨nger mentions nationalism as a motivation, love for king and country plays but a minor role in his text. Ju¨nger affirms that the fatherland is worth bleeding and even dying for (S 38) and declares that Germany’s rebirth after the war will be effected by national feelings. But in spite of such affirmations, it is not the nation but the individual warrior’s personal growth that provides a justification for the war. Ju¨nger redefines the destruction of war as a new form of creation, “die ma¨nnliche Form der Zeugung” (“Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis,” Essays I 50) (the masculine way of procreation), that gives birth to a new race. Hardened in storms of steel, the new princes of the trenches (“die Fu¨rsten des Grabens,” S 244) emerge full of determination, courage, and equanimity.

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Consistent with his endeavors to portray the birth of the new man are Ju¨nger’s attempts to redefine war as a productive and life-giving force. In order to achieve this effect, he relies on well-worn metaphors but also on comparisons with the industrial world. Ju¨nger speaks of the harvest of death (S 281) and the grim reaper and refers to soldiers as the fruit of war: “Sie wuchsen wie eine eiserne Saat aus dem mit Feuer gepflu¨gten Boden empor” (S 264) (They grew like iron seed out of earth ploughed with fire). In addition to these traditional images, Ju¨nger employs industrial metaphors, for example, when he likens the war to a factory, calling it the “Walzwerk der Front” (S 7, 201) (mill of the front). In Ju¨nger’s account, war is work, the front is a factory, and carnage is its product. The text abounds with personifications, such as the breath of battle (S 7), the deadly roar of the artillery (S 257), and the commanding force of fire (S 260), that endow war with its own life force and create the impression of consciously motivated activity.23 If war is a force of nature that follows its own laws and is endowed with its own life and agency, the individual soldier cannot be held accountable for his participation in it. Paradoxically, although Ju¨nger never questions the war as such or his involvement in it, he insists on personal agency in the everyday conduct of war.24 Throughout In Stahlgewittern, Ju¨nger does not once adopt the stance or attitude of the victim. Rather, he consistently presents himself as a responsible agent who retains some degree of control. Even killing is portrayed as a consciously chosen activity rather than as reactive impulse or necessary defense against an anonymous enemy. Repeatedly, Ju¨nger recounts how he commands his men to shoot – “Schießt ihn kaputt” (S 168) (Shoot him dead). Moreover, even when he points out that the state bears the ultimate responsibility for killing in warfare, he still insists on some form of personal accountability: “Der Staat, der uns die Verantwortung abnimmt, kann uns nicht von der Trauer befreien” (S 272) (The state that relieves us of responsibility cannot take away our grief ). Ju¨nger’s accounts of killing contain information about the intended target and frequently define the act of killing as a deliberately and even enthusiastically chosen act. Ju¨nger’s desire to provide specific information about his opponents may constitute a somewhat anachronistic attempt to re-personalize the anonymous slaughter of the First World War. But it also shows his desire to uphold the possibility of human agency in a war whose every feature is designed to erase it. One might even interpret Ju¨nger’s willingness to focus on killing as a form of honesty missing from most accounts of war. The military historian Joanne Bourke, for example,

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laments that “accounts of the experience of war prefer to stress the satisfaction of male bonding, the discomforts of the frontlines, and the unspeakable terror of dying,”25 but remain silent about what Bourke names as the central activity of warfare: killing. Ju¨nger confronts his readers with a facet of war that many would like to forget, the fact that some men take pleasure in warfare and killing. While Remarque’s novel does not feature a single soldier who enjoys warfare, Ju¨nger refers repeatedly to the type of soldier to whom war is fun and adventure: “Ihnen macht der Krieg eben Spaß” (S 55) (They simply enjoy war). And yet, it is difficult to applaud Ju¨nger for his honesty since his willingness to embrace agency in the context of the battlefield stands in stark contrast to his refusal to accept any form of responsibility in the political realm. By the time Ju¨nger wrote his Second World War diary Strahlungen, he had further refined his mythological conception of the world. In In Stahlgewittern, noisy convictions are meant to drown out deep insecurity and disorientation. The text seeks to situate war in a cosmic order, but its attribution of meaning to warfare remains fragile and, for the most part, indirect. War is a conduit, the nettle of danger from which the individual soldier plucks the flower of inner transformation. In Strahlungen, on the other hand, war is itself a meaningful and necessary sacrifice. Although Ernst Ju¨nger and Mircea Eliade did not meet until the 1950s, Strahlungen evinces striking similarities to Eliade’s analysis of mythological thought. In Myth and Reality (1963), Eliade explains the mythological pattern of Eternal Return, that is, the “idea of the progressive ‘degradation’ of a Cosmos, necessitating its periodical destruction and re-creation.”26 Strahlungen elucidates its own version of this idea. Ju¨nger takes comfort in a form of unity and eternal presence that exists beyond the realm of time, individuation, and appearances (Strahlungen II 20). Borrowing from Christian symbolism, Ju¨nger now represents death as a purification and transition to a new form of truth and reality: “Erst wenn der Tod uns aufbricht, werden wir lebendig sein” (Strahlungen II 46) (Not until death pries us open will we be alive). In Strahlungen, everything that is exists necessarily and for a reason. Thus, resistance is futile and acceptance of the status quo imperative. Mythology is employed to assuage guilt as the cosmic order has taken the place of individual political responsibility. The only freedom left to the individual is that of inner detachment: “Zum Beispiel liegt es kaum in der Freiheit des Einzelnen zu verhindern, daß der Staat ihn auf seine Schlachtfelder schickt. Wohl aber liegt es in seiner Freiheit, den Standort des Beobachters einzunehmen” (Essays I 427–8) (For example, it is hardly within the realm

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of an individual’s freedom to prevent the state from sending him to its battlefields. However, it is left to his discretion to adopt the stance of the observer). Ju¨nger’s First World War account is obsessed with the search for meaning, but its repetition compulsion, its constant need to reaffirm what it claims to take for granted, betrays the unease and trauma that lie at the heart of the text. In Ju¨nger’s Second World War diaries, on the other hand, war is confirmed as a sacrifice that forms the foundation of a new order.27 Although Ju¨nger was familiar with the resistance group of June 20, 1944, he never felt inspired to join: “Wir stehen in einer Pru¨fung, die begru¨ndet und die notwendig ist; und diese Ra¨der schraubt man nicht zuru¨ck” (Strahlungen II 283) (We are in the midst of an ordeal that is justified and necessary; and one cannot turn back these wheels). The Nazis are described as demonic forces whose crimes are manifestations of a larger and ineradicable evil that is bound to erupt periodically: “Die Katastrophe mußte kommen; sie wa¨hlte sich den Krieg als ihren besten Fo¨rderer. Doch ha¨tte auch ohne ihn der Bu¨rgerkrieg das Werk vollbracht, wie es in Spanien geschah, oder ganz einfach ein Komet, ein Feuer vom Himmel, eine Erderschu¨tterung. Die Sta¨dte waren reif geworden und mu¨rbe wie Zunder” (Strahlungen II 188) (The catastrophe had to come; it chose the war as its best sponsor. However, even without it civil war would have accomplished the deed, as it was in Spain, or simply a comet, a fire from heaven, an earth tremor. The cities had become ripe and combustible like tinder). Referring to such detached fatalism, Herf rightly points out that Ju¨nger “ennobles passivity, raises a contemplative, spectatorial view of events into a heroic cult.”28 Moreover, in Strahlungen II, Ju¨nger’s worldview is marked not only by his passivity, but also by his determination to interpret the mass murder of the war and the genocide of the Jews as a sacrifice that lays the foundation for a new order (110). In In Stahlgewittern, the wounds of the war bleed through the aesthetics of the text. In Strahlungen, Ju¨nger’s cyclical concept of history finds in every form of cruelty and destruction the germ of a new order. Myth finally succeeds in displacing the trauma of history.29 mind and matter It has become evident by now that Ju¨nger is no mere apologist of war. Rather, his conjuration of meaning is counterbalanced by his faithful representation of the body in pain. Tellingly, although the young Ju¨nger never questions the necessity of the First World War, he also never seeks

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to downplay its horrors. Although war emerges as a productive and transformative force, Ju¨nger never denies or diminishes its atrocity or grueling routines: “statt der erhofften Gefahren hatten wir Schmutz, Arbeit und schlaflose Na¨chte vorgefunden” (S 16) (instead of the dangers we had hoped for we had found dirt, work and sleepless nights).30 Although the boredom and physical attrition of life in the trenches, the constant lack of sleep or exposure to the elements are presented as but one facet of his experience, Ju¨nger mentions them repeatedly and acknowledges their impact. Similarly, Ju¨nger also depicts the effect of war on all the institutions and practices that contribute to the peaceful working of society (S 41), for example, when he describes how thriving villages are laid to ashes (S 106, 144). From beginning to end, In Stahlgewittern is filled with casualty lists and all the devastating injuries that war inflicts on the human body. As Bullock explains, Ju¨nger’s “account of the carnage is not only true to this reality, he makes it a point of honor to allow no sensitivity to keep him from recording the horrors of ripped and broken bodies in every detail.”31 Many of the daily entries in the chapter “Vom ta¨glichen Stellungskampf,” for example, simply record the type of injuries inflicted on this particular day (S 60–3). Ju¨nger speaks of “blutige Zeug- und Fleischfetzen” (S 26) (bloody scraps of gear and flesh), disemboweled horses, severed body parts, a torso that has been torn open, and brain matter that spills from the skull. And yet, although he openly acknowledges these injuries, he also maintains that they are legitimized by the larger context of the war. Characteristically, Ju¨nger inserts a striking episode in which he compares his queasiness over a comparatively minor injury, a thumb hit by a car door, with his calm in the face of terrible mutilations (S 103). Because his injured thumb is not justified by the “Sinn des Ganzen” (meaning of the whole), he is less able to deal with it than with the daily bloodbath of the front. In light of his familiarity with Schiller’s work, it is hardly surprising that Ju¨nger is deeply influenced by Schiller’s advocacy of the mastery of mind over body.32 Unlike Remarque, whose soldiers are primarily physical beings, Ju¨nger defines soldiers as spiritual beings, thus minimizing the importance of their injuries. To Ju¨nger’s soldier, the body has become a foreign object: “Es ist seltsam, dass in solchen Augenblicken der eigene Ko¨rper das Gefu¨hl eines fremden Gegenstandes erweckt” (Der Erste Weltkrieg 55)33 (It is strange that in such moments one’s own body evokes the sensation of a foreign object). In spite of all the evidence to the contrary that it so carefully records, In Stahlgewittern seeks to uphold

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the supremacy of spirit and courage (S 103, 298). And yet, regardless of its best efforts, the text cannot fully deny the triumph of matter over mind in the Materialschlacht of the First World War. To Ju¨nger, the most disturbing experience of the war appears to consist in the fact that the power of the mind is helpless when confronted with the might of machine gun fire. While In Stahlgewittern struggles to affirm the importance of courage and spirit, Der Arbeiter concedes defeat. In Der Arbeiter, Ju¨nger calls Langemarck an event that “weniger kriegs- als geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung besitzt” (109) (that possesses significance less with respect to the history of war than the history of ideas). The revolutionary impact of Langemarck consists in the fact that “freier Wille, Bildung, Begeisterung und der Rausch der Todesverachtung reichen nicht zu, die Schwerkraft der wenigen hundert Meter zu u¨berwinden, auf denen der Zauber des mechanischen Todes regiert . . . die Empfindungen des Herzens und die Systeme des Geistes sind widerlegbar, wa¨hrend ein Gegenstand unwiderlegbar ist – und ein solcher Gegenstand ist das Maschinengewehr” (Der Arbeiter 109–10) (Free will, education, enthusiasm and the intoxication of defiance of death do not suffice to overcome the gravity of the few hundred meters in which the magic of mechanical death reigns supreme . . . the sensations of the heart and the systems of the mind can be refuted but an object is irrefutable – and the machine gun is such an object).34 Curiously, in his memoir Siebzig verweht III (1993), Ju¨nger claims that Schiller, not he, is guilty of glorifying war in his works: “Gewiss ha¨tte ich gegen den Titel eines Kriegsverherrlichers nichts einzuwenden, aber er trifft mich nicht genau. Kriegsverherrlicher sind eher Schiller und Ho¨lderlin” (247) (I would certainly not object to the label of glorifier of war, but it does not really apply to me; it applies more easily to Schiller and Ho¨lderlin). We can surmise that Ju¨nger is referring to Schiller’s conceptualizations of mind and matter. And yet, while this statement contains an important truth about the works of the Classics, Ju¨nger is not entirely forthcoming. For even as Der Arbeiter acknowledges the power of “Material” and the defeat of idealism in the First World War, it also proclaims that the new man, the worker, overcomes death and emerges as a new being: “Durch diesen Tod muß der Einzelne hindurch” (110) (The individual has to go through this kind of death). Whereas In Stahlgewittern portrays death and injuries, Ju¨nger’s theoretical treatise Der Arbeiter not only proclaims an afterlife of the soul, but insists on the continued existence of the body as well: “Es ist jedoch ein Irrtum, eine fremde Lehre, daß der sterbende Mensch seinen Ko¨rper verla¨ßt – seine Gestalt tritt vielmehr in eine neue Ordnung ein . . . Diesem Wissen entsprach

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die Anschauung unserer Vorva¨ter, nach der der Krieger im Augenblicke des Todes nach Walhalla geleitet wurde – nicht als Seele wurde er dort aufgenommen, sondern in strahlender Leibhaftigkeit” (36) (It is, however, an error, a foreign doctrine that the dying person leaves his body – rather, his Gestalt enters a new order . . . The belief of our ancestors that the warrior is being led to Valhalla in the moment of his death corresponds to this knowledge – there he is housed not as a soul but in his radiant bodily being). In order to break the power of death, Der Arbeiter renounces individuality. Ju¨nger’s radical philosophy combines the proclaimed end of individuality – “man fa¨llt nicht mehr, man fa¨llt aus” (111) (one does not die, one malfunctions) – with an ultimate affirmation of meaning and the complete denial of the finality of death. This is already evident in In Stahlgewittern, where soldiers no longer exist as individual beings, but become one body: “zu einem großen, begeisterten Ko¨rper zusammengeschmolzen” (S 7) (melted into one big, enthusiastic body). Consequently, Ju¨nger’s war memoir lacks well-defined characters. Where Remarque provides a cast of characters that we come to know and like, Ju¨nger’s text is limited to casual references of names, all of whom die before the reader gets a chance to learn anything about them. While Remarque creates individual characters as points of identification, Ju¨nger’s account does not describe personalities but rather lists names with next to no information about the person. Usually, a name is mentioned in the context of its bearer’s violent death and then never heard of again. For example, Ju¨nger mentions his friendships with “Clement, der bei Monchy, mit dem Maler Tebbe, der bei Cambrai, mit den Bru¨dern Steinforth, die an der Somme fallen sollten” (S 21) (Clement, who died at Monchy, with the painter Tebbe, who died at Cambrai, with the brothers Steinforth, who died at the Somme). Tellingly, the only exception to this rule is Ju¨nger himself. He even claims that the bullets and shrapnel that wounded him were directed at him personally. But even though Ju¨nger clings to his own individuality, the death of individuality as such leaves him totally isolated.35 Finally, Ju¨nger’s isolation is also evident in the lack of relationships with the other sex. Although he would later interpret the triumph of matter over mind as the victory of the female principle over the male principle, real women are absent from his text. Aside from a forgettable encounter with a woman whom Ju¨nger calls Jeanne d’Arc and brief mention of the dead body of a girl (S 106), the female gender appears as an allegory, as Mother Earth (“die Mutter der Dinge,” S 110). In In Stahlgewittern, as Theweleit has argued, the experience of battle has taken

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36

the place of the sexual embrace, and love is directed away from women toward the fatherland, one’s comrades, and weapons. When Ju¨nger speaks of his participation in battle, his language expresses hope (S 16) and longing (S 26). When he loads his gun, he does so “mit geheimer Wollust” (S 11) (with clandestine lust). Ju¨nger’s text mentions male–male friendship, but he does not illustrate it, while relationships with women are introduced as distant possibilities, which always fail to materialize. Surely, such splendid isolation is meant to highlight the heroic stature of the author, but the accompanying erasure of everybody else’s individuality again conveys the reality of a war that is defined by mass slaughter and anonymous burial. conclusion It is not only Ju¨nger’s revolutionary propositions that are of lasting influence, but also the author’s attempt to come to terms with the literary and philosophical heritage dominant in his upbringing and education. Ju¨nger’s text is deeply beholden to German Classical literature, to Schiller’s idealism, and to the notion of the sublime. But it is also a striking testimony to the fact that this tradition can no longer fulfill its promise. The arsenal that Ju¨nger relies on to combat the trauma of the war is enormous, ranging from German Classicism to military history, from the ideals of knightly combat to creaturely comforts, and from the distancing function of aesthetics to the power of myth. But much as it marshals the force of tradition, Ju¨nger’s text cannot contain the trauma of war. Ju¨nger mythologizes war and seeks to redefine it. In his account, warfare is life-giving, transformative, and deeply meaningful. Ju¨nger divorces war from its political and historical context and situates it in a cosmic cycle of destruction and renewal. And yet, in spite of this whole panoply, the trauma of war remains evident in the text’s narrative structure, in its inability to fully recover the body in pain, and, most prominently, in the text’s repetition compulsion, its constant need to reaffirm what it claims to take for granted. Designed to celebrate the glory of war, In Stahlgewittern cannot help but evoke its pity.

chapter 7

War and the body: Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque’s (1898–1970) novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929)1 is certainly one of the most famous, commercially successful, and controversial anti-war novels of recent memory. Although Remarque’s novel is still extremely popular with readers and included in many school curricula, literary critics have repeatedly questioned the text’s pacifist credentials, along with its aesthetic merits. The novel’s publication in 1929 gave rise to a heated public debate in which the Nazi press denounced Remarque’s work as malicious slander of the honor of the German soldier, while the political left felt that Remarque’s pacifism was too bland and non-committal. To be sure, these evaluations are the results of an overly politicized agenda, but they also point to a contradiction at the heart of this highly ambiguous text. As I will show, Im Westen nichts Neues provides a powerful critique of war and an equally powerful subtext that confounds this critique. In fact, the same elements that allow for the novel’s most stringent condemnation of war also present the biggest obstacle to its pacifist agenda. authenticity and the “content of the form” Unlike his protagonist Paul Ba¨umer,2 Remarque was not a volunteer. He entered the military on November 21, 1916, was wounded in Ypres, and remained in a hospital in Duisburg from August 3, 1917 to October 31, 1918. During his time at the front, he performed support work, such as repairing railroad tracks and telephone lines or erecting barbed wire fences, but also witnessed harrowing scenes. We know, for example, that the episode that describes how Kat is wounded is based on Remarque’s personal experience. All in all, however, Remarque’s exposure to frontline fighting is not as extensive as that of Ernst Ju¨nger or Siegfried Sassoon, and it is hardly surprising that he was accused of numerous inaccuracies and distortions.3 This is crucial since much secondary literature on novels 88

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of war is inspired by an unspoken consensus: if a text succeeds in representing the reality of war, it will also convince its readers of war’s horrors. Consequently, all too often the gold standard of war literature is not aesthetic or stylistic accomplishment, but fidelity and accuracy. In contrast, this chapter proposes a shift of focus from questions of factual accuracy to formal and narrative aspects. In order to elucidate what is involved in this choice, I will first parse the nature of Remarque’s supposed lack of fidelity as well as the problems that attend the critical commitment to authenticity. Critical evaluations of Remarque’s treatment of the subject of war are as contradictory as assessments of his politics. While some consider Im Westen an example of the paratactical, crisp style of “Neue Sachlichkeit,”4 others accuse Remarque of “redolent sentimentality”5 and of calling upon “the whole frenzied machinery of Gothic romance.”6 To its critics, Im Westen is guilty of romanticizing warfare and stylizing life on the front. Remarque’s detractors point to the fact that the novel celebrates the intimacy and complete trust of comrades in arms; that it paints idyllic scenes of silvery forests and moonshine glistening on steel helmets – “die Reiter mit ihren Stahlhelmen sehen aus wie Ritter einer vergangenen Zeit, es ist irgendwie scho¨n und ergreifend” (47) (the riders with their steel helmets look like knights from a bygone era, it is somehow beautiful and touching); that it portrays the exhilarating joy and bravado of preparing a meal under fire, but fails to portray the boredom, the “zum Verrecken Langweilig[e]”7 (fatally boring) that characterized life on the front. Frequently, such scenes and tendencies are offered as proof of the novel’s lack of commitment to the reality of war on the Western front. And yet, one might argue with equal right that these lyrical moments do not distort, but rather form an integral part of the war experience. After all, even Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire (Le Feu, 1917), whose anti-war credentials are generally not in question, describes how soldiers, who have been exposed to heavy artillery fire, return from the trenches elated and exhilarated.8 Similarly, in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933), which relates the author’s experience as a nurse during the First World War, the terror of a bombing raid is followed by “a strange exultation that was unlike any emotion that I had known before.”9 Clearly, Remarque’s choice not to omit the exhilarating aspects of war could also be seen as evidence of the truthfulness of his account. But even if one rejects this notion, one would do well to read Remarque’s romantic tropes in their proper literary context. For all too frequently, Remarque’s front romantics act as a foil against which the horror of war appears all

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the more glaringly. The description of gleaming helmets, for example, functions as the prelude to an account of a ferocious attack in which the silvery landscape turns into a setting for human carnage and piercing screams of dying horses. Similarly, a sketch of soldiers in the latrines absorbed in a game of cards is presented as an idyll, but one whose vital ingredients are human feces and the roar and smoke of artillery fire. Im Westen may breathe life into old cliche´s at first, but it inevitably proceeds to smash them most forcefully. Paul Ba¨umer’s dream of a garden party from which he is awakened by a bomb that strikes right next to him might well be seen as the paradigm of Remarque’s particular brand of war romantics. If Remarque’s war romantics lose their shine in the larger framework of the novel, his celebration of the unity of all soldiers is interrupted not by discord, but by death. To some, the fact that the novel does not question the firmness of the soldiers’ bond constitutes an undue idealization of the war; others, however, might see it as a hallmark of its realism. Studies of warfare frequently emphasize the extreme importance and unique quality of intimate bonds among the soldiers of a particular unit. Seen in this light, Remarque’s depiction of ideal comradeship faithfully records the experience of some, though not all, soldiers.10 Moreover, even the representation of comradeship, when interpreted in the context of Remarque’s entire oeuvre, is subject to qualification. Remarque’s Der Weg zuru¨ck (The Road Back, 1931), which followed upon the heels of Im Westen, depicts a group of returning soldiers who, for the most part, fail to find a place in postwar German society. The novel focuses on the gradual dissolution of the bonds between First World War comrades and demonstrates how differences in class and outlook turn former allies into dangerous opponents. When dealing with novels of war, the question of authenticity is indispensable. After all, truth is imperative where human lives are at stake. At the same time, however, authenticity is not only a highly perspectival category but also prone to a certain tunnel vision that underestimates the importance of literary context and structure. It is telling that the reception history of Im Westen is marked by a refusal to acknowledge the literariness of this work. Remarque’s novel has repeatedly been branded as trivial – “no one would want to claim for the novel a place in the ranks of firstclass literature”11 – and many attributed to Remarque not artistic vision but mercenary motivations. Emil Marius Requark, the pseudonymous author of the Remarque parody Vor Troja nichts Neues (All Quiet at Troy), has his narrator exclaim: “I will become a rich man, all Greece will read my book.”12 The seductive simplicity and acute immediacy of

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Remarque’s novel further support the notion that one is dealing with an artless, matter-of-fact report. And yet, Im Westen nichts Neues was not conceived as a first-hand report, but as a work of art. Although the marketing campaign, engineered by the powerful Ullstein publishing house and abetted by the young author, banks on the authenticity of the eye-witness,13 the novel itself tells a different story. The existence of three different manuscript versions with extensive corrections and revisions proves that Remarque’s initial claim that he wrote the novel in six weeks was a publicity stunt in compliance with the Ullstein sales strategy. One of the literary traditions that had a decisive influence on Remarque’s novel is the Bildungsroman. This may be somewhat surprising since, on the thematic level, the text goes out of its way to denigrate the ideal of Bildung. Remarque’s soldiers are young recruits who enlist before they have a chance to finish school. Once in the trenches, they quickly denounce what little Bildung they had: “Das erste Trommelfeuer zeigte uns unseren Irrtum, und unter ihm stu¨rzte die Weltanschauung zusammen, die sie uns gelehrt hatten” (18) (The first barrage showed us our error, and underneath it the worldview that they had taught us collapsed). Repeatedly and insistently, Bildung is portrayed as harmful – “Katczinsky behauptet, das ka¨me von der Bildung, sie mache da¨mlich” (18) (Katczinsky claims that this stems from Bildung, it makes one daft) – whereas its opposite, a state of utter and complete imbecility, represents salvation from all earthly plight: “ich habe einen Kopfschuß gehabt, und darauf ist mir ein Attest ausgestellt worden, daß ich zeitweise unzurechnungsfa¨hig bin. Seitdem bin ich fein heraus” (171) (I’ve been shot in the head, and afterwards they gave me a medical certificate that I am temporarily insane. Ever since, I’ve got it made). Moreover, an analysis of the representation of teachers shows that in Remarque’s novel Bildung is not only the first casualty of the war, but also the main reason why the disaster of war was possible to begin with. In light of this utter rejection of Bildung, it is quite surprising that the story of Paul Ba¨umer, who is given little time to mature and barely enough to die, bears traces of the Bildungsroman. Remarque’s novel traces Paul’s personal development and shows how his experience in the trenches deepens his understanding of war and society. But in narrating a process of maturation – albeit one in which greater experience and insight lead to depression and resignation – Im Westen nichts Neues imports the teleological structure and the investment in causal-logical connections and formal closure associated with Germany’s most peculiar genre into the narrative of war.14

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Im Westen nichts Neues also shares with the Bildungsroman the confidence in narrative. This too is somewhat surprising since, in many novels and memoirs of war, the claim that war is ineffable is a standard trope. Carl Zuckmayer’s memoir Als wa¨r’s ein Stu¨ck von mir (As if it Were a Part of Myself, 1966), for example, discusses the impossibility of writing about the war.15 In his Memoirs of an Infantryman (1930), Siegfried Sassoon remarks that it is “a weary business . . . to be remembering and writing it down . . . how difficult it is to recover the details of war experience,”16 and the protagonist of Ludwig Renn’s Krieg (War, 1929) admits “fu¨r die Darstellung der wichtigsten Dinge . . . fehlten mir stets die Worte”17 (I always lacked the words for the representation of the most important things). Remarque’s novel, on the other hand, does not contend with what Elaine Scarry calls the unsharability of pain and its resistance to language,18 and it does not address the central contradiction that it speaks where language has become tenuous in the extreme. As Hannah Arendt explains, “where violence rules absolutely, everything and everybody must fall silent . . . the point here is that violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence.”19 Many novels of war acknowledge the vagaries of language in the context of war. In Edlef Ko¨ppen’s Heeresbericht (Army Report, 1930), for example, exposing propaganda and censorship is a constant concern, and Barbusse’s Under Fire features a discussion of the author with a fellow soldier about the truthfulness of his account.20 In contrast, Paul Ba¨umer’s narrative appears out of nowhere – there is no mention of a diary or of the process of writing itself – and does not question its own validity. In Remarque’s novel, the confidence in words is oddly intact: “Trommelfeuer, Sperrfeuer, Gardinenfeuer, Minen, Gas, Tanks, Maschinengewehre, Handgranaten – Worte, Worte, aber sie umfassen das Grauen der Welt” (96; see also 93) (barrage, curtain fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine guns, hand grenades – words, words, but they comprise the horror of the world). Although Paul repeatedly stops himself from thinking about the war and is unable to communicate his experience to his loved ones at home, this hesitation does not affect the aesthetics of the novel itself. In Im Westen nichts Neues, the ideal of Bildung is annihilated along with Paul’s youthful companions, but the confidence in narrative remains intact until the end. Im Westen exhibits little awareness of the fact that the well-ordered integrity of its story is incongruent with the attempt to depict the orderdestroying effects of violence. Even the concluding paragraphs, in which an anonymous narrator relates Paul’s death, provide the closure that is

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typical of the novel of Bildung, albeit in highly ironic form. In these two paragraphs, chronology is affirmed – “er fiel im Oktober 1918” (197) (he died in October of 1918) –, intimations of sleep and peace supplant those of pain and suffering – “ruhig und still . . . lag wie schlafend” (197) (calm and still . . . lay as though sleeping) – and closure is, if not accomplished, at least intimated: “sein Gesicht hatte einen so gefaßten Ausdruck, als wa¨re er beinahe zufrieden damit, daß es so gekommen war” (197) (his face had such an expression of composure as though he were almost content that it had ended this way). The disembodied voice of these paragraphs not only interposes a safe distance between the reader and the physical horror of the battlefield. It also provides an ironic confirmation that Paul’s process of maturation is now complete. In death, Paul has finally reached a state of calm composure. Because Remarque infuses this passage with a strong sense of irony, it remains up to each reader to decide whether the death of an innocent symbolizes the ultimate accusation of the injustice of war, or whether it provides the kind of closure that suggests that all history is trauma and resigned inaction the only possible recourse.21 While the structure of Im Westen evokes the novel of Bildung, Remarque’s unqualified use of the first person plural does not. Throughout the novel, Paul speaks not for himself, but for an entire generation. “Wir” is not only the first word of the novel, but a structural element of the narrative. Just like the novel’s affirmation of narrative mastery, its use of “wir” is designed to provide comfort to the generation of postwar readers – the representation of a tightly knit community of soldiers certainly contributed to the popularity of Im Westen nichts Neues – but it also threatens to obliterate the atomizing aspects of war and the community-destroying nature of pain. As Susan Sontag reminds us, no “we” should be taken for granted when the subject is speaking about other people’s pain.22 The warmth of comradeship is one possible facet of the experience of war, but the isolation of the soldier in the face of death is another. By consistently employing the first person plural, Remarque chooses a narrative form that emphasizes the comfort of community over one that highlights the isolating and meaningless aspects of war. In order to strengthen its narrative coherence, Remarque’s novel relies heavily on the use of leitmotifs and proven tropes while it lacks the kind of specificity with respect to dates, places, and battles that characterizes Ju¨nger’s documentary war novels and memoirs. Literary motifs, such as the cemetery as hideout that offers protection from death

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or the boots of the dying soldier that are passed on to a comrade who in turn will die, are introduced to lend coherence to a story that would otherwise share in the aimless chaos of the event it depicts. In Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, Jay Winter claims that, far from furthering modernist forms of expression, the experience of the First World War created a desire for conventional forms. Such familiar structures offered a promise of meaning and order to peoples in desperate need of comfort and consolation. It is this aspect that endows Remarque’s novel with a therapeutic dimension. But in providing a well-ordered, teleological structure, Remarque also undermines the novel’s repeated claim that war has no meaning. It would appear that this tension is caused not by the author’s lack of skill, but by his desire to expand the circle of readers beyond the narrow confines of the avant-garde elite. Remarque wanted his prose to be accessible and was proud of the fact that his book was read by “Handwerkern, Arbeitern, Angestellten, Mechanikern, Postboten, Chauffeuren, Lehrlingen” (Briefe 79) (Craftsmen, workers, employees, mechanics, mailmen, chauffeurs, apprentices). In order to familiarize a majority of readers with the reality of war, Remarque dampens its shock by introducing narrative structures that represent order, community, and closure. If Remarque’s novel fails to do justice to the theme of war, it is not because it misrepresents or romanticizes. Rather, the problem consists in the fact that the war experience is embedded in traditional narrative structures gilded with time-honored motifs that reintroduce a structure of meaning and coherence that the narrative voice goes to great lengths to deny. Unlike Robert Graves in his war memoir Good-Bye to All That (1929), Remarque voices no concern about “having distorted my material with a plot” (321). Thus, Im Westen enacts a paradox. In the course of the novel, the naı¨ve narrator comes to realize the meaninglessness of the war. On the level of the characters and their expressed opinions, there is nothing but opposition to the war and its destructive potential. However, structurally and aesthetically, Im Westen is characterized by purpose, control, and symmetry. And it is precisely these contradictions that account for the appeal of Im Westen nichts Neues. As I will show, the combination of the anodyne with the critical finds its continuation in the novel’s representation of the body. Remarque conveys a most powerful critique of war through careful attention to the multiple effects of war on the human body, to the acts of injuring, suffering, and dying. But he combines his body politics with a pervasive victim discourse that holds the potential to invalidate all calls to action.

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body talk and victim discourse Several critics have attempted to disparage Remarque, the infamous author of an essay on cocktails, with references to his riches, his hedonistic lifestyle, and his appreciation of creaturely comforts including good food and alcohol.23 It is certainly true that some of his works exhibit a fascination with the exhilaration of car races, the glamour of Monte Carlo, oysters, and Chateau Lafite, but references of this kind are outweighed by far by Remarque’s obsession with “the body in pain” (Scarry). His novels are filled with descriptions of torture and mutilation, of maimed and wounded bodies, of suffering, pain, and death. Der Funke Leben (The Spark of Life, 1952), for example, Remarque’s depiction of life in a Nazi concentration camp, details the effects of crippling violence and torture on the whole of the human body. Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (A Time to Live and a Time to Die, 1954), his Second World War novel about the horrors and crimes on the Eastern front, opens with a grueling description of the putrefaction and decomposition of dead soldiers in thawing ice and snow. Im Westen nichts Neues contains horrifying accounts of the debilitating injuries incurred during battle and of the many atrocious ways of dying in combat. Bodies keep running even after their heads have been torn off. They run without feet on splintering stumps. Severed hands, arms, and legs are strewn across the battlefield. Soldiers kill their opponents by splitting their faces with spades. There are soldiers without arms, without legs, without chins, without faces. This focus on bodily injury is uniquely suited to convey the terror of the First World War, which far surpassed previous wars not only in terms of casualty numbers, but also, as Bourke explains, “led to amputations on a scale never seen before, or since.”24 Even when he does not focus on wounds and injuries, Remarque’s attentiveness to the body and its functions is paramount. Both the intake of food and the passing out of excrements occupy center-stage: “Dem Soldaten ist sein Magen und seine Verdauung ein vertrauteres Gebiet als jedem anderen Menschen” (15) (The soldier is more familiar with his stomach and digestion than every other human being). Numerous metaphors are taken from the realm of nutrition: the division cook is a tomato head, private Tjaden is a herring, and artillery fire is “dicke Brocken” (11) (big crumbs).25 The narrative of Paul Ba¨umer creates an economy of war in which different bodily states and functions become interchangeable. Death is converted into food, e.g., more food for the survivors who get the rations of their dead comrades, and food is converted into

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sexuality, e.g., when bread is used as payment for sexual favors. Remarque expounds on the life of the latrines, on Private Tjaden’s habit of bedwetting, on the details of delousing, the effects of fear on one’s bowels and of sleep deprivation on the body. Throughout his novel, Remarque lets the body talk. Fear and courage, instincts and responses on the battlefield are direct emanations of the body that circumvent the control of the conscious mind: “in unserm Blut [ist] ein Kontakt angeknipst” (44) (in our blood a conduit has been switched on). Im Westen nichts Neues stands out not because it portrays gruesome wounds but because it recreates the sheer physicality of warfare in its many facets. Even Henri Barbusse, whose Under Fire paints the misery of a mud-drenched existence in the trenches in drastic detail, cannot rival Remarque’s images of bodily abjection or his vast repertoire of body functions. Undoubtedly, Remarque’s focus on the body and its pain conveys a drastic critique of war. Remarque’s body talk offers a radical counternarrative to the notion of war as spiritual reawakening that dominated the war discourse of the political right. In Im Westen, death and injury are not moments of national rejuvenation but instances of personal loss. Remarque does not embrace the stab-in-the-back legend or the idea of regeneration through violence. And yet, in spite of its critical impetus, Remarque manages to embed his narrative of the body in pain in a consoling context. In almost Homeric fashion, Remarque combines the description of wounds with stories and telltale details that use the moment of death to introduce images of pulsing life: there is a young recruit, who shits his pants and whose body is identified because of its missing underwear. There is the dying Kemmerich, who worries about his stolen watch and whose mother cried incessantly when she took her son to the train station. The stylistic simplicity of these scenes, the absence of irony, the focus on the narrator’s compassion for his comrades help to situate the wounded and dying in a context of friendship and family. This exclusive focus on the most basic human relationships restores dignity to the victims, but it also stands in stark contrast to the anonymity of mass death in the wastelands of the First World War. While the most famous war memorials, such as Sir Edwin Lutyens’s Cenotaph in London or his Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval on the Somme, are dedicated to the unknown soldier of the First World War, Im Westen nichts Neues celebrates individuality. It is precisely because Remarque’s novel reverses and obfuscates the identity-erasing murderousness of the First World War, where up to half of those killed were unidentified,26 that it is able to illustrate the magnitude and futility of every individual’s pain and loss. As the trauma

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of anonymous slaughter gives way to the commemoration of individual destinies, the novel again combines the depiction of suffering and loss with an offer of comfort and a confirmation of meaning. Throughout the novel, the notion of the pure body has an equalizing potential. Paul and his comrades do not bear the imprint of any particular political party, and even social class is erased when Private Tjaden realizes that “ein Kaiser auch genauso zur Latrine muß wie ich” (139) (an Emperor has to use the latrine same as I do). On the other hand, while the pure body is essentially democratic, it does not carry the potential of agency. Significantly, it is in the moment of death that Remarque’s concept of the pure and autonomous body achieves culmination. When a soldier is dying, his body takes complete control: “Das Fleisch zerschmilzt, die Stirn wo¨lbt sich sta¨rker, die Backenknochen stehen vor. Das Skelett arbeitet sich durch” (29) (The flesh melts, the forehead is raised in a more forceful arch, the cheek bones protrude. The skeleton presses to the surface). In the process of decomposition when fingernails and hair keep growing, the body becomes a subject in its own right. “Die Tage sind heiß, und die Toten liegen unbeerdigt . . . Manchen treiben die Ba¨uche auf wie Ballons. Sie zischen, ru¨lpsen und bewegen sich. Das Gas rumort in ihnen” (91–2) (The days are hot, and the dead lie about unburied . . . The stomachs of some rise like balloons. They hiss, burp and move. Gas rumbles inside them). Since Remarque’s soldiers are reduced to the body, they achieve agency only when they decompose. In the Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry speaks of the reality-conferring power of the wounded body. According to Scarry, the hurt body is both referentially unstable and indisputably real. Because it has no inherent meaning, the “compelling and vivid reality” of the wounded body can be used to confer legitimacy onto immaterial ideas and “become an attribute of an issue that at that moment has no independent reality.”27 Dead bodies are not stable signs, and pure bodies are not political agents. Because Remarque’s soldiers are reduced to a physical existence, they are victims of politics, but never political agents. Since Remarque’s representation of the body in pain is paired with an elaborate victim discourse that encompasses all aspects of the soldier’s existence, it cannot form the foundation of a fight for peace, which must be built on notions of agency. While Remarque’s focus on the body in pain constitutes a powerful antiwar discourse, it cannot move beyond critique toward a politics of peace. In his biting essay “Hat Erich Maria Remarque wirklich gelebt?” (Did Erich Maria Remarque really exist?), Mynona, aka Salomo Friedlaender, calls Remarque the “Chaplin of German philosophy.”28 Unlike Vera

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Brittain and Henri Barbusse, who place their hopes in socialism and political activism, Im Westen nichts Neues does not present a coherent theory of the social and political factors that lead to war nor does it offer any guidance as to how to prevent future wars. Remarque’s protagonist evinces a conscious abstention from historical reflection that is facilitated by the resistance of the Great War itself to straightforward explanations and narratives.29 Consequently, Paul Ba¨umer’s declared intent to fight “gegen dieses, das uns beide zerschlug” (154) (against that which shattered both of us) and his desperate cry that all soldiers are going to march “gegen wen, gegen wen?” (101) (against whom, against whom), though meant to signal determination, are also indicative of helplessness and lack of direction. Significantly, the narrator Paul is portrayed as a victim, and his youth, his lack of experience, truncated education, and the fact that Paul and his comrades occupy the very bottom of the military hierarchy, only serve to reinforce this role. Remarque’s emphasis on his narrator’s youth and victimization are designed to lend particular power and urgency to his critique of war, but they also deprive his protagonist of any prospect of effective resistance. Paul’s victim status allows for a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, Im Westen nichts Neues might be said to showcase Paul Ba¨umer’s helplessness in order to incite action in its readers. In other words, by introducing a naı¨ve protagonist, Remarque calls on his readers to finish the thoughts that Paul Ba¨umer could not afford to develop during his short life in the trenches.30 But it is also possible that the novel invites readers to share Paul’s sense of victimization and thus confers legitimacy on resigned inaction.31 Paul and his comrades are portrayed as innocents who were manipulated to enlist. In Remarque’s novel, the spirit of 1914 is conspicuously absent. Chauvinistic slogans of the time, such as “Jeder Schuß, ein Ruß / Jeder Stoß, ein Franzos! / Jeder Britt, ein Tritt! / Jeder Klapps, ein Japs”32 (every shot, a Russian / every blow, a Frenchman, / every kick, a Brit, / every slap, a Jap), or German atrocities such as the massacre in the Belgian town Dinant are not only non-existent, they are unimaginable. Im Westen is completely devoid of warmongering and nationalistic jingoism. Although recent research has qualified the long-held assumption of widespread enthusiasm for the war – we now know that white-collar workers were more likely to welcome the war than peasants, that war enthusiasm was stronger in cities than in the countryside33 – Im Westen does not so much reflect this differentiated account as skirt the issue of war enthusiasm through its generational focus. As Zuckmayer explains in his memoir, whereas war enthusiasm was exhibited by the generation of 1914,

