German Novelists of the Weimar Republic

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

German Novelists of the
Weimar Republic
Intersections of Literature
and Politics

Edited by
Karl Leydecker

CAMDEN HOUSE
 Copyright 2006 by the Editor and Contributors
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
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without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 2006

by Camden House

Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.

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www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
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ISBN: 1571132880

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

German novelists of the Weimar Republic: intersections of literature and

politics / edited by Karl Leydecker.
p. cm. (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57113-288-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. German fiction20th centuryHistory and criticism.
2. Authors, German20th centuryPolitical and social views.
3. Politics and literatureGermanyHistory20th century.
I. Leydecker, Karl. II. Series: Studies in German literature, linguistics,
and culture (Unnumbered)
PT772.G396 2006
833.91209dc22
2006003308

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Karl Leydecker

1: Heinrich Mann and the Struggle for Democracy 19

Karin V. Gunnemann

2: Hermann Hesse and the Weimar Republic 45

Paul Bishop

3: In Defense of Reason and Justice: Lion Feuchtwangers 61

Historical Novels of the Weimar Republic
Roland Dollinger

4: The Case of Jakob Wassermann: Social, Legal, and 85

Personal Crises in the Weimar Republic
Karl Leydecker

5: Signs of the Times: Joseph Roths Weimar Journalism 101

Helen Chambers

6: Ernst Jnger, the New Nationalists, and the Memory 125

of the First World War
Roger Woods

7: Innocent Killing: Erich Maria Remarque and the 141

Weimar Anti-War Novels
Brian Murdoch

8: In A Far-Off Land: B. Traven 169

Karl S. Guthke

9: Weimars Forgotten Cassandra: The Writings of 193

Gabriele Tergit in the Weimar Republic
Fiona Sutton
vi
CONTENTS

10: Radical Realism and Historical Fantasy: Alfred Dblin 211

David Midgley

11: Vicki Baum: A First-Rate Second-Rate Writer? 229

Heather Valencia

12: Hans Falladas Literary Breakthrough: Bauern, 253

Bonzen und Bomben and Kleiner Mann was nun?
Jenny Williams

Notes on the Contributors 269

Index 273
Acknowledgments

T HE EDITOR WISHES TO THANK his former colleagues at the University of

Stirling: Malcolm Read, who helped to conceive the volume, was a
careful reader of my own and other contributions, and provided the initial
impetus for the introduction, and Brian Murdoch, who provided constant
support, advice, and encouragement, and also allowed me to benefit from
his extensive personal library. I would also like to acknowledge the gener-
ous support of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, which
funded a research trip to the German Literature Archive at Marbach am
Neckar for a separate project, during which time I was able to collect mate-
rial for my own contributions to this book.
I am grateful to Cornelia Pastelak-Price and the Frderverein der
Jeanne-Mammen-Stiftung e.V. (www.jeanne-mammen.de) for permission to
reproduce Jeanne Mammens watercolor Sie reprsentiert (She Represents).
At Camden House I would like to thank James Hardin, for his help
with the conception and initial planning of the book, Sue Innes for her
help with the preparation of the final manuscript, and especially Jim Walker
for his exemplary support throughout.
Finally I would like to thank my family, Faye and Elanor, for their love,
encouragement, and patience during the preparation of this book.

K. L.
January 2006
Introduction

Karl Leydecker

A s PETER GAY OBSERVED in his classic study of the culture of the Weimar
Republic, For over a century Germans had looked upon politics with
a mixture of fascination and aversion.1 German writers and intellectuals,
most notably those on the left of the political spectrum, had long dreamt
of having a direct involvement in political events and affairs of the state. In
the immediate aftermath of military defeat at the end of the First World
War and the collapse of the monarchy, it appeared that those dreams were
about to be realized. Indeed, some writers even briefly took political office
in the politically turbulent first months of 1919, most notable amongst
them the dramatist Ernst Toller, the anarchist writer Erich Mhsam, and
the intellectual Gustav Landauer, who took leading roles in the short-lived
Bavarian Republican government, an honor declined by Hermann Hesse,
while Ret Marut, who would become better known as the novelist B. Traven,
was also highly active in the Munich Republic. Certainly in no previous
period of German history did writers and intellectuals engage so directly
with political events and social forces and seek so actively to have a direct
influence on them as they were to do during the Weimar Republic. Nor
was this engagement confined to those on the left. Political and social
developments forced even conservative middle-class writers, who generally
had a conception of literature as high art that had no business dirtying its
hands with politics, and who would therefore have preferred to remain
above the fray, to abandon their Olympian detachment and enter the arena
to try to shape events.
As one commentator has noted, the novel was the most consistently
politically charged genre of the time.2 This volume focuses on the
response of German novelists from across the political spectrum to the
political and social events of the Weimar Republic. In doing so, it extends
in several cases to cover not just novels but also literary essays and
reportage, for several of the prominent novelists of the period, notably
Heinrich Mann, Gabriele Tergit, Jakob Wassermann, and the Austrian
novelist Joseph Roth, were prolific observers of the Republic in those
mediums. In order to set the scene, this introduction will briefly sketch the
political, social, and artistic context, which provides the necessary back-
drop for an understanding of the specific political and social engagement
of major novelists of the period.
2
KARL LEYDECKER

Political Events of the Weimar Republic

In the course of 1918, after the failure of the spring offensive on the western
front, the certainty of German military defeat became ever more obvious.
The Kaiser left Berlin on 29 October, never to return. On 9 November his
abdication was announced and the chancellorship was handed to the Social
Democratic leader, Friedrich Ebert, with Philipp Scheidemann proclaim-
ing the birth of the German Republic to cheering crowds gathered outside
the Reichstag building. The House of Hohenzollern ceased to rule Germany
and the imperial system had come to an end. Two days later the armistice
was signed.
Behind the imperial system, however, stood a powerful force, namely
the army. In August 1916 the Kaiser had appointed Field Marshal Paul von
Hindenburg Chief of the General Staff, supported by his Quartermaster-
General, Erich von Ludendorff. Since the civilian political government at
that time was virtually without power, this amounted to control of the fate
of the nation itself. In effect, the conduct of national affairs had passed
from the hands of the government and into the control of the military. The
de facto domination of the High Command remained unchecked almost to
the end of the war, and left the army with the conviction that it should
have more than a passing say in the way that Germanys future should be
shaped. But crucially the military handed over power to a civilian govern-
ment in October 1918, shortly before the final capitulation, a tactical
maneuver that would ensure that it was the civilian authorities, and not the
military, to which blame for the defeat would be attached.
For most, resignation and disillusionment were the prevailing emotions
rather than some urge for constructive political activity. The shock and
confusion felt by civilians and soldiers alike at the final military defeat was
compounded by this sudden end of monarchist government and the so-
called November revolution of 1918, which posed an armed challenge to
Eberts and the Social Democrats claim to be the rightful representatives
of the people. Few, apart from a small number of politicians and political
activists such as Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and their Spartakus-
bund (Spartacus League), had any notion of what might replace the old
imperial system. The revolution certainly left its mark in the foundation of
the German Communist Party by the Spartacists in January 1919, but at
that time it did not have the broad support that would have been required
to transform the country into a Soviet state on the Russian model. Many,
in fact, could not accept the validity of any form of government other than
the authoritarian, paternalistic, and dictatorial monarchy. To many, the
transition from loyal and obedient subject to democratic citizen was simply
inconceivable. A successful revolution would have required a determined,
far-sighted proletarian party able to seize control, dismantle the institutions
of bourgeois government, and establish its own apparatus of state control.
 INTRODUCTION
3

Such ideas were entirely alien to the mass of the populace. Despite the
agitation and bloodshed, the people as a whole were barely touched by the
revolution, and were not moved to support its aims.
Ebert was certainly not a revolutionary if he had been he would
never have been offered the chancellorship. Eberts majority socialists (the
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) and the smaller group
of independent socialists (Unabhngige Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands, or USPD, formed in 1917) could not agree on a response
to the events of November 1918. Eberts program was reformist; the Inde-
pendents, spurred on by the extreme left-wing Spartacists, had more gen-
uinely revolutionary principles. For seven weeks a coalition strove to find a
common policy, receiving its mandate directly from the Arbeiter- und Sol-
datenrte (workers and soldiers councils) that had sprung up in the major
cities throughout the country. However, the Independents withdrew their
support on 27 December, when it had become clear that their major aims
of socialization of the state, nationalization of industry, and democratiza-
tion of the army were not Eberts priorities. After the Independents left the
coalition, the Spartacists rose in armed rebellion in Berlin on 5 January
1919 and sought to take control of the state by force. When, in the face of
this, social democracy, in the person of SPD minister Gustav Noske, called
on the army (which had been at pains to keep itself intact in the midst of
these political upheavals) to put down the Spartacist rebellion, during
which Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered by a right-wing military
Freikorps unit, the realities of the situation became even plainer.
It was a situation that was to recur in Bavaria. The Independent Social-
ist leader Kurt Eisner had declared a Bavarian Republic on 8 November
1918. Although he was forced to concede defeat to right-wing parties in
elections held in January 1919, and was prepared to resign, he was mur-
dered by a nationalist student before he could do so. The reaction against
the right that this provoked led to the appointment of the SPD politician
Johannes Hoffmann as prime minister of the Bavarian Republic. As they
had in Berlin, the Independents rejected the SPDs political aims as too
moderate, and sought to seize power themselves by setting up a more radi-
cally left-wing Rterepublik (Soviet-style republic) on 7 April 1919. This
new government included such figures as the writers Gustav Landauer and
Ernst Toller, whose actions were dictated by a nave idealism and whose
lack of practical political experience became immediately obvious. The
Munich revolution was short-lived. Mirroring events in Berlin, the Social
Democrat Prime Minister Hoffmann brought in the Freikorps to stamp out
the rival government, thus provoking a civil war in which hundreds were
killed and imprisoned.
As Anton Gill has noted, even as the plans for the new democracy
were being drawn up, the forces of reaction were crystallizing.3 Loyalty to
the army as an agent of the government seemed to be unquestioned. There
4
KARL LEYDECKER

was, it is true, brief popular anti-militaristic enthusiasm in the immediate

aftermath of the war, but this had subsided by the end of 1919. The very
forces that had been so demoralized at the military defeat and collapse
quickly reasserted themselves, leaving Germany effectively under the con-
trol of the same elements that had supported and conducted the war.
Those who had resisted the war were crushed by continuing military
power exercised through the Freikorps.
The period of revolutionary activity achieved little that was positive.
All that had changed was the set of officials who exercised military and
bureaucratic control. The revival of the never-disbanded military machine
and the underlying yearning for national unity (which the war had only
served to intensify) were welded firmly together by the national reaction
to the Treaty of Versailles signed on 28 June 1919. Under the treaty,
Germany lost substantial territories in the west in the shape of Alsace-Lor-
raine, and in the east, where formerly German lands became part of
Poland, as well as all its colonies. It was compelled to disarm, and its army
was limited to no more than 100,000 men. Finally it was to pay very high
war reparations. The conviction in Germany was that the peace terms
represented a deliberate policy of humiliation and repression. The loss of
colonies and the demands by the Allies that Germany pay reparations
became symbols of Allied viciousness and duplicity. The atmosphere in
Germany became conducive to the spread of the Dolchstolegende (myth of
the stab in the back) cultivated by the commanders of the army, which now
asserted that it had never been defeated in the field but only sabotaged at
home by socialists and Jews. Adding insult to injury was the forced admis-
sion, one of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, that Germany had
been the aggressor who had caused the war and must bear the guilt for its
consequences. The result was that the German people carried into their
new republic a sense of resentment not only against France and Britain,
but also against the moderate political leaders of the Weimar Republic,
who had been forced to sign first the armistice and then the peace treaty.
This, of course, strengthened the hand of conservative groups industri-
alists, army officers, nationalists of various kinds within Germany. In this
can be seen not only one of the reasons for the failure of the republic but
also for the stultification of the political education and development of the
German people. It is generally recognized that there was a direct link
between this perceived betrayal and the turn to Hitler, some twelve years
later, as the savior of the nation. For in the minds of many, democracy was
from the first identified with humiliation and defeat, an attitude that did
little to win support for the Weimar Republic.
One of the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles was that the new
government was soon also sorely tested economically. Inflation, which had
already become an alarming factor by the end of the war, was further exacer-
bated by the cost of demobilization and reparation payments. Whereas the
 INTRODUCTION
5

exchange rate at the beginning of 1914 was 4.21 marks to the dollar, by
December 1918 the figure was 8.28. By December 1921 a dollar was worth
191 marks. By December 1922 the figure had already reached 7,589 marks,
but it was in 1923 that hyperinflation reached truly epic proportions. By
August the dollar was worth 4.6 million marks, rising to 25.2 billion by
October, and peaking at an unimaginable 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar
in December 1923. Shoppers took to the street not with wallets but with
wheelbarrows full of money, and prices rose by the minute. As well as ruin-
ing the livelihoods and wiping out the savings of many, the inflationary cri-
sis destroyed the trust and confidence of a whole generation.4
On the political front the right-wing Kapp Putsch in Berlin of March
1920 collapsed, partly from internal weakness and differences, but also,
more encouragingly for the government, because of the loyalty of public
servants and a general strike of workers in Berlin. Both seemed to indicate
some popular support for the republic. But there was little cause for opti-
mism. Any national consensus that had existed was soon eroded. In the
Reichstag elections of 6 June 1920 the government coalition parties the
SPD, the Catholic Center Party (Zentrum), and the liberal Deutsche
Demokratische Partei (DDP) lost ground to parties both to the political
left and political right of them. On the left the Communists and the Inde-
pendent Socialists (USPD) gained an increased number of seats while on
the right the DDP lost much of its support to Gustav Stresemanns monarchist
Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP), which had campaigned under the claim that
they were the only party that could resist the threat of tyranny by the left
wing. Even more indicative of the swing to right were the successes of the
nationalist Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) and the Deutsche
Volkspartei. Although they remained the largest single party in the Reichstag,
the Social Democrats temporarily withdrew from the government and
went into opposition.
The ensuing frequent changes of administration and varying fortunes
of the very high number of political parties and factions demonstrate how
little enthusiasm or loyalty these successive administrations enjoyed from
the general German public. They also showed that Germany lacked any
definable or acceptable political course. The threat of disorder and social
upheaval simply caused the middle classes to become increasingly reac-
tionary, to embrace the old authoritarian attitudes and to look to the mili-
tary as saviors of the national interest. The military in general were still
held in high regard. The officer class still commanded respect and was
regarded as socially superior, while the military values of loyalty and discip-
line were preserved by veterans organizations such as the Stahlhelm (steel
helmet), whose attraction grew for many as the internal fragmentation of
the republic continued apace.
Meanwhile, powerful industrial concerns resisted government attempts
to levy more tax from them. They argued that it was their patriotic duty to
6
KARL LEYDECKER

resist such taxation if the money raised was simply to be used to pay the
humiliating and unjust reparations. As inflation raged, these industrialists
made huge profits by selling goods abroad for hard foreign currency while
paying their workers in worthless Deutschmarks. Inflation was the greatest
destabilizing factor, undermining the whole of German society, and it was
a blow from which Weimar Germany never recovered, either politically or
socially. The middle classes had their savings wiped out and felt themselves
let down by the government as their security was shattered when social and
economic stability disappeared. This led to widespread disillusionment, not
only with the parties but with Weimar democracy as a whole.
Those that railed against the Treaty of Versailles attacked the political
representatives that had accepted it, the republican government in general,
the Allies, the Jews in fact anything and anyone that might serve as a
scapegoat and persuade people of the acceptability of an authoritarian,
nationalistic, militant alternative to further national unity and national
pride. When, in 1921, Walther Rathenau, Minister of Reconstruction,
stated that it was Germanys duty to follow the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, whatever its injustices, he was accused of betraying the national
cause and of doing so because he was a Jew. The hatred generated against
Rathenau led to his assassination on 24 June 1922 by two ex-officers from
a Freikorps brigade, who were later turned into Nazi heroes for their exem-
plary patriotism.
The assassination of Rathenau is the subject matter of Vicki Baums
novel Feme (1926), discussed by Heather Valencia in this volume, and the
lives and motives of these two young men are portrayed in the novel Die
Gechteten (The Outlaws, 1930) by Ernst von Salomon. The author was
himself implicated in Rathenaus murder and was sentenced to five years
imprisonment in 1922. After his release he became involved in anti-
republican activities among farmers in Schleswig-Holstein, activities that
are reflected in Hans Falladas novel Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben (Farmers,
Functionaries, and Fireworks, 1931), which is discussed in Jenny Williamss
chapter on Fallada in this volume. Salomon depicts events from the end
of the war until Rathenaus assassination. The novel portrays how patri-
otic and nationalistic organizations were created as a direct consequence
of the abortive revolution, and shows the extremes to which the members
of such groups were prepared to go in pursuit of their political principles.
Nor was Rathenaus assassination an isolated case. Anton Gill notes that
376 political murders were committed in Germany between 1918 and
1922.5
At the beginning of 1923 the nationalist camp won further sympathy
for their claims of persecution by the French and other allies as the French
occupied the key industrial region of the Ruhr, which they justified as a
reaction to the failure to maintain reparation payments. The German
nationalists used this to stimulate further support for their political views.
 INTRODUCTION
7

On 8 November that same year, Hitler staged his Beer-Hall Putsch, a

failed coup attempt in Munich. At his trial, together with nine accomplices
including General Ludendorff, Hitler presented himself as the defender of
national interests, appealing to all who would help to recapture a lost sense
of German unity and restore German honor.
The lenient sentences passed on those accused of this crime against the
state reflect the political attitude of those who meted out such justice.
Hitler, though an Austrian who could have been deported for his act of
treason, persuaded the court that he felt himself to be a German, and was
therefore sentenced to only five years imprisonment; he was released after
only thirteen months. It was obvious that in the civil service and in the
judiciary attitudes prevailed that were not those of the Weimar Republic
but of Wilhelmine Germany. The political power wielded by the courts in
their interpretation of the law might be said to have equaled that of the
Reichstag itself. Thus, while left-wing agitators were harshly punished for
their activities, peaceful or violent, those responsible for such right-wing
acts as the Kapp Putsch or Hitlers Munich Putsch were treated far more
leniently, and sometimes even acquitted.6
The general state of disillusionment with politics which resulted from
defeat and the ensuing chaos led to the questioning of moral values. There
was the widespread view that western culture was in terminal decline, and
was moving towards totalitarianism and technological control, a view that
found its echo in the ever-growing popularity of Oswald Spenglers Der
Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West, 2 vols., 191822)
during the Weimar Republic. Spengler dismissed the attachment to liberal
idealism as futile in a world destined to decline, and argued it was useless to
attempt to resist inexorable historical change.
At the end of 1923 the Dawes Plan was introduced by the United
States, which rescheduled reparation payments and so made them more
manageable, and inflation was curbed through the introduction of a new
temporary unit of currency, the Rentenmark. It is a matter of some irony
that when Germany emerged from its bout of hyperinflation it found itself
in a healthier economic situation than before, having cleared its debts. The
post-inflation period of relative economic stability and growing prosperity
from 1924 to 1929 saw rapid industrial growth, not least because of for-
eign investment, with the emergence of a number of massive industrial
concerns that dominated the countrys economy: the chemical company
I. G. Farben (founded 1925), Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works,
founded 1926 from Stinnes, Thyssen, Otto Wolff and Phoenix A.G.),
Siemens in the electrical industry, Hapag and Norddeutsche Lloyd in ship-
ping, and Hugenberg, Mosse, and Ullstein in publishing. The result was
that by 1929 Germany had regained its position as the worlds second
leading industrial nation, after the United States, a position it had first
achieved just prior to the start of the war.
8
KARL LEYDECKER

As national prosperity grew, there was the prospect of stability. Under

the able stewardship of Gustav Stresemann, who was foreign minister from
1923 until his death in 1929, Germany was admitted to the League of
Nations (1926), the French evacuation of the Ruhr was agreed upon (it
was completed in 1930), and the Kellogg-Briand declaration of 1928 con-
demning war generated an air of optimism and belief in a stable future. But
this was to be short lived, and was brought to an end not least by the very
cause of its success, namely dependence on foreign, principally American,
short-term loans. As politicians recognized, if there were to be a crisis
resulting in America requiring the return of its short-term credits, Germany
would in effect be bankrupt.
Their worst fears were soon to be realized. The Wall Street collapse of
October 1929 led soon to the Great Depression that spread throughout
Europe, particularly England and Germany. Though this was a worldwide
economic phenomenon, it had the most devastating effect on countries
that relied heavily on investment from abroad. The more prosperous coun-
tries defended their own interests by withdrawing foreign investment and
reducing their imports. As a result, Germany was deprived of investment
capital and also lost its export markets. Unemployment rose from just over
one million in 1929 to over six million by 1932.7
Against this backdrop of economic crisis, anti-democratic sentiments,
whether propagated by the left or the right, flourished. In the elections of
14 September 1930 the Communists increased their share of the vote by
fifty percent. On the right, Hitlers Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeit-
erpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers Party) increased
its number of seats in the Reichstag from 12 to 107. The NSDAPs new
brand of nationalism appeared to offer a sense of direction to a younger
generation who felt that they had gained nothing from the experiment in
democracy. It also appealed to the disillusioned older generation and the
militaristic elements in Germany, stressing the Prussian virtues of national
loyalty, discipline, and subordination of the self to the common good. The
rising nationalism also fostered a mood of anti-Semitism that had never
been far below the surface of the Weimar Republic. The nationalists had
stigmatized the Jews as representing an alien and un-German liberal-
democratic spirit upon which the disastrous republic had been founded.
Now they sought scapegoats for the economic misery that the country was
suffering.
Political extremists of either color were vying for domination of
contemporary youth who, with no political experience and no evidence
that the Weimar Republic had any sound future, had little idea to whom
to offer their allegiance. Whoever could harness its support would win
the day politically. In its 1932 issues, Die neue Rundschau, the liberal
democratic journal published by the S. Fischer Verlag, concentrated on
the difficulties facing the younger generation. Contributors such as Jakob
 INTRODUCTION
9

Wassermann, Ernst Robert Curtius, and Peter Suhrkamp were at pains to

guide the younger student generation towards the principles of humanism
and liberalism, and generate within them a historical awareness that might
counteract the irrationalism and emotionalism that would inevitably
become self-destructive.
However, by this time democracy had already been fatally under-
mined. In his classic study of the Weimar Republic, the historian Detlev
Peukert identified four separate processes that destroyed the Weimar
Republic: chronic economic and social crisis; the decline of the popular
legitimacy of the Republic; the avowed determination of the old anti-
republican lites to destroy Weimars already battered parliamentary and
democratic institutions; and finally Hitlers broad-based totalitarian
movement.8 Between 1930 and 1932 the then Chancellor, Brning,
attempted to steer Germany through the deepening economic crisis with-
out a majority in parliament, repeatedly making use of emergency execu-
tive powers. The attempts to deal with the economic crisis by cutting state
expenditure alienated the mass of the people even more. Brning was
forced to resign, and there followed a sequence of elections that produced
no majority for any one political party or coalition of parties. Germany was
effectively governed by ministerial decree even before Hitler came to
power. Indeed, parliament was deliberately sidelined so that presidential
rule could be imposed.9 President Hindenburg initially resisted Hitlers
demand that he be appointed chancellor after the elections of 31 July 1932
in which the NSDAP emerged as the largest party in parliament, though
without an overall majority. After subsequent elections on 6 November
1932, Hindenburg was persuaded that Hitlers support was on the wane,
and reluctantly agreed to the suggestion that Hitler could be kept in check
as chancellor, a disastrous miscalculation on the part of the old lites, who
backed Hitler for tactical reasons. Hitler was duly appointed chancellor on
30 January 1933. Only fourteen years after it started, the Weimar Repub-
lic was over, as Hitler immediately set about sidelining the old lites and
turning Germany into a totalitarian dictatorship.

Weimar Culture
As Anton Gill noted in his lively account of Berlin between the wars, cul-
tural life flourished in Berlin even at the height of the revolutionary
upheavals in 1918/19,10 and if the Weimar Republic was characterized by
political instability, this went hand in hand with a vibrant cultural life that
quickly became the stuff of legend.11 Film, theater, cabaret, dance, art,
architecture and design, as well as novel writing, all experienced a creative
flowering during the period. Moreover, during the course of the 1920s
German culture became more open to influences from other cultures,
10
KARL LEYDECKER

most notably the United States, as financial credits went together with
cultural influence, and at the same time German culture was itself well-
received in the English-speaking world. To take one example, American
jazz became hugely popular in Germany, while in the other direction,
German Expressionist films were internationally acclaimed and distributed.
Novelists who rose to prominence in Germany were also often quickly
translated into English and enjoyed a wide readership and considerable
prestige in the United States as well as in their own country, notable exam-
ples being Thomas Mann, Jakob Wassermann, and Hermann Hesse, though
it is true to some extent of nearly all the novelists featured in this volume.12
Expressionism, initially associated primarily with the visual arts and
poetry, crystallized as a movement around 1910 and experienced its high
point during and in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.13 It
was therefore, along with its close companion Dada, which was particularly
in vogue in Berlin, still the dominant artistic mode in the early years of the
Weimar Republic. Characteristic of Expressionism is an oscillation between
messianic optimism and apocalyptic despair, which was perfectly in tune
with the times during the chaotic period of military defeat and the
revolutionary events of 191819. The greatest Expressionist poetry was
written on the eve and in the early years of the war. By the time Kurt
Pinthus published his seminal collection of Expressionist poems, which he
ambivalently called Menschheitsdmmerung (The Dawn [or Twilight] of
Mankind, 1918), many of the greatest poets, amongst them Ernst Stadler,
August Stramm, and Georg Trakl, were dead. Expressionist plays did begin
to appear on the eve of the war, notable examples being Reinhard Sorges
Der Bettler (The Beggar, 1912) and Walter Hasenclevers Der Sohn (The
Son, 1914), which as the name implies focuses on the conflict between the
generations in a manner that would become typical of Expressionism. But
it was during the early years of the Weimar Republic that Expressionism
reached its high point in the theater, with the appearance of now-classic
Expressionist plays such as Ernst Tollers Die Wandlung (The Transform-
ation, 1919) and Masse Mensch (Masses and Man, 1921), and Georg
Kaisers so-called Gas-Trilogie (comprising Die Koralle [The Coral, 1917]
and Gas I and Gas II [1918 and 1920]). With the first performance of
Bertolt Brechts early play Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night,
first performed in 1922 and published the following year) Expressionism
in the theater at least was a movement already in decline, Brechts play
marking a deliberate challenge to the excessive emotionalism of Expres-
sionism.14 Filmmakers meanwhile adopted the Expressionist style a little
later than the other arts. Robert Wienes Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
(1919) is regarded as the first Expressionism film, and in film the style
remained in vogue well into the 1920s, with F. W. Murnaus Nosferatu
(1922) and Fritz Langs Metropolis (1927) among the masterpieces of
German Expressionist film.15
 INTRODUCTION
11

The growth of the metropolis, the experience of urban life, was a

central aspect of Weimar culture. Urbanization had proceeded rapidly in
Germany during the industrial revolution that followed German unifica-
tion in 1871. To take the example of the capital, Berlin: in 1871 its popu-
lation was 800,000, whereas by 1925, the total population of Greater
Berlin had reached four million, making it the second largest city in
Europe after London.16 Berlin was also arguably the cultural capital of
Europe in the 1920s, and as John Willett has argued, Weimar culture was
a culture of city-dwellers, so that during the 1920s the concepts of the
Big City, Asphalt Literature and so forth dominated all the arts.17 So
pervasive has the image of Berlin in the 1920s become that the Weimar
Republic is associated in many minds above all with 1920s Berlin.18
Both film, through for example Walther Ruttmanns Berlin: Die Sinfonie
der Grostadt (Berlin, the Symphony of a Big City, 1927), and literature,
most famously in the shape of Alfred Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatz
(1929), but also notably in the work of Gabriele Tergit and Vicki Baum
discussed later in this volume, helped to locate Berlin as the apparent epi-
center of Weimar culture, though as one scholar has recently argued, the
dominance of Berlin should not be overstated, since the myth of Berlin in
the 1920s that lives on so powerfully to this day was largely a creation of
the Weimar literary feuilleton.19 Also part of the myth is the legendary
cabaret scene in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.20
Industrialization and urbanization were accompanied by rapid techno-
logical advances, including new and rapid modes of transport and commu-
nication, such as the motor car, the airplane, the expansion of rail
networks, and the telephone. This brought with it a sense of the accelera-
tion of modern life, a feeling that reached its peak during the middle years
of the Weimar Republic, as economic growth picked up and the influence
of the USA, perceived as the most modern country in the world, reached
its peak. Technological advances also had a direct influence on the arts.
Alongside film, other media rose to prominence during the period on the
back of advances in technology, contributing to a sense of modernity and
change. Such new media included radio, which began broadcasting in
1923, and photography, which acquired a new status as an art form.21 Its
greatest exponent was John Heartfield (18911968), who perfected the
technique of photomontage as a means of capturing the vibrancy and com-
plexity of modern life. These developments were part of a growing vogue
for documentary approaches throughout the arts, coupled with a notice-
able shift towards visual culture during the period. Also important in this
regard was the growth in scope and sophistication of the advertising indus-
try, which was transformed by developments in printing and attracted lead-
ing artists to the medium.22 In the theater too, new visual techniques and
the adoption of montage became central to avant-garde developments in
the second half of the 1920s, as films and images projected on stage
12
KARL LEYDECKER

became key components of the new style of epic theater developed

by Brecht and Erwin Piscator (18831966). This is best exemplified in
Piscators famous production of Ernst Tollers Hoppla, wir leben! (Hoppla,
Were Living, 1927) at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin, which
has as its subject changes in Weimar politics, society, culture and even tech-
nology from 1919 to 1927.23
These developments in theatrical style were part of a larger shift that
occurred around the mid-1920s. By 192425, as relative political and eco-
nomic stability returned, the talk was of a new artistic style that set its face
against the excesses of Expressionism. This new style became known as
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Sobriety or New Objectivity). A notoriously diffi-
cult term to define, the eminent cultural historian Jost Hermand sees it less
as an artistic style than as a mode of thinking: Neue Sachlichkeit is primar-
ily not so much an artistic as an ideological standpoint that seems to reject
everything idealistic, noble, and grandiose, including even bourgeois artis-
tic isms themselves, and that, as a world-view, responds specifically to the
political, social and economic reality of the newly created Weimar Repub-
lic.24 In architecture and design this new movement saw the elimination
of ornamentation and a turn towards self-consciously modern design.
Instrumental in this shift was the Bauhaus school of art and design. It was
founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, and developed its distinc-
tive new style seeking to unite art and technology as early as 1922. In
1925, due to political pressure following a change in the regional govern-
ment, it moved to a new specially designed home in Dessau. With its stress
on functionality, simplicity, and clarity, the Bauhaus style was perfectly in
tune with the movement of New Sobriety. In painting too, Expressionism
gave way to the more sober, to some eyes cynical, art of Otto Dix
(18911969) and Georg Grosz (18931959), whose most typical work
includes satirical and often grotesque portraits of everyday characters.

Weimar Novelists
The Weimar Republic was a propitious time for novelists.25 Not only is the
novel a form that lends itself well to the exploration of the turbulent polit-
ical circumstances and rapid social change which characterized the Weimar
Republic, but there was a rapidly expanding readership, as literacy
improved, leisure time increased, and bookclubs proliferated.26 The result
was a large market for both high-brow and more popular novels during the
period. New genres became popular, such as the detective story and the
Zeitroman (novel of the times), while older genres such as the historical
novel were revived and given a new relevance for the times, notably by
Lion Feuchtwanger, discussed in Rolland Dollingers chapter in this vol-
ume.27 Also popular were novels set in exotic locations, none more so than
 INTRODUCTION
13

the works of the enigmatic B. Traven, whose distinctive contribution to

the Weimar literary scene is explored in these pages by Karl S. Guthke.
While some older writers, such as Hermann Sudermann (18571928)
and Jakob Wassermann (the latter the subject of a chapter by Leydecker in
this volume), who were already popular long before the war, generally
stuck to relatively traditional narrative forms, new forms and narrative
styles developed. The Expressionist style is perhaps best embodied in the
early postwar novels of Hermann Hesse, especially Demian (1919), which,
as Paul Bishop shows, was heavily influenced by psychoanalytical theories,
while the new technique of montage, which was such a feature of all the
arts in the latter years of the Republic, is nowhere better exemplified in
novel writing than in Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatz, discussed here by
David Midgley.
Novelists of the Weimar Republic also had a new subject matter,
namely modern warfare, characterized by previously unknown levels of
mass slaughter, mechanization, and brutality. Along with painting,28 the
novel was the cultural space in which often diametrically opposed views
about the nature and meaning of modern warfare in general, and the First
World War in particular, clashed. In the present volume Brian Murdoch
examines the work of Erich Maria Remarque in the context of the anti-war
novels of the political Left, while Roger Woods looks at the war novels of
Ernst Jnger and other novelists of the Conservative Revolution.
Although the powerful feminist movements that had developed in
Germany around 1900 lost some of their momentum during the war and
in the 1920s, the Weimar constitution did grant women the right to
vote.29 Moreover, women entered the workforce in ever greater numbers
during the Weimar Republic, in both the manufacturing and the growing
service sector, which no doubt contributed to the perception amongst
contemporaries that womens emancipation if anything was accelerating
during the period. Womens access to education, including higher educa-
tion, also steadily improved. This was the age of the New Woman, with the
new hairstyle of the Bubikopf (bobbed haircut) coming to be synony-
mous with burgeoning female emancipation, including sexual emancipa-
tion. Of all the novelists of the Weimar Republic, it was Vicki Baum who
best captured this new spirit of possibility for women in a series of popular
novels which are explored in this volume by Heather Valencia. In his chap-
ter on Wassermann, Leydecker demonstrates the continuing importance of
the theme of marriage and relations between the sexes during the Weimar
Republic.30
Each of the chapters discusses a novelist of the Weimar Republic who
published at least one work during the period that was not only popular at
the time but has also stood the test of time, being read and studied by later
generations of readers and critics. Nearly all of these novelists have had
their novels frequently reprinted and translated into English and widely
14
KARL LEYDECKER

read on both sides of the Atlantic. Each chapter contains a brief account of
the life of the novelist, his or her significant achievements before and after
the Weimar Republic where relevant, and the history of their reception,
but the principal focus is on the engagement of the novelists with Weimar
politics and society, be it in their novels or in essays or other non-fiction
such as the feuilleton, a series of subjective impressions that appeared in
the section of German newspapers with the same name. In the case of non-
fiction, particular attention is paid to this dimension of the Weimar writ-
ings of Heinrich Mann, Gabriele Tergit, and Jakob Wassermann, while
Joseph Roths Weimar journalism, a substantial sample of which has
recently become available to an English-reading public for the first time, is
given special attention in Helen Chamberss chapter on the novelist.31
At its beginnings the Weimar Republic seemed to hold out the
promise that writers could have a direct influence on political and social
life. The fact that the National Socialists organized public book burnings
on 10 May 1933 in which works by many of the novelists featured in this
volume, including Baum, Feuchtwanger, Mann, Remarque, Roth, Traven,
and Wassermann, were destroyed, paradoxically illustrates the perceived
political and social power of novelists during the period, which the
National Socialists moved rapidly to curtail.32 At the same time, the book
burnings marked the end of all freedom of expression in Germany and the
abrupt termination of one of the most innovative and creative periods of
novel writing in the German language.