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Remarque’s contemporaries “mußten ihre normale Schulzeit abschwitzen, um dann widerwillig eingezogen, gedrillt und gezwiebelt zu werden, und sie gingen ohne Illusionen ins Feld”34 (had to sit through the normal period of schooling only to be drafted unwillingly afterwards, be drilled and mistreated, and they went to war without illusions). Consequently, Remarque’s choice to begin his narrative not at the beginning but in the midst of the First World War underlines the victimization of his soldiers. Unlike Sassoon and Ju¨nger, Remarque is not interested in the exhilarating aspects of killing, but he also does not explore the characterdeforming effects of war. Whereas in Renn’s Krieg, soldiers routinely refer to the French as “dogs,” Im Westen presents a cast of characters who have nothing but respect for the French and English. While Barbusse acknowledges that war “developed every bad instinct in them . . . malice to the point of sadism, egotism to the point of ferocity and a lust for pleasure to the point of madness,”35 Remarque’s Ba¨umer remains an innocent throughout the war. Whereas the soldiers in Good-Bye to All That face an imminent attack with the knowledge that “ ‘It’s murder, Sir’ ‘Of course, it’s murder, you bloody fool’ ” and Robert Graves admits that “I only once refrained from shooting a German I saw,”36 Remarque’s Paul is filled with remorse when he kills a French soldier in self-defense and implores his dying enemy: “Vergib mir, Kamerad” (152) (Forgive me, comrade). Both Paul and the French soldier he kills are portrayed as victims of the same vague but overpowering force: “dieses, das uns beide zerschlug” (154) (that which shattered us both). In Koeppen’s Heeresbericht, the protagonist, now confined to an insane asylum, professes his responsibility for the war: “Der Krieg ist das gro¨ßte Verbrechen, das ich kenne. Ich habe Schuld an ihm. Ich habe jahrelang Schuld an ihm gehabt”37 (War is the biggest crime that I know. I am to blame for it. I have born this guilt for years). Similarly, Barbusse’s Under Fire affirms the responsibility of the individual soldier: “It’s only with us that they can make battles: we are the raw material of war.”38 In contrast, Im Westen nichts Neues obliterates all notions of agency. Remarque employs metaphors that depict war as a force of nature, as fire, water, and thunder. Admittedly, the figure of the soldier as victim or martyr is common in texts by authors who served during the last years of the war,39 but many of these writers such as Sassoon, Graves, and Owen also acknowledge a sense of guilt about their complicity in the crimes of war.40 Remarque’s Paul, however, is always a victim, even when he kills.41 Im Westen nichts Neues may well owe its mass appeal to the fact that Remarque embeds his critique of war in an aesthetic and narrative context that offers comfort

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and closure. But it is also possible that its popularity derives from the novel’s powerful victim discourse designed to absolve readers of a sense of complicity in the crimes of war. Consistent with the emphasis on victimization is what Bance has called “the reduction of vision to the immediate moment,”42 that is, the absence of any information or point of view that transcends Paul’s personal experience. Unlike Sassoon’s Memoirs, Barbusse’s Under Fire, or Ludwig Renn’s Krieg, Im Westen lacks awareness of strategic objectives and does not comment on the terrible waste of human life resulting from tactical errors and ill-conceived maneuvers. Even the distortions and falsehoods of the press, which feature prominently in many war novels and memoirs, including Under Fire and Heeresbericht, are of no concern in Im Westen nichts Neues. In omitting the levels of strategy, command, and propaganda, Remarque reinforces the notion of general victimization and deprives his novel of the opportunity to convey the absurdity of the war by portraying its inner workings. Most importantly, though, the novel’s “reduction of vision to the immediate moment” releases the victim narrator from the obligation to reflect critically on the origin and course of the war. Again, this is not necessarily a misrepresentation. As Eksteins explains, the average soldier “rarely had time or energy to contemplate meaning and purpose of the war.”43 But it does allow Remarque to have it both ways. While the novel’s narrative structure possesses the control and coherence that is only possible as a result of careful planning and reflection, his representation of war, its theories, origins, and motivations, is not subject to the critical reflection that derives from hindsight. The novel’s emphasis on victimization is further reinforced by its class discourse. Im Westen not only depicts the disadvantaged position of the lower classes, but also insinuates that class hierarchies are among the root causes of war: “Gleiche Lo¨hnung, gleiches Essen, wa¨r’ der Krieg schon la¨ngst vergessen” (36) (Same pay, same food, the war would have been forgotten a long time ago). Several vignettes highlight the strength of the moral convictions as well as the heightened vulnerability of the lower classes. The novel insists that the poorer segment of society never shared the war enthusiasm of the bourgeoisie, but rather objected to the war from the beginning – “Am vernu¨nftigsten waren eigentlich die armen und kleinen Leute; sie hielten den Krieg gleich fu¨r ein Unglu¨ck, wa¨hrend die bessergestellten vor Freude nicht aus noch ein wußten” (17–18) (The poor and little people were really the most reasonable; right away, they considered the war a misfortune whereas the joy of the ones who were better off knew no bounds) – and cites numerous examples of how the

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lower classes are victimized by their social superiors but dare not defend themselves against this abuse. A doctor in the hospital, where Paul recovers from his injuries, uses wounded soldiers as guinea pigs for his misguided research agenda. More often than not, the soldiers are left crippled by these experiments. In addition to Paul himself, Paul’s father is also portrayed as a victim of the medical system. He works himself to death in order to pay for medication and treatment for his sick wife. Although the family is poor, Herr Ba¨umer hesitates to ask the doctor about pricing for fear that his wife will suffer the consequences. The only kind of resistance available to the lower classes exhausts itself in tricks, petty abuse of minor authority figures, and cheating. Thus, the soldiers poke fun at the director of the hospital and beat up their drill sergeant Himmelstoß when they can do so anonymously and without fear of reprisal. Occasionally, these actions produce small victories – the soldiers may double their food rations or successfully bend the rules – but for the most part, resistance against authority figures is petty and inconsequential. Like many authors of war novels, Remarque assigns responsibility for the war to the older generation, to officers, parents, and teachers. But this general claim is not born out by the individual representatives of these three groups. Paul’s mother and father, for example, far from being authority figures, are portrayed as lamentable victims. Similarly, Im Westen nichts Neues heaps blame on the officer caste in general, but portrays individual officers in a sympathetic light. Thus, Im Westen nichts Neues is able to cite the social difference between officer and common soldier as a crucial factor for war, even as it is filled with military authority figures who are understanding, fair, and decent.44 Interestingly, Remarque, who was himself a teacher by training, is much harder on the teaching profession. Paul Ba¨umer repeatedly connects the death of his schoolmate Rehm with the warmongering of his former teacher Kantorek.45 Typically, Kantorek’s responsibility is addressed in an ironic form that leaves questions of guilt deliberately vague: “Man kann Kantorek natu¨rlich nicht damit in Zusammenhang bringen; – wo bliebe die Welt sonst, wenn man das schon Schuld nennen wollte” (18) (Of course, one cannot trace this back to Kantorek – or else, where would we be if one wanted to call something like this guilt). Again and again, Remarque leaves his readers the choice between diametrically opposed interpretations. Through its sparse but clever use of irony46 – “Ich ka¨mpfe nicht; ich la¨chele zu Tode” (Briefe 28) (I do not fight; I smile to death) – and the skillful juxtaposition of generalizing statements and contradictory

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illustrative examples, Im Westen nichts Neues offers its readers a choice between mutually exclusive options. Interestingly, Im Westen nichts Neues absolves the officer caste from blame, but creates a subtext of hostility toward women. As in many war novels, the suffering on the home front – between 1914 and 1918, 800,000 German civilians starved to death – does not feature prominently in Im Westen. Instead, women are portrayed as lacking the most basic understanding of the cruelty and oppressiveness of war. When a Red-Cross nurse offers Paul some coffee, he responds with contempt: “Ich wende mich ab, sie la¨chelt mich zu albern an, so durchdrungen von ihrer Wichtigkeit: Seht nur, ich gebe einem Soldaten Kaffee” (111) (I turn away, her smile is too silly, so permeated with her significance: Look, I am giving coffee to a soldier). When Paul pays a visit to the mother of his dead comrade Kemmerich, he responds with impatience to her questions about the circumstances of Kemmerich’s death: “Ich bemitleide sie, aber sie kommt mir auch ein wenig dumm vor” (127) (I pity her, but she also seems a little stupid to me). In the hospital where Paul recovers from his wounds, the loud prayers of the attending nurses deprive the soldiers of their much-needed sleep. Rather than contribute to the soldiers’ speedy recovery, the nurses create more obstacles. On the one hand, women are represented as the opposite of war. When Paul and his friends happen upon a poster of a young girl, they consider it a miracle, “ein Wunder. Wir haben ganz vergessen, daß es so etwas gibt” (101) (a miracle. We forgot completely that something like this exists). On the other hand, it is this very distance from warfare that turns women into a source of irritation and contempt rather than into potential allies. Tellingly, in Im Westen nichts Neues, the only female presence that is both desirable and safe is Mother Earth. In a letter to the British general Ian Hamilton, the commander at Gallipolli and head of the British Legion, the young Remarque claims that it is not his place to argue for or against war: “Ich habe mich nicht berufen gefu¨hlt, u¨ber den Krieg selbst zu argumentieren. Das muß den Fu¨hrern vorbehalten bleiben, die allein alles wissen, was zu wissen notwendig ist” (Briefe 77) (I did not feel called upon to forward arguments about the war itself. That must be reserved for the leaders, who alone know everything that is necessary to know). In his later works, Remarque combines empathy with the suffering of “die kleinen Leute” with a more pronounced advocacy of resistance against the abuse of power. To this day, Remarque’s later novels, in particular, Ein Funke Leben and Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben, stand out through their willingness to confront

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the crimes of the Nazi era. Zeit zu leben is also of interest with respect to the current political discourse on German victimization because it links the portrayal of genocide on the Eastern front with the depiction of the effects of carpet bombing on German cities. In his works about the Third Reich and the fates of refugees, Remarque, a dedicated anti-fascist, breaks out of the mold of victim discourse, faces the question of personal responsibility, and embraces active and even violent forms of resistance. The postwar denial of guilt and the self-definition of ex-Nazis as subalterns who simply followed orders were subjected to Remarque’s incessant critique. What started out as a wish to fight against war defined as an anonymous disease and shapeless force of nature turned into active resistance to National Socialism. And yet, even these later works are limited by their preference for lone heroes. Remarque does not place his trust in groups or organizations. Rather, he relies on individual acts of solitary fighters who do not form part of political groups or even informal networks, but enact justice on their own. While Paul Ba¨umer finds no target for his critique, Remarque’s later heroes are determined to fight against a fascist regime, which to them is tantamount to killing all Nazis, one at a time.

conclusion In his controversial memoir Beim Ha¨uten der Zwiebel (Peeling the Onion, 2006), Gu¨nter Grass remembers reading Remarque’s novel. Interestingly, this causes him to reflect on the “ernu¨chternd begrenzte Wirkung der Literatur”47 (soberingly limited effect of literature). Grass emphasizes the general nature of his insight, and yet, I believe it is no coincidence that it is Im Westen nichts Neues that prompted this remark. It would appear that one of the reasons for the “ernu¨chternd begrenzte Wirkung” of this book lies in its pervasive victim discourse. Although Remarque’s structural and aesthetic conservatism runs counter to the asserted meaninglessness of war, it does not in itself invalidate the text’s critique of war. While Bance, in his excellent essay on Im Westen nichts Neues, passes severe judgment on Remarque claiming that his novel is all things to all readers, one might argue with equal right that the novel’s ambiguity constitutes its most significant accomplishment. Its traditional structure is both an anodyne that dulls and distorts the pain of war and a comforting framework in which insights into war’s horrors, expressed through the body in pain, become possible. In its

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promise of closure and meaning, the traditional structure of Im Westen accounts for the novel’s therapeutic value and its bestseller status. Remarque’s body politic, on the other hand, while it leaves no room for the glorification of warfare, also offers no room for concepts of agency. What at first glance would seem to be the most effective critique of war, the portrayal of the effect of war on the body, becomes a self-defeating strategy. Because Remarque combines the representation of the body in pain with a persistent victim discourse, the novel’s potential as text of peace remains doubtful. Although there is the possibility that the victimization of Remarque’s soldiers mobilizes a sense of injustice and a desire for resistance in his readers, it is more likely that the novel’s victim discourse stifles any pacifist agenda the text may seem to convey. If it is true that “the Great War shaped the ways in which future conflicts were imagined and remembered,”48 then Im Westen nichts Neues certainly offered a model that proved useful for German public discourse after the Second World War. Ironically, Remarque, whose later works are all committed to the fight against fascism and to Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung, reinscribes a concept of history as universal trauma and of the average German as victim.

part iii

The Second World War

chapter 8

The Second World War: overview

’s ist leider Krieg – und ich begehre Nicht schuld daran zu sein (Sadly, there is a war, And I desire not to be to blame for it) (Matthias Claudius, Kriegslied )

As the previous part has shown, First World War writers probe the sublime and transformative aspects of war and are concerned with the devastating impact of new weapons, the dynamic of battles, and the body in pain. In contrast, the epoch-making texts of the post-1945 period do not focus on the experience of frontline fighting. Rather, the horror of the front recedes behind issues of guilt and suffering: the guilt incurred in the unprecedented magnitude of the crime of genocide and the suffering born by millions of civilians and soldiers. Of course, to say that the most prominent Second World War texts are not primarily concerned with day-to-day combat is not to deny that there are texts that deal with war in traditional ways, ranging from Gert Ledig’s Die Stalinorgel (The Stalin Organ, 1955), Gerd Gaiser’s Die sterbende Jagd (The Dying Hunt, 1953), and Reinhart Stalmann’s Staub (Dust, 1951) to the numerous works on the military disaster of Stalingrad, ranging from Theodor Plivier’s Stalingrad (1945) to Heinz Konsalik’s Der Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1956).1 But none of these works have come to define the literature of the Second World War. Their readership is rather limited, and they have received little critical attention. In contrast, the German authors whom we have come to identify with the post-1945 period – Heinrich Bo¨ll, Gu¨nter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, Christa Wolf, and others – struggle to achieve a proper balance between the pity of war and German complicity with, and responsibility for, the Holocaust. In her excellent study Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (The Long Shadow of the Past: Culture of 107

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Memory and the Politics of History), Aleida Assmann points to an important paradigm shift after 1945. According to Assmann, “war das nationale Geda¨chtnis 1945 nicht mehr nur ein Verlierergeda¨chtnis, sondern obendrein auch ein Ta¨tergeda¨chtnis”2 (in 1945 national memory was no longer merely the memory of the defeated but also that of perpetrators). Whereas the categories of victory and defeat shape the remembrance of the First World War, our understanding of the Second World War is inseparable from the terms victim and perpetrator. This shift is caused by the fact that Hitler’s army was a political tool as well as a military organization. As Ralph Giordano explains, the Wehrmacht was not only directly involved in the mass murder of Jews,3 but also made the genocide possible in the first place since “die Eroberungen der Wehrmacht schufen die territorialen Voraussetzungen fu¨r die Ausdehnung der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft”4 (the conquests of the Wehrmacht created the territorial preconditions for the expansion of the National Socialist empire). Germany’s war was not a neutral activity unrelated to Nazi racial politics. Rather, the war was “das Hauptverbrechen des Nationalsozialismus”5 (the capital crime of National Socialism).6 The insoluble tie between the Second World War and the Holocaust has changed the way in which authors conceive of warfare and of questions of agency and victimization. As we have seen, First World War texts established the paradigm of the average soldier as victim. In Remarque’s case, the soldier is victimized by politics. In Ju¨nger’s case, the individual is a tool in a larger cosmic design. Representations of the Second World War further developed this notion of Germans as victims introduced in First World War texts, but they do so within a fundamentally different framework and along a different trajectory. Because war is now inextricably linked with genocide, authors such as Heinrich Bo¨ll and Gu¨nter Grass, unlike their First World War counterparts, are attuned to the dangers inherent in narratives of victimization and to the moral imperative to create a language of agency. We owe our current public awareness of the dangers inherent in narratives of victimization to the recent proliferation of essays, literary texts, movies, and television productions depicting the plight of “ordinary” Germans during and after the Second World War.7 However, even though the topic acquired new urgency during the mid 1990s, neither the notion of Germans as victims of the Second World War nor the unease regarding this self-perception is new.8 Rather, the discourse of German victimization was already fully developed in the 1950s and 1960s. In their path-breaking study Die Unf a¨higkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven

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Verhaltens (The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior, 1967), Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich note a tendency in post-1945 Germany “sich mit den Opfern der Verfolgung und des Krieges zu identifizieren, statt deren Tod oder Leiden schuldhaft zu erleben”9 (to identify with the victims of persecution and war instead of experiencing guilt for their death and suffering). The Mitscherlichs interpret this as a strategy to avoid responsibility for the crimes of war and genocide. Their thesis is confirmed by Robert G. Moeller’s recent study War Stories. Moeller’s analyses of public policy, stories in the daily press, works by historians, and movies in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate that the “past of German victimization did not have to be scripted anew, because it was already in place.”10 To be sure, the suffering of the German population during the Second World War was immense. Over half a million Germans died in the Allied bombing of German cities. The number of refugees from the East, the so-called “Ostflu¨chtlinge” from the lost provinces of Pomerania, Silesia, and East Prussia including the cities of Danzig and Stettin, is estimated at ten million with approximately two million dead from the strain of cold and hunger.11 In the aftermath of war, rape and shortage of food added to the toll of suffering. Clearly, representations of German suffering correspond to the experienced actuality. If they are perceived as problematic, it is not because they fabricate or lie, but because they are political currency in an ideological calculation. Starting immediately after the Second World War, the discourse of German suffering has been employed to turn the spotlight away from the average German as perpetrator.12 Norbert Frei’s voluminous study Vergangenheitspolitik (Politics of the Past) paints a vivid picture of the Adenauer-era focus on the “Leidensgeschichte des deutschen Volkes”13 (the history of suffering of the German people) and its granting of amnesty to all but the most prominent members of the Nazi Party. As Frei points out, “die grosse Mehrheit der Mitla¨ufer dagegen lebte inzwischen in dem Bewusstsein, in einem umfassenderen Sinne selbst zu den NS-Gescha¨digten zu geho¨ren”14 (the vast majority of bystanders, however, were by now convinced that they belonged amongst the victims of the Nazis in a comprehensive sense).15 Clearly, in the post-1945 context, the self-identification of Germans as victims of Hitler and denazification emerges as the crucial form of friction that accounts for a rift between the reality of the Second World War and German narratives about it. At times, the perception of Germans as victims went hand in hand not only with a problematic reevaluation of the past, but also with expressions of

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anti-Semitism.16 Thus, in addition to blotting out German crimes, attempts to portray German suffering also run the risk of leveling differences between different kinds of victims.17 As Stuart Taberner explains, this “development often subsumes the very different causes of German and Jewish suffering within a sentimentalized, universalized victimhood. Sooner or later, however, the depiction of Germans as victims may no longer necessitate the attendant depiction of Jewish victims.”18 Although the discourse of German suffering originates in the immediate postwar period, it has shaped public debates up to the present. Most recently, the potential conflicts between narratives of suffering and guilt were exemplified by the uproar caused by Jo¨rg Friedrich’s Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 (The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–45), a study of the horror of death and survival in the bombarded cities.19 Several scholars have drawn attention to the fact that Friedrich likened air-shelters to crematoria and called the Allied bombing the biggest book-burning of all times, thus provoking a comparison of the air raids on German cities and the Germanengineered Holocaust. In Friedrich’s book, a “Mongolian” storm of destruction is unleashed against the Germans, and the Allies are frequently portrayed as on a par with the Nazis. Friedrich calls the Allied Bomber Group 5 an “Einsatztruppe,” a term commonly used to refer to Nazi military units charged with the murder of Jews, and implies that Churchill was a war criminal. Clearly, the discourse of German suffering is as alive and problematic now as it was then, and it is because of this longevity that this chapter includes not only texts from the immediate postwar period, but also Gu¨nter Grass’s most recent contribution to this debate. Works by Assmann, Frei, and Giordano demonstrate convincingly that a de-contextualized focus on German suffering is fraught with political pitfalls. However, eliding the issue altogether is equally problematic. In a muchdiscussed series of lectures at the University of Zurich in 1997, W. G. Sebald lamented the dearth of literary treatments of the bombing of German cities. According to Sebald, this lack produces its own form of “Geschichtsblindheit.”20 While Sebald is concerned with the absence and calcification of narratives, others conceive of the long overdue return of the repressed as a contribution to the psychological health of the German nation. In this way, the dictum that, if we choose not to remember the past, we are doomed to repeat it – long associated with the Holocaust – could now be applied to the issue of German victimization. Thus, Gu¨nter Grass’s Im Krebsgang suggests a possible link between the failure to acknowledge German suffering and the emergence of new forms of right-wing extremism.

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Then as now, the discourse that surrounds narratives of German wartime suffering is fraught with ideological traps. Frequently, agency and victimization are misconstrued as simple binaries. Agency is perceived as a stable entity, victimization is equated with innocence and moral superiority, and victims and perpetrators are perceived as mutually exclusive categories. Thus, discussions about the representation of German suffering are deadlocked into the oversimplified dichotomy of silence or remembrance. And yet, the volatility of the political context in which these narratives are conceived and received as well as their multi-layered nature call for more carefully calibrated analyses of how Second World War stories are being told. Instead of asking whether or not it is appropriate to discuss German suffering one might ask how to acknowledge the suffering of individual Germans without denying or minimizing their responsibility and culpability both on a personal and on a national level. In other words, in analyzing stories of victimization, moral and political concerns will have to be translated into questions of aesthetic form and narrative structure. After all, the morality of the writer, as Grass has claimed, is aesthetic.21 In order to elucidate the complexities and pitfalls of narratives of the Second World War, it is enlightening to read the works of two of the most prominent writers of the postwar period: Heinrich Bo¨ll and Gu¨nter Grass. Drawing on his experiences as a soldier in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, Heinrich Bo¨ll devoted much of his life as a writer to the subject of war. Many of his works deal with the crimes Germans committed and the suffering they experienced. But his efforts did not meet with unanimous approval. While some lauded Bo¨ll, “the good person of Cologne,” as Germany’s moral conscience because of his relentless dedication to Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung, others accused the Nobel laureate of complicity in a “language of silence” – “he, like most Germans, did not address issues that needed urgently to be confronted”22 –, of portraying the average German as victim,23 and even of passive loyalty to the regime.24 The reason for these contradictory evaluations lies in the fact that Bo¨ll’s fictional treatments of Second World War-related topics are widely read, not least because of their dominant presence in German school curricula, and widely misunderstood. Bo¨ll is a difficult author because he transgresses ideological demarcations. He is an anarchist with socialist leanings and a deeply committed Catholic. He teaches both compassion for every human being and radical rejection of all societal institutions.25 His texts are uneven and do not strive to attain ideological consistency. Significant statements are presented not as final results but as momentary

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suggestions that quickly recede into the background. Bo¨ll’s texts are protocols of a struggle for understanding. They represent aesthetic, stylistic, and moral experiments, relentlessly progressing investigations of the ethical and political implications of the Second World War legacy. If Bo¨ll deserves the epithet “moral conscience of the nation,” it is not because of an unfailing sense of right and wrong but because of his absolute dedication to continually reexamine the meaning of German guilt and suffering. His writing truly is “Fortschreibung,” as the author himself claimed. Bo¨ll advocates the cause of the “simple people” who, as he believes, fell victim to a treacherous and seductive regime, but he also shows how an abyss of cruelty arises in the midst of a bourgeois idyll. He launched numerous violent attacks against the continued power and influence of former Nazis in the postwar republic, but he also pondered the possibility of Christian forgiveness for the most heinous acts of war and genocide. In addition to their ideological unevenness, Bo¨ll’s works are subjected to misreadings because of a persistent focus on content to the detriment of literary form combined with an underestimation of their aesthetic complexity.26 Bo¨ll’s stories may contain the hallmarks of popular literature and appear to invite easy consumption and identification, but his narrators tend to be highly unreliable.27 According to Robert E. Sackett, Bo¨ll’s “fiction itself is so marked by shifts in narrative perspective that a viewpoint of ‘the author,’ of Bo¨ll himself or of some persona who inhabits the work, is hard to infer.”28 Moreover, Bo¨ll’s texts are rarely linear; rather, chronological sequences are segmented into multiple complex and interrelated layers so that “die Zeit . . . als ordnende Kategorie aus [fa¨llt]”29 (time fails as an organizing category). More often than not, confounding heteroglossia appears in the guise of a seemingly conventional realist narrative. Consequently, a careful analysis of the formal and stylistic sophistication of his work is imperative if we want to understand how Bo¨ll conceptualized German guilt and victimization. While Bo¨ll’s texts vacillate between awareness of German guilt and his compassion for ordinary Germans, Grass’s works are preoccupied with the German responsibility for war and genocide. Spanning over six decades, from the immediate postwar years to the present, Grass’s oeuvre engages with the changing discourse on Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung and with the reality and representation of German guilt and suffering. Although an Ostflu¨chtling himself, who believes that the refugees from the East paid a higher price for the lost war than most other Germans,30 Grass has always insisted that the plight of the refugees is inseparable from

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Nazi crimes and conquests31 and, opposing all attempts to regain what was lost, declared that the Oder–Neiße line is the only legitimate boundary of the German state.32 From his postwar masterpiece Die Blechtrommel to his recent success Im Krebsgang, Grass’s work seeks to draw our attention to the dangers inherent in narratives of German victimization. Both Die Blechtrommel and Im Krebsgang portray characters who are unwilling or incapable of defining themselves as agents. The difference consists in the fact that Die Blechtrommel adopts an ironic stance toward a narrator who has come to depend on his self-fashioned victim status whereas Im Krebsgang depicts a narrator who, much as he tries to free himself, remains entrapped in narratives of victimization. Grass’s texts are characterized by great narrative complexity and highly unreliable narrators.33 Thus, it is hardly surprising that many readers of Die Blechtrommel have taken the novel’s obsession with guilt at face value but have overlooked its interest in self-victimization. Die Blechtrommel moves far beyond a mere account of guilt and suffering. Rather, Grass’s first novel uses its inflated discussion of guilt to complicate and problematize the categories of victim and perpetrator. Grass links his characters’ inability to conceive of themselves as moral agents not only with their failure to create both biologically and artistically, but, more fundamentally, with their inability to tell the difference between creation and destruction; a difference without which concepts of agency and morality cannot exist.34 Related to this confusion about accountability and agency is the novel’s satire of the German propensity for self-victimization, which it lambastes through the tall tales of its dwarf narrator and the incisive analysis of the petit bourgeois milieu. Furthermore, by connecting responsibility and authorship, and literary and biological creation, Grass also elucidates the gender dynamic that lies at the heart of the discourse of victimization. Im Krebsgang, on the other hand, appears to offer a straightforward account of German suffering, but this account is again undermined by the complexity of the narrative structure. By choosing a victim-narrator, Grass highlights the problematic repetition compulsion, i.e., the danger of recycling Nazi narratives, to which any account of German suffering is liable. Im Krebsgang exemplifies the insight that every story about German suffering must also be a story about the impossibility to narrate German suffering.

chapter 9

War and victimization: Bo¨ll

Auf die Gefahr hin, mich unbeliebt zu machen, muß ich hier eine Tatsache erwa¨hnen, zu deren Verteidigung ich nur sagen kann, daß sie wirklich eine ist. In den Jahren 1939 bis 1945 hatten wir Krieg. (“Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit,” KW i i : 13)1

(Regardless of the danger of making myself unpopular, I now have to mention a fact in defense of which I can only say that it really is a fact. From 1939 to 1945 we had a war.) Nun, hier muß ich ein weiteres Gesta¨ndnis ablegen: ich bin ju¨discher Nationalita¨t, und bestimmte, oder sollte ich sagen gewisse historische Ereignisse, die das Schicksal des ju¨dischen Volkes betreffen, verringern meine Sehnsucht, ein von Deutschen bewohntes Land zu besuchen, erheblich. (“Gesta¨ndnis eines Flugzeugentfu¨hrers,” 92)

(I now have one more confession to make: I am of Jewish nationality, and specific or should I say certain historical events regarding the destiny of the Jewish people considerably diminish my desire to visit a country inhabited by Germans.)

Unlike the slightly younger Gu¨nter Grass, who enlisted during the last months of the war, Heinrich Bo¨ll (1917–85) spent six years of his life as a soldier in Hitler’s army. Unsurprisingly, a considerable portion of Bo¨ll’s later work as a writer is dedicated to the subject of war and the travails of the immediate postwar period. Unlike much First World War literature, Bo¨ll’s texts do not describe battles and conquests. If the experience of the front features at all, it is in the form of the everyday hardships to which a soldier is exposed.2 Bo¨ll’s soldiers are dirty, they feel fear and exhaustion, they are mutilated, and they die painful and undeserved deaths.3 Far from glorifying warfare or endowing it with sublime attributes, Bo¨ll’s works emphasize the mindlessness and boredom that, to him, epitomize the essence of military life. Characteristically, in Bo¨ll’s story Ende einer 114

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Dienstfahrt (End of a Mission, 1966), a young recruit burns an army jeep because he cannot bear the absurdity of his job: to drive aimlessly and senselessly until he reaches a certain number of kilometers required by military guidelines for the scheduled inspection. Like Erich Maria Remarque and unlike Gu¨nter Grass, Bo¨ll was not primarily interested in explaining the origin of war. As Reich-Ranicki points out, “Krieg erscheint in diesen Bu¨chern nicht als Folge menschlicher Handlungen, die sich erfassen und analysieren lassen, sondern als ein undurchschaubares und grausames Pha¨nomen, als eine furchtbare Krankheit . . . Der junge Bo¨ll zeigt nicht, wie die Menschen den Krieg machen, sondern was der Krieg aus den Menschen macht”4 (In these books, war does not appear as a consequence of human actions which can be recorded and analyzed, but rather as an incomprehensible and cruel phenomenon, a terrible disease . . . The young Bo¨ll does not show how human beings make war, but rather what the war does to human beings). To Bo¨ll, the moral challenge of writing about the war consisted in living up to and communicating its horror. He felt this imperative all the more keenly since his own reading about the war had in no way prepared him for the actual experience: “es ist Krieg, und wir sind an der Front; genau wie im Weltkrieg sind wir; aber das kommt mir nie so zum Bewußtsein, weil es aus Bu¨chern und Filmen und Erza¨hlungen der vorigen Generation alles so romanhaft in Erinnerung ist” (August 18, 1942, Briefe i: 438) (it is war, and we are on the front; we are just like in the World War; but I am never fully aware of it because everything remembered from the books and films and stories of the previous generation is like a novel). Bo¨ll never let go of the commitment to tell the truth about war, but he struggled with this self-imposed task. Although his texts have often been placed in the tradition of nineteenth-century realism, Bo¨ll himself expressed grave doubts about the possibility of truthfully conveying reality through fiction: “allerdings verfolgt mich, wenn ich etwas Scho¨nes oder auch etwas Ha¨ßliches sehe, immer der stetige berufliche Schmerz, es nicht beschreiben zu ko¨nnen” (July 30, 1948, Die Hoffnung 109) (to be sure, when I see something beautiful or even something ugly, I am haunted by the constant professional pain not to be able to describe it).5 More than anything, Bo¨ll was motivated by his belief that silence about the horrors of the past would have pernicious effects on postwar society and in particular on the younger generation.6 Convinced that silence is the worst option, Bo¨ll maintained his absolute commitment to keeping the memory of the war alive in spite of aesthetic quandaries and lack of commercial viability. To Bo¨ll, the subject of war includes the trauma of the body in pain, but it does not occupy center stage. Rather, in Bo¨ll’s works, the representation

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of war is inseparable from and at times near identical with questions of guilt and victimization. More than many of his left-leaning contemporaries, Heinrich Bo¨ll allowed for the depiction of the suffering of “ordinary” Germans, but he also explored complicity with and responsibility for the Holocaust. In the past, Bo¨ll’s position on German victimization and culpability has been subject to criticism. But this criticism was hampered by the fact that it was dealing with an incomplete corpus of texts and thus was liable to reenact the discursive silences of the postwar period. In order to come to a fuller understanding of Bo¨ll’s conceptualization of guilt and suffering, this chapter focuses on a number of texts that have only recently become accessible to a wider audience. Several crucial texts by Bo¨ll remained unpublished in the decades following the Second World War. Bo¨ll’s first novel Kreuz ohne Liebe (Cross without Love), for example, which was written in 1947, was first published in 2002.7 Similarly, Bo¨ll’s Das Verma¨chtnis (A Soldier’s Legacy) was written in 1948 but published in 1982.8 Finlay explains that all too often Bo¨ll’s texts were rejected by post-Second World War publishing venues because they were perceived to be too critical.9 Bo¨ll himself claimed that Das Verma¨chtnis was turned down because it was considered too anti-militaristic: “die Bru¨der wollen nichts so scharf Antimilitaristisches. Ist das nicht toll? Drei Jahre nach dem Krieg muss man sich schon wieder vor dem Publikum fu¨rchten” (July 10, 1948, Die Hoffnung 96) (the brothers do not want something so poignantly anti-military. Isn’t that fantastic? Only three years after the war one has to be afraid again of the audience). Bo¨ll’s correspondence with Ernst-Adolf Kunz, whom he had met in a prisoner-of-war camp, provides valuable insights into the young author’s struggle to find suitable publication venues: “Mein eigentliches Gebiet ist ja offenbar der Krieg mit allen Nebenerscheinungen und keine Sau will etwas vom Krieg lesen oder ho¨ren” (October 11, 1948, Die Hoffnung 143) (My real subject is obviously the war with all its side effects, and no pig wants to read or hear anything about the war).10 Bo¨ll’s call to remember the war conflicted with both Germany’s Unf a¨higkeit zu trauern (inability to mourn) and with the demands of Cold War rhetoric that was soon to dominate the West German media.11 Bo¨ll frequently expressed his frustration with the audience’s craving for optimistic stories or, as he called it, “allgemeine Pralinenproduktion” ( January 10, 1949, Die Hoffnung 166) (general chocolate production). In light of Bo¨ll’s frustration with the publishing world of the postwar period, it is crucial to discuss these suppressed texts if one wants to

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determine whether Bo¨ll is indeed guilty of a “language of silence,” as Schlant claims,12 and of portraying the average German as victim, as Bartov suggests.13 But before I turn to Bo¨ll’s early fiction, I will present close readings of his letters, which share the fate of his early fiction in the sense that they too were first published in 2001. Bo¨ll’s letters allow some insights into his experience of the war and provide an essential background for understanding his preoccupation with the suffering of the common man. hitler’s unwilling soldier Drafted in August of 1939, Heinrich Bo¨ll spent the bulk of his years as a soldier in France where he performed guard duty, requisitioned food, and studied for an assignment as an interpreter. In 1943 he was transferred east, but was wounded soon after both his first and second deployments so that his encounter with frontline fighting was limited to two periods of less than four weeks. Bo¨ll’s letters reflect this fact. For the most part, they contain complaints about boredom, lack of sleep, inclement weather, the dehumanizing effect of life in the barracks – in Kreuz ohne Liebe, he referred to it as “systematische Zersetzung der Menschenwu¨rde” (KA ii: 238) (systematic dissolution of human dignity) – and expressions of his unfulfilled desire to read, write, and think in peace. Bo¨ll himself notes in a letter to his wife that every child at home felt the war more directly than he: “jedes Kind zu Hause hat letztlich mehr vom Krieg gespu¨rt als ich” (November 29, 1942, Briefe i: 543) (all in all, every child at home felt the war more than I did). Many of Bo¨ll’s letters testify to an inversion of the traditional roles of soldier and soldier’s wife. While Bo¨ll’s position on the Western front is fairly stable and safe, his wife and family in Cologne are threatened by air raids. Over and over again, Bo¨ll worries about his loved ones, waits anxiously for news from home, and ships food to his family since their provisions are worse than his: “Es ist wirklich ein ganz phantastisch sonderbarer Krieg, wir Soldaten sitzen hier fast wie im Frieden, sind braun und gesund, und Ihr hungert zu Hause und erlebt den Krieg in der schrecklichsten Weise, im Keller” ( June 5, 1942, Briefe i: 359) (It is truly an utterly, fantastically strange war, we soldiers are sitting here almost like in peace, we are tanned and healthy, and you at home go hungry and experience the war in the most terrible way, in the basement). From the very beginning, Bo¨ll showed little enthusiasm for the war. Already in his second letter, he voices his hope that the war may end soon. He hates being a soldier – “du mußt wissen, daß es fu¨r mich tatsa¨chlich,

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wirklich und wahrhaftig, das verko¨rperte Grauen ist” (December 17, 1940, Briefe i: 147) (you have to know that for me it is really, truly, and truthfully horror incarnate) – and repeatedly professes his conviction that there is nothing more horrible than war. In spite of this declared aversion, however, Bo¨ll’s early letters also give voice to a desire to get to know real war. Motivated perhaps by his resentment of life in the barracks or perhaps by feelings of guilt for having drawn a relatively lucky number in this war, Bo¨ll longed for frontline fighting: “deshalb ist meine soldatische Sehnsucht wirklich, immer an der Front zu sein . . . es muß doch herrlich sein, in diese unendliche Weite Rußlands vorzustoßen” (June 29, 1941, Briefe i: 205; see also June 7, 1940, Briefe i: 65) (this is why it is truly my soldierly desire to always be on the front . . . it must be wonderful to push forward into the infinite vastness of Russia). But even this vague longing for adventure subsides once Bo¨ll was actually exposed to frontline fighting in November, 1943. During the last two years, “diesen letzten Monaten elender Qua¨lerei” (April 11, 1944, Briefe ii: 1035) (these last months of miserable torment), his hatred of the war and all things soldierly knows no bounds: “Ko¨nnte ich dir nur sagen, wie maßlos ich dieses Leben hasse, hasse, hasse, aus vollster Seele” (April 25, 1944, Briefe ii: 1023) (If only I could tell you how immeasurably I hate this life, hate, hate with all my soul). Bo¨ll’s hatred of the war was compounded by feelings of isolation. Rather than celebrate the joys of comradeship, Bo¨ll calls his fellow soldiers an “Umwelt von Dummko¨pfen” (December 20, 1940, Briefe i: 150) (environment of idiots) and frequently considers their company a source of discomfort and pain. Although he despises the officers far more than the common soldiers, he is disgusted with the idle talk and dirty jokes that characterize conversations in the barracks: “Das ist die gro¨ßte Qual und das gro¨ßte Opfer, daß wir uns Tag und Nacht in der Gesellschaft von Wesen befinden mu¨ssen, mit denen kein menschliches Wort zu sprechen ist” (February 27, 1943, Briefe i: 635) (This is the greatest torment and the biggest sacrifice that day and night we have to be in the company of beings with whom one cannot speak one human word). Bo¨ll frequently expresses a sense of isolation which he attributes to religious and, implicitly, political differences. Indeed, to Bo¨ll, being a Christian is a codeword for being anti-Nazi: “wir werden maßlos einsam sein, wirklich und wahrhaftig die letzten Christen . . . Wir mu¨ssen die Kultur erhalten und das Wissen um die Wahrheit” (August 3, 1941, Briefe i: 238) (we will be exorbitantly lonely, really and truly the last Christians . . . We have to sustain culture and the knowledge of the truth).