Notes
1
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (London: Penguin, 1988), 73.
2
Alfred D. White, Weimar Republic, in Encyclopedia of German Literature, ed.
Matthias Konzett (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 2:98993;
here, 991.
3
Anton Gill, A Dance between Flames: Berlin between the Wars (London: John
Murray, 1993), 24.
4
Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Berkeley, Los
Angeles, and London: U of California P, 2001), 3. Widdigs excellent book not
only contains a lively account of the experience of hyperinflation, but also a wide-
ranging investigation of the effects of that inflation on the culture of the Weimar
Republic.
5
Gill, A Dance between Flames, 72.
6
For an account of literary representations of the legal system in the Weimar
Republic, see Klaus Petersen, Literatur und Justiz in der Weimarer Republik
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988), and Jrg Hammerschmidt, Literarische Justizkritik in
der Weimarer Republik: Der Beitrag der Schriftsteller in der Auseinandersetzung mit
 INTRODUCTION
15

der Justizwirklichkeit unter besonderer Bercksichtigung des Werkes von Kurt Tuchol-
sky (Gttingen: Cuvillier, 2002).
7
On unemployment in the literature of the Weimar Republic, see Thorsten Unger,
Diskontinuitten im Erwerbsleben: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu Arbeit und
Erwerbslosigkeit in der Literatur der Weimarer Republik (Tbingen: Niemeyer,
2004).
8
Detlev J. Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans.
Richard Deveson (London: Penguin, 1991), 26667.
9
Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 259.
10
Gill, A Dance between Flames, chap. 2, 2139.
11
Only a brief outline of the richness of Weimar culture can be given here. Useful
further reading on Weimar culture generally includes: Walter Laqueur, Weimar: A
Cultural History, 19181933 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974); John
Willett, The New Sobriety, 19171933: Art and Politics in the Weimar Period
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1978); Willett, The Weimar Years: A Culture Cut
Short (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984); Jost Hermand and Frank Trommler,
Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung,
1978); and Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley and London: U of California P, 1994). On Weimar
literature more specifically, see Anthony Grenville, Cockpit of Ideologies: The Litera-
ture and Political History of the Weimar Republic (Bern, Berlin, New York: Peter
Lang, 1995); Keith Bullivant, ed., Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic
(Manchester: MUP, 1977); A. F. Bance, ed., Weimar Germany: Writers and Politics
(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982); and Richard Dove and Stephen
Lamb, eds., German Writers and Politics, 19181939 (Basingstoke and London:
Macmillan, 1992). On Weimar art, see Brbel Schrader and Jrgen Scherera, The
Golden Twenties: Art and Literature in the Weimar Republic (New Haven and
London, Yale UP, 1990).
12
On American influences in Weimar, see Thomas W. Kniesche and Stephen
Brockmann, eds., Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar
Republic (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994), part 2, 69116.
13
On Expressionism, see A Companion to the Literature of German Expressionism,
ed. Neil H. Donahue (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005).
14
On Weimar theater, see John Willetts definitive study, The Theater of the Weimar
Republic (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1988).
15
On Weimar film, see Dietrich Scheunemann, ed., Expressionist Film: New Per-
spectives (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003) and Fritz Langs Metropolis: Cin-
ematic Visions of Technology and Fear, ed. Michael Minden and Holger Bachmann
(Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000).
16
Gill, A Dance between Flames, 34.
17
Willett, The Weimar Years, 111.
18
Ibid., 7.
19
Erhard Schtz, Beyond Glittering Reflections of Asphalt: Changing Images of
Berlin in Weimar Literary Journalism, in Kniesche and Brockmann, Dancing on
16
KARL LEYDECKER

the Volcano, 11926. Two further chapters of part 3 of that collection of essays
focus on Berlin as a case study in Weimar culture; see 12763. The photojournalis-
tic representation of the Weimar Republic, with a particular focus on Berlin, is the
subject of the superbly illustrated The Weimar Republic through the Lens of the Press
by Torsten Palmr and Hendrik Neubauer (Cologne: Knemann, 2000).
20
On cabaret, see Alan Lareau, The Wild Stage: Literary Cabarets of the Weimar
Republic (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995).
21
On Weimar photography, see Diethart Kerbs and Walter Uka, eds., Fotografie
und Bildpublizistik in der Weimarer Republik (Bnen: Kettler, 2004).
22
Erich Kstners novel Fabian (1931), in which the eponymous hero is employed
as a copywriter in the advertising industry, is a satirical literary reflection on the
advertising industry towards the end of the Weimar Republic.
23
For Piscators own account of the production of Hoppla, wir leben! see Erwin
Piscator, Das politische Theater (Berlin: A. Schultz, 1929, repr. Reinbek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), translated as The Political Theatre by Hugh Rorrison
(London: Eyre Methuen, 1980).
24
Jost Hermand, Neue Sachlichkeit: Ideology, Lifestyle, or Artistic Movement?
in Kniesche and Brockmann, Dancing on the Volcano, 5768; here, 58.
25
The best recent study of the Weimar novel in English is David Midgley, Writing
Weimar: Critical Realism in German Literature, 19181933 (Oxford: Oxford UP,
2000). In English, see also Elke Matijevich, The Zeitroman of the Late Weimar
Republic (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). There has been considerable critical inter-
est in the Weimar novel by German critics in recent years, with important studies
including Erhard Schtz, Romane der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Fink, 1986);
Martin Lindner, Leben in der Krise: Zeitromane der Neuen Sachlichkeit und die
intellektuelle Mentalitt der klassischen Moderne (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994); Sabina
Becker and Christoph Wei, eds., Neue Sachlichkeit im Roman: Neue Interpretatio-
nen zum Roman der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1995);
Michael Hahn, Scheinblte, Krisenzeit, Nationalsozialismus: Die Weimarer Repub-
lik im Spiegel spter Zeitromane (192832/33) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995); and
Walter Delabar, Was tun?: Romane am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Opladen/
Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999).
26
On bookclubs, see Urban van Melis, Die Buchgemeinschaften in der Weimarer
Republik: Mit einer Fallstudie ber die sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbuchgemein-
schaft Der Bcherkreis (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2002).
27
On the historical novel during the Weimar Republic, see also Bettina Heyl,
Geschichtsdenken und literarische Moderne: Zum historischen Roman in der Zeit der
Weimarer Republik (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1994).
28
See Matthias Eberle, World War I and the Weimar Artists: Dix, Grosz, Beckmann,
Schlemmer (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1985).
29
On the feminist movements of the period, see Richard J. Evans, The Feminist
Movement in Germany, 18941933 (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976).
30
On gender relations in the Weimar novel, see also Hartmut Vollmer, Liebes(ver)lust:
Existenzsuche und Beziehungen von Mnnern und Frauen in deutschsprachigen
Romanen der zwanziger Jahre: Erzhlte Krisen Krisen des Erzhlens (Oldenburg:
 INTRODUCTION
17

Igel Verlag, 1998). On female creativity in the Weimar Republic, see Practicing
Modernity: Female Creativity in the Weimar Republic, ed. Christiane Schnfeld
with Carmel Finnan (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2006). On women
writers of the Weimar Republic, see Walter Fhnders and Helga Karrenbrock, eds.,
Autorinnen der Weimarer Republik (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2003); specifically on the
novel, see Kerstin Barndt, Sentiment und Sachlichkeit: Der Roman der Neuen Frau
in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Bhlau, 2003).
31
Austrian novelists have not been included in the volume, with two exceptions:
Roths journalism and the works of Vicki Baum, who although Austrian by birth,
like Roth lived in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Nor are there chapters on the
two giants of German novel writing in the first half of the twentieth century, Franz
Kafka (18831924) and Thomas Mann (18751955), on both of whom there is a
mass of critical literature readily available in English as well as German. Moreover,
Kafka was in any case a marginal figure during the Weimar Republic and was not
widely read until after the Second World War, while Thomas Manns major full-
length novel of the Weimar Republic, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain,
1924) is set before the First World War and is more a diagnosis of the collapse of
the old prewar order than a direct engagement with the Weimar Republic. On
Manns politics during the Weimar Republic, see the opposing views of Keith Bul-
livant, Thomas Mann and Politics in the Weimar Republic, in Bullivant, Culture
and Society in the Weimar Republic, 2438, and Martin Swales, In Defence of
Weimar: Thomas Mann and the Politics of Republicanism, in Bance, Weimar Ger-
many: Writers and Politics, 113. Limitations of space precluded the inclusion of
other writers for whom a case could be made, notably Werner Bergengruen, Willi
Bredel, Kasimir Edschmid, Marieluise Fleier, Erich Kstner, Irmgard Keun, Hans
Henny Jahnn, and Anna Seghers.
32
On the book burning, see Ulrich Walberer, ed., 10. Mai 1933: Bcherverbrennung
in Deutschland und die Folgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1983). A selected list of
banned authors during the period from 193345 is given on p. 303.
1: Heinrich Mann and the Struggle
for Democracy

Karin V. Gunnemann

H EINRICH MANN WAS ONE OF THE most outspoken and visible literary
figures during the Weimar Republic. Other novelists were more popu-
lar in the twenties and early thirties, but none of them dealt with the polit-
ical, social, and cultural upheavals of the new republic with more energy
and courageous vision than he. Well before the First World War Mann had
criticized the repressive life under Wilhelm II in both essays and fiction.
His work had provoked the authorities to the point where his ninth novel,
Die kleine Stadt (The Little Town), was at first denied publication in 1909.
Mann had introduced the work as the song of songs of democracy, and it
was feared that it might contaminate the publics faith in the authoritarian
national state.1
Manns political criticism comes as a surprise if one looks at his back-
ground. Born in 1871 into the world of a well-established bourgeois family
of merchants and civil servants, his literary beginnings were situated firmly
in the fin-de-sicle aestheticism and political conservatism prevalent at that
time. But even as a young man he began to develop a keen interest in the
intellectual and artistic history of France. He studied the French philoso-
phers of the Enlightenment, and he observed how a novelist like Honor de
Balzac (17991850) stressed the importance of the writer as an anatomist
and legislator of his time and nation. As early as 1904 Mann defined his role
and that of all serious writers as moral and political educators of the people
and saw himself specifically as a teacher of democracy for Germany. From
then on, the French Revolution (naively stripped of its contradiction
between freedom and violence) became for Mann the pivotal event in
human history. The supreme task of a German artist-intellectual, a person
of Geist (intellect), he argued, was to educate his nation to follow the
demands of critical reason for truth and justice, just as the French people
had done in the Revolution of 1789. Along with other important writers of
the time such as Alfred Dblin and Georg Kaiser, Mann came to under-
stand intellect as irrevocably tied to action, a dissecting and equalizing force
working on society whenever power obscured social and political truth, and
threatened human justice and freedom.2 Intellect became for Mann the
spearhead in Germanys attempt to establish a democratic government.
20
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

Mann considered Germanys lack of democratic institutions outra-

geous in light of the historical development of the previous hundred years.
If politicians were unwilling to bring about change, social action had to
come from artists like him. Throughout his long life (he died in 1950), this
mission gave strong urgency of purpose to Manns writings, and it created
in him a unique willingness for artistic experimentation and compromise.
If the primary function of art was the political and social education of the
consumer of art, then writing novels using popular slang and cinematic
techniques, or writing words for musicals, might be the most effective
means for the serious artist, since the younger generation most closely
identified with them.
Heinrich Manns literary output was prodigious: eighteen novels, nine
published plays, eleven volumes of short stories, and, most important, over
one thousand essays, speeches, and articles. The history of German litera-
ture is poor in good essayists, but Heinrich Mann deserves to be remem-
bered as one of them. The essay was the art form best suited to his critical
mind and to his sense of mission to provoke change. While only a few of
Manns novels can be considered literary masterpieces, a number of his
skillfully written essays are invaluable contributions to German intellectual
and political history. Despite their historical and intrinsic significance, only
a few of Manns essays have been translated into English. Two of his early
important works are Geist und Tat (Intellect and Action) and Voltaire-
Goethe, written in 1910. They were published in major Socialist journals
and had a significant influence on the expressionists, especially those who
called themselves activists. The extensive essay Zola, written in 1915 in
response to his brother Thomass patriotic welcome of the outbreak of the
First World War, helped intensify an ongoing nation-wide debate over the
difference between German culture and Western civilization. In his essays
and speeches from the twenties and thirties Heinrich took a courageous
stand against the political power of big business. He fought for a better
understanding with France and for the idea of a unified Europe. Most
striking and audacious are the pieces in which he attacked the curtailment
of civil liberties during the Weimar Republic and the urgent warnings
against the rise of National Socialism and its consequences.
Heinrich Mann has always stood in the shadow of his more famous
brother Thomas, considered by many as the greatest storyteller in German
literature.3 Only one of Heinrichs novels, Der Untertan (1918, The Sub-
ject; translated as The Patrioteer, retranslated as The Loyal Subject) came
close to the success of his brothers books. Since the novel was completed
in 1914, its conception lies before the time that concerns us here. How-
ever, the topic of the book, and the history around its publication, are
directly relevant to the problems faced by Germany in the twenties and
early thirties. German historians studying what is sometimes called the
authoritarian personality4 see the Untertan as a prototype for persons
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
21

with fascist tendencies. Historians are also interested in how the novel por-
trays the political role of the middle class with its antidemocratic national-
ism before and after the First World War.5
By close observation of German society under Wilhelm II and acute
premonition of its direction, Mann anticipated in this novel several of the
basic obstacles Germany faced in its attempt to become a viable democracy
during the years of the Weimar Republic. In Der Untertan he dramatized
a political system in which indecisive liberal parties helplessly watched the
coalition between an aggressive nationalism and monopoly capitalism.
Social Democrats had less interest in social reforms than in securing their
position in government, and the proletariat was unorganized and open
to coercion and corruption. Most important, Mann exposed what he
understood to be a uniquely German characteristic, the Untertanengeist
(spirit of an underling). The underling was the loyal subject who ironically
combined a masochistic subservience with a will to wield power over those
beneath him. In his late autobiographical memoir, Mann declared power as
his most fruitful theme, the topic around which he composed most of his
works.6 Through Der Untertan he wanted to warn his readers of the dev-
astating effect of the Untertanengeist on the political, social, and cul-
tural life of a nation. Together with the short story Kobes, from 1923,
this novel is the strongest example of Manns belief in the educational role
of fiction for public life.
Some historians would argue that the mentality of the German
Untertan survived the First World War and the German Revolution of
1918/19, and was in part the social-psychological basis for Hitlers rise to
power in 1933. The protagonist of the novel, Diederich Heling, the
underling, clearly prefigures fascist practices. Mann himself called Der
Untertan a Kampfbuch (polemical treatise) against Wilhelmine politics.7
As such it provides a thematic, critical background for Manns literary
engagement in the politics of the Weimar Republic.
Mann recognized that the attempt by Wilhelm II to combine a boom-
ing, modern, imperialist economy with a backward, restrictive, and authori-
tarian political system was a ludicrous anachronism. In order to subdue the
increasing opposition and socially integrate his subjects, the emperor had
built his personality into mythical heroic proportions. He presented this
invented self to the public with great histrionics. His dazzling words about
Germanys unique grandeur and expansion through colonies, his boastings
about the might with which he was smashing the socialist onslaught, and
the hollow threats to his foreign enemies all served to intoxicate his sub-
jects with awe and fantasies of unrealistic goals. The emperors grand
behavior provoked in his people a desire for imitation.
The development of Diederich Helings character is a reversal of the
unfolding of an individual described in the German Bildungsroman. In
this literary genre the protagonist goes through a slow process of inner
22
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

growth. Shaped by various educational factors, he matures into a person

whose worth is measured by the degree to which he becomes a useful
member of society. In contrast, Heling starts out in his youth knowing
very well that he was destined to work and to lead a practical existence, but
through various forces of an authoritarian society acting on him, his iden-
tity is first lost and then perversely reshaped. Through his obsession with
power, and his identification with the Emperor Wilhelm II, he first
becomes a human nothing, ending up as a power-wielding devil.
Diederich Helings education into a perfect subject starts at home
when he is frightened by threatening fairytales and a terrifying father. In
school he faces the imperial authoritarian system for the first time. He
starts to understand that the reward for his subjection to the will of the
more powerful, in this case his teacher, is the license to exploit those who
are weaker than he is. Proud to be beaten by the teacher, he brutally sub-
jects the weakest member of his class, the only Jew, to kneel before a cross
he has erected on the desk. The next steps in his education are a dueling
student society at Berlin University and his military service. Hessling is
delighted that in both institutions jh und unabnderlich sank man zur
Laus herab, zum Bestandteil, zum Rohstoff, an dem ein unermelicher
Wille knetete (precipitously and inevitably one degenerated to the status
of an insect, of a part in the machine, of so much raw material to be
molded by an omnipotent will).8 After this experience he is ready to meet
the highest personification of power, the magnificent emperor himself,
who by his sheer appearance in uniform and on horseback subdues a work-
ers uprising. Intoxicated, Hessling observes:
Auf dem Pferd dort, unter dem Tor der siegreichen Einmrsche und mit
Zgen, steinern und blitzend, ritt die Macht! Die Macht, die ber uns
hingeht und deren Hufe wir kssen! Die ber Hunger, Trotz und Hohn
hingeht! Gegen die wir nichts knnen, weil wir alle sie lieben! Die wir im
Blut haben, weil wir die Unterwerfung darin haben! (64)

[There on horseback rode Power, through the gateway of triumphal

entries, with features stony and piercing! The power that transcends us
and whose hooves we kiss, the power that is beyond the reach of hunger,
spite and mockery! Against which we are impotent, for we all love it!
Which we have in our blood, for in our blood is submission!]

Heling, the monarchist and loyal subject, finds here the reason for his
existence. After the personal encounter with the Emperor, he feels ready to
imitate the monarch and become a pioneer of the spirit of the times in his
native town of Netzig.
Mann has Heling imitate the Emperor in looks as well as in exact
speech. By taking the Emperors words out of context, he hopes to
heighten the readers understanding of their preposterous meaning. In
order to provide a critique of domestic and foreign policy in prewar
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
23

Germany, Mann portrays Helings goal to become the most powerful

person in his hometown as a purpose parallel to the politics of the emperor.
Both are establishing their power by combating the interior enemy: Social
Democrats and Jews. While the Emperor is desperately trying to acquire
colonies, Helings imperialism consists of absorbing all competition into
his own factory. As town politician Hessling confronts his liberal citizens
with the necessity for more funds for patriotic causes, while the Emperor
persuades the nation of a military buildup so that the German navy would
equal that of Great Britain. With high emotion inappropriate to the occa-
sion, Heling addresses the workers in his factory in the exact words from
a speech the Emperor had given at a political rally in 1892: Mein Kurs ist
der richtige, ich fhre euch herrlichen Tagen entgegen. Diejenigen, welche
mir dabei behilflich sein wollen, sind mir von Herzen willkommen; diejeni-
gen jedoch, welche sich mir bei dieser Arbeit entgegenstellen, zer-
schmettere ich (106; My course is right, and I am guiding you to glorious
times. Those who wish to help me are heartily welcome, but whoever
opposes me in this work I will smash). Zerschmettern (to smash) was
one of the emperors favorite terms for threatening Social Democrats and
any foreign nation that stood in Germanys way as it fought for its Platz
an der Sonne (107; place in the sun). Clearly, Mann could hope that con-
temporary readers who discovered these familiar terms in the text would
newly contemplate their irrationality and sinister showmanship.
Later in the novel Mann exposes the corrupt judicial system of the
Empire as a theatrical farce. The law courts are exposed as an instrument of
arbitrary power. Hessling provokes a Jewish industrialist to commit lse-
majest in order to prove to the town audience during the trial that Bis-
marcks ideas were still valid: Blut und Eisen bleibt die wirksamste Kur!
Macht geht vor Recht! (319; Blood and iron are still the most effective
remedies! Might makes right!). In spite of the lack of evidence, the out-
come of the trial is a victory for Heling. The Jew is convicted because
establishing guilt is declared unimportant when weighed against the polit-
ical sympathies of the listeners.
Heling and his nationalist followers are successful in subduing all
opposition in the town. The liberals have sold out over the integrating pol-
icy of a strong fleet against Great Britain, the Social Democrats are not
interested in social reforms, and the workers are unorganized and equally
corrupted by power. In a boastful speech, again using the Emperors exact
words, Heling calls Germany the Schrecken aller Feinde (terror of all
enemies). The army is the pillar of strength with which German colonies
will finally be won, and through which the world will understand that Ger-
many is the salt of the earth. The nation has reached the Hhe germani-
scher Herrenkultur (height of Germanic master-culture) and is the envy
of all people. In contrast to France, dem demokratisch verseuchten, daher
von Gott verlassenen Reich (the empire poisoned by democracy and
24
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

therefore abandoned by God), Germans were Gods chosen people and

the instrument of His purpose (46768). At the end of the novel, Heling
senses rumbles from social upheavals to come, but he puts them aside as
the horsemen of the apocalypse holding maneuvers for the Day of Judg-
ment (473).
The only person in the book who understands the full implications of
the kind of power represented by Heling is old Herr Buck, a hero of the
1848 revolution, once the leader of the liberal bourgeoisie in Netzig but
now demoted by Heling, like everyone else. Buck watches helplessly as
evil in public life grows to mythic proportions. The novel ends with Bucks
death. As he lies dying he expresses visions of a brighter, more humane
future until the moment he notices Heling standing in the doorway to his
bedroom. Terror-stricken as if he had seen the devil, he falls forward and
dies.
The type Mann called the Untertan has buried all concepts of free-
dom, justice, truth, and humanity. Indeed, Diederich Heling, in his
attempt to live his life in imitation of the Emperors power politics, has lost
all humane feelings and proportions, and his leadership acts like poison on
the moral awareness of the people in his hometown. Helings disregard
for the rights of the working class goes so far that he experiences the shoot-
ing dead of a worker as etwas direkt Groartiges, sozusagen Majestti-
sches (144; something really grand, so to speak majestic). Helings
intoxication with power allows him to go even beyond the Emperors own
unfeeling fancies. Toward the end of the novel in a public speech, he
sketches out his personal vision for a future state in which racial hygiene
would be guaranteed by procedures to prevent imbeciles and perverts from
breeding. This is the kind of message of terror old Herr Buck feels he is
receiving from Heling on his deathbed. It is a message by which Mann
anticipates Nazi eugenics, including sterilization and euthanasia for those
perceived to be valueless. An equally striking premonition of things to
come is Manns depiction of the devastating power Heling asserts over
the people of Netzig. As he outlines his vision of an inhumane future state,
the people hail him with whooping elation and raised patriotic beer glasses.
The process of moral desensitization has come a long way.
Mann was cautious about later remarks praising his book as an anti-
cipation of National Socialism and its atrocities. He understood himself
primarily as a novelist who created his work out of the tension between his
desire to diagnose contemporary life and suggest possible alternatives for
the future, and his wish to entertain. Mann did not want to be seen, above
all, as a critical sociologist or historian, and certainly not as a mere com-
mentator on current affairs. But, independently of these claims, his acute
observation and study of political life from the formation of the German
Empire in 1871 to the time just before the First World War enabled him
to discover some of the dangerous potential that lay in the history of
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
25

Germanys preoccupation with power. With unique insight Mann recogn-

ized that these dangers would go far beyond the time in which he wrote
this novel, and would have a devastating effect on the future of his country
and its eventual struggle with democracy.
The evaluations of the political dimensions of Der Untertan have
often obscured the substantial artistic achievement of the novel. The book
is not without problems. There are inconsistencies in the plot, and readers
may be irritated by the confusing labyrinth of intrigues and the exagger-
ated descriptions of facts until they realize that Mann uses them as parts of
the world he wishes to depict.9 Der Untertan is not a realistic historical
novel, even though the story is based on a number of historical events and
uses direct quotations from the emperor. Following the model of the
French social novelists, Manns characters and events are larger than life,
and serve the purpose of pointing to their moral qualities. Mann hoped
that readers would gain insight into the real world surrounding them by
means of both the content and the form of the text, and so be motivated to
change that world. Critics of the novel have attached the terms parody and
bitter satire to the book, frequently as derogatory evaluation, thereby
attempting to obscure its resemblance to the real state of the German
Empire. What such criticism overlooks, however, is that Mann believed
that German life under Wilhelm II was a parody of the self and of ideas and
events. People were living parodies of their ideologies and of reality. Mann
explained in his introduction to a new edition of Der Untertan in 1929
that he had observed how der Typ des kaiserlichen Deutschen (the type
of the German imperialists) lived their lives as parodies of national pride
and of a will to power that wants to dominate the world. They also paro-
died realism because they refused to respect anything that cannons could
not destroy, and they despised things invisible that live in the mind.10
The history of the publication of Der Untertan and its reception pro-
vide a striking account of German political and intellectual life from just
before the First World War to after the Second World War. At the same
time, the emotional intensity with which this novel was received is proof of
Manns success in making literature a means of communicating a political
message. Mann had signed a contract for the publication of the novel in
weekly installments in Zeit im Bild from 1 January 1914 on, but only after
he had agreed to eliminate some of the more incriminating passages con-
cerning the emperor so as not to run into trouble with censorship. Even
then, the text caused a storm of disputation. On 1 August 1914, the day of
Germanys declaration of war on Russia and the call for general mobiliza-
tion, Mann was informed that in the climate of patriotism the publication
of further installments was inappropriate. Not until the end of the war
could Der Untertan appear in complete form. Then, in 1918, the novel
immediately gained overwhelming popularity. Seven editions of 100,000
copies each were printed within six weeks. The responses to Der Untertan
26
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

reflect the wide spectrum of the hardened political and cultural positions in
Germany after the war, a spectrum that made the realization of a democra-
tic state during the Weimar Republic so problematic right from the begin-
ning. The critique from the right went so far as to threaten Manns life for
what some called his unpatriotic and communist smear campaign. His
brother derided the book as an irresponsible social satire unrelated to real-
ity. He called the novel sheer nonsense (Unfug), and he added: . . . .
wenn sie einen vornehmeren Namen verdiente, einen vornehmeren als den
der internationalen Verleumdung und der nationalen Ehrabschneiderei, so
laute er: Ruchloser sthetizismus (. . . . and if it deserved a more noble
name, more noble than that of international defamation and national slan-
der, then it would be: ruthless aestheticism).11 On the other hand, the
young Activist-Expressionists hailed the novel as a long-overdue injection
of political blood into the German people, and there were those who
affirmed the book as the valuable account of a gullible people seduced by
power.12 Even though the heat of the responses and the number of reviews
diminished during the Weimar years, Der Untertan catapulted Mann into
the position of a public figure whose writings remained at the center of the
intellectual and political debates of the Weimar Republic.
Mann played his most public role in the so-called November Revolu-
tion, which followed the armistice of 11 November 1918. At the time, in
several German cities, Arbeiter- und Soldatenrte (Workers and Soldiers
Councils) were formed, modeled on the Soviet Workers Councils. Unlike
their model, however, these councils did not promote radical social change
through revolutionary means. Rather, their primary goal was to establish
peace between the radical factions and to represent a strong democratic
presence in a newly elected social-democratic government. Kurt Hiller, an
activist among the expressionists and a great admirer of Heinrich Mann,
organized Intellectual Workers in several German cities that were to coop-
erate with the Councils of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants. In Munich,
Manns adopted home town, the Independent Socialist Kurt Eisner had
established such a council, and Mann was asked to become its chairman. In
the Politische Rte geistiger Arbeiter (Councils of Intellectual Workers)
Mann saw an opportunity for the realization of the idea that was most
important to him, the unity of Geist und Tat (intellect and action). Eisner
himself combined the qualities Mann thought were necessary for a politic-
ally effective artist intellectual. He was a well-educated man though his
roots were in the working class. He was a philosopher, educator, writer,
politician, and pragmatist, who believed in political change through the
power of ideas rather than revolutionary force. Never before in German
history had the possibility of an effective involvement of intellectuals
in politics looked more hopeful than directly after the First World War.
Germany was finally ready to join the rest of the Western world in the pursuit
of freedom and justice. Persons of Geist hoped to assist the population in
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
27

sorting out the contradictory political claims made on them. The most
important task was the enlightenment of the future voters in order to pre-
vent a relapse into reactionary politics. Mann shared with Eisner the recog-
nition that after Germanys long experience with power politics, the
creation of a democratic system would have to be a slow, dynamic learning
process, an approximation of an ideal, the realization of which, most prob-
ably, lay beyond their own lifetime.
The Councils only survived until May 1919, when Freikorps (free
corps), rightist military groups, put a bloody end to them. Eisner himself
was murdered by a rightist extremist in February 1919. But Manns work
for the Council in these short months provided for him public visibility
through speeches he gave expressing his thoughts about the kind of poli-
tics Germany needed. In his second address to the Political Council of
Intellectual Workers in December 1918 (one of the few that has been
translated into English), he stressed that the revolution was an attempt to
introduce Germany to the moral laws of the liberated Western world. Ger-
manys defeat served as an opportunity to move toward absolute honesty
and away from its former position, where might took precedence over
right. He emphasized that intellectual boldness in the name of justice was
at this point in German history more important than material wellbeing or
the socialization of the means of production. As an example, he pointed to
Woodrow Wilson, who in 1918 had formulated the famous Fourteen
Points that he thought would make the world safe for democracy. Ignor-
ing, or at least putting aside, the bitter reality of postwar economic and
political chaos, Mann declared that a spiritual revolution had to precede
economic transformation. The fate of a nation was more determined by its
way of feeling and thinking than by economic principles. He called on
his fellow intellectual workers to help shape the German people into
responsible republicans who, through their insistence on justice, would
reconcile Germany with the rest of the world.13
In December 1919, Mann published Macht und Mensch (Power and
Humanity), which he called a textbook for the Republic. The volume con-
tains the sum of his political essays from 1910 onward with the addition of
one long, new piece called Kaiserreich und Revolution (Empire and
Revolution). This essay is not only a political complement to his novel Der
Untertan, but is also the first essay in which Mann clearly called for a social
democracy for Germany and spelled out concrete suggestions for its imple-
mentation. He was deeply concerned about the murderous hatred with
which the Communists were trying to get a foothold in Germany, thereby
radicalizing the attacks from the extreme right. Mann envisaged a new
German state in which the social classes moved toward equality guided by
reason, individual responsibility, and a shared interest in work and owner-
ship. For the sake of justice and humanity, he wrote, we must socialize.
Mann called for economic policies that would accomplish two basic
28
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

changes. One, the proletarians would be raised and gentrified to the point
where they ceased to exist as a separate class. Two, the new bourgeoisie
would be forced to question its self-hatred and at the same time would be
freed from its addiction to being part of a master race. Mann believed that
only by abolishing class differences could Germans finally reach an ethic of
individual responsibility in politics.14
The utopian goal of a classless bourgeois society may seem to readers
of the twenty-first century (as it seemed to many readers of Manns own
time) as painfully out of touch with reality. By December 1919, all of
Germany was in brutal turmoil as assassinations by the right spurred reprisals
from the left. Since Bavaria was the most fertile breeding ground for vari-
ous counterrevolutionary groups, Munich experienced the pendulum of
political events with greater violence than any other city in Germany.
Manns vision of a social republic was based more on his idealistic admir-
ation of the French Revolution and the tradition of 1848 than on a realistic
assessment of the social and political struggle of postwar Germany. He
lacked insight into the importance of class identification and, in spite of his
very justified attacks on the current political situation, he was not suffi-
ciently aware of the entrenched power structures that were not about to
give up their grip on the government. He was unaware of the fear of the
middle class of descending the social ladder and of the genuine pride
others had in belonging to the working class. He underestimated the
heightened susceptibility of the middle class to antidemocratic challenges
precipitated by economic and sociopsychological factors arising from the
war and its aftermath. In spite of increasing counterevidence over the next
years, Mann preserved his idealistic view of the final victory of reason in
human history. He emphasized that the darker the times, the more import-
ant it was to keep the moral assets of humanity alive, a task ascribed to the
artist-intellectual above all.
True, the content of the Weimar Constitution adopted in August
1919 gave Mann concrete reasons for hope that Germany would finally
follow the other European nations in becoming a functioning democratic
state. Universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, and the right to free
assembly and association were established but, within a few months, the
Kapp Putsch (March 1920), an attempted coup dtat, made it clear that
the military represented a continuing threat to the new government. The
destructive presence of nationalism in politics was fed by the widely held
conviction that Germany had never fully been defeated in the First World
War, and also by the Versailles Treaty, with its demand for exorbitant puni-
tive reparations. Though the Constitution had provided for comprehensive
codes of labor, none of the socialization laws promised during the Revolu-
tion were ever passed. The alliance between the aristocracy and industry
that had dominated the Empire continued to exist, and Socialists and labor
unions watched powerless as multimillionaires formed large cartels across
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
29

borders. To many, it was obvious that French and German business mag-
nates were secretly negotiating the formation of an iron and coal cartel. In
a letter to his French friend Flix Bertaux in April, 1923, Mann reported
that he was working on a long article for Die neue Rundschau15 in which
he was going to expose the disastrous predominance of the economy,
above all of industry. In Germany, a helpless socialist party was standing by
while industry was destroying all human freedom. It was most urgent that
German and French intellectuals fight together against these industrialists
who wanted to prevent Europe from uniting (BW, 5557).
On 11 August 1923, Germany celebrated the anniversary of the
Weimar Constitution in Dresden. The extent to which Mann was con-
sidered a spokesperson for the Weimar Republic is shown by the fact that
he was asked to contribute a formal address at this occasion in the Dresden
Opera House. The Dresdner Rede, as his speech was called, is one of the
short masterpieces of Manns political writings. Its impact went well
beyond Germany.16 That year, the celebration of the Weimar Constitution
took place under the burden of the Ruhr Invasion. In January, 1923,
France, with one Belgian division, had occupied the Ruhr region in order
not only to guarantee the flow of reparations but also to achieve the pre-
dominance of French industries in Europe.17
Mann focused his address on two issues, the continuing war-mad
nationalism of Germans, now heated by the French occupation, and the
danger of the concentration of capital for the welfare of the majority and
for a democratic political system. Fearless of the hatred he would cause in
some circles, he asked his audience, with high rhetorical skill, whether this
day was truly a time for celebration, or not rather a day for alarm. Had the
spirit of the Constitution not been to work for peace and social equality?
But what was the spirit reigning now other than hatred? Had the form of
government not become a republican plutocracy, a dictatorship of the
greediest? He conceded that the general reactionary tendencies in
Germany were partly the consequence of the continuing oppression by
foreign masters and the general spiritual exhaustion that followed war, but
he pointed to the blood-gorging profiteers who used the universal
exhaustion for their own profit. The Weimar Constitution had been con-
ceived in Weimar, a symbolic place for the renunciation of absolutism and
for the desire to live by humane ideas. But now the German people found
themselves thrown from a prewar military absolutism into the unlimited
power of capitalism, even though it was clear that only as a democracy
could the country survive. Nothing was to be expected from the bankrupt
Reichstag. In its inertia it resembled a house of ghosts playing a grotesque
ghost sonata. The chancellor himself fed the people with empty promises.
Mann ended his speech expressing his hope that spiritual leaders, intellec-
tuals like him, could save the Republic by keeping alive those moral values
on which the Constitution had been founded. The state and the economy,
30
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

he pointed out, were only useful to the extent that they served human-
ity. All working people had to unite and follow those leaders who
regarded them as moral human beings to whom they felt responsible.
Mann assured the laborers that they could count on intellectuals as their
best friends.18
Another example of Manns passionate commitment to the survival of
the Republic, and to the active role of the intellectual in politics, is his open
letter to chancellor Gustav Stresemann in October 1923.19 By the fall of
1923, inflation had spiraled out of control. Reparation payments had been
well in arrears, and the Allies demanded that they be paid in gold. The
resulting adverse balance of payments and flight of capital meant that by
October, not millions or billions, but trillions of marks were needed to buy
a loaf of bread or mail a letter. There were food riots, and widespread star-
vation was reported. Early in August of 1923, the Social Democrats had
declared the need for a new national coalition to deal with the crisis, and
Gustav Stresemann was called upon to form a new cabinet. Though a Ver-
nunftrepublikaner (republican of the mind) rather than a fervent supporter
of democracy, Stresemann aligned himself firmly with the defenders of the
Weimar system. His brief tenure testifies to the chaotic state of the Repub-
lic. He was chancellor for only three months, during which his cabinet fell
twice. He foiled an attempt by the army in collaboration with leaders of
big business to force him to resign, and he also helped to crush Hitlers
first attempted putsch.
Mann wrote his letter on 11 October, five days after Stresemann was
again forced to reshuffle his cabinet in order to escape a reactionary
takeover. His open letter was published in the Vossische Zeitung, Berlin, and
had the title Diktatur der Vernunft (Dictatorship of Reason). The
address to Stresemann is worth reading today for its masterful craftsman-
ship and powerful historical message. The piece exemplifies Manns keen
sense of dramatic wording and effect. In short, decisive, and provocative
statements, through repetitions, and forceful summonses, and imperatives,
he asked Stresemann to do three things: first, to avoid a dictatorship of
power, second, to establish a dictatorship of justice, and third, to adopt a
dictatorship of reason. He blamed the timidity of Social Democratic pol-
icies for the formation of a poisoning plutocracy of industry that acted as
hangman of the state. In terms that in their urgency prefigure warnings he
later voiced about the rise of National Socialism, Mann asked the chancel-
lor to get rid of those shabby rogues who were seducing the vulnerable
German people with empty promises. He assured Stresemann that it was
not too late to work on those issues of justice on which the Constitution
had been based: human rights, socialization of industries, redistribution
of land, state-controlled capitalism. And he emphasized again that
Germany required a social democracy in order to limit the abuse of power
by big industry. The disastrous effect of the last four years had shown the
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
31

limitations of a liberal democracy and the need for more governmental

control of the economy.
Manns last demand of Stresemann, the adoption of a dictatorship of
reason, sounds bizarre and, as he admitted at the time, surprised even him-
self. Obviously, Mann could not have had in mind a transfer of political
leadership to an intellectual power elite. Rather, the demand for a dictator-
ship of reason has to be understood as a moral imperative to counter the
radicalization of German politics, from the threat of a dictatorship of the
proletariat on the left to the growing power of the National Socialist move-
ment on the right. Mann was well aware of the dubious nature of his
appeal to the head of the German government, but, as he confirmed to
Stresemann, he considered the call to reason and humanity his only right
to exist. Intellectual politics was duty to ones country and to oneself
regardless of success.
Mann used the peak of the economic debacle in 1923 not only for
intensified direct political engagement but also to write three dramatic,
innovative novellas. Kobes is the finest and most horrendous of these
three so-called inflation stories. In its combination of avant-garde tech-
nique and stark realism Kobes stands out as a striking example of mod-
ern story-telling.20 When the piece first appeared in 1925, its message was
intensified by a number of illustrations by George Grosz, the most biting
political caricaturist of the twenties. Mann believed that in a country in
danger of becoming the slave of high capitalism only the most drastic and
shocking depiction of this situation could move the modern reader to con-
template the implications. He knew that literature had to compete with the
easy thrills of mass entertainment, especially the new media of the cinema,
to be effective, and he therefore needed to mix his social-analytical realism
with suspense, the grotesque, and the surreal.
With bitter irony, Mann himself called Kobes a hymn to inflation, a
kind of Stinnes glorification in novella form.21 Kobes, the main character,
an elusive phantom, is indeed modeled after Hugo Stinnes, who was
regarded as the prototype of the predatory capitalist by the leftist press and
parties.22 Taking advantage of galloping inflation, Stinnes had amassed a
gigantic fortune through the heavy industry of the Ruhr. His industrial
empire functioned as a state within the state and wielded powerful reac-
tionary pressure on the politics of the Republic. Mann thought that a tale
about a character like Stinnes, who gained fabulous wealth while whole
classes of people sank into poverty, lent itself to a fantastic, grotesque nar-
rative. He captured the speed with which fortunes were made in the early
twenties, and solid incomes lost, by the rapid motion of the storys action,
incomplete sentences, modern catchwords, and brief stage-direction-like
phrases. In a world where hunting after the most lucrative deal was the
only reason for being, language had lost its communicative function. In a
style similar to that of modern thrillers, he has people meet in movable
32
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

waiting rooms that zoom up and down macabre elevator shafts. Characters
chase each other through labyrinthine, elusive spaces to find the phantom,
Kobes, who has his office somewhere in the upper regions of the building.
The story opens with an allegorical figure named Middle Class, who in
his full and ludicrous devotion to the power of Kobes reminds the reader
of Diederich Helings destructive worship of the Emperor. In absolute
self-denial, the faceless figure has only one ambition: to serve the greatest,
to see him, and die. As in George Orwells 1984, Kobes advertises himself
through a thundering radio voice that fills all spaces. He declares: Ich
habe einfache Gedanken, einfache Ziele. Ich bin nichts Vornehmes, Politik
verstehe ich nicht. Rhriger Kaufmann bin ich, Sinnbild der deutschen
Demokratie. Mich kann keiner. Ich bin Kobes (I have simple ideas, simple
goals. I am nothing noble. Of politics I understand nothing. Im a busy
businessman, symbol of German democracy. Nobody can touch me. I am
Kobes).23 Kobes wealth has grown to mythic proportions. It is the new
religion after which the whole world lusts.
While dramatically describing the sellout of the middle class and the
cunning and destructive power of industry, Mann does not spare his own
class, the intelligentsia. His attack on contemporary society includes every-
one, even if he thereby questions his own legitimacy as a critic. A meek lit-
tle doctor of philosophy and natural sciences introduces himself as Sand.
Nicht Kant. Nur Sand (182; Not Kant. Only Sand). Insubstantial like
sand, he trickles away at the end of the story, but not before he exposes the
horrific nature and disastrous effects of Kobes, the god of the economy
and the state, on the people. As the self-appointed chief of propaganda and
head of a varit, Sand directs a show in which he makes the audience
believe it is seeing and hearing Kobes himself speaking. Since the people in
the audience have never seen the master in person before, but recognize
his voice, they are ready to follow blindly the ideas and orders given by the
man on the stage. With awe they hear him demand that they sacrifice
themselves for the good of the whole. Eerily anticipating Hitlers atroci-
ties, the would-be Kobes figure orders the people to check their wives. He
declares that only a first-rate certificate of good conduct entitles to procre-
ation. For children with tuberculosis there will be no support. Mesmer-
ized, the crowd listens as Kobes asks them to become like him and work
twenty hours a day. As a hard-working person, he boasts, he finds nothing
impossible. He is beyond good and evil, and therefore nothing is forbid-
den to him, not even the raping of his sister. To emphasize the irrationality
of evil and the alarming devotion to authority in Germany, Sand-Mann has
Kobes entice the crowd to jump into a Moloch, a glowing furnace that
appears on stage. Especially the little children are called to sacrifice them-
selves because Kobes promises that all those who jump into the furnace will
be invulnerable and can do whatever they wish. After an initial hesitation by
the adults, even mothers send their children to be burnt in reverence to
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
33

Kobes. When Kobes, the furnace master, has had enough human sacrifices,
he releases the people with the call to rape their sisters and to fly at each
others throats. An orgy of plunder, lust, and violence, of murderous
stench and screams, ends the evening in utter chaos. Helpless and in sad
irony Sand asks the crowd to hand over their reason as a last sacrifice to the
god Kobes. Sands attempt to expose Kobes evil ways in order to wake up
and frighten the people has been in vain. At the end of the story, Sands
enemy, the head of social affairs, consoles the intellectual like a child by
telling him that Kobes does not exist as one single human being but that
he is a mythical invention who stands for an organization, a mentality.
Even if eliminated, his economic interests and methods will survive well
beyond his own lifetime. Resigned to the ways of the world, Sand calmly
ends his own life.
In Kobes Mann gave a frightening example and a powerful warning
of what he saw as the contemporary mode of life. By showing the dangers
that lie in the absence of personal responsibility and in the susceptibility
to mass propaganda and self-sacrifice for an irrational evil cause, Mann
was anticipating the causes of the rise of fascism as early as 1923. He was
skeptical of his success in effectively warning his readers and teaching
democratic values, but, he confirmed: Wre die Gesellschaft vollkommen
und endgltig, so wei ich nicht, was Literatur sollte (If society were
perfect and final, I dont know why there should be literature).24 His self-
affirmation as a writer depended on being a critical observer of his time
and a relentless voice for truth and justice independent of the question of
success.
By 1923 the immense obstacles to the creation of a democracy in
Germany were obvious. Even the resolution of the currency crisis in Novem-
ber of that year and the Dawes Plan in 1924, which put an extensive credit
system in place, were not able to calm the political polarization and unrest.
With the influx of foreign, mostly American, capital and the American way
of life, German culture was changed almost overnight into a mass culture
with large cultural industries. Humanistic education and privilege, up to
then associated in German public understanding with the arts, was chal-
lenged by the need for a democratization of all culture. The idea of the arts
as a means for the education of a mass audience in the twenties is primarily
associated with the political theater of Marxist writers like Erwin Piscator
and Bertolt Brecht, but there were also important left-bourgeois artists,
Heinrich Mann included, who took the change in society as a challenge for
new artistic experimentation. The basis for Manns modernity and there-
fore part of todays interest in his works is his ability to shape his often
painful observations of Germanys social and political development into a
challenge for his own creativity. For Mann, the role of the modern artist
was to tell the historical truth in an artistic medium that could grasp the
imagination of the broadest possible readership. Art could only function as
34
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

an agent for social change if it adapted in form and content to the new
consumers of art. Intellect, on which art was based, was an enduring moral
strength beyond changing social and political fortunes and personal disap-
pointment. To Mann, the failure of democracy and the crisis of high cul-
ture were no reasons to give up attempts to salvage the humanizing ideas
on which his democratic utopia was based. His most ambitious literary
projects in fiction during the Weimar Republic that demonstrate these
insights are his social novels, the trilogy Mutter Marie (Mother Mary,
1927), Eugnie oder die Brgerzeit (The Royal Woman, 1928), and Die
groe Sache (The Big Deal, 1930).
In his search for a creative response to the new mass culture of the
twenties, Mann returned to his French models, Balzac and Zola, who had
written social novels in the nineteenth century. In a letter to Bertaux he
described the direct link that existed between social novels and the growth
of democracy. Germany did not have social novels; instead, German
authors wrote personal and timeless fiction. Balzac and Zola had depicted
the living sociology of their time. Their novels were criticisms of daily life,
understandable to everyone. Referring to his own writing projects, he
wrote that he hoped to introduce the genre of the social novel into Ger-
man literature (BW, 87).
In the so-called Weimar novels, Mann was determined to expose the
moral and political disasters of the Republic and at the same time to make
evident the moral imperatives that were essential to a working democracy
in the future. In 1926, when he started to write the first of these novels, he
described the state of the Republic in devastating terms in another letter to
Bertaux. Parliamentary democracy in Germany, he wrote, had taken on
unimaginably evil qualities. Not even a dictatorship could be more cor-
rupt, more unjust and lawless, more predatory and murderous than this
so-called republic (BW, 12728). German culture too, had fallen to a mis-
erable level. Young people were absorbed by the pursuit of material goods
and sex. In their spare time they visited sports events, read detective stories
and illustrated magazines, and luxuriated in sparkling revues and in the
new glamour of movie theaters.
In light of these pessimistic observations, Manns confidence in the
future and the strength of his enduring belief in the mission and power of
literature to keep humanistic values alive was remarkable. In numerous
articles and speeches he discussed the youth of his day and the new role of
the contemporary artist in relationship to young readers. In spite of his
criticism, Mann was fascinated by the young generation. He admired their
enthusiasm and restless energy in their pursuit of personal happiness and in
their attempt to succeed in the economically highly insecure environment
of the late twenties. To Bertaux he confessed that, in spite of their dis-
tracted lives, young people gave him courage when he thought of their
future and they provided him with the impetus to improvise in his novels
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
35

(BW, 229). Wrestling to find an adequate literary form for his time, Mann
asked himself the question: How would Zola have written if faced by the
problems of the Weimar Republic? Mann was convinced that Zola, too,
would have made artistic concessions to the time. As always, he would have
fought for ideas that were based on his overarching love and compassion
for all humanity.25 He came to the conclusion that the social novel was still
able to speak to the new public and teach justice and love for humanity.
But in order to be effective, the novel had to be adjusted to modern read-
ers and their sensibilities.
Mann was fascinated by the reasons for the huge success in Germany
of Edgar Wallace (18751932) at the end of the twenties. This English
author of crime novels proved how important fantasy was for modern fic-
tion. Contemporary readers yearned to be lifted, through surprise and
mystery, out of anxious and uncertain lives. This insight informed all of
Manns Weimar novels: the harder peoples lives, the more their need for
the fantastic.26
Mutter Marie, Eugnie oder die Brgerzeit, and Die groe Sache are
respectively composed around the moral maxims of learn to be responsible,
learn to endure, and learn to be joyful. In order to draw the modern
reader into the text and make these imperatives more palpable, Mann
experimented with a number of narrative techniques. The speed of modern
life, whether in the form of cars or changing relationships, is reflected
in the concentration of time in the plot, in the use of hasty, incomplete
sentences, at times reduced to mere syllables, in the use of slang and
the simplification of characters. The stories are full of grotesque adven-
tures (especially in the depiction of figures dominant in the business
world), of surprise, and of fantastic occurrences. In the two novels with
contemporary plots, Die groe Sache and Mutter Marie, Mann made use of
cinematic techniques, remarking in the introduction to Die groe Sache
that modern society made the similarities with movies visible.27 The young
protagonists find themselves constantly mingling their experiences in the
real world with those they have seen on the screen. The reality of the one
blends with the other for a fleeting, fantastic effect. Mann wanted the
reader to notice and be alarmed by the way young people used fantastic
scenes from the cinema as solutions to daily problems instead of making
reasonable decisions and acting responsibly on urgent moral and social
issues in their lives.
Manns artistic flexibility to the point of risking devastating criticism
from both his fellow writers and some young readers is admirable. But
whether many contemporary readers could identify with the depicted
world, or were moved by it to contemplate the humanizing messages for
their own lives, is at best questionable. Mutter Marie appeared in three edi-
tions before 1930, but the other two novels were less successful. Neverthe-
less, these novels are well worth reading today as documents of their time.
36
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

The many political essays, speeches, letters, and articles Mann wrote
during the latter part of the Weimar Republic are more skillfully crafted
from a literary point of view. They include urgent calls for a United States
of Europe, attacks on various anti-democratic practices damaging to the
struggling Republic, and warnings about the National Socialist movement.
From the beginning of the Weimar Republic, Mann had fought for the
unpopular goal of an understanding between Germany and France. A lively
document of this concern was his long friendship and extensive correspond-
ence with Flix Bertaux, the French scholar of German literature. French
intellectuals saw Manns Zola essay as the welcome testimony of a
German who wrote against the general war hysteria in 1914. They admired
him as someone who courageously attacked the practices of the Wilhelmine
Empire. When anti-French feelings were at their height in 1923 because of
the French-Belgian Ruhr occupation, Mann accepted Bertauxs invitation
to take part in the Entretiens de Pontigny, a yearly meeting of French
writers, diplomats, and scientists. A year earlier Mann had expressed to
Bertaux the hope that his works would contribute to their joint cause, the
understanding between their two countries.

Mir liegt weit mehr daran, zu wirken, als bewundert zu werden, und ich
glaube, dass wahre Wirkung heute keine Landesgrenzen mehr kennen
darf. Schon lngst ist es meine berzeugung, dass, im Geistigen wie im
Materiellen, die Lnder Europas, besonders aber Frankreich und
Deutschland, sich annhern und ausgleichen mssen, wenn unser Erdtheil
lebendig erhalten werden soll. (BW, 37)

[To me, being effective is far more important than being admired, and I
believe that today, true effectiveness may not stop at any borders. For a
long time it has been my conviction that in spiritual as well as in material
matters the countries of Europe, but especially France and Germany, have
to become closer, and work with each other if our world is to be kept
alive.]

Taking on the role of the writer as a pre-diplomat, Mann made per-

sonal contact with Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, who tried to found a Pan-
European Union working from Vienna, and with Jan Masaryk, the
Czechoslovak ambassador to Britain and later the Czech foreign minister.
In newspaper articles and speeches, Mann stressed that a United States of
Europe was the only reasonable solution to the escalating national and
international crises of the twenties. He argued that a European alliance was
the only safeguard against a most devastating war, a war that would mean
the end of civilization. Above all he blamed monopoly capitalism for the
increase in general European irrational nationalism. In this he was not
alone. When Mann met in June of 1931 with Aristide Briand, formerly the
French premier, to discuss Franco-German relations, he found that he
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
37

shared the same view. Briand expressed amazement at the level of political
power big business wielded over the state in Germany, a power that had, as
Briand put it, its own private army in the form of the National Socialists. It
was incomprehensible to Briand that in a time of democratic crises a coun-
try fought against democracy. France was willing to discuss the end of all
reparation payments, but only under the condition of a promise for peace.
Briand suggested Mann should initiate an opinion poll containing the
names of all those who were sick of being led from one catastrophe to the
next by the convictions of weaklings.28
Mann was also among those intellectuals who forcefully expressed
their disgust at the Republics antidemocratic practices in controlling free-
dom of speech and artistic expression. Germany instituted film censorship
in 1920, as well as various arbitrary committees supervising radio broad-
casting. The governments threat in 1926 to pass a law protecting youth
from publications it judged as Schmutz und Schund (filth and rubbish)
provoked Mann to some of his sharpest language. In an article entitled
Letzte Warnung (Last Warning), he tried to capture his readers atten-
tion by asking the repeated rhetorical question: Wozu das Gesetz? (Why
do we need this law?). The censorship law, he argued, would be useless in
changing the lives of the young, especially those who were poor and disad-
vantaged. He pointed out that they received a far more drastic education in
the vices of life by living in mass housing projects than through reading
trashy literature. Mann challenged the government to show young people
that life was more than an arena for wild animals by building affordable
apartments for the poor and providing them with a more dignified life,
instead of writing arbitrary laws.29 Shortly after this protest, the law against
certain kinds of literature came into effect anyway, but not before Mann
had directly addressed the prosecuting attorney on the matter.30
There was one encouraging event for those concerned about protecting
literature and education. In 1926, the more than two-hundred-year-old
Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences added a literary section that, sur-
prisingly, enjoyed relative freedom from the interference of the state dur-
ing its first years. In 1928 Mann delivered a report to the Academy entitled
Dichtkunst und Politik (Writing and Politics) in which he stressed the
definition of the writer as the uncompromising defender of truth and just-
ice.31 He stated that literary persons based their lives on the belief in the
perfectibility of humankind, and therefore did not hesitate to express
moral outrage at the misuse of power by the state. Mann hoped that
through his membership in the Academy he would have influence on the
badly needed reform of the public school system. He claimed that equal
access to institutions of higher learning and revision of educational mater-
ials were to help train the German people in international understanding
and democratic values. Together with Alfred Dblin, Mann worked on
editing a new German textbook for the Prussian school system, but it was
38
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

never published, even though it was approved by the last socialist minister
of education. Mann served as president of the Academy from 1931 to Feb-
ruary of 1933, when the Nazis expelled him.
Inequalities of the Weimar Republics judicial system were another tar-
get for Mann and other left-wing intellectuals. One of the obvious reasons
for the failure of the Republic was that it had taken over the antiquated
imperial judicial system. The dogma of the irremovability of judges had
survived, with the result that many judges continued to serve the Republic
in spite of their personal resistance to its democratic values. Consequently
sentences for politically motivated murders committed by the right were
much less severe than those committed by the left. Mann entered the
ongoing heated debate in the Reichstag on the abolition of the death
penalty in 1926. In speeches and articles he discussed individual cases in
which the death penalty had been erroneously applied without either pub-
lic outcry or official scrutiny of the judges who were responsible. While a
democratic system promised equality before the law, in Weimar Germany
the poor were continually disenfranchised and killed.32
Beginning in the late twenties, Mann focused his literary efforts on the
rise of National Socialism. In spite of repeated threats on his life, he fear-
lessly warned the German people about Hitlers rise to power. He took the
occasion of a new edition of Der Untertan in 1929 to condemn the docil-
ity of the German people in the face of the governments open boast about
a future war. Even in a republic one could be a despicable underling, he
argued in the introduction to this new edition. Indeed, the new powers to
which the Weimar citizens were subject were more dangerous than those
his Untertan had faced, because what Mann called their paths of atroci-
ties were more difficult to identify. Consequently, one didnt need to wor-
ship and imitate those in power in order to be an underling it was
sufficient to be passive, to accept them without questioning their authority.
By failing to insist on better laws, on social justice, and on justice in general
by renouncing personal responsibility, Weimar Germans resembled
Diederich Heling, the Untertan.33
A few days before the 1932 election in which the Nazi party more
than doubled its vote and membership in parliament, Mann wrote his most
urgent and prophetic article entitled Wir whlen (We Vote). The party
called itself a National Workers Party, he wrote, but this was pure fraud.
Ever since its foundation the party was neither national nor social but was
working for and with the money of a select group of wealthy capitalists.
Betrayal and exploitation were its true mission. Hitler, whom Mann called
a bsartiger Trottel34 (malicious idiot) advocated the breeding of a mas-
ter race and at the same time was preparing for a vast blood bath. Manns
keen observation and understanding of the nature of the Nazi threat made
him anticipate future atrocities: Sie werden die Massen vergasen mssen.
Wenn das national ist! (They will have to gas the masses. As if that is love
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
39

for a nation!). Mann ended the article with a plea for the despicable drug
of nationalism not to become the cause again for the death of millions of
innocent people.35
Flix Bertaux rightly observed Manns unique simultaneous abilities as
novelist, philosopher, and psychologist (BW, 558). In one of his few arti-
cles translated into English,36 Mann claimed that psychological factors
were the basis of the economic situation in Germany. According to his the-
sis, one of Germanys unique characteristics was its passivity. While other
countries also experienced the collapse of their economies, only in
Germany did the process achieve its maximum effect on the psyche. Only
the Germans did nothing to remedy the economic crisis. In reference to
the political situation, Mann posed the rhetorical question of whether the
Germans allowed National Socialism to come to power because they were
hearing once again the call of the abyss? Usually, people living in a democ-
racy had a healthy instinct for self-preservation. Aber es mu doch
Witterung haben, wie selbst das Tier, wenn die Schlachtbank nahe rckt
(But they must have the capacity that animals have, to smell the slaughter-
bench as it approaches). The Germans lacked even this fundamental sensi-
tivity for survival.37
Mann was already in exile in France when he gave Bertaux his psy-
chological explanations for the Nazis raging hatred and the reasons for
their pathological motives, their hysteria, their Freudian complexes. He
was convinced that Nazi hatred for the Republic did not have its origins
in the Republics weaknesses or its unforgivable mistakes. Rather, as crea-
tures stripped of all humanity, the Nazis could not bear the idea that the
Weimar Republic meant to make the emotional German people, a people
so little open to selfless reason, into a less violent nation (BW, 284). A
year earlier, in a discussion of Hitlers anti-Semitism, Mann had offered a
similar account of the psychological origins of hatred of the Jews. He
argued that anti-Semitism develops from the inferiority complex of a
nation, that it serves as distraction from its own inner problems, and that
it is practiced most fervently by those who cannot forget the times of
national defeat.38
In 1932 a number of intellectuals were convinced that a coalition
between the Socialist and Communist Parties offered the last possibility for
preventing a Nazi dictatorship. A proclamation to that effect was signed by
Heinrich Mann, Kthe Kollwitz, and Albert Einstein, among others. After
Hitlers takeover on 30 January 1933, the same proclamation appeared on
advertising pillars all over Berlin. The Vlkische Beobachter launched a
tirade against Mann, calling him national vermin, and demanding that the
disagreeable Literary President should have a bomb put under him.39 The
proclamation and the furore it provoked caused Manns immediate expul-
sion from the Academy of the Arts and Sciences and precipitated his secret
flight to France six days later, on 21 February 1933.
40
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

Three months earlier, as it became increasingly clear to Mann that the

collapse of the Weimar Republic was imminent, he had written one more
long essay in which he explored the background to National Socialism and
the conditions for its defeat. The title of this daring piece is Das Bekennt-
nis zum bernationalen (Confession of Supranationalism). It appeared in
the last uncensored edition of the important journal Die neue Rundschau
in December 1932. Mann argued that ever since the formation of the
German Reich in 1871 a divide had existed in Germany between Wirk-
lichkeit (reality) and Gedanke (mind), which was the cause for authori-
tarian governments and irrational nationalism. Hitlers dictatorship was
only the natural outcome of a state in which critical minds were feared and
excluded from public politics. From the start, the Wilhelmine Empire was
an irrational nationalistic nation for which war was the only purpose. The
general European devaluation of rationality around 1900 contributed to
the development of the German idea of the state based on the instinctual,
on dream, love, and war. The First World War was the consequence of
these premises and an example of the most grandiose catastrophe of unrea-
son. After Germanys defeat in 1918, the country cried for revenge and
rearmament. Nationalist ideology continued, heated by monopoly capital-
ism, and finally opened the way to Nazi dictatorship, against which intel-
lect and reason were helpless. At the end of the article Mann predicted
with astonishing optimism that the age of irrationalism would come to an
end in about 1940. While the Nazis wanted a repetition of a great cata-
strophe, he believed that reality was working against them, since the world
had become too weak for war. A single country in Europe was no longer
viable, either economically or politically, and above all not morally. Practi-
cal reason demanded that the national state with its irrational exclusiveness
and hate make way for a new political reality, a United States of Europe
governed by truth, justice, and prosperity for all.40
For the next seven years Mann worked for this cause with great vigor.
Just a few months after he settled in Nice, in the fall of 1933, he published
the first and one of the most significant anti-fascist works written by a
German in exile. Der Hass: Deutsche Zeitgeschichte (Hatred: Contemporary
German History) with the dedication Meinem Vaterland (To My
Fatherland), is a collection of polemical essays that appeared simultan-
eously in German and French.41 It was widely read, even smuggled into
Germany, and praised to the point where someone compared its power to
Zolas Jaccuse.42 Mann made appeals and gave speeches that were
broadcast on short-wave radio into the German interior, in which he urged
German workers to unite against Hitler. Hundred of thousands of copies
of these addresses were disseminated in the Reich under the guise of adver-
tising brochures.
Manns political and literary efforts in the few years between 1933 and
1940 (when he had to flee from the Nazis once again to his next refuge,
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
41

the United States), are extraordinary. Not only did he become the repre-
sentative for Germans in French exile, but he acted as honored mediator
among international political groups trying to prevent the Nazis from
coming to power in Germany. With his help, the Popular Front movement
was created, a movement that succeeded in persuading Stalin to work
together with the Social Democrats in this urgent cause.
Even with his intense political agenda, Mann continued his long-held
practice of writing fiction alongside his political essays. Between 1935 and
1938 he published the two volumes, over 1500 pages in length, of his highly
regarded historical novel, Die Jugend des Knigs Henri Quatre (Young Henri
of Navarre, 1935) and Die Vollendung des Knigs Henri Quatre (translated
as Henry Quatre, King of France, 1938). Mann had been collecting material
on the first Bourbon King (15531610) since 1925. To a large extent the
work is based on historical facts, but Mann invented additional events and
emphasized characteristics of Henri that exemplified those values and human
qualities the writer himself had advocated as essential for a politically and
humanely constructive society. Mann intended the Henri IV novels as moral
parables. They were to give a utopian alternative to German power politics
of the past and, more urgently, in the present. Obvious parallels exist
between the corrupt and powerful house of Habsburg and the National
Socialist dictatorship in Germany. The main spokesman for the Catholic
Habsburg rulers of Spain bears unmistakable resemblances to Hitler, who in
a raging voice preaches hatred against the moderates and calls for a powerful
cleansing of everything foreign. Preparing for an attack on France, he
addresses and hypnotizes the masses with promises and threats of Boden
(soil), Blut (blood), and Gewalt (force).43 But in contrast to twentieth-
century Germany, sixteenth-century France had a leader in King Henri IV who
had the qualities with which to counter and conquer evil, at least temporarily.
In the novel, Henri unites intellect and action, reason and kind tolerance,
skepticism and enduring belief in his mission, love for humanity and a fight-
ing spirit. He knows that evil will persist in human history, but succeeds in
implementing the Edict of Nantes (1598), which grants religious tolerance
and more social rights in France, strengthening the country against Habs-
burg expansionism. Henri is assassinated by a radical Jesuit, but the human-
ism for which he stands will survive. Mann ended the novel with Henri
speaking to Manns own generation, struggling three hundred years later.
Henri challenges it to continue his work for justice and peace. The world can
only be saved by love, he proclaims, but love means to act, to act even more
decisively and courageously than he had done. Moral decay encourages a
new beginning.
By the time Mann had finished the Henri Quatre novels, in 1938,
there was no more hope for peace in Germany and in Europe. Intellectual
politics, whether during the Empire, the Weimar Republic, or from exile,
had not made a noticeable difference to the course of history. Still, Manns
42
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

skeptical optimism about the victory of reason remained unbroken. About

the Henri Quatre novels he remarked that if a later Germany should one
day improve on its past performance, he hoped this literature would show
itself to have been the spiritual antecedent.44 Manns tireless efforts to
change the course of German history and his enduring hope are well sum-
marized in a cautious comment he made in reference to Die kleine Stadt:
Was wir knnen ist: unser Ideal aufstellen, es so glnzend, rein und uner-
schtterlich aufstellen, da die Besseren erschrecken und Sehnsucht
bekommen (All we can do is to establish our ideal, to establish it in such
a sparkling, pure, and unshakable way that those with greater understand-
ing take fright and start longing for it).45

Notes
1
Heinrich Mann, 18711950: Werk und Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern, ed.
Deutsche Akademie der Knste zu Berlin (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag,
1971), 112.
2
Heinrich Mann, Geist und Tat, Essays (Hamburg: Claassen Verlag, 1960), 14.
3
The latest striking example of this fact is a recent television movie that was a great
success in Germany in 2002. Heinrich Breloer, in his two-part documentary, called
Die Manns Ein Jahrhundertroman, tells the intriguing story of two generations
of the infamous Mann family. Thomas Mann and two of his children figure large in
the tale, while Heinrichs life and work play a subordinate role. His sociopolitical
passions are downplayed and his politically most engaged time, his exile in France,
is left out completely.
4
David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (Berkeley:
U of California P, 1980), 14041.
5
Reinhard Alter, Die bereinigte Moderne: Heinrich Manns Untertan und politische
Publizistik in der Kontinuitt der deutschen Geschichte zwischen Kaiserreich und
Drittem Reich (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995), 1. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Das
deutsche Kaiserreich, 18711918 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 93.
6
H. Mann, Der Untertan, in Materialien (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1991),
626. All page numbers from the novel given in the text are taken from this edition.
7
Pierre Bertaux, ed., Heinrich Mann Flix Bertaux: Briefwechsel, 19221948
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), 95. Subsequent references to this work in the
text are given using the abbreviation BW and the page number.
8
H. Mann, Der Untertan, 50.
9
As one critic puts it, odd juxtapositions, expressions out of place, paradoxes,
abrupt transitions and non sequiturs all serve as an aesthetic corollary of the
Emperors-Hesslings irrational, amoral governance. Mark Roche, Self-Cancellation
of Injustice in Heinrich Manns Der Untertan, Oxford German Studies 17
(1988): 88.
 HEINRICH MANN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
43

10
H. Mann, Der Untertan, 617.
11
Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, in Politische Reden und
Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Werkausgabe, 1968), 1:422.
12
Gotthart Wundberg, ed., Heinrich Mann: Texte zu seiner Wirkungsgeschichte in
Deutschland (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1977), 95.
13
H. Mann, The Meaning and Idea of the Revolution, in The Weimar Republic
Source Book, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley: U of
California P, 1994), 3840.
14
H. Mann, Macht und Mensch: Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1989), 2068.
15
H. Mann, Europa: Reich ber den Reichen, Die neue Rundschau 34 (Die Freie
Bhne 7), July 1923: 577602.
16
The Boston journal The Living Age published a practically full report of the
address in its October, November, December issue of 1923. In Honor of the
Constitution, Living Age 319 (October 1923): 5760.
17
Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 18401945 (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1969), 607.
18
H. Mann, Diktatur der Vernunft (Berlin: Verlag die Schiede, 1923), 6675.
19
Ibid., 711.
20
Jrgen Haupt, Die Entwertung des Geldes und der Gefhle: Heinrich Manns
Inflationsnovellen zur Gesellschaftskrise der zwanziger Jahre, Heinrich Mann-
Jahrbuch 6 (1988): 64.
21
Deutsche Akademie der Knste zu Berlin, Heinrich Mann, 18711950, 212.
22
Henry Ashby Turner, Stresemann and the Politics of the Weimar Republic (Prince-
ton: Princeton UP, 1963), 69.
23
H. Mann, Ausgewhlte Erzhlungen (Zurich: Diogenes Verlag, 1964), 179.
24
H. Mann, Theater der Zeit, in Sieben Jahre: Chronik der Gedanken und
Vorgnge (Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig: Paul Zsolny Verlag, 1929), 267.
25
H. Mann, Zeit und Kunst, in Sieben Jahre, 546.
26
H. Mann, Detective Novels, in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, Source Book, 521.
27
H. Mann, Mein Roman, in Das ffentliche Leben (Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig:
Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1932), 331.
28
H. Mann, Gesprch mit Briand, in Das ffentliche Leben, 28591.
29
H. Mann, Letzte Warnung, in Sieben Jahre, 29699.
30
H. Mann, Herr Staatsanwalt! in Sieben Jahre, 28691.
31
H. Mann, Dichtkunst und Politik, in Sieben Jahre, 498516.
32
H. Mann, Justiz, in Sieben Jahre, 51729.
33
H. Mann, Der Untertan, 61719.
34
Heinrich und Thomas Mann: Ihr Leben und Werk in Text und Bild, Katalog zur
stndigen Ausstellung im Buddenbrookhaus (Lbeck: Drger Druck, 1994), 314.
35
H. Mann, Das ffentliche Leben, 25762.
44
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN

36
H. Mann, The German Decision, in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, Source Book,
16466.
37
H. Mann, Das ffentliche Leben, 309.
38
H. Mann, Gut geartete Menschen, in Das ffentliche Leben, 31219.
39
Nigel Hamilton, The Brothers Mann (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979), 264.
40
Der Hass: Deutsche Zeitgeschichte (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1983), 14.
41
The term Ha referred to the unprecedented hatred with which the Nazis
persecuted all who stood for reason and humanity.
42
Hamilton, Brothers Mann, 284.
43
H. Mann, Die Jugend des Knigs Henri Quatre (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1952),
399400.
44
Hamilton, Brothers Mann, 285.
45
H. Mann, Die kleine Stadt (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998), in Materialien,
469.
2: Hermann Hesse and the
Weimar Republic

Paul Bishop

A SHORT POEM ENTITLED November 1914 presents us with the quiet-

ness of a forest, in which mist hangs and leaves fall; a storm then tears
through the forest, clearing away the mist and stripping the trees of
branches and leaves. The final stanza cries:

Rum auf und brich in Scherben,

Was nimmer halten mag,
Und rei aus Nacht und Sterben
Empor den lichten Tag!1
[Clear up and break into pieces
What can never last,
And bring out of night and death
The light of day!]

Like many poems of the Expressionist period, this text written by a

pacifist welcomes the outbreak of the First World War as an opportunity
to clear away the dead wood of a stagnant society. Although the mood of
later poems changed as the war went on, for the most part they retain an
element of optimism. Im Frhling 1915 (In Spring 1915), for example,
opens with a vision of Christ, who has come down from his cross to preach
the kingdom of love; in the second stanza he wanders across a dark field of
blood; in the final stanza, however, new flowers blossom on the meadow,
and birdsong fills the air (G, 404). In Im vierten Kriegsjahr (In the
Fourth Year of War), written in April 1917, the evening is cold and sad,
and it is raining; but even if the world is drowning in war and fear, love still
burns somewhere (G, 423). Finally, however, in Herbstabend im fnften
Kriegsjahr (Autumn Evening in the Fifth Year of War), written on 13
August 1918, the mood is as grim as the weather is stormy:

Ach was sollen wir Trumer auf Erden?

Dichter und Denker sind fremd in der Welt
[Alas, what are we dreamers doing on earth?
Poets and thinkers are alien to the world]
46
PAUL BISHOP

Even if the poet is able to reaffirm his confidence in the cold but com-
forting light of the moon, the conclusion of the poem is despairing: troops
of soldiers crawl forward, mines explode, bloodied limbs and soil fly into
the air, and the generals urge the limping horse of war on and on, driving
the wagon of misfortune deeper into the blood and filth:

Ach wir wollen den dummen Glauben begraben,

Da auch Liebe und Geist eine Sttte auf Erden haben! (G, 445)
[Alas, we should bury the stupid belief
That love and spirit have a place on the earth!]