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Compared with his hatred of the war and dislike of his comrades, Bo¨ll’s comments on the Holocaust are rather indirect. It is likely that Bo¨ll gained direct knowledge of the Nazi genocide during his stay on the Eastern front, but his letters avoid direct references to or criticism of the plight of the Jews in the Third Reich. Rather, Bo¨ll takes recourse to allusions and omissions. The further east, and hence the closer to the genocidal practices of the Nazi empire, he ventured, the more his hatred of the war intensified. In his early correspondence, Bo¨ll refers to feelings of depression and disease. During a brief and early stay in Bromberg in June and July, 1940 – the town was the site of a massacre in 1939 –, Bo¨ll tells of an unspeakable, deep depression.14 In his later letters, the allusions to the genocide grow more urgent. In a letter from 1943, Bo¨ll expresses his opposition to Nazi eugenics and Nazi racial policy, but even here he names the first directly, while the latter appears as circumlocution: “Wir haben uns lange hier unterhalten u¨ber Sterilisation und Irrenmord und a¨hnliche Dinge . . . und man spu¨rt dann, wie schrecklich fremd und einsam wir Christen in der Welt sind” (March 14, 1943, Briefe i: 644) (Here, we spoke for a long time about sterilization and murder of the insane and similar things . . . and one then senses how horribly strange and lonely we Christians are in the world). Similarly, in a letter from July 10, 1944, Bo¨ll exclaims ominously that war contains within itself all other crimes: “Ich weiß nun, daß der Krieg ein Verbrechen ist, ein absolutes Verbrechen, das schlimmste! Es birgt alle anderen Verbrechen in sich, alle, alle” (Briefe ii: 1063) (I now know that war is a crime, an absolute crime, the worst! It holds within itself all other crimes, all of them, all). In 1944, Bo¨ll was stationed in Jassy, the site of a pogrom inflicted on the Romanian Jewish population on June 29, 1941. Again, the Jassy genocide – estimates of the number of victims range as high as 8,000 – is not mentioned explicitly but rather reflected in indirect form. Bo¨ll calls Jassy a beautiful city that is infused with a cruel smell: “Es war der Geruch von altem, faulenden Blut, der auch in den Straßen, in den La¨den und Kneipen von Jassy schwebte” ( June 19, 1944, Briefe ii: 1069) (It was the smell of old, foul blood that hovered in the streets, the shops and bars of Jassy as well). Clearly, in Bo¨ll’s letters, the Nazi murder of the European Jews cannot be spoken out loud. And yet, we must assume that his oblique allusions and potent omissions offered ample information to readers well schooled in the circumlocutions of the Nazi dictatorship. In interpreting the indirect nature of Bo¨ll’s references to the Holocaust, we would do well to bear in mind that, although letters are often credited with heightened authenticity, they are in fact highly ambiguous

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documents. Firstly, they are written for and tailored to the needs of the respective addressee. Thus, in some cases, awareness of a shared background allows for a certain form of shorthand while, in other cases, the desire to comfort one’s loved ones may temper the kinds of information conveyed. Secondly, the Nazi regime censored the letters of its soldiers15 and created a general political climate of oppression designed to stifle reflection and criticism. Although in actuality the number of letters read by the authorities was very small, the fear induced by this practice may have led to self-censorship.16 Indeed, some passages in Bo¨ll’s letters appear to be all but directly tailored to the eyes of the censor.17 In light of this context, it is hardly surprising that Bo¨ll’s letters raise more questions than they answer. The impression one is left with after perusing over a thousand pages of letters is one of thoughts left unspoken and experiences left untold. Moreover, although Bo¨ll’s hatred of the war and shock about the Holocaust are evident throughout, the reader is also confronted with troubling comments that are difficult to reconcile with our idea of the “good person of Cologne.”18 Although Bo¨ll was opposed to the Nazis, it would appear that his love for his country occasionally overrode his hatred of the regime and led to a conflicted stance. Thus, Bo¨ll wishes that Germany may win the war irrespective of the fact that this also implies Hitler’s victory: “es wa¨re auch traurig, wenn es in dem rein politischen Sinn fu¨r unser Volk wieder umsonst wa¨re; wir haben doch schon bestimmt 20 bitter arme und elende Jahre nach Versailles hinter uns” (December 14, 1942, Briefe i: 573) (it would also be sad if in a purely political sense it were in vain again for our people; certainly, we already have 20 bitterly poor and miserable years behind us after Versailles). At times, Bo¨ll even seems to be in agreement with certain aspects of Nazi ideology: “Ich sehne mich sehr nach dem Rhein, nach Deutschland, und doch denke ich oft an die Mo¨glichkeit eines kolonialen Daseins hier im Osten nach einem gewonnenen Krieg” (December 31, 1943, Briefe ii: 972) (I long very much for the Rhine, for Germany, and yet, I often think of the possibility of a colonial existence here in the East after a victorious war). With respect to the scandalous behavior of German soldiers in the East, Bo¨ll wonders whether the Germans possess the necessary discipline to be colonizers, but later on claims that his countrymen are too naı¨ve and easygoing (“gutmu¨tig”) for the job ( January 30, 1944, Briefe ii: 988). As these latter comments indicate, Bo¨ll’s statements frequently contradict each other to such a degree that the author’s stance is difficult to make out. On the one hand, Bo¨ll appears to endorse Nazi colonization politics as late

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as 1944; on the other hand, he expresses his distaste for a Goebbels speech in 1942 (December 24, 1942, Briefe i: 586) and his disgust with the incompetence of the Nazi military leadership (“das vollkommene Versagen und die Unsicherheit der ho¨heren Fu¨hrung,” June 24, 1944, Briefe ii: 1074; the complete failure and the uncertainty of the higher command) in 1944. Attempts to make sense of such contradictions are not aided by the fact that Bo¨ll’s letters are infused with irony.19 Clearly, the context of his writing makes it impossible to take all statements at face value. And yet, while there is great resistance to the war and the atrocities of the Holocaust, there appears to be a certain susceptibility of the young Bo¨ll to some facets of National Socialist thought. Perhaps it is this complicity, and his later awareness of it, that accounts for Bo¨ll’s sympathy for ordinary Germans as well as for his need to continually renegotiate the nature of German guilt and suffering. It is in the process of “Fortschreibung” that Bo¨ll found an arena for the questions left unasked in his letters. complicit victims Bo¨ll has often been described as a spokesperson for “little people.” His characters are frequently poor and inhabit the margins of society, and his protagonists tend to be portrayed as victims of overpowering historical forces. Bo¨ll, who went hungry himself and frequently did not know how to feed his growing family, found a language for the hunger and harrowing feelings of loss in the postwar period.20 But Bo¨ll’s works not only give voice to the hardships of civilian life, they also portray German soldiers as victims. In Bo¨ll’s first book-length publication, Der Zug war pu¨nktlich, Andreas, a common German soldier, is mistaken for a general and blown up by Polish resistance fighters. Andreas is a sacrificial lamb, so innocent (or subconsciously oppositional) that he forgets to bring his gun when he boards the train to the Eastern front.21 His blamelessness is further established by the comments of a Polish resistance fighter who absolves the average German soldier of guilt: “das ist furchtbar, daß alles so sinnlos ¨ berall werden nur Unschuldige ermordet. U ¨ berall. Auch von uns . . . ist. U Es gibt ja nur Opfer und Henker. Und als ich dich sah . . . da erst fiel mir ein, daß auch wir nur die Unschuldigen morden” (Der Zug, KA iv: 379–80) (it is horrible that everything is so meaningless. Everywhere one murders only innocent people. Everywhere. We as well . . . There are only victims and henchmen. And not until I saw you . . . did I realize that we

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too murder the innocent ones). It would seem that, in Der Zug, the little people of all nations are the victims of a group of oligarchs, who alone stand to gain from murder, corruption, and war. Der Zug creates a stark dichotomy between a world of victims, comprised of German soldiers and Polish resistance fighters, and a small and diffuse group of henchmen. Instead of developing the characters of these henchmen, the story refers to the unstoppable workings of destiny and displaces agency and responsibility onto some vaguely defined higher powers: “Alles Unglu¨ck kommt von diesen sonoren Stimmen; diese sonoren Stimmen haben den Krieg angefangen” (Der Zug, KA iv: 301) (Every misfortune stems from these sonorous voices; these sonorous voices started the war). But there is more to Der Zug war pu¨nktlich than this seemingly straightforward portrait of German innocence and victimization. Bo¨ll does not shy away from addressing questions of complicity nor is he blind to the average soldier’s passionate faith in the “Fu¨hrer.” Der Zug introduces the question of the little man’s guilt indirectly by interjecting the anonymous voices of Andreas’s comrades, who sing Nazi songs and parrot Nazi slogans – “praktisch haben wir den Krieg schon gewonnen . . . Als ob der Fu¨hrer einen Krieg verlieren ko¨nnte” (Der Zug, KA iv: 305) (we have practically already won the war . . . As if the Fu¨hrer could lose a war) – followed by Andreas’s prayers for them. Indeed, the image of the train itself and its inexorable progress eastward function as symbols of complicity. Repeatedly, Andreas considers getting off but cannot muster the strength to do so. Clearly, Bo¨ll’s texts do not simply reify victimization. Rather, Bo¨ll, as Durzak claims, “sieht den einzelnen . . . schuldhaft beteiligt an der Katastrophenverkettung, die sich im Krieg auswirkte”22 (believes that the individual shares in the guilt for the concatenation of catastrophes that unfolded during the war).23 To the casual reader, Bo¨ll’s 1948 story Das Verma¨chtnis also appears to reenact a basic dichotomy of honorable victim and despicable perpetrator. Das Verma¨chtnis narrates how the noble and courageous lieutenant von Schelling, who cares for his men and speaks out against corruption in the army, is shot point blank by captain Schnecker, a cowardly and immoral leader, who shows no regard for his inferiors and always manages to stay far away from actual frontline fighting.24 But again, there are clear indications that Bo¨ll avoids “die im nachhinein bequem zu habende Glorifizierung der schuldlosen Opfer und Stigmatisierung der ¨ belta¨ter”25 (the glorification of innocent victims and the stigmatization U of the perpetrators that is easy to come by after the fact) in favor of exploring questions of complicity.

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At the center of Das Verma¨chtnis is the narrator Wenk, a classical bystander, who despises Schnecker but does nothing to prevent his crimes. Stranded in the moral chaos of war, Wenk shifts from sudden glimpses of guilt about his participation in the Nazi campaigns – “das Schlimmste: den widerlichsten Feldzeichen der Nazis in den Garten Frankreichs vordringen helfen” (KA iv: 192) (the worst: to help the loathsome insignia of the Nazis advance into the garden of France) – to professions of the innate goodness of the average soldier – “Ach, ga¨be es nur Infanteristen, das ganze Geschrei Krieg oder Nichtkrieg wa¨re u¨berflu¨ssig. Es ga¨be keinen mehr” (KA iv: 201) (Oh, if only there were only infantry, the whole clamor about war or no war would be superfluous. There would be no more war).26 Obsessed with his own suffering (“es gibt wohl nichts Gra¨ßlicheres, als jede, jede Nacht aus dem tiefsten Schlaf gerissen zu werden,” KA iv: 194) (there is hardly anything more dreadful than to be woken abruptly from deepest slumber every, every night), Wenk remains oblivious to the genocidal horror of the war and of life in the camps. Because of Wenk’s disgust with Schnecker, one might be tempted to identify him as the moral center of the text. However, there are numerous hints that Wenk is anything but a reliable narrator. Emotionally paralyzed after the war, Wenk spends all his nights and waking hours in bed and proclaims that “jedes Narkotikum hat fu¨r mich einen unwiderstehlichen Reiz” (KA iv: 200) (to me, every narcotic possesses an irresistible allure). Wenk’s desire for numbness is rooted in his awareness that his commitment comes too late. In narrating Schelling’s story, Wenk undergoes a development from mute and inactive bystander to committed witness, who comes to understand his own complicity. Bo¨ll’s narrator is no moral paragon, but a bystander who realizes that he failed to live up to Schelling’s call to change his life: “Vergessen Sie nicht, daß sich jede Minute unser Leben a¨ndern kann” (KA iv: 218) (Do not forget that our life can change any minute). A call to mourn the past and to be true to one’s responsibility as a witness, Das Verma¨chtnis not only condemns Nazi cruelty but also draws attention to the failure to act when action was needed most. In sum, the complicity of the little man is of crucial importance in Bo¨ll’s work. If it is easily missed, it is because it lacks the satirical edge that characterizes similar portrayals by other writers such as Gu¨nter Grass. Bo¨ll’s empathy with the suffering of average Germans is front and center, while German complicity with the regime is portrayed through subtle allusions and ironic twists.27

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As analyses of both Der Zug and Verma¨chtnis show, Bo¨ll’s seemingly straightforward portrayals of German victimization are undermined by narrative strategies and complicated by the question of complicity. But even so, Bo¨ll’s complicit German victims, such as Andreas and Wenk, are fully developed characters while his Jewish victims are often represented in allegorical form. Der Zug, for example, does not include Jewish characters, but invokes the knowledge of genocide through the protagonist’s prayers for the Jews of Czernowitz and Lemberg, through metaphors such as the “lange[n] Leichenfinger der Scheinwerfer” (KA iv: 296) (long cadaverous fingers of the searchlights), and the names of towns and regions, “du¨stere Namen, die nach Progrom riechen” (KA iv: 311) (somber names that smell like pogroms). It appears that, although Bo¨ll is committed to the representation of the Holocaust, he struggles to find an aesthetic form adequate to the task. Moreover, the contemporary publishing world posed mundane obstacles that compounded this struggle. Der Zug war pu¨nktlich, for example, originally bore the title Zwischen Lemberg und Cernovitz, but Bo¨ll’s publishers insisted on changing it because it was too evocative of Jewish life in the East. The difficulties that adhere to Bo¨ll’s quest for a proper aesthetics find their most striking expression in his first novel, Kreuz ohne Liebe. Kreuz ohne Liebe features a concentration camp inmate named Joseph, who was targeted by the Nazis because he belonged to a Christian resistance group, but does not depict the murder of Jews. Like Der Zug and Das Verma¨chtnis, Kreuz ohne Liebe foregrounds the victimization of Christians whereas the only Jewish victim is represented in indirect form, as a character in a story told by an artist. But even though Kreuz ohne Liebe does not represent Jewish suffering, it does elucidate the difficulties inherent in doing so. The product of a thirty-year-old author, who was still trying to find his literary bearings, Kreuz ohne Liebe is an uneven text with a sentimental plot and a plethora of nature images run wild, but it also possesses moments of raw clarity and immediacy that pierce through the cliche´s and platitudes of Second World War writing. Bo¨ll’s discussion of the problematic inherent in an aesthetics of the Holocaust is contained in a diversion from the main plot. Set in ancient Rome, this story-within-the story revolves around Caius Decimus Moguntiacus, who makes money by selling busts of Roman emperors. When the new religion of Christ threatens to ruin his business, Caius quickly resolves to hawk depictions of the crucified Jew, and, in order to

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produce a true likeness, decides to crucify his Jewish slave Cantus. What is most striking about this narrative is that an artist’s representation of the suffering of a Jew is inseparable from the causation and exploitation of such suffering. Bo¨ll appears to suggest that those who are responsible for suffering do not possess the moral right to depict it. Since Caius’s representation is inextricably linked to the crime from which it originates, art itself has become a crime. Because Caius murders in imitation of the crucifixion, the sin against his Jewish slave is also a sin against Christ. We may assume that, to Bo¨ll, conflating the Jew Cantus with the true lamb of the Lord constitutes an attempt to reverse the dehumanization of the racial “Other” and thus denounce the sinfulness of Nazi racial policy. But such conflation is a double-edged sword. While it seeks to undo the Othering of Jews, it also transfixes Jews into a Christian paradigm and endows their suffering with a redemptive meaning. Such redemption is consistent with Bo¨ll’s belief, evident throughout Kreuz ohne Liebe, that pain has an ennobling effect.28 Again, the attempt to make sense of the suffering of war and even genocide is meant to stimulate healing and reconciliation on an individual religious level, but it carries troubling implications in its wake. The assumption that all suffering is meaningful not only threatens to diminish the experience of the victim, but is apt to transmute into a story that ends up blaming the victim: “es wird einem Menschen nie mehr aufgebu¨rdet, als er tragen kann; und wenn er zusammenbricht, dann ist irgendwo eine Schuld” (KA ii: 259–60) (a human being is never burdened with more than he can bear, and if he breaks down, then there is some guilt somewhere). As Kreuz ohne Liebe seeks to skirt the moral traps of Holocaust representations, it falls victim to the snares of its proposed solution. The dilemma that plagues Kreuz ohne Liebe reappears in Bo¨ll’s short story Todesursache Hakennase (Cause of Death: Hooked Nose), written in 1947 and first published in 1983. Todesursache Hakennase is exceptional in that it does not resort to indirection, but rather portrays the Holocaust most explicitly. The story revolves around a mass execution of Jews. When the Jew Grimschenko is about to be shot to death by German soldiers, his wife pleads with the German lieutenant Hegemu¨ller to help them. Hegemu¨ller runs to the site of the execution, finds Grimschenko, and takes him to the hospital, but it is too late: Grimschenko is already dead. Although Hegemu¨ller is opposed to the Nazi genocide, the question of complicity is of paramount importance: “er fu¨hlte, daß er nicht unschuldig war. Er wußte sich hineingedra¨ngt in ein steinernes Herz der

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Schuld” (KA iii: 146) (he sensed that he was not innocent. He knew he was forced into the stony heart of guilt). Like Kreuz ohne Liebe, Todesursache Hakennase brands the murder of Jews as a crime against the shared humanity of Jew and gentile. In killing Jews, the Germans not only commit atrocious crimes, they also kill their own souls. Again, such parallelization is meant to reverse the dehumanization of the victim, but it also represents Germans as victims of their own crimes: “daß er es war, der schoß, und er es war, der erschossen wurde . . . jeder dieser Schu¨sse traf den Leutnant Hegemu¨ller mitten ins Herz” (KA iii: 146) (that it was he who shot and he who was being shot . . . every one of these shots hit lieutenant Hegemu¨ller right in the heart). Moreover, in his attempt to emphasize the humanity of the victims, Bo¨ll again runs the risk of sacralizing their suffering. Repeatedly, he refers to the massacre as “Ernte” (harvest) and to the Jews who are about to be machine-gunned as the “Todgeweihten” (consecrated to die) thus transposing the brutal murder into a consecrated realm: their faces are auf eine ko¨stliche Weise hinausgehoben aus der Masse und hinaufgestellt in die Ho¨he der menschlichen Perso¨nlichkeit. Ein dunkles Schweigen lag u¨ber der Masse, etwas merkwu¨rdig Schwingendes, fast Flatterndes darin wie vom Wehen schwerer Fahnen, etwas unsagbar Feierliches, und – Hegemu¨ller spu¨rte es mit stockendem Herzen – etwas auf eine unheimliche Weise Tro¨stliches, Freude, und er fu¨hlte, wie diese Freude gleichsam auf ihn einstro¨mte, und in diesem Augenblick beneidete er die Todgeweihten und wurde sich mit Schrecken bewußt, daß er die gleiche Uniform trug wie die Mo¨rder. (KA i i i : 148) (standing out from the crowd in a delicious way and elevated to the height of human personality. A dark silence lay over the crowd, something strangely vibrating, almost fluttering like the waving of heavy flags, something unspeakably solemn and – Hegemu¨ller sensed it, his heart standing still – something comforting in an uncanny way, joy, and he felt how this joy streamed into him so to speak and in this moment he envied those consecrated to die and he realized with horror that he wore the same uniform as the murderers.)

In Todesursache Hakennase, victimization is tantamount to moral superiority. Bo¨ll’s story hints at a teleology that endows suffering with meaning even though the narrative perspective is aligned with the perpetrators. And yet, just like Der Zug and Das Verma¨chtnis, Bo¨ll’s short story also appears to undermine its purported agenda. Although Todesursache Hakennase toys with the idea of redemption, it refuses to offer it. In the end, Grimschemko dies, and Hegemu¨ller’s moment of bliss, inspired by his courageous action, turns into the laughter of madness.

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Like Todesursache Hakennase, Wo warst du, Adam (Where Were You, Adam, 1951) does not resort to allegory but represents the Holocaust in explicit form. Repeatedly, the narrative refers to the constantly smoking chimneys in the concentration camp that Filskeit commands and mentions the large number of Jewish victims. But it also evinces more problematic similarities with its predecessors. Like Todesursache, Wo warst du, Adam toys with the idea of redemption, and like Kreuz ohne Liebe, it transfixes its Jewish victim into a Christian paradigm. The Jewess Ilona, the protagonist in one of several narrative strains, is portrayed as a devout Christian, and her death, which occurs while she is singing a litany, can be interpreted as redemption.29 Like Todesursache, which suggests that Germans are victims of their own crimes, Wo warst du, Adam also conflates different forms of victimization. The story parallelizes two vans: one takes Jews to the concentration camp, the other takes soldiers to the front.30 Similarly, Bo¨ll’s novel Haus ohne Hu¨ter (House without Guardians, 1954) equalizes different kinds of victimization. The text focuses its narrative energy on the families of German soldiers, but contains refrain-like references to Absalom Billig, the first Jew to be killed in the protagonist’s hometown, and to Bamberger, the owner of a noodle factory, who died in a gas chamber. At times, German and Jewish victims are subsumed in the same list: “Heinrich, zusammengeschmort zwischen Saporoshe und Dnjepropetrowsk . . . Bamberger: zusammengeschrumpft im Verbrennungsofen” (KW ii: 282) (Heinrich, burnt between Saporoshe and Dnjepropetrowsk . . . Bamberger: shrunk in the incinerator).31 By setting the dead soldier Heinrich alongside the Jewish victim of the Holocaust, Bo¨ll appears to suggest the equality of all victims irrespective of their position in the Nazi empire.32 The equalization of different kinds of victims is further reinforced by the fact that Bo¨ll’s soldiers suffer not at the hands of the enemy, but are mistreated by their own superiors. Several of Bo¨ll’s texts revolve around the cruelty of German officers, who brutalize and even murder those entrusted to their care. Der Zug, for example, portrays an officer who sodomizes the soldiers of his unit and murders the only one courageous enough to offer resistance. In Haus ohne Hu¨ter, a poet is sent to his death by a superior who forced him on a mission he knew would result in his demise. Like the symbolism of the crucifixion in Kreuz ohne Liebe, this strategy is a double-edged sword. Bo¨ll refuses to vilify the enemy and instead locates cruelty in the homeland. But an emphasis on the German victims of the Nazis also allows for a reinterpretation of the war and

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Holocaust such as the one exemplified in Andreas Hillgruber’s thesis of “zweierlei Untergang” (two kinds of downfall), according to which Hitler is responsible for two kinds of genocide: that of the European Jewry and that of the German Volk. In interviews and essays, Bo¨ll repeatedly refused to engage in a discourse that compared different kinds of victims – he referred to it as “fu¨rchterliche Rivalita¨t” (terrible competition) – and proclaimed: “Ich halte nicht viel davon, auf diese Art Konten ausgleichen zu wollen” (“Die himmlische Bitterkeit,” KA xviii: 267) (I don’t believe in settling accounts in this way). And yet, even though Bo¨ll rejected the very concept of comparisons, his early works, in particular, Kreuz ohne Liebe, are obsessed with the desire to account for the differences between different groups of victims and between victims and perpetrators. In Kreuz ohne Liebe, for example, the German soldier Christoph feels victimized by the military, but he also knows that there are worse fates: “Mein Gott, wie hatte er nur vergessen ko¨nnen, daß er noch unendlich reich war; daß seine Gefangenschaft noch eine ertra¨gliche war unter den vielen Mo¨glichkeiten der Gefangenschaft” (KA ii: 305) (My God, how could he have forgotten that he was still infinitely rich; that his captivity was still tolerable compared with the many possibilities of captivity). Christoph acknowledges that inmates of Nazi concentration camps and the peoples conquered by the Nazis are worse off than he. Interestingly, the only claim to the contrary, Christoph’s declaration that there is a hierarchy of suffering and that the Germans are at the top because they have been victimized by both the Nazis and Allied bombing – “Glaubst du denn, diese Leute, die uns mit Gummisohlen und Bu¨chsenfleisch besiegen werden, wu¨rden jemals begreifen, was wir gelitten haben” (KA ii: 408) (Do you believe that these people who will defeat us with rubber soles and canned meat will ever understand what we have suffered) – is rejected by the novel as a moment of weakness, as “dunkle[n] Worte der Verzweiflung” (KA ii: 410) (dark words of despair). intimate strangers Bo¨ll’s commitment to the victims finds its clearest expression not in the representation of the Holocaust, but in his exploration of the different dimensions of complicity. In addition, the same commitment also calls forth his attempts to understand the motivations and genesis of the perpetrators. Typically, the Nazis in Bo¨ll’s works are strange and intimate at the same time. Since we experience Bo¨ll’s stories through the eyes of

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narrators and protagonists who are invariably opposed to the Nazi regime, though they rarely act on their convictions, the Nazis in his work tend to be relegated to the category of “the Other.” And yet, even though Nazis are “the Other,” they are also painfully intimate. In several of Bo¨ll’s works, the Nazis are quite literally the protagonists’ brothers. In Kreuz ohne Liebe, which narrates the story of the Brachem family, Hans Brachem is a committed Nazi official, who recognizes the error of his ways just in time to save the life of an unknown soldier, who turns out to be his brother Christoph. Christoph, an opponent of the Nazis, was about to be executed for stealing food from the military and sharing it with a Russian family. Christoph survives the war, but Hans’s one good deed leads to his execution. In the epilogue, Christoph is reunited with his friend Joseph, a concentration camp survivor, who was arrested in a raid conducted by Hans.33 Although the novel focuses on a Nazi who grows to hate National Socialism, it does not portray the Nazis as a small minority but rather insists that Hitler’s supporters, the “unbegrabenen Leichen” (KA ii: 165) (unburied corpses), are everywhere. The novel openly professes what few dared to admit in 1947: the widespread knowledge of and willed blindness to the existence of the camps, “jenen Scha¨delsta¨tten der Macht, von denen jeder wußte, ohne es sich einzugestehen” (KA ii: 304) (those Golgothas of power, everybody knew about them without admitting it to themselves). Kreuz ohne Liebe portrays Nazis as brothers and strangers. Similarly, their crimes spring from both a mysterious source of metaphysical evil and concrete social and psychological factors. On the one hand, Kreuz ohne Liebe is deeply beholden to transcendental systems of meaning. In Bo¨ll’s first novel, Hitler is the devil incarnate, “Satan selbst zum Staatsoberhaupt” (KA ii: 241) (Satan himself as head of state), the “go¨ttliche Bestie” (KA ii: 233) (divine beast), National Socialism is a demonic force, a “finstere[s] Komplott der Da¨monen” (KA ii: 371) (dark scheme of demons), and all human suffering finds its cause and reason in God: “ein Krieg ist eben nichts als eine millionenfache Kreuzigung” (KA ii: 157) (a war is nothing but millions of crucifixions). The novel portrays the coming to power of the Nazis as the “sanfte Flattern eines apokalyptischen Vogels” (KA ii: 163) (soft fluttering of an apocalyptic bird), thus leaving little room for individual political agency. The Nazis, represented as an ominous and shadowy power source, are the controlling force, while Hans is but an instrument, “ohne seinen Willen getrieben von diesem irrsinnigen Uhrwerk” (KA ii: 173) (driven without his will by this crazy clockwork). Consequently, the only source of salvation lies in divine

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intervention: “es schien, als ko¨nne Hans Bachem nichts mehr retten als ein heißer Strahl der Gnade” (KA ii: 182) (it seemed as though nothing could save Hans Bachem but a hot ray of mercy). And yet, in spite of its fascination with the metaphysical Otherness of Nazis, the novel also explores the socio- and psychological appeal of Nazi ideology. Thus, Hans’s arrogance, his craving for power, and misguided idealism coexist with the presupposition that metaphysical evil holds Hans in its grip. Moreover, Bo¨ll’s interest in the social and psychological conditions that contributed to the rise of Nazism is even more pronounced in later works. Wo warst du, Adam, for example, does not portray the concentration camp commander Filskeit as inexplicably different. Instead of relegating the character to a realm of metaphysical Otherness, Bo¨ll’s narrative of Filskeit’s life before the camp and his general character seeks to explain why he might be attracted to National-Socialist ideology.34 It has often been pointed out that in Gu¨nter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) the Nazis are petit bourgeois, a class that Bo¨ll tends to idealize,35 whereas in Bo¨ll’s work they are members of a small elite.36 But it is equally true that in Die Blechtrommel, the Nazis are small-fry vandals whereas in some of Bo¨ll’s texts they are brutal killers. It is easy to dismiss Kreuz ohne Liebe as the well-intentioned but naı¨ve product of a young and inexperienced author. And yet, although Bo¨ll’s first novel may be more interested in the metaphysics than politics of Nazism, it does not minimize the atrocities for which the Nazis are responsible. Several of Bo¨ll’s early texts insist on the magnitude of Nazi crimes even if they ponder the possibility of forgiveness.37 In contrast, those texts by Bo¨ll that insist on the complicity of the petit bourgeoisie tend to limit themselves to indirect and allegorical portrayals of the Holocaust. Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady, 1971) is a case in point. The novel’s victim–victimizer hybrids – the war profiteer Gruyten, the opportunist Pelzer – resemble Grass’s hapless Nazis, while the Holocaust is relegated to a distant elsewhere: of the two Jews portrayed in the novel, one survives the war, the other is a converted Christian nun who starves to death. While the representations of Nazis in Bo¨ll’s early works oscillate between metaphysical Otherness and sociopolitical conditioning, he never wavers in his accusations of an unbroken continuity of Nazi thought and structures from the Third Reich to postwar society. To Bo¨ll, the Germany of the economic miracle is a society dominated by fear, greed, and unacknowledged guilt: “Es laufen zu viele Mo¨rder frei und frech in diesem Lande umher, viele, denen man nie einen Mord wird nachweisen ko¨nnen. Schuld, Reue, Buße, Einsicht sind nicht zu gesellschaftlichen

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Kategorien geworden, erst recht nicht zu politischen” (“Frankfurter Vorlesungen,” KA xiv: 139)38 (Too many murderers are running around in this country freely and impertinently, many whose murder one will never be able to prove. Guilt, remorse, penance, insight have not become societal categories, certainly not political ones). The failure to confront the past constitutes an ineradicable flaw in the foundation of the new republic, a second guilt – Ralph Giordano’s “zweite Schuld” – that is aggravated by the fact that the Germans engage in it voluntarily without being threatened by a murderous regime.39 Even in Bo¨ll’s earliest texts, postwar Germany is a society in which old Nazis are thriving. Tellingly, in Das Verma¨chtnis, the former Nazi Schnecker, who brutally murdered another officer, builds a highly successful career after the war. Schnecker, who is portrayed not as a monster but as an average man, feels not the slightest degree of remorse for his actions. The predominance of Nazis in powerful positions in West German society, apparent in his earliest texts, was to remain a prevalent theme throughout Bo¨ll’s life.40 In Haus ohne Hu¨ter, Schurbiger, who wrote his dissertation about the representation of Hitler in modern poetry, becomes a much sought-after critic in the postwar culture industry and a popular speaker at church functions. His colleague Ga¨seler, who is responsible for the death of the poet Rai, makes a living as a writer for a Catholic journal. In Billiard um halb zehn, the “buffalo” Nettlinger, who tortured the “lamb” Schrella, is a successful functionary of the new democracy. In Bo¨ll’s last novel, Frauen vor Flußlandschaft (Women in a River Landscape, 1985), a significant segment of the political elite of West Germany consists of war criminals. Minister Blaukra¨mer, for example, ordered the brutal execution of concentration camp inmates when American soldiers closed in on the camp. When he learns that there is incriminating evidence against him, he replies with great calm: “Du wirst alt und begreifst nicht, daß das heute niemandem mehr schaden kann” (134) (You are getting old and don’t understand that this can no longer hurt anybody nowadays). Similarly, Plietsch, one of the most powerful men in the new republic, is little troubled by the fact that he ordered the execution of German men and children when the Russians advanced. conclusion Bo¨ll’s texts do not present a consistent ideology. Rather, they embrace and even court contradictions. Bo¨ll insists that complicity, innocence, and guilt are complex categories that resist easy binaries – “Verso¨hnung?

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Mit Schuldigen, Unschuldigen, Ahnungslosen? Keins dieser Worte tra¨fe zu” (“Wir Deutsche,” KW xiv: 62) (Reconciliation? With guilty, innocent, clueless people? Not one of these words applies here).41 Consequently, he portrays both German civilians and soldiers as victims of the war, but his accounts of victimization are undermined by narrative strategies and complicated by questions of complicity and guilt. His representations of Jewish victims, on the other hand, are more problematic. Bo¨ll’s first novel Kreuz ohne Liebe does not attempt to represent Jewish victims, but contains a striking reflection on the dilemmas inherent in the task. In several texts, Bo¨ll conflates Jewish and Christian victimization. This conflation is meant to reverse the dehumanization of the racial “Other,” but it also transfixes Jews into a Christian paradigm and runs the risk of endowing their suffering with a redemptive meaning. In his essay “Versuch u¨ber die Vernunft der Poesie” (Essay on the Rationality of Poetry), Bo¨ll spoke of art as a “Versteck fu¨r den Widerhaken, der den plo¨tzlichen Ruck oder die plo¨tzliche Erkenntnis bringt” (KA xviii: 216) (hiding place for the barbed hook that brings a sudden jolt or sudden insight). To be sure, Bo¨ll’s works contain many such “Widerhaken.” Throughout, Bo¨ll sugar-coats the pill of complicity in sweet empathy, but it is difficult to imagine that readers could swallow it without ingesting it at all.

chapter 10

War and accountability: Grass

While Heinrich Bo¨ll’s stories depict facets of the everyday lives of soldiers, Gu¨nter Grass’s texts are predominantly interested in the home front. Grass embarks on an exploration of the origin and consequences of violent conflicts. Unlike Bo¨ll, who showed great sympathy for the plight of ordinary Germans, Grass shies away from the theme of German suffering and focuses his attention instead on Germany’s burden of guilt for the crimes of war and genocide. This reluctance to portray the experience of German refugees, bombing victims, or soldiers may be due to the fact that Grass, even more so than Bo¨ll, is acutely aware of the dangers inherent in narratives of victimization. His first novel and postwar masterpiece, Die Blechtrommel (1959), is not only a powerful call for personal accountability, but also expresses a critique of what might be described as a German propensity for self-victimization through playful irony and biting satire.1 Since Grass had long been identified with German Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung and its insistence on remembrance and accountability, his novella Im Krebsgang (Crab Walk, 2002) instigated a heated public debate.2 Numerous critics felt that the poet laureate had revised his previous leftist political stance. To Gu¨nter Franzen, for example, a critic for Die Zeit, the fact that Grass of all people chose to present a literary account of German victimization and thus to tackle a topic that is commonly identified with the right end of the political spectrum was “eine ¨ berraschung . . . die an ein Wunder grenzt”3 (a surprise . . . bordering U on a miracle). And yet, as I will show, the assumption that Grass changed his politics is as wrong as the notion that German suffering was a taboo topic throughout the postwar period. Grass’s Im Krebsgang is as critical of its narrator’s claim to the status of victim as was Die Blechtrommel. The difference between the two texts is one of style and emphasis, not of ideology. While Die Blechtrommel lambastes a narrator who promotes and cherishes his self-fashioned victim status, 133

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Im Krebsgang shows a narrator who is engaged in a prolonged struggle to overcome his victim status and reflects self-critically on the dangers inherent in narratives of victimization. Most importantly, both texts point to a crucial connection between a propensity toward violence and the inability to create biologically and artistically. Thus, Grass connects the theme of warfare not only with that of accountability but also with creation. ‘the tin drum’ Awareness of an “ererbter, nicht zu lo¨schender Schuld” (Essays III 63) (inherited guilt that cannot be extinguished), a guilt that “unser Volk wissend und unwissend angeha¨uft hatte” (Essays I 183) (our people have accumulated knowingly and unknowingly) has been a major influence on Grass’s oeuvre. In his comments on Die Blechtrommel, he repeatedly mentioned the motor of guilt that powers the narrators of the Danzig trilogy: “Alle drei Ich-Erza¨hler in allen drei Bu¨chern schreiben aus Schuld heraus: aus verdra¨ngter Schuld, aus ironisierter Schuld, im Fall Matern, aus pathetischem Schuldverlangen”4 (All three first-person narrators in all three books write out of a sense of guilt: repressed guilt, ironic guilt, in Matern’s case out of a pathetic desire for guilt). Tellingly, the very first word of Die Blechtrommel raises the subject of culpability. Oskar Matzerath, the protagonist of Grass’s maiden voyage, begins his narration with the adverb “zugegeben” (admittedly), thus suggesting some previous fault or crime that he then proceeds to deny. On the first page, we also learn that Oskar, whose name echoes “oskarzac,” the Polish word for “accuse,”5 is potentially insane, but not insane enough not to avail himself of the services of a lawyer. The lawyer is sorely needed since Oskar, a notoriously unreliable narrator,6 confesses to multiple murders, including matricide and patricide. But Die Blechtrommel is no detective story that seeks to locate and catch perpetrators. Rather, like Oskar himself, the novel uses its inflated discussion of guilt to complicate and problematize the categories of victim and perpetrator, of passivity and agency. Paradoxically, Oskar’s victimization is, at least in part, the result of his own agency, whereas his guilt results largely from the failure to act. Throughout the novel, Oskar oscillates between victim and perpetrator,7 a fact that also finds expression in the narrative structure. Alternating between first and third person singular, the novel casts Oskar as both the subject and object of his story. As a child, Oskar is abused and

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maltreated by the children in the neighborhood. As an adolescent, he is persecuted by the Sta¨uber gang, a group of delinquent young men. As a physically deformed individual, he is also a potential victim of Nazi eugenics. Hence, it is hardly surprising that Oskar, frequently victimized himself, would associate with other victims of the Nazi regime. He befriends the Jewish toy merchant Marcus, who commits suicide during Reichskristallnacht, and proclaims solidarity with his cousin Stephan, who is beaten up by his classmates because he is Polish. In many ways, Oskar is among those who are particularly vulnerable to Nazi violence. At the same time, however, Oskar also works to further the Nazi cause. Several critics have pointed out that Oskar’s piercing blue eyes and his desire to become an artist along with his aversion to bourgeois professions are reminiscent of the Fu¨hrer.8 Significantly, Oskar’s activity as a drummer evokes an epithet frequently bestowed on the young Adolf Hitler, the drummer for the Nazi cause. Oskar, like Hitler, employs his talents in the service of the Nazi Party. As an employee of the Reich propaganda unit, Oskar travels to Paris and the Atlantic Coast, where he entertains dispirited soldiers. Finally, after the war, Oskar’s performances in a jazz club with the telling name “Zwiebelkeller” (onion cellar) provide an emotional outlet for feelings of shame and guilt. In encouraging mass infantilization rather than reflection and remembrance, Oskar’s drumming prevents true mourning or remorse. Oskar’s victimization, though initially inflicted on him from the outside, is increasingly self-imposed. Repeatedly, Oskar, who stopped growing on his third birthday, hides behind the face of a three-year-old. At first, Oskar’s infancy offers an easy explanation for his lack of moral and legal accountability. In the course of the narrative, however, it becomes evident that Oskar dons and sheds his mask of immaturity at will. During the attack on the Polish post office, for example, Oskar abandons his “Verkleidung” (310) (disguise) and exhibits the behavior of a fifteen-year-old, his real age. The reason for this sudden truthfulness lies in the fact that the only persons present, Jan Bronski and Kobyella, are bound to die and thus “spa¨ter in keinem Fall mehr als Zeugen in Frage kamen” (310) (will not be available as witnesses later on). Clearly, Oskar’s guilt consists in his voluntary withdrawal from responsibility.9 Whenever it serves his purpose, Oskar hides behind a fac¸ade of “Unwissenheit . . . die damals in Mode kam” (320) (ignorance . . . that became fashionable at the time). Oskar is guilty not because he acts, but because he fails to act when action is required. The culminating event in this respect occurs during Oskar’s visit to the

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Atlantic Coast. Grass relies on a surreal image, the execution of nuns on the beach by private Lankes, to convey Oskar’s problematic moral stance. Rather than interfere on behalf of the victims, Oskar continues his breakfast to the sound of Lankes’s machine gun fire. It is his silence that renders him guilty. As Grass claims, “es gibt keine innere Emigration, auch zwischen 1933 und 1945 hat es keine gegeben. Wer schweigt, wird schuldig” (Essays I 42) (there is no inner emigration, there wasn’t one between 1933 and 1945 either. Whoever remains silent, incurs guilt). Initially, Oskar’s refusal to grow seems harmless enough. As the child gets older, however, such early protest loses its innocence and turns into a failure to act responsibly. Grass characterized this behavior in a speech ¨ ber Erwachsene und Verwachsene” (Speech to entitled “Jungbu¨rgerrede: U Young Citizens: On Adults and Deformed Adults): Es ist die kindliche Ohnmachtsbezeugung, die infantile Geste, mit der Erwachsene sta¨ndig Schuld und Verantwortung außerhalb ihres eigenen Bereiches vermuten und mystifizieren: Die Gesellschaft ist schuld, die Verha¨ltnisse sind schuld. Mit anderen Worten: Die Erwachsenen flu¨chten sich oft in die Schutzbereiche kindlicher Verantwortungslosigkeit. (Essays II 22) (It is the childish demonstration of powerlessness, the infantile gesture with which adults constantly mystify guilt and responsibility assuming them to be outside their own realm: society is at fault, the conditions are at fault. In other words: adults take refuge in the protective realm of childish irresponsibility.)