Although the emotional trajectory of these poems follows, in the end,

the pattern established by the works of many Expressionist writers, it seems
it took five years of war, millions of dead and missing soldiers, and the col-
lapse of the German monarchy and state to make Hermann Hesse
renounce his faith in love and spirit. Nevertheless, much of his work, par-
ticularly that produced during the period of the Weimar Republic, bears
witness to this largely successful attempt to maintain his optimism.
In 1912 Hesse had moved to Bern, where he was living when the First
World War broke out. During the war, Hesse worked for the German pris-
oner of war welfare service in the Swiss capital and founded the Bcherei
fr deutsche Kriegsgefangene (Library for German Prisoners of War),
sorting and sending books to the prisoners of war in France. This social
and political work was backed up with strong declarations of a pacifist
stance, as clearly stated in the article O Freunde, nicht diese Tne! (O
Friends, do not speak thus, 1914).2 This short piece, the title of which
alludes to Schillers great ode An die Freude (Ode to Joy), exemplifies
the typical subjectivist bent of Hesses writing. At the same time, Hesse
became aware of the pressing need, not just for grand statements, but for
practical action albeit of a limited kind. In Den Pazifisten (To the
Pacifists), an article published in the Viennese newspaper Die Zeit on 7
November 1915, Hesse urged his fellow pacifists to become actively
involved in the work of helping those in need because of the War.3
An entire sequence of anti-war essays culminated in Zarathustras
Wiederkehr (Zarathustras Return, 1919), as much a response to the revo-
lutionary activities emerging in the post-war period as to the war itself, and
a successful attempt to recapture the rhapsody and the rhetoric of Also
sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 188284). This text, the
central work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900), and a
key influence on Hesse, had been used by the Prussian government for
political ends, even being distributed to German soldiers in a kitbag-sized
edition.4 In the ten short sections of this powerful exercise in rehearsing
Zarathustras style, Hesse sought to clarify Nietzsches message about the
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
47

relationship between morality, art, and life, and to rescue the prophets
teaching from its contemporary misuse.
During the War, Hesse had begun to experience difficulties in his
marriage the first of three as his wife slowly succumbed to a form of
mental illness, and his youngest son fell ill.5 On 8 March 1916 his father,
Johannes Hesse (18471916), died. As the war worsened, so Hesse found
himself close to physical and psychological collapse; in May 1916 he began
psychotherapy. The therapist, Josef Bernhard Lang (18831945), was a
follower of the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung (18751961), and acted as
an important means of transmission of Jungian thought to Hesses writ-
ing.6 Within the first month, Hesse attended twelve sessions with Dr. Lang,
and between June 1916 and November 1917 he completed a further sixty
sessions. During the final months of his therapy in September and October
1917, Hesse began work on his novel Demian, which appeared in 1919,
the year he decided to leave his wife and family and moved to Casa
Camuzzi in Montagnola, but also the year of the general strike and the
Spartacus uprising in Berlin (512 January 1919), the murder of Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (15 January 1919), and the opening of
the National Assembly in Weimar (9 February 1919).
As well as a product of his personal engagement with Jungian ther-
apy, Demian is and was widely read at the time as a response to the
catastrophe of the First World War, out of which the Weimar Republic
emerged.7 Just as Peter Camenzind had found a welcome audience among
those dissatisfied with the stagnation of Wilhelmine Germany, so Demian
spoke to a generation demoralized by the war. Looking back in 1948 in his
foreword to the American edition, Thomas Mann wrote that the electri-
fying influence exercised on a whole generation just after the First World
War by Demian was unforgettable: With uncanny accuracy this poetic
work struck the nerve of the times and called forth grateful rapture from a
whole youthful generation who believed that an interpreter of their inner-
most life had risen from their own midst.8 A contemporary review in the
journal Die Tat of December 1922 confirms Thomas Manns memory: the
desperate postwar generation, wrote Lulu von Strau und Torney, found
in Hesses work a solution to their most urgent concerns: In dieser
inneren Not kam dem einen oder anderen der Demian in die Hnde. Er
las, und es war ihm, als werde ihm eine Binde vom Auge genommen. Las
und fand sich selber (In this time of inner need this person or that
came across Demian read it, and it was as if a blindfold were removed
from his eyes. Read it and found himself).9 In Demian, Hesse produced
a heady cocktail of personal confession, Jungian analytical ideas, and arche-
typal imagery. The work is steeped in Gnostic tenets, mediated in part to
Hesse by Jungian theory. One cannot deny the appeal of the novel to read-
ers in the early years of the Weimar Republic (not to mention the German
reading public of the 1950s and 1960s and the American reading public of
48
PAUL BISHOP

the 1960s and 1970s); however, it is not clear whether Demian represents
a political response or a flight into mysticism (a charge frequently leveled at
Jung, the fons et origo of many of the ideas in the book).
Originally published using the pseudonym of the narrator figure in the
novel,10 Demian relates the story of the psychological development of Emil
Sinclair or, in the terms used in the work, how he manages sich selber zu
suchen, in sich fest zu werden, den eigenen Weg vorwrts zu tasten, einerlei
wohin er fhrte (GW 5:126; to find himself, become solid in himself, feel
his way forward along his own path, wherever it leads). Sinclair is encour-
aged along his path by his older classroom comrade, Max Demian, the
church organist Pistorius (based on Hesses therapist, Josef Lang), and
finally Demians mother, referred to as Frau Eva. Using Jungian and other
techniques to meditate on his dreams, Sinclair draws a picture of a bird
emerging from a globe as from a giant egg and flying up to God, to Abraxas
(GW 5:91). This deity, Abraxas, derives from ancient Gnostic beliefs, but is
also mentioned in a poem by Goethe in the West-stlicher Divan, and sym-
bolizes the coniunctio oppositorum the union of das Gttliche und das
Teuflische (the divine and the demonic), of Wonne und Grauen, Mann
und Weib gemischt, Heiligstes und Grliches ineinander verflochten, tiefe
Schuld durch zarteste Unschuld zuckend (GW 5:9495; bliss and horror,
man and woman intermixed, what is most sacred and what is most gruesome
entwined, deep guilt flashing through the most tender innocence). Where
does this leave morality? Like everything else, beyond good and evil: a pre-
carious location. For if, on the one hand, Demian reassures Sinclair that
knowing what is allowed and what is forbidden does not mean that one
can commit murder and rape (GW 5:65), Pistorius concedes that there
might be circumstances where it is possible to murder someone just
because one finds that person repulsive (GW 5:111).
Those who separate themselves from the herd and follow the true path
that is to say, their own, individual true path are said to bear the mark
of Cain, a reference to the Biblical narrative deconstructed by Demian:
because he was different from the rest of the people, the story of how he
slew Abel was invented to destroy his reputation (GW 5:32). Thus the true
inheritors of Paradise are the Cainites (GW 5:14243), also the name of
an early Christian heretical sect (GW 5:48), and it is no coincidence that
the communist-anarchist journal founded by Erich Mhsam (18781934)
in 1911 was called Kain.11 Mhsam was, like Hesse, a member of the eso-
teric community on the Monte Verit,12 whose values Demian embraces as
clearly as it rejects those of Wihelmine Germany that is to say, the Pruss-
ian values of the German Reich presided over by Kaiser Wilhelm II
(18591941).
Even bearing the mark of Cain cannot prevent one from being killed,
however, and in the final chapter war breaks out, clearly identified with the
First World War because of the geopolitical circumstances of the conflict
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
49

(GW 5:156). It turns out that Demian has the rank of lieutenant, and
there are strong hints in the novel that war will have a beneficial effect:
In der Tiefe war etwas im Werden. Etwas wie eine neue Menschlichkeit
(GW 5:160; cf. 13435; Deep down something was coming into being.
Something like a new humanity). The dream of the Great Mother, Sin-
clairs fantasy about Frau Eva in chapter 8, becomes the military reality of
war, in which Sinclair is injured, and the novel leaves him in his bandages,
still pondering the image of his Freund und Fhrer (friend and guide),
Max Demian.
The obsession with myth, which Sinclair demonstrates (GW 5:63),13
has reminded some of the way myth was used for dark political ends by
such National Socialist apologists as Alfred Rosenberg (18931946),
author of Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the
Twentieth Century, 1928). Correspondingly, at least one critic has gone so
far as to accuse Hesse of sympathy with precisely the same proto-fascistic
tendencies that, so it is argued, led to National Socialism.14 In Hesses
defense, it might be argued that he was, at least in part, trying to do what
Thomas Mann attempted some two decades later in his Joseph tetralogy,
namely, to combine Mythos plus Psychologie and den Mythos den
fascistischen [sic] Dunkelmnnern aus den Hnden zu nehmen und ihn ins
Humane umzufunktionieren (to take myth out of the hands of the dark
men of fascism and refunctionalize it into something humane).15 Yet, as
Hesse made clear in his letter to Emil Molt of 19 June 1919, at the time he
conceived his task as a writer as an apolitical one: Meine Aufgabe liegt auf
der Seite des Geists, nicht der Praxis, also auch nicht der Politik (My task
lies on the side of Geist, not of praxis, and hence also not politics). This
relation had, Hesse emphasized, implications for how he executed that
task: Dichterisch uert sich das Erlebte bei mir in einer Vertiefung der
Psychologie, die mir aber zugleich viele neue technische Aufgaben stellt, so
da die literarische Arbeit fr mich zu einem schweren Ringen geworden
ist (Briefe 1:4034; What I experience manifests itself poetically in me by
involving me more deeply in psychology, which at the same time presents
me with many new technical tasks, so that literary work has become a diffi-
cult struggle for me). Hesse discovered just how difficult it had become
when writing his next novel, Siddhartha (1922).
In Berlin, the November Revolution of 1918 ended with the collapse
of the Spartacus uprising (Spartakusaufstand) and the execution of
Liebknecht and Luxemburg. In Munich in Bavaria, on the other hand, a
socialist republic was established by Kurt Eisner (18671919) in 1918 and
when Eisner was assassinated in February 1919, the Communists pro-
claimed a Soviet-style republic (Rterepublik). In March 1919, several
months before military intervention by forces from Prussia and Wrttem-
berg put an end to the Rterepublik, Hesse was invited by Johann Wilhelm
Muehlon to take over the presidency of the ruling cabinet. Hesse turned
50
PAUL BISHOP

down the offer; for one thing, he wrote to Muehlon on 11 March 1919, it
was against his nature (Briefe 1:392). No, his task was a different one and
involved the founding with the zoologist Richard Woltereck (18771944)
of a journal called Vivos voco, first published in October 1919. In this
journal (whose title called on the living, in memory of the dead, to help
create the new postwar culture)16 he indicated the kind of arena where he
wished to intervene; introducing Zarathustras Wiederkehr, he wrote:
Wir mssen nicht hinten beginnen, bei den Regierungsformen und
politischen Methoden, sondern wir mssen vorn anfangen, beim Bau der
Persnlichkeit (GW 10:467; We must not begin at the end, with govern-
mental reform and political methods, but we must begin at the beginning,
with the construction of the personality).
But Hesse was experiencing difficulty constructing his own personal-
ity, as the genesis of Siddhartha reveals.17 He had begun work on the text
in December 1919, producing in a burst of creativity the stories published
in Klingsors letzter Sommer: Erzhlungen (Klingsors Last Summer, 1920),
and numerous watercolor paintings. As the months passed, however, 1921
turned into a year of crisis, to which some poems such as Krankheit (Sick-
ness), Gebet (Prayer), and Media in vita (In the Midst of Life) bear
witness (G, 49397); Hesse turned again to psychoanalysis, this time con-
sulting Jung himself in Zurich in May 1921. For Hesse psychoanalysis was,
as he told Hans Reinhart in May 1921, neither a faith nor a philosophy,
but ein Erlebnis (Briefe 1:473; an experience). The extent of the success
of Hesses therapy with Jung can be gauged by the fact he was able to com-
plete work on Siddhartha, a work he saw as both continuing and comple-
menting the themes of Demian.18 The novel appeared in 1922, the same
year in which the cultural philosopher Theobald Ziegler (18811958)
published his study of Buddhism.19
Siddhartha complicates the legend of the Buddha by giving the name
of the historical Buddha, Siddhatta Gotama, to its central character, who,
however, rejects the Buddhas teaching. In a moment of epiphany,
which has been compared to similar moments in modernist novels by, for
example, Joyce, Musil, or Proust, Siddhartha gains insight into the import-
ance, not of following the right teaching, but of accumulating the right
experience.20 Indeed, there are parallels between this emphasis on experi-
ence and the significance attached to Erfahrung by Walter Benjamin.21
Despite, or maybe because of, its archaic diction, Siddhartha met with a
warm critical response; Hesse reported with satisfaction that, after reading
the novels conclusion (which he described as more Taoist than Indian)
at the peace congress of the international womens league in August 1922,
a Hindu professor from Calcutta congratulated him on the depth of his
engagement with Eastern thought.22 (In the fifties, the book achieved
great popularity in the United States, where Henry Miller described it as
superior to the New Testament.)23
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
51

In 1924, Hesse acquired Swiss citizenship and two years later married
his second wife, the singer Ruth Wenger (from whom he separated in
1927). In 1926 he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts,
but his personal life had turned miserable again, as the collection of poems
published in 1928 under the title Krisis (Crisis) indicates. Hesse saw his
own writings in confessional terms, as he indicates in his letter to Heinrich
Weigand of 14 October 1926, where he also defends the navet of
Eichendorff against the aesthetic perfection of Stefan George (Briefe
2:154). Nor was Hesse any longer sure of the efficacy of therapy, as his cri-
tique of psychoanalysis in his letter to Theodor Schnittkin of 3 June 1928
suggests. For psychoanalysts, he writes, such figures as Novalis, Hlderlin,
Lenau, Beethoven, and Nietzsche would be nothing more than extreme
pathological cases; in their eyes, Schiller suffered from repressed patricidal
desires, and Goethe from certain complexes (Briefe 2:196).
While he was completing work on Siddhartha, Hesse began work on
what many regard as his most successful novel, Der Steppenwolf (1927). If
Siddhartha was able to see his lifes mission in terms of die Welt lieben zu
knnen, sie nicht zu verachten (GW 5:467; being able to love the world,
not to despise it), then the central character of Der Steppenwolf begged to
differ. This work constituted Hesses last major study of that important lit-
erary and social figure, the outsider, analyzed at length by Colin Wil-
son.24 (Thomas Mann also took up an outsiders perspective by sending
Hans Castorp into the mountains in Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain,
1924], where he could see society through a clinical prism, in order to elu-
cidate the disease of modernity.) Shortly after the novel in its entirety had
appeared, Hesse wrote in a letter that neither its content nor its poetic form
had been understood,25 and nearly a decade and a half later he commented
in his Nachwort (1941) to the novel that it was, of his all works, the one
that had been more often and more badly misunderstood than any other.26
What most struck the novels early critics, though, was its honesty das
unbarmherzigste und seelenzerwhlendeste aller Bekenntnisbcher,
dsterer und wilder als Rousseaus Confessions (the most remorseless and
most soul-churning of all confessional writings, gloomier and more savage
than Rousseaus Confessions), as Kurt Pinthus put it27 in its depiction of
the fifty-year-old Harry Haller (Hesse shared the same initials and age as his
main character), the Steppenwolf of the title. For Harry Haller, beyond
doubt an outsider,28 is indeed the Steppenwolf, that is, a mixture of man
and wolf, das in eine ihm fremde und unverstndliche Welt verirrte Tier,
das seine Heimat, Luft und Nahrung nicht mehr findet (GW 7:211; an
animal gone astray in a world it finds strange and incomprehensible, which
can no longer find its home, air, or nourishment). In this formally more
complex work consisting of the Editors Preface, the Records of Harry
Haller, and the Treatise on the Steppenwolf Haller learns, thanks to
the mysterious Hermine, how to dance, and enters the magic theater in
52
PAUL BISHOP

which his desires are acted out. In some respects, this is very much a novel
of the roaring twenties, but although the descriptions of the shady world
of Maria and Hermine (GW 7:328 and 333) are evocative of the social
world of the Weimar Republic, the names of some of the venues locate the
novel, if anywhere, in Zurich or Basel. (Hallers wolf aspect, it has been
suggested, has its analogue in the murders and assassinations in the new
Weimar Republic of the early 1920s, a decade pregnant with coming disas-
ter, as Germany marched relentlessly toward fascism.)29 Nevertheless, the
world of smoke-filled cabaret halls, flappers, vamps, and jazz music func-
tions overall as a cultural signifier of modernity (Pablos saxophone and the
fox-trot Yearning have their counterpart in the recording of Sophie
Tucker singing Some of These Days in Jean-Paul Sartres Nause (Nau-
sea, 1938), another work set in the late twenties or early thirties).
As a powerful amalgam of Nietzsche, Novalis, and Jung, the novel is a
sustained exercise in social critique, and, in parts, constitutes a savage
denunciation of society. A great deal of this critique derives from Hermann
Graf Keyserling (18801946) and Oswald Spengler (18801936), particu-
larly the latters two-volume work Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The
Decline of the West, 191822), with which Hesse was temperamentally
much in agreement.30 To begin with, Haller inveighs against jazz and
against modern culture in general; jazz, we read in the early pages of the
novel, is Untergangsmusik (music of decline) which, compared with
Bach and Mozart, is like all our art, all our thought, all our would-be cul-
ture (Scheinkultur) no more than a disgraceful deception (Schweinerei;
GW 7:219). In a letter to Josef Englert of 1 July 1923 about Handels
opera Rodelinde, Hesse wrote that, for many years now, every time he
heard this kind of music or saw Gothic or Baroque architecture he had
the feeling that this represented eine vergangene, nicht wiederkehrende
Formenwelt (a world of form that has gone and will never return)
grade dies spricht Spengler ja nun in seinem Werk systematisch aus
(Briefe 2:63; this is precisely what Spengler articulates systematically in
his work).
Then again, the challenge presented to Harry Haller by Hermine (GW
7:298) is reminiscent of the decisionism of such so-called Conservative
Revolutionaries as Ernst Jnger (18951998) and Arnolt Bronnen
(18951959),31 and one critic has recently identified elements of the
thought of Ludwig Klages (18721956) in the discourse of Hermine.32 By
the same token, there are echoes of Ernst Jngers critique of the role of
technology in modern social and political economy, as well as of the suspi-
cion of technology expressed by the existential philosopher Martin Hei-
degger (18891976).33 In fact, there is a startling similarity between
Hesses novel and the critique of modernity offered by Heidegger.
After all, it was precisely in the twenties that Heidegger presented his
analysis of modernity in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927), published
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
53

in the very same year as Der Steppenwolf.34 In the contemporary world of

the Weimar Republic, no less, Heidegger detected Seinsvergessenheit the
fact that human beings had forgotten the nature of their existence. For
human beings, Heidegger argued, are Dasein; that is to say, beings whose
existence is structured by temporality (SuZ, 911). We experience this
temporal structure of our existence above all through the possibility, or
rather the certainty, of death; our Dasein is, in Heideggers terms, a Sein
zum Tode (SuZ, 4653; being-towards-death). Acknowledging the
fact of death produces in us Sorge (SuZ, 3944; care), but our Dasein is
also structured by openness, freedom, and the grasping of opportunities,
for it can be projected or designed (entworfen) within the horizon of
the possibilities of being (SuZ, 31). Taking a leaf from Kierkegaards
book, Heidegger argues that the very openness of being can make us
anxious, just as Angst is the appropriate response in a world that has
become unhome-like and uncanny (SuZ, 40; unheimlich). If human
existence in general is a form of thrownness (Geworfenheit) into the
unknown, then modernity in particular robs us of our consciousness of
the temporality of Dasein, as well as its openness, and hence its freedom
and individuality. In the modern world, characterized for Heidegger by the
use of public transport and by reading the newspaper, the specificity of the
(one) individual becomes dissolved into the generality of the (many)
others, what Heidegger termed das Man (SuZ, 27). In opposition to this
loss of responsibility in a general anonymity, Heidegger urged his readers
to become resolute or open (SuZ, 60; ent-schlossen), and Sein und
Zeit constitutes nothing less than a call to authenticity and totality (SuZ,
45; Eigentlichkeit and Ganzheit).
Now, in Hesses novel the fictional editor publishes the papers left
behind by Haller on the grounds that they constitute ein Dokument der
Zeit (a document of the times) expressing die Krankheit der Zeit selbst,
die Neurose jener Generation, welcher Haller angehrt (GW 7:203; the
sickness of the time itself, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller
belongs). The glance thrown by Harry Haller at the editor when they
attend a lecture given by a famous historian and art critic says it all: Der
Blick des Steppenwolfes durchdrang unsre ganze Zeit, das ganze betrieb-
same Getue, die ganze Streberei, die ganze Eitelkeit, das ganze oberflch-
liche Spiel einer eingebildeten, seichten Geistigkeit (GW 7:18990; the
Steppenwolfs look pierced our whole epoch, the whole bustling pretence,
the whole superficial game of a conceited, feeble intellectuality). There are
allusions to Hesses own writings against the First World War it emerges
Harry Haller is ein Kriegsgegner (GW 7:265 and 276; an opponent
of the war): he elaborates on his anti-war stance in conversation with
Hermine (GW 7:3046) and there are prescient references to a coming
war (GW 7:342 and 350). Later, in the Magic Theater, Harry Haller
comes to realize that the capacity for war is in us all (GW 7:390).
54
PAUL BISHOP

For its part, the Treatise on the Steppenwolf defines the contemporary
bourgeoisie in terms of an attempt to ensure preservation and security at
the cost of a feeling of Lebensintensitt (GW 7:23536; intensity of
life). It notes that the Steppenwolf loves, as if he were his own brother, the
political criminal, the revolutionary, or the intellectual seducer, but
deplores the thief, the burglar, the rapist and, while in theory having
nothing whatever against prostitution, would in reality have been quite
unable of taking a prostitute seriously as his equal in a way that suggests
this constitutes a fundamental shortcoming on Harry Hallers part (GW
7:234). In political terms, bourgeois democracy is said to be born of weak-
ness (GW 7:235), and the bourgeois willingly sacrifices his so-called per-
sonality (a compromise born of the need to placate both nature and
Geist) to the great Moloch, the state (GW 7:245).
On the path of Menschwerdung (becoming truly human), those
who count are the great Unsterblichen (immortals), who have tran-
scended bourgeois values and have realized da das verzweifelte Hngen
am Ich, das verzweifelte Nichtsterbenwollen der sicherste Weg zum
ewigen Tode ist, whrend Sterbenknnen, Hllenabstreifen, ewige
Hingabe des Ichs an die Wandlung zur Unsterblichkeit fhrt (GW 7:246;
that the desperate clinging to the ego, desperately not wanting to die, is
the surest way to eternal death, while being able to die, stripping away
ones exterior, the eternal surrender of the ego brings about the transform-
ation to immortality). Elsewhere in the novel there are frequent allusions
to Harry Hallers fear of death, and how he manages to overcome it (GW
7:318; cf. 339, 348). Indeed, his earlier fear of death (GW 7:318), which
determines his relationship to his razor and his decision to commit suicide,
becomes transformed into a desire for suffering that will prepare him for,
and make him willing to accept, dying (GW 7:339): on the night before
the masked ball, Haller senses that his Angst vor dem Tode (anxiety
about death) is about to become Hingabe und Erlsung (GW 7:348;
surrender and redemption).
Later on, the modern world is summarized by Hermine in terms of
eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, playing-cards and radio music,
bars, dance-floors, and jazz (GW 7:34041); but unless, she says, we
accept that life is not a heroic poem, we remain no better than a fool or a
Don Quixote: Wer statt Gedudel Musik, statt Vergngen Freude, statt
Geld Seele, statt Betrieb echte Arbeit, statt Spielerei echte Leidenschaft
verlangt, fr den ist diese hbsche Welt hier keine Heimat . . . (GW
7:341; Those who want music instead of tootling, joy instead of pleasure,
soul instead of money, real work instead of bustle, passion instead of fool-
ing around, will find no home in this pretty little world of ours). Indeed, in
several places the novel deals with the question of the relationship between
high art and popular culture. In short, history amounts to no more than
a swindle, and to genuine human beings there remains nothing but
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
55

death death, and eternity (GW 7:342). In the novel, eternity is described
as a world outside time, as das Reich des Echten (the kingdom of the
truth), and as the kingdom of Mozart, the saints, and the other immortals
(GW 7:343).
It is no coincidence that Hesses critique of the lack of authenticity of
everyday life is developed from the example of an academic, in this case a
professor of oriental studies (GW 7:263). The novel shows Hesse asking
himself, through Harry Haller, what the task of the intellectual in the
modern world is (GW 7:32435 and 340). In a long excursus, the rela-
tionship between the German spirit on the one hand, and music and matri-
archy on the other, is cast in terms of the significance of Logos (GW
7:32425); subsequently, when he is in bed with Maria, the touch of Eros
initiates a flood of images and memories (GW 7:33031).35 According to
Hesses Nachwort, however, what the critics had overlooked were the
positive aspects of the novel. After all, in the text itself the opposition
between man and wolf is deconstructed (GW 7:23940) and, as Hesse
himself pointed out, the suffering world of the Steppenwolf stands in
contrast to eine positive, heitere, berpersnliche und berzeitliche
Glaubenswelt (a positive, cheerful, supra-individual and extra-temporal
world of faith), the world of such immortals as Mozart and Goethe.
(Indeed, Hesse emphasized a key episode, where Harry Haller has an
imaginary conversation with Goethe, by pre-publishing the passage sep-
arately in the Frankfurter Zeitung.)36 In short, then, Hesse emphasized
da das Buch zwar von Leiden und Nten berichtet, aber keineswegs das
Buch eines Verzweifelten ist, sondern das eines Glubigen (that the book
tells of suffering and distress, but it is a book not about someone who
despairs but about someone who believes).37 Above all, the basis of bour-
geois democracy, the conception of the single, unitary self, is rejected by
the treatise in favor of the self as something plural, eine hchst vielfltige
Welt, ein kleiner Sternenhimmel, ein Chaos von Formen, von Stufen und
Zustnden, von Erbschaften und Mglichkeiten (GW 7:242; a highly
diverse world, a small galaxy, a chaos of forms, levels and conditions, of
legacies and possibilities), a view endorsed by Harry Haller (GW 7:315)
and confirmed by his experiences in the Magic Theater (GW 7:385).
The most significant images in the novel are the nexus play
dramatheater, beginning with the play of a child. By means of his
relationship with Maria, Haller believes, he has learned [s]ich kindlich
dem Spiel der Oberflche anzuvertrauen, flchtigste Freuden zu suchen,
Kind und Tier zu sein in der Unschuld des Geschlechts (GW 7:348; to
entrust himself like a child to the play of surfaces, to seek the most fleeting
joys, to be a child and an animal in the innocence of sex) or, in the Schil-
lerian and Nietzschean terms from which this passage derives, to appreciate
the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. This development takes place even
before the final, climactic scenes in the Magic Theater although, as
56
PAUL BISHOP

Hesse once observed, the Magic Theater beginnt schon mit dem
Auftreten Hermines (begins the moment that Hermine enters).38 In the
Magic Theater itself, Haller finally learns, under the influence of the drugs
given to him by Pablo (whose unnaturally large eyes, presumably, indicate
his own excessive use of illegal substances),39 to escape the world of reality
and discover the self: Sie wissen ja, wo diese andere Welt verborgen liegt,
da es die Welt Ihrer eigenen Seele ist, die Sie suchen (GW 7:366; After
all, you know where this other world lies hidden, that it is the world of
your own psyche you are looking for). This capacity to find a universe
within demonstrates Hesses indebtedness to Romanticism,40 but the
Magic Theater can also be read in Jungian terms as the world of active
imagination (on 19 February 1927 Hesse himself read the chapter about
the Magic Theater to the members of Jungs Psychological Club in
Zurich).41
The thirties in Germany saw the rise of the National Socialist Party:
within ten years of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 8 November 1923,
Hitler gained more and more political influence until, on 30 January 1933,
President Hindenburg named him chancellor. Thereafter, Hitler turned
Germany into a totalitarian state, the power of the Party reaching into all
aspects of economic, political, and cultural life. In 1931, the same year he
married his third wife, Ninon Dolbin, Hesse withdrew from the Prussian
Academy of Arts. Following its political takeover, Hesses publisher, the
S. Fischer Verlag, in 1935, was forbidden by the National Socialist govern-
ment to transfer overseas the publication rights to his works; in the Third
Reich itself, his works were suppressed after 1939. Thus Narzi und Gold-
mund (Narcissus and Goldmund, 1930) was one of his last works to be
published in Germany; this work, like Die Morgenlandfahrt (Journey to
the East, 1932), develops further the familiar question of integrating lifes
polarities in general, and Eros and Logos in particular, through the devel-
opment of the two eponymous characters. From 1932 to 1943, Hesse
worked on his largest novel, Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game,
1943), published in Zurich after Hesse had been unable to find a German
publisher.42 As Ronald Gray has pointed out, the novel contains indirect
political references;43 for direct comment on events in the Third Reich,
however, we must turn to Hesses correspondence. Following the collapse
of its successor state, Hesse, in a letter to Luise Rinser of 23 April 1946,
described the Weimar Republic as die einzige erfreuliche Frucht des
ersten Weltkrieges (the one single welcome fruit of the First World War),
in which, however, the roots of National Socialism were also to be found;
Hesse recalled da das deutsche Elend ja nicht erst mit Hitler begonnen
habe, und da schon im Sommer 1914 der trunkene Jubel des Volkes ber
sterreichs gemeines Ultimatum an Serbien eigentlich Manchen htte
aufwecken knnen (Briefe 3:341; that the misery of Germany had not
begin with Hitler, and that as early as the summer of 1914, the drunken
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
57

jubilation of the people at Austrias contemptible ultimatum to Serbia

should have acted for some as a wake-up call). In his correspondence
such as his letter of late 1933 to Josef Englert Hesse had some frank
comments, too, on the treatment of the Jews (Briefe 2:397). Later, in a let-
ter to Rudolf Pannwitz of January 1955, Hesse elaborated on the links
between the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the composition of Das
Glasperlenspiel.44
In some respects, Hesses engagement with the Weimar Republic, the
focus of this volume of essays, is minimal, largely because he was living out-
side Germany for most of the time. In other respects, however, his influ-
ence was massive, because of the immense popularity of his writings. For all
that, however, his writing failed to prevent the rise of National Socialism
and the outbreak of the Second World War. Writing to Marianne Weber in
February 1944, Hesse tried to deal with the question of how German sol-
diers could burn villages and then go and play Mozart, and he looked back
nostalgically on the period of the Weimar Republic as one of hope; then
Hitler suddenly created thousands of brown-shirts for whose uniforms the
public was willing to pay: es gab auch Offiziere genug, die nach dem
Erschieen von 10 oder 100 Geiseln oder dem Niederbrennen eines Dor-
fes sich die Hnde wuschen, sich hinlegten und noch eine Stunde Rilke
oder Goethe lasen (there were also enough officers who, after shooting
dead ten or a hundred hostages or burning down a village, washed their
hands, lay down, and read Rilke or Goethe for an hour); but, he added,
mir wre ein einziger lieber, der keinen Rilke noch Hesse liest, aber seine
Soldaten, statt auf Russen und Juden, auf die eigenen Fhrer zu schieen
beibrchte (Briefe 3:240; I would prefer one officer who reads neither
Rilke nor Hesse but instructs his soldiers to shoot, not at Russians and
Jews, but at their own leaders). This letter raises the questions of why not
one such officer emerged and whether the excessive attention paid to form
by such writers as Rilke bears any responsibility for the rise of Fascism, and
thus whether their aesthetic is, in fact, a murderous one.
Elsewhere, Hesse appears to recognize that an excessive dedication to
literature and psychoanalysis might have been the prime cause of his own
physical and psychological decline, describing himself to Emil Molt on 26
June 1923 as ein hoffnungsloser Outsider (Briefe 2:62; a hopeless out-
sider). Yet Hesse remains an important writer, because the issues that his
works address were not only of great relevance to the Germany of the
Weimar Republic, but remain pressing questions over and beyond this
original historical context. Shortly before Hitlers rise to power, Hesse
wrote to Hilde Saenger in 1931 of what he saw as his and, by extension,
our existential project: Das Leben ist sinnlos, grausam, dumm und
dennoch prachtvoll. . . . Wir mssen die Grausamkeit des Lebens und die
Unentrinnbarkeit des Todes erst in uns aufnehmen, nicht durch Jammern,
sondern durch Auskosten dieser Verzweiflung (Briefe 2:3045; Life is
58
PAUL BISHOP

senseless, cruel, stupid, and nevertheless magnificent. . . . We must absorb

the cruelty of life and the inescapability of death, not by complaining, but
by experiencing this despair to the full).

Notes
1
Hermann Hesse, Die Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 395
(henceforth cited as G). Hesses other works are cited from the following editions:
Hermann Hesse, Gesammelte Werke in zwlf Bnden (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1987), henceforth cited as GW; and Hermann Hesse, Gesammelte
Briefe, 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 197386), henceforth cited as Briefe.
2
GW 10:41116. The article was first published in the Neue Zrcher Zeitung on 3
November 1914.
3
See the extract cited in Volker Michels, Paul Rathgeber, and Eugen Wrzbach,
Hermann Hesse, 18771862 [Marbacher Magazin 54/1990] (Marbach am Neckar:
Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1990), 47.
4
GW 10:46697. See chap. 5, Zarathustra in the Trenches, in Steven E.
Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 18901990 (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London: U of California P, 1992), 12863; here, 134.
5
The novel Rohalde (1914) reflects the breakdown of the relationship with Maria
(GW 1:5169).
6
On Hesse and Jung, see Malte Dahrendorf, Hermann Hesses Demian und
C. G. Jung, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 8 (1958): 8197; Johanna Neuer,
Jungian Archetypes in Hermann Hesses Demian, Germanic Review 57 (1982):
915; and David G. Richards, The Heros Quest for the Self: An Archetypal Approach
to Hesses Demian and Other Novels (Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1987).
7
See Volker Michels, ed., Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Demian, vol. 1, Die
Entstehungsgeschichte in Selbstzeugnissen und Dokumenten, vol. 2, Die Wirkungss-
geschichte in Rezensionen und Aufstzen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993 and
1997).
8
Thomas Mann, Introduction to Demian (New York: Bantam, 1970), ix.
9
Lulu von Strau und Torney, Review of Demian, Die Tat, Dec. 1922; cited in
Hermann Hesse im Spiegel der zeitgenssischen Kritik, ed. Adrian Hsia (Bern:
Francke, 1975), 18283.
10
Hesses authorship was uncovered by Eduard Korrodi in his article of 24 June
1920 in the Neue Zrcher Zeitung, Wer ist der Dichter des Demian? (Briefe
1:56466).
11
Heribert Kuhn, Kommentar, in Hermann Hesse, Demian (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 230.
12
See Harald Szeemann et al, Monte Verit Berg der Wahrheit: Lokale Anthro-
pologie als Beitrag zur Wiederentdeckung einer neuzeitlichen sakralen Topographie
(Milan: Electa Editrice, 1980).
 HERMANN HESSE AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
59

13
See Theodore Ziolkowski, The Gospel of Demian, in The Novels of Hermann
Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1965),
87145; and Der Hunger nach dem Mythos: Zur seelischen Gastronomie der
Deutschen in den Zwanziger Jahren, in Die sogenannten Zwanziger Jahre: First
Wisconsin Workshop, ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (Bad Homburg
v.d.H.: Gehlen, 1970), 169201.
14
Robert C. Conrad, Socio-Political Aspects of Hesses Demian, in Hermann
Hesse: Politische und wirkungsgeschichtliche Aspekte, ed. Sigrid Bauschinger and
Albert Reh (Bern: Francke, 1986), 15565.
15
See Thomas Manns letter of 18 February 1941 in his correspondence with the
Hungarian classicist and associate of Jung, Karl Kernyi (18971973) (Thomas
Mann/Karl Kernyi, Gesprch in Briefen [Munich: dtv, 1967], 105).
16
Ralph Freedmann, Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis; A Biography (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1979), 205.
17
See Volker Michels, ed., Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Siddhartha. 2 vols.
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 197576).
18
See Hesses letter of 3 February 1923 to Frederik van Eeden (Briefe 2:48).
19
Theobald Ziegler, Der ewige Buddho (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1922).
20
Theodore Ziolkowski, Siddhartha: The Landscape of the Soul, in The Novels of
Hermann Hesse, 14677.
21
Heribert Kuhn, Kommentar, in Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek, 1998), 138; see Walter Benjamin, Der Erzh-
ler, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2.2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schwep-
penhuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 43865.
22
Letter to Helene Welti of 29 August 1922 (Briefe 2:28).
23
See his letter to Volker Michels of 24 January 1973, cited in Michels, Materi-
alien zu Hermann Hesses Siddhartha, 2:302.
24
Colin Wilson, The Outsider (1956; London: Picador, 1978), 74.
25
Letter to Hilde Jung-Neugeboren of July 1927 (cited in Volker Michels, ed.,
Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1972], 122).
26
Cited in Michels, Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf, 159.
27
Kurt Pinthus, Hermann Hesse: Zum 50. Geburtstag, in 8 Uhr Abendblatt
(Berlin), 2 July 1927 (cited in Friedrich Pffflin and Bernhard Zeller, Hermann
Hesse, 18771977: Stationen seines Lebens, des Werkes und seiner Wirkung [Munich:
Ksel, 1977], 229).
28
The term itself is used in the novel (64); in his letter to Emil Molt of 26 June
1923, Hesse did not hesitate to apply the expression to himself (Briefe 2:62).
29
Don Nelson, entry on Der Steppenwolf, in Encyclopedia of German Literature,
ed. Matthias Konzett, 2 vols. (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 1:457.
30
See Hesses discriminating but ultimately positive comments on Keyserling and
Spengler in his letters to Romain Rolland of 6 April 1923, to Georg Reinhart of 17
April 1923, and to Italo Zaratin of January 1924 (Briefe 2:57; 60; 76); he
60
PAUL BISHOP

described Der Untergang des Abendlandes as the most significant work to have
emerged from Germany in the previous twenty years (letter to Josef Englert of 1
July 1923 [Briefe 2:63]).
31
Heribert Kuhn, Kommentar, in Hermann Hesse, Der Steppenwolf (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek, 1999), 29899. See Jeffrey Herf, Reac-
tionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984).
32
Eva-Maria Stuckel and Franz Wegener, Interpretationen zu Hermann Hesses
Der Steppenwolf Interpretations on Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf (Gladbeck:
Kulturfrderverein Ruhrgebiet, 2000).
33
Michael E. Zimmerman, Heideggers Confrontation with Modernity: Technology,
Politics, Art (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990).
34
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986); In
English, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London:
SCM P, 1962). Henceforth cited as SuZ with section number.
35
This opposition of Eros and Logos is derived, at least in part, from Ludwig
Klages Von kosmogonischen Eros (1922; Of Cosmogonic Eros), which Hesse much
admired (see his letter to Italo Zaratin of January 1924 [Briefe 2:76]).
36
See Traum von einer Audienz bei Goethe, in the Frankfurter Zeitung of 12
September 1926 (Briefe 2:154).
37
Nachwort, in Michels, Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf, 15960.
38
See his letter to Reinhold Geheeb of 13 June 1927 (cited in Kuhn, Kommen-
tar to Demian, 296).
39
His reading of Steppenwolf prompted Walter Benjamin to record his experiments
with hashish, as well as opium and mescalin (Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Neg-
ative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute
[New York: The Free P, 1977], 126).
40
Compare with Schellings description of intellectual intuition in his Philosophische
Briefe ber Dogmatismus und Kritizismus (Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and
Criticism, 1795), letter 8, in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Historisch-kritische
Ausgabe, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner, Wilhelm G. Jacobs, Hermann Krings,
Hermann Zeltner (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976), Reihe 1, Werke,
vol. 3, p. 87.
41
See Briefe 2:165. There is also a disguised allusion (GW 7:387) to the German
art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn (18861933).
42
Ronald Gray, Hermann Hesse: The Prose and the Politics, in Weimar Ger-
many: Writers and Politics, ed. Alan Bance (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic P,
1982), 1425; here, 21.
43
Such as GW 9:392; see Gray, Hermann Hesse, 24.
44
Volker Michels, ed., Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Das Glasperlenspiel, 2
vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 197374), 1:29596.
3: In Defense of Reason and Justice:
Lion Feuchtwangers Historical
Novels of the Weimar Republic