The same “selbstvergessene Verlorenheit . . . an sein Instrument” (Essays II 326) (state of obliviousness to everything but one’s instrument) that is charming in a child is problematic in a grown-up. Oskar is both a victim and a perpetrator, but most of all he is the quintessential bystander, concerned only with his own wellbeing and consumed by the desire to stay out of trouble: “Meiner Natur entsprechend hielt Oskar sich wa¨hrend der Aktionen im Hintergrund” (489) (According to my nature Oskar remained in the background during these actions). The novel paints an image of Oskar that must seem enviable to every contemporary of the Third Reich. While Oskar insists that his mental capacities were fully developed at the moment of his birth, he also lays claim to the social power and moral consciousness of a child. Thus, Oskar is in the comfortable position of always already having understood the goings-on of the Third Reich and yet being powerless to do anything about it.10 After the war, Oskar’s shrinking from responsibility finds its complement in the conspicuous absence of remorse. Instead of attempting to understand the past, Oskar is obsessed with fantasies about doctors (“Chefa¨rzte”) because they are seen as welcoming the responsibilities that he himself

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cannot shoulder; and he longs for nurses, who – as Klaus Theweleit’s Ma¨nnerphantasien demonstrates convincingly – function as ciphers of an innocence that must forever elude him.11 It is significant that Die Blechtrommel never gives the reason for Oskar’s lack of growth but rather presents us with conflicting accounts. Whereas Oskar claims that his malformation is the result of a conscious decision on his part, everybody else believes it to be the unhappy consequence of a fall. After the war, Oskar grows an additional twenty-some centimeters and in doing so acquires a hunchback. It is again uncertain whether this sudden growth results from a conscious act of willpower on his part or was caused by a head injury inflicted by his relative Kurt. Because of this ambiguity, Oskar appears simultaneously deformed, responsible for his deformation, and victimized because of it. The temptation to read Oskar’s physical predicament as a symbol of Germany’s moral condition is great.12 Patrick O’Neill, for example, points out that Oskar’s personal experiences tend to coincide with events of national importance.13 However, in focusing on the analogy between Oskar’s personal and Germany’s national situation, one is liable to overlook the narrative ambiguity that contains a message of its own. Oskar’s physical deformation may signify a state of national infantility, but his conflicting stories, his lies and obfuscation point to a much larger problem. If Oskar exemplifies the moral character of postwar Germany,14 it is not only because he is immature but because he has a very confused understanding of what constitutes maturity and accountability in the first place. Interestingly, Grass links the question of moral responsibility with that of fatherhood. In Die Blechtrommel, no one quite knows who his progenitor really is. In Oskar’s case, there are two father candidates: Alfred Matzerath, his mother’s husband, and Jan Bronski, his mother’s lover. The paternity of Maria’s son Kurt is also unclear. Oskar is convinced that he is Kurt’s father, while Maria claims that Kurt is the descendant of Alfred Matzerath, Oskar’s father. This confusion about questions of creation is all the more significant since it points to a much larger confusion about questions of accountability. Tellingly, it is Oskar’s penis that signs for Oskar: “der weder lesen noch schreiben konnte, der dennoch fu¨r mich unterschrieb” (364) (that knew neither how to read nor write, that signed for me all the same). In Die Blechtrommel, questions of authorship, creation, and responsibility are as inextricably intertwined as they are confused. Moreover, Grass also suggests that the confusion regarding the most basic questions of origin, of cause and effect, may be as much the result of accidental circumstances as of conscious choice. In the petit bourgeois milieu of Die Blechtrommel,

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where the preferred method of birth control is coitus interruptus, male characters do not underwrite their actions. But where the originator of an action, the father of the child, cannot be determined, responsibility cannot be properly attributed to any party. Consequently, wild accusations abound throughout the novel. Agnes calls Matzerath a murderer because he opened the trap door to the basement and thus prepared the ground for Oskar’s fateful fall (74). Questions of intent or the fact that Matzerath can hardly be blamed for murder since Oskar is still alive do not enter this calculation. Similarly, both Oskar and Alfred are being blamed for Agnes’s death, Oskar because of his drumming, which drove his mother to distraction, and Alfred for no particular reason at all. When Matzerath tries to hide his Nazi Party badge by swallowing it, starts to choke, and is shot by a startled Russian soldier, Oskar is accused of murdering his father because he had given him the badge. When Jan Bronski is shot in the Polish post office, where Oskar had taken him to have his drum repaired, this death is also laid at Oskar’s door. Last but not least, Oskar is accused of having killed Sister Dorothea, his roommate in Du¨sseldorf. In Oskar’s petit bourgeois world, the proliferation of meaningless accusations results in the total obfuscation of concepts of guilt and accountability.15 Because they shrink from creating or originating anything, Grass’s characters cannot even begin to understand responsibility. In speaking about Die Blechtrommel, Grass claimed that Oskar emphasizes misdemeanors and faults in one context so as to hide his real guilt in another.16 Indeed, accusations of patricide abound while Oskar’s actual guilt, that of the bystander who bears witness but fails to act and that of an adult who hides behind the mask of a three-year-old, remains unmentioned. Thus, it is only consistent that, in postwar Du¨sseldorf, Germans flock to the “Zwiebelkeller” in order to induce tears artificially with the help of onions: “Machen wir es jetzt ab, dann mu¨ssen wir spa¨ter kein schlechtes Gewissen haben” (570) (Let’s be done with it now so we don’t have to have a bad conscience later). Without a sense of responsibility, there can be no awareness of guilt and certainly no remorse. Confused notions of accountability and failed creativity characterize all small-time Nazis in Die Blechtrommel. Grass does not demonize the Nazi characters, as Hans Magnus Enzensberger has pointed out, but portrays them in their true aura of “Mief ” (stale air).17 Their portrayal evokes what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil.18 Grass’s Nazis are not stern ideologues, but opportunistic bystanders (Mitla¨ufer). They tolerate injustice and violence, but they rarely initiate it. Often they both benefit from

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and are victimized by the National Socialist system. Alfred Matzerath, for example, feels no qualms warming his fingers on the flames of the burning Danzig synagogue during Reichskristallnacht, but balks at the idea of surrendering Oskar to the euthanasia program. Alfred’s willingness to accept Oskar as his son, although he knows very well that his wife conducted an affair with her cousin, speaks to his softness and compassion in the private arena, but also to his indifference to questions of cause and effect, to the link between actions and their consequences. But where actions are divorced from their consequences, the concept of responsibility is meaningless. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Alfred’s death is portrayed as a mishap rather than a punishment. Although his affiliation with the Nazi Party is implicated in his demise – he is shot while choking on his party badge – it is brought about by the accidental impulse to cough. Throughout his life, Alfred acts the part of the victim, weak, cuckolded, and put upon. Paradoxically, it is precisely his inability to conceive of himself as an agent that leads to his participation in a murderous regime. While Alfred remains confined to the lowest ranks of the Nazi Party, the musician and former communist Meyn seeks to elevate his social prestige through his affiliation with the SA. Like Alfred, Meyn is portrayed as both a victim and a perpetrator. An alcoholic and outcast from the community, Meyn craves recognition. Unlike Alfred, however, who facilitates crimes through passivity, Meyn is an active perpetrator who is capable of open violence and clandestine betrayal. But Meyn is also a failed artist, and it may very well be his talent as a musician that makes it impossible for him to find a place in bourgeois society. Whereas Alfred fails to create in the biological sense, Meyn is hampered in his artistic creativity. In Die Blechtrommel, it is the petit bourgeoisie that is particularly vulnerable to National Socialism.19 Several critics have criticized Grass’s focus on the lower ranks of the Nazi organization.20 Grass’s Nazis are victims because they are weak or marginalized, and perpetrators because they fail to prevent Nazi crimes or because they harm those who are even more defenseless than they. It is their inability to conceive of themselves as subjects of history and their failure to create both biologically and artistically that takes them down the path toward violence and crime. In the world of Die Blechtrommel, human players define themselves as objects, not subjects, of history: They become “gleich nach der Scho¨pfung Gescho¨pfe ihrer eigenen epochemachenden Erfindungen” (80) (they become the objects of their own path-breaking inventions immediately

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after their creation). Conversely, inanimate objects display initiative and act on their bourgeois owners.21 But where objects run amok, the world erupts in the violence of war.22 Tanks frolic and cavort like colts, and grenades indulge in a giant joke, leaving carnage in their wake. The petit bourgeois characters of Grass’s novel stand aside from the arena of politics, but whenever they get close, they are crushed by it. To them, history is war – “die Schlacht, die schon dagewesen, die immer wieder kommt” (30) (the battle that always was and that will always return) – and, unless they die in it, history has nothing to do with them. It is because the petit bourgeois chooses to absent himself from the realm of history and politics that he fails to prevent a course of events that leads to his victimization and ultimately his death. In Die Blechtrommel, violence flows from the bourgeois inability to differentiate between creation and destruction. In the infamous episode that revolves around eel fishing, the eel is both a phallus symbol that stands for creation and impregnation and the incarnation of destruction, a bottom feeder fattened by the consumption of human corpses.23 We eat eels and eels eat us. Sexuality and life are but preludes to death and destruction, and “das To¨ten die Fortsetzung der Sexualita¨t mit anderen Mitteln” (Essays II 445) (killing is the continuation of sexuality by other means). Critics have pointed out that Blechtrommel juxtaposes victories on the front and in bed without a moment’s pause.24 To Oskar, sexuality is war, and Lina Greff ’s bed is the military terrain where he conducts his drills. Similarly, when Matzerath impregnates Maria, radio messages announce the bombardment of enemy ships by German U-boats. In the inverted world of the Second World War, wombs are coffins, coffins are wombs, and concrete pill-boxes represent the highest form of art.25 Peace treaties are the precursors of future wars (47), and the sinking of a ship begins with its maiden voyage (40). When Oskar first beholds Maria naked, her “behaarte[s] Dreieck” (349) (hairy triangle) forever contaminates him with the “Geschmack der Verga¨nglichkeit” (349) (taste of transitoriness). To Oskar, to be born is to be infected with death. But where there is no more difference between creation and destruction, moral categories no longer apply. In Grass’s novel, moral indifference spawns violence, and violence carries moral apathy in its wake. In his speeches and articles, Grass has repeatedly attacked the German tendency to attribute to fate what should properly belong to the realm of human agency: “Nicht das Schicksal spielte uns u¨bel mit, wir spielten uns u¨bel mit” (Essays I 207) (It was not destiny that treated us cruelly, we treated ourselves cruelly). In Die Blechtrommel, the narrative oscillates

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between straightforward reproduction and scathing criticism of the political self-castration of the petit bourgeois. Sarcastic depictions of the stifling bourgeois milieu of Langenfuhr alternate with passages that are inspired by empathy with the little men, the wearers of uniforms that “so bemessen sind, daß der zuletzt geza¨hlte Knopf immer Verdun . . . meint” (46) (are tailored in such a way that the last button always signifies Verdun). But Die Blechtrommel speaks to more than the interrelation between the bourgeoisie, politics, and violence. Grass also draws our attention to an interesting gender dynamic that informs the petit bourgeois discourse on violence. In Die Blechtrommel, almost all acts of violence are initiated by men, but the metaphors and images associated with violence are female. Thus, a tank is introduced as a “Jungfrau aus dem Geschlecht der Krupp” (300) (virgin from the house of Krupp), armored cars are likened to “zwei junge bildungsbeflissene Damen” (300) (two young ladies who are eager for knowledge), and the Atlantic pill-box that Oskar visits bears the name Dora Seven. One of the most striking examples of the feminization of violence is Niobe. Niobe, a wooden statue exhibited in a Danzig museum, is considered to be the originator of misery and violence. Readers learn that the decision to decline the gift of Niobe is the only reason why the city of Lu¨beck survived the carpet bombing of the Second World War. But while Niobe the myth is blamed for every imaginable mishap, both Niobe the woman and Niobe the wooden statue are exposed to real violence and disfigurement. The historical person after whom Niobe is modeled was burnt as a witch. The statue of Niobe is defaced by Oskar’s friend Herbert, who was appointed to be her guardian. With Oskar’s help, Herbert drives nails into her knees, but is ultimately impaled during an attempt to rape the wooden figure with an axe. The Niobe episode lambastes the gender reversal that substitutes a demonized female Other for real violence against women, but it is also a parody of the demonization of historical forces that informed National Socialist thinking and politics. To Grass, demonization and mythification are watchwords that describe the attempt to attribute power and agency to some supernatural entity in order to obfuscate human violence and responsibility. According to Grass, the end result of a politics built on mythification is Auschwitz (Essays III 19).26 In the mythological worldview, humans appear subjected to an eternal cycle of violence imposed on them by higher forces. It is not accidental that Blechtrommel begins with the image of the continually rotating skirts of Oskar’s grandmother and ends with that of a perpetually revolving escalator. So long as humans continue to conceive of themselves as the

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objects of a predetermined cycle of violence and destruction, they will never dare to effect true changes. All this is expressed powerfully in the image of the Black Cook that concludes the book. A symbol of guilt – “du bist schuld und du bist schuld und du am allermeisten” (778) (you are guilty and you are guilty and you most of all) – the Black Cook embodies the obliteration of personal agency in the face of a demonized female force of destiny who is ultimately nothing but a bogeyman for little kids.27 In concluding his story with the Black Cook, Oskar demonstrates that, though he has grown older and taller, he did not grow up at all.

‘im krebsgang’ In Die Blechtrommel, German suffering is either elided altogether or reported in a laconic tone. Oskar feels the horrors of the expulsion from Danzig so deeply that he is unable to narrate the journey West. Instead, Bruno, Oskar’s guard and male nurse, is called upon to describe all events relating to the loss of Heimat. Similarly, the rape of German women by Russian soldiers is confined to a few cursory remarks. In Im Krebsgang, on the other hand, German pain and suffering take center stage. Im Krebsgang interweaves the fictional stories of three generations of Pokriefkes with the maritime disaster of the Nazi ship Gustloff, which was sunk by a Russian submarine in January 1945, causing the deaths of at least 6,600 – some estimates are as high as 9,000 – refugees from the East and military personnel. Tulla Pokriefke, originally conceived as Oskar’s malicious little sister (Essays II 328) but ultimately relegated to the pages of Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse, 1961) and Hundejahre (Dog Years, 1963), is among the very few rescued from the torpedoed ship. Immediately upon her evacuation from the Gustloff, Tulla, now aboard a torpedo boat, gives birth to Paul. During the postwar era, Tulla and Paul embody diametrically opposed attitudes toward remembrance. Tulla insists on keeping the memory of the Gustloff alive, while Paul strives to avoid it at all cost. Giving up on ever convincing her son to write about the disaster, Tulla finds a willing listener in her grandson Konny, who creates an internet website dedicated to both the ship and the Nazi Heinrich Gustloff, after whom it was named. In his chatroom, Konny meets David, who claims to be Jewish. The two engage in lengthy arguments, and David finally agrees to meet the neo-Nazi youngster Konny in Schwerin. During the meeting, Konny kills the unsuspecting David with four bullets at the site of the demolished Gustloff monument.

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Like Oskar, Paul Pokriefke is an unreliable narrator,28 but, unlike Oskar, Paul possesses the ability to reflect on his own actions critically. Oskar rejoices in lies and obfuscations. Paul, on the other hand, strives to be truthful, but his shortcomings and his personal investment in his story slant his perspective. A self-described journalistic mercenary (“So¨ldner von Nachrichtenagenturen” 7), Paul is characterized as weak, defensive, and, at times, indifferent. In the beginning of his career, Paul felt little compunction working first for the right-wing Springer press and then for the left-wing taz. He himself admits that he is no hero and that, had he been of age during the Third Reich, he would most likely have been a bystander. In the present, Paul’s political abstinence manifests itself in his absence from the ballot box: he has not voted in years. Paul’s propensity to shun responsibility finds its most pronounced expression in a dual failure: his refusal to tell his story and his unavailability as a father. In Im Krebsgang, as in Die Blechtrommel, paternity is a problematic category. Paul, who does not know who his own father is, fathers a son not because he wants to but because his ex-wife Gabi stopped taking the pill without his knowledge. Similarly, he authors a story because he is being prodded by “der Alte,” a shadowy plenipotentiary who represents none other than a fictionalized version of Grass himself. As in Die Blechtrommel, questions of paternity, authorship, and responsibility are intricately connected. Paul emerges as a narrator precisely because he failed as a father. He feels compelled to tell his story and hence the story of the Gustloff, whose sinking coincided with his birth, because he believes that his son’s obsession with the past would not have escalated in murder if Paul had lived up to his responsibility to bear witness. For years, Tulla had requested that Paul commit the story of the Gustloff to writing, and for years Paul had refused to do so. Even when he is faced with his son’s imprisonment, he fulfills the self-imposed obligation reluctantly and half-heartedly. “Noch haben die Wo¨rter Schwierigkeiten mit mir” (7) (The words still have a hard time with me), Paul claims, characteristically casting himself as an object of his own story. Although both Tulla and Paul are fixated on the same traumatic event, Paul identifies with the victim, whereas Tulla, as we shall see, has occupied the part of the perpetrator. Victimized by his own sins, Paul is a modern-day Oedipus. Like Oedipus, Paul, seeking to trace the origin of right-extremist propaganda online, finds the root cause of the problem in his own home. It is this structural similarity to the Oedipus story – the detective who finds himself at the center of the crime – that introduces a concept of fate that also

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plagues Die Blechtrommel. But while Die Blechtrommel ironizes notions of fate by uncovering the processes of mythologization that undergird them, Im Krebsgang seeks to dismantle the repetition compulsion by introducing a narrator who is aware that he is entangled in a predetermined story. As a failed father who conceives of himself as a victim, Paul is a successor of Alfred Matzerath. But, unlike Alfred Matzerath, Paul struggles to claim a position of agency and tries to make amends for his shortcomings as citizen, father, and author. Paul vacillates between self-blame and attempts to saddle his mother with the responsibility for his son’s right-extremist views and even for the crime that Konny committed. Paul’s feelings for his mother oscillate between grudging admiration, loathing, and outright hatred. In Paul’s story, Tulla is an archetype of almost superhuman dimensions. A classical survivor, Tulla Pokriefke thrives in every political system. During the Third Reich, she is a Nazi and anti-Semite who praises the classlessness of Nazi society and is convinced that Gustloff fell victim to a Zionist agitator. After the war, she becomes a dedicated member of the socialist workforce who is inconsolable when her hero Stalin dies. Deep down, however, she never changes, thus embodying Grass’s convictions that there is a great affinity between National Socialism and Communism. And yet, although Tulla appears to dance to every tune, she refuses to march in line. She never joined the Nazi youth organization for girls, the BDM (Bund der deutschen Ma¨dchen), and resents the fact that her son became a member of the GDR youth organization FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend). In Paul’s story, Tulla emerges as a survivor of quasi-mythical dimensions.29 But while Paul describes Tulla as a “Hexe mit Fuchspelz” (193) (witch with a fox fur), Im Krebsgang is very clear that Paul is a biased narrator. Whereas Die Blechtrommel makes fun of the “demonization of the feminine,”30 Krebsgang deconstructs such mythologization by revealing it to be nothing but a male projection. While Paul’s flight from responsibility is coupled with profound feelings of powerlessness, Tulla refuses responsibility but never shies away from power. Whenever Paul tries to hold her accountable, she takes refuge in her “Binnichtzuhause-Gesicht” (I-am-not-at-home face). Paul, on the other hand, is incapable of determined action because he conceives of himself as the victim of external forces. Although he loathes his mother for her moral detachment, Paul, who claims that his story is written by “jemand, der nicht ich bin” (7) (somebody who is not I), has clearly developed his own form of the “Binnichtzuhause-Gesicht.” If parental

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neglect and error have contributed to Konny’s crimes, then Tulla and Paul must bear an equal share of the burden. Im Krebsgang portrays Paul’s and Tulla’s deficiencies as complimentary. Tulla never indulges in the kind of self-victimization that characterizes her son, but, unlike Paul, she is unwilling to learn from mistakes. She never pauses to reconsider her undying devotion to Stalin or her unqualified approval of the Nazi organization Kraft durch Freude, whose vacations for the masses her parents so enjoyed. And she refuses to acknowledge publicly her influence on her grandson. At the trial, she does not even mention that she provided Konny with a gun. Frozen in her convictions and yet pliable in the face of different regimes, she does not undergo any kind of development. Always a Nazi and never a Nazi, Tulla defies through accommodation. Like Maria in Die Blechtrommel, she knows what side her bread is buttered on. Like Irmgard in o¨rtlich beta¨ubt (Local Anaesthetic, 1969) Tulla cannot let go of the past and, in doing so, causes harm in the present. And yet, even though Tulla is an “Ewiggestrige” (die-hard Nazi), she is always true to her own experience and her own agenda. When Tulla decorates the monument of Gustloff with flowers, she claims to honor not the Nazi official, but the children who died during the sinking of the ship. Tulla latches on to established narratives and, however unsuccessfully, seeks to twist them according to her own needs. Paul, on the other hand, is acutely aware that the repetition compulsion inherent in these narratives threatens to undo any personal meaning. His refusal to write about the past was rooted in his insight that it is impossible to tell the story of the Gustloff without recycling Nazi narratives.31 Inevitably, the story of the Gustloff, and hence Paul’s story, must deal with a Jewish perpetrator and a panoply of German victims. David Frankfurter, the only Jewish character who features prominently in Im Krebsgang, shot the Nazi organizer Wilhelm Gustloff in Zurich. Gustloff was subsequently revered as a blood witness for the movement and thus gave name to the infamous ship. Although Paul summons the contemporary context of violent anti-Semitism that prompted Frankfurter to act, he still portrays Frankfurter’s deed as the origin of a chain of events: “Seine Tat hat etwas in Gang gesetzt” (14) (His deed launched something). Albeit in much milder form, this echoes the right-extreme claim that Frankfurter is to blame for the fate of the Gustloff. The second perpetrator who receives detailed narrative attention is Alexander Marinesko, the captain of the Russian submarine that sank the Gustloff. Konny, on the other hand, the German perpetrator, is portrayed as the

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victim of a pernicious family dynamic. Indeed, in Paul’s story, German victims proliferate: German refugees, German children, German women, and a few wounded soldiers and military personnel aboard the Gustloff. In the end, even David, Konny’s online opponent whom he murders during their first encounter in real life and the only victim who appeared to be Jewish, is a non-Jewish German after all. Named Wolfgang, not David, he pretended to be Jewish out of a sense of identification with Jewish victimization. Thus, Paul’s story comes painfully close to reerecting the front lines of the Nazi empire in which Jews and Russians were the perpetrators and the victims were German. At times, this unholy alliance of Jews and Russians is joined by a third all too familiar villain, namely capitalist America and its “Jewish” dream machine, Hollywood. Thus, the narrator laments that the blockbuster Titanic left no room for the remembrance of the victims of the Gustloff (62) and then proceeds to inform us that the most vicious forms of right-extremism now originate in the US and Canada (63). The conflation of Paul’s story with Nazi narratives is exemplified by the fact that it is often impossible to differentiate between Paul’s voice and that of the website. Consider, for example, the following paragraph: Das Trio ist nicht komplett. Einer fehlt noch. Seine Tat hat etwas in Gang gesetzt, das Sogwirkung bewies und nicht aufzuhalten war. Da er, gewollt wie ungewollt, den einen, der aus Schwerin kam, zum Blutzeugen der Bewegung und den Jungen aus Odessa zum Helden der baltischen Rotbannerflotte gemacht hat, ist ihm fu¨r alle Zeit die Anklagebank sicher. Solche und a¨hnliche Beschuldigungen las ich, mittlerweile gierig geworden, der immer gleich firmierenden Homepage ab. (14) (The trio is not complete. One is still missing. His deed launched something that created a vortex and could not be stopped. Because he, intentionally or unintentionally, turned the one who came from Schwerin into a blood witness of the movement and the boy from Odessa into the hero of the Baltic red banner fleet, he is sure to be in the dock for all time. I read these and similar accusations, grown greedy by now, on the homepage always under the same heading.)

Readers are almost at the end of the paragraph when they finally learn that Paul is quoting from the website. The beginning of the quote remains unclear. Even though at times Paul appears to recycle readymade narratives, he is acutely aware of the danger of entrapment and, throughout the entire book, engaged in a struggle to resist Nazi emplotment. Paul’s attempts to establish a distance from revisionist accounts of the past are most clearly visible in his critique of the right-extreme bias of the Gustloff website,32 which becomes more pronounced as the narrative progresses. Moreover,

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particularly towards the end of the book, Paul also questions the confusion of victim and perpetrator. He draws attention to the fact that the judges and lawyers all conceive of Konny as the victim, whereas the actual victim Wolfgang has been forgotten. Seen in this light, Konny’s story contains a warning not about the dangers of repressing stories of German suffering, but about the pernicious consequences of a problematic national selfperception. If Germans continue to conceive of themselves as victims, they are in danger of repeating the past and of becoming perpetrators again. Paul pays tribute to this insight when he refuses to celebrate his birthday, which is the anniversary not only of the Gustloff disaster but also of Hitler’s Machtergreifung. By highlighting both Paul’s entrapment in Nazi narratives and his struggle with these narratives, Grass demonstrates that stories of German victimization must take recourse to metanarrative, that is, they must be stories that perform their own critique. Throughout Im Krebsgang, the question of whether or not to tell the story of German victimization is of paramount importance. The initial refusal of the narrator is mirrored by that of “der Alte” (the old man), a fictionalized Grass character, who professes to feelings of guilt because of his failure to write about German suffering. “Der Alte” claims that his silence left the story of German victimization to the right-extremists. Because the left remained silent, the narrative of Nemmersdorf – a village that was conquered by the Russians and taken back by the Germans, who then broadcast pictures of Russian rape and atrocities for propaganda purposes – became the central paradigm for the telling of German suffering. In order to regain narrative agency the left must break the silence. But, significantly, it is not “der Alte” who tells the story but the victim-narrator Paul, thus introducing yet another layer of intratextual dialogue that helps readers to question Paul’s stories about the past.33 In writing Die Blechtrommel, Grass acted on the belief that only the madhouse could provide an appropriate setting for a story about the Third Reich. In writing Im Krebsgang, Grass insisted on the necessity of representing German suffering and on the inability of German victim-narrators to do so without running the danger of endorsing Nazi narratives. In Die Blechtrommel, readers are bombarded with competing accounts of the same event, with potent omissions, hints, and fragments of the truth, all revealing that narratives are dangerous and potentially treacherous. In Im Krebsgang, silence about the past may be the root cause of Konny’s violence, but the narratives that spring from suffering are fraught with the danger of repeating the same old stories over and over again: “Das ho¨rt nie auf. Nie ho¨rt das auf ” (It never stops. It never stops). The only

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way to counter this vicious circle lies in the critical reflection of one’s own narrative entrapment. conclusion In both Die Blechtrommel and Im Krebsgang, the themes of violence, warfare, procreation, art, and accountability are intricately interwoven. The failure to create, biologically or artistically, blends into the refusal to accept responsibility for one’s actions. Die Blechtrommel, in particular, does not limit itself to a critique of violence. Rather, the text appears to suggest that a life dedicated to creation is the only viable alternative to the pursuit of war. Both Die Blechtrommel and Im Krebsgang exhibit an awareness that telling a story is a dangerous activity. White paper may be innocent (Blechtrommel 11), but narrators are implicated in a circle of guilt.34 Both texts show that the categories of victim and perpetrator are not mutually exclusive and seek to draw attention to a form of guilt that springs from the German propensity for self-victimization. Oskar, the German ¨ ber- und Untermensch, wears the mask of victimization to conceal his U failure to act where action was required. Throughout, Die Blechtrommel ironizes the German tendency to attribute to fate what should properly belong to the realm of human agency. But Die Blechtrommel also shows that the inability to define oneself as an agent of history is as much the result of choice as of a fundamental cultural and social confusion regarding authorship and accountability. Im Krebsgang, on the other hand, deals with a protagonist who struggles to overcome his victim status. In introducing a protagonist who knows that he is entrapped in preexisting stories, Im Krebsgang does not simply narrate German suffering but rather elucidates the dangers inherent in such narrativization. Im Krebsgang shows that we cannot write stories about German victimization unless we know that it is impossible to do so.

part iv

Yugoslavia and Iraq

chapter 11

Yugoslavia and Iraq: overview

At first glance, the war in the former Yugoslavia and the Iraq War appear to be fundamentally different. The conflicts in Yugoslavia hark back to an old kind of war, a form of nationalistic and ethnic warfare that seemed all but extinguished in modern Europe. Beginning in 1991 and lasting throughout the 1990s, it was a war fought with rifles and knives and in which neighbors killed neighbors. It was also a war that gave renewed urgency to the concept of genocide and recalled the horror of concentration camps. The Iraq War, on the other hand, initially pitted a superpower against a moribund dictatorship in a high-tech blitzkrieg. Soon, however, it too was mired down in ethnic conflicts, and the sophisticated weaponry of the US military was disabled by improvised explosive devices employed by insurgent forces. Moreover, even before these affinities became evident, both wars evinced other important similarities. Both erase the difference between civilians and military, and both extend indefinitely. Finally, both wars are significantly influenced by accompanying media wars, and in both Islam is a crucial discursive determinant. From the beginning, the Iraq War was defined and marketed as a war on Islamic terrorism. A perceived link between radical Islam and violence informed the planning and execution of the war and the current counterinsurgency strategy. Similarly, in the former Yugoslavia, the warring parties are split along ethnic and religious lines. Forty-four percent of the population in Bosnia-Herzegovina are Muslim, and Muslims were also the victims of some of the most infamous massacres in the territories of the former Yugoslavia, including Srebrenica where 7,000 Muslim inhabitants were killed by Serb forces. When Bosniac President Izetbegovic invited Mujahideen to fight alongside his forces, Serbian propaganda countered his move by denouncing it as an effort to found a radical Islamic state.1 Clearly, our perception of Islam determines our understanding of these wars. And it is hardly surprising that attempts to 151

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define the relation between Islam and the West are evident in both Peter Handke’s and Elfriede Jelinek’s works about these wars. Both Handke and Jelinek are deeply concerned with the impact of the modern media on our perception and practice of war and are acutely aware that media reports and images do not only record events, but create their own reality. Today’s media are not mere observers of war but are best understood as direct and active participants in ongoing conflicts. What the media report can be used strategically by combatants to further specific goals, but a story may also owe its very existence to the initiative or intervention of one of the warring parties. We know, for example, that the American public relations company Ruder-Finn was hired by the administrations of Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina to influence the war in their favor. And the Iraq War has by now become synonymous with hyped newspaper stories and the misrepresentation of intelligence, especially regarding weapons of mass destruction.2 Television stories and images can end wars, as did the photos of dead American soldiers in Mogadishu that led to the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia, and they can start wars, such as the photos of atrocities and war crimes used to legitimize German participation in the war in Kosovo.3 Herfried Mu¨nkler goes so far as to claim that in today’s world “Kampf mit Waffen als Antriebsrad fu¨r den eigentlichen Kampf mit Bildern fungiert”4 (combat with weapons functions as incentive for the real combat with images). Both Handke and Jelinek respond to the dominating influence of the media and to the power of images. Unlike many of their predecessors, they no longer attempt to represent war, but rather critique media representations of war. When Handke’s Yugoslavia essays were first published, they were greeted with some surprise. Previously known for his radical subjectivism, Handke now presented work that evinced strong political convictions. In spite of this seeming turnabout, anybody familiar with Handke’s career, jump-started by his provocative statements at the Gruppe 47 meeting in Princeton and his infamous drama Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience, 1966), could have realized that Handke has always courted contradiction and controversy. Handke’s Yugoslavia essays ride roughshod with the most widely accepted categories of Western political discourse. Handke deconstructs the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator, refuses to conform to traditional notions of the political left and right, departs from the common interpretation of Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung, and ignores the divide between artistic and political discourse. In a manner reminiscent of post-ideology, Handke’s essays shift back and

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forth between positions commonly associated with the left end of the political spectrum, such as advocacy of cosmopolitanism and universalism over independent statehood and national aspirations, and the discourse of the extreme right, in particular the rejection of Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung in the form of truth commissions and legal proceedings in favor of a mytho-poetic unity. The critical and journalistic responses to Handke’s essays reflect the difficulty of dealing with an author who defies traditional categories. Some see in Handke an elitist poet-priest in the tradition of German Romanticism; others view him as an avant-garde author, whose works indulge in formal experimentation and references to pop culture. Handke’s writing is both quietly reflective and viciously polemic; a range that is also evident in the critical responses to his essays. While some laud Handke for his anti-fascist stance, others accuse him of producing Blut und Boden literature. Moreover, attempts to evaluate the essays critically and objectively are not aided by the fact that Handke’s public statements in interviews and at readings tend to add fuel to the fire. In his writing, Handke provokes and insults, but he also prevaricates, questions his own approach, anticipates possible objections, employs distancing devices, and expresses doubt and uncertainty. In his public statements, Handke exhibits no such caution and, at times, peppers his speech with insults and curse words. When questioned about the most controversial aspects of his engagement, his decision to travel to Serbia, but not to the Bosnian hotspots of the war, he does not so much defend his actions as simply flaunt them. As the heated nature of this public debate indicates, controversy and contradiction are not the result of misunderstandings, but part of Handke’s method. Thus, it cannot be the goal of an analysis to resolve the contradictory nature of Handke’s essays in favor of a linear account. Rather, it is necessary to come to a precise understanding of these contradictions and to evaluate whether they serve to produce a text of peace, “Friedenstext,” as Handke has emphasized repeatedly, or whether they in fact run counter to his declared intention. Like Handke, an avid consumer and critic of newspaper and television reporting, Elfriede Jelinek writes texts that are first and foremost concerned with the interrelation of warfare and the media. Her works vivisect and reenact media discourses of war in order to unveil our cultural me´connaissance of war. By inhabiting established discourses, by quoting and paraphrasing, Jelinek’s works stage a calculated interruption of the discourses they mimic,5 a process that Jelinek has described as “zur Kenntlichkeit entstellen” (Sturm und Drang 49) (to distort to recognition).

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Jelinek’s mimicry of a form of reporting that one might call “wartainment” showcases how popular culture and television trivialize warfare, foster indifference, and co-opt criticism. Jelinek uses neologisms, such as “Erholungsschlachten” (Totenauberg 11) (relaxation battles) and “KriegsSpielgruppe” (Sportstu¨ck 151) (war play group), mixes registers, and introduces jarringly incongruous juxtapositions to show that current media discourses lack conceptual frameworks appropriate to the gravity of the wounded body and the finality of death. Jelinek is particularly attuned to how the media exploit and corrupt discourses of victimization. Throughout, her work critically interrogates and redefines the categories of victim and perpetrator. While Jelinek is concerned with the triviality of war, she also lays bare the manifold and subtle ways in which canonical works of Western literature and philosophy undergird and support the practice of war. In particular, Jelinek’s Das Werk investigates the relation between war and the sublime, the “Gewaltiges, das leicht zu Gewalt werden kann” (In den Alpen 45) (the powerful that can easily turn into violence). Finally, Jelinek’s Bambiland, her play about the Iraq War, deconstructs processes of “Othering” and, in contradistinction to the perceived link between violence and Islam, explores the intimate ties between violence and religion in Western culture.

chapter 12

War and peace: Handke

When Peter Handke published his essays on the violent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, he unleashed a veritable media war.1 The responses ranging from outraged condemnation to whole-hearted endorsement fill several edited volumes. In spite of such turmoil, Handke continues to label his essays “Friedenstexte,” texts of peace. Intriguingly, Handke appears to suggest that a text of peace is categorically different from one that critiques war. Already in his early work, Handke was acutely aware of the difficulties inherent in the attempt to narrate peace. Whereas war gives rise to numerous stories, peace resists representation: “Yet no one has been successful in intoning an epic of peace. What is it about peace that it does not continually excite and seldom allows itself to be told” (Wings of Desire). In order to write an epic of peace, Handke’s essays devise a new concept of history; one that focuses on the stuff of our daily lives rather than the defining events and glorious leaders of conventional history writing. Handke’s attempt to write a different history also conjures the force of myth. But, unlike Ju¨nger’s mythical construct, Handke’s use of myth is designed not to renounce agency and encourage fatalistic acceptance of the cosmic maelstrom, but to break out of history’s spiral of violence. Handke’s essays seek to carve out moments of peace by moving beyond the ravages of war and history toward recognition of the transcendental in the everyday. But, as I will show, in so doing, Handke not only comes close to reconnecting the experience of war with the notion of the sublime, he also allows himself to forget that narratives of peace cannot be imposed from the outside. the ninth land When Handke published his first essay on the question of Slovenian independence, he was already intimately familiar with several regions of the former Yugoslavia. Handke’s hometown Griffen is located in the 155

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Austrian region of Ka¨rnten, which, for two years after the First World War, formed part of Yugoslavia. When the region’s political identity was to be determined in the plebiscite of 1920, Handke’s beloved grandfather voted in favor of joining Yugoslavia. Handke himself first traveled to Slovenia in June of 1960 and later wrote his first novel on the island of Krk. Interestingly, Handke’s first Yugoslavia essay deals with a question of national identity similar to the one that had preoccupied his grandfather. In Abschied des Tra¨umers vom Neunten Land (The Dreamer’s Farewell to the Ninth Land), first published in the Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung in 1991, Handke argues against Slovenian independence in favor of the Yugoslav union. While this first essay reflects a process of deliberation, his second essay Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flu¨ssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit fu¨r Serbien (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia), first published in the Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung in January, 1996, records impressions from Handke’s trip to Serbia in November, 1995. This first trip to war-torn Yugoslavia was followed by many others, at least three per year, at times alone, at times with companions, some illustrious, such as Katja Flint and Claus Peymann, some personal friends of the author.2 Handke’s translator Zarko Radakovic and his friend Zlatko Bocokic, who, along with his second wife Sophie Semin, had accompanied Handke on his first trip, also came along for the second one. The experiences of this second journey in June and July, 1996, are recorded in Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (A Summery Addendum to a Winter’s Journey). Finally, the fourth essay, Unter Tra¨nen fragend (Asking through the Tears) draws on two trips to the sites of NATO bombings in 1999, the year in which Handke returned the prestigious Bu¨chner prize and left the Catholic Church out of protest against NATO bombings. Already in his early works, Handke insisted on the limitations of literature, on the fact that its primary constituents are words, not worlds. But while he is skeptical of literature, he also embraced a heightened notion of poetry as a quasi-religious force capable of bringing about redemption.3 According to Handke, language and narrative open up utopian spaces and show the path to a different history; a process that Handke calls “ausscheren zu einer anderen Geschichte” (WR 131) (veer off toward a different history).4 In the Yugoslavia essays, this utopian moment is realized as a movement in and out of history, back and forth between history and myth, the ninth land and the political entity of former Yugoslavia. Handke’s utopia is closely associated with poetry, more specifically, with faith in “die heilenden Wirkungen glu¨ckender

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Poesie”5 (the healing effects of successful poetry), and with the term “Bild” (image), which Handke uses in a highly idiosyncratic way explicated in his novel Der Bildverlust oder durch die Sierra de Gredos (The Lost Image or Through the Sierra de Gredos, 2002). Handke’s project of a different history encompasses both remembrance of the past, perception of the present, and images of a better future, and it relies centrally on the power of myth to achieve its goals. Handke’s essays are characterized by the author’s uneasy balancing act of history, myth, fairy tale, and utopia. Handke seeks to create a “Friedenstext,” a text that promotes peace and understanding by marshaling the conciliatory force of common traditions and memories against the pain of recent destruction and violence. In order to achieve his goal, Handke imagines a counter-narrative that breaks free from Western culture’s history of violence and instead draws from places and landscapes utopian possibilities.6 The hypnotic power of Handke’s narrative seeks to transform Serbia into a fairy-tale land. Tellingly, all four Yugoslavia essays are interlaced with structures and expressions typical of the German fairy-tale tradition. The farm of Zlatko’s parents, for example, is located “hinter sieben Bergen” (WR 74) (behind the seven mountains), a term that designates the home of the seven dwarves in the fairy tale of Snow White. The same image is again evoked in Sommerlicher Nachtrag and its reference to “hinter den sieben mal sieben Bergen” (SN 57) (behind the seven times seven mountains) and in Unter Tra¨nen fragend and its “hinter den siebenmalsieben Bergen” (TF 30) (behind the seven times seven mountains).7 Handke is also fond of slightly archaic expressions such as “da geschah es” (it occurred) or “es traf sich” (it happened) characteristic of both biblical language and German fairy tales. Interestingly, the fairy-tale land that Handke conjures is gendered female. It is the land of his mother’s ancestors, a garden of fruit and flowers. It is also a land where images and sensual perception rank higher than abstract principles.8 This notion of a sensual motherland stands in stark contrast to the heritage of the father, associated with German militarism (Abschied 9). In shifting identifications, Handke transforms first Slovenia, then Serbia and Yugoslavia into the land of the mother. Unlike the warmongering fatherland, the peace-loving motherland can draw strength and pride from its resistance to German fascism. Conversely, when present-day Slovenia opted for independence, it also opted for the land of the father and its “blindwu¨tige Killen, samt gebleckten Killermienen” (Abschied 49) (killing in blind rage, along with killer countenances showing their teeth): “In der ganzen bisherigen

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slowenischen Geschichte war stets nur die Mutter da. Unser Vater hat immer geschlafen . . . Jetzt ist der Vater aufgewacht . . . Aber ob das je seiner Kinder Wunsch war?” (Abschied 50–1) (Throughout all of Slovenian history so far, only the mother was always present. Our father has always been asleep . . . Now the father has awoken . . . But was that ever the wish of his children?). Handke’s transformation of Yugoslavia into a maternal fairy-tale land is effected through a provocative amalgamation of history and myth. Already in his first Yugoslavia essay, Abschied des Tra¨umers vom Neunten Land, Handke introduced a philosophy of history that identifies history itself with war and violence, whereas the absence of history paradoxically connotes not only permanence and peace, but also reality, “Wirklichkeit” (Abschied 19). In the subsequent essays, Handke portrays Serbia as a mythical land, a paradisiacal “Flußwelt” (WR 64) (river world), “Weltlandschaft” (WR 64) (world landscape) and “Urwelt” (WR 65) (primeval world). In evoking these epithets, Handke seeks to remove Yugoslavia from the domain of history and elevate it to the timelessness of the mythical realm. And myths, as scholars such as Karen Armstrong and Joseph Campbell point out, do not deal with facts, but are designed to help us cope with pain, sorrow, and death. According to Leed, “myths alleviate contradictions by reframing the elements that conflict in reality.”9 By mythologizing Serbia, Handke is able to imagine peace in the midst of war. Handke’s texts weave mythological narratives that aim to give guidance and to reveal the transcendental in the everyday, a project that is not new to Handke’s oeuvre. Several critics remarked that Handke’s writing seeks to capture moments of epiphany or “unio mystica,” an experience in which self and world are in harmony.10 In Handke’s Yugoslavia essays, Serbia emerges as a country in which this heightened mode of being has become a daily reality. But even though Handke’s “Wirklichkeit” is a spiritual concept, it is also defined in the most sensual, bodily terms. It is experienced through wine, riding a bus, and the sensual nature of language. The special quality of life in Serbia reveals itself to the taste buds, in savoring bread, honey, and fish (WR 71). Handke’s text does not simply substitute myth for history. Rather, it radically undermines the differences between the two. While Handke’s mythical world is tangibly sensual and filled with objects that are magically alive, it is strangely devoid of people. It is not accidental that all illustrations in Abschied depict plants, animals, or objects. Whereas the landscape of Yugoslavia is portrayed as real, its

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people are inauthentic, their opinions the result of Western brainwashing: “es kommt mir jetzt vor, eine große Zahl, jedenfalls die Mehrheit . . . habe sich den Zerfall ihres Staates von außen einreden lassen” (Abschied 31) (it seems to me now that a large number, the majority in any case . . . let themselves be talked into the dissolution of their state from the outside). On the one hand, Handke reminds those in favor of Slovenian, Bosnian, and Croatian independence of the history of Western oppression of Eastern European peoples that is glossed over in all too eager celebrations of a common middle European identity. On the other hand, he himself continues this problematic tradition by denying the Slovenians their own voice. Handke’s rejection of independent statehood for Slovenia elides the people of Slovenia, evoking instead the common geography, the sky, and the rivers, and, as I will show, a historical narrative that he has redacted for his purposes. The scandalous effect of Handke’s Yugoslavia essays is rooted not in the author’s oblivion to facts or his withdrawal from history, but in his attempts to harness history for his enterprise of utopian mythification. Since Handke is equally conversant in legend and fact, he is able to combine his portrait of the mythical properties of Serbian nature with a highly selective, though excruciatingly detailed recording of historical fact.11 Thus, when Handke takes his readers to the legendary place where the Danube is supposed to flow in complete silence, he also reminds them that this enchanted locale once held a fortress that was destroyed by Germans during the Second World War (WR 69). As this example indicates, Handke emphasizes the common history and geography of the Yugoslav nation as well as the common fight of the Yugoslav peoples against the Nazis. In order to forge unity and strengthen this claim to commonality, the first essay (unlike the following ones) downplays the role of the Croatian Nazi collaborators (Abschied 22), which is demarcated as exceptional, even though conservative estimates give the number of Serbian victims of Ustasha violence as 370,000. Handke’s first essay rewrites history by accentuating certain aspects and minimizing others. Handke does not seek to uncover all aspects of the past in the manner of truth commissions and international tribunals. Instead, he advises that in order to gain peace one must leave past injustice behind: “Laßt die Toten ihre Toten begraben” (WR 128) (Let the dead bury their dead). Handke acts on the conviction that peace will result from narrative, mental, and emotional adjustments that favor stories of reconciliation and commonality over those of violence and injustice. In Handke’s works, history is the handmaiden of myth, and myth guides the way toward peace.