Roland Dollinger

F EUCHTWANGER (18841958) BELONGS TO a generation of German

writers who spent their formative years in the Wilhelmine Empire.
These writers began their literary careers shortly before or after the turn
of the century, were politicized during or at the end of the First World
War, established their reputation as representatives of literary modernism
or the avant-garde during the Weimar Republic, and often shared
the common experience of exile after the collapse of the first German
democracy. Many of Feuchtwangers artistic friends and acquaintances
belonged to this Frontgeneration, as the historian Detlev Peukert has
called this generation of intellectuals born in the late 1870s and 1880s.1
What Feuchtwanger shared with them despite many cultural and
political differences was his generations disdain for the bourgeois
value system of their parents, the flight into the practice of aestheticism
before the First World War, and the rejection of this often immoral and
apolitical stance in favor of artistic endeavors that could no longer afford
the aestheticist denial of the social and political realities of the Weimar
Republic.
Feuchtwanger rebelled against the Jewish and bourgeois world of his
parents the Feuchtwangers were owners of a margarine factory by
first turning away from the orthodox rituals of his religious parents, and
then, after the completion of his dissertation, Heinrich Heines Fragment:
Der Rabbi von Bacherach (1907), preferring a financially insecure career
as literary critic and author over a respectable life as an academic.2 Like
other young writers at the time who cultivated their social marginalization,
Feuchtwanger cherished his distance from both the Jewish world of his
parents and his non-Jewish German environment. However, this distance
also laid the foundation for his lifelong self-representation as someone who
does not belong to any greater collective other than that group of
exemplary human beings who, like Feuchtwanger, would take it upon
themselves to enter the realm of spiritual darkness and enlighten it with
their rationality.
62
ROLAND DOLLINGER

Before Feuchtwanger established his fame as a romancier who would

modernize the nineteenth-century historical novel by using historical facts
as allegorical material for his literary analysis of contemporary issues,3 he
made a name for himself in 1908 as an ambitious editor of his own short-
lived journal Der Spiegel (The Mirror), and then as critic for Siegfried
Jacobsohns Schaubhne, a journal for contemporary theater. Shortly
before he met his wife Marta, he finished his first novel, Der tnerne Gott
(The God Made of Clay, 1910), a romantic-erotic tale still inspired by the
fashionable turn-of-the-century aestheticism despite its critique of the
artistic Bohme in Munich, and somewhat reminiscent of Heinrich Manns
celebrated Die Gttinnen (The Goddesses, 1903).4 From 1912 until the
beginning of the First World War, Feuchtwanger and his wife traveled
through Southern Europe and North Africa, continuing their adventur-
ous, Bohemian lifestyle that ended with Feuchtwangers flight from a
French-Tunisian prison in 1914. After his return to Munich in the fall of
1914, Feuchtwanger was drafted into the army but was declared unfit for
military service, thus avoiding the horrific war experiences that for many
writers became the vantage point for their literary works in the 1920s.
Several significant changes in Feuchtwangers literary development
occurred during the First World War. In several of the plays he wrote
between 1915 and 1918, Feuchtwanger not only expressed his pacifist
convictions and sympathy for the enemy (his adaptation of Aeschyluss The
Persians in 1916; Die Kriegsgefangenen [Prisoners of War, 1919]) but also
began to see the war as the catastrophic climax of Western civilization. He
tried to correct Western civilizations inherent flaws by embracing the
philosophical wisdom of Asian or Eastern cultures a topic that not only
formed the basis of his plays Vasantasena (1916), Jud Sss (1916), and
Warren Hastings (1916)5 but would also inform all of his novels from the
Weimar Republic. Although Feuchtwanger continued to write plays until
1923 (and then two more after the Second World War), he realized that a
new genre the historical novel was more appropriate for the depic-
tion of the conflict between East and West, a conflict that according to
Feuchtwanger also manifested itself in the opposition between Handeln
and Betrachten (doing and observing). The most significant changes the
First World War brought about in Feuchtwangers work were the transi-
tion from drama to novel, visible in his dramatic novel Thomas Wendt
(1920), which deals with the political idealism of a writer during the revo-
lution in Munich at the end of the First World War; his rejection of aes-
theticism; and his intention to depict the complexity of the postwar reality
beyond the confines of the self.6
Besides being remembered as a successful playwright and the innov-
ator of the modern historical novel, Feuchtwangers work is often associated
with that of other German-Jewish writers, such as Kurt Tucholsky
(18901935) or Jakob Wassermann (18731934), who like Feuchtwanger
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
63

responded to the crisis of self-identity of German Jews.7 Their assimilation

into German society in the wake of their complete emancipation in 1871
was threatened by the reemergence of anti-Semitism during and after the
war. While Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka (18831924), Arnold Zweig
(18871968), and Jakob Wassermann looked for manifestations of a true
Jewish identity in the idealized world of Eastern European Judaism,
Feuchtwanger, as we shall see, hoped to rescue Jewish subjectivity by view-
ing it as the driving force behind a historical process that would ultimately
lead to a synthesis of Western and Eastern values.

Jud Sss and Die hliche Herzogin

If someone were to write a history of mistakes committed by German
publishers, its author would certainly have to include a chapter on Feucht-
wangers first two historical novels, Jud Sss and Die hliche Herzogin
(The Ugly Duchess).8 Dissatisfied with his drama Jud Sss, which he wrote
191617, Feuchtwanger returned for his first novel to the same historical
subject matter of the rise and downfall of Joseph Sss Oppenheimer
(16921738) in the duchy of Wrttemberg during the early eighteenth
century.9 Although the first German book club, the Volksverband der
Bcherfreunde, expressed its interest in Feuchtwangers novel upon its
completion in September 1922, the Jewish theme of the book was deemed
too provocative for its publication at a time of rising anti-Semitism. The
publisher therefore commissioned Feuchtwanger to write a different novel
in the same historical vein and Feuchtwanger immediately began to work
on the life of the Tyrolean Duchess Margarete (131869). The publication
of this literary by-product in 1923 was an immediate success, but, unfor-
tunately for Feuchtwanger, by the time he received his first royalties gal-
loping inflation had already devalued the Reichsmark and the literary
success of Die hliche Herzogin did not translate into financial gain for the
author. Meanwhile, the publication of Jud Sss depended on another coin-
cidence. Feuchtwanger had been under contract by the Drei Masken Ver-
lag, a publisher specializing in plays, to find Italian and French plays and
make them suitable for German theater. When his publisher lost interest in
this project and wanted to cancel its contract with Feuchtwanger, they
offered to publish Jud Sss (in a small edition of only 6,000 copies) as
financial compensation. After the books publication in 1925, Feucht-
wangers first historical novel soon became a literary sensation both in the
United States, where it first appeared as Power (1926), and in England,
where Jew S (1926) was reprinted twenty-three times during the first
year. This stunning success of a hitherto unknown German writer in the
Anglophone world helped increase the number of copies sold in Germany
to approximately 300,000 by the end of the Weimar Republic. Despite the
64
ROLAND DOLLINGER

timidity of two German publishers, Jud Sss became an international best-

seller and established Feuchtwangers fame as a novelist.10
Inspired by Manfred Zimmermanns biography of Joseph Sss Oppen-
heimer (1874),11 Feuchtwangers novel remained faithful to the basic facts
of the life and death of Sss Oppenheimer (16981738), who during the
reign of Duke Karl Alexander from 1733 to 1737 became his powerful
financier and political advisor. In constant need of money in order to satisfy
his insatiable desire for a lavish lifestyle at his court and to pay for the many
soldiers who helped him realize his political plans to cancel the rights of the
parliament and turn protestant Wrttemberg into a Catholic state, Karl
Alexander became increasingly dependent on his Court Jews political
shrewdness and his ability to provide the financial means. Sss Oppen-
heimers own extravagances and his disregard for the financial well-being
of the Swabian subjects rendered him an easy target for the simmering
anti-Semitism that ran deep in all social groups. The dukes unexpected
death at the height of the political crisis over the his planned coup dtat
brought the wrath of the populace upon Sss Oppenheimer, who without
his protector became the most obvious scapegoat for the Swabians pent-
up rage against the dukes policies and machinations. Most of the dukes
other advisors remained unmolested, and the spectacle of Sss Oppen-
heimers public hanging in Stuttgart signified the brutal conclusion of this
chapter from Wrttembergs local history.
According to Feuchtwanger, the significance of his novel lies neither in
the representation of the social rise of an eighteenth-century Jew from life
in the ghetto to a powerful public position nor in his becoming a scapegoat
for the non-Jewish majorities. Numerous other Jewish financiers had suf-
fered a similar fate before him. This story, Feuchtwanger argues, would
hardly have raised the interest of his readers (CO, 38889). Feuchtwanger
does not view his novel as a panorama of Jewish life in eighteenth-century
Germany, nor does he want to vindicate Sss Oppenheimer, whom previ-
ous anti-Semitic renditions such as Wilhelm Hauffs novella Jud S
(1827) had vilified, by creating an apologetic depiction of his protagonist.
Indeed, Feuchtwangers Sss Oppenheimer is everything but a positive
image of a Jewish person. For most of the novel he is seen as greedy for
power and money, cunning and servile, and with little respect for other
people. This negative portrait of an eighteenth-century Jewish financier
opened the book to attacks from both German-Jewish and vlkisch critics
(CO, 388). While anti-Semites saw the novel as further evidence for the
allegedly evil, destructive character of the Jews, German-Jewish critics
feared that Feuchtwanger unnecessarily provided them with new ammuni-
tion. Of course, such criticisms reveal more about the reviewers anxieties
about the uneasy relationship between Germans and Jews in the first half
of the twentieth century than they do about the authors intentions in the
novel. Only a biased reader could ignore the fact that all the character flaws
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
65

that one may attribute to Sss also typify the multitude of German charac-
ters in Jud Sss. The scrupulousness with which Sss Oppenheimer and the
duke use each other to pursue their own selfish interests binds them
together in an uncanny love-hate relationship that both Sss Oppenheimer
and Karl Alexander acknowledge (JS, 297). The parrot that Sss Oppen-
heimer keeps in his villa in Stuttgart is not merely a symbol for his fascin-
ation with exotic objects. It also symbolizes the link between the German
sovereign and his Jewish subject, a relationship based on mutual imitation
and repetition. The Duke, for example, casts his eyes at Magdalen Sybille,
the only woman in the novel with genuinely positive feelings for Sss
Oppenheimer, only after he discovers his Jews desire for her. And when
Sss Oppenheimer convinces her to become the dukes courtesan, he uses
the young woman to please the duke and obtain more power for himself,
power that is modeled after the absolute power of the monarch (JS, 22329).
By executing the Jewish scapegoat who conveniently serves as a screen for
the projection of their own negative qualities, the people of Wrttemberg
cleanse the body politic of their own failures. It is a gross misrepresentation
of Jud Sss to suggest that certain character traits used by Feuchtwanger to
describe the many figures of his novel are specifically Jewish or German
attributes an intentional misreading of the book that became the basis
for Veit Harlans viciously anti-Semitic film version of 1940.
In Feuchtwangers opinion, however, the key to understanding Jud
Sss is to be found not in Sss Oppenheimers morally questionable actions
but rather in his development from a man of power to a man of wisdom, in
the trajectory of his inner life that clearly sets him apart from the German
characters in the novel. He wants the reader to recognize the allegorical
significance of this exemplary Jew for all white Western Europeans: they
too must embark on a spiritual journey toward the Eastern culture of Asia:
they must enter den Weg ber die enge europische Lehre von der Macht
. . . zu der Lehre Asiens vom Nichtwollen und Nichttun (CO, 390; the
path from the narrow European teachings about power . . . to the teaching
of Asia about non-desiring and non-doing). In numerous autobiographical
sketches, commentaries on his literary works, and essays on the historical
significance of Judaism, Feuchtwanger repeatedly refers to the importance
of this idea for both his fictional characters and his self-understanding as a
German-Jewish intellectual. In his Versuch einer Selbstbiographie
(Attempt at an Autobiography, 1927) Feuchtwanger even claims that prior
to 1927 he had written only one book, which dealt with human beings
caught between the dualism of activity and inactivity or Macht und
Erkenntnis (CO, 363; power and knowledge). For Feuchtwanger, Jud
Sss was primarily a novel of ideas, dealing with a number of philosophical
oppositions such as vita activa versus vita contemplativa, outer versus inner
life, appearance versus essence, power versus wisdom, the pursuit of ones
desires versus the denial of desires, Nietzsche versus Buddha (CO, 390).
66
ROLAND DOLLINGER

Although Feuchtwangers fascination with Eastern cultures and religions

was shared by many non-Jewish writers during the first part of the twenti-
eth century, Feuchtwangers discursive linkage between the Orient and the
historical task of Judaism went beyond such Exoticist tendencies.
Since the turn of the century, Wilhelmine culture had displayed a great
fascination with the Orient, and Feuchtwangers first major dramatic suc-
cess, Vasantasena (1915), an adaptation of a fifth-century Indian play, cap-
italized on this attraction. He also positively reviewed Alfred Dblins novel
Die drei Sprnge des Wang-Lun (1916), which he praised for its wisdom in
promoting non-resistance (CO, 33740). However, Feuchtwangers par-
ticipation in this fashionable literary topos becomes more complicated
through his claim that he chose a Jewish character to undertake this jour-
ney to the East because, in his view, Jews are destined to become a sort of
avant-garde in this process of bringing Eastern ideas to Europe. Both their
geographical origin in a region located between Europe and Asia as well as
their historical role as mediators between the two cultural spheres made
Jews particularly qualified to exemplify this path to the wisdom of the East.
Paul Levesque has recently demonstrated that Feuchtwangers notion of
the mediating role of Jews must be understood within the context of the
long-standing history of a discourse ascribing supposedly Oriental character
traits to modern European Jewry.12 While in the nineteenth century anti-
Semitic writers such as Treitschke, Chamberlain, and Sombart used this type
of rhetoric to deprive German Jews of their proper space within German cul-
ture by labeling them as non-European, and Western European Jewish writ-
ers like Karl Emil Franzos (18481904) employed a similar strategy to distance
themselves from their unrefined, unassimilated Eastern European co-
religionists, Jewish intellectuals of the early twentieth century welcomed the
association of Jews with the East.13 The cultural and political purpose of this
reinterpretation of the image of the Oriental Jew is clear: German-Jewish
intellectuals, threatened by rising anti-Semitism in the wake of the First World
War and the loss of a Jewish self-identity through assimilation, could redefine
themselves in positive terms as major players in the cultural sphere and view
themselves as uniquely qualified to perform tasks of world-historical impor-
tance.14 As Michael Brenner has demonstrated in his book The Renaissance
of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, the construction of the Jew as Orien-
tal in works by other German-Jewish writers, such as Else Lasker-Schlers
Hebrische Balladen (Hebrew Ballads, 1913), Arnold Zweigs Das ostjdische
Antlitz (The Eastern Jewish Countenance, 1919), and Jakob Wassermanns
Der Fall Maurizius (The Maurizius Case, 1928), to mention only a few,
served the purpose of creating an ideal, authentic counterimage to the
highly assimilated Western Jew who had lost his Jewish self-identity15. But
whereas these writers sought the authentic Jew either in the Orient or in the
Eastern European shtetl, Feuchtwanger rejected this notion of idealizing the
East, instead opting for a cultural symbiosis of East and West.
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
67

In order to make Sss Oppenheimer an allegorical figure signifying the

development of European man toward the ideal of overcoming ones
worldly ambition and desire, Feuchtwanger could not construe his protag-
onist simply as a victim of unjust prosecution. His inner transformation
had to be seen as the result of his own decision. Two fictional episodes in
the novel serve this purpose. First, Feuchtwangers main character could
have saved himself from being executed by making public the written evi-
dence that he was in fact the illegitimate son of a Christian nobleman a
stunning development in the novel for which Feuchtwanger had no histor-
ical evidence. By keeping the secret of his Christian father to himself, Sss
Oppenheimer decides to retain his Jewishness and remain the Jewish out-
sider in a Christian world. Unlike his brother, who converted to Christian-
ity in order to serve as a high-ranking official at the court in Darmstadt,
Sss also rejects conversion and chooses to die as a Jew. In his commentary
on the novel, Feuchtwanger writes that his protagonists repudiation of
Christianity should not be equated with his faithfulness to Judaism (CO,
389). Until his incarceration, Sss Oppenheimer in fact shows only disdain
for the ritual laws of his religion. But his unwillingness to save his neck by
converting to Christianity demonstrates the authors ideal of self-denial.
Sss Oppenheimer must accept his demise happily (CO, 390) and welcome
death in order to illustrate Feuchtwangers preference for knowledge over
power (JS, 387). At the same time, however, and this questions Feucht-
wangers own interpretation, Ssss refusal to give in to the hypocritical
proselytizing of some Swabian Protestants assures his final victory over his
enemies. Feuchtwangers ideal of self-denial requires that his protagonist
enjoy a masochistic pleasure during his public humiliation but, like other
masochistic pleasures, this too guarantees that he remains in control at the
moment of his demise.
Moreover, Sss Oppenheimers path toward enlightenment and the
denial of his initial will to power required Feuchtwanger to include
another purely fictional strand in his historical narrative. The death of Sss
Oppenheimers daughter Naemi, who escapes from the clutches of the
intoxicated and lecherous Duke Karl Alexander by throwing herself from
the roof of her house, constitutes the tragic turning point in her fathers
metamorphosis. While he first seeks revenge by pushing the Duke toward
a confrontation resembling a civil war with the inhabitants of Wrttem-
berg, Sss Oppenheimer later recognizes that this course of action was the
wrong way to commemorate his daughter. Only after overcoming his
Western desire to boost his self-esteem through confrontation with others,
and by internalizing the Eastern wisdom that schlafen ist besser als
wachen, tot sein besser als lebendig sein (JS, 393; sleeping is better than
being awake, being dead is better than being alive) is he able to enjoy a
visionary community with his daughter (CO, 449). Naemis death is the
narrative prerequisite for her fathers final acceptance of Asian principles.
68
ROLAND DOLLINGER

She joins other female characters in the modern German novel for
example, the murdered women in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) or Harry
Hallers female counterpart Hermine in Hesses Steppenwolf (1927)
whose deaths serve as the necessary sacrifice for the modern heros suc-
cessful spiritual development. Unlike her father, who chooses death,
Naemi is a victim.16
At the end of the novel, shortly before his execution, Sss Oppen-
heimers inner transformation is complete. A mystical union between Sss
and Rabbi Gabriel (JS, 462), the cabbalist seeking the presence of God in
the natural world, signifies that Sss Oppenheimers life of political
activism has now been replaced by his knowledge about the vanity of all
worldly desires and the futility of selfish individualism. Oppenheimers
forehead now bears the mark of religious wisdom, the Hebrew letter shin,
which is also the physical leitmotif characterizing Rabbi Gabriel. Although
Feuchtwangers idealization of self-denial and self-dissolution deeply
Romantic notions that became part of twentieth-century German culture
via Wagners operas and Schopenhauers philosophy may help Sss
Oppenheimer find his peace at the moment of death, Feuchtwangers mes-
sage should not be accepted without some reservations. At a time when
Thomas Mann published Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924),
his novel about the transcendence of the life-negating German fascination
with death, Feuchtwanger seems to have moved in the opposite direction.
If Sss Oppenheimer has become like Rabbi Gabriel, then one cannot
speak of a unity reconciling the juxtaposed lives of the Court Jew and the
mystic.17 And if Rabbi Gabriel embodies Feuchtwangers ideal, then his
mysticism prevails at the expense of all social and political activity.
Feuchtwangers dilemma at the end of Jud Sss expresses a fundamen-
tal problem for liberal intellectuals of the Weimar Republic. While sup-
porting the democratic principles of the new republic in Germany after the
First World War and hoping for free elections, the end to censorship, and
an economic policy that would end the material suffering of the people,18
Feuchtwanger and like-minded liberal writers such as Heinrich Mann
(18711950) and Alfred Dblin (18781957) were caught between the
desire to break down the barrier between literature and politics, on the one
hand, and the equally strong tendency to defend the purity of the cul-
tural sphere on the other hand. Feuchtwanger witnessed the leftist revolu-
tion in Munich in 191819, the active role that intellectuals such as Ernst
Toller, Erich Mhsam, and Gustav Landauer (18701919) played in it,
and their gradual disillusionment with the practical world of politics. In his
play Thomas Wendt (1920), an immediate response to the events in
Munich, Feuchtwanger created the character of a writer who initially joins
the revolution before coming full circle by abandoning politics completely
for the purer world of the spirit. Both Feuchtwangers Thomas Wendt and
Jud Sss deal with the problem of the intellectual who must negotiate his
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
69

path between assuming power and accepting responsibility for his actions,
and defending the realm of knowledge and risking being sidelined by other
historical forces. In this light, the character of Jud Sss is perhaps less
an allegorical figure for the journey of so-called Western men toward an
imagined East than a character symbolizing the insecurity of an intellectual
like Feuchtwanger about his proper place within an increasingly class-
conscious modern German society. While this is true for most liberal
writers of the Weimar Republic who refused to put their literary production
in the service of party politics, Feuchtwangers Jewish background certainly
heightened his sense of not belonging. And he continued to pursue this
topic in his next novel, Die hliche Herzogin.
Much smaller in scope than Jud Sss, Feuchtwangers novel about
Duchess Margarete, nicknamed Maultasch (HH, 112) because of the
ugly shape of her mouth, is both an action-filled political thriller and a psy-
chological portrait of an outsider. Set in Tyrol in the fourteenth century,
the novel tells a complex story of intrigue, deception, jealousy, greed, and
several murders. Revolving around the competing interests of German
dynasties such as the Luxemburgs, Wittelbachs, and Habsburgs, the Pope
(who was exiled in Avignon), local feudal lords, and the cities of Tyrol,
Feuchtwangers narrative about the life and politics of Margarete bears sev-
eral similarities to Jud Sss.
Inspired by Freuds psychoanalysis, which Feuchtwanger began to
study after the First World War, this novel deals principally with the sublim-
ation of emotional and sexual satisfaction through political activity.
Spurned by all men due to her ugliness, Margarete, whose intellectual
capabilities are vastly superior to those of her male allies and enemies, seeks
personal fulfillment by becoming an important player on the European
political stage. Her first effort to substitute the idealization of a knightly
friend for her unfulfilled desires is cut short when he is executed after an
unsuccessful coup dtat directed against her first husband. Although Mar-
garete always pursues the interest of Tyrol against the more powerful
dynasties, who are intent on absorbing this bridge to Italy into their
domains, and implements a progressive, enlightened policy of moderniz-
ing her country, her smart leadership never produces the desired result,
that is, her recognition by others. The Volk, characterized by Feuchtwanger
as superstitious and governed by primitive instincts, attribute her political
success to her rival, the beautiful but cunning Agnes von Flavon, one of
Feuchtwangers invented characters. Consumed by jealousy and hatred,
Feuchtwangers ugly duchess seeks the death penalty for Agnes against the
resistance of the Tyrolean aristocracy and the masses, who worship Agness
beauty and charisma. Before Margarete can spare Agness life, Agnes is
killed by Konrad von Frauenberger, a cynical nihilist representing the
politician without conscience. Earlier in the novel, he had poisoned Mar-
garetes second husband with her knowledge, because her husband,
70
ROLAND DOLLINGER

Ludwig of Bavaria, had an affair with Agnes and deprived Tyrol of much-
needed income and Konrad also kills Margaretes son, the only heir, to
protect the power interests of his own social group, the gentry. While Mar-
garete buries her son alone, the aristocracy and the populace honor Agnes
by flocking together at her burial. Agnes, the beautiful Other, has
defeated Margarete even in death. At the end of the novel, the reader sym-
pathizes with a broken Margarete, who was unable to realize either her
personal desires or her political goals. Abandoned by her former friends,
allies, and subjects, who blame her wrongfully for Agness death, she cedes
Tyrol to Duke Rudolf of Austria (133965), leaving the House of Habs-
burg to determine its future. Unlike the historical Margarete, who spent
the remaining years of her life in Vienna, Feuchtwangers protagonist
moves to Bavaria, where we see her disillusioned and resigned to a life of
solitude on a tiny island.
Like Sss, Margarete withdraws from the world of political intrigue by
renouncing all claims to power. But Margaretes passivity at the end of her
life, unlike Sss Oppenheimers, does not signify Feuchtwangers Eastern
ideal of self-conscious non-doing; it is mere resignation, the result of the
many defeats she has suffered at the hands of her opponents.19 His dictum
that der Handelnde niemals Gewissen hat, sondern nur der Betracht-
ende (CO, 369; the man of action never has a conscience, only the
observing person has one) is a fitting characterization of Margaretes long-
time advisor, Jakob von Schenna, who refuses to be drawn into the polit-
ical battle between the Duchess and Agnes (HH, 253). Always the
intellectual observer, he analyzes the all-too-human motives of the power-
ful and shares with the old Abbot Johannes von Viktrings melancholic
insight into the transitoriness of happiness and fame (HH, 210).
Both Jud Sss and Die hliche Herzogin take place at a historical time
that Feuchtwanger conceives of as a transitional period between the patri-
archally structured order of premodern times with an emphasis on lineage
and rank on the one side, and the onset of modernity on the other.20 And
in both novels the discourse of modernity is intimately linked to the sphere
of money and trade, urbanization, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and most
interestingly, the figure of the Jew, whose status as social outsider allows
him to take advantage of new economic opportunities. Margarete repre-
sents modernity: she opens the gates of Tyrolean cities to Jews, improves
the trading conditions, enhances the financial well-being of a rising urban
middle-class, but ultimately her project of modernization is doomed to
failure because the irrationality of her environment, still anchored in the
medieval value-system, proves to be too strong. An outsider herself, she
strongly identifies with her own Court Jew, Mendel Hirsch, who helps her
modernize the cities. Unlike Sss, however, Mendel Hirsch does not seek
entrance into the inner circles of power, but like his latter-day coreligionist
he and many other Jews are brutally murdered during a pogrom, the origin
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
71

of which Feuchtwanger unequivocally locates in the material envy of Chris-

tian merchants.
Through this discourse of modernity, linked to the image of the Jew,
Feuchtwangers historical novels also reveal their proper cultural and polit-
ical origin within the context of the Weimar Republic. The demise of the
Wilhelmine Empire and its concomitant patriarchal, authoritarian struc-
tures and its replacement by a republic, in which capitalist tendencies and
culturally modern values were no longer kept in check by feudal interests,
were viewed by many opponents of the postwar order on both the political
right and left as a Jewish conspiracy against the supposedly more trad-
itional German forms of life. Although the discursive nexus between
modernity and Jews was an invention of the nineteenth century and often
embraced by German-Jewish writers such as Heinrich Heine (17971856)
and Ludwig Brne (17861837), it gained new prominence during the
Weimar Republic. The murder of Walter Rathenau (18671922) intel-
lectual, director of AEG, and secretary of state in 1922, whose life
Feuchtwanger originally wanted to use as the model for the character of
Sss (CO, 511), indicated that Jews as symbols of a capitalist modernity
once again became a target of nationalist circles. By portraying Mendel
Hirsch as a Jewish financier supporting the modernizing projects of Mar-
garete and by emphasizing his usefulness for the development of her cities,
Feuchtwanger emphasizes the historical role of Jews for the rise of a
capitalist modernity in German territories and simultaneously blames
backward-oriented Germans, assembled in the ultra-conservative Artus-
runde (HH, 194), for the destruction of historical progress. Not the Jews,
but the German opponents of modernity, Feuchtwanger suggests, pre-
sented the real danger for the Weimar Republic. His thinly veiled allego-
rization of the beginnings of the Nazi movement through this group of
young, violent champions of knightly culture and enemies of bourgeois
capitalism was Feuchtwangers first, brief attempt to come to grips with the
phenomenon of vlkisch nationalism in the 1920s. In his next novel,
Erfolg, Feuchtwanger met this challenge head-on, and he no longer felt
the need to project his representation of the early 1920s into a distant past.

Erfolg
Erfolg (1930)21 is the first of three loosely connected novels Die Geschwis-
ter Oppermann (The Oppermanns, 1933) and Exil (1940) were written after
Hitlers ascent to power that Feuchtwanger called Wartesaal-Trilogie
(Waiting-Room Trilogy).22 In his commentary on Exil, Feuchtwanger
explained that the German dictatorship was also made possible by the inex-
cusable passivity of the opponents of National Socialism, who had waited too
long before responding to the brutality of the Nazi regime with their own
72
ROLAND DOLLINGER

violence.23 While these comments, written two months after the beginning of
the Second World War in his French exile, reflect Feuchtwangers pugnacious
attitude, prompted by the aggression of Nazi Germany, we shall see that in
Erfolg he still hoped to defeat vlkisch barbarism by means of an appeal to
human rationality and the power of literature.
When Feuchtwanger began to dictate his novel to his secretary, Lola
Sernau, at the end of 1927, two years after he had moved from Munich to
Berlin, the Weimar Republic was enjoying relative economic and political
stability. The public was not yet concerned with rising unemployment in
the wake of the Great Depression and the radicalization of the political
parties of both the left and the right that soon would weaken the moderate
political center. In May 1928 the National Socialists received less than
three percent of the votes to the Reichstag, and Feuchtwangers fictional
account of the origin of the National Socialist movement in Munich
seemed to revolve around an already historical event. This may have led
Feuchtwanger to choose a narrative perspective that supposedly looked
back at the narrated events from the year 2000.24 When Erfolg was pub-
lished in 1930, however, the National Socialists share of seats in the par-
liament had increased to 18.3 percent, and most reviewers did not read
Erfolg as a historical novel but rather as a political Zeitroman, the first
novel by a major Weimar novelist dealing with the origin of National
Socialism.25 Depending on the political viewpoint of the reviewer, Erfolg
was either praised as a warning against the Nazi movement or lambasted as
a book of hatred that according to a Nazi reviewer had earned its
author his exit visa from Germany.26 More recently, there have also been
critical attempts to establish Erfolg as a Schlsselroman and identify some of
the characters of the novel as representations of historical persons:27 the
Marxist engineer Prckl, for example, is said to be Feuchtwangers friend
Bertolt Brecht, the comedian Balthasar Hierl allegedly shows great resem-
blance to Karl Valentin, while the writers Matthi, Pfisterer, and Tverlin
are modeled after the writers Ludwig Thoma, Ludwig Ganghofer, and
Feuchtwanger himself.28 While such readings emphasize the resemblance
between fictional characters and real persons Feuchtwangers friend
Brecht, for example, was offended by the character of Prckl they
downplay the aesthetic (fictitious) character of Erfolg, that is, Feucht-
wangers effort to analyze historical events and movements through the
perspective of fictional characters who become metonymic figures repre-
senting various social groups and their Weltanschauungen during the
Weimar Republic (CO, 397).
Formally, Erfolg is the most modern of Feuchtwangers novels, and is
often associated with the term Neue Sachlichkeit (New Sobriety), a term
that Feuchtwanger did not find particularly useful to describe his novels
(CO, 436). While Die hliche Herzogin and Jud Sss often experiment
with language reminiscent of Expressionist prose noteworthy is the
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
73

effort to create an astonishing rhythm by stringing together several verbs

or adjectives such linguistic innovation recedes in favor of a plurality of
narrative modes. The insertion of sociological data, historical excursions,
and essays on cultural issues into the fictional plot,29 the often rapid change
of narrative perspective from an omniscient narrator to first- and third-
person narration to interior monologue, and the montage-like juxtaposition
of several narrative strands that create the impression of simultaneity lend
to Erfolg a decisively modern quality. Unlike some other modern writers
in his essay Die Konstellation der Literatur (1927) he names Dblin and
Brecht as examples (CO, 420) Feuchtwanger wanted to make sure that
an avantgardist experimentation with form did not gain the upper hand
and obscure the purpose of prose literature. According to his essay Der
Roman von heute ist international (Todays Novel is International,
1932), the novel accomplishes what the different sciences fail to do, that is,
unify the fragmented knowledge of ones era and offer readers a coherent
worldview. Like other modern novelists, such as Hermann Broch and
Alfred Dblin, Feuchtwanger ascribes to the modern novel the function of
creating a totalizing image of reality and thus enabling the reader to
construct meaning in a meaningless world (CO, 434).30 And since literary
realism was no longer able to adequately reflect the complexity of modern
reality and bring about a meaningful, coherent world view, the combin-
ation of different narrative modes documentary, essayistic, and fictional
seemed most promising to Feuchtwanger, as well as to other modern
novelists.
Although Feuchtwangers novel Erfolg deals primarily with the eco-
nomic, social, cultural, and political developments in Bavaria after the First
World War through the representation of a great number of mainly
middle-class and aristocratic characters Feuchtwanger was criticized by
leftist reviewers for the conspicuous absence of proletarians and farmers31
it does not lose sight of the major historical trends in Weimar Germany
from 1921 to 1924. Feuchtwanger pays great attention to the galloping
inflation of the early 1920s as well as the occupation of the Ruhr valley by
the French army. More specifically, the novel focuses on the corrupt judi-
cial system, the influence of powerful economic circles on the political
process, and the rural conservatism and cultural backwardness of Bavaria
and its inhabitants at a time of rapid industrial development. Erfolg also
continues the discussion of a theme in Feuchtwangers earlier novels: the
dilemma of intellectuals who are caught between political engagement and
passivity, a dilemma that reappears in Erfolg as the struggle of the bour-
geois writer with the theory and practice of Marxism. Finally, and perhaps
most important, Feuchtwanger analyses the rise and (only apparent) fall of
the National Socialist movement in Bavaria between 1921 and 1924.32
Exemplary for Feuchtwangers exposure of the corrupt judicial sys-
tem in Bavaria is the story of Martin Krger, the director of a modern
74
ROLAND DOLLINGER

Munich art museum (Gemldegalerie), who is falsely accused of perjury

and sentenced to several years in prison. In the wake of the failed leftist
revolution after the First World War, conservative and reactionary polit-
icians, driven by personal ambition and ideology, find an easy scapegoat
in the intellectual Krger. His predilection for avantgardist art is offen-
sive to the reactionary cultural politics of the Munich government, which
claims to represent the aesthetic taste of the people of Bavaria. Although
Feuchtwanger does not introduce the character of Rupert Kutzner and
his political movement of the Wahrhaft Deutschen (True Germans)
an easily decipherable allusion to Hitler and the National Socialist
Party until the thirteenth chapter of the second book, his analysis of
the forced marginalization of Krger prepares the reader to recognize
National Socialism as a reactionary movement rejecting everything that
may be associated with anti-German modernity: modern art, international
monopoly capitalism, Jews, the Freemasons, and the Jesuits (E, 2046).
Moreover, the True Germans are seen as a hotchpotch of disillusioned,
violent war veterans (such as Erich Bornhaak and Dellmaier), petit-bour-
geois, authoritarian characters (such as Cajetan Lechner), who sympathize
with the National Socialists for non-political, material, and sometimes
merely very personal reasons, and adventurous romantics of little intelli-
gence (such as Kutzners brother). Feuchtwanger often uses literary satire
bordering on caricature to mock the political irrationalism and navet of
Kutzner and his inner circle. Representing Kutzner as a charlatan for
whom the world of politics is merely a stage to act out his petit-bourgeois
fantasies of power (Feuchtwanger has him study his lines with a famous
actor), one must wonder today whether Feuchtwanger did not underesti-
mate the broad appeal of the National Socialists and the effective means of
propaganda they used in order to exploit the political and economic instabi-
lity of the Weimar Republic for their political purposes. Painting them as
dumb irrationalists, Feuchtwanger underestimated their widespread attrac-
tion for a populace that became increasingly disillusioned with a demo-
cratic parliamentary system that was seen not only as ineffective in dealing
with political and economic problems but also as a foreign, western polit-
ical framework. Feuchtwangers representation of the True Germans as a
movement of the intellectually challenged fails to see the Nazis invocation
of reason for the realization of irrational goals. While the True Germans
rise to power in Erfolg comes to an abrupt end with the failure of Kutzner-
Hitlers beer hall putsch in 1923, Feuchtwangers reader of 1928 may have
wondered with good reason whether the author of this novel about
Bavaria did not underestimate the danger of the National Socialists for the
Weimar Republic (CO, 397). Although Feuchtwanger was forced to
reevaluate the political effectiveness of the National Socialists after 1933,
he continued to view their ideology and politics primarily as a manifest-
ation of petit-bourgeois irrationalism.
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
75

For Feuchtwanger, neither the theory of Marxism nor the Soviet

Union is a credible alternative to vlkisch ideology. He reassessed this pos-
ition after his journey to the Soviet Union in 1936/37, when during his
French exile he wanted to help build a strong antifascist Volksfront that
would include the communists of the Soviet Union.33 In Erfolg, the author
Tverlin expresses the bourgeois rejection of violent mass politics and
Feuchtwangers belief in the aristocracy of the spirit, that is, the cultural
power of the (creative) word, when he says:

Ein groer Mann, . . . er heit Karl Marx meinte: die Philosophen haben
die Welt erklrt, es kommt darauf an, sie zu ndern. Ich fr meine Person
glaube, das einzige Mittel, sie zu ndern, ist, sie zu erklren. Erklrt man
sie plausibel, so ndert man sie auf stille Art, durch fortwirkende Ver-
nunft. Sie mit Gewalt zu verndern, versuchen nur diejenigen, die sie
nicht plausibel erklren knnen. . . . Ich glaube an gutgeschriebenes
Papier mehr als an Maschinengewehre. (E, 785)

[A great man, . . . his name is Karl Marx thought: philosophers have

explained the world, but it is important to change it. I personally believe
that the only way to change it is to explain it. If you explain it in a plausi-
ble way, you change it silently through the influence of reason. Only
those who are unable to explain it in a plausible way try to change it by
means of violence. . . . I believe more in well-written texts than in
machine guns.]