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In addition to the selective use of conventional history, Handke also seeks to redefine our notion of the objects and events worthy of historical narrativization. Rather than recount important dates, outstanding leaders, and momentous changes, Handke’s history revolves around seemingly negligible incidentals, so-called “dritte Dinge” (third things), also referred to as “Lebenswelt” (life world) and “nebendraußen” (beside-outside) (WR 52, 134). It is through his use of myth and focus on “dritte Dinge,” the essence of poetry, that Handke seeks to break out of history’s spiral of violence and carve out moments of peace. Rather than retracing the ravages of war, Handke directs his readers toward a recognition of the transcendental in the everyday. In this sense, the Yugoslavia essays form part of Handke’s project of “a¨sthetischen Verkla¨rung des Realen”12 (aesthetic transfiguration of the real), of an “A¨sthetik des Schauens und des Augenblicks . . . bei der sich angesichts der allta¨glichen Dinge Momente erhabenster Gegenwart einstellen”13 (aesthetics of looking and of the moment . . . where instants of the most sublime presence occur in view of everyday things). But, as I will show, in his quest for “Wirklichkeit,” Handke comes close to reconnecting the experience of war with notions of the sublime. war and “wirklichkeit” In an essay on Handke’s theater, Fritz Wefelmeyer claims that Handke conceives of “art as a training ground for those operating in the political sphere.”14 The same might be said of Handke’s Yugoslavia essays, which are designed to effect the transformation of society away from the Western history of war toward a utopian ideal of peace. In his commitment to art as a tool for social change, Handke stands in the tradition of Schiller’s Briefe u¨ber die a¨sthetische Erziehung des Menschen (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795). Moreover, much like Schiller, Handke discovers in war an arena not only of cruelty and corruption, but also of sublime aspiration to a higher plane of existence. Although Handke’s essays are motivated by a desire to narrate peace in the midst of war, they veer uncomfortably close to a discourse that celebrates war for its transcendental and life-enhancing qualities. In his first essay, Handke still associates his notion of an intensified form of reality with everyday life in peacetime Slovenia. But by the time he writes Winterliche Reise, it is the war and its instruments, in particular, the embargo and awareness of the international condemnation of Serbia, that heighten the realness of reality. In Handke’s carefully crafted portraits,

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Serbia emerges as a country in which the essence of being manifests itself in the form of, “im Vergleich zu der unsrigen, gescha¨rften und fast schon kristallischen Alltagswirklichkeit” (WR 115) (in comparison with ours, a sharpened and almost crystalline everyday reality). At first glance, Handke’s eulogy to the war-deprived country is reminiscent of Heidegger’s being-toward-death with its authenticating impact on life. Indeed, Heidegger’s philosophy exerted some influence on Handke’s recent works, but in the Yugoslavia essays it is not primarily the confrontation with death that possesses transformative power. Rather, the crystalline quality of Serbian life results from the deprivations of war. Because of the Western embargo on Serbia, the country was isolated from the distractions of the capitalist market. According to Handke, the enforced paucity stripped buying and selling of the nefarious implications of consumerism and profiteering and initiated a return to lighter and happier forms of human exchange. In this new mode of being, products are transformed into precious objects of luminescent beauty. Gasoline, for example, now appears as a “gru¨nrotgru¨ne Flu¨ssigkeit . . . eine Kostbarkeit, ein Bodenschatz” (WR 88) (green-red-green fluid . . . a precious object, a treasure of the soil ), and pasta is transformed into the much-quoted “andersgelben serbischen Nudelnestern” (TF 50) (Serbian noodle nest of a different kind of yellow). While these transformations are accidental byproducts of the war, Handke also detects instances of conscious resistance to Western consumerism in the war-ravaged country. Thus, he reads the fact that the computers in the German Institute have not been stolen as a sign that the Serbs are repudiating Western culture and instead opt for a purer form of life and quiet interiority (TF 44). In Handke’s account, Serbia emerges as the only holdout against the destructive force of Western capitalism and consumerism. In addition to being cut off from Western consumer goods, Serbia is also shielded from Western media. Consequently, in contrast to a mediadominated West, Handke’s Serbia is defined as a country of readers. Repeatedly, Handke draws attention to the respect of the people for their writers and shows writers and readers as engaged in a mutually enlightening conversation. When Handke revisits Bajina Basta, his local readers point out geographical and other inaccuracies in Winterliche Reise. His subsequent Sommerlicher Nachtrag then records both their concerns and his response. Numerous other episodes highlight the strong and direct bond between the Serbian people and their writers. The Serbian population appreciates not only its own poets, such as Milorad Pavic, the

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national author (“Nationalschriftsteller,” 77), it also extends its welcome to the Western writer. When Handke attends a concert in Belgrade, everybody asks for his signature, and even the maid of the hotel where he stayed “hatte sich diesen und jenen Satz, den ich zum Kriegsausbruch gea¨ußert hatte, zu eigen gemacht” (TF 59) (had appropriated one or the other sentence that I had uttered toward the beginning of the war). Handke goes to great lengths to affirm that it is not the war itself, but the embargo that possesses redeeming features because it removes Serbia from Western capitalist exchange. He sees in capitalism a system that strips the world of its essence, renders it soulless, erases regional differences and leads to the “Gleichschaltung” (enforced synchronization) of all thought. To be sure, this nexus of consumerism and soullessness is already evident in Handke’s first essay about Slovenia. Since Handke credits Slovenia with a heightened form of reality even though it was not yet embroiled in warfare and not suffering from an embargo, his claim that “Wirklichkeit” is not the result of the war appears to be truthful. And yet, even in Abschied, war slips in through the backdoor and emerges as the foil against which essence and reality become visible. Tellingly, Handke’s Abschied compares the author’s concept of “Wirklichkeit” and “Unwirklichkeit” with similar notions expressed in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Briefe des Zuru¨ckgekehrten (Letters of One Who Has Returned, 1908). He explains that Hofmannsthal had written these letters shortly before the First World War, but does not mention Hofmannsthal’s subsequent support for the Austrian war effort. Nor does he mention that many welcomed the First World War precisely because it promised to end the alienation and stifling unreality associated with a bourgeois life. In Handke’s texts, war does not embody the sublime, but merely points the way toward it. Unter Tra¨nen fragend does not celebrate violence, but it does applaud its cathartic effect. According to Handke, the bombs on Belgrade purged the city of the soullessness of capitalism and led the way to “Eigentlichkeit”: “Die Bomben haben immerhin bewirkt, daß wenigstens eine Jugend auf der Welt geheilt ist von CC [Coca Cola?] und McD [MacDonald]” (TF 44) (Still, the bombs had the effect that at least one group of young people in the world is cured of CC and McD). Although for the most part the transcendental impact of war is mediated through the repudiation of capitalism, there are moments when it originates directly in the suffering caused by war. In his description of a visit to a Serbian cemetery, Handke characterizes the songs, prayers, and tears of mourning widows as “ganz anders sich in die Lu¨fte erhebend und

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diese erfu¨llend als je eine Arie, selbst jene nicht, wo Mann und Frau an den Himmel reichen” (SN 48) (soaring into the air and filling it entirely differently than any previous aria, not even that where man and woman reach the sky). The widows’ grief over the fallen of the Yugoslav war reconnects them to spiritual powers that remain inaccessible in every other context. Thus, although Handke mythifies not the war itself, but everyday life in the war,15 and although he celebrates the heroism of civilians, not soldiers, his praise of a culture devoid of the decay of Western consumerism continues a tradition that links warfare and the sublime. It is through the war that the transformation of Serbia into a land of essence becomes possible. the landscape of war Many of the attacks against Handke focused on his decision to travel to Serbia rather than the hotspots of war and violence in Bosnia and Croatia.16 Consequently, Handke’s essays about his journeys in Yugoslavia contain no first-hand accounts of encounters with wounded or maimed victims of war. Handke mentions the Serbian casualties of war, but he refers to second-hand reports, mostly stories and images in the Western media, instead of drawing on his own experience or that of his interlocutors. During his visit to Bajina Basta, for example, he comments on the absence of direct information: “die Bevo¨lkerung habe von dem Krieg in einem Kilometer Entfernung fast nichts mitbekommen. Immer wieder sollen scharenweise Kadaver die Drina abwa¨rts getrieben haben, doch sie kannte niemanden, der das mit eigenen Augen gesehen hatte” (WR 94) (the population is said not to have noticed anything about the war at a distance of one kilometer. Again and again, cadavers are supposed to have drifted down the Drina in droves, but she did not know anybody who saw it with their own eyes). Handke’s refusal to witness atrocities against the Bosnian population first-hand has led to accusations of willful denial and blindness. But it is also a consequence of his belief that narratives of war are literally “ausweglos” or hopeless. In Winterliche Reise, Handke admits his helplessness when it comes to the realities of war: “dem Krieg, zu welchem selber aber jemand wie ich nichts zu sagen hat; denn noch immer gilt eben jenes schreckliche ‘Krieg ist Krieg’ . . . Und wer das nun, statt als Gewu¨rgtheit, als Gleichgu¨ltigkeit versteht, auch der braucht hier nicht weiterzulesen” (WR 36) (the war about which somebody like me has nothing to say; because that terrible “war is war” still holds true . . . And whoever believes

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that this is indifference rather than choking, he too should not continue to read here). To Handke, a literature of war is likely to remain entangled in the same history of violence that it seeks to critique. War narratives are easily co-opted for narratives of revenge and are liable to get caught in a vicious circle of violence and counter-violence. Handke’s texts suggest that, even at their best, narratives of war cannot lead the way toward peace. At worst, they are a form of pornography. Handke’s text does not focus on the victims of conflicts between Croats, Muslims, and Serbs. And while he makes mention of the victims of NATO air raids, he does not portray their suffering directly but rather evokes it through oblique images and allusions. Instead of effecting a critique of war by portraying the “body in pain,” Handke represents human suffering indirectly through pastoral tropes and anthropomorphic metaphors. In his analyses of First World War fiction, Paul Fussell devotes an entire chapter to the use of pastoral tropes. According to Fussell, “pastoral reference, whether to literature or to actual rural localities and objects, is a way of invoking a code to hint by antithesis at the indescribable; at the same time, it is a comfort in itself, like rum, a deep dug-out, or a woolly vest.”17 Handke’s essays evince both aspects of the pastoral: comfort and the evocation of the indescribable. He relies on the comfort of pastoral tropes in his endeavor to envision a different history. The Yugoslav landscape is a unifying element, a literal and figurative common ground that testifies to a shared history while eliding the fractions and conflicts of this history. Highlighting the natural environment, the rivers, mountains, the bloom of spring, and the snow of early winter, facilitates a narrative that does not concern itself with questions of guilt and responsibility. Rather, by conceptualizing the landscape as a prayer incarnate, “dieses ganze Land da . . . hingestreckt zum Gebet” (TF 29) (this entire country there . . . prostrate for prayer), the country itself becomes a cipher of innocence (TF 30). Handke’s use of the pastoral is designed to affirm meaning, but it can also express critique. For Winterliche Reise, Handke chose as epitaph a quotation from Milos Crnjanski’s Tagebuch u¨ber Carnojevic : “Was macht es uns aus, drei Millionen Menschen zu to¨ten. Der Himmel ist u¨berall der gleiche, und blau, so blau” (9) (What is it to us to kill three million people. The sky is the same everywhere, and blue, so blue). Here, nature is not innocent but rather indifferent to human suffering. The image of the blue sky does not provide comfort but symbolizes an absurd universe. It reintroduces the devastation of war through

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indirection and can be read as an oblique accusation against NATO forces, who mete out death from the sky. Throughout, Handke details the violation of objects to evoke the trauma inflicted on the human body. Instead of portraying the effect of war on humans, Handke provides extensive descriptions of the destruction of houses, barns, bridges, and factories. Arens referred to this as Handke’s “odd, depopulated set of images.”18 Handke presents himself as a witness who seeks to avoid the testimony of survivors in favor of the stories embodied in mute objects, claiming that “allein die Stummheit, die wortlosen Haltungen und die stummen Dinge, das Beiwerk, zu uns ha¨tten sprechen sollen” (SN 33) (only the muteness, the wordless poses and the mute things, the accessories should have talked to us). Handke’s detailed accounts of the destruction of objects force his readers to confront the reality of what we euphemistically refer to as collateral damage, but they also reintroduce metaphorically what the text refuses to describe. Although the death of humans is absent from the text, it resurfaces in the form of metaphors. Repeatedly, Handke identifies the demolition of bridges and houses with the extermination of animate life: “Bru¨cken haben eine Seele” (TF 105) (bridges have a soul). He speaks of a “halbtote Bru¨cke” (TF 141) (half-dead bridge) and of an apartment building that has been “totgebombt . . . aus dem Leben geballert” (TF 122) (bombed dead . . . shot out of life). Bridges and houses assume the shape of human bodies so that a bridge is “geko¨pft” (TF 121) (decapitated), and a bomb pierces a house “von der Scha¨deldecke bis durch die Fußsohlen” (TF 122) (from the skullcap to the soles of the feet). Similarly, when Handke visits the bombed-out Zastava car factory, the partially destroyed auto parts are likened to “leibhaftige Wesen” (TG 118) (incarnate beings). Handke’s texts do not represent corpses or the body in pain, but his tropes and metaphors speak to the human cost of war. While Handke’s essays gloss over the wounding and killing of human beings, they foreground the unmaking of the world in war. Upon beholding the village of Dobrun, for example, Handke describes how former houses are now reduced to walls without doors and windows and remarks that “nicht bloß ein einzelnes, dieses bestimmte Haus da vernichtet worden, sondern sozusagen das Haus an sich” (SN 30) (not only was a single house this very one, destroyed there, but rather the idea of the house). Since material possessions are the products of labor, time, and love, the damage inflicted on them exceeds financial considerations. It symbolizes the destruction of the very possibility of domesticity, culture, and civilization. Moreover, since war transforms everyday tools and

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objects into weapons, its corrosive effect does not remain limited to the battlefield, but contaminates the experience of everyday reality. The sound of an airplane, for example, that used to connote peaceful travel now evokes the threat of bombing raids. The yellow parachutes that look like toys but are actually parts of cluster bombs do not only signal present danger, but also the end of any innocent notions of childhood, play, and family. In Unter Tra¨nen fragend, objects are endowed with a life force of their own, and their destruction echoes the loss of human life. In Handke’s Sommerlicher Nachtrag, the destruction of objects stands metonymically for the unmaking of the world in war. In his focus on the destruction of the very possibility of culture and civilization, Handke both exceeds and falls short of conventional notions of war. While Handke’s depiction of Serbian suffering is indirect and allusive, his references to the Western military and press show no such restraint. Handke contrasts the cowardly “NATO-Fernkampfhelden” (39) (NATOlong-distance heroes) with a nation of “Ka¨mpfer” (35) (fighters), whose heroic acts are rendered futile by Western technological prowess: “dazu die Bomben aus der Stratospha¨re (fast) – wie sich dagegen wehren, er wolle ja ka¨mpfen, aber so sei kein Kampf, keine Gegenwehr mo¨glich” (131) (in addition, bombs from the stratosphere (almost) – how to defend oneself against that, he would like to fight, but no fight, no resistance is possible like that). Similarly, Handke finds fault with Western reporters whom he calls “Fernfuchtler” (those who flail wildly in the distance) and accuses of interfering in the war from their “Auslandshochsitz” (WR 123) (raised hide in a foreign land). NATO soldiers are portrayed as part of a large bureaucratic organization, the “Internationale Friedensvertragsdurchfu¨hrungstruppe” (SN 75) (international peace treaty execution troop), that is indifferent to and detached from the culture it seeks to police. The image of the black soldiers who pass through Srebrenica and point their machine guns at the destroyed houses conveys Handke’s opinion of NATO as an alien force that lacks all understanding of the cultural complexities in former Yugoslavia. Handke goes so far as to compare the Serbs to Native American freedom fighters, whereas US American troops are accused of imperialism and genocide: “Zuerst haben sie die Apachen ausgerottet und dann nennen sie ihre Luftkiller nach dem von ihnen ausgerotteten Volk” (TF 27) (First they exterminated the Apaches and then they named their airborne killers after the people they have exterminated). Handke’s sympathies for Serbian fighters are intricately linked with his beliefs about violence and power. According to Handke, organized

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violence, although or precisely because it presents itself as rational and inevitable, is far more nefarious than the spontaneous eruption of individual violence. In his “Bu¨chner Preisrede,” Handke states: “Was mich unfa¨hig und unwillig zu einer politischen Existenz macht, ist nicht der Ekel vor der Gewalt, sondern der Ekel vor der Macht; die Macht erst, indem sie es sich erlauben kann, aus der Gewalt ein Ritual zu machen, la¨sst diese als das Vernu¨nftige erscheinen”19 (What makes me incapable and unwilling to embrace a political existence is not the disgust with violence but the disgust with power; only power, by allowing itself to turn violence into a ritual, lets violence appear as reason). Paradoxically, although Handke calls his text a text of peace, he does not denounce the use of violence. His initial response to reports of Serbian cruelties is to call for a second Georg Elser, who would murder Karadzic. Similarly, he professes that, had he been a member of the Serbian population of Croatia, he too, upon being declared a minority in a foreign state, would have fought against this oppression. Handke calls his essays “Friedenstexte,” but his comparison of NATO and Serbian troops suggests that he is not simply opposed to war, but rather prefers the heroism of the traditional warrior to the technological prowess of twentieth-century warfare. Handke’s combination of indirection and invective is a powerful mix. His decision to evoke rather than portray the horror of war seeks to do justice to the Serbian victims without producing what he refers to as war pornography. His invectives, in contrast, are all the more forceful as they are designed to redress the imbalance of power that, in his opinion, is at the root of Serbian suffering. And yet, while Handke’s narrative does justice to the Serbian victims of war in the most thoughtful way, it excludes Croat and Muslim casualties. This does not invalidate his record of Serbian suffering, but it presents an obstacle for his dream of peace. War and peace are two-sided affairs, but Handke’s project of peace is addressed to one party only. the return of the repressed In the Western media, any discussion of the war in the former Yugoslavia is informed by the subtext of the Second World War and the Holocaust. While some acknowledge this subtext openly, others manipulate it subtly, employ covert allusions for strategic purposes, or disavow its relevancy altogether. Handke’s essays make use of all these strategies. In fact, the moral outrage provoked by the essays is, to a large part, motivated by the

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author’s controversial and contradictory evaluation of the relevancy of the Nazi genocide for the war in Yugoslavia and by his partial blindness to his own implication in this history. Handke is convinced that Western reporting on the war in Yugoslavia suffers from a “Bilderstarre” (calcification of images). To counter such calcified narratives and categories, Handke’s texts seek to undermine and destabilize the discursive certainties of Western war reporting. However, while Handke’s portraits of Yugoslavia question and complicate the dualistic categories of victim and perpetrator and seek to write without “Feindbilder,” (stereotypical images of the enemy) his vitriolic attacks on the Western media and NATO forces re-erect hardened frontlines and are themselves informed by an unacknowledged agenda. Handke’s opinion about the impact of Germany’s past on the current war in Yugoslavia differs markedly from that of his contemporaries on the political left. The majority of German politicians and intellectuals associated with the cultural revolution of 1968 and its firm commitment to Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung equated the Serbs with the Nazis and the Bosnian Muslims with the Jews. In contrast, Handke rejects the Holocaust as an appropriate frame of reference for the ethnic conflicts in contemporary Yugoslavia, but insists on the continued impact of the German occupation during the Second World War. While Handke’s first essay minimizes the importance of Ustase collaboration with the fascist occupiers and Chetnik resistance to them, his following essays draw attention to the long-term consequences of this rift. In Handke’s defense of the Serbian minority in Croatia – exemplified in his discussion of the Vukovar massacre, for which paramilitary Serbian forces were responsible – the Croatian collaborators of the Nazi occupiers, who persecuted their Serbian neighbors, feature prominently. Handke reminds his readers of German crimes and Croatian complicity, which, as he believes, are largely ignored by the Western media but omnipresent in Serbia in the form of memories, lingering suspicions, and resentments. Repeatedly, Handke maintains that the Serbs are not paranoid, as the Western press likes to imply, but simply mindful of a past that Germany and Austria would like to forget. In Handke’s account, the stereotype of Serbian paranoia, which the Western media present as an ethnic trait, not as a response to national history, is the logical counterpart of the repression of Germany’s fascist past. While Handke insists on the relevancy of the past, he refuses to impose interpretative models from the past on current events. In

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Handke’s opinion, the Western media misrepresented the Serbian people by imposing Nazi paradigms on the contemporary context.20 In the West, Bosnian Muslims are widely identified with the victims of the Holocaust, while the Serbs are likened to the Nazi perpetrators. Because of this link, Handke’s inversion of the victim–perpetrator dichotomy in the Yugoslav context raised questions about his stance toward the Nazi past and led to accusations of revisionism and Blut und Boden (blood and soil) ideology. These accusations were fueled anew by Handke’s essay Noch einmal fu¨r Jugoslawien (Once Again for Yugoslavia, 1999), a treatise on the illegitimacy of the International Tribunal in the Hague. In Noch einmal fu¨r Yugoslawien, Handke again provokes his enemies through his selective use of Second World War history. He names as reason for his refusal to testify on Milosevic’s behalf his conviction that the court in the Hague is a typical example of victor’s justice. Since Handke does not explicate his position on the Nuremberg trials, an obvious parallel to the current proceedings, his essay can be read as a rejection of this tribunal as well. While Handke is attuned to the impact of the Nazi past on the collective unconscious of today’s Serbian population, he does not reflect on the influence of his own childhood in the Nazi empire on his perception of the war in the former Yugoslavia. And yet, a careful reading of his texts suggests that Handke’s early experience shaped his experience in Serbia in significant ways. Born on December 6, 1942, Handke, stepson of the German soldier Adolf Bruno Handke, spent the war years in Berlin and Griffen, Austria. Two of his uncles did not return from the Second World War. In Unter Tra¨nen fragend, Handke mentions as his first memory that of the two-year-old child playing in his grandparents’ yard when the roaring of a fighter-bomber resounded in the sky and the uncomprehending child was carried off to the safety of the house (TF 64–5; see also 137). Although the recounting of this episode suggests that Handke is aware of its pertinence, he never explicitly discusses any possible connection between his childhood memories and the boundless anger directed at NATO air raids over Serbian territory evident in numerous tirades in Unter Tra¨nen fragend. Although Handke does not discuss the impact of his own experiences in the Second World War, they inform his representation of contemporary Serbia. In Handke’s essays, Serbia is transformed into a highly contradictory fantaso-political entity. On the one hand, Serbia is identified with the Chetnik resistance to Nazi Germany and thus fulfills Handke’s desire for a mother country that stood up to the evil Empire

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of the Father.21 On the other hand, Serbia is identified with a Germany that was itself subject to Allied air raids. Handke portrays Serbia as the target of a “Weltkrieg” (TF 14) (world war), “Totalkrieg” (TF 119) (total war), and “Blitzkrieg” (TF 136) conducted by NATO forces and refers to a journalist “in einer franzo¨sischen, spanischen, holla¨ndischen Zeitung” (in a French, Spanish, Dutch paper) as “Westkriegsblitzma¨del” (TF 43) (Western war blitz girl). In several interviews, Handke defended his decision to focus on the suffering of the Serbs as a necessary balancing act. Since reporting in the West is preoccupied with the suffering of Muslims, Handke considers it his duty to shine a light on the experiences of the other side. Handke’s essays are contributions to a public, political debate, but they remain beholden to the author’s artistic vision. In the face of international disinterest in the Serbian victims of the war, Handke feels called upon to commit his art to the commemoration of individual suffering. Where political decisions are based on numbers and majorities, a procedure that led to interventions on behalf of the Muslims of Srebrenica, Handke commemorates the loss of every Serbian child, mother, and father irregardless of numbers: “die eine (1), einza¨hlige, von ihrem hungernden toten Sohn tra¨umende Mutter, majka, des in den Hu¨geln von Srebrenica verlorenen Streudorfs Kravica” (99) (the one (1), single mother, majka, dreaming of her famished dead son, from the remote village of Kravica lost in the hills of Srebrenica). Although Handke defends his bias most eloquently, it is not as innocent as the author would like to have us believe. Handke’s essays have been taken to task for the textual absence of the massacres perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims. It is, however, not only this absence that renders the text problematic, but also its casual interjections of anti-Muslim prejudices. Handke’s references to “kopftuchliebe Kleinmenschen (TF 39) (headscarf-wearing dear little people) and “Kopftuchma¨gdlein” (TF 40) (headscarf maidens); his description of the holy trinity and accompanying comments about Islam’s failure to understand this concept and brand it as polytheism (TF 106–11); or his reflection of the detrimental aftereffects of the Muslim prohibition of images on the art of story telling (SN 66) hardly facilitate peaceful intercultural dialogue. Handke seeks to portray the Western allies as the true enemies and avoids taking sides in the conflicts among Serbians, Bosnians, and Muslims. But his characterization of Islam and the subtext of his own victimization by Allied air raids suggest that his noble endeavor is marred by its own unacknowledged agendas.

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media wars While Handke questions clear-cut victim–perpetrator dichotomies with respect to Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, he re-erects battle lines in his wholesale condemnation of Western reporters. In the Yugoslav context, Handke advocates a world without “Feindbilder,” without simplistic dichotomies of “reinen Opfer and der nackten Bo¨sewichte” (WR 38) (pure victims and stark perpetrators). He defines his writing as an attempt to liquefy hardened categories, to write against the “Bilderstarre” (49) (calcification of images). Only the refusal to endorse simplistic notions of victim and perpetrator allows us to break free from the vicious circle of narratives of war and revenge. This logic, however, does not apply to Handke’s treatment of the Western media. In Handke’s opinion, the media are directly and ruinously involved in the war, and his essays attack them relentlessly. Throughout, Handke portrays the Western media as combatants who use words as weapons (“Schla¨gerwort,” Abschied 26). Handke relies primarily on neologisms to reinforce the association of writing and warfare. He speaks of “Hackbeil-Artikeln” (WR 126) (hatchet articles), “Haßleitartikler” (WR 33) (columnists of hatred), “Wortbeschuss” (WR 126) (word shelling), “Parallelbeschuss mit Worten” (TF 22) (parellel shelling with words), and “Zuschlag-Wo¨rtern” (TF 22) (hit words). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is a “Serbenfreßblatt” (WR 125) (Serb-devouring paper) that fires “Tendenzkarta¨tschen” (WR 15) (biased case-shots). To Handke, words are weapons in the most literal sense: “Ihr Medien entwirklicht oder, eher, verformt und verderbt jedes Mitgefu¨hl, indem ihr zuerst mitbombt und dann die Stories eurer (in jedem Sinn ‘eurer’) Gebombten verschachert” (TF 72) (You media de-realize or, rather, deform and spoil every form of compassion by bombing along at first and then bartering away the stories of your (‘your’ in every sense of the word) bombing victims).22 Handke’s vitriolic assault on Western newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is motivated by an acute awareness that an individual’s consciousness and his or her perception of reality are socially constructed through language.23 Already in his earliest works, Handke expressed his conviction that literature is made with words, not things. Thus, literary form necessarily inflects what it portrays.24 The conventions of language, narrative, and genre restrict and shape our mode of perception, privileging certain perspectives and repressing others. Whereas Handke’s early statements are concerned with literature and the “content of the form,” his Yugoslavia essays foreground newspapers

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and television, which they accuse of a process of radical distortion. Handke does not simply disapprove of individual instances of false reporting, but rather questions the institution of the media and even the concept of mediation as such: “Denn was weiß man, wo eine Beteiligung beinah immer nur eine (Fern-)Sehbeteiligung ist? Was weiß man, wo man vor lauter Vernetzung und Online nur Wissensbesitz hat, ohne jenes tatsa¨chliche Wissen, welches allein durch Lernen, Schauen und Lernen, entstehen kann? Was weiß der, der statt der Sache einzig deren Bild zu Gesicht bekommt” (WR 30) (For what do we know, where participation is almost always only television participation? What do we know, where in the face of lots of networks and online we are only in possession of knowledge, without that actual knowledge that comes only from learning, looking and learning? What does he know, who instead of the object only sees its image). In order to pierce through the false layers of mediated reality, Handke relies on an ideal of “reines Schauen” (pure looking), a pure and disinterested form of perception that is guided by the nature of reality itself and impresses itself on the narrator “ohne meinen Vorsatz und ohne mein Zutun” (WR 51)25 (without my intention and without my assistance). “Reines Schauen” translated into poetic language possesses the power to heal and reconnect the subject to the world. It connects the individual to “etwas durchaus ganz Wirkliches, worin alle die durcheinandergewirbelten Realita¨tsweisen etwas wie einen Zusammenhang ahnen ließen” (WR 30) (something utterly real, in which all the different forms of reality have been mixed up and foreshadow something like a connection). Provocatively, Handke lays claim to such “reines Schauen” for his own writing and declares it to be impossible with respect to television and magazine reporting. Although Handke’s notion of “reines Schauen” lays claim to prophetic truth, his texts are not characterized by certainty, but rather highlight the inaccessibility of a world at war. Handke’s writing is of a mercurial nature. All his essays contain numerous auto-reflexive comments in which he anticipates possible responses and critiques of his writing. He prefers not to propose statements but rather asks questions or adds a “perhaps” in parentheses. What Arens refers to as Handke’s “egregiously faux-naı¨ve tone”26 could also be seen as an attempt to convey the illegibility of the Serbian landscape, history, and of the current war. The experience of getting lost and obscured vision because of snowstorms, darkness, fog, and rain form a constant motif. Repeatedly, Handke explicitly deals with the issue of cultural legibility. For example, during his first visit to Bajina Basta, Handke notices a group of men who, at first glance, appear to be

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hardened killers, but whom their local companion describes as harmless foresters (WR 98). Handke constantly undermines his own assumptions along with those of his readers. In his texts, nothing is what it seems. What appears to be a tabernacle on the bridge over the Drina is in fact an ashtray (WR 100). What looks like a bunker is in fact a place where mushrooms are grown (SN 25). The smoke he sees might be a sign of domesticity or of destruction; the houses that are missing roofs, windows, and doors, are either being built or destroyed (WR 101). Handke takes the literal meaning of the essay as an attempt, of “writing as a tentative search,”27 very seriously. Handke’s forceful tirades against Western media may strike his readers as unbalanced, but his performance of uncertainty opens the doors that conventional war reporting has shut. conclusion In Winterliche Reise, Handke declares that his essay is an attempt to counteract reports in the Western media that are all too eager to assign to Croats, Muslims, and Serbs “die Rollen des Angreifers und des Angegriffenen, der reinen Opfer und der nackten Bo¨sewichte” (WR 38) (the roles of attacker and attacked, of pure victims and stark perpetrators). Throughout, Handke’s essays subvert and deconstruct dualistic structures and instead suggest third terms. Handke feels at home in Slovenia, but only because he is a stranger. He creates a mythical, timeless world that is defined as tangibly sensual and real. He rejects any attempt to demarcate Slovenia and Croatia as European because it implies the branding of Serbia as the Balkan Other. Similarly, Handke’s politics defy traditional dichotomies of left and right. He rejects the claims of small nations to have a state of their own with references to multinational communities. He insists on the relevance of the Nazi past, but rejects the common association of the Nazis with the Serbs. He wants to write a text of peace, even as he embraces the use of violence. Handke does not strive for consistency but rather defies reader expectations of linear arguments. Interpretations of specific episodes are juxtaposed to generalizing philosophical musings. Casual judgments based on a problematic phenomenological method – in Winterliche Reise, Handke takes a look at some old men in Belgrade and concludes that they could not possibly be Serbian chauvinists – stand side by side with deeply learned excursions on European history. His attempt to write a text “ohne ein Feind-Bild” (SN 91) contrasts with his acerbic attacks on the Western media and NATO forces.

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Handke’s intellectual and artistic project is intriguing and hopeful, but his one-sided focus on the Serbian victims of the war and his depopulated landscapes of war remain controversial choices. His muted recording of the horror of war seeks to portray suffering without doing harm to the victim’s dignity, but it also threatens to remove the victims of war from direct view. Handke’s notion of a “Friedenstext” introduces the radical proposition that peace cannot spring from a mere critique of war. His project is driven by inspiring originality and passionate commitment, but it also excludes the voices of some participants of the war as inauthentic. Handke remarks repeatedly that the suffering of Croats and Muslims is overrepresented in the Western media, but his desire to redress the balance introduces a new set of problems. Narratives of peace cannot be imposed from the outside (“was weiss ein Fremder”), and they certainly cannot limit themselves to one party. Handke’s narratives may be deeply transformative harbingers of peace, but they are also incitements to controversy and strife.

chapter 13

War and the media: Jelinek

c lo v : If I could kill him I’d die happy. (Pause) h a m m : What’s the weather like? c lo v : As usual. (Beckett, Endgame) So is. Jetzt is Krieg und da gibts keine Wu¨rschtel. Karl Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (That’s it. It is war now, there’s not going to be any fuss.)

In an essay entitled “Islam and Violence” (Islam und Gewalt), published in taz in December of 2001, the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek claims that the violence of 9/11 awakened in her a desire for violent revenge. She then expresses her determination to renounce this desire and support tolerance and freedom of religion. But she also declares her firm resolve to resist what she calls Islamic fascism – “Aber wer will mich daran hindern, dem islamischen Faschismus entgegenzutreten wie ich jedem Faschismus entgegentreten wu¨rde?”1 (But who wants to prevent me from opposing Islamic fascism just as I would oppose every kind of fascism) – and laments the lack of outspoken criticism of terrorism by Islamic leaders. In particular, Jelinek takes exception to the treatment of women: “immer immer die Gewalt gegen Frauen, die offenbar eines nie zu su¨hnenden Verbrechens schuldig sind, bloß weil sie u¨berhaupt da sind, daher muß man sie verbergen, aber fu¨r Vergewaltigungen sind sie immer noch gut genug”2 (always always violence against women who are apparently guilty of a crime that can never be atoned, simply because they exist at all, therefore one has to hide them, but when it comes to rape they are still good enough). The last couple of lines of this article contain a surprising twist. Jelinek again refuses to quell her thirst for revenge on substitute victims only to declare in the next sentence that she’ll trust the US to do that for her: “Ich werde Amerika holen. Die werden jetzt die fu¨r 175

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mich nicht Erreichbaren fu¨r mich zersto¨ren. Das machen die. Meine Stellvertreter: ganz Amerika. Ich bin dafu¨r, aber ich weiss noch nicht, ob sie es richtig machen. Ich hoffe es. Aber wissen kann ich es nicht”3 (I will get America. They will destroy those whom I cannot reach in my stead. They do that. My substitutes: all of America. I am for it, but I do not know yet if they are going to do it right. I hope so. But I cannot know that). Any reader with even a passing familiarity with Jelinek’s work is going to wonder if this article expresses the author’s own opinion or if it mimics cultural attitudes in order to critique them. Is “Islam and Violence” meant to expose the hypocrisy of an attitude that disavows revenge only to delegate it, or is it a straightforward endorsement of the war on terror? In order to parse Jelinek’s thinking on warfare, this chapter presents readings of three of her plays that engage in a dialogue with current events and particularly with our current practice of wars. As I will show, Jelinek is a war writer, but she does not attempt to represent war herself. Rather, Jelinek’s works vivisect media discourses and cultural images of war. Although there is but little critical attention to Jelinek’s conceptualization of warfare, a large number of scholars have analyzed her treatment of violence. Inevitably, Jelinek’s take on the subject of violence is linked to the infamous violence of her style. The German director Christoph Schlingensief, for example, likens Jelinek to a literary terrorist who hides in conspiratorial cells and produces a “machine gun text” (“Maschinengewehrtext”).4 Jelinek herself has claimed that she is “an author of the axe.”5 And the critic Peter Michael Lingens went so far as to suggest that Jelinek’s writing is literally lethal when he warned that Burgtheater (1983), a play about the Nazi past of the popular Ho¨rbinger clan, might give Attila Ho¨rbiger a heart attack.6 Because her style is perceived as aggressive, Jelinek has often been accused of reproducing the same oppressive mechanisms that she sets out to unveil. Beatrice Hanssen, for example, laments that Jelinek’s work “enlists one mode of violence to combat another.”7 But, as Hanssen herself suggests, there is another way to read Jelinek’s work. Jelinek’s mirroring of existing discourse is never limited to reproduction but rather exaggerates, scrambles, distorts, recontextualizes and recodes its originals.8 Jelinek’s work stands in the tradition of the objet trouve´, of the Austrian writers Karl Kraus and Thomas Bernhard, and the Bavarian cabaret of Gerhard Polt. Her technique is perhaps best captured by Luce Irigaray’s

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concept of mimicry.9 By inhabiting established discourses, by quoting and paraphrasing, Jelinek’s works stage a calculated interruption of the discourses they mimic, a process that Jelinek has described as “zur Kenntlichkeit entstellen” (Sturm und Drang 49) (to distort to recognition). In deconstructing discourse from within, Jelinek’s works perform what Judith Butler has called “the possibility of a repetition of the law which is not its consolidation, but its displacement.”10 Seen in this light, Jelinek’s texts do indeed perform a critique of violence and of war. Several critics have characterized Jelinek as a postmodern writer with a modern agenda. Relying on postmodern forms, her works are powered by an “aesthetics of resistance,”11 by a moral impulse that has been read as the continuation of Schiller’s Schaubu¨hne als moralische Anstalt with other means.12 But Jelinek’s moral impulse is not of the kind that seeks to offer solutions and alternatives. Rather, as Wright points out, Jelinek’s “anarchic destructiveness takes place without any attempt at an imaginary reconstitution of society.”13 Like Karl Kraus, whose satiric First World War drama Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind, 1922) uncovers ideology by aping it, Jelinek’s texts dissect contemporary war discourse in order to unveil our culture’s me´connaissance of war. In the following, I will analyze Jelinek’s representation and conceptualization of warfare and violence, two subjects that are of paramount importance in her works.14 From wir sind lockvo¨gel baby! (We are Decoys, Baby, 1970) to Bambiland, Jelinek weaves a dense discursive net that allows her to “track down the horizon of war in every area of contemporary life.”15 As I will show, Jelinek’s critique of warfare is first and foremost a critique of the contemporary media. Already in her early works, Jelinek portrayed mass entertainment, in particular television, as de-realizing. Her novel Michael, for example, highlights the artificiality of pulp fiction and popular culture in general. Repeatedly, the narrator protests emphatically that the events described in these pages belong to the realm of “WIRKLICHKEIT” (REALITY) in capital letters and reassures readers that “die wirklichkeit dauert immer noch an” (reality still continues) (22).16 According to Jelinek, television not only devalues and erodes our experience of the real, but rather appropriates for itself the realm of the real: “Das Fernsehen ist wirklicher als sie, aber sie ahmen es immerhin tapfer nach” (Oh Wildnis 210) (television is more real than they, but at least they imitate it courageously). In a manner reminiscent of Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal, a concept of reality without origin or referents which substitutes signs of the real for the real

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itself,17 Jelinek lambastes a culture in which TV is “so echt wie im wirklichen leben. fast noch echter” (Michael 139) (as real as real life, almost more real). In several of her recent texts, Jelinek then explores how the “hyperreal” affects our perception of war. Jelinek’s texts mimic a form of reporting that one might call “wartainment,” thus showcasing the trivialization and banalization of violence and warfare in popular culture and television. Jelinek portrays amusement and annihilation, Gemu¨tlichkeit and genocide as inseparable units. Again and again, her work takes jabs at the ideological leveling of differences in current forms of mass entertainment. In wir sind lockvo¨gel baby!, for example, Heintje, the Beatles, the Easter Bunny, the Vietnam War, and Stalingrad exist side by side in perfect harmony (98). In Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (Disease or Modern Women, 1984), Dr. Heidkliff rhapsodizes about his “neuesten Liebhaberei: Vo¨gelsingen und Massengra¨ber Betrachten” (Theaterstu¨cke 218) (latest hobby: bird song and contemplating mass graves). Jelinek uses neologisms, mixes registers, and introduces jarringly incongruous juxtapositions to show that current media discourses lack conceptual frameworks appropriate to the gravity of the wounded body and the finality of death. Further developing Jelinek’s critique of the media, Ein Sportstu¨ck (A Sports Play, 1998) is not only concerned with the motivating factors of violence, but relates Western indifference to the pain of others to the mediated, televised nature of warfare.18 The play critically interrogates victim and perpetrator discourses and points to a tendency in the media to commercialize and co-opt discourses of victimization. While television derealizes pain and suffering – “tv ist scho¨ner. und tut nicht weh! es tut nicht weh obwohl man DABEI ist” (Michael 128) (TV is more beautiful. And it does not hurt! It does not hurt even though we are INVOLVED) – Ein Sportstu¨ck stages battered, bleeding, wounded, and mutilated bodies. Thus, Jelinek disrupts the sanitization of war in the media and draws our attention to the body in pain. While Jelinek is concerned with the triviality of war, she also lays bare the manifold and subtle ways in which canonical works of Western literature and philosophy undergird and support the practice of war. Jelinek’s Das Werk (The Work, 2002), in particular, uncovers the literary underpinnings of war and draws attention to the link between warfare and the sublime. In Das Werk, war is not the antithesis of civil society but integrated into its very core. Warfare is an enduring societal institution, “eine liebe Gewohnheit” (In den Alpen 93) (a dear habit) that informs every practice of life.