For Feuchtwanger, the ever rationalist defender of the enlightened

principle of the spirit, theoretical Marxism was too simplistic a model to
explain the complexity of modern life sufficiently. The Marxist explanation
of Martin Krgers fate, for example, would reduce him to a victim of
economic relationships and turn him into a modern-day tragic hero. But
other factors contributed to Krgers death in prison, factors that do not
warrant such a conclusion: his poor health, his relationship with a female
painter whose painting scandalized the conservative circles in Munich, and
other sociological and political coordinates that a Marxist analysis fails to
take into account (E, 703). And for Feuchtwanger this constitutes the
moment when Marxisms alleged scientific objectivity becomes a new
mythology (E, 703). Moreover, Feuchtwanger has the Communist,
Prckl, criticize the dictatorship of the party and the lack of individual lib-
erties as well as material wealth in the Soviet Union, thus indicating his dis-
tance from the Communist Party that in Feuchtwangers view also shared
the National Socialists desire for revolution and violent upheaval.34
While Erfolg reveals Feuchtwangers rejection of mass politics in favor
of his defense of bourgeois individualism, a political stance typical of many
liberal intellectuals of the Weimar Republic, Feuchtwanger simultaneously
warns his readers of the dangers that powerful economic elites pose for the
76
ROLAND DOLLINGER

democratic decision-making process and the justice system. Characters

such as Baron von Reindl, the director of the Bavarian Motor Works, or
Dr. Bichler, the leader of the farmers unions, are the secret power brokers
not only influencing the outcome of Krgers trial but also appointing and
dismissing cabinet members as they see fit. Again and again, Feuchtwanger
insists on the hegemony of the economic over the political sphere (E, 620;
643; 659; 708), viewing even the National Socialists as a useful tool for the
interests of big industry: they keep the working-class parties in check and
offer strong national resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr val-
ley, the location of Germanys heavy industry. The failure of Kutzners
putsch is primarily the result of the industrialists decision to stop financing
his movement because the end of the French occupation of the Ruhr
valley and German-French rapprochement are in sight (E, 711). Although
Feuchtwangers interpretation of the Nazi movement as a puppet in the
hands of German industry was similar to the Marxist understanding of
fascism in the 1930s, he probably provoked the ire of leftist reviewers with
his positive representation of another capitalist, the American Potter.
Potters rational pragmatism, devoid of any ideological bias, coupled with
his offer to the Bavarian government to help finance the electrification of
Bavaria if Krger is pardoned, ironically achieves what Krgers supporters
fail to accomplish. Potters dollars prove more effective than the individual
efforts of Johanna Krain, his girlfriend, Dr. Geyer, his Jewish lawyer, and
Tverlins essay entitled The Case of Krger (E, 175). Even if Potters
intervention comes too late for Krger, who perishes before his pardon
becomes effective, Feuchtwangers positive image of Potter and America
leave no doubt that he had no interest in demonizing capitalism as the
cause of all evil. If economic rationality does not ignore the common
good, Feuchtwanger seems to imply, it is able to enhance social progress
and bring about a more reasonable society.35 Both the American capitalist
Potter and the intellectual Tverlin participate in the project of enlight-
ened modernity, that is, the creation of a liberal, just, and reasonable soci-
ety. The fascination with all things American during the Weimar Republic
produces in Feuchtwangers novel a truly unusual alliance between the
pragmatic, common-sense capitalist and the rational intellectual.36
Although Tverlins essay The Case of Krger fails to produce the
desired results, namely Krgers release from prison, the novel ends on an
optimistic note concerning the effectiveness of a politically engaged art. At
the end of Erfolg we see Johanna Krain working on a film called Dr. Martin
Krger, and Tverlin on his Das Buch Bayern: Oder Jahrmarkt der
Gerechtigkeit (E, 798; The Book Bavaria: Or the Fair of Justice). Tverlin
has learned that in addition to the cool skepticism that characterized his
earlier essay he must use his outrage at Bavarias corrupt judicial system if
he wants his book to reawaken a sense of justice in his lethargic readership.
His and Johannas personal suffering about Krgers meaningless death
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
77

now become the principal driving force for his work, which can no
longer save Krgers life but can strive to keep his memory alive. Literature
(and art in general), Feuchtwanger suggests, may not be able to effect
immediate political results but brings about changes through its mnemosynic
function: by remembering the dead and bearing witness to the origins
of social calamities, literature might stimulate the numb emotions of its
readers and provoke them into political action. The sense of unease and
embarrassing helplessness that Johannas film and the screening of Panz-
erkreuzer Orlow (E, 495; Battleship Orlow) are able to elicit among the
viewers seem to confirm Feuchtwangers unabating faith in the political
effectiveness of literary works.

Der jdische Krieg

After the completion of Erfolg, Feuchtwanger returned to the project of
writing a historical novel about the Jewish historian Josef Ben Matthias (37
or 38100 A.D.), a project he had originally begun in 1926 and then set
aside in favor of the more urgent task of dealing with the rise of the
National Socialists. This new novel about Josef Ben Matthias, who is also
known under his Roman name Flavius Josephus, was to appear in two vol-
umes. After the publication of the first volume, Der jdische Krieg (The
Jewish War, 1932), and while Feuchtwanger was visiting the United States,
the Nazis looted his house in Berlin and destroyed his manuscript and
important material for the second volume. Since it was impossible to
reconstruct the original version in his French exile, he decided to widen
the scope of the novel and publish it in three parts. Die Shne (The Sons)
came out in 1935 with the exile publishing house Querido in Amsterdam;
Der Tag wird kommen first appeared in English (The Day Will Come,
1942)37 before Bermann-Fischer published the first German version in
Stockholm in 1945.38
Feuchtwangers choice to use the history of the Jewish rebellion
against the Roman occupation in the second half of the first century A.D.
for his novel is interesting. At a time when German Jewry was feeling the
increasing pressure of racial anti-Semitism in Germany, Feuchtwanger
could easily have taken as his topic the heroic aspects of the Jewish resist-
ance against the Roman empire or focused on one of the Jewish leaders of
the rebellion in order to strengthen the political resolve of his beleaguered
coreligionists. Instead, Feuchtwanger concentrated on the role of the Jew-
ish historian Joseph, who in his book The Jewish War (completed in the
early 80s A.D.) put most of the blame on the various revolutionary factions
of the Jewish populace, making their nationalist inspirations responsible for
the course of events that led to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D.
By doing so, Feuchtwanger perhaps resisted the temptation to identify the
78
ROLAND DOLLINGER

Romans of the first century A.D. with the Germans of the 1930s, even if
the second and third volume of the Joseph trilogy establish some parallels
between them. By essentially accepting the historical Flavius Josephuss
(Roman) viewpoint, Feuchtwanger made sure that his readers would focus
on the philosophical content of his book and not just on the victimization
of the Jews. And by making the traitor Joseph and his development the
crucial aspects of his novel, Feuchtwangers Brechtian strategy was to strip
his protagonist of heroic qualities and thus turn his readers attention to
the novels ideas.
The historical Josephus seems to have been a complicated man whose
account of the Jewish war against the Romans became despite its histor-
ical unreliability the primary source of our knowledge about the Jewish
war (6670 A.D.). During the revolt, Josephus was a Jewish leader who in
the end surrendered to the Romans. He began his career as the comman-
der of the Jewish revolutionary forces in Galilee who, when the Romans
began their campaign, fled with his forces to the fortress of Jotapata. After
a siege of seven weeks, the fortress was taken, and Josephus and his soldiers
fled to a nearby cave, where his men decided to commit suicide rather than
be taken prisoner by the Romans. Josephus, on the other hand, insisted
that surrender to the overpowering Roman military was the more rational
course of action; nevertheless, he reluctantly agreed to draw lots with the
rest to determine who would die first. As luck would have it, Josephus
drew last and convinced the only other remaining soldier that they should
give themselves up. He was taken to Vespasian; at this meeting he pre-
dicted that the general would soon become Roman emperor, a prophecy
that after Neros death would prove correct. After the destruction of
Jerusalem, he lived in Rome where he wrote his account of the war.
According to contemporary scholarship, his book sent a twofold message
to Jews and other peoples under Roman dominion: it was a strong warning
against revolt, and the uprising should be seen as the work of political
fanatics and criminals who by no means represented the political opinion
of all Jews.39
While Feuchtwanger follows the historians account with regard to the
main stages of the Jewish revolt from its first acts of resistance to the siege
and destruction of Jerusalem to the victory march in Rome, the main
theme of the novel is Josephs transformation from a staunch Jewish
nationalist to a cosmopolitan citizen of the civilized world, transgressing
national and ethnic identities.40 Recognizing nationalist politics as destruc-
tive and opposed to rationality, Feuchtwangers Joseph becomes an early
twentieth-century champion of the hybridization of self and other:
Es kam darauf an, das eigene Gute berflieen zu lassen in die anderen,
das fremde Gute einzusaugen in sich selbst (JK, 268; It was important to
let the good in oneself flow into others, the good of others into oneself).
Rejecting the racial Blut und Boden nationalism in Germany, Feucht-
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
79

wanger, in his essay Nationalismus und Judentum (1933), celebrates the

universalistic principles of the Enlightenment. By distancing himself also
from political Zionism in Palestine, the bad Jewish nationalism he calls a
kind of jdischer Hitlerei (CO, 482), Feuchtwanger tries to rescue the
spirituality inherent in a positive Jewish nationalism. And this good
nationalism, he claims, has its origins in the historical catastrophe of the
destruction of the Jewish temple.
According to Feuchtwanger, the Roman Empire represented a polit-
ical structure characterized by reason, tolerance, and the absence of nation-
alism. It was the Jewish nationalists who committed the original sin of
introducing the civilized world to the irrationality and senselessness of
nationalism. But because they had to pay such a heavy price for their insub-
ordination, they learned a historical lesson that other white peoples will
accept only after the devastating experience of two World Wars (CO,
48081). The living memory of the Jewish war against the Romans has led
Jews to redefine their national identity. Judaism for Feuchtwanger is not
based on a common race, geography, or language but, rather, on a com-
mon mentality or spiritual attitude that he summarizes by reference to the
Kantian moral imperative (CO, 490). And while other nations, too, have
made this basic principle an integral part of their reasoning, the Jews alone
have absorbed it as part of their Instinkt (CO, 492) a somewhat
strange conclusion for this defender of rationality.
One can see Feuchtwangers struggle to preserve his sense of Jewish
self-identity at a time when it was threatened by anti-Semites, a self-identity
that is defined by an all-embracing, universal, and spiritual principle that
Feuchtwanger sees symbolized by the immaterial, abstract God of the Jews
(CO, 493). And this is the moment where a gulf opens up between Feucht-
wangers idealization of the Roman Empire in his essay and the Roman
soldiers as they are represented in his Der jdische Krieg. The merciless
violence and hatred that Roman soldiers display during the destruction of
Jerusalem and its residents is to a great extent caused by their inability to
tolerate the physical absence of the Jewish God inside the Temple. Their
resistance to this spiritual principle is shared by the National Socialists
whose materialism also opposes the Jewish Bekenntnis zum Geistigen
(CO, 494; belief in spirituality).
The Jewish historian Joseph represents not only Sss treading his path
from power to knowledge Joseph poignantly summarizes this idea by
saying that the kingmaker is more powerful than the king himself (JK,
240) but also Feuchtwangers new ideal of a rational cosmopolitanism.
By divorcing his Jewish wife Mara and marrying the Egyptian woman
Dorion, he also wants to live his multicultural convictions in his private life.
Without ever denying his Judaism, his hybrid existence becomes a provo-
cation for both his Jewish coreligionists, who see in him a traitor, and the
Romans, who never fully accept him as one of their own. The price he
80
ROLAND DOLLINGER

must pay for his lofty ideals is his sense of not belonging, of remaining an
outsider. Whereas Sss found his inner peace by returning to Judaism at
the end of his life, Joseph continues to suffer from the dilemma of, on the
one hand, not being Jewish enough and, on the other, of being too Jewish.
Feuchtwanger creates a drastic image of Josephs situation as an outsider
when Joseph, shortly before the destruction of the Temple, tries to bring
about a last-minute truce and is greeted by both Jews and Romans with
derisive mockery (JK, 384). He strives to preserve his Jewish identity by
overcoming it at the same time a paradox that could only become lived
reality if the other nations of the novel made his cosmopolitan, spiritual
principles their own.
Josephs hope that he could reconcile Jews and Romans through the
authority of his writing (JK, 324) turns out to be unrealistic at a time when
the military machinery, incited by irrational politics, does not heed the
words of peace. When Joseph at the end of Der jdische Krieg begins to
work on his book about the Jewish war, his intention is both to remember
its horror and to warn the next generations against the violence inherent in
nationalist ideologies (JK, 463). At the end of the trilogy, we see Joseph
recognize his failure and return to the side of the Jewish rebels. When the
last volume, Der Tag wird kommen, was published in 1942, the Second
World War had already claimed millions of lives, the extermination of the
Jews was accelerating, and Feuchtwanger was living out his second exile in
California. Forced to rethink his earlier conception, Feuchtwanger realized
that what was needed was not his rational utopian notion of a cosmopol-
itan multiculturalism but emotional involvement with the victims of
National Socialism. Josephs support for Jewish nationalism at the end of
his life is also symbolic of Feuchtwangers confession that a Jewish self-
identity, when threatened by extermination, cannot be based on universal,
rational principles alone.

Notes
1
Detlev Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 2631. To mention a few from this gener-
ation: Alfred Dblin (18781957) and Arnold Zweig (18871968) who both
exerted a strong influence on Feuchtwangers literary and political development;
Herbert Ihering (18881977), the famous theater critic who like Feuchtwanger
wrote his first reviews for Siegfried Jacobsohns Schaubhne; Bruno Frank
(18871945), Erich Mhsam (18781934), Joachim Ringelnatz (18831934),
Ernst Toller (18931939) with whom Feuchtwanger shared his Bohemian life in
Munich. Heinrich Mann (18711950) and Frank Wedekind (19641918) should
be mentioned here as significant influences on Feuchtwangers career, although
they do not belong to the war generation. For Feuchtwangers biography, see
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
81

Volker Skierka, Lion Feuchtwanger: Eine Biographie, ed. Stefan Jaeger (Berlin:
Quadriga Verlag, 1984), 2178.
2
Wulf Kpkes Lion Feuchtwangers Discovery of Himself in Heinrich Heine, in
The Jewish Reception of Heinrich Heine, ed. Stefan Jaeger (Berlin: Quadriga Verlag,
1984) analyzes Feuchtwangers dissertation.
3
In his essay Vom Sinn und Unsinn des historischen Romans (On the Meaning
and Meaninglessness of the Historical Novel, 1935) Feuchtwanger writes that he
uses historical facts as a means of creating distance between himself and the imme-
diacy of the present; historical material becomes ein Gleichnis (510; an allegory)
for his representation of the now. In Lion Feuchtwanger, Centum Opuscula, ed.
Wolfgang Berndt (Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag, 1956), 50815. Subsequent refer-
ences to this collection of essays by Feuchtwanger are cited in the text using the
abbreviation CO and the page number.
4
See Wulf Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger (Munich: Beck, 1983), 1617.
5
Feuchtwanger and Brecht cooperated on the rewriting of Warren Hastings. The
new play, Kalkutta, 4. Mai premiered in 1928. The anticapitalist play Die Petroleum-
insel was also performed for the first time in 1928.
6
For an excellent analysis of Thomas Wendt, see Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 6975.
7
For a discussion of the relationship between assimilation and the crisis of Jewish
self-identity, see Noah Isenberg, Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of Ger-
man-Jewish Modernism (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1999), esp. 117.
8
Lion Feuchtwanger, Jud Sss (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000); Lion
Feuchtwanger, Die hliche Herzogin (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002).
Subsequent references to these works are cited in the text using the abbreviations
JS and HH and the page number.
9
For a brief comparison of Feuchtwangers drama and his novel, see David
Bathrick, 1925: Jud Sss by Lion Feuchtwanger is published, in Yale Companion
to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 10961996, ed. Sander Gilman
and Jack Zipes (New Haven: Yale UP, 1997), 43637.
10
Frank Dietschreit, Lion Feuchtwanger (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988), 95109.
11
Manfred Zimmermann, Joseph Sss Oppenheimer, ein Finanzmann des 18.
Jahrhunderts: Ein Stck Absolutismus- und Jesuitengeschichte; Nach den Vertheidi-
gungsakten und den Schriften der Zeitgenossen (Stuttgart: Rieger, 1874).
12
Paul Levesque, Mapping the Other, German Quarterly 71.2 (Spring 1998):
14565, esp. 14856.
13
Levesque, Mapping the Other, 14850.
14
Ibid., 154.
15
Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP, 1996).
16
At the beginning of their journey through Europe and North Africa from 1912
to 1914, Marta Feuchtwanger gave birth to a daughter, who died soon afterwards.
The loss of a child became a motif in several of his novels (Die Geschwister Opper-
mann, 1933; Die Jdin von Toledo, 1955; Jefta und seine Tochter, 1957) but it is
too reductive to read its significance for these works only biographically.
82
ROLAND DOLLINGER

17
The character of Rabbi Gabriel owes his presence in Jud Sss to Feuchtwangers
desire to present his readers with a positive example of a Jewish mystic, whose mere
possibility anti-Semitic stereotypes have stubbornly denied. Just three years before
the publication of Jud Sss, Werner Sombart had expounded in his Die Juden und
das Wirtschaftsleben (1911) that a Jewish mystic in the tradition of Jakob Bhme
was unthinkable. Reducing the Jewish spirit to an alleged Jewish preoccupation
with material and quantifiable phenomena, Sombart saw no room in Jewish life for
mysticism. By creating the character of Rabbi Gabriel and emphasizing the spiritual
qualities of Sss Oppenheimer, Feuchtwanger like Martin Buber before him
reserved for German Jews a place at the metaphysical table (Levesque, Mapping
the Other, 155).
18
Wilhelm von Sternburg, Lion Feuchtwanger: Ein deutsches Schriftstellerleben
(Knigstein: Athenum, 1984), 157.
19
Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 88.
20
Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 87.
21
Lion Feuchtwanger, Erfolg (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996). Subse-
quent references to this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation E and the
page number.
22
See Feuchtwangers Nachwort des Autors 1939 (when Feuchtwanger finished
writing Exil) in Lion Feuchtwanger, Exil (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1979), 787.
23
Feuchtwanger, Nachwort to Exil, 787.
24
Feuchtwanger, Nachwort to Exil, 790.
25
Sternburg, Lion Feuchtwanger, 226.
26
Skierka, Lion Feuchtwanger: Eine Biographie, 109; Dietschreit, Lion Feucht-
wanger, 5152.
27
See Synnve Clason, Die Welt erklren: Geschichte und Fiktion in Lion Feucht-
wangers Roman Erfolg (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1975), and Egon
Brckner and Klaus Modick, Lion Feuchtwangers Roman Erfolg: Leistung und
Problematik schrifstellerischer Aufklrung in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik
(Kronberg: Scriptor, 1978).
28
For a more complete list see Skierka, Lion Feuchtwanger: Eine Biographie, 106.
29
For example, chapter 4 of the first book is called Kurzer Rckblick auf die Justiz
jener Jahre (E, 2829; A Brief Retrospection of The Judicial System during These
Years); in the second book, the chapter entitled Einige historische Daten
(E, 21218; Some Historical Data) lists various sociological data about the popula-
tion of the world, Europe, Germany, and Bavaria in order to illustrate the back-
wardness of this particular German state.
30
Hermann Broch, in his James Joyce und die Gegenwart (new ed.; Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), summarizes this idea: Aber eben diese Totalitt ist ja die
Aufgabe der Kunst und der Dichtung, sie ist ja die Grundaufgabe schlechthin
(6768). For a discussion of the notion of totality in modern literature, see
Dollinger, Die Welt als Sprache und der Mythos: Ganzheitsideen in der modernen
deutschen Literatur, in Unus Mundus: Kosmos und Sympathie; Beitrge zum
Gedanken der Einheit von Mensch und Kosmos (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1992), 7592.
 FEUCHTWANGERS HISTORICAL NOVELS
83

31
Skierka, Lion Feuchtwanger: Eine Biographie, 109.
32
Sternburg, Lion Feuchtwanger, 217.
33
For a discussion of Feuchtwangers book Moskau 1937: Ein Reisebericht fr
meine Freunde, a mostly positive representation of Stalin and the achievements of
the Soviet Union, see Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 2427; for the role of German
exile writers in the construction of a Volksfront, see Albrecht Betz, Exil und
Engagement, in Deutsche Schriftsteller im Frankreich der Dreissiger Jahre (Munich:
edition text kritik, 1986), esp. 12534.
34
Skierka, Lion Feuchtwanger: Eine Biographie, 107.
35
Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 102; Brckner und Modick, Lion Feuchtwangers
RomanErfolg, 77.
36
The ugly side of American capitalism became the reason for Feuchtwangers
book of ballads called PEP: J.L. Wetcheeks amerikanisches Liederbuch (1928).
37
Lion Feuchtwanger, The Day Will Come, vol. 3 of the Josephus trilogy, trans.
Caroline Oram (London and New York: Hutchinson, 1942).
38
Dietschreit, Lion Feuchtwanger, 110.
39
Shaye J. D. Cohen, Roman Domination: The Jewish Revolt and the Destruc-
tion of the Second Temple, in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman
Destruction of the Temple, ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeol-
ogy Society, 1999), 268.
40
Lion Feuchtwanger, Der jdische Krieg (Berlin: Aufbau, 2002), 268. Subsequent
references to this collection of essays by Feuchtwanger are cited in the text using
the abbreviation JK and the page number.
41
Kpke, Lion Feuchtwanger, 122.
4: The Case of Jakob Wassermann:
Social, Legal, and Personal Crises
in the Weimar Republic

Karl Leydecker

I N 1927 JAKOB WASSERMANN (18731934), then in his mid-fifties,

undertook a triumphant lecture tour of the United States that lasted sev-
eral months. He was at the height of his powers as a writer, and the tour of
the USA confirmed that he had also advanced from being one of the most
widely read novelists in Germany in the 1920s to become a Welt-Star des
Romans (world star of the novel), as his fellow novelist and friend
Thomas Mann dubbed him shortly after his death.1 All over America,
crowds flocked to hear him speak, to the extent that the police had to be
called to restore public order on the occasion of a lecture at Columbia
University. Wassermanns global appeal seems to have been particularly
strong to young people, with the effect he had on the younger generation
of the 1920s being likened to Hermann Hesses significance for the hippy
generation of the 1960s.2
Whilst in America, the workaholic Wassermann, who wrote more than
a dozen novels as well as dozens of short stories and was also a prolific
critic, essayist, and biographer, was working on the novel Der Fall Mauriz-
ius (The Maurizius Case) which on its publication the following year
would confirm and enhance his reputation and readership both in
Germany and abroad. In the final years of his life he went on to write two
further novels that together with Der Fall Maurizius form his magnum
opus, known as the Andergast trilogy: Etzel Andergast (1931), and his final
novel, Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz (Joseph Kerkhovens Third Exist-
ence), which was published posthumously in 1934, shortly after his death
of a heart attack on 1 January of that year.

The Pre-Weimar Years

But Wassermanns reputation as a novelist does not rest solely on these
works written at the end of the Weimar Republic and at the end of his life.
His literary career spanned nearly forty years. He was born in Frth in
86
KARL LEYDECKER

Franconia, into a largely assimilated Jewish family that had little social or
religious connection to the Jewish community in the town, but the
young Wassermann nevertheless suffered discrimination on account of
his Jewishness.3 His childhood was not a happy one, particularly following
the early death of his mother in 1882 and his fathers subsequent remar-
riage the following year. The family suffered grinding poverty and Wasser-
mann was harshly treated by his stepmother. Leaving school at sixteen in
1889, he endured dull apprenticeships in his uncles business in Vienna,
one years military service, and several dead-end jobs before he got his big
break, being employed in Munich in 1894 by the writer and dramatist
Ernst von Wolzogen, who encouraged the young Wassermanns literary
aspirations. In Munich, which was the literary capital of southern Germany
at this time, Wassermann began to move in literary circles, meeting such
promising young writers as Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Hugo
von Hofmannsthal. In 1896 Wassermann published his first short stories
and his first novel, Melusine, and also joined the staff of the legendary satir-
ical magazine Simplicissimus, where he worked for three years before mov-
ing to Vienna to take up a post as theater correspondent. In 1901 he
married Julie Speyer and lived with her in Vienna until their separation in
1919, at which time Wassermann moved to Altaussee in Steiermark to live
with Marta Karlweis, whom he was eventually able to marry in 1926 after
the conclusion of extremely acrimonious and protracted divorce proceed-
ings with Julie, an experience which would be reflected in several of the
late novels.
Wassermanns second novel Die Juden von Zirndorf (The Jews of
Zirndorf, 1897), was his first work to gain critical attention. It also marked
his first literary engagement with the fate of Jews in Germany, a topic
which would preoccupy him in both his novels and his non-literary writ-
ings throughout his career. His next novel, Die Geschichte der jungen
Renate Fuchs (The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, 1901) was the first to be
published by Samuel Fischer in Berlin and marked his commercial break-
through. This popular if ultimately conservative womens novel about a
fallen woman, which ends with the union of the eponymous heroine with
Agathon Geyer, who, like many of Wassermanns characters, reappears
from an earlier novel (Die Juden von Zirndorf), marked the beginning of
an extremely lucrative relationship for Wassermann and Fischer.4 Wasser-
mann would become one of Fischers most commercially successful novel-
ists, with the result that by the time of Wassermanns death the publishing
house had sold almost 1.5 million copies of his novels in Germany alone.5
Wassermanns most significant prewar novel was Caspar Hauser oder
Die Trgheit des Herzens (Caspar Hauser or the Lethargy of the Heart,
1908), which has remained popular with successive generations of readers,
not least because interest in its subject matter was renewed by Werner Her-
zogs 1974 film Jeder fr sich und Gott gegen alle (English title: The
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
87

Enigma of Kaspar Hauser). In the novel Wassermann retold the story of

the famous foundling who was discovered in Nuremberg in 1828. This
enigmatic figure, who had apparently been incarcerated and kept isolated
from human contact during his childhood and was rumored to be the heir
to the throne of Baden, was repeatedly subject to hostility and attack and
eventually murdered in 1833. In presenting his story of an innocent out-
sider and victim of an uncaring world, Wassermann introduced his concept
of the lethargy of the heart alluded to in the subtitle of the novel, which
would remain central in his subsequent oeuvre. Put simply, this concept
implies that injustice is less the product of particular political or social
structures or circumstances than the result of a series of individual human
failings. This idea resurfaces throughout Wassermanns works, with the
result that for all their focus on injustice, most notably in Der Fall Mauriz-
ius, his novels are open to the accusation that they shy away from offering
a concrete analysis of the specific political and social ills of the day. More-
over, if anything this tendency would, as we shall see, become even more
pronounced towards the end of his life, so that, for example, his final
novel, written 193233, makes no reference at all to the rise of fascism,
Hitlers seizure of power, or the rising tide of anti-Semitism, of which
Wassermann was only too acutely and personally aware.
The foundation stones for Wassermanns great popularity during the
Weimar Republic were laid with the appearance of two hefty novels imme-
diately before and after the First World War: Das Gnsemnnchen (The
Goose Man), serialized in the Munich journal Neuer Merkur from April
1914 to March 1915 and published in book form in 1915; and Christian
Wahnschaffe, completed during the war in May 1918 but not published
until January 1919. The former is a chronicle of the provincial bourgeoisie,
beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century and ending in 1909,
safely before the war, and attracted a wide middle-class readership. Its idyl-
lic, resignatory, humanistic ending in the recent past no doubt offered con-
solation to those grappling with the realities of Germany during and in the
immediate aftermath of the First World War. Christian Wahnschaffe, where
again no mention is made of the war, is a panoramic novel that rejects
prewar capitalist materialism and preaches the virtue of charity, the epony-
mous hero renouncing his inheritance and throwing in his lot with the
poor and the outcast. In its vision of the redemptive neuer Mensch
(New Man) it is close in spirit to the work of the younger generation of
Expressionists, whose works similarly contain a heady cocktail of irrational-
ism and visions of quasi-religious personal redemption.6 However, in
Expressionism that individual redemption has a social dimension only inso-
far as the redemption of the individual is typically presented as the catalyst
for a wider social transformation.7
It was Christian Wahnschaffe that first brought Wassermann to the
attention of an American audience, appearing in a popular translation as
88
KARL LEYDECKER

The Worlds Illusion in 1920, only a year after its publication in German.
Translations of the other major prewar works quickly followed (only Die
Juden von Zirndorf had previously appeared in English, in 1918) as did
translations of his subsequent novels. Wassermann rapidly reached a wide
readership in English on both sides of the Atlantic, and would soon
become one of the most widely read German writers in North America in
the 1920s.8

Wassermann as German and Jew

Wassermanns best-known publication from the early years of the Weimar
Republic was not a novel at all but his autobiography, Mein Weg als
Deutscher und Jude (My Life as German and Jew, 1921). It was perhaps
Wassermanns direct engagement with the Jewish question, culminating
in this work, that was most responsible for the revival of critical interest in
his life and works in the 1980s, when an exhibition and publication in
1984 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death focused almost exclu-
sively on the Jewish dimension.9 Wassermanns reflections on the position
of Jews in Germany in Mein Weg and other writings and speeches are,
however, not clear-cut, nor were they uncontroversial, either at the time
of writing or in the revival of interest in this aspect of his work in the
1980s and 1990s.
Wassermanns thinking on the issue of Jews and Germans is intimately
bound up with his own sense of identity as a person and as a writer. The
starting point is his personal experience of being discriminated against
throughout his life, which he documents in Mein Weg in some detail. The
sense of injustice that this provoked in Wassermann was particularly acute,
since, as he recalls in Mein Weg, as a young man he felt he didnt just
belong in a profound way to German life and culture, but was zuge-
boren, or born into it.10 Indeed, he regarded his novel Caspar Hauser as
the ultimate demonstration of this, describing it as a fundamentally Ger-
man book that proved that a Jew durch inneres Sein die Zugehrigkeit
erhrten, das Vorurteil der Fremdheit besiegen knne (WDJ, 82; through
inner Being could consolidate the feeling of belonging and overcome the
prejudice of being alien), but felt that his achievement had not been prop-
erly recognized. Out of this sense of injustice arose what for Wassermann
was the key question for the Germans, namely, why did they bite the hand
that fed them (WDJ, 90).
Wassermanns entire oeuvre is marked by this paradox of feeling
German on the one hand but feeling rejected by Germans on the other.
But Wassermann rejected the response of some Jews, namely to repress
their Jewishness altogether. As early as 1904, in his essay Das Los der
Juden (The Fate of the Jews), Wassermann had strong words for those
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
89

Jews who tried to repress their Jewishness, describing them as behaving

like runaway slaves, branded on the inside. These he calls Schwchlinge
(weaklings), Abfall (garbage), and Verrter (traitors).11 Yet Wassermann
is often at pains in his writings to distance himself from and criticize some
sections of Jews. One such group comprises those Eastern European Jews
who came in large numbers to Western Europe, including Germany,
during and after the First World War. In Mein Weg he describes Polish and
Galician Jews as being totally alien to him, even abstoend (WDJ, 113;
repulsive). In the same paragraph he goes on to distance himself from the
Zionists, calling them Jewish Jews, in contrast to himself, a German Jew,
whose mission is to be a Brcke, a bridge between Jews and Germans
(WDJ, 11415). Closely related to this sense of his own role is Wasser-
manns controversial distinction, first made in 1910 in his essay Der Literat
oder Mythos und Persnlichkeit (The Literary Figure, or Myth and Person-
ality, 1910), between the creative person (amongst whose number Wasser-
mann would include himself), and what he called the Literat, an
imitative, epigonic figure.12 The former is characterized as a Fhrer
(LM, 512), the latter as a pacifist (LM, 504), a dilettante, godless, a rebel
against all order (LM, 539), a life-denier and pessimist (LM, 543). Wasser-
mann concluded the essay by noting that there was an especially high pro-
portion of such Literaten amongst Jews, indeed the whole Jewish people
were destined to a kind of Literatenrolle (LM, 546). It was left to a few
lite Jews to transcend this role, to become creators, and these figures were
said to have their roots in the Orient: Der Jude als Europer, als Kos-
mopolit ist ein Literat; der Jude als Orientale, nicht im ethnographischen,
sondern im mythischen Sinne, mit der verwandelnden Kraft zur Gegen-
wart, die er besitzen mu, kann Schpfer sein (LM, 54647; The Jew as
European, as cosmopolitan is an epigone; the Jew as Oriental, not in an
ethnographical, but rather in a mythical sense, with the transformative
power in the present, which he must possess, can be a creator). Challenged
by the philosopher, theologian, and Judaic scholar Martin Buber
(18781955) to clarify his remarks, Wassermann went on to reinforce his
message in an open letter to Buber entitled Der Jude als Orientale (The
Jew as Oriental), first published in 1913, in which he did nothing to hide
his contempt for sections of the Jewish population, which he referred to as
so-called modern Jews, who are said to gnaw at all foundations, because
they are themselves without foundation, who are described as slaves to
their personality, and offer a spectacle of bestndigen Krampfes, bestndi-
ger Gier, bestndiger Unruhe (constant senseless waste of effort, constant
greed, constant commotion).13 He returned to the attack on such Jews,
whom he regarded as exemplified in the figure of Heinrich Heine, in Mein
Weg. He condemns the tendency of the sons of parvenu Jewish families to
become artists and intellectuals, seeing this as a symptom of what he sees as
the decadence of modern society, der Krankheit der Epoche berhaupt,
90
KARL LEYDECKER

der Schrumpfung des Herzens und Hypertrophie des Intellekts (the

malaise of the age, the contraction of the heart, and the hypertrophy of the
intellect) and for which he holds Jews at least in part responsible (WDJ, 119).
Wassermann was also clearly horrified by the prevalence of political
radicalism amongst Jews (WDJ, 12122). Towards the end of Mein Weg,
he launches a powerful attack on anti-Semitism in Germany in the early
Weimar Republic, observing that the Jew is now regarded as vogelfrei or
outlawed, if not in legal terms, then certainly in the feeling of the people.
Yet in the very next sentence, he goes on to argue that it cannot be denied
that the agitators against Jews do have one valid reason, namely the polit-
ical radicalism of Jews, describing Jews as the Jacobins of the epoch (WDJ,
124). Though he goes on to qualify these remarks, Wassermanns deeply
ambivalent attitude towards Jews and Jewishness is very clear, and indeed
leads him into contradiction. Thus he regards himself on the one hand as a
German Jew, and at the same time talks of being at some mythical level
Oriental rather than European.14
Thus, while Mein Weg is at one level a penetrating account of Wassermanns
own experience of anti-Semitism and an indictment of the treatment of
Jews in Weimar Germany, at another level it is a testament to Wasser-
manns deep sense of insecurity in the face of rapid political, social, and
economic change. This accounts for, though it doesnt excuse, the rather
unguarded language that Wassermann sometimes employs to distance
himself from East European Jews and Jewish radicals, which, as critics have
pointed out, often does not rise above the clichs of anti-Semitism, and
indeed comes too close for comfort to the rhetoric of Nazism. In fact, Bir-
git Stengel accuses Wassermann of having a totalitarian attitude of mind
and of being nothing less than a Mitlufer or fellow traveler of Nazism.15

Wassermann and Politics

For much of his life, Wassermann shared with many of his middle class
contemporaries a disdain for politics. Thus he concluded his essay on
Walther Rathenaus assassination in 1922 by suggesting that only a hurri-
cane, which would destroy good and bad alike, could sweep away the
atmosphere of disgust and horror that he ascribed to politics and the polit-
icization of life.16 This disgust with politics was widespread in Germany
before and just after the First World War amongst the conservative middle
classes, and not least among writers and intellectuals, as Wassermann him-
self admitted in his essay Teilnahme des Dichters an der Politik (The
Participation of the Writer in Politics),17 and as the title of his friend
Thomas Manns essay Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Observations of
an Unpolitical Person, 1918) eloquently testifies.18 But by the late 1920s,
Wassermann, like Thomas Mann, had changed his attitude to politics. He
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
91

now believed that politics was der Augenpunkt jedes zu sittlicher Verant-
wortung bereiten Staatsbrgers (L, 329; the focus of attention of every
citizen ready to accept moral responsibility). Faced with the rising tide of
anti-Semitism and fascism, writers like Wassermann and Thomas Mann
realized that they could no longer afford the luxury of an Olympian
detachment from political events that threatened the very existence of the
Weimar Republic.
In the same essay Wassermann went on to argue that the novel cannot
be anything other than a mirror of the reality of the time, and the very
meaning of an age (L, 330). He concluded the essay by arguing that his
analysis of the justice system and the relationship of society to the idea of
justice in Der Fall Maurizius was im hheren Sinn auch ein politisches
Faktum (L, 330; in a higher sense also a political fact). But the reference
to a higher sense is extremely revealing, suggesting as it does that Wasser-
mann was still uncomfortable with the idea of a direct engagement with
politics, and this is reflected even in the later Weimar novels, including Der
Fall Maurizius, as we will see below. As Neubauer has rightly observed,
Wassermanns works avoided politically or ideologically explosive issues,
attacked no parties or persons, and remained rather vague in their socio-
political dimensions, which Neubauer identified as the reason for the lack
of interest in him by critics in the period after the Second World War.19
But as literary critics have come to focus less exclusively on the rela-
tionship of writers to party politics and have widened their interest to
encompass the social dimensions of writers and to explore the relationship
between literary history and social history, so also Wassermanns works have
a new relevance and interest for the critic and the reader.20 Of particular
interest, in addition to his important critique of the justice system in Der
Fall Maurizius and elsewhere, is one other subject that was highly politi-
cally charged in the Weimar Republic and which Wassermann engaged with
repeatedly in his later novels, namely, the question of marriage.