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Finally, Jelinek’s recent play Bambiland (2004) and her three monologues entitled Babel further explore the trivialization of war in the media and investigate the nexus of warfare, women, and religion. As I will show, Jelinek does not focus on the relation between violence and Islam, but rather explores the intimate ties between violence and religion in Western culture. ‘ein sportstu¨ ck’ Jelinek’s play Ein Sportstu¨ck, which premiered at the Burgtheater on January 23, 1998, explores connections between warfare, gender, and sports. As the play declares flippantly, “Wie wollen Sie einem jungen Mann klarmachen, daß er in den Krieg ziehen soll, wenn er vorher keinen Sport getrieben hat” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 25) (How do you want to convey to a young man that he should go to war if he did not first exercise). Ein Sportstu¨ck conceptualizes war as a contact sport and establishes associative links between teams of athletes and armies and between sport and killing. Jelinek weaves an associative web that conflates warfare with a triumph over nature, and the athlete’s discipline with the warrior’s disregard for physical wellbeing. Like a heroic warrior, the athlete who is willing to go to extremes gains the edge over his competitors and effects “ein Comeback auf dem Umweg u¨ber den Tod” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 18) (a comeback via the detour of his death). In order to get her point across, Jelinek relies heavily on farce and physical comedy, including an assortment of characters who play soccer with human bones. Ein Sportstu¨ck also makes reference to and transmogrifies classical works, in particular Euripides’s Women of Troy and Homer’s Iliad. The play pokes fun at the Amazon myth, features Hector and Achilles as tennis and corporate players, and takes jabs at the commodification of the human body by demanding that all actors wear and promote clothing by Nike, Addidas, Reebok, and Puma. Ein Sportstu¨ck explores the mechanics of individual and collective violence and the relation between violence and cultural attitudes toward the body. Cameo appearances by the Austrian bodybuilder Andreas Mu¨nzer, who emulated Arnold Schwarzenegger and died as a result of steroid abuse, and the “black widow” Elfriede Blauensteiner, who killed three people, in each case inheriting the deceased’s possessions, serve to illustrate the relations between individual acts of violence and cultural systems of valuation. Ein Sportstu¨ck suggests that Blauensteiner’s murders of the infirm patients for whose care she was responsible are informed by a

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cultural idolization of the perfect body and the corresponding disregard for weak and old bodies: “auf Schwa¨che, Krankheit und Hinfa¨lligkeit bin ich beruflich spezialisiert” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 78) (I specialize professionally in weakness, illness, and decrepitude). Blauensteiner’s murders are portrayed as both an expression of disgust with the infirm body and a perverted attempt to reconnect with the body. While Blauensteiner’s rejection of normative femininity is coupled with aggression against others, Andreas Mu¨nzer’s efforts to conform to the Schwarzenegger variety of masculinity result in self-destruction. Mu¨nzer’s “selbstgezeugtes Mannstum” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 92) (self-begot manliness) is the product of an extreme form of alienation from the body that culminates in death. In Ein Sportstu¨ck, violence against the self and against others is linked to a cultural and personal desire for bodily perfection that results in estrangement from the body. Ein Sportstu¨ck also critically interrogates and deconstructs victim and perpetrator discourses. Jelinek shows that victimization is not synonymous with innocence, and that victim and perpetrator are not mutually exclusive categories. For example, a character, who is designated as victim, “Opfer,” and who is being beaten mercilessly by all the other characters, continues all the while to produce an endless stream of malicious slander. The interaction between victim and perpetrator is also designed to ridicule the idea that rationality and discourse can put a stop to violence. In a farcical note, “das Opfer” (the victim) and characters who are designated as “Ta¨ter” (perpetrator) wax eloquent about psychological motivations and sociological explanations as they continue to beat each other. Finally, Jelinek shows that the media have a significant impact on victim–perpetrator dynamics. Tellingly, Jelinek’s victim is more worried about how he will be represented on television than about the brutality inflicted on him. Since some forms of victimization are telegenic, they can be abused for purposes of selfaggrandization: “Ich allein bin die Erfinderin der Opferfu¨rsorge, damit die Geschichte endlich auf mich aufmerksam wird und tut was ich ihr sage” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 117) (I alone am the inventor of welfare for victims so that history finally notices me and does what I tell it to do). The attempt to complicate victim–perpetrator relations also informs the play’s portrayal of gender. In her early works, Jelinek contrasts male violence with female complicity and presents female domesticity and male warmongering as perfect complements: “erichs liebe zu den abenteuern des zweiten weltkriegs gegen paulas liebe zu erich” (Die Liebhaberinnen 53) (erich’s love for the adventures of the second

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world war against paula’s love for erich). Similarly, her novel Die Ausgesperrten (Wonderful, Wonderful Times, 1980) explores how concepts of masculinity undergird military endeavors and how war boosts male self-confidence, for example, when it describes how veterans of war “denken an die Zeit, als sie, im feindlichen Ausland, noch wer waren, der sie jetzt nicht mehr sind” (27) (think of the time when they, in hostile foreign lands, still were somebody who they no longer are now). In contrast, Ein Sportstu¨ck expands the notion of female culpability from complicity to active engagement in violence. Among the perpetrators, who beat the “Bu¨ndel” (bundle) to a bloody pulp, is a woman of forty, who is introduced as “normal halt” (17) (just normal). Furthermore, the play suggests that woman’s exclusion from the realm of war is not a moral accomplishment but an all too comfortable excuse for political indifference. In Ein Sportstu¨ck, the wailing woman of Greek tragedy, whose lament restores dignity to the victims of war, has been transformed into the babbling couch potato whose “polar inertia”19 in front of the television screen is characterized as a different form of murder: “Ich bin dagegen, daß es u¨berhaupt einen Krieg gegeben hat und sitze ganze Mo¨rderstunden vor dem Fernseher, um zu heulen und zu klagen. Man la¨ßt mich die Toten einfach nicht begraben! Man la¨ßt mich nur dabei zuschauen. Gemein. Wir Frauen” (Sportstu¨ck 34) (I am against the fact that there was a war at all and sit whole murderous hours in front of the television in order to cry and wail. They simply do not let me bury the dead! They only let me watch. Mean. We Women). In the face of mediated warfare, passivity itself has become a form of violence. Watching war on television is tantamount to being involved in warfare, in a “heimlichen Krieg gegen alles, was lebt und daher auf diesem Bildschirm angeschaut werden kann” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 110) (a secret war against everything that is alive and can therefore be watched on this screen). Jelinek’s portrayal of female violence is paired with a radical subversion of the gender dichotomy. The actress who plays “die Frau” does not speak her text but lip-syncs it while male voices are projected from offstage. The fact that a woman channels male voices undermines the naturalness of gender along with any assumptions about woman’s inherently peaceful nature and reinforces the connection between individual acts of violence and the structural violence of society. Jelinek rejects essentialist concepts of the body and chooses instead to portray gender and the body as sites of social inscription and power struggles.20 This deconstruction of the gender dichotomy finds its logical equivalent in the liquification of the Cartesian

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body–mind/soul split. Thus, the play’s metaphors lend material reality to the soul, which the character of the mother washes “immer wieder bei 30 Grad” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 31) (again and again at 30 degrees). Moreover, in addition to the denaturalization of gender, Jelinek also subverts the category of nature itself through her portrayal of the regulation of the Wienfluß. The effort to create a “natural” riverbed for the Wienfluß does not restore primordial nature, but rather produces a new kind of artifice. Jelinek’s text suggests that there is no natural state that is not already cultured, and that there is no paradisiacal state before violence. Rather, nature itself is as violent as our attempts to combat and contain it. Like all of Jelinek’s texts about war, Ein Sportstu¨ck characterizes modern society’s attitude to war as casual and banal. Jelinek’s characteristic mixing of registers again serves to highlight the trivialization of warfare by presenting it as yet another form of mass entertainment. Repeatedly, war is associated with fashion, forever changing and forever the same: “Bald kommt schließlich der na¨chste Krieg mit einer ganz neuen Mode an” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 38) (After all, soon the next war will arrive with an entirely new fashion). A character, simply called “Andrer” (the other), desires a “schicke Golfkriegsfrisur” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 162) (chic Gulf War hairdo), and readers are informed that the heroes of history such as Hitler and Stalin are passe´ “denn die neuen haben wir bereits hereinbekommen” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 11–12) (for the new ones have already arrived). Battles are rated like soccer matches – “Das Ergebnis ist allerdings nicht schlecht fu¨r eine so kleine Schlacht: zehn Prozent unserer Bevo¨lkerung ausgerottet” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 67) (The result is certainly not bad for such a small battle: ten percent of our population exterminated) – and warfare is greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that is commonly associated with the World Cup – “Krieg! Krieg! Jubeln! Freuen! Frohlocken!” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 34) (War! War! Cheering! Joy! Rejoicing!). Ein Sportstu¨ck is deeply pessimistic about the efficacy of resistance and wonders if any kind of opposition to war could ever be successful. A self-critical commentary runs through the entire play. Several characters insult the “Autorin” (the author) and mock her obsession with all forms of victimization. There are repeated references to the angry and accusatory nature of the works of “Frau Autor” – “Sie, Frau Autor, warum sind Sie denn so aggressiv” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 130) (You, Madame Author, why are you so aggressive). In Ein Sportstu¨ck, protest does not produce tangible results, and criticism is routinely co-opted for commercial purposes. Consequently, “Frau Autor” decides to renounce political engagement altogether. The play evokes atrocities committed by Hitler, Stalin, and

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Karadzic only to comment nonchalantly: “Bitte einen Applaus fu¨r all diese Herren, denn dies ist das erste und gleichzeitig letzte Mal, daß hier von ihnen die Rede sein wird, obwohl von mir in diesem Punkt eigentlich mehr Engagement zu erwarten gewesen wa¨re” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 11) (Please, an applause for all these gentlemen because this is the first and simultaneously last time that they will be spoken of here even though one might really have expected more commitment from me in this respect). Empathy for the victims of war and condemnation of warfare and murder are presented as cheap and ineffective rituals – “ich bin jederzeit bereit, sie zu a¨chten und auszupfeifen” (52) (I am always ready to ostracize and boo them) – designed to soothe the conscience of the passive spectator but unable to change the lot of those who suffer. In spite of such pessimism, Ein Sportstu¨ck does not abandon all attempts to intervene critically in contemporary attitudes toward war and violence. In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry reminds us of the multiple strategies with which texts about war seek to elide the body in pain and eliminate from their surface the facts of wounding and killing.21 In Ein Sportstu¨ck, on the other hand, wounding, killing, and the body constantly disrupt the rhetoric of the characters. Throughout the entire play, a character simply referred to as “das Bu¨ndel” is beaten to a pulp. This enactment of violence on stage contrasts sharply with the play’s numerous casual references to brutal acts of murder and mutilation: “Oder sollte die junge Frau, die ich vorhin mit einem Betonring beschwert und in den Fluß geworfen habe, bereits einen Wert an sich dargestellt haben” (Ein Sportstu¨ck 158) (Or should the young woman whom I weighed down with a concrete ring earlier and threw into the river, have represented a value as such). It is this “aesthetics of embodiment,”22 the attention to the body and its subjectification, that functions as the focal point of Jelinek’s critique of our media-induced indifference to war. Ein Sportstu¨ck cannot alter the fact that television allows us to take perverted pleasure in warfare from a distance, but it can force us to confront our own complicity and indifference to the body in pain. ‘das werk’ Ein Sportstu¨ck and Das Werk share many themes and concerns. Like Ein Sportstu¨ck, Das Werk diagnoses the contemporary trivialization of warfare – “wenn wir nicht vergessen, erkla¨ren wir noch jemand Falschem den Krieg” (In den Alpen 168) (if we don’t forget we will declare war on the wrong party).23 Both texts present women’s exclusion from the realm

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of warfare not as an act of resistance but as a form of inertia: “Verstehst du etwa den Krieg, Heidi? Nein, du verstehst ihn nicht, du kannst ihn nicht verstehen . . . Der Krieg kommt und geht. Ihr Frauen bleibt und verko¨rpert, weil ihr nichts Andres zu tun habt, das Bleibende” (In den Alpen 117) (Do you perhaps understand war, Heidi? No, you do not understand it, you cannot understand it . . . War comes and goes. You women stay and embody, because you have nothing else to do, that which lasts). Finally, both texts engage in complex intertextual dialogues. While Ein Sportstu¨ck alludes to the Iliad, Das Werk makes reference to Ernst Ju¨nger’s Der Arbeiter, Schubert’s Winterreise, and Euripides’s The Women of Troy. In addition to these high-culture links, Das Werk also traces war discourse in popular culture. Large parts of the text are spoken by the Geißenpeter and the Heidis, a reference to Johanna Spyri’s children’s book Heidi of 1880. While Ein Sportstu¨ck is interested in the nexus between warfare, sports, and gender, Das Werk explores the connection between Heimat, commodification, and war.24 The nexus of traditional folk culture and warfare, of “Nockerl” and “Stukas” (Theaterstu¨cke 131), already featured prominently in Jelinek’s play Burgtheater (1985). In Burgtheater, Heimat, National Socialist ideology, and the Second World War are inextricably linked: “Die Gemse brunzt im Morgenrot, der junge Krieger der ist tot” (Theaterstu¨cke 135) (The chamois pisses in the dawn, the young warrior he is dead). Das Werk further pursues the association of Heimat and war, but it also explores the intimate relation between creative and destructive impulses. The play has as its point of departure the construction of the hydroelectric power plant of Kaprun.25 The Nazis started the construction of Kaprun in 1938 after the Anschluß. The workforce consisted largely of slave laborers, many of whom died from exhaustion and abuse. The inscription on the monument for the workers who died during construction reads: “Aus Arbeit und Opfer ein Werk” (From labor and sacrifice a work). Thus, Kaprun signifies the Nazi program of extermination through labor, but it also stands for a seamless transition from the Nazis to post-Second World War society. The plant, which first went into operation in 1955, became a symbol of Austrian reconstruction after the war so that Austria’s triumph over the forces of nature served to conceal its defeat in the Second World War. As Jelinek puts it, the water of the power plant washes Austria clean of its past (In den Alpen 97). This interrelation between work and annihilation, between construction and destruction as it is symbolized by the history of the power plant is of crucial

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importance to Jelinek’s analysis of war. The play diagnoses a fundamental confusion of creative and destructive impulses embodied in the National Socialist program of extermination through work, the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free). Moreover, Jelinek suggests that the xenophobic debate centered on present forms of labor migration echoes Nazi strategies of extermination through work. In Das Sportstu¨ck, Jelinek already hints at an associative link between killing, production, and work: “Ich to¨te, das ist die Dienstleistung, die ich produziere” (Sportstu¨ck 76) (I kill, that is the service that I produce). Alluding to the work of Ernst Ju¨nger, whose Storms of Steel compares the slaughter of the front to industrial labor, Das Werk further explores the nexus between construction and destruction, and between tools and weapons (“Ihr Werkzeug ist ja immer: die Waffe,” In den Alpen 129; Their tool is really always: the weapon). Jelinek toys with the idea that construction and war spring from the same root: “Wenn man eine Welt mit einem Krieg u¨berziehen kann, kann man auch Sta¨dte mit Wolkenkratzern spicken oder einen Berg mit einer Mauer u¨berziehen” (In den Alpen 97) (If one can cover a world with a war, one can also lard cities with skyscrapers or cover a mountain with a wall). However, although war is initially a man-made creation, it soon evolves into a self-regulating principle, completely divorced from human agency: “Der Krieg geht, wohin er will, und dann la¨uft er sich in seinem Gera¨t langsam tot, und dann ist er wieder aus” (In den Alpen 117) (War goes wherever it wants to, and then it slowly goes dead in its apparatus, and then it is all over again). The play portrays the construction of the Kaprun power plant as a war against nature and against one’s fellow human beings, thus postulating that every form of construction contains a destructive core: “die Baustelle ist ein Kampfplatz, beinahe ein Krieg. Kein Krieg zwischen Menschen und Menschen, wie er uns eine liebe Gewohnheit geworden war, nein, hier greift der Mensch die Natur an” (In den Alpen 93) (the construction site is a battlefield, almost a war. No war between humans and humans, as it has become a dear habit to us, no, here man attacks nature). Conversely, every form of destruction induces creation. Thus, the Second World War generated the need for energy and ultimately motivated the construction of the plant. War emerges as “the father of all things,” the creative principle that inspires material and intellectual production: “Aber ohne Krieg wird gar nichts. Ohne Krieg ist noch nie etwas ein Etwas geworden. Mit der Hand, der Waffe und dem perso¨nlichen Denken ist der Mensch scho¨pferisch. Zuerst macht er Tote, dann macht er Beton, aber er hat

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schon oft beides gleichzeitig gemacht. Tote in Beton. Beton in Toten” (In den Alpen 102) (But without war nothing comes into being. Without war nothing has ever become a something. Man is creative with his hand, weapon, and his personal thinking. First he makes dead people, then he makes concrete, but often he has already made both simultaneously. Dead people in concrete. Concrete in dead people). Throughout Das Werk, construction and destruction are shown as not only compatible but inextricably linked. Interwoven with the discussion of the power plant are references to the Kaprun glacier railway disaster and the skier Hermann Maier, the Herminator, who was injured in a car accident, all of which are designed to create a dense web of technology and death. In Das Werk, technology and construction demand sacrifice and death so that “bluten” (bleed) and “bauen” (build) are as one. The play reinforces this conflation through puns such as “Schlichtungsvorgang” (process of arbitration) and “Schlachtungsvorgang” (In den Alpen 141) (process of slaughtering), “schaffen” (create) and “wegschaffen” (remove) and juxtapositions such as “Kraftwerk des Krieges” (In den Alpen 180) (power plant of war). Throughout the play, seemingly contradictory discourses are made to reveal their hidden connections. Jelinek reinforces the nexus between warfare, death, and commerce through references to glacier skiing in the Kaprun area, first practiced by k.u.k. soldiers during the First World War,26 and to the Kaprun railway disaster, which resulted in the deaths of 155 people. In Das Werk, the glacier railway disaster, which gave rise to a bitter public controversy and has come to symbolize criminal negligence, greed, and miscarriage of justice, emerges as a linchpin that links tourism, technological mastery of nature, and death. In addition, Jelinek draws highly controversial parallels between Kaprun and 9/11. Das Werk compares the invisibility of the 155 Kaprun victims who died in a tunnel and hence without media coverage with the ubiquity of images of 9/11. The text suggests that this invisibility and the fact that the Kaprun victims died because of the greed of local entrepreneurs, not because of Islamist fanaticism, led to the scandalous release of all defendants. As this portrayal of 9/11 demonstrates, Jelinek is not one to comply with representational conventions. Like Roland Barthes, Jelinek appears to believe that “the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth.”27 Sifting through the debris of televised images and normalizing discourses, Jelinek seeks to correct our perspective by producing texts that are “falsche[r] Spiegel eines schon Falschen”28 (wrong mirrors of something that is already wrong).29

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In addition to exploring the interrelation between production and destruction, Jelinek is interested in the connection between war and the sublime, the “Gewaltiges, das leicht zu Gewalt werden kann” (In den Alpen 45) (the powerful that can easily turn into violence).30 Jelinek reshuffles the repertoire of classical motifs and rhetoric, and, in so doing, unveils a cluster of themes and thoughts that inform both the most violent excesses of Western history and the most treasured texts of Western civilization. Already in er nicht als er (1998), Jelinek points out parallels between our culture’s high regard for the artistic exploration of new terrain and the conquest of new lands in warfare: “Aus der Dichtkunst ist der Krieg entstanden: Das ihnen Bekannte hat die Leute gelangweilt, aber fragen wollten sie auch wieder nicht. Sie wollten gleich antworten. Eins wissen sie aber ganz genau: immer was Neues erobern! Das ist ku¨nstlerisch! So viel Zeit muß sein” (22) (War originated in poetry: that which was familiar to them bored people, but they did not want to ask either. They wanted to answer right away. But one thing they know for sure: always conquer something new! That is artistic! That much time we need). Like er nicht als er, Das Werk explores connections between the most select pieces of German literature and philosophy and the most destructive impulses and actions of German and Austrian society. Jelinek incorporates, deforms, and defaces the language and thought of canonical literature. Das Werk links Goethe’s Faust and “geballte Fa¨uste” (clenched fists) and connects the motif of “wandern,” in frequent allusions to Schubert’s Winterreise, with the restlessness of a “Volk ohne Raum”: “Und der Krieg wurde erfunden, damit die Menschen ebenfalls nicht immer bleiben mu¨ssen, wo sie sind, sondern daß sie hinmu¨ssen, wo schon andre sind” (In den Alpen 174) (And war was invented so that people do not always have to stay where they are, but rather have to go where other people already are). In Das Werk, warfare is firmly rooted in the heart of Western culture and Western economy. But if, as Jelinek suggests, the eradication of war entails a fundamental transformation of Western culture as such, all hopes to contain war are precarious at best. Das Werk is a deeply pessimistic text that implies the ultimate futility of any attempt to prevent war and violence. After all, what can be done if war forms an intimate component of all forms of creation and production? And yet, in spite of its ideological pessimism, aesthetically and stylistically, Das Werk is designed to upset calcified categories and open up space for new forms of thinking and living. Even more than Sportstu¨ck, Das Werk abandons traditional genre conventions. There are no

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psychologically motivated characters, and there is no plot. Successive monologues have supplanted traditional dramatic dialogue. Das Werk references numerous historical events, but it does not explain or narrate. Rather, the fragmentary nature of the information offered in the play challenges readers to fill in the blanks. While these invocations of history and politics speak to our rational side, the play’s aesthetics address the reader on a subtle, subconscious level. Das Werk works with leitmotifs, associative links reinforced through iteration, and mantra-like phrases that seek to disrupt dominant discursive paradigms. Jelinek presents arguments that seek to convince and enlighten, but she also relies on the power of language to unlock and possibly reconfigure the discursive paradigms that determine our thoughts and lives.

‘bambiland’ Bambiland, a dramatic rendering of the Iraq War, premiered on December 12, 2003 in the Burgtheater in Vienna. It chronicles the Iraq invasion in the form of a chatty media diary. The banal banter of its narrative voices responds to all the major headlines of the early phase of the war: from the dolphins used to locate mines to the Apache helicopter shot down by peasants, from the Blackwater contractors killed in Falluja to President Bush’s fall from a bicycle. As the title suggests – the Bambi is Germany’s most coveted media award – Bambiland does not seek to represent warfare, but rather dissects media representations of war. The play superimposes motifs and characters from Greek mythology onto current events in order to stage the clash between the lofty ideals of Western culture and the triviality of its media discourses.31 Like Ein Sportstu¨ck and Das Werk, Bambiland differs markedly from Jelinek’s early works. Whereas Was geschah mit Nora, nachdem sie ihren Mann verlassen hatte (What Happened after Nora Left Her Husband, 1978) and Clara S. (1981) work with traditional dialogues, Bambiland consists of polyphonic monologues, chameleonic narrative voices that constantly change perspective. As has often been pointed out, in Jelinek’s text, it is not the subject that produces discourse, but rather discourse produces multiple subjects. Since all voices are shown as parts of the same discursive web, classic notions of subjectivity, individuality, and agency are dissolved.32 Like Das Werk, Bambiland is a play without plot, without action, and without characters. Instead, Bambiland presents the matrix that governs the discourse of war in the Western world.

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Since multiple narrative positions coexist and meld into each other, the reader can never be quite sure who is speaking.33 The voice of a mother who laments the loss of her sons becomes the voice of a rich man who refuses to send his son to war (B 61).34 The “I” of the text is identified with Jesus, with God (“Ich als Gott,” B 78) and with a weapons dealer (B 79) while the “du” is “Private Ryan” (B 59), the victim of a bomb (B 63), and then whoever, “wer immer Sie sind” (B 59). The shifting, heterogeneous identities of the “du” are complicated by the fact that the reader him-/ herself is drawn into the text, made complicit, and asked to buy weapons of mass destruction. Thus, readers become characters in the texts and are forced to shoulder political responsibility for the war. Although Bambiland is peopled by a multiplicity of voices, these voices betray a striking lack of diversity. Throughout, the reader is caught in a Western perspective, mockingly presented as monolithic: “Wir sind ein Amerikaner. Derzeit vielleicht nicht. Aber im Prinzip schon” (B 73) (We are an American. Perhaps not right now. But definitely in principle). In classic Nietzschean fashion, Bambiland suggests that Western morality is a function of power,35 but the play also portrays Western culture as infused with a lack of direction and purpose that undermines its own agenda. The Gulf War is both an imperialist enterprise that seeks to impose Western values on the conquered nation and a war led by imbeciles who expect failure and are untroubled by it: “Wetten, dass bald wir ihre Go¨tter sind? Nein? Na, dann nicht” (B 19) (Wanna bet that we will be their Gods soon? No? Well, whatever). The play gleefully apes the voices of hapless Westerners who, in their egomaniacal self-centeredness, expect to be greeted with flowers and hurrahs upon entering Baghdad: “Was fu¨hren die sich dann so auf? Wollen nicht frei sein” (B 16) (Why are they making such a fuss? Don’t want to be free?). Throughout, Bambiland’s unstoppable monologue circles around an empty core without ever engaging in a true conversation. And yet, even as Jelinek’s text highlights its own discursive entrapment, it constantly seeks to display and expose processes of “Othering.” Bambiland mimics the dehumanization and marginalization of the Arab Other and employs a barrage of stereotypes whose excess renders them nonsensical. Self-declared experts in all matters Arabic, the narrative voices poke fun at insipid instances of Orientalism: “Arabien oder wie es heißt strotzt nur so vor Namen” (B 19) (Arabia or whatever it is called brims over with names). The voices oscillate between hymnic idolizations, “O babylonisch Land, der Pracht, des Reichtums Port” (B 42) (O Babylonian country, port of splendor and riches) and insults

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and denigrations, “Sandneger, die so originell sind, dass sie keine Kultur mehr brauchen, weil sie schon eine gehabt haben” (B 35) (sand niggers who are so original that they do not need any more culture because they have already had one). The voices chart the enemy as both devoid of all feelings – “eine ganze Welt der Gefu¨hle, wie nur wir nur wir im Westen sie kennen” (B 16) (a whole world of feelings such as only we only we in the West know them), “Vielleicht kennen sie gar kein einziges von den Gefu¨hlen perso¨nlich” (B 18) (Perhaps they do not know a single one of these feelings personally) – and consumed by excessive feelings, “eine Welle des Hasses, wie nur die dort sie kennen” (B 16) (a wave of hatred as only they over there know it). The West is touted as the only land, “wo der einzelne Mensch noch wichtig ist, weil jeder der einzige ist” (B 37) (where every single human being is still important because everyone is the only one), whereas Arabs, so the narrative voices tell us, do not value individuality (B 19). Through exaggeration and comical distortion, Bambiland exposes Western discourses on the “Other” as a string of self-contradictory stereotypes. Moreover, in addition to its relentless rehearsing of cultural stereotypes, Bambiland, in a self-referential gesture, comments on the impossibility to write from the point of view of the “Other:” “Scheiße, wie komm ich jetzt von den Gewinnern zu den Verlierern” (27) (Shit, how do I now get from the winners to the losers). The play concedes the failure of any attempt to move beyond one’s own frame of reference – “außerhalb von uns ist nichts” (B 35) (outside of us there is nothing) even as it mouths a desire for reconciliation in an ironically exalted tone: “Wie ko¨nnen wir nach all dem wieder gut werden mit dem Babyloniervolk?” (B 16) (How can we be reconciled again with the Babylonian people after all this?). Bambiland ’s refusal to represent the “Other” produces a striking result. The play does not investigate the nexus of violence and religion in the Arab world. Rather, through its chain of associations, the West itself emerges as a society whose religious practices are enmeshed in violence. Both Bambiland and its sequel Babel seek to uncover symbological affinities between warfare and Christianity, between the “Heer” (army) and “dem Herrn” (the Lord). The play contains a lengthy monologue in which God praises the superior qualities of the warheads he created. The crucifixion of Christ and the spear wound in his side are interpreted as attempts to seek the truth about the “Other” by inflicting violence on his body. Babel, which deals with torture at Abu Ghraib and the killing and dismemberment of four private security contractors in the city of Falluja, further explores the interrelation between the body,

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religion, and warfare. Numerous references to “ausweiden” (gutting) and to the sacrament of communion, “Erlo¨sung durch Verzehr” (B 121) (redemption through consumption), serve to establish connections between eating, ingesting, killing, and sacrifice. In both Bambiland and Babel, the link between violence inflicted on the human body and a spiritual quest for truth and redemption emerges as a practice characteristic of the Western imagination. Paradoxically, Bambiland represents the West as both completely indifferent to religion and deeply immersed in it but only insofar as the realm of the sacred has been displaced onto politics and business. In Bambiland, capitalist practices are transformed into religious revelations – “ich ku¨nd es euch. Die mu¨ssen auch Auftra¨ge kriegen, und nicht zu knapp” (B 21) (I tell thee. They must get contracts, and not just a few) – and companies are the stuff of poetry, “an Scho¨nheit sonder Makel, Schwestern gleichen Stammes, werden die Baufirmen antanzen” (B 21) (of a beauty without blemish, sisters of the same tribe, the construction companies will come dancing). Throughout, the text elicits linguistic slippage between different registers to lay bare the ideological underpinnings of the most treasured values of Western culture. Again and again, the language of human rights and the sacred blend seamlessly into the vernacular of capitalism. Thus, “Kunden ku¨nden” (B 43) (clients prophesy), “fo¨rdern” (support/drill) is related to both oil and people (B 35), and “Jeder Mensch za¨hlt” (Everybody counts) is followed by “Jeder Mensch za¨hlt sein Geld” (B 37) (Everybody counts his money). Ventriloquizing the hymnic tone of Greek drama, the narrative voice sings the praise of Halliburton and Vice President Cheney, its “heiligen Herrn” (holy lord) while President Bush is transformed into “Jesus W. Bush” (B 26). Even imperialism itself is linked to biblical motifs: “Wer uns liebt, der folge uns nach. Wieso folgt uns dann keiner . . . Wir sind doch die Guten” (B 40) (He who loves us, may follow us. Why doesn’t anybody follow us then . . . We are the good ones). Throughout the text, death and destruction are portrayed as banal, while the workings of international corporations are endowed with the aura of the sacred.36 In order to showcase the incongruity of the banal ramblings of the media and the bloody reality of warfare, the play constantly disrupts its lofty passages with colloquialisms, filler sentences, and commonplaces. For every exalted statement, there is an “a¨h” or a “sage ich so einmal in den Raum hinein” (B 26) (I’m just saying). Jelinek also routinely deflates highflying notions by taking them literally, for example, when she combines the saying “sich mit Ruhm bekleckern” (spotted with glory) with the

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call for a “La¨tzchen” (B bib). Bambiland is filled with metaphors that conflate warfare and consumption, warheads and Mu¨sliriegel (Cereal bars), and introduces weapons dealers who possess the aura and moral cachet of used car salesmen: “leider ohne Warhead, der kostet extra, da kann man nichts machen” (B 28) (unfortunately without warhead, that costs extra, can’t do anything about that). In Bambiland ’s moral universe, hawkishness and hawking are one and the same. The convivial chatter of the narrative voices, trivial references, and casual banter form the strongest possible contrast to the subject of deadly force and all-encompassing destruction. Thus, missiles that fail to reach their target are chided as though they were ill-behaved children: “Die du¨rfen jetzt dort nicht mehr fliegen und aus” (B 31) (they are not allowed to fly there anymore, and that’s it), and war is turned into a farce: “Kein Wunder, daß die Tomahawks manchmal daneben gehen, wenn auch der Gegner woanders ist, als er sein sollte. Logisch” (B 30) (Hardly surprising that the tomahawks sometimes miss their target if the enemy is not where he is supposed to be. Logical). Even more than her previous texts, Bambiland is concerned with the role of the media in warfare and with the concept of mediated reality. Like Baudrillard, who claims in his analysis of the First Gulf War that “the virtual has definitely overtaken the actual,”37 Jelinek proclaims that “Sein und Nichtsein fallen u¨bereinander her und werden eins. Es ist unentschieden ausgegangen zwischen Sein und Schein. Beide gleich stark. Gut so. Es gibt eh kein Kriterium fu¨r Realita¨t, sage ich einmal so. Es ist alles wahr, was Sie sehen, aber es ist nicht richtig” (B 82) (Being and Non-being pounce on each other and become one. It was a tie between being and appearance. Both equally strong. Good. There is no criterion for reality anyway, I’m just saying. Everything you see is true, but it is not right). In Bambiland, television viewers validate the messages of the media and guarantee their circulation: “wir sind die Marken unserer Bilder” (B 24) (we are the stamps/brands of our images). And television itself is an appendix and accomplice of war, “ein praktisches Zusatzgera¨t zu all diesen Bomben” (B 82) (a practical auxiliary apparatus for all these bombs). TV is “Leuchtspurmunition” (B 17) (trail of light munition). Unlike Ein Sportstu¨ck, Bambiland does not stage the body in pain. Instead, Bambiland dissects the distortions of war discourse, in particular, contemporary idealizations of weapons technology. The text lampoons the rhetoric of surgical precision bombing and ridicules the utopia of the fusion of body and machine. Again and again, humans stand by in

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helpless astonishment as their missiles keep missing. Technology is mockingly presented as the secret master of this war while humans are to be lamented for their inferior design and capabilities: “Und auch Ihr Einsatzbereich als Mensch ist ein Scheiß dagegen, was ja kein Wunder ist, wenn man bedenkt, wie lieblos Sie hergestellt wurden” (B 28) (And your operating range as a human being is shit compared to that, which is no miracle if one considers how carelessly you’ve been produced). Bambiland anthropomorphizes weapons, chastises them, commiserates with them, and endows them with feeling, intelligence, and intentions. Thus, on the one hand, Westerners are portrayed as perpetrators, guilty of initiating a war and victimizing Arabs, while on the other, they are themselves marginalized by a discourse that privileges technology and financial profit: “Technik . . . die ist ja das eigentliche Wunderwerk, dagegen ist der Mensch ein Dreck” (B 27) (technology . . . that is the real miracle, compared to that humans are dirt). From the beginning of her career, Jelinek was known as a writer who is committed to feminist issues. One might therefore expect that her text about the Iraq War would be dedicated to portraying women’s experiences, but, unsurprisingly, Jelinek chooses a different route. Rather than representing women’s lives in warfare, Bambiland shows that in warfare women’s experiences do not count. Throughout, the text denigrates women as hysterics: “Derweil schreit, u¨berall wo man es trifft, aua das Weibsvolk, aber die schrein ja immer, egal was passiert” (B 36) (Meanwhile womenfolk cry ouch wherever we meet them, but they cry all the time, no matter what happens). Repeatedly, female experiences are devalued and the existence of the female gender is denied altogether through statements such as “die Besitzer des Geschlechts, wurscht welchen, es gibt eh nur eins” (B 90) (the proprietors of gender, no matter which, there is only one anyway) or “die Mutter hat nie recht, immer nur der Vater” (B 99) (the mother is never right, always only the father). While Bambiland reduces women to nonentities, Babel introduces two female speakers. One of them, Margit, is simultaneously the Mother of God, Mohammed Atta’s mother, and Jokasta, the mother of Oedipus. Although it would appear that Jelinek here does attempt to speak for the Arab Other, the fact that the voice is called “Margit” immediately signals an ironic distance. Moreover, although we are supposedly dealing with the mother of an Arab terrorist, the religious references in the text again relate to Christianity. For example, the persistent conflation of cooking and killing is linked to Jesus, “der jeden Sonntag Tausenden

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als Essen dient” (B 111) (who serves as food for thousands every Sunday) and to Saint Agatha, the female saint who is often depicted carrying her own breasts on a platter. Similarly, the suicide of a terrorist is associated with the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Again, it is Christianity that is characterized by an intimate link between violence and religion. Furthermore, the story of Oedipus, employed in the text in order to trace the interrelation between male violence and cultural attitudes toward femininity, is a decidedly Western story. In portraying a randy mother whose every thought is about incest with her son, Margit’s monologue lampoons the desire to blame mothers for male aggression. But Margit’s monologue also addresses female complicity with male violence and establishes symbolic links between violence and femininity, for example when it associates the spear wound in Jesus’s side with the vagina, or when it creates ties between the womb, the oven, and the hijacked airplanes. Throughout, Bambiland does not portray women as innocent victims but as complicit in a system that objectifies and oppresses them. Like Ein Sportstu¨ck, Bambiland relies heavily on parody, satire, mockery, slapstick, and puns. Several scholars, including Dagmar Lorenz, have found fault with Jelinek’s use of humor, which they characterize as ultimately affirmative. Indeed, Jelinek’s satirical bite treads a thin line between incisive criticism and bad taste, for example, when the narrative voice informs us that there is “noch kein Wasser zum Trinken und kein Essen. Es tut uns sehr leid . . . Dafu¨r werden wir bald Seuchen haben, mehr als genug. Immerhin etwas. Manche haben nicht einmal das” (B 55) (no drinking water yet and no food. We are very sorry . . . Instead we will soon have epidemics, more than enough. At least something. Some people do not even have that). And yet, Jelinek’s mockery is directed not at the reality of war but at the war over reality as it is waged in both mass media and everyday discourse. Jelinek once characterized her technique as an attempt “die Sprache selbst zu zwingen, die Wahrheit zu sagen und ihren Ideologiecharakter preiszugeben” (Sturm und Drang 72) (to force language itself to tell the truth and to reveal its ideological character), and Bambiland is a prime example of this approach. If Bambiland relies on absurd humor to showcase the absurdity of war, it is not because Jelinek does not take war seriously but rather because she mirrors the discourse of a society that finds in its disasters a source of mass entertainment. “An indirect expression of her compassion for the victims,”38 Jelinek’s Bambiland relies on the biting wit of farce to give expression to the tragedy of war.

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conclusion Ein Sportstu¨ck, Das Werk, and Bambiland all explore the nexus of culture and warfare. Jelinek’s mimicry of the representation of war in the media reveals how the media trivialize warfare, foster indifference, co-opt criticism, and exploit and corrupt discourses of victimization. Jelinek is not a writer who suggests solutions nor does she embrace the role of the author as moral conscience. Rather, her texts absorb our liberal malaise and spit it back out at us. Jelinek does not outline a politically correct position toward the war on terror nor does she offer edifying messages about the possibility of peace. Instead, her texts put the finger in the burning wounds of our cultural hypocrisies and lies. And yet, although Jelinek’s works evince intellectual pessimism, their aesthetics is designed to effect the kind of changes that the texts declare to be impossible. Combining perceptive critique with subtle metaphorical links, associative chains, and mantra-like incantations, Jelinek’s texts address our conscious and unconscious mind alike. Jelinek uses language as a key to our mind and culture in a way that speaks to all our faculties. Her work may enlist one mode of violence to fight another, but Jelinek’s artful technique may yet be our best hope to corrode the imaginary ties between our contemporary culture and society and our perception and practice of war.

chapter 14

Conclusion

Analyzing war representations of the past and present is a sobering experience. In addition to a rich tradition of texts that valorize war, many of which are not the works of marginal writers but form the very core of our literary canon, we find numerous examples of texts that are highly critical of war on one level but remain implicated in its logic on another. Moreover, if we analyze representations of war in the eighteenth century, we quickly discover that the Enlightenment was by no means innocent of the martial fantasies that we associate with later periods. Numerous writers around 1800 cast warfare as an ennobling and creative endeavor, attribute to war the ability to strengthen a man’s character, and credit it with the potential to transcend the mundane and move toward the sublime and transcendental; a tradition that is carried forth into the twentieth century when war is endowed with an intensified reality that surpasses that of civil life. Clearly, many of the glorifying notions of war that we attribute to the culture of the First World War were already fully developed around 1800. As part i shows, the writings of Schiller and Kleist left a mixed legacy. Schiller was acutely aware of the cruelty and corruption that accompany every war, of the devastation it wreaks on every form of civil life, material, moral, and spiritual, and of the tendency of war to spiral out of control and elude the political goals and ethical imperatives that seek to confine it. And yet, even as he portrayed the sordid reality of war, Schiller also made war available as a trope of transcendence. Schiller’s ideal soldier is free because he has shed the desire for earthly rewards and conquered the fear of death itself. Thus, warfare is linked to the sublime and represented as an inner experience. In Die Jungfrau von Orleans, finally, war emerges as a powerful metaphor for man’s glorious triumph over the vicissitudes of the body, and death in battle assumes the quality of a sacrifice for the nation capable of effecting personal and national catharsis. Consequently, the play’s similes and metaphors, for example, the images of harvesting and 197

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animal-husbandry, tend to veil the atrocity of war, while its symmetry and order subdue its chaos. Like Schiller, Kleist knows of war’s tendency to elude rational and political control. But unlike Schiller, who sought to maintain the difference between legitimate wars of national self-defense, the classical bellum justum, and illegitimate wars, Kleist not only erodes the distinction between just and unjust wars, but also that between war and peace itself. To Kleist, civil society is itself a form of warfare, and the constitutive elements of civil life are also the prime movers and instruments of war. In Kleist’s texts, language is a weapon, and desire is but a different form of violence. Both Schiller and Kleist partake of a tradition that links the conceptualization of gender with the representation of war. Because of this link, the valuation of warfare remains fundamentally ambiguous. Schiller’s Jungfrau portrays warfare as a sacred and necessary sacrifice, but the fact that the play revolves around the manly exploits of a female warrior brands warfare as unnatural and perverted. While Schiller’s portrayal of gender throws doubt on his positive evaluation of warfare, Kleist’s representation of femininity undercuts his drastic critique of war. On the one hand, Kleist’s texts deconstruct the recuperative war discourse of his time. In Kleist’s works, the concept of terror emerges as the dark “Other” of the nexus of war and the sublime, and complete freedom is identified with total annihilation. Kleist’s wars entail the dehumanization of the enemy, the total destruction of all earthly possessions, and the moral corruption of all participants. And yet, even though Die Hermannsschlacht suggests that war corrupts winner and loser alike, the fact that it highlights female victims keeps the fantasy of a triumphant male victory alive. Similarly, Penthesilea conflates femininity and savagery so that the dehumanizing effect of total warfare becomes a function of gender. Moreover, even if we assume that Kleist’s critique of war is not completely corroded by the gender dynamics of his plays, his texts do not offer a vision of peace, but rather portray war as an ineradicable part of human life. If the nexus of war and the sublime is an important trope of eighteenthcentury German literature, Ju¨nger is its most prominent heir. The author of In Stahlgewittern was deeply indebted to the literature and thought of German Classicism and marshaled the force of tradition to contain the trauma of the front. In particular, there are many points of contact between Schiller and Ju¨nger. Like Schiller, Ju¨nger presents war as a privileged gate to the transcendental realm. Ju¨nger’s aestheticization and mythification of war are designed to afford a measure of control and impose

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order and meaning on his experience of war. However, the fascination of In Stahlgewittern consists precisely in the author’s failure to master the anarchic violence of war through recourse to traditional tropes. Like Ju¨nger, Remarque is caught between the trauma of his experience and an investment in traditional tropes and modes of emplotment, but his novel processes the disjuncture of content and form in a fundamentally different way. In Stahlgewittern sings the glory of war, but its literary allusions and citations are empty shells that fail to contain the violence of war. Remarque’s Im Westen, in contrast, proclaims the pity of war thematically and expressis verbis, but restores order through leitmotifs and narrative. Unlike Ju¨nger and Schiller, who advocate the mastery of mind over body and portray war as a potential catalyst of personal growth, Remarque paints a drastic picture of the devastating effect of war on the human body. But in spite of its radical body politics, Im Westen relies on the teleological structure of the novel of Bildung, thus importing the genre’s investment in causal-logical connections and formal closure into the context of war. Throughout, Im Westen combines the depiction of suffering and loss with an offer of comfort and a confirmation of meaning. Remarque’s novel is characterized by a pervasive victim discourse designed to absolve readers from complicity in the crime of war. In this, Remarque is not too different from Ju¨nger, who, although he presents himself as a responsible agent in the everyday context of war, abjures agency in the political realm. Ju¨nger never minimizes the horror of war, but his translation of political reality into transcendental necessity makes his war memoir deeply problematic. Though their texts are generally conceived as polar opposites, both Remarque and Ju¨nger subscribe to a notion of history as universal trauma. In Remarque’s case, the soldier is victimized by politics. In Ju¨nger’s case, the individual is a tool in a larger cosmic design. This emphasis on victimization not only made it impossible for these texts to transcend the matrix of war and move toward a grammar of peace, it also provided a powerful template that proved crucial in the aftermath of the Second World War. Unlike the most prominent First World War texts, canonical texts about the Second World War are largely uninterested in the technicality of weapons and the mechanics of battles, and there is no mention of the sublime or transformative aspects of war. Instead, the experience of the front recedes behind issues of guilt and suffering, the guilt incurred in the unprecedented magnitude of the crime of genocide and the suffering born by millions of civilians and soldiers. Consequently, German post-1945 writers struggle to reconcile the depiction of the

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suffering of “ordinary” Germans with their complicity with and responsibility for the Holocaust. Because war is now inextricably linked with genocide, writers such as Bo¨ll and Grass are attuned to the dangers inherent in narratives of victimization and of the moral imperative to create a language of agency. For Heinrich Bo¨ll, Grass’s senior by ten years, the ethical and aesthetic challenge to represent guilt and suffering was compounded by the unwillingness of contemporary publishers and readers to face the reality of genocide. It may be due to these restrictions that Bo¨ll’s portrayals of the suffering of German soldiers and civilians are direct and explicit, while the Holocaust and the average German’s complicity in the crime of genocide are presented through allusions, indirection, and irony. Bo¨ll is acutely aware that those who are responsible for suffering do not possess the moral right to depict it, but his tendency to conflate Jewish and German victims and to associate the Holocaust with a redemptive meaning testify to the unresolved tensions in his work. While Bo¨ll’s texts do not explore the origin of the war, Grass links irresponsibility and violence to an inability to create biologically and artistically. Unlike Bo¨ll, who shows great empathy for the suffering of ordinary Germans, Grass’s Die Blechtrommel satirizes what might be described as a German propensity for self-victimization. Grass’s novel uses its inflated discussion of guilt to complicate and problematize the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator. In Die Blechtrommel, victim and perpetrator are not mutually exclusive categories, and victimization may be the result of one’s own agency, whereas guilt can stem from the failure to act. Insisting on individual accountability, Grass pokes fun at the kind of mythologization that characterizes Ju¨nger’s work, exposing it as an attempt to evade and obfuscate responsibility. Thus, in Grass’s work, creative agency emerges as the antidote of war. The desire to reconceptualize the categories of victim and perpetrator also defines the literature of the most recent wars. Peter Handke’s Yugoslavia essays have been widely criticized for their attempt to question clear-cut victim–perpetrator dichotomies with respect to Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. However, in spite of his critique of victim–perpetrator dualities, Handke is at a distance from the tradition of Bo¨ll and Grass. Whereas Bo¨ll conceives of the denunciation of war and genocide as a moral duty, Handke is convinced that a critique of war will remain caught in a history of violence. And while Grass places his hopes on creative agency, Handke, like Ju¨nger, conjures the force of myth along with that of poetry. Unlike Ju¨nger, though, Handke aims for a fusion of

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history and myth that does not renounce agency but moves toward a recognition of the transcendental in the everyday. But even if Handke seeks to anchor the transcendental not in violence, but in the quotidian, his texts come close to reconnecting war to the concept of the sublime. Moreover, in order to create his narrative of peace, Handke is forced to depopulate his texts. Handke’s decision to elide the plight of the Muslims and to portray the suffering of the war through pastoral tropes and anthropomorphic metaphors is designed to avoid the bias and war pornography that characterize the reports of the Western media, but it also testifies to the difficulty of reconciling the author’s notions of authenticity and reality with those of his subjects, the Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian participants of war. Much more than their predecessors, authors who write in the postmodern context are concerned with how audiovisual media impose their own meaning on the discourse of war. Like Handke, Jelinek directs the full force of her critique at the Western media. Both Jelinek and Handke see the media not as observers of but as nefarious participants in warfare, and both are acutely aware of the derealization, trivialization, and leveling of differences effected by “wartainment.” However, while Handke places his hope in what he calls “reines Schauen,” a purer form of perception possible only in personal encounters and poetry, Jelinek mimics cultural attitudes and discourses in order to critique them, a technique that she calls “zur Kenntlichkeit entstellen” (Sturm und Drang 49). Jelinek’s plays radically question traditional assumptions about victims and perpetrators and the gender constructs that inform them. They confront their audiences with the body in pain and link violence to cultural attitudes toward the body and toward truth. More drastically than any of her predecessors, Jelinek unveils how canonical works of Western literature and philosophy promote and support the practice of war. Her texts showcase not only the intimate link between war and the sublime but also the close tie between violence and Western religion. Jelinek, like Kleist, is convinced that warfare is deeply rooted in Western culture and society. Although Jelinek has been accused of fighting one form of violence with another, her attempt to disrupt established patterns of thought through metaphorical links, associative chains, and mantralike phrases may be the most effective form of resistance yet. From Schiller to Ju¨nger, from Remarque to Bo¨ll, from Kleist to Jelinek, texts of war are riddled with contradictions that keep them confined within the arena of war. The stabilizing force of narrative conventions and common tropes, notions of the sublime, concepts of agency and

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victimization, as well as gender signifiers all interpose themselves on the war discourse and threaten to disrupt and overpower the critical impetus of the text. Indeed, if peace appears as a possibility in texts of war, it is frequently in the form of what Giorgio Agamben calls an inclusion by exclusion.1 Peace, defined as the absence of war, is that which is at once excluded from the realm of war and captured within it. In this sense, peace, as an included exclusion or as Kleist’s and Jelinek’s continuation of war by other means, far from ending the reign of war, actually serves to stabilize it. If this is so, it is crucial that we learn to think of peace not as the opposite of war, as the end product of a radical critique of war, but as a force in its own right. Thus, Grass’s concept of creative agency or Handke’s notion of “Friedenstext” deserve our attention for it is in them that peace emerges as a language that possesses its own grammar, its own body of rules, kit of constitutive elements, and, most of all, its own tradition of stories. In many recent works on war, scholars have affirmed their conviction that it is possible to eradicate the institution of war. While few are as optimistic as John Mueller, who claims that we are already dealing with the last remnants of an institution in decline,2 many express hope for the future. Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America, for example, believes that “it is not possible to eliminate individual human violence – but war, a state activity, is like chattel slavery – this we can end.”3 Similarly, the American economist Jeffrey Sachs compared war to the devastation wrought by fire, which previous centuries believed to be a natural disaster outside human control. Clearly, thinking of war as a societal creation subject to human agency is a crucial step toward its eradication. But, as war literature teaches us, it is equally and perhaps even more crucial to think of peace as a form of existence fundamentally different from and exceeding by far a mere absence of war.

Notes

1 INTRODUCTION 1 Zuckmeyer, Als wa¨r’s ein Stu¨ck von mir 251. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the German are mine. 2 Clausewitz, Vom Kriege 86. 3 Agamben, Homo Sacer 7. 4 Norris, Writing War 16. 5 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft 180; subsequent references are cited in the text. 6 There are countless memoirs, diaries, and collections of letters ranging from Friedrich Christian Laukhard’s (1757–1822) description of the campaign against Revolutionary France to Colby Buzzel’s My War: Killing Time in Iraq (2005). In order to get a general impression of the material, it is helpful to begin with one of the many collections. Intimate Voices, for example, a compilation of responses to the First World War edited by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, contains letters and diary entries written by soldiers and civilians of different nationalities. War Stories, edited by Elizabeth Mullener, offers entries by American soldiers and nurses active in all theaters of the Second World War ranging from the invasion of Poland to the Battle of the Bulge. 7 Cobley, Representing War 5. 8 Scarry, The Body in Pain 77. 9 Adair, Hollywood’s Vietnam 159. 10 Reimer, “Picture-Perfect War” 307. 11 Bethman, “My Characters” 1. 12 Goldstein, War and Gender 10. 13 Ibid. 6. 14 See Duerr, Obszo¨nita¨t und Gewalt 220–41. 15 Goebbels, Michael 22. 16 Theweleit, Ma¨nnerphantasien 39. 17 See Paret, Clausewitz and the State 25. 18 Rothenberg, The Napoleonic Wars 25. 19 Tatum, The Mourner’s Song 46. 20 Dyer, War 2.

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1 For information on the debate on war as a moral institution see Kunisch, Fu¨rst – Gesellschaft – Krieg 161–201 and Bell, The First Total War 78–83. 2 In 1797 Austria too was compelled to enter a peace accord, the Treaty of Campo Formio, thus effectively ending the First Coalition (1792–7). Although Austria was soon to join the Second Coalition (1798–1802), the disastrous defeat at Hohenlinden on December 3, 1800 made an immediate continuation of the war impossible, and Austria signed the Peace of Lune´ville on February 9, 1801. 3 For more information on this debate see Dietze and Dietze, eds., Ewiger Friede?, and Schulz, Revolution 159–80. 4 See Portmann-Tinguely, Romantik und Krieg 43. Expounding his theory of duality, Mu¨ller portrays war and peace as inextricably linked. Consequently, his Elemente der Staatskunst claims that wars forge the unity of a nation; they are “die Bewegungen insonderheit, unter denen das politische Leben sich selbst erkennen und fu¨hlen lernt” (Elemente i : 80). To Mu¨ller, the absence of war does not equal peace, but death. 5 See Philip Shaw, The Sublime 6, 80. 6 See Simpson, Erotics of War 40. ¨ ber den Krieg 12. 7 Mu¨nkler, U 8 Clausewitz, Vom Kriege 683; subsequent page references are cited in the text. 3 WAR AND THE SUBLIME: SCHILLER 1 Safranski, Schiller oder die Erfindung des deutschen Idealismus 143. 2 For the transition from soldiers as slavish tools of the absolutist state to the citizen soldiers of the Wars of Liberation see Kunisch, Fu¨rst – Gesellschaft – Krieg 161–201 and Frevert, A Nation in Barracks. 3 Ziolkowski appears to detect a similar pessimism when he claims that Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years’ War reflected his fear “that the era introduced by the events in France might again prelude a lengthy period of European war” (Hesitant Heroes 116). 4 Schiller visited Wu¨rttemberg in March of 1794, but left immediately when he received notice that the French were drawing closer. 5 See also x x x i : 112. 6 Safranski, Schiller oder die Erfindung des deutschen Idealismus 348. 7 Schiller’s work on Wallenstein extends over almost a decade. He conceived the plan for the drama in 1791 but did not complete it until 1799. Schiller himself claimed that he began the actual process of writing the drama on October 22, 1796. 8 This anti-war effect may have been strengthened by the fact that in Weimar Wallenstein’s Lager was frequently performed by itself. When it was performed together with Die Piccolomini, it did not precede it, but followed it (Rudloff-Hille, Schiller auf der deutschen Bu¨hne 112).

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9 All citations from Wallenstein are taken from vol. 8 of Werke Nationalausgabe, ed. Hermann Schneider and Lieselotte Blumenthal (Weimar: Bo¨hlau, 1949). 10 All translations of Wallenstein are taken from Friedrich Schiller: Wallenstein and Mary Stuart, ed. Walter Hinderer, trans. Jeanne Willson and Charles E. Passage (New York: Continuum, 1991). 11 Interestingly, in his Kampagne in Frankreich, Goethe too is preoccupied with the effect of war on civil order: “So zwischen Ordnung und Unordnung, zwischen Erhalten und Verderben, zwischen Rauben und Bezahlen lebte man immer hin, und dies mag es wohl sein, was den Krieg fu¨r das Gemu¨t eigentlich verderblich macht . . . hiedurch entsteht nun eine Art von Heuchelei, die einen besondern Charakter hat” (46–8). 12 The play is quite clear that peace with the Swedes can only be bought at the price of substantial concessions of German lands, a situation that the Emperor seeks to avoid at all costs. Wallenstein too is resolutely opposed to a permanent Swedish presence on German soil, but he deludes himself into thinking that he could manipulate both the Swedes and the Emperor. 13 See Wittkowski, “Ethik der Politik” 49; see also Borchmeyer, who points out that “wenn Wallenstein u¨ber den Frieden spricht, ist das immer Taktik” (“Wallenstein” 281) and Henke, “Wallenstein und Macbeth” 317; Mu¨ller-Seidel, on the other hand, believes that Wallenstein truly wants peace (“Idee” 85). 14 See the following passage: “soll dieser kaiserliche Ju¨ngling / Den Frieden ¨ lzweig, / Die wohlverdiente Zierde unsers leicht wegtragen, soll den O Haupts, / Sich in die blonden Knabenhaare fechten” (Wallensteins Tod 1934–7). 15 Several scholars, including Wittkowski and Leibfried, have drawn attention to Wallenstein’s unwillingness to respect the wishes, feelings, and the independence of other characters. 16 Mu¨ller-Seidel expressed this succinctly: “Der Versuch, Demokratie und Republik zu retten, ist gebunden an eine wie immer beschaffene Gro¨ße des Menschen; aber diese Gro¨ße ist auch der Grund dafu¨r, daß Demokratie und Republik scheitern” (“Verschwo¨rungen” 129–30); see also Lamport, “Charismatic Hero” 74 and Wolf, “Der politische Himmel” 227. 17 Schiller’s portrayal of the Emperor in his Geschichte des Dreißigja¨hrigen Kriegs is even more negative. He repeatedly calls Ferdinand II a despot. In his summary of Ferdinand’s reign he refers to him as “Unterdru¨cker der Menschheit . . . Feind des Friedens . . . Geißel seiner Vo¨lker” (x v i i i : 356). 18 Octavio’s claim that Wallenstein interfered with Buttler’s attempt to be elevated to the rank of duke casts a shadow upon the notion of the camp as a world where personal merit, not birth, is decisive. But then again, the play, unlike Schiller’s Geschichte, does not clarify whether this is the truth or a political maneuver on Octavio’s part. 19 See Schulz, who claims that “es ist etwas Republikanisches in dem Verha¨ltnis zwischen ihm und seinen Soldaten” (“Wallenstein” 126). In this, the play

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Notes to pages 36–41

anticipates the Napoleonic propaganda that every soldier carried a marshal’s baton in his cartridge pouch. See Neubauer, “The Idea of History in Schiller’s Wallenstein” 453. Alt points out that Schiller was aware of the pessimistic content of his play but placed his hopes for a transformative, morally uplifting effect in the form (Schiller 462–3). Schiller started work on Die Jungfrau on July 1, 1800, and completed it in April 1801. The play’s first performance in Leipzig in 1801 was a triumphant success. Hebbel, Sa¨mmtliche Werke i x : 267. Ibid. i x : 268. Shaw, Selected Plays 759. Schiller did not know the trial records since they were not published until 1841. He relied on a collection by Gayot de Pitaval (Donnenberg, Schiller 263). All translations of Die Jungfrau are taken from Schiller: Five Plays, trans. Robert David MacDonald (London: Oberon Books, 1998). Hinderer points out that Schiller considered the peace of Lune´ville a farce because France and England still constituted a threat to the freedom of every other European nation (“Wallenstein” 132); see also Sauder, “Jungfrau” 221 and Allison who, in comparing Iphigenie and Johanna, states that “in Goethe’s drama it is a universal ordinance before which differences of nationality cease to exist, but there is no such universality, no spiritual dimension to the truth which Johanna speaks” (“Spiritual Element” 326). Several scholars pointed to the national and political goal of Johanna’s mission (Brundrett, “Role of the Ego” 20) or to her “bornierter, Menschlichkeit nur fu¨r Franzosen empfehlender Chauvinismus” (Guthke, “Jungfrau” 119). See also “Rosse zerstampfen Frankreichs blu¨hende Gefilde” (6–7) (horses trample France’s blooming fields); “Haus und Scheune sind des na¨chsten Feindes oder Feuers Raub” (31–2) (house and barn fall victim to the next enemy or fire). Ironically, Thibaud’s remarks describe the historical reality of warfare more accurately than Schiller’s ahistorical theories. In the fifteenth century, strategists of war aimed not for military victory but sought to exhaust the economic resources of their opponents (Mu¨nkler, Die neuen Kriege 76). See Fowler, who points out that Johanna “is able to link the tempest, the storm of battle, and the tempestuous conflict within herself, and to accept them all as a positive part of a larger pattern” (“Storm” 55). See also “Und diese frechen Inselwohner alle / Wie eine Herde La¨mmer vor sich jagen” (322–3) and “wie die rasche Schnitterin die Saat / Den stolzen ¨ berwinder niederschlagen” (420–1); “Kann ich Armeen aus der Erde stampfen? U Wa¨chst mir ein Kornfeld in der flachen Hand?” (596–7). See Sellner, “The Lionel-Scene” 278. Crosby, “Freedom through Disobedience” 39. Cf. “Mein Volk wird siegen und ich werde sterben” (3376). Boas, “Joan of Arc in Shakespeare, Schiller and Shaw” 39.

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36 In a letter to Friedrich Christian von Augustenburg, Schiller called the faculty of wisdom a warrior: “Nicht umsonst wird uns die Weisheitsgo¨ttin in der Fabel als eine Kriegerinn vorgestellt, die in voller Ru¨stung aus Jupiters Haupte stieg. Denn schon die erste Verrichtung der Weisheit in den Ko¨pfen ist Kriegerisch. Schon in ihrer Geburt muß sie den schweren Kampf mit der Sinnlichkeit bestehen” (November 11, 1793, x x v i : 298). 37 Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words 27. 38 See Hart, “Re-dressing History” 97. 39 Note also that it is Agnes Sorel who pays the soldiers when the king has run out of cash. It is also she who advises him “verwandle deinen Hofstaat in Soldaten, / Dein Gold in Eisen” (640–1). 40 See Hart, “Re-dressing History” 102. 41 Stephan draws attention to this dynamic when she points out that female characters who become allegories of freedom pay for this symbolic privilege with their lives (“Weiber” 109). 42 See Pfaff, “Ko¨nig Rene´” 411. 43 In order to present a united front of men, Schiller introduced the reconciliation between Charles and Burgundy which, historically, did not take place until 1435. Joan was burned at the stake in 1431. 44 Cf. Johanna’s statement “Du bist des Todes! Eine brit’sche Mutter zeugte dich” (1580) which implies that, in giving life, mothers give death. The theme of mothers is highlighted further through the figure of Mother Mary. The historical Joan heard the voices of the virgin martyrs Saints Margaret and Catherine and the Archangel Michael, but only rarely the voice of the Blessed Virgin. 4 WAR AND TERROR: KLEIST 1 All citations from Kleist’s letters and essays are taken from Sa¨mtliche Werke und Briefe, edited by Helmut Sembdner. 2 Although there are a number of excellent studies about Kleist and warfare (Kittler, Samuel, Stephens), Kleist is usually situated with respect to the military reformers of the period, in particular Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), August von Gneisenau (1760–1831), Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813), and Carl August Freiherr von Hardenberg (1750–1822). In contrast, this chapter reads Kleist’s works as responses to the recuperative war discourses of fellow writers and philosophers. 3 Reeve, “The Lion” 267. 4 Peymann and Kreutzer, “Streitgespra¨ch” 77. 5 In a series of lectures, edited posthumously under the title Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault posits a rift between late sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury and eighteenth-century discourses of war and politics. Pre-eighteenthcentury discourse allowed for an analysis of politics that essentially inverted the Clausewitzian dictum and defined politics as the continuation of war by other means. Foucault shows that such a concept of politics as war is always perspectival: “In a discourse such as this, being on one side and not the other

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Notes to pages 48–54

means that you are in a better position to speak the truth” (Society Must Be Defended 53). In the eighteenth century, there was a shift from a society permeated by warlike relations to a state endowed with military institutions. This change implied a transition from a discourse of warring parties to a universal discourse. “Increasingly, wars, the practices of war, and the institutions of war tended to exist, so to speak, only on the frontiers, on the outer limits of the great State units” (ibid. 48), whereas relations within the state are subsumed under a principle of national universality. Mu¨nkler, Die neuen Kriege 188. For discussions of Kleist’s politics at the time see Bornscheuer, “Kleists Vaterla¨ndische Dichtung,” Samuel, “Kleists Hermannsschlacht,” and Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen 105–8, 244–5. Kittler, Geburt des Partisanen 226. See also “Es heißt ja, daß der Kaiser den Franzosen alle Hauptsta¨dte zur Plu¨nderung versprochen habe” (i i : 770). This also takes care of ethnic quarrels: since Hermann’s notion of freedom does not include earthly possessions, it is uniquely qualified to unite the warring Germanic factions under one common cause. With nothing left to quarrel over, the tribes have no option but to unite under Hermann’s leadership. All quotes from Die Hermannsschlacht are taken from the Sembdner edition and given as H and verse number. All quotes from Penthesilea are given as P and verse number. Hermann, “Vaterland” 131; Kluge, “Hermann und Fiesko” 258. Several passages in Kleist’s letters show that his appreciation for heroism has a nihilistic touch; see, for example, “Ach, es ist nichts ekelhafter, als diese Furcht vor dem Tode. Das Leben ist das einzige Eigentum, das nur dann etwas wert ist, wenn wir es nicht achten” (i i : 670). Peter, “Sehnsucht nach dem Gott” 248. Reeve, “Prelude” 124. Peymann and Kreutzer, “Streitgespra¨ch” 83; Norbert Miller, “Versto¨rende Bilder” 100; Allan, “Revenge” 238. Kennedy, “For the Good of the Nation” 20. Seeba, “ ‘Historia in Absentia’ ” 249. A term that refers to the bureaucrat as perpetrator who does not get his hands dirty, but has others do his bloody deeds for him. The model is Eichmann. When Hermann wants to communicate with Marbod, his messenger Luitgar proclaims “[m]eine Brust ist Erz und ein Demantengriffel seine [Hermann’s] Rede” (H 794–5). In order to open Thusnelda’s eyes about Ventidius’s vows of passion and reveal his base mercenary intentions, Hermann produces the lock of hair that Ventidius stole from her and offered up to his Empress. Kennedy makes a similar point when she draws attention to “woman’s body as the chief casualty of nationalistic fervor” (“For the Good of the Nation” 18); see also Ku¨nzel, “Gewaltsame Transformationen” 176.

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23 Cf. Hermann, “Arminius” 15. 24 Bernd Fischer characterized it as a drama that “statt oder neben der Propaganda zu deren Analyse u¨bergeht” (“Fremdbestimmung und Identita¨tspolitik” 167). See also Rek who claims that “die angestrebte Wirkung – als Tendenzstu¨ck – will sich nicht einstellen” (“Und alle Greul” 106). 25 Fischer, “Fremdbestimmung und Identita¨tspolitik” 167; Allan, Plays 206; Stephens, Kleist 251. 26 Penthesilea also defies class expectations. Because she does not respond to the Greek call, the Greek leaders have to fight Amazon commoners. 27 See McAllister, Kleist’s Female Leading Characters 140–1. 28 Clausewitz, Vom Kriege 50. 29 The persistent use of animal metaphors in both dramas suggests that in 1807 and 1808 Kleist still felt that warfare and “Menschlichkeit” were mutually exclusive. 30 Cf. Simpson who points out that, in Penthesilea, “the gender transfers in war and in desire are not symmetrical” (Erotics of War 128). 31 Horchet! – Durch die Nacht, ihr Bru¨der, / Welch ein Donnerruf hernieder? / Stehst du auf, Germania? / Ist der Tag der Rache da? / Deutsche, mutger Vo¨lkerreigen, / Meine So¨hne, die, geku¨ßt, / In den Schoß mir kletternd steigen, / Die mein Mutterarm umschließt, / Meines Busens Schutz und Schirmer, / Unbesiegtes Marsenblut, / Enkel der Kohortenstu¨rmer, / Ro¨meru¨berwinderbrut! // Alle Pla¨tze, Trift’ und Sta¨tten, / Fa¨rbt mit ihren Knochen weiß; / Welchen Rab und Fuchs verschma¨hten, / Gebet ihn den Fischen preis; / Da¨mmt den Rhein mit ihren Leichen; . . . Eine Lustjagd, wie wenn Schu¨tzen / Auf die Spur dem Wolfe sitzen! / Schlagt ihn tot! Das Weltgericht / Fragt euch nach den Gru¨nden nicht! (i i: 26–7). 32 Kittler suggests as much when he locates the root of the heroine’s savagery in her violation of gender norms (Die Geburt des Partisanen 185). 33 Grathoff, Kleist 126; Stephan, “Mignon” 203. 34 Choluj, “Auf den Ko¨rper schauen und ho¨ren” 111; Gallas, “Antikenrezeption bei Goethe und Kleist” 213. 35 Neumann, “Stocken” 18. 36 Mize, The Open Wound 68; Stephens, Kleist 72. 37 As Hermand maintains, “Kleist did not tie his historical expectations for the future to the redeeming role of the feminine in the manner of Goethe’s Iphigenie” (“Penthesilea” 55; see also Lange, “Kleists Penthesilea” 707). 38 Cullens and Mu¨cke, “Love” 472. 39 Brandstetter, “ ‘Eine Trago¨die’ ” 203; Neumann, “Erkennungsszene” 65; Chaouli, “Die Verschlingung der Metapher” 128; Debriacher, “Die Lesbarkeit der Seele” 73. 5 T HE F I R S T W O R L D W A R : O V ER VI EW 1 All citations from Nietzsche’s work are from Sa¨mtliche Werke, ed. Colli and Montinari.

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2 All citations from Freud are from the Studienausgabe, vol. 9: Fragen der Gesellschaft. Urspru¨nge der Religion, ed. Mitscherlich, Richards, and Strachey. 3 Hynes, A War Imagined 108; see also Cobley, Representing War 5. 4 Winter, Sites of Memory 5. 5 Scarry, The Body in Pain 77. ¨ NGER 6 W AR A N D M YT H : J U 1 2 3 4 5

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Mann, Briefwechsel 646. Heissenbu¨ttel, “General i.R. als Goethe” 119. Decker, Kriegerda¨mmerung 26. Bluhm, “Ein geistiger Wegbereiter” 425. A certain self-critical distance from his early essays is indicated by the fact that Ju¨nger did not include them in his complete works. Even Der Arbeiter was included only because of Martin Heidegger’s intervention. In Stahlgewittern was first published privately in 1920. In 1922 and 1924, the Berlin publishing house E. S. Mittler issued two editions (see Nevin, Ernst Ju¨nger and Germany 39). Four more versions appeared in 1926, 1934, 1937, and 1961. Nevin offers the following evaluation of the different versions: “Storms of Steel had three lives . . . Of these, the first remains the best; it is free of clomping nationalism just glimpsed in the second and free of the literary adornments with which Ju¨nger extensively reworked the third” (62). In the following, all citations from In Stahlgewittern are taken from the KlettCotta edition and given as S and page number. Hermand, “Explosions” 123. Neaman, “Ernst Ju¨nger’s Millennium” 223–4; Honold, “Die Kunst” 45. In a letter to his brother Friedrich Georg, Ju¨nger mentions that he is studying Goethe’s complete works. Benjamin, “Theorien des deutschen Faschismus” 239. Strathausen, “Return of the Gaze” 131. Cf. Eksteins who claims that, in Ju¨nger’s works, “horror was turned into spiritual fulfillment” (Rites of Spring 202). See Shaw, “Continuity” 478. Philippi claims that Ju¨nger portrays war as an experience of religious dimensions: “der Krieg wird als Offenbarungsgeschehen neben die Religionen gestellt” (“ ‘Versinken im Wirbel’ ” 175). Ju¨nger’s and Schiller’s concepts of leadership are also quite similar. Like Schiller, Ju¨nger affirms that “die eigentliche Stosskraft kommt von wenigen” (S 309). Ju¨nger believes that some men are born leaders: “manche Menschen sind zum Befehlen geboren” (S 249). See Bohrer, who argues that, even though Ju¨nger’s portrait of war focuses on its mythical and primal elements, it is precisely the awareness of these atavistic impulses in the midst of modernity that allows critical insights into the present (Die A¨sthetik des Schreckens 360).

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18 See also “Gewiss wird der Kampf durch seine Sache geheiligt; mehr noch wird eine Sache durch den Kampf geheiligt” (“Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis,” Essays I 49). 19 Benjamin, “Theorien des deutschen Faschismus” 240. See also the following statement by Benjamin: “Beinahe ko¨nnten diese Wegbereiter der Wehrmacht einen auf den Gedanken bringen, die Uniform sei ihnen ein ho¨chstes, mit allen Fibern ihres Herzens ersehntes Ziel, gegen welches die Umsta¨nde, unter denen sie spa¨ter zur Geltung kommt, sehr zuru¨cktreten” (239). 20 Herf, Reactionary Modernism 73. According to Geissler, conceiving of war as a natural event wholly removed from the realm of human agency is a persistent tendency in war literature of the political right (Dekadenz und Heroismus 96). 21 Armstrong, Short History of Myth 3. 22 Eliade, Myth and Reality 2. Ju¨nger edited a journal entitled Antaios with Eliade, the renowned scholar of myth. 23 Ju¨nger calls mines sly creatures (52). 24 Interestingly, Ju¨nger also never questions the wisdom of his superiors. He does not even raise his voice to complain when he is almost killed in obeying the commands of the officer in charge (18). 25 Bourke, Dismembering the Male xiv. 26 Eliade, Myth and Reality 60. 27 See also “Es ist ein grosser Schatz von Opfern angesammelt als Grundstock zum neuen Bau der Welt” (“Der Friede,” Essays I 196). 28 Herf, Reactionary Modernism 85. 29 That the trauma lingers in a different form is evident in Ju¨nger’s many references to depression and melancholia in Strahlungen. 30 See also “Schlimmer als die schnellen Stunden offener Feldschlacht war diese ewige Bereitschaft” (“Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis,” Essays I 28). 31 Bullock, Violent Eye 315. 32 In “Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis,” Ju¨nger speaks of “jene einzige Idee, die sich fu¨r Ma¨nner geziemt: dass die Materie nichts und der Geist alles ist” (Essays I 60). 33 See Stockmann, “ ‘Prosa’ ” 8. 34 There is another incentive for Ju¨nger to concede the importance of matter over mind. Ju¨nger attributes the victory of the allies to the “Ungleichheit der Mittel” (114). 35 Bo¨ll comments on this feature of Ju¨nger’s writing: “besonders gespannt war ich immer auf die Ausfu¨hrung u¨ber den Vokal U, der mich am meisten wohl interessierte, weil er doch das Wort Du tra¨gt und erfu¨llt . . . aber das Du gar nicht erwa¨hnt wurde in dem Abschnitt u¨ber das U” (December 12, 1942, Briefe i : 570). See also the following comment: “Mit Ju¨nger habe ich mich auch viel bescha¨ftigt . . . aber es fehlt etwas darin: eine menschliche Note” (Briefe i : 733). 36 Theweleit, Male Fantasies 49.

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Notes to pages 88–97 7 W AR A N D T H E B O D Y: R E M A R Q U E

1 The novel first appeared as a serial in the Vossische Zeitung in November and December, 1928. 2 The name of the protagonist indicates an autobiographical impetus. Remarque was originally called Erich Paul. Ba¨umer is the maiden name of his maternal grandmother. 3 See Eksteins, Rites of Spring 280–2. Klein points out that the critical reception of Im Westen nichts Neues largely neglects aesthetic features in favor of questions of authenticity (see Klein, “Introduction” 4). 4 Norris, Writing War 88 5 Wagener, “The Novels” 214. 6 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory 197. 7 Renn, Krieg 31. 8 “These men are happy, despite everything, as they emerge from hell – for the very reason that they are emerging” (Under Fire 47). It is this mood that Remarque attempts to capture: “Leicht ha¨tte es sein ko¨nnen, daß wir heute nicht auf unsern Ka¨sten sa¨ßen . . . darum ist alles neu und stark” (16). 9 Brittain, Testament of Youth 418. 10 The letters and works of Heinrich Bo¨ll, for example, provide ample proof that he never felt the sense of comradeship that is depicted in Im Westen. See also Robert Graves, who writes that “what I most disliked in the Army was never being alone, forced to live and sleep with men whose company, in many cases, I would have run miles to avoid” (Good-Bye to All That 226). 11 Bance, “Bestseller” 359. 12 Quoted in Barker and Last, “The Critics’ Views” 85. 13 Schneider, “Krieg ist Krieg” 219, 222. 14 Becker, Bu¨rgerlicher Realismus 168. 15 Zuckmeyer, Als wa¨r’s ein Stu¨ck von mir 251. 16 Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantryman 93–5. 17 Renn, Krieg 138. 18 Scarry, Body in Pain 4. 19 Arendt, On Revolution 19. 20 Barbusse, Under Fire 155. 21 See Hans-Harald Mu¨ller, who claims that the novel provided an explanation for the failure of many soldiers to reintegrate into civil society and thus lessened individual feelings of inadequacy (Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller 65). 22 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others 22. 23 Remarque’s Der Funke Leben, a novel about life in a concentration camp, has been called a “Cocktailscherz” (quoted in Meier, “Remarques Stellung zu Faschismus” 227). 24 Bourke, Dismembering the Male 33. 25 Equally important and frequent are animal metaphors. 26 Winter, Sites 36. 27 Scarry, Body in Pain 121, 125.

Notes to pages 97–108

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28 Quoted in Barker and Last, “The Critics’ Views” 85. 29 As John Keegan claims, “the First World War is a mystery. Its origins are mysterious. So is its course” (First World War 456). 30 Cf. Murdoch, “Strategies” 189. 31 Tellingly, the narrative perspective does not resolve but rather strengthens this ambiguity. Paul Ba¨umer is a sympathetic character, with whom readers are likely to identify and whose conversational and chatty narrative draws us in. But Paul’s death is designed to put an abrupt end to this identification and might incite readers to a critique of the institution of war. 32 Hamann, Der erste Weltkrieg 25. 33 See Mommsen, Weltkrieg 138; Strachan 142. 34 Zuckmayer, Als wa¨r’s ein Stu¨ck von mir 244. 35 Barbusse, Under Fire 307. 36 Graves, Good-Bye to All That 162, 132. 37 Koeppen, Heeresbericht 390. 38 Barbusse, Under Fire 310. 39 Hynes, A War Imagined 212. 40 Winter, Sites 213. 41 Eksteins goes so far as to claim that “All Quiet promoted at a popular level what historical revisionism was achieving at an academic and political level: the erosion of the idea of a collective German war guilt” (Rites of Spring 296). 42 Bance, “Bestseller” 362. 43 Eksteins, Rites of Spring 173. 44 The first lieutenant we encounter is a good man who helps his men in a dispute about food. Similarly, the lieutenant at the barracks disapproves of Himmelstoß’s methods and stands by Paul and his friends when the latter abuses them. Even Himmelstoß is absolved of guilt in the end. First we are told that the drill he inflicted on the young recruits allowed them to acquire necessary survival skills. Secondly, when Himmelstoß proves himself in battle, Paul Ba¨umer is willing to forget the past, and the former opponents reconcile. 45 Paul informs us that Rehm did not want to enlist, but finally gave in to Kantorek’s relentless war sermons. 46 In The Great War and Modern Memory, Fussell claims that irony as the “dominating form of modern understanding” originates “largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War” (35). 47 Grass, Beim Ha¨uten 112. 48 Winter, Remembering the War 1. 8 THE SECOND WORLD WAR: OVERVIEW 1 For more information see Bance, “Germany” 90–3. 2 Assmann, Der Lange Schatten 67. 3 See also the controversial exhibition Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944 (War of Extermination: Crimes of the German

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Notes to page 108 Armed Forces 1941 to 1944) organized by the Hamburg Institut fu¨r Sozialforschung, which opened in 1995 but was temporarily shut down in response to accusations regarding careless use of photographic evidence. The original exhibition focused on the potential involvement of millions of soldiers in the genocide of the Jews on the Eastern front and thus brought the Holocaust home to the average German family (Bartov, Germany’s War 157–8). In contrast, the reopened and defanged version, which removed the twenty out of 1,433 photos that had been used inappropriately, minimized the role of German perpetrators. Hannes Heer, one of the organizers of the exhibition, connects the “Verschwinden der Ta¨ter” (disappearance of the perpetrators) with the newly popular discourse of victimization that leaves no room for the representation of Nazi crimes (Vom Verschwinden der Ta¨ter). Giordano, Die Zweite Schuld 166. Ibid. 166. The connection between war and genocide is also evident in the fact that the term Kriegsverbrechen (war crime) was used to designate all forms of National Socialist crimes against humanity during the 1950s and 1960s (Reichel, Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung in Deutschland 45). These works include Jo¨rg Friedrich’s Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 (The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940–45), first printed in installments by the Springer-owned tabloid Bild. Der Brand was quickly followed by a plethora of monographs and anthologies, all dedicated to the memory of the bombing of German cities. The plight of the refugees was represented in a 2001 series produced by the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen and by a series of articles in the magazine Der Spiegel. Concurrent with these popular treatments was a political controversy about the creation of a center dedicated to the remembrance of Second World War refugees. Last but not least, following the 2003 publication of Eine Frau in Berlin (A Woman in Berlin), an anonymous account of a German woman raped by Red Army soldiers, the topic of rape during the occupation received widespread attention in the German press. In the literary realm, the depictions of German suffering range from Dieter Forte’s Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen (The Boy with Bloody Shoes, 1995) and Bernd Spa¨th’s Tru¨mmerkind (Rubble Child, 2002) to Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s Der Verlorene (Lost, 1999). Films that deal with the topic of German suffering include Helke Sander’s Befreier und Befreite (Liberators Take Liberties, 1992), So¨nke Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Berne, 2003), which features a traumatized German soldier who returns to his family after thirteen years of Russian captivity, and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (The Downfall, 2004). Studies such as Peter Sichrovsky’s Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families and Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall’s Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengeda¨chtnis (Grandfather was no Nazi: National Socialism and the Holocaust in Family Memory) provide ample proof that, far from being a taboo, the perception of Germans as victims of the Nazis and the war dominates memories of the Third Reich in the private realm.