Wassermann and Marriage:

From Laudin to Kerkhoven
Wassermanns literary works of the early Weimar years, comprising primar-
ily the four-volume cycle of novels and novellas Der Wendekreis (The Turn-
ing Circle, 192024), have long been out of print and are almost totally
forgotten. Only the final volume, consisting of the novel Faber oder Die
verlorenen Jahre (Faber or The Lost Years, 1924) engages directly with life
in the postwar period, recounting the story of a soldier returning late from
the war. Like many such Heimkehrer stories, for which there was a real
vogue in the Weimar period, the story focuses on the effect of the long
92
KARL LEYDECKER

separation on relationships between the sexes;21 in this case an initial alien-

ation between Faber and his wife eventually gives way to their reconcili-
ation and return to bourgeois normality.
The depiction of marriages in crisis is one of the recurrent subjects of
Wassermanns fiction, even from the pre-Weimar period, as for example
in the marriage novel Der Mann von vierzig Jahren (The Forty-Year-Old
Man, 1913). But during the Weimar years, Wassermanns interest in the
subject grew even stronger, no doubt partly for biographical reasons, but
also because the subject was perceived at the time to be one of the most
important social issues of the day, and one of the most hotly debated.22 A
major contribution to the debate during the 1920s was Graf Keyserlings
Ehe-Buch (Book of Marriage, 1925), a 500-page tome in which Keyser-
ling published the invited views of twenty-four leading contemporaries,
including Wassermann himself and such other worthies as Thomas
Mann, C. G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Ricarda Huch, and Leo Baeck.23 For
Wassermann, the invitation was particularly timely, since he was just com-
pleting a new novel about marriage that appeared almost simultaneously,
Laudin und die Seinen (Laudin and his Family, 1925, translated as Wed-
lock, 1926), and he was able to quote two key passages at length from
the novel as part of his contribution to what he, in common with many
contemporaries, regarded as an issue von uerst dringlicher Beschaf-
fenheit (L, 96; of an extremely urgent nature) that threatened the roots
of unser aller Existenz (ibid.; the existence of all of us).
Wassermanns views put him squarely in the camp of moderate conser-
vative reformers, who saw the root of the problem of marriage in contem-
porary society in the growth of individualism, with individuals no longer
accepting the constraints imposed by Church and State on their behavior,
a situation that Wassermann calls a Krankheit or disease (L, 1056). As a
consequence, a gap was perceived to have opened up between the law on
the one hand and the values and behavior of individuals on the other
(L, 103; 111). He attacks the fact that the law still insists on regarding
women as inferior (L, 108), and implicitly pleads for an easing of restric-
tions on marriage and divorce (L, 109). In typical fashion Wassermann,
quoting from Laudin, counters the argument of ultra-conservatives that
any loosening of the marriage bonds would open the way to sexual anarchy
by insisting that each individual has one, and only one, ideal soul-mate
(L, 111), which would ensure a certain stability of sexual relations, and in
this way he protected himself from the accusation that he was a dangerous
social reformer who advocated promiscuity.
Whilst Wassermanns views on marriage and divorce reform are
not strikingly original, being in the tradition of moderate conservatives
stretching back to Max Nordaus seminal work Die conventionellen Lgen
der Kulturmenschheit (The Conventional Lies of Civilization, 1883), his
treatment of marriage in Laudin und die Seinen is a noteworthy literary
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
93

contribution to the debate. Wassermann himself saw it as of great impor-

tance, saying that he felt a greater sense of mission (L, 97; Sendung)
when writing it than ever before, which is no small claim for a writer who,
as Marcel Reich-Ranicki observed, was if anything too deeply driven by a
sense of mission.24 Moreover, in this novel Wassermann was able to com-
bine the two themes of marriage and justice, which together would go on
to dominate his last works.25
Laudin is a middle-aged divorce lawyer, married with two children.
Whilst investigating the suicide of a friends son, he comes under the spell
of a bohemian and demonic actress, Luise Dercum, for whose sake the
young man is said to have committed suicide. This triggers a mid-life crisis
in Laudin, who feels a sense of ennui, loss of identity, lack of fulfillment in
marriage, and disgust with the constant exposure through his job to what is
portrayed as the rotten underbelly of a bourgeois society, characterized by
lies, deception, cheating, and every kind of immorality. Laudins work and
home life gradually deteriorate and he eventually sinks to giving money
from his clients to Luise. Finally, when Laudin is on the brink of physical
intimacy with her, his friend brings him to his senses by revealing his
discovery that his son committed suicide because he had contracted syphilis
from Luise. The novel ends with a reconciliation between Laudin and his
wife, with Laudin resolving to give up his legal practice, sell their villa and
retreat to a simpler life in the country, and devote himself to what with the
help of his wife he now recognizes as his calling, namely, to work to create
the basis for a new legal framework. At the same time he is reconciled with
his elder daughter, who with her young friends has founded a society called
The Flame with the aim not of overthrowing the old (which might smack
too much of revolution), but of trying to build something new.
The strength of the novel lies less in its unconvincingly conciliatory
ending than in its powerful depiction of a series of interlinked crises: the
crisis of an individual, specifically a middle-class, middle-aged man; a whole
social class, namely the bourgeoisie; a central institution of bourgeois soci-
ety, marriage; and more generally a crisis of the legal system as a whole.
The result is a devastatingly pessimistic diagnosis of the ills of contempor-
ary society and a plea for specific social and legal reform, notably the
removal of social restrictions in the choice of marriage partner in order to
allow ideally suited couples to be united (LS, 256). Nor does Wassermann
shy away from touching on the taboo subject of abortion, and despite his
focus on male crisis he does not fail to address the concerns of women.
Thus the consequences of Laudins vision of the loosening of the marriage
bonds and a liberalization of sexuality are forcefully pointed out to him by
May Ernevoldt, who notes that abortion, although illegal, is already com-
monplace in bourgeois marriages, and that this situation would be exacer-
bated if Laudins vision were to be realized, since it would inevitably lead
to an increase in the pregnancy rate outside marriage (LS, 25859).
94
KARL LEYDECKER

Laudin und die Seinen underlines the point that Wassermann was
most able to engage with social issues of the day when focusing on the
concerns of the individual. Entirely typical also is the way in which Laudin,
and with him Wassermann, goes on to move from the analysis of a particu-
lar social ill to make a vaguer general plea for what he calls a transformation
of the social ideal (LS, 256), which would require a greater stock of some-
thing called Menschenhumus (LS, 257; human substance). The awk-
wardness of the word is a clue to the vagueness of the concept, and the
suggestion that this substance is something organic is highly revealing of
Wassermanns tendency to move from the specifically social to the vaguely
mystical.
Marriage crises proliferate in Wassermanns three later Weimar novels,
which comprise the Andergast trilogy. In the first book, Der Fall Mauriz-
ius, Etzel Andergasts father and mother are divorced, Mauriziuss mar-
riage to his wife Elli is also in a state of crisis prior to her murder, and it is
even mentioned in passing that the enigmatic central Jewish figure, Gregor
Waremme, is divorced from his wife. The first part of the second book,
Etzel Andergast, deals with the collapse of Joseph Kerkhovens first mar-
riage and with the associated collapse of Marie Bergmanns marriage, who
later becomes Kerkhovens second wife. The second part of the novel in
turn depicts the marriage of Kerkhoven and Marie in crisis, as she commits
adultery with Etzel, and this plot is carried over into Joseph Kerkhovens
dritte Existenz, which begins with the continuing crisis of the Kerkhoven
marriage and successful trial separation, but then shifts in focus to the
account of the marriage and divorce of Alexander Herzog, which is a thinly
veiled blow-by-blow account of Wassermanns own marriage and divorce
and stretches to hundreds of pages. These depictions of marital difficulties
allow Wassermann to amplify his critique in Laudin of marriage and
divorce law. In Der Fall Maurizius, the eponymous hero goes so far as to
describe a loveless marriage as cursed, and entering into one as a crime,
possibly the most serious crime possible.26 But increasingly, these marriage
crises become vehicles to convey Wassermanns ever sharper sense of a
wider social, psychological and even metaphysical malaise, which becomes
all-pervading by the last novel.27

Critique of the Justice System:

Der Fall Maurizius
Wassermann had already been preoccupied with the theme of justice in the
pre-Weimar years, not least in Caspar Hauser. His critique of the Weimar
criminal-justice system reached its height in his novel Der Fall Maurizius.
The novel, based on a real-life case, tells the story of Leonhart Maurizius,
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
95

who has been in prison for eighteen years for the murder of his wife.
Instrumental in his conviction was the senior public prosecutor, Baron
Andergast, who made his reputation through the successful prosecution of
the case. The case turned on the evidence of the polish Jew Gregor
Waremme. Andergasts sixteen-year-old son, Etzel, is convinced of Maur-
iziuss innocence, and eventually gets Waremme, now living in Berlin
under the name Warschauer, to confess that he had perjured himself at the
trial and that it was Mauriziuss wifes sister, Anna, with whom Maurizius
was having an affair, who had committed the murder. Meanwhile Baron
Andergast feels compelled by his sons actions to reconsider the case him-
self and eventually visits Maurizius in prison. No longer able to justify the
conviction, he chooses to take the cowards way out, arranging a pardon
for Maurizius, rather than see the original judgment overturned on appeal.
When Etzel learns of his fathers action, he breaks off all contact with him,
and his father suffers a complete breakdown. On his release, Maurizius
is unable to adapt to life outside prison and shortly afterwards commits
suicide.
Baron Andergast represents the Weimar justice system, and in criticiz-
ing him Wassermann joins the ranks of novelists who used their works to
attack that system during the Weimar Republic.28 Andergasts moral bank-
ruptcy is doubly emphasized when it is revealed that he himself lied in
order to engineer the suicide of his wifes lover (FM, 430), who was in turn
tricked into perjuring himself in order to protect her honor. Andergasts
eventual complete breakdown is a metaphor for the bankruptcy of the
Weimar justice system, though characteristically Wassermanns critique is
couched in general, almost philosophical terms, and does not, for example,
address the specific right-wing bias of judges during the Weimar Republic,
a matter which so exercised Heinrich Mann, Gabriele Tergit and Lion
Feuchtwanger, to name but three novelists who directly addressed this
issue.29 Thus, when Andergast realizes that Mauriziuss conviction is
unsafe, he is shaken by the abstract thought that truth might not be
absolute, but a product of the passage of time (FM, 418), but, in contrast
to Laudin und die Seinen there is little analysis in the novel of the specific
weaknesses of the legal system that could lead to miscarriages of justice.
Indeed, it can be argued that it is the personal moral weakness of
Waremme/Warschauer, allied to Andergasts rush to prejudge the case,
that led to the injustice. In the end it is personal shortcomings as much as
social and political conditions that are shown to lead to injustice, and this
is emphasized by the fact that Andergasts shortcomings in his private life
are given as much prominence as those in his public role and serve to illu-
minate it. Wassermanns target remains the lethargy of the heart that he
had identified as the ultimate source of injustice as far back as the Caspar
Hauser novel. It is, however, true to say that Der Fall Maurizius is much
more concrete when it comes to exposing and condemning the harshness
96
KARL LEYDECKER

of the prison regime to which Maurizius is subjected, including the

systematic abuse of prisoners (FM, 45253).

Conclusion
In Etzel Andergast and Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz, the second and
third novels of the Andergast trilogy, Wassermann became increasingly
preoccupied with the themes of decay, disintegration, and death. The
growing sense of pessimism and futility that pervades these works went
hand in hand with an ever greater fascination with mysticism and irra-
tionalism, with critics seeing in these last works an affinity between Wasser-
mann and Existentialism (Martin Heideggers seminal work, Sein und Zeit
[Being and Time], appeared in 1927).30 A key late influence on Wasser-
mann was the work of the Swiss philosopher Constantin von Monakow
(18531930), from whom Wassermann borrowed whole passages for his
Kerkhoven novel and whose work provided the philosophical underpin-
ning for Wassermanns search for metaphysical certainties in an ever more
hostile world.31
Wassermann was all too aware of the political realities of the Weimar
Republic in its final phase. His exclusion from the Prussian Academy of the
Arts in 1931 on account of his Jewishness was only the most obvious sign
of the worsening political situation in Germany. It was confirmation that
his cherished project of the assimilation of the Jews into German culture
and society, in which his own self-designated role was to be a bridge
between German and Jewish culture, had irretrievably failed.
Wassermanns Weimar novels are symptomatic of the difficulties
that many bourgeois writers who had risen to prominence during the
Wilhelmine period encountered when trying to come to terms with the
new political, and indeed economic, realities of the Weimar period
(Wassermann was always short of money and some of his numerous minor
works were written in haste with an eye to generating income, not least to
allow him to make alimony payments to his ex-wife). There is considerable
continuity between the concerns and the form and style of the novels writ-
ten before the First World War and those written during the Weimar
period. It is not by chance that several of the Weimar novels are set either
wholly or at least in part before the First World War. Moreover, thanks to
the lack of specific focus on the political and to a lesser extent the social
realities of the Weimar Republic in the novels from that period, there is a
sense in which novels or parts of novels set during the Weimar period
could equally well have been set before the war, or indeed appeared before
the war. This is true even where he is at his most specific and most success-
ful in his focus on social concerns in the Weimar novels, as for example in
his discussion of marriage or the criminal justice system.
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
97

Notes
1
Thomas Mann, in Marta Karlweis, Jakob Wassermann: Bild, Kampf und Werk, mit
einem Geleitwort von Thomas Mann (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1935), 7.
2
Gerd-Dieter Stein, Gesellschaftskritik und Kolportage: berlegungen zu Struk-
turen des Trivialen in J. Wassermanns Roman Laudin und die Seinen, in Literatur
und Sprache im sterreich der Zwischenkriegszeit: Polnisch-sterreichisches Germanisten-
Symposion 1983 in Salzburg, ed. Walter Weiss and Eduard Beutner (Stuttgart:
Akademischer Verlag Heinz, 1985), 14162; here, 142.
3
On this, see Wassermanns detailed account of his early life in the strongly
autobiographical novel that he completed in 1905 but which he was dissuaded
from publishing and which appeared only in 1973: Jakob Wassermann, Engel-
hart oder Die zwei Welten (Munich: Langen-Mller, 1973). On Wassermanns
life see also the account by his second wife, Marta Karlweis, Jakob Wassermann,
and more recently Rudolf Koester, Jakob Wassermann (Berlin: Morgenbuch
Verlag, 1996).
4
For a discussion of the novel, see Alan Corkhill, Emancipation and Redemption
in Jakob Wassermanns novel Die Geschichte der jungen Renate Fuchs, Seminar 22,
no. 4 (1986): 299310.
5
Martin Neubauer, Jakob Wassermann: Ein Schriftsteller im Urteil seiner
Zeitgenossen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994), 2324.
6
For a full discussion of these elements in Christian Wahnschaffe, see Klaus Karl-
stetter, Das Bild des Jugendlichen in der deutschsprachigen Erzhlliteratur der Zeit
zwischen dem Ersten Weltkrieg (1918) und der Diktatur (1933) (Uppsala: Berlings,
1980), 5196, esp. 5355 and 9596.
7
Well-known dramatic examples include Walter Hasenclevers Der Sohn (1914)
and Ernst Tollers Die Wandlung (1919).
8
For details of the translations of Wassermanns works into English and his recep-
tion in America in the 1920s, see Neubauer, Jakob Wassermann, 2125.
9
See the catalogue of the exhibition in Bonn and other cities in 1984, Dierk
Rodewald, ed., Jakob Wassermann, 18731934: Ein Weg als Deutscher und Jude;
Lesebuch zu einer Ausstellung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1984); and the collection of Wasser-
manns essays and speeches on the Jewish question: Dierk Rodewald, ed., Jakob
Wassermann: Deutscher und Jude; Reden und Schriften, 19041933 (Heidelberg:
Lambert Schneider, 1984). See also the collection Rudolf Wolff, ed., Jakob
Wassermann: Werk und Wirkung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), where five of the six
main chapters focus on aspects of Jewishness in Wassermanns works. The interest
in Wassermann and the Jewish question was part of a wider critical interest in Jew-
ish writers of the early twentieth century at the time. See the important collection
Gunter E. Grimm and Hans-Peter Bayerdrfer, eds., Im Zeichen Hiobs: Jdische
Schriftsteller und deutsche Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert (Knigstein im Taunus:
Athenum, 1985).
10
Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (Berlin: Dirk Nishen,
1987), 50. Subsequent references are given using the abbreviation WDJ followed
by the page number.
98
KARL LEYDECKER

11
Jakob Wassermann, Das Los der Juden, in Dierk Rodewald, Jakob Wasser-
mann: Deutscher und Jude; Reden und Schriften, 19041933, 1727; here, 24.
12
Jakob Wassermann, Der Literat oder Mythos und Persnlichkeit (Leipzig: Insel
Verlag, 1910), reprinted in Lebensdienst: Gesammelte Studien: Erfahrungen und
Reden aus drei Jahrzehnten (Leipzig and Zrich: Grethlein & Co., 1928), 50249.
All references are to the latter edition and are given using the abbreviation LM fol-
lowed by the page number in the text.
13
Jakob Wassermann, Der Jude als Orientale, reprinted in Lebensdienst, 17377;
here, 176.
14
Wassermanns ambivalent attitude towards Jewishness is most evident in the
novels in his depiction of Gregor Waremme in Der Fall Maurizius. On this, see
Martina Landscheidt, Mutmaungen ber Waremme, Annherung an
Warschauer: Zu der jdischen Doppelfigur Warschauer-Waremme in Jakob Wasser-
manns Roman Der Fall Maurizius, in Wolff, Jakob Wassermann: Werk und
Wirkung, 1432.
15
See Birgit Stengel, Jakob Wassermanns Weg als Deutscher und Jude, in Kurt
Tucholsky und das Judentum, ed. Michael Hepp (Oldenburg: bis Verlag, 1996),
13750; here, 140, and her earlier essay, Birgit Stengel-Marchand, Das tragische
Paradox der Assimilation der Fall Wassermann, Der Deutschunterricht 37
(1985): 3841. In her book-length study of aspects of Jewishness in Wassermanns
works, Christa Joeris is a generally much more sympathetic in her analysis, but she
too draws attention to the way in which his writings sometimes reproduce anti-
semitic stereotypes: see Christa Joeris, Aspekte des Judentums im Werk Jakob Wasser-
manns (Aachen: Shaker, 1996), esp. 6373.
16
Jakob Wassermann, Zu Walter Rathenaus Tod, in Lebensdienst, 2329; here, 29.
17
Jakob Wassermann, Teilnahme des Dichters an der Politik, in Lebensdienst,
32830; here, 328. The date of first publication of the essay could not be
determined.
18
Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Berlin: Fischer, 1918).
19
Seine Epik umging politisch oder ideologisch brisante Fragestellungen, attack-
ierte keine Parteien und Personen, sondern blieb in ihrer sozialpolitischen Dimen-
sion eher unbestimmt. Neubauer, Jakob Wassermann, 30.
20
For an account and critique of this shift towards the exploration of the relation-
ship between literary history and social history, see Jrg Schnert, The Reception
of Sociological Theory by West-German Literary Scholarship, 19701985, in
New Ways in Germanistik, ed. Richard Sheppard (Oxford and New York: Berg,
1990), and Schnert, On the Present State of Distress in the Social History of
German Literature, Poetics 14 (1985): 30319.
21
Well-known examples include Bertolt Brechts early play Trommeln in der Nacht
(Drums in the Night, 1919) and Ernst Tollers play Der deutsche Hinkemann
(1924).
22
For a full account of the debate about marriage around the turn of the century
and beyond, see Karl Leydecker, Marriage and Divorce in the Plays of Hermann
Sudermann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), 5576.
 JAKOB WASSERMANN: SOCIAL, LEGAL, AND PERSONAL CRISES
99

23
Graf Hermann Keyserling, Das Ehe-Buch: Eine neue Sinngebung im Zusammen-
klang der Stimmen fhrender Zeitgenossen (Celle: Niels Kampmann Verlag, 1925),
translated into English as The Book of Marriage: A New Interpretation by Twenty-
Four Leaders of Contemporary Thought, arranged and edited by Count Hermann
Keyserling (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1926). Wassermanns chapter
Brgerliche Ehe: Offener Brief an den Grafen Keyserling was reprinted in Jakob
Wassermann, Lebensdienst, 96112. All references are to the latter edition using the
abbreviation L and the page number.
24
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Jakob Wassermann, der Bestsellerautor von gestern, in
Nachprfung: Aufstze ber deutsche Schriftsteller von gestern (erweiterte Neuaus-
gabe) (Munich: dtv, 1984), 4752.
25
See Stephan Koranyi, Nachwort, in Jakob Wassermann, Laudin und die Seinen
(Munich: dtv, 1987), 33744; here, 338. References to the novel are to this edi-
tion, using the abbreviation LS and the page number. For a biographical and psy-
choanalytical approach to the representation of marriage in Wassermanns later
fiction, see Regina Schfer, Plaidoyer fr Ganna: Mnner und Frauen in den
Romanen Jakob Wassermanns (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1992).
26
Jakob Wassermann, Der Fall Maurizius (Gtersloh: Mohn Verlag, 1960),
37475. Subsequent references to the novel are to this edition, using the abbrevia-
tion FM and the page number.
27
As Garrin observes, The marriages which are shown in these volumes as decay-
ing and crumbling are representative of the German middle class (Stephen H.
Garrin, The Concept of Justice in Jakob Wassermanns Trilogy [Berne, Frankfurt am
Main and Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1979], 81).
28
On this, see Koester, Jakob Wassermann, 73.
29
See the chapters on Heinrich Mann, Gabriele Tergit, and Lion Feuchtwanger in
this volume.
30
On this development in Wassermanns last novels, see the excellent article by
Esther Schneider-Handschin, Aspekte des Wertezerfalls in Jakob Wassermanns
Andergast-Trilogie, Wirkendes Wort 43 (1993): 8190.
31
On this see Geraint Vaughan Jones, Jakob Wassermanns Joseph Kerkhovens
dritte Existenz: Its Philosophy and Structure, German Life and Letters 3
(194950): 16984, and Ren Kaech, Doktor Kerkhovens drei Existenzen: Als
Hinweis auf den Schriftsteller Jakob Wassermann, Schweizer Monatshefte 51
(197172): 41931.
5: Signs of the Times: Joseph Roths
Weimar Journalism

Helen Chambers

T HE AUSTRIAN NOVELIST JOSEPH ROTH is best known for Radetzky-

marsch (The Radetzky March, 1932) a wryly nostalgic evocation of
the Habsburg Empire in decline, and Hiob (Job, 1930) a novel about the
lost world of the eastern European Jews. As a journalist in the 1920s, how-
ever, he was one of the most politically astute and socially aware observers
of life in Berlin, and indeed elsewhere in Germany, during the Weimar
Republic. His observations were published in the German, Viennese, and
Prague press in articles and essays whose literary quality and reader appeal
made him, at a Mark a line, the highest paid journalist working for the
Frankfurter Zeitung. His work appeared unter dem Strich in the so-called
Feuilleton, the arts section, below the line that marked off news from
comment. Committed throughout his life to discovering and communicat-
ing underlying truths, as opposed to documentary fact, Roth saw his con-
tributions as more substantial than the ephemeral daily political reports. In
a letter to his editor in 1926 he asserted with characteristic rhetorical lan,
Ich bin nicht eine Zugabe, nicht eine Mehlspeise, sondern eine
Hauptmahlzeit (Im not a garnish, not a dessert, Im the main course),
continuing, Ich zeichne das Gesicht der Zeit (I paint the portrait of the
age).1 The main reason for his conviction that his articles had a greater
impact was their literary quality. In another letter in 1927 he explains that
by his writing he is trying to show the Germans that art is no decorative
optional extra: it is as crucial to survival in the modern world as machinery,
a winter coat, and medication.2
Roth is often referred to as a chronicler of his times, but in the pream-
ble to a series of pieces on the South of France he claims that he cannot
deliver reports, rather Ich kann nur erzhlen, was in mir vorging und wie
ich es erlebte (I can only tell what went on within me and how I experi-
enced it)3 what he is doing, then, is giving aesthetic form to his own
feelings. This apparent tension between subjective experience and object-
ive reality lies at the heart of Roths non-fiction. He turns a private eye on
public life and exposes and analyses the contradictions of the day, in texts
that represent human behavior, circumstances, and institutions at a time of
social and political turbulence and economic instability. In order to present
102
HELEN CHAMBERS

the issues of the time with an immediacy that retains his readers attention,
engaging their minds and hearts, he interrogates his own subjective
responses. He aims to translate the political into human and personal
terms. The relationship between his articles and the news reports is com-
parable to that between the novel and historiography, where the novel, as
has been argued, provides a more reliable narrative of the past than histor-
ical discourse. His process of composition involves reducing and filtering
events in order to arrive at a human perspective, which is the level at which
the reader can grasp the dynamics of a situation and in so doing gain a bet-
ter understanding of the bigger picture:

Jedes Ereignis von Weltgeschichtsqualitt mu ich auf das Persnliche

reduzieren, um seine Gre zu fhlen und seine Wirkung abzuschtzen.
Gewissermaen durch den Filtrierapparat Ego rinnen lassen und von
den Schlacken der Monumentalitt befreien. Ich will sie aus dem Poli-
tischen ins Menschliche bersetzen. Aus den Bezirken, die ber dem
Strich liegen, in die Regionen unter dem Strich. (W 1:570)

[In order to feel its greatness and weigh up its effect, I have to reduce
each world-history-quality occurrence to a personal dimension. To let it
run, as it were, through the filtration plant ego and purge it of the
dross of monumentality. My aim is to translate it from a political idiom
into a human one. From the areas above the line, to the regions below it.]
The ironic composite term world-history-quality in this programmatic
statement from a 1921 article signals Roths skepticism about the standard
press view of what is of primary importance for an understanding of the
contemporary world. Well aware of the major issues of the day, he none the
less more often turns his attention to aspects of ordinary, everyday exis-
tence and to marginalized groups and individuals in society. These both
command his interest and sympathy in themselves and are seen as sympto-
matic of wider problems. Losers, not winners, and the immediate milieu of
city life are frequently the focus of the over 800 articles Roth published in
the Berlin press alone between 1920 and 1932.4 More than 1,300
appeared between 1915 and 1939.
Joseph Roths journalism belongs in a literary tradition that he him-
self, in an article in defense of the feuilleton against charges that it was not
a serious publication, traces back to Herodotus. He also names Heinrich
Heine (17971856), saying his Reisebriefe (Travel Letters, 182629) are
both amusing and a great artistic achievement and equating their artistic
value with their moral import (W 1:617). A comparative study of the non-
fiction of these two humorously melancholic German Jewish writers who,
almost a century apart, responded in sensually rich, ironic prose to political
persecution in the land of their mother tongue would be a rewarding pro-
ject.5 Roths journalism is also directly descended from a Viennese line that
includes Peter Altenberg, Karl Kraus, and Alfred Polgar. Altenbergs
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
103

atmospheric prose sketches, which capture everyday phenomena, turning

pebbles into crystal (W 1:268) are free of superficial Viennese charm, as are
Krauss uncompromising polemics on the misuse of language and the false
morality of the age. Polgar was literary editor of the pacifist Viennese
weekly, Der Friede, where Roth first placed contributions as a young jour-
nalist. He followed Polgar to Der Neue Tag, modeling his work on the edi-
tors carefully crafted ironic miniatures.6
As a genre whose heyday was in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the Viennese feuilleton had a mixed pedigree. Then it was the pre-
serve of influential cultural pundits such as Ludwig Speidel, who could
make or break a dramatists reputation. Defining its generic characteristics,
Hubert Lengauer draws attention to the personal perspective, which
invests each piece with an individual unifying tone polemical, melan-
cholic, or whatever. He sees in the articulation of the feuilletonists per-
sonal point of view as opposed to the official version of the news a political
gain post-1848, an assertion of liberalism that affirms confidence in the
individuals judgment and encourages independent thought and feeling.7
The most prestigious daily was the Neue Freie Presse, which published feuil-
letons on the cultural scene in the Habsburg monarchy, many written by
gifted Jewish writers such as Hieronymus Lorm, Daniel Spitzer, and Sig-
mund Schlesinger. However a literary form that allowed the writer to
indulge in subjective, impressionistic ruminations on topics of sometimes
questionable significance laid itself open to charges of pandering to the
escapism of readers for whom idle curiosity could readily take the place of
the desire for intellectual stimulation.8 Roth was well aware of these
criticisms, but in his first waged position, with the newly founded, left-
of-centre Der Neue Tag from April 191920, his articles, for all their buoy-
ant tone, reflect the harsher sides of postwar Vienna, repeatedly addressing
the issues of food shortages and uncertainty about identity.9 Many
appeared under the rubric Wiener Symptome (Viennese Symptoms),
suggesting a diagnostic approach to an ailing city, an approach Roth carried
over into later pieces where the patient was the Weimar Republic and the
diseases incurable. When Der Neue Tag folded, he headed for Berlin to join
many other German-speaking intellectuals looking for a living in the capi-
tal of the new republic, where press, cultural activity, and the entertain-
ment industry were expanding rapidly. There, with the aid of contacts from
Vienna, but largely on his own merit, he established himself on the Frank-
furter Zeitung, a leading national daily, as a star journalist amid a galaxy of
talent. Among his Berlin contemporaries were Egon Erwin Kisch, Kurt
Tucholsky, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin.
Roths family background, unlike theirs, was modest and provincial.
Born in 1894 in Brody in Galicia, a small town with a large Jewish popula-
tion (over 70 percent), on the easternmost fringes of what was then the
Habsburg Empire, Roth was raised by his protective mother. He never
104
HELEN CHAMBERS

knew his father, whose mental illness and early death were topics avoided
in the Jewish community. He distinguished himself at school, but his study
of German philology at the University of Vienna (191416) was inter-
rupted by the First World War. In Vienna he experienced a strongly anti-
Semitic atmosphere, exacerbated by the influx of eastern Jewish refugees
from the Russian campaign. Roth served in the army for two years, return-
ing to Vienna in 1918 to an irrevocably changed world. He had lost his
homeland, territory that fell to the victors; the Habsburg Empire, frame-
work of his early existence, was gone, as was its symbolic anchor, Emperor
Franz Josef, who had died in 1916. Roth had to earn a living and also cre-
ate a new identity for himself. Acutely conscious of his situation as a
Heimkehrer, a chance survivor of the war, Roth experienced the geographi-
cal and political losses of home town and Empire as emotional and cultural
traumas. These were to be replicated more brutally with the collapse of the
Weimar Republic and his resulting exile from the German state that
became the Third Reich in 1933; the annexation of Austria in 1938 only
added to his pain.
Roths journalistic career took him to Berlin in 1920, but also back
and forth to Vienna, and to Prague, particularly in the early twenties, and,
starting in 1925, on journeys in France, Russia, Albania, and Italy, as well
as Germany. From 1923 he was also writing and publishing novels. He
emigrated in January 1933, shortly before Hitler became Reichskanzler,
living in exile in France, Holland, and Belgium until his premature death in
Paris in 1939 from the effects of alcoholism.
In the early twenties Roth expressed socialist views and wrote for left-
wing publications, such as the Neue Berliner Zeitung-12-Uhr-Blatt, from
1920 to 1926. He also contributed regularly in 1921 and 1922 to the
more conservative Berliner Brsen-Courier, but resigned from it because of
lack of sympathy with its politics, placing articles instead from mid-1922 to
mid-1924 with the SPD party paper Vorwrts. The death in 1925 of social
democrat Friedrich Ebert, first president of the Republic, was a severe
blow to Roth, and the shift to the right, signaled by his replacement by the
nationalist Hindenburg, led Roth to stop contributing to the Berliner
Brsen-Courier altogether.10 From the beginning of 1923 he was employed
by the liberal, politically independent Frankfurter Zeitung.11 Despite the
high pay he could command, he was always short of money and sought
multiple outlets for his work. Throughout the Weimar Republic he wrote
occasionally for the Prager Tagblatt. In 1929 he signed a lucrative contract
with the conservative Mnchner Neueste Nachrichten, breaking temporarily
with the Frankfurter Zeitung, and from January 1933 he refused to pub-
lish further in Germany with the result that subsequent articles appeared in
the exile press in Paris, Prague, and Amsterdam. These were largely polem-
ical essays attacking the Third Reich and rallying support for an Austrian
monarchist stance, as the only hope of countering the Nazis. Roths political
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
105

shift from left to right is technical rather than substantial. He never moved
from his conviction of the right of all humanity to freedom and dignity, or
from his resistance to the abuse of power and of language as an instrument
of power. What changed with events was his perception of the political cli-
mate best suited to deliver his ideal of humanity. At the same time he was a
career journalist, and his choice of outlets was influenced by pragmatic
financial considerations, just as the subjects and style of his articles inevitably
took account of the editorial expectations of the organs to which he
contributed.
Although our main concern here is with Roths Weimar journalism
and the light it casts on political and social issues of the age, the novels he
published in the period should not be passed over in silence. His first
novel, Das Spinnennetz (The Spiders Web), though set in Berlin, was seri-
alized in 1923 in the Wiener Arbeiterzeitung, the official paper of the Aus-
trian Socialist Party. It is a remarkably prescient account of the danger from
right-wing conspiracy in postwar Germany. The petit-bourgeois protago-
nist Theodor Lohse, a Heimkehrer (returnee) without qualities, unable
to think for himself, humiliated and disorientated by his lack of role in the
postwar city, finds a spurious sense of self as spy, manipulator, and mur-
derer in the shady underworld of illegal nationalist activity. Roth commu-
nicates the threatening atmosphere of chaotic violence in the Berlin streets
and the subaltern mentality that was open to exploitation by power-seeking
ideologues. This novel, in which he includes both past and anticipated
future political events, concluded publication two days before the Hitler-
Ludendorff attempted putsch in Munich in November 1923. Both figure
in the novel, as does the failed bomb attack on the Victory Column outside
the Reichstag in 1921.12 Although it has been criticized for stylistic
unevenness, switching between an overheated Expressionist mode and the
distanced coolness of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity),13 and although
no evidence has been found of its influence on the readership of the day
it first appeared in book form in 1967 as Bronsen observes, Das Spin-
nennetz represented an important stand by Roth against his literary con-
temporaries, whom he publicly criticized for remaining indifferent to the
alarming political developments of the day (W 1:1068; 2:5961). While
announcing central thematic concerns such as the fruitless search for order
and direction in a world without meaning, and the alienation and disorien-
tation of the individual, it equally demonstrates Roths finely tuned anten-
nae for the specifics of atmosphere and mentality as reciprocally influential
aspects of human existence, intangibles to which he gave tangible form in
his writing.
The novels that followed, Hotel Savoy (1924), Die Rebellion (1924),
Flucht ohne Ende (Flight without End, 1927), Zipper und sein Vater (Zipper
and His Father, 1928), and Rechts und Links (Right and Left, 1929), all set
in the present or recent past, portray protagonists who are engaged in the
106
HELEN CHAMBERS

attempt to return to a home that can no longer be found. In his novel

Hiob, subtitled, the story of a simple man, he changed style and focus. It
tells the story of a Russian rabbi leaving his traditional life in eastern
Europe and going to New York, in the hope of protecting his children
from the temptation to live non-Jewish lives. Mendel Singer leaves a dis-
abled child, Menuchim, behind. After one son and his wife have died and
his daughter has succumbed to schizophrenia, he suffers a crisis of faith,
but is saved in the end by the miracle of Menuchims return as a successful
composer. The novel, about the meaning of suffering and the possibility of
grace, is a metaphysical meditation in the form of a legend-like narrative.14
This was Roths first major success as a novelist and it was followed by a
second, Radetzkymarsch (1932) in which he turned not to rural eastern
Jewry, but to the historical past of the fading years of the Habsburg
Empire, in order to create a counter-world and escape into a prewar exist-
ence (B, 218), remote from violent reality. It is a world shot through with
weakness, folly, and indecision and on the brink of political disintegration
because of emergent nationalisms, but nonetheless one where the notion
of multiethnic tolerance is not dead and a benign order is still thinkable.
Much of the novel was written at caf and hotel tables in Berlin, Frankfurt,
Antibes, and Baden-Baden: in Mampes Gute Stube on the Kurfrsten-
damm, for example, not far from where Robert Musil was simultaneously
working on his novel of Habsburg Austrias decline, Der Mann ohne Eigen-
schaften (The Man without Qualities, 193043). Radetzkymarsch was seri-
alized by the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1932, and published later that year.
Because of anti-Jewish legislation and Roths departure into exile, he never
received the royalties. His books were burned in 1933, and all subsequent
works, including the sequel, Die Kapuzinergruft (translated as The
Emperors Tomb, 1938), were published in Holland by Allert de Lang,
Querido, or De Gemeenschap.
Although his later novels and stories were an escape from the present,
his non-fiction up to 1933 and beyond was firmly rooted in it, which is not
to say that it was either literarily true or uniformly realistic in style. As to
the reception and distribution of his non-fiction writing, most was
ephemeral. Roth, for all his desire to effect change, recognized its limited
impact: Im Feuilleton ist es sehr schwer etwas zu verndern (It is hard to
change anything by writing feuilletons), he reflects in 1925 to Bernard von
Brentano (B, 68). He was, however, working on a collection of essays,
Juden auf Wanderschaft (The Wandering Jews), which appeared in book
form in 1927.15 The text is an attempt to combat prejudice about the Jews
in Europe. Roths preface is a polemical attack on burgeoning anti-Semitism
in Germany and metropolitan Austria, designed both to dispel ignorance
in the West and to give the eastern Jews a sense of their own worth and of
the value of their traditions. In writing it, Roth was returning to a part of
his identity as an eastern Jew, on which as a young man he had turned his
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
107

back as he sought, highly successfully, to assimilate into western educated

society in Vienna and Berlin. The rise of Nazism prompts him to ask
searching questions about the nature and location of civilization and bar-
barism in Europe. When describing the community of Hassidic Jews, he
begins ironically by showing them as if through the eyes of a traveler in
exotic parts: Sie sind fr die Westeuroper ebenso ferne und rtselhaft als
etwa die Bewohner des Himalaja, die jetzt in Mode gekommen sind
(W 2:843; To the Western European they are as exotic and remote as, say,
the inhabitants of the Himalayan region, who are now so much in fashion),
but no one shows any interest in learning about them, because they live in
our midst. He goes on to show the everyday life of the community. What
is being offered is not a backward-looking Utopia, such as Roth is often
seen as creating, not an alternative in place of the uncomfortable or vicious
complexity of urban life, but a corrective to prejudiced perceptions. By
detailed descriptions of people and customs, insight is being given into the
cultural diversity within the homeland, and into the tendency of the natives
to look with contempt on their own compatriots if they speak another
language or dress differently, like the Hassidic Jews or indeed the Slavs in
Galicia.
Although Roth was not religious in any orthodox sense, the text
focuses on the spiritual leader in the community, the rabbi, and what inter-
ests Roth about him is his role in providing social and psychological sup-
port. The angle is sociological, showing the rabbi as a focus and a source of
identity and meaning in relation to the fundamental experiences of human
existence: birth, marriage, sickness, troubles, and death. He is a fixed point
of reference, a reliable but threatened source of wisdom. The question as
to who will replace the miracle rabbis function where in modern soci-
ety is a substitute for his counsel and benign authority to be found? is
implicit in Roths text (W 2:84345). In his enlightening accounts of areas
that are generally viewed with disdain, Roth is not implying that every-
thing is better there than in so-called Western civilization, but that some
things are different, and different does not necessarily mean worse. Cor-
rections to the publishers proofs show the care Roth took in making his
case. He removed the explicitly subjective frame and tone in chapter 2,
Das jdische Stdtchen (The Jewish Shtetl). He also cut some of the
more sentimental and polemical observations, together with comments
that present Jews in terms of current stereotypes.16
Only two volumes of Roths nonfiction appeared in Weimar Germany.
The other, Panoptikum: Gestalten und Kulissen (Panopticum: Figures and
Scenery), was a collection of reprinted articles published in Munich in
1930.17 After his death his nonfiction disappeared from view, to be redis-
covered and increasingly republished from 1970 on. Ingrid Sltemeyers
edition of selected political articles from Der Neue Tag was followed by the
reprinting of some 600 articles in Hermann Kestens 1975/6 four-volume
108
HELEN CHAMBERS

edition of Roths works. A further hundred and twenty-seven reappeared

in 1984, edited by Klaus Westermann under the title Berliner-Saison-
bericht. Of a six-volume edition of Roths works published from 1989
through 1991, three volumes comprise journalism, and these, with a sup-
plementary fourth edited by Rainer-Joachim Siegel (1994), make the full
range of Roths non-fictional output accessible simultaneously for the first
time. These four volumes have been attracting increasing scholarly atten-
tion as well as feeding more popular markets in the form of geographically
focused selections for cultural and historical tourists, armchair and other-
wise, in Berlin, Vienna, and the Saarland.18 Michael Bienerts selection of
articles, Joseph Roth in Berlin, has recently appeared in English translation
under the title What I saw: Reports from Berlin, 192033, and thus a sub-
stantial sample of Roths non-fiction has become available to the English-
reading public for the first time.19 Because the collection was originally
designed as a kind of guidebook to Berlin of the twenties, there is a
stronger emphasis on the built environment in these pieces than might
otherwise have been the case, so that although a number of them will serve
as core points of reference, it will be necessary to go beyond them to
amplify the picture.
Given the volume and range of the texts, all that can be attempted
here is to give some sense of the nature of Roths literary engagement with
his times. The task is problematic, because of the intricate and concen-
trated form of the genre. Although they are not all of equal artistic quality,
each piece has its own structure, strategies, and dramaturgy.20 The analysis
of any one cannot readily be generalized or be transferred to another. In
the chosen period some 800 works come into question, from which a
choice has to be made for sample analysis. Any selection inevitably involves
distortion, in a way that is less true of the genre of the novel, where there
are fewer works to choose from. Roths reportage is by virtue of its inher-
ent characteristics multiple self-contained small masterpieces an
intractable treasure for literary critics.
After a detailed discussion of Spaziergang (Going for a Walk) as a
piece that epitomizes Roths approach to his journalistic writing, we will
turn to three key areas of life in Weimar Germany with which he engaged
repeatedly: entertainment, politics, and the face of the city, with a final
glance forwards to the polemical essays of the post-Weimar period. There
is a broadly chronological progression in the groups of articles discussed.
Dietmar Goltschnigg, in his illuminating discussion of Roths essays,
distinguishes three types of journalistic output: the feuilleton, a series of
subjective impressions, pictures, and moods; reportage, comprising reports
on local, social, law court, war, and travel matters; and the essay, with its
greater emphasis on rational, critical discourse.21 These are not watertight
categories in Roths work, a fact exemplified by Juden auf Wanderschaft, in
which all three categories can be found. We will be concerned principally
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
109

with the first two, as Roth turned to the essay mainly in his last years in
response to the political situation. Early clues to Roths approach to his
writing, to a poetics of his reportage, can be found in a birthday wish to
Paula Grbel and a tribute to Peter Altenberg. In 1916, having no cash for
a gift, Roth wishes his cousin Drei knigliche Dinge: eine Krone, einen
Scharlachmantel und ein Szepter. Die goldene Krone der Phantasie, den
Scharlachmantel der Einsamkeit und das Szepter der Ironie (B, 29; Three
royal things: a crown, a scarlet cloak, a scepter. The golden crown of imagina-
tion, the scarlet cloak of solitariness and the scepter of irony). These royal
gifts, attributes setting the owner above and apart from others, are ones
that set Roth himself apart, as an artist. The first, imagination, imparts the
power to create alternative or supplementary realities to those experienced
in the world of everyday existence. There are two main aspects to Roths
use of imagination in his reportage. The first is to give an impression of
truth, irrespective of whether what is written is literally true or not. The
underlying truth of a situation is what matters, and the literary imagination
can convey this more successfully than a documentary report, sometimes
by adjusting the facts, as Heine does (W 1:617), sometimes, as in the case
of Dblin in his Polish travelogue, by using exaggeration (W 2:535).22
This is close to Egon Erwin Kischs notion of the reporters logical imagin-
ation, as expounded in his programmatic article of 1918.23 It is generally
impossible to tell how much of the ostensible truth Roth presents is actu-
ally true and how much is adapted or invented. Any reading of Roths
nonfiction must be alert to this potential unreliability in factual terms. One
example will serve as an indication of how he operates. In the ironically
titled 1921 feuilleton, Reise nach Kultur-Wien (W 1:592; Journey to
Vienna, City of Culture) Roth draws on an article about the nefarious
activities of the Austrian lawyer Hof- und Gerichtsadvocat Smirsch, which
he found in an collected volume of pieces by Walter Rode. He gets the title
of the book and the name of the lawyer wrong, writing Jurisprudenz,
Juristen und anderes for Justiz, Justizleute und Anderes and Smilasch
for Smirsch. These approximations suggest that though the book had
only recently appeared, Roth neither had it to hand any longer nor felt the
need for accuracy.24 He further expresses the hope that he will meet this
symptom of local culture on his visit to Vienna, although Rodes article
makes clear that Smirsch was already dead in 1913. Roth resuscitates
Smirsch/Smilasch in order to use his exploitative dishonesty humorously
to illustrate a contemporary ill.
Roth also employs imagination to shift reality into a surreal dimension.
By this technique Roth makes a strongly visual (sometimes aural) appeal to
his readers, which challenges their rational responses. It forces them to
look for the join, to consider where the real tips over into the imaginary,
and in so doing raises their consciousness of the underlying extremity of
situations accepted as normal. He uses this imaginative technique to create
110
HELEN CHAMBERS

striking images of a topsy-turvy world or of a disorientated consciousness.

Like surrealist painting, this literary device challenges accepted views of
reality by shifting ordinary objects into unfamiliar relationships. It is a
heightened form of the incongruity that is a hallmark of Roths style. In a
1920 article on postwar black-marketing, written from the perspective of a
wide-eyed bystander, Roths account of feverish dealing in large quantities
of disparate commodities, from foodstuffs to foreign currencies, culmin-
ates in a sensually precise surreal image of chaos:

Millionen sprangen mit leichtem Klaps gegen die Zimmerdecke und

blieben kleben, wie feuchtgemachte Zigarettenhlsen, von Schulz u. Comp.
emporgeschleudert.
Sardinenl ergo sich ber Pferdedecken. Die nicht garantierten
Zndhlzer entzndeten sich am Schmirgelpapier. (W 1:299)

[Millions leapt upwards and slapped gently against the ceiling, sticking
there like moistened cigarette paper, flung aloft by Schulz and Co.
Sardine oil poured over the horse blankets. The unguaranteed
matches struck themselves on the emery paper.]

This suggests, with concrete immediacy, the precarious value of traded

commodities, when millions in banknotes have no more substance than
cigarette paper that may yet go up in smoke, and the matches already have,
in a kind of mock apocalyptic vision.
Imagination, as the golden crown, is the most valuable gift for the lit-
erary journalist, but the scarlet mantle of solitariness is a key attribute too.
Roth writes from a perspective as observer and commentator, as eyewit-
ness, at times flaneur, detached from the reality through which he moves,
isolated in his sharpened consciousness of what he sees, his desire to record
and reflect from a distance without participating.25 Third, the scepter, the
symbol of the capacity to rule, that is, to control, is the gift of irony. In the
preface to a planned collection of articles, Roth describes irony as a form of
analysis (W 3:149). It is the tool he uses to take command of his subjects,
to probe and expose the contradictions in the world about him. He fre-
quently achieves this by ironic juxtaposition of discrepant phenomena or
information or by otherwise drawing attention to mismatches between
form and content, between appearance and substance, between intention
and result.
In a 1922 piece on Altenberg, he notes, Er wies in eine neue Zeit. In
die Zeit der Wortknappheit und der strengen Krze. (W 1:769; He
pointed the way to a new age. An age of word scarcity and stringent
brevity).26 His own work nonfiction and much of his fiction too cor-
responds to this perception of the demands of the times. Roth voices
his awareness of the need to find a new and adequate literary language to
represent the phenomena of modernity, whose mass aspect and previously
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
111

unencountered ramifications threaten to elude the writers grasp (W

2:220, 332; H, 108, 163). His answer to the instability and contradictions
of the age, to its accelerated pace and loss of comfortable certainties is to
develop a style where pace and impact are achieved by a range of rhetorical
strategies whose essence is condensation and distillation, pregnant brevity
and formal clarity. The clean lines of his bright, brittle prose style, where
color and rhythm appeal directly to the reader, rest on the frequent use of
paratactic sentence structure and linguistically concentrated figures of
speech based on contrast and contradiction: oxymora, antonyms, synesthe-
sia, antitheses, paradoxes, and sly zeugma are his ironic stock in trade.
Anaphora serves to highlight difference as much as similarity. This is poetic
prose, a consciously though not preciously literary style, partaking of
Impressionism, New Objectivity, and modernism.
The 1921 article Spaziergang (Going for a Walk) is both program-
matic and exemplary with regard to Roths approach and his journalistic
style (W 1:56467; H, 2327). It is about the sense of loss of authenticity
in modern city life, and its critical edge, designed for the well-heeled read-
ers of the Berliner Brsen-Courier, is less cutting than its satirical compan-
ion piece, Feuilleton, published two months later, in defense of the
genre (W 1:61619). The title is deceptively innocuous. It is characteristic
of literary reportage to take something familiar and shift it into an unfamil-
iar light, or alternatively to present something unfamiliar and render it
comprehensible by framing it in familiar terms. This twin aspect of moving
close-up phenomena away from the reader and bringing remote ones
closer is a defining characteristic of a dynamic genre that, in its small com-
pass, seeks to engage the readers interest and make them think, by shifting
their responses through a succession of perspectives.
The dramaturgy of Spaziergang involves an initial sentence, the
point of departure, that establishes the perspective adopted: the authors
visual perception in the present.27 These are not phenomena that can be
wished away or glossed over. The text asserts their presence, but equally
their surface quality what can be seen. Pointing beyond that, there are
already two evaluative epithets attached to what is seen, absurd and
inconspicuous, and in the metaphor of the face of the street and the day
we see a typical example of anthropomorphism in Roths writing. Whereas
Altenberg peoples his fragments of everyday life with invented, novelistic
characters into whose minds he looks as omniscient author, in order to
reveal their interactive, socially conditioned psychological processes,28
Roth here and elsewhere represents contemporary reality in terms of a
human being, whose face, as the direct communicative interface with the
rest of humanity, holds the key to understanding what lies behind it. The
face metaphor recurs in Roths reportage in this sense of the exposed, visi-
ble surface of the living organism of the times, a readable surface with a
range of individual features that needs the observer as writer to decode
112
HELEN CHAMBERS

them. It is a sociological project in which Roth is engaged, but also an

ontological one. One is reminded of Bchners Woyzeck, looking at pat-
terns of toadstools in the grass, and saying Wer das lesen knnt! (If one
could read that) to communicate the sense of a mysterious unseen, living
world beneath the surface, whose superficial signs are just that, clues to a
deeper truth about existence, questions about which can be explored with
tools that are both scientific and poetic.29 Of the synonyms for face repeat-
edly employed by Roth in this sense: Gesicht (face), Antlitz (counte-
nance), Physiognomie (physiognomy), the last suggests a process of
scientific interpretation of empirical evidence to get at a hidden truth.30
Before he reviews the evidence, Roth alerts the reader to the dis-
crepant but complementary aspects of his project by a shift of register
between the matter-of-fact beginning and end of the sentence and the
poetic Antlitz, a term which, etymologically, has a strong animate reso-
nance. It derives from the Old High German, antlizzi, meaning das
Entgegenblickende, literally, what looks back at you. Equally the dou-
ble collocation Antlitz der Strae und des Tages, implies a contradictory
thrust: the street and the day are parallel dimensions of existence, place
(here in the city) and time (the present), but the more abstract, intangible
term day, as opposed to the more concrete and contingent street, sug-
gests a metaphysical context that points beyond a straightforward journal-
istic report of external contemporary phenomena. The poetic resonance of
Antlitz functions too as part of Roths program to raise unspectacular
and unprepossessing features into prominence and invest them with dig-
nity and value in their own right.
Working with humor and irony from his standpoint of superior know-
ledge, Roth proceeds first to show and reflect on a working horse, a child,
and a policeman. They are all ignorant of the truth he knows, deluded in
their understanding of freedom, innocence, overarching order, and the
purpose of creation. The oxymoron zweckmigen Wirrwarr (functional
chaos) of the misguided adult world is antithetically balanced against the
childs Trieb zur Nutzlosigkeit (impulse towards uselessness), which is
presented as a Utopian ideal, and one which the pose of the flaneur under-
writes.31 The end of Roths text, however, self-reflexively undermines this
pose of detachment and his plea for a world free of a functional imperative.
He has satirized the misuse of nature, its functionalization by modern man
for purposes of entertainment and leisure, but his own concluding com-
ment, that all the unpalatable facts he has observed have caused his own
walk to be vollstndig verfehlt (completely futile), implicates Roth in his
own target area. The function of the walk for him was to provide relaxation,
but this is no longer possible, it seems, for the Westeuroper (W 1:567;
western European: H, 26), a category to which Roth indubitably belongs.
He is thus both subject and, to a degree, object of his own critical, and
disillusioned, gaze.
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
113

His gaze in the first paragraph moves on to a girl in a window, a man

picking up cigarette butts, a fat man smoking a cigar, an advertising pillar,
a cafe terrace, waiters, and sundry other people and things. In this section
the syntax as well as the figurative discourse is the statement. A combin-
ation of linguistic strategies serves to erase the distinction between human
beings and things. The girl in the first sentence in the series is the gram-
matical object of a finite verb [I] see, and no more than the equivalent of
an inanimate object, a part of the wall, with which she is identified by a
brutal metonymy. The five pseudo-sentences that follow have no finite
verb and are all accusative predicates of the initial subjugating I see.
Thus the people described are reduced to the level of importance of things
(objects), with no scope for agency or self-determination. The final sen-
tence is a conjunction-free list of insignificant, marginal people and one
thing, unrelated except by the apparently random order in which the see-
ing eye lights on them. The incongruous insertion of a hotel into this list
implies its equivalent value in a series that otherwise consists of people, dis-
tinguished only by a detail of external appearance and/or occupation. The
reduction of the bunten Damen (W 1:564; colorful ladies: H, 24) to a
predicative phrase attributed to the cafe terrace, and their metaphorical
transformation into flowers to be plucked, is parallel to the reductive trans-
formation of the fat man, by simile, into a grease spot. Both are humorous
counterparts to the more muted and subtle reductive transformation of the
man collecting scraps of paper and cigarette ends: the description of him as
pressed into the shadows of a square with numerous corners suggests that
he is virtually indistinguishable from the scraps of discarded rubbish
he pursues. It is not possible here, for reasons of space, to do full justice to
the linguistic subtlety with which this part of the text, to say nothing of the
text as a whole, achieves its effects. This is much more than an evocation of
visual impressions, although it is clearly that too, and its strongly visual
quality gives it a sense of immediacy that speaks directly to the reader of
tangible and tactile reality.
The following section reasserts the eyewitness perspective, picking up
the idea of the destitute man, a social peer of the earlier cigarette-stub col-
lector. Roth shifts to narrative mode, and this time the grammar accords
the marginalized figure, the beggar with the tin trumpet, subject status.
Roth plays out a series of small dramas, triggered by tiny chance events
a fly landing, a nail file falling, a ball bouncing.32 He does this, he tells us,
in defiance of what the press presents in inflated terms as of primary import-
ance. He does it to bestow dignity on beggars by granting them existence
in the narrative as more than just victims. When one of them, the war crip-
ple, manicures his nails with a file that chance has put his way, Roth com-
ments explicitly (and over-hyperbolically) on the symbolic significance of
this sight.33 It has radically changed ones perception of his social class.
This sudden, unexpected shift of perception on the basis of a detail of body
114
HELEN CHAMBERS

language shows the precariousness of the individuals position in contem-

porary society. This was particularly true of the early Weimar years in
Berlin, but is not confined to that period. It also draws attention to the
construction of identity, perennially central to Roths concerns. One aspect
of the expression of this concern in his work focuses on body language and
gesture as defining constituents.
Pursuing the idea of the relative importance of phenomena, Roths
attention returns to the advertising pillar as a visible and strongly visual sign
of the times. The Litfasule had been part of the Berlin cityscape since
1855, but in the twenties it took on new prominence as a mass medium in
an age when the media were still heavily text-based. The press was mush-
rooming, and a hitherto unfamiliar variety of typefaces vied for the reading
publics attention. The German press was able to exploit particularly rich
possibilities with the choice of old German fonts as well as the Latin ones
current in western Europe and the United States. What concerns Roth is
the way that the physical appearance of the text has become the false meas-
ure of its importance. He uses the example of a cigarette ad in a font size
more appropriate for an ultimatum or a memento mori. Nonessential com-
mercial goods are placed on a level with a crucial political statement affect-
ing the entire population of the state, or a religious utterance affecting the
existential conditions of the whole of humanity. This is media hype avant la
lettre, by typeface and layout. Roth draws political implications from the
cultural phenomenon. For the reader of the signs, with no way of judging
the value of the substance, political statements become meaningless,
reduced to the level of significance of a commercial advertisement. It is the
victory of form over content. Roth encapsulates his sense of the radical dis-
tortion of values in two characteristically aphoristic formulations, using
polysyllabic oxymoron in the first and monosyllabic antithesis in the second:
Ich sehe die Typographie zur Weltanschauung entwickelt (I see typo-
graphy transformed into Weltanschauung) and Nichts ist, alles heit
(W 1:56566; Nothing is, everything claims to be: H, 25).
It is clear from comments elsewhere too that Roth had a highly devel-
oped visual awareness of the communicative impact he calls it expres-
sive potential of formal aspects of the media (newsprint, pamphlets,
posters, and film) and its producers powers of emotional manipulation. In
a 1925 letter to his editor Benno Reifenberg, he emphasizes the import-
ance of typography and layout (B, 65). A 1922 article, h-moll Sym-
phonie (Symphony in B Minor), on the silent movies shows that he has
already identified and analyzed the grammar of film, whereby formal pat-
terns of visual stimuli are calculated to elicit predictable audience responses
(W 1:91517). In his 1929 article Nonpareille aus Amerika (Nonpareil
from America) which takes its ironic title from a small typeface reserved for
minor matters, Roth again addresses the presss power to manipulate
reader response by technical means, and he exposes the associated social
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
115

and political mechanisms that conspire to distort human values. The same
small typeface in which the public flogging of criminals in the name of the
law in Delaware is reported has also been used to list fallen servicemen dur-
ing the First World War, Roth tells us. His sympathy is with the flogged
and fallen, as he seeks to restore the human dignity denied them by the
offhand textual communication of their fate. The semiotics of typography
are presented as a barometer of humane values. In the 1926 article Einer
liest Zeitung (Reading a Newspaper), a remarkable self-reflexive text, and
a tour de force about reader reception, Roth explicitly raises the issue of
reader manipulation by typeface, asking whether the individual is reading
the paper or vice versa (W 2:53132). This is not a literary conceit, but a
serious political question.
In Spaziergang, Roth, as he goes for his walk, sets nature against the
value-impoverished leveler typography, and his seeing eye moves on to
record how the dazzling sunshine temporarily burns out the spurious
claims to attention of the clamorous text. The ensuing reflection on
nature, and on the limited possibilities for modern men and women to
escape into it beyond the city, works in two main ways: rhetorically and
poetically. The problem is presented rhetorically, as nature itself is reduced
to a mediated concept in composite expressions such as Lesebuch-Natur
(W 1:566; picture-book nature: H, 25) and Naturbegriff (W 1:566; idea
of nature: H, 25), and the way people view it in relation to its usefulness
for themselves, is conveyed by lists of purposes for which it is used (lakes
for rowing, mountains for walking tours, and so on). Nature is perceived as
entries in Baedekers Guide, as text and commodity, instead of sponta-
neously experienced reality. Nature has become heavily implicated in the
discourse of socialized existence in a consumer society.
Against this rhetoric Roth sets a brief paragraph, introduced by the
comment Aber was ich sehe, kam nicht in den Baedeker (W 1:566; But
what I see hasnt made it into Baedeker: H, 26), which signals the unique-
ness of his immediate, subjective experience in an age of technical repro-
duction, to borrow Benjamins phrase. It sits outside the normative
framework symbolized by the guidebook. In a poetic evocation of a chance
combination of fleeting sights and sounds, characterized by distance,
insubstantiality, and delicate melancholy, Roth tentatively intimates the
existence of a metaphysical dimension, with a discreet allusion to the music
of the spheres. The horizons opened up by this brief vision of dancing
midges, a jasmine twig, and a childs voice in the distance, are promptly
closed off by a bad-tempered aphorism-laden diatribe against the use of
nature for recreation, and a satirical representation of city types, deaf to the
tiny natural events that really matter.
By the end of the article Roth has asserted the primacy of the eye, the
gaze, which, for all his pleas against purpose-driven activity, does not
simply register but leads to critical reflection. He has presented external
116
HELEN CHAMBERS

reality as a text that can be read, and in which the small print merits more
attention than the headlines. The tone is of disillusion and disenchant-
ment, but despite this there is evidence of a clear moral purpose and tenta-
tive idealism. Through his examination of surface manifestations of
modern metropolitan life from an eccentric viewpoint, or, as he would put
it, on a diagonal trajectory (W 1:565), he has sought to reveal existing pat-
terns and structures and propose new ones. Above all, he has shown rela-
tionships between the significant and insignificant, suggesting a revision of
values in a world where established facts and order must be regarded with
suspicion if not contempt, and he has given a fugitive glimpse, created a
tantalizingly faint echo, of an ideal existence. The articles last three sen-
tences shift successively through three distinct registers.34 A lyrical voice
evoking the unheard sounds of nature is replaced and so silenced by a sar-
donic, colloquial aphorism, the harsh, knowing voice of the urbanized
world. The final voice is prosaic too, its rational discourse and its labored
rhythm simultaneously pronouncing on, and ironically embodying, the
futility of the writers project. By the juxtaposition of clashing discourses
Roth urges the reader to distinguish between them, and to reflect on their
bearing on contemporary life and attitudes. The impulse behind these
clashes is comparable to Heines turn from lyrical forms to prose in the face
of the political situation from the 1820s, or to Brechts preoccupation with
the mismatch between traditional poetic diction and life in the Third
Reich.
A recurrent focus in Weimar reportage is Berlins entertainment indus-
try. For Roth it provides multiple points of departure for reflections on
urban civilization often close to barbarism in his view at a time when
mass entertainment increasingly provided temporary escape from the harsh
reality of city life. His 1925 piece Das XIII. Berliner Sechstagerennen
(The Thirteenth Berlin Six-Day Races), about the massive, hectic annual
cycling event in the velodrome on the Kaiserdamm, is not really about the
riders and races at all, but about the sociological phenomenon and about
communicating sights, sounds, and smells with a critical slant. This is bar-
barism, a temporary loss of humanity. It is a good example of Roths con-
cern with atmosphere and his strategies for capturing it (W 2:33135;
H, 16167). Bekehrung eines Snders im Berliner UFA-Palast (The Con-
version of a Sinner in Berlins UFA Palace) in the same year, similarly, is not
about the entertainment itself this time film not sport but about the
discrepancy between content and form in a cinema that looks like a
mosque, and where the audience inside is dazzled by technology and sub-
jected to mass manipulation, in a travesty of religious practice. Cinema is
the new religion, and Roth shows its influence and emptiness simultan-
eously (W 2:51214; H, 16871). Alongside these it is worth reading
Schillerpark (1921) on popular recreation. This is a small gem, at once play-
ful and melancholy, which uses observations in a public park to combine
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
117

commentary on contemporary socio-economic history and urban geogra-

phy with a reflection on the history of civilization and mans place in cre-
ation (W 1:66264; H, 7577).
Roths articles on particular political issues are not numerous.
Although he was acutely sensitive to the evolving political climate in Ger-
many and increasingly uncomfortable in it (B, 56), the generic characteris-
tics of the feuilleton remained his guide, and so he wrote pieces that had a
subjective point of departure and sought out the symptomatic signs in
events and locations. Rundgang um die Siegessule (The Tour around
the Victory Column, 1921) and Ein Unpolitischer geht in den Reich-
stag (An Apolitical Observer Goes to the Reichstag, 1924) both reflect
on the symbolic function of public architecture, on the discrepancy
between what it is designed to symbolize and what it means in reality
(W 1:5023; H, 17981; W 2:19194; H, 19398). The first is a mock-
ing, satirical piece about human folly, which prompts serious comment at
the end on the dangers of political extremism. The later Reichstag piece is
more somber in tone and links ceremonial and architectural forms to men-
tality formation. Roth asks, Wie soll hier Menschlichkeit, Verstndnis,
Wrme entstehen (W 2:194; How should humanity, understanding, com-
passion, exist here?) among Prunk ohne wrme (W 2:194; the frozen
displays of pomp: H, 198). Gesang mit tdlichem Ausgang (Singing
Comes to a Fatal End) a 1925 article for the left-wing satirical weekly Der
Drache, takes the form of a tragicomic narrative. It presents the case of two
Berlin workers shot dead in an altercation with a policeman (W 2:32729).35
They have been singing Heines Lorelei. For Roth this incident is typical
of the endemic nationalist ills of state-countenanced brutality and anti-
Semitism. He proclaims himself to be unpolitisch, which can be taken to
mean not participating in party political activities, but his reportage is
charged with political insights both in the broadest sense, but also at times
in a more specific way. He identified clearly the kind of post-First-World-
War mentality that was to lead to the end of the democratic state,36 and
wrote articles exposing symptoms of rising National Socialism.37
Roth returns repeatedly to the face of the city as an object of his gaze.
Commercial buildings and transport are the main focuses, and although
critical skepticism about the effects of rapid and major change in the physi-
cal environment and the citys infrastructure is the dominant tenor, his
response remains ambivalent, and the assertion that he becomes progres-
sively more pessimistic with time requires qualification.38 Later pieces such
as Das steinerne Berlin (Stone Berlin, 1930) and even Das ganz
groe Warenhaus (The Very Large Department Store, 1929) leave room
for a modicum of cautious optimism. The dual response of horror and
fascination has been current in literary evocations of the city since the
nineteenth century. Roth in his city writing draws on both impulses but
goes well beyond them, using the tools of detailed observation and
118
HELEN CHAMBERS

rhetoric to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena, and in so

doing, as Karl Prmm puts it, he delivers . . . a theory of the city.39 By far
the most widely discussed article in this context is his 1924 Bekenntnis
zum Gleisdreieck (Affirmation of the Triangular Railway Junction), an
ambivalent hymn to technology, whose last-minute shift in tone from elab-
orate praise for the railway network to anxiety about dehumanization is
problematic (W 2:21821; H, 1058).40 It is not appropriate here to enter
at length into the discussion of an already well-aired subject. Carl Weges
view that Roth saw the technological constructs not simply as functional
but as bearers of a new metaphysics is consonant with his use of the term
Eidolon (W 2:220; Platonic ideal, H, 108) for the junction, and with indi-
cations throughout his writing of his search for and tentative belief in a
metaphysical ideal.41 I would only wish to add that Roths glowing enthu-
siasm is based in part on a dialectic between mathematics and sentiment,
and the preference for human activity to be controlled by a rational system
can be read in political terms as an attack on the irrational appeals to senti-
ment and emotion on which the growing power of the National Socialists
was based. A rational system is being presented as more humane than an
irrational one (W 2:220; H, 108).
The face of the city is characterized by disorienting contradictions, and
Roths texts are designed to raise awareness of these and tease out their
implications in ways that tap into the readers sensual experience and lin-
guistic sensitivity. Architektur (1929) highlights the modern practice of
changing buildings facades, with the result that the eye, trained to distin-
guish fake from genuine, can no longer do the job in an age of constantly
mutating surface appearance that can render cabaret and crematorium
indistinguishable (W 3:11516; H, 11518). It is a sinister sign of the
times that the distinction between death and amusement is no longer clear-
cut, and the metaphorical comment Die Fassade der neuen Zeit macht
mich unsicher (W 3:115; The facade of the modern age makes me unsure
of myself) shows the direct link between architectural change and the
increasingly heteronomous situation of the individual.
In the same year Roths detailed descriptive analysis of Das ganz
groe Warenhaus (W 3:8184; H, 11923), and in particular his reflec-
tions on the escalator, expose the discrepancies between appearance and
reality, the mismatch between surface and substance. His paradoxical and
antonymic style shows up the contradictions and instability of the day,
where something or someone can readily become their opposite. Ostensi-
bly about the expansion of opportunities and the realization of potential,
about increased freedom and spiritual development, the store is actually
about the subjugation of the customer to its systems and structures, and
about constraint, reduction, suppression, and deprivation. It creates non-
existent needs, with the kind of false teleology Roth noted in Spazier-
gang in relation to nature. Contrary to appearances the escalator is not
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
119

raising customers to something higher, but reducing them to passivity. It is

an assault on the human quality of self-determination, and the attack is
reinforced by the power of text to create anxiety and fear of the stairs that
people climbed using their own power. These are now labeled dangerous
because newly waxed, by the anonymous management. The notion of bene-
fits of scale and size is undermined by an extended zeugma, listing what
the store has much more of, ending with cardboard boxes to emphasize
the emptiness and lack of value of the gain. Roth frequently uses cardboard
as a symbol of worthless form without content or substance.42 Here as in
Spaziergang, we see the rhetorical power of the paradoxical antithesis to
demonstrate that what appeared to be arrogance (Hochmut) is actually
humbleness (Demut). Roth shows that it is important to keep looking, in
order to read the signs correctly, and