Notes to pages 109–10

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Consider, for example, the following quote: “There’s all that talk about you Jews being the victims of the war. But for those of you who survived, the suffering ended with Hitler’s death. But for us, the children of the Nazis, it didn’t end” (Sichrovsky, Born Guilty 138). As regards public discourse, a taboo against Germans as victims characterized the works of the “skeptical generation,” such as Gu¨nter Grass and Ju¨rgen Habermas (Frei, 1945 12), but can hardly be said to describe the entire political spectrum. Still, there are important shifts that differentiate the discourse of victimization of the immediate postwar years from current victim discourse. For example, in the immediate postwar years, much attention was being paid to the plight of imprisoned Nazis, who were seen as victims of victor’s justice. Literary depictions of the air war, on the other hand, such as Hans Erich Nossack’s Der Untergang (The End: Hamburg 1943, 1948) and Gert Ledig’s Die Vergeltung (Payback, 1956) were unwelcome then, but received much attention during the 1990s. However, in spite of these changes, the fact that the representation of German suffering is often framed as a much-needed and long-delayed breaking of a taboo indicates that these stories are in the business of fashioning “a present truth about the past” (Eberwein, “Introduction” 13). In other words, the frequency, popularity, and supposed “newness” of the theme of German suffering suggests that this discourse is not simply designed to set the record straight, but rather has purchase on the current political situation. More specifically, as Aleida Assmann explains, stories of German victimization can be interpreted in the political context of 1989, i.e., they may be appropriated for the consolidation of a new German state and the concomitant efforts to relieve the Germans of their historical burden (“Resentment” 129). Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich, Die Unf a¨higkeit zu trauern 59. Moeller, War Stories 193. See Beyersdorf, “. . . den Osten verloren”; Tighe, “The Tin Drum in Poland” 4. Assmann quotes Hans Frank’s statements during the Nuremberg trials as paradigmatic of this attempt: “Die riesigen Massenverbrechen entsetzlichster Art, die, wie ich jetzt erfahren habe, vor allem in Ostpreussen, Schlesien, Pommern und im Sudentenland von Russen, Polen und Tschechen an Deutschen veru¨bt wurden und noch veru¨bt werden, haben jede nur mo¨gliche Schuld unseres Volkes schon heute restlos getilgt” (quoted in Assmann, Der lange Schatten 170). Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik 13. Ibid., 404; see also Reichel, Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung in Deutschland 68. Scholars have also related the self-perception of Germans as victims of war to current German foreign policy. Thus, Huyssen pointed to a connection between the current German reluctance to engage in warfare and the propensity to identify with the victims of the Second World War (Huyssen, “Air War Legacies” 164–71; see also Kettenacker, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? 13). Most recently, Martin Hohmann, then Member of Parliament for the CDU, characterized the Jews as “Ta¨tervolk” in a reference to Jewish Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

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Notes to pages 110–5

17 Frei, 1945 3. 18 Taberner, “Normalization” 362. 19 For older examples of the same dynamic see Edgar Reitz’s Heimat (Homeland, 1984), which traces the gradual destruction of a small German community in the wake of war and economic miracle, or Helma Sanders-Brahms’s Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany Pale Mother, 1980), which comes close to portraying even perpetrators of Nazi crimes as victims. The film shows how the impressionable and apolitical Hans, the father of the female narrator, is traumatized by his experiences on the Eastern front. The film depicts executions of Polish women, but it also encourages empathy for Hans, who is portrayed as the victim of the murder he commits. 20 See Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur 6. 21 Grass, Essays II: 7. 22 Schlant, The Language of Silence 36. 23 Bartov, Germany’s War 226–7; Pakendorf, “Die verlorene Ehre” 118. 24 Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat 132. 25 Reich-Ranicki, “Dichter” 224; Mu¨ller-Schwefe, Sprachgrenze 141. 26 Berman, Cultural Studies 151; see also Ralph Ley’s analysis of the reception of Bo¨ll’s work in the US, where Bo¨ll was often perceived as a writer who put old-fashioned narrative ahead of experimentation (“Big Apple” 259–60). See also Finlay, Rationality 9, and Durzak, who points out that many perceive Bo¨ll as “literarisch unbedarft” (“Bo¨ll” 609). 27 Perraudin, “Heinrich Bo¨ll” 128; Strauss, “The Agony of Witnessing” 43. 28 Sackett, “Germans” 317. 29 Migner, “Heinrich Bo¨ll” 211. 30 Grass, Essays III: 27. 31 Grass, Essays II: 77. 32 Grass, Essays I: 210; see also 113, 447. 33 Nemoto, “Gu¨nter Grass’s The Tin Drum” 749; Frizen, “Blechmusik” 34; Caltvedt, “Oskar’s Account of Himself ” 286; McElroy, “Lunatic” 310; O’Neill, “Implications” 433. 34 See Dawes, Language of War 69–106; Scarry, Body in Pain 241–56. ¨ LL 9 W A R AN D V I C T I M I Z A T I ON : B O 1 All references to the Ko¨lner Ausgabe of Bo¨ll’s works appear as KA; references to the edition edited by Bernd Balzer appear as KW. 2 Ko¨llerer, Heinrich Bo¨lls Konzeption von Literatur 25. 3 Repeatedly, soldiers are compared with prostitutes since both are in the business of selling their bodies. 4 Reich-Ranicki, Mehr als ein Dichter 26; see also Jeziorkowski, “Heinrich Bo¨ll” 273. 5 “Der Krieg ist entsetzlich, grausam und bestialisch, ich kann es Dir nicht beschreiben, vielleicht kann ich Dir spa¨ter erza¨hlen” (November 21, 1943, Briefe i i : 952); see also: “Ach, ich wu¨nschte nur, ich ko¨nnte Dir einmal

Notes to pages 115–20

6

7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17

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alles erza¨hlen, denn wenn man es beschreibt, ho¨rt es sich ungleich schlimmer an, als es ist, und auch wieder ko¨nnen Worte es gar nicht beschreiben” (November 28, 1943, Briefe i i : 955). Certainly, the limitations of language must have appeared all the more drastic to a writer who had witnessed the appropriation and corruption of the German language by the Nazis. In his short story “Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit,” Bo¨ll ironizes the German inability to deal with the losses inflicted by the war. During the war, air raids destroy Aunt Minna’s most cherished possession, her Christmas tree. All its ornaments, including little glass dwarves and a silver angel with a mechanism that whispers “peace,” are shattered. In January 1947 when Germany’s economic situation begins to improve, Minna’s family begins to celebrate Christmas again. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that the only way to comfort Minna, who was traumatized by her wartime experience, is to keep celebrating Christmas all year long, a practice that stabilizes Minna, but slowly drives the younger generation crazy. Bo¨ll had originally submitted the novel to a contest, but seems to have abandoned all attempts to publish it when it was turned down. Several publishing houses showed interest in Das Verma¨chtnis, but all options fell through. The publishing house Kurt Desch turned it down because it had already committed to several similar works and did not want to be limited to war novels. Finlay, “Gruppe 47” 106. See also “allerdings besteht fu¨r antimilitaristische Literatur wenig Aussicht jetzt, wo es wieder ‘aufwa¨rts’ geht” (November 22, 1950, Die Hoffnung 264). Finlay, “Literaturbetrieb” 103. Schlant, The Language of Silence 36 Bartov, Germany’s War 226–7. His mysterious eye problems that prevent him from handling a gun also date from this time in Bromberg: “Sonderbarerweise habe ich jetzt sehr starke Beschwerden mit meinem Augenzittern . . . Schießen kann ich ja nun damit u¨berhaupt nicht mehr” (June 30, 1940, Briefe i : 68). Reid, “Nachwort” 1518. This is even more likely since Bo¨ll’s autobiographical sketch Was soll aus dem Jungen bloß werden testifies to self-censorship in a different context. In it, Bo¨ll describes how the execution of seven communists in Cologne made him aware of the dangers of expressing one’s opinion freely: “ich machte keine frivolen Bemerkungen u¨ber Hitler mehr, nur noch zu Hause und auch dort nicht in jedermanns Gegenwart” (36). When Bo¨ll tells his parents that dry bread is now called Adolf-Hitler-cake, he prefaces his little joke with the remark that, although as a German soldier he abhors this brand of wit, he feels an obligation to illustrate and condemn the irresponsibility that spawns such humor (March 2, 1940, Briefe i : 45). Similarly, in a note to his parents, Bo¨ll lampoons the cliche´d phrases expected of the German soldier: “Was schreibt der deutsche Soldat nach Hause? Daß

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19

20

21

22 23

24

Notes to pages 120–2 er sich unsagbar glu¨cklich fu¨hlt, dienen zu du¨rfen an diesem großen Werk, das Europa ein anderes Gesicht geben wird. Daß die Stimmung fabelhaft, das Essen reichlich und schmackhaft und die Lo¨hnung bezaubernd ist. Das schreibt der deutsche Soldat nach Hause” (December 29, 1939, Briefe i : 32). Bo¨ll’s comments in his early letters that he hopes for and believes in Germany’s ultimate victory may have been designed to please Nazi censors, but they may also be expressions of the youthful author’s love for his country. A postscript such as “Und Gott strafe England” may be an ironic quote of Nazi rhetoric or a reflection of the young writer’s naı¨ve nationalism. It is interesting to read Heinrich Fa¨hmel’s denouncement of irony in Billiard um halb zehn, in this context: Fa¨hmel “wußte, daß Ironie nie ausreichte und nie ausreichen wu¨rde” (KA i i : 89). In many of his stories, bread functions as a powerful symbol for wolfish desires as well as the hope of human communality. In Das Brot der fru¨hen Jahre (The Bread of Those Early Years, 1955), for example, the protagonist’s insatiable hunger is physical and spiritual, a growling stomach from months of undernourishment and mental anguish resulting from an all too close intimacy with death. Another important motif consists in the notion that memories of the dead hold the living in their thrall. The protagonist of Das Brot der fru¨hen Jahre, for example, pillages the remains of bombed houses and happens upon rubber ducks in a bathtub, left behind by children who suffocated during an air raid. In Der Engel schwieg (The Silent Angel, 1992), whose plot sets in on May 8, 1945, the survivors of the war are zombies who envy the dead. In the fatherless postwar society of Haus ohne Hu¨ter (The House without Guardians, 1954), the orphaned sons of soldiers are robbed of their childhoods while the widow Nella is imprisoned in recollections of the past. Bernath points out that Andreas is the name of a Christian martyr (“Auftritt um halb zehn?” 13). In the story, Andreas dies because he is mistaken for a Nazi official. Similarly, Wo warst du, Adam features a scene in which German soldiers fall victim to a misunderstanding. German soldiers who have been left behind attempt to surrender, but the soldier who carries the flag accidentally steps on a mine. The advancing enemies mistake this for an attack and destroy every building in sight. Durzak, “Bo¨ll” 614. In his novel Wo warst du, Adam, Bo¨ll addresses the question of complicity through the title and epithet, a quote from Theodor Haecker’s Tag- und Nachtbu¨chern: “Eine Weltkatastrophe kann zu manchem dienen. Auch dazu, ein Alibi zu finden vor Gott. Wo warst du, Adam? ‘Ich war im Weltkrieg.’ ” In a letter to Kunz, Bo¨ll claimed that this story was inspired by his own experience: “Spa¨ter ‘fa¨llt’ der Sohn in Russland und zwar wird er im Suff von seinem Bataillonskommandeur erschossen (letzteres habe ich selbst erlebt)” (May 30, 1948, Die Hoffnung 79). Wenk is called upon to testify in court in a corruption case. This too is inspired by Bo¨ll’s own experience: “Ich wurde spa¨ter vors Kriegsgericht geladen als Zeuge . . . Ich habe einfach gesagt,

Notes to pages 122–30

25 26

27

28 29 30 31

32 33

34 35

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da habe ich nichts gemerkt, ich habe nichts gewußt. Ich wollte nicht zur Verurteilung eines Menschen beitragen” (“Eine deutsche Erinnerung,” KW Interviews i : 624). Durzak, “Bo¨ll” 617. Kreuz ohne Liebe also raises questions about the subservience of the common soldier to Nazi policy and his potential guilt as an agent of the regime, but it does so in much more explicit form. When Christoph becomes a soldier, he wonders: “Diente er nun nicht derselben Macht als Waffentra¨ger, die Joseph irgendwo in ihren blutigen Kellern gefangenhielt?” (KA i i : 235). Christoph suffers because he fights for a cause whose victory he cannot desire. Wo warst du, Adam, for example, contains a description of a transfer of Jews to an extermination camp that is reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. The scene focuses not on the Jews in the van but on the two drivers, who eat their sandwiches, exchange pictures of their families, and sing “Heidemarie.” The allusions to the desperate situation of the prisoners in the van stand in stark contrast to this elaborate portrayal of normality. Bo¨ll traces this idea to his encounter with the works of Leon Bloy, who, incidentally, also exerted a great influence on Ernst Ju¨nger. See Bance, “Bo¨ll” 218. Gruppenbild mit Dame also features a converted Jewess, the nun Rahel. Nahrgang, “War in the Works of Heinrich Bo¨ll” 23; Bance, “Bo¨ll” 320. Billiard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half Past Nine, 1959) describes the plight of German and Russian victims of Nazi abuse and offers the following list: “Edith, von einem Bombensplitter geto¨tet; Ferdi, ein Attenta¨ter, rechtskra¨ftig verurteilt; der Junge, der die winzigen Papiere mit seinen Botschaften in den Briefkasten geworfen hatte; Schrellas Vater, der verschwunden war; Schrella selbst, der so fern von dem Land leben mußte, in dem Ho¨lderlin gelebt hatte; Groll, der Kellner im Anker” (135). Sackett, “Germans” 5. The Nazi as brother and “Other” also characterizes later works. In Billiard um halb zehn, for example, the Otherness of Nazism, which is repeatedly referred to as the sacrament of the buffalo, is metaphysical in nature. Nazism appears to be a curse that can be neither explained nor prevented. Thus, Schrella, a character in Billiard um halb zehn, does not want children because one can never be sure that they will not grow up to be Nazis, and Otto, a fervent supporter of the Nazis, is the brother of Robert, who has to flee the country because of his opposition to the regime. Ko¨llerer, Heinrich Bo¨lls Konzeption von Literatur 28. See, for example, Leneaux: “Bo¨ll’s works abound in lower middle class artisan figures who possess such healthy instincts that they automatically reject Nazism as ‘Blo¨dsinn’ without really being conscious of its political dimensions. Yet it is historically demonstrable that German fascism was a movement largely based on lower middle-class support” (“Bo¨ll and the Rehumanization of Art” 128). Critics who objected to Bo¨ll’s portrayal of the petit bourgeoisie include Na¨gele and Durzak (see also Zachau, Bo¨ll 51, 78).

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36 See his response to Hilde Domin: “Wer hat Sie denn aus Deutschland vertrieben? Waren’s die Proleten? Wollen Sie mir mit dem Anstreicher Hitler kommen? Es waren die Herren von Papen und von Hindenburg, die einer rapide an Wa¨hlern verlierenden NSDAP die Chance gaben” (KA x x v i i i : 10). And yet, although Bo¨ll’s texts frequently blame a mysterious small elite for the crimes of war and genocide, more often than not, the Nazi characters in his texts – Hans in Kreuz ohne Liebe, Filskeit in Wo warst du, Adam, Pelzer in Gruppenbild mit Dame – are petit bourgeois. 37 A connection between truthful confession and forgiveness is evident in Bo¨ll’s Kreuz ohne Liebe as well as in his short story Der blasse Hund (The Mad Dog), written in 1947 but first published in 1995. “Der blasse Hund” was a member of a Nazi unit responsible for the mass execution of Jews, the crime, “das die Vernichtung minderwertigen Menschentums geheißen wurde” (KA i i i : 34). When the story begins, the mad dog is already dead, but a chaplain recounts the story of his crimes to a doctor and then insists on accompanying his body. It is the chaplain’s compassion for the dead man that hints at the possibility of forgiveness. To the Catholic Bo¨ll, the sacrament of confession, interpreted as a truthful discourse of crimes committed, functions as the dominant model of Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung. 38 See Cory, “Some Observations on the Role of Violence” 49. 39 See Warnach, “Bo¨ll und die Deutschen” 56. 40 See Zachau, Bo¨ll 15. 41 See the following passage from his letters: “Die Feldwebelsgesichter und die Unteroffiziersnacken, die so widerlich und doch wieder in einem ganz tiefen Sinn unschuldig sind – wo ist da u¨berhaupt ein Schuldiger zu finden” (February 28, 1942, Briefe i : 301). 1 0 W A R A N D A C C O U N T A B I L I T Y : GR AS S 1 Henrik Engel, “ ‘Grassomanie’ ” 122; Horrocks, “The Undisciplined Past” 353; Rickels, “Die Blechtrommel” 109; Minden, “A Post-Realist Aesthetic” 156. 2 This debate was followed by an even more heated controversy in August, 2006, when Grass, preceding the publication of his memoir Beim Ha¨uten der Zwiebel (Peeling the Onion), revealed that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during the last months of the war. The Nobel laureate now stood accused of the same silence and obfuscation that he had so frequently reviled in others. 3 www.zeit.de/archiv/2002/07/200207_l-grass.xml. 4 Arnold, “Gespra¨ch mit Gu¨nter Grass” 10. 5 Scherf, Das Herz der Blechtrommel 43. 6 Beyersdorf, “The Narrator” 129–33. 7 Arnds, Representation 86. 8 Palencia-Roth, “Anti-Faustian Ethos” 180. 9 Remak, “Comparative Value Judgements” 170; Ronald Schneider, “A¨sthetische Opposition” 86; Noel L. Thomas, “Oskar” 43. 10 Cf. Scherf, Das Herz der Blechtrommel 100.

Notes to pages 137–56 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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Jendroviak, “Urtrommel” 183. Guidry, “Theoretical Reflections” 137. O’Neill, Grass Revisited 25. Botheroyd, Ich und Er 42; Hamilton, “From Social Welfare to Civil Rights” 223; Herd, “Tin Drum and Snake-Charmer’s Flute” 217; Palencia-Roth, “Anti-Faustian Ethos” 181. Neuhaus, Interpretation 76. Durzak, Roman 19; see also 54. Quoted in Neuhaus, Dokumente 61. See also Cepl-Kaufmann, “Verlust” 72. Hermand, “Das Unpositive” 10; Baker, “Nazism and the Petit Bourgeois Protagonist” 90. Reddick, Danzig Trilogy 21. Pflanz, Sexualita¨t 103; Hans Dieter Zimmerman, “Gu¨nter Grass: Die Blechtrommel ” 325. Cf. Cunliffe, “Aspects of the Absurd” 87. Slaymaker, “Who Cooks” 51. Brode, Gu¨nter Grass 73. See O’Neill, “Musical Form” 306; Botheroyd, Ich und Er 30; Neuhaus, Interpretation 91–3. See Ryan, The Uncompleted Past 31. Cf. Jendrowiak, Hybris 49. Dye, “Weil die Geschichte nicht aufho¨rt” 482. Veel, “Virtual Memory” 27. Arker, Nichts ist vorbei 203. Caspari, “Im Krebsgang gegen den Strich” 107. Taberner, “Normalization” 181. Midgley, “Gu¨nter Grass, Im Krebsgang” 68. von Schilling, Schuldmotoren 31. 11 Y U G O S L A V I A A N D I R A Q : O V E R V I E W

1 2 3 4 5

Finlan, The Collapse of Yugoslavia 39. Ricks, Fiasco 56. Preußer, ed., Krieg in den Medien 16–17. Mu¨nkler, Neuen Kriege 197. Beaugrande, “In Search of Feminist Discourse” 254. 12 W A R AN D P E A C E : H A N D K E

1 For information on the public debate see Zu¨lch Tilman. 2 Pichler, Die Beschreibung des Glu¨cks 176. 3 Strasser, “Sich mit dem Salbei freuen” 121. Cf. Schmidt-Dengler who claims that all of Handke’s works endeavor “Sinn und Zusammenhang herzustellen,

222

4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21

22

23 24

25 26 27

Notes to pages 156–73 auch dort herzustellen, wo er so gut wie suspendiert zu sein scheint” (“Letzte Welten oder” 54). In contrast, Hensing points out that Handke’s recent works favor details over unity and strive for openness and a gaze without intention (“Peter Handke” 253). All references to Winterliche Reise are given as WR and page number. Gottwald, “Einladung Peter Handke zu lesen” 32. See Tabah, “Land and Landscape” 338. All references to Sommerlicher Nachtrag are given as SN and page number; references to Unter Tra¨nen fragend appear as TF and page number. In the very first paragraph of his first essay, Handke insists that the word “Grund” can only make sense if it is paired with the verb “sehen.” This is indicative of Handke’s technique that redefines immaterial ideas into visible objects. Leed, No Man’s Land 120. Halsall, “Place, Autonomy and the Individual” 58. See Tabah, “Land and Landscape” 356. Schmidt-Bergmann, “Peter Handke” 673. Zelle, “Parteinahme fu¨r die Dinge” 99. Wefelmeyer, “Handke’s Theater” 228. Cf. Petersdorf, “Spaßmacher und Ernstmacher” 282. See Jancar, “Gerechtigkeit fu¨r Sarajevo” 90. Fussell, The Great War 235. Arens, “Politics, History, and Public Intellectuals” 124. Quoted in Pichler, Die Beschreibung des Glu¨cks 107. Several supporters of Handke referred to the fact that the Bosnian Muslims hired Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs, whose manager James Harff declared as his biggest victory the fact that Jewish organizations in the US supported Bosnian Muslims in spite of Tudjmann’s and Izetbegovic’s open antiSemitism (Gritsch, “Der Kunst die Freiheit?” 82). Burdorf speaks of the “Idealisierung einer Gruppe (in diesem Fall der Bevo¨lkerung Serbiens) zu einem Volk von Freiheitska¨mpfern” (“Helden fu¨r einen Tag” 245). Handke is aware that his critique of the media has often been interpreted as an attempt to “entwirklichen” (29) Serbian war crimes. Peter Schneider, for example, in his attack on Handke, insists that the primary issue is not whether we call somebody a murderer, but whether he is a murderer. Lamberechts, “Von der Spa¨tmoderne” 61; Wefelmeyer, “Handke’s Theater” 200. Hensing, “Peter Handke” 235; McChesney, “From Fiction to Reality” 132; Parry, “Das sind jetzt die richtigen Bilder” 360; Konzett, Rhetoric of National Dissent 61. See Weller, “Between Violence and Transcendence” 239; Barry, “Text as Life/Life as Text” 284. Arens, “Politics, History, and Public Intellectuals” 122. Hoesterey, “Autofiction” 47.

Notes to pages 175–7

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1 3 W AR A N D T H E M E D I A : J E L I N E K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/elfriede/. Ibid. Ibid. Schlingensief, “Unnobles Dynamit” 9. Bethman, “My Characters” 63. Quoted in Lamb-Faffelberger, “Repra¨sentation” 199. Hanssen, Critique of Violence 211. Polt-Heinzl, “Das Abrakadabra der Philosophen” 63; El Refaie, “Dramatist with a Talent for Dramatisation” 340; Ho¨fler, “Sexualita¨t und Macht” 101. See Sylvester, “Die Stimme” 88; Haines, “Beyond Patriarchy”. Butler, Gender Trouble 30. Lamb-Faffelberger, “Avant-garde” 231. Kurzenberger, “Die heutige Schaubu¨hne” 29. Wright, “Aesthetics of Disgust” 193. Her experimental novels wir sind lockvo¨gel baby! (1970), which she dedicated to the Austrian army, and Michael: Ein Jugendbuch fu¨r die Infantilgesellschaft (1972) depict violence as an integral component of popular culture whereas Die Klavierspielerin (1983) is interested in the dialectic of violence and high culture. Die Liebhaberinnen (1975) and her first play Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte (1977) focus on the violence inherent in the economic structure of society. Jelinek’s novel Die Ausgesperrten (1980) depicts the lasting effects of the Second World War on Austrian society and characterizes the family as a site of systematic and pervasive violence. In Krankheit oder moderne Frauen (1984), the male protagonists Benno Hundekoffer and Dr. Heidkliff develop a passion for all things soldierly. They wear guns and spout anti-Russian slogans as military garbage keeps piling up on stage until everything is littered with weapons. Jelinek’s Lust (1989), an attempt to write a female pornographic novel, and Gier (2000) portray sexual and romantic relations as arenas of violence and degradation. The dramas Totenauberg (1991) and Wolken.Heim (1988) seek to unveil the violent core of German idealist and existential philosophy. Finally, In den Alpen (2002) shines a critical light on violence and death in the realms of sport and recreation by portraying “die Toten der Berge mit ihren zerbrochenen Fesseln, gerissenen Ba¨ndern, geborstenen Knochen” (In den Alpen 14). Virilio and Lotringer, Pure War 9. The topic of war recurs with great frequency in her texts. One of her earliest texts, wir sind lockvo¨gel baby, repeatedly alludes to the Vietnam War. Her comments on the “schrecklichen zerfleischenden krieg zwischen amerikanern und gelben zwischenmenschen” (15) transpose the rhetoric of the trivial novel into the realm of international politics in order to expose the racist underpinnings inherent in both. In addition to the Second World War, several of her later works make mention of the war in the former Yugoslavia. The term “wirklichkeit” also functions as the title of numerous subsections.

224

Notes to pages 178–89

17 Baudrillard, Selected Writings 170. 18 The first-person narrator of her novel Gier, for example, presents a garbled summary of the war in Kosovo in which the extermination of the local population appears as an afterthought: “Das nenne ich Kriegskunst! Die Menschen sterben schließlich so und so, keine Angst, ihre Ha¨user bleiben ja da, außer wir wa¨ren in Kosovo, da wa¨re es umgekehrt, aber nein, dort bleibt ja gar nichts. Von keinem etwas” (32). 19 Virilio and Lotringer, Pure War 77. 20 Szalay, “Of Gender and the Gaze” 237. 21 Scarry, Body in Pain 77. According to Chris Hables Gray, the tendency to eclipse the role of the human body has become even more pronounced in postmodern warfare, which relies heavily on the use of machines, be it computers, robots, or tanks (Postmodern War 46). 22 Finney, “Politics” 240. 23 See also “Ja, menschliches Leid kann natu¨rlich niemals mit Geld aufgewertet werden, das sage ich einmal so ohne Zusammenhang, aber es paßt an jeder andren Stelle auch hin. Den Satz behalte ich, den kann ich auch noch o¨fter verwenden” (In den Alpen 94). 24 On Jelinek’s critique of Austrian Heimat discourse see Konzett, Rhetoric of National Dissent ; see also Wolken.Heim, which explores the explosive mixture of discourses of masculinity and nationality: “Umsonst zu sterben, lieben wir nicht, doch lieben wir, zu fallen am Opferhu¨gel fu¨rs Vaterland, zu bluten des Herzens Blut fu¨rs Vaterland” (Wolken.Heim 145). 25 In her opening remarks, Jelinek calls upon the National Socialist Hermann Grengg, the chief engineer of the plant, to step out in front of the curtain. 26 K.u.k. stands for kaiserlich und ko¨niglich (as in the imperial Austrian emperor and Hungarian king). There are several references to Clemens M. Hutter, author of numerous Austrian travel guides including Kitzsteinhorn = 3.000 m above it All, which discusses the history of glacier lifts and glacier skiing in Kaprun. 27 Barthes, Mythologies 135. 28 Janz, “Spiegel” 86. 29 See Johanning, who points out that Jelinek’s “Texte eignen sich Wirklichkeit an, indem sie sich bereits vorgeformter Wirklichkeitsaneignung, wie Literatur, Film und Fernsehen bema¨chtigen . . . Ziel dieses Verfahrens ist gerade die “Weisen der Welterzeugung,” ihre Funktionen und ihr Funktionieren aufzuzeigen” (Ko¨rperStu¨cke 75). 30 The Alps, often cited as the supreme embodiment of the horror and beauty of the sublime, provide the setting where, in the form of the Kaprun plant, nature is conquered by man’s superior might. 31 Ba¨rbel Lu¨cke suggests that the references to Greek myth are designed to uncover the conversion of logos into myth (“Zu Bambiland und Babel ” 259). 32 Kremer, “Schnittstellen” 143. 33 Similarly, in Das Werk, the voices of Geissenpeter and Heidi become the voices of the skier Hermann Maier’s mother, of a generic “engineer,” and of three forced laborers from the Ukraine.

Notes to pages 189–202

225

34 All references to Bambiland are given as B and page number. 35 On Jelinek’s Nietzsche reception see Eigler, “Gewissenlose Erkenntnis.” 36 Jelinek is acutely aware of the fact that war produces immense profits for a select group of corporations and individuals. Already in Die Ausgesperrten, she speaks of “die Wege des Volksvermo¨gens, die im Dunkel enden, um bald in Gestalt eines Weltkriegs wieder ins Rampenlicht zu treten” (78). Consequently, both Bambiland and Babel address the economic dimension of war through numerous references to Halliburton and Blackwater: “Drauf ko¨nnt ihr euch verlassen, daß diese Firma gewinnt, egal wer gewinnt.” 37 Baudrillard, Selected Writings 233. 38 Finney, “Politics” 249. 14 C O N C L U S I O N 1 Agamben, Homo Sacer 7. 2 Mueller, Remnants of War 1. 3 Shay, Odysseus in America 251.

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Index

Adair, Gilbert 8 Agamben, Giorgio 2–3, 202 agency 9, 11, 67, 70, 81, 82, 104, 111, 199, 200, 201, 202 Allan, Sean 51 Aly, Go¨tz 111 Amazons 55, 59 Amazon War 55–6 Andersch, Alfred 72 Angelopoulous, Theodorus 1 anti-war texts 2, 7, 88, 97 Arendt, Hannah 92, 219 Arens, Katherine 165, 172 Ariosto 74 Armstrong, Karen 80, 158 Assmann, Aleida 108, 110, 215 Austria 9, 12, 168, 184 authenticity 2, 5, 89, 201 Bance, A. F. 90, 100, 103, 127, 213 Barbusse, Henri 13, 96, 98, 99 Under Fire (Le Feu) 89, 92, 99, 100 Barthes, Roland 186 Bartov, Omer 111, 117, 214 Baudrillard, Jean 177, 192 Beaugrande, Robert de 153 Beckett, Samuel, Endgame 175 Belgrade 162 Benjamin, Walter 78, 80, 211 Berman, Russell 216 Bethman, Brenda 176 Bible, the 74 Bildung 5, 7, 49, 61, 73, 91, 92, 93, 199 Bildungsroman 6, 7, 69, 77, 91 Bloy, Leon 219 Bluhm, Lothar 71 Blut und Boden 153, 169 Boas, Frederick S. 41 Bocokic, Zlatko 156 body 69, 70, 84, 86, 95, 165, 180, 181, 197, 199, 201

body in pain 3, 7, 8, 69, 83, 87, 115, 164, 165, 183, 192, 201 body in warfare 53–4, 88–104 relation between mind and body 3, 4, 8, 30, 42, 44, 84 writing on the 53 Bohrer, Karl Heinz 210 Bo¨ll, Heinrich 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 107, 108, 111, 114–21, 121–2, 200, 201, 211, 212, 216 Billiard um halb zehn 218, 219 Der blasse Hund 220 Das Brot der fru¨hen Jahre 218 Ende einer Dienstfahrt 114 Der Engel schwieg 218 Frauen vor Flußlandschaft 131 Gruppenbild mit Dame 130, 219 Haus ohne Hu¨ter 127, 131, 218 Kreuz ohne Liebe 116, 124–5, 127, 129–30, 219 Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit 217 Todesursache: Hakennase 125–6 Das Verma¨chtnis 116, 122, 131, 217 Wo warst Du Adam? 127, 218 Der Zug war pu¨nktlich 127 Bourke, Joanne 81, 95 Brandstetter, Gabriele 209 Brittain,Vera 89, 97 Testament of Youth 89 Bullock, Marcus P. 84 Burdorf, Dieter 222 Bush, George W. 191 Buzzel, Colby, Killing Time: My War in Iraq 203 Caltvedt, Lester 113 Campbell, Joseph 158 catharsis 5, 76, 79, 162 Chaouli, Michael 60 Cheney, Dick 191 Choluj, Bozena 58 Christianity 190, 193 class 100–1

262

Index Claudius, Matthias 107 Clausewitz, Carl von 1–2, 25–6, 57, 66 Vom Kriege 1, 26, 47 Cobley, Evelyn 6, 7, 68 content of the form 3, 5–7, 8, 68, 88, 171 critique of war representations 7 Crnjanski, Milos, Tagebuch u¨ber Carnojecevic 164 Crosby, Donald H. 41 Cullens, Chris and Dorothea von Mu¨cke 60 Dawes, James 113 death 39, 75, 76, 82, 85, 89, 93, 97, 165, 178, 186, 197 Debriacher, Gudrun 60 Decker, Gunnar 71 Domin, Hilde 220 drama, eighteenth-century 6, 46 Duerr, Hans-Peter 10 Durzak, Manfred 122, 216, 219 Dyer, Gwynne 14 Eberwein, Robert 215 Einstein, Albert 66 Eksteins, Modris 88, 100, 210, 213 El Refaie, Elisabeth 176 Eliade, Mircea 80, 82, 211 Myth and Reality 82 emplotment 7 Euripides, Women of Troy 179 fairy tale 157 fairy-tale land 157, 158 gendered 157 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 20–1, 24 ¨ ber den wahrhaften Begriff des Krieges 24–5 U Finlan, Alastair 151 Finlay, Frank 116, 216 Finney, Gail 183, 194 First World War novels 6, 7, 199 Fischer, Bernd 209 Flint, Katja 156 Forte, Dieter, Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen 214 Foucault, Michel, Society Must Be Defended 207–8 Frank, Hans 215 Frederick the Great 74 Frei, Norbert 109, 110, 215 Freud, Sigmund 66 Zeitgema¨sses u¨ber Krieg und Tod 66 Friedlaender, Salomo 97 Friedrich, Jo¨rg 214 Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–45 110

263

friction 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 11 Frizen, Werner 113 Fussel, Paul 89, 164 The Great War and Modern Memory 213 Gaiser, Gerd, Die sterbende Jagd 107 Gallas, Helga 58 Geissler, Rolf 211 gender 37, 42, 43, 58, 180, 181, 184, 193, 198, 202 gender dichotomy 181 gender metaphors 58 in Hermannsschlacht 51 Gewalt 4, 22 Giordano, Ralph 108, 110, 131 Gneisenau, August von 207 Goebbels, Joseph 10 Michael 10 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 12, 73, 75, 210 Kampagne in Frankreich 12, 75 Faust 187 Goldstein, Joshua 9, 10 Gottwald, Herwig 157 Grass, Gu¨nter 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 103, 107, 111, 112, 114, 115, 200 Beim Ha¨uten der Zwiebel 103 Die Blechtrommel 7, 11, 113, 130, 200 Im Krebsgang 12, 110, 113 Grathoff, Dirk 58 Graves, Robert 94, 99, 212 Gray, Chris Hables 224 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel von 74 Simplicius Simplicissimus 74 Gruppe 47 152 Habermas, Ju¨rgen 215 Haecker, Theodor, Tages- und Nachtbu¨cher 218 Haines, Brigid 177 Halliburton 191, 225 Halsall, Robert 158 Hamann, Brigitte 98 Handke, Peter 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 152, 155, 172, 200–1 Abschied des Tra¨umers vom Neunten Land 156, 158, 162 Der Bildverlust durch die Sierra de Gredos 157 Noch einmal fu¨r Jugoslawien 169 Publikumsbeschimpfung 152 Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise 156, 157, 161, 166 Unter Tra¨nen fragend 156, 157, 162, 166, 169 Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flu¨ssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina, oder Gerechtigkeit fu¨r Serbien 156, 160, 161, 163, 164, 173 Hanssen, Beatrice 176

264

Index

Hardenberg, Carl August Freiherr von 207 Harff, James 222 Hart, Gail K. 43 Hebbel, Friedrich 37 Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm 22, 61 Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechtes 22 Heidegger, Martin 161, 210 Heimat 184 Heissenbu¨ttel, Helmut 71 Hensing, Dieter 171, 222 Herder, Johann Gottfried 20 Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism 80 Hermand, Jost 73, 209 Hillgruber, Andreas 128 Hirschbiegel, Oliver, Der Untergang 214 Hitler, Adolf 182 Hoesterey, Ingeborg 173 Hoffmansthal, Hugo von, Briefe des Zuru¨ckgekehrten 162 Ho¨fler, Gu¨nther A. 176 Ho¨lderlin, Friedrich 85 Holocaust 107, 116, 119, 120, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 167, 168, 169, 200 Homer 74 Iliad, The 10, 179, 184 Honold, Alexander 73 hostility towards women 102 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 20, 21, 61 Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen 20 Hutter, Clemens M. 224 Huyssen, Andreas 215 Hynes, Samuel 68, 99 Irigaray, Luce 176 Islam 151, 154, 170, 179 Izetbegovic, Alija 151, 222 Jacob, Ludwig Heinrich 20, 21 Jancar, Drago 163 Jelinek, Elfriede 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 152, 154, 175–95, 201, 202 In den Alpen 154, 178, 223, 224 Die Ausgesperrten 181, 223, 225 Babel 179, 191, 193, 225 Bambiland 7, 154, 177, 179, 188–94, 195, 225 Burgtheater 176, 184 Clara S. 188 er nicht als er 187 Gier 223 Islam und Gewalt 175 Die Klavierspielerin 223 Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen 178, 223 Die Liebhaberinnen 180

Lust 223 Michael, ein Jugendbuch fu¨r die Infantilgesellschaft 177, 223 Oh Wildnis, oh Schutz vor ihr 177 Ein Sportstu¨ck 7, 154, 178, 179–83, 188, 192, 195 Totenauberg 154, 223 Was geschah mit Nora, nachdem sie ihren Mann verlassen hatte 188, 223 Das Werk 154, 178, 183–8, 195 Wir sind lockvo¨gel baby! 177, 223 Wolken. Heim 223 Jeziorkowski, Klaus 115 Ju¨nger, Ernst 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 67, 69, 70, 71, 88, 108, 198–9, 200, 201, 219 Auf den Marmorklippen 71 Das Wa¨ldchen 71 Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt 72, 85–6, 184 Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis 71 Feuer und Bewegung 71 Feuer und Blut 71 In Stahlgewittern 5, 6, 9, 67, 69, 72, 85, 185, 198, 199 Siebzig verweht III 85 Strahlungen 82 Sturm 71 Kant, Immanuel 4, 19, 20, 22–4, 25, 49, 60, 61, 78 Zum ewigen Frieden 20, 22 Kaprun 186 Karadzic, Radovan 183 Keegan, John 213 Kennedy, Barbara H. 51, 208 Kettenacker, Lothar 215 Kittler, Wolf 48, 207, 209 Klein, Holger M. 212 Kleist, Heinrich von 4, 5, 11, 12, 19, 46, 197–8, 201, 202 Die Hermannsschlacht 19, 47–55, 198 Katechismus der Deutschen abgefasst nach dem Spanischen, zum Gebrauch fu¨r Kinder und Alte 48 Penthesilea 11, 19, 47, 55–60, 198 Koeppen, Edlef 13 Heeresbericht 92, 99 Kohl, Helmut 71 Ko¨llerer, Christian 114 Konsalik, Heinz, Der Arzt von Stalingrad 107 Konzett, Matthias 171, 224 Kraus, Karl 176 Die letzten Tage der Menscheit 175, 177 Kremer, Detlef 188 Ku¨nzel, Christine 208

Index Lamb-Faffelberger, Margarete 176, 177 Lamberechts, Luc 171 Laukhard, Friedrich Christian 73, 203 Begebenheiten, Erfahrungen und Bemerkungen wa¨hrend des Feldzuges gegen Frankreich 73 Ledig, Gerd Die Stalinorgel 107 Die Vergeltung 215 Leneaux, Grant F. 219 Lenz, Siegfried 107 Levi, Primo 70 Survival in Auschwitz 70 Lorenz, Dagmar 194 Lotringer, Sylvere 177, 181 Lu¨cke, Ba¨rbel 224

Neaman, Elliot 73 Nemoto, Reiko Tachibana 113 Neubauer, John 36 Neumann, Gerhard 59, 60 Nevin, Thomas 210 Nietzsche, Friedrich 65–6, 73, 189, 224 Also sprach Zarathustra 65 Zur Genealogie der Moral 65 Novalis 20, 21 Heinrich von Ofterdingen 21 Norris, Margot 3–4, 89 Nossack, Hans-Erich, Der Untergang 215

Maier, Hermann 186 Mann, Thomas 71 masculinity 10 May, Karl 74 McAllister, Grant P. 56 McChesney, Anita 171 McElroy, Bernard 113 mercenaries 13, 34, 35 metonymic slippage 3, 26, 27 Migner, Karl 112 Miller, Norbert 51 Mitscherlich, Alexander and Margarete 108 Die Unfa¨higkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens 116 Mitterand, Franc¸ois Moeller, Robert G. 109 Mogadishu 152 Mommsen, Wolfgang 98 War Stories 109 Mu¨cke 60 Mueller, John 202 Mujahideen, 151 Mu¨ller, Adam 21 Elemente der Staatskunst 21 Mu¨ller, Hans-Harald 212 Mu¨ller-Schwefe, Hans-Rudolf 111 Mu¨nkler, Herfried 25, 48, 152 Die neuen Kriege 152 Murdoch, Brian O. 98 Mussolini, Benito 10 myth 158, 159, 200 mythification 159, 198

Pakendorf, Gunther 111 Palmer, Svetlana 177, 181 Paret, Peter 13 Parry, Christoph 171 Pavic, Milorad 161 peace 15, 153, 155 Perraudin, Michael 112 Peter, Klaus 50 Petersdorf, Dirk von 163 Peymann, Claus 47, 51, 156 Pfaff, Peter 44 Philippi, Klaus-Peter 210 Plivier, Theodor, Stalingrad 107 Polt, Gerhart 176 Polt-Heinzl, Evelyne 176 pornography 164, 167, 201 Portmann-Tinguely, Albert 21 Preußer, Heinz-Peter 152

Na¨gele, Rainer 219 Nahrgang, W. Lee. 127 narrative 5, 92, 95, 155, 157, 158, 159, 164, 199, 200, 201 narrativization 160 NATO 156, 166, 167, 169, 170

265

O’Neill, Terry 113 Owen, C. R. 99

Radakovic, Zarko 156 realism 6, 7, 68, 115 Reich-Ranicki, Marcel 111, 115 Reid, James H. 120 Reimer, Robert C. 8 Reitz, Edgar 216 Rek, Klaus 209 Remarque, Erich Maria 6, 7, 12, 13, 67, 108, 115, 199, 201 Der Funke Leben 95, 102, 212 Der Weg zuru¨ck 90 Im Westen nichts Neues 6, 9, 12, 67, 68, 69, 70, 77, 88–102, 199 Zeit zu leben, Zeit zu sterben 95, 102 Renn, Ludwig, Krieg 92, 99, 100 Ricks, Thomas E. 152 Romanticism 21, 153 Rothenberg, Gunther E. 13 Ruder-Finn Inc. 152

266

Index

Sachs, Jeffrey 202 Sackett, Robert 112, 127 Safranski, Ru¨diger 27, 30 Sander, Helke 214 Befreier und Befreite 214 Sanders-Brahms, Helma, Deutschland, bleiche Mutter 216 Sassoon, Siegfried 13, 88, 92, 99 Memories of an Infantryman 92, 100 Scarry, Elaine 7, 53, 92, 95, 113 The Body in Pain 7, 53, 69, 97, 183 Scharnhorst, Gerhard von 207 Schiller, Friedrich 3, 4, 10–11, 12, 19, 26, 27, 28–9, 46, 69, 73, 78, 84, 87, 197–8, 199, 201, 210 Briefe u¨ber die a¨sthetische Erziehung des Menschen 160 Don Carlos 73 Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinten Niederlande von der Spanischen Regierung 28 Geschichte des Dreissigja¨hrigen Kriegs 28 Jungfrau von Orleans 3, 4, 30, 37–44, 46, 73, 79, 197 Schaubu¨hne als moralische Anstalt 177 Wallenstein 4, 30–6, 46 Schlant, Ernestine 111, 117 Schlegel, Friedrich 20 Universalgeschichte 21 Schlingensief, Christoph 176 Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin 221 Schneider, Peter 222 Schubert, Franz, Winterreise 184, 187 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 179 Sebald, W. G. 110 Seeba, Hinrich 52 Sellner, Timothy F. 41 Sembdner, Helmut 207 Semin, Sophie 156 Serbia 157, 158, 160, 161 Shakespeare, William 50 Shaw, George Bernard 37 Shaw, Philip 22–4, 79 Shay, Jonathan 202 Sichrovsky, Peter 214 Simpson, Patricia Ann 23, 209 Slovenia 156, 157, 160, 162, 173 Sontag, Susan 93 Spa¨th, Bernd, Tru¨mmerkind 214 Spyri, Johanna, Heidi 184 Stalin, Joseph 182 Stalman, Reinhard, Staub 107 Stein, Freiherr vom 207 Stephan, Inge 57, 58 Stephens, Anthony 207 Sterne, Laurence 74

Sto¨ckmann, Ingo 84 Strachan, Hew 98 Strasser, Peter 221 Strathausen, Carsten 79 Strauß, Botho 71 Strauss, Walter A. 112 structure 67, 69, 113 teleological structure 6, 28–9, 78, 94, 126 sublime, the 3, 4, 5, 19, 22, 23, 36, 46, 49, 65, 69, 78, 79, 87, 107, 154, 155, 160, 162, 163, 197, 198, 199, 201, 224 Sylvester, Nina 177 Szalay, Ludwiga 181 Tabah, Mireille 157, 159 Taberner, Stuart 110 Tatum, James 14 terror 3, 5, 19, 23, 46, 47, 50, 57, 61, 75, 76, 77, 198 terrorism 151 Theweleit, Klaus 10–11, 86 Ma¨nnerphantasien 10 Tieck, Ludwig 48 transcendence 4, 5, 23, 35, 36, 44, 50, 69, 129, 158, 162, 197, 198, 201 in war 4, 22, 30, 36, 42, 45, 54, 160 trauma 1, 69, 72, 73–8, 83, 87, 93, 115, 165, 199, 211 Treichel, Hans-Ulrich, Der Verlorene 214 Tschugnall, Karoline 214 Tudjmann, Franjo 222 utopia 157, 160 Vergangenheitsbewa¨ltigung 12, 104, 111, 112, 152, 153, 168 victimization 7, 8, 9, 67, 98, 100, 103, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 122, 124, 126, 127, 132, 154, 170, 180, 182, 195, 199, 200 violence 166–7, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 198, 199, 200, 201, 223 female 181 and femininity 194 and religion 190, 201 Virilio, Paul 177, 181 Wagener, Hans 89 Wagner, Richard 74 Lohengrin 75 Wallenstein, Albrecht von 13 Wallis, Sarah 177, 181 war aestheticization 8, 75, 78 and language 53, 59, 76 and motherhood 10 as contact sport 179

Index as moral institution 5, 55 as spectacle 75 glorification of 66 hatred of 118 media wars 7, 14, 151, 171–3 metaphors 29, 39, 76 mythologization of 73, 78–83 sexuality and 140 total war 52, 170 transformation through 78 triviality of 154 wars Amazon War 55–6 Austro-Prussian War 11 First World War 5, 6, 11, 19, 65, 66, 67, 69, 74, 156, 162, 197 Franco-Prussian War 12 Gulf War 189, 192 Iraq War 7, 12, 151–4 Korean War 12 Napoleonic Wars 11, 13, 14, 19 Schleswig Wars 11

Second World War 11, 14, 67, 107, 108, 111, 159, 167, 169, 184, 185, 199, 223 Thirty Years’ War 13, 14, 30 Trojan War 57 Vietnam War 12 Yugoslavia War 12 Wefelmeyer, Fritz 160, 171 Weller, Christiane 172 Wenders, Wim, Wings of Desire 155 White, Hayden 68 Winter, Jay 68, 94, 99, 104 Wolf, Christa 107 Wortmann, So¨nke, Das Wunder von Bern 214 Wright, Elizabeth 177 Yugoslavia 151–4, 157, 158 Zachau, Reinhard K. 131 Zuckmayer, Carl 198 Als wa¨rs ein Stu¨ck von mir 1, 92 Zu¨lch, Tilman 221

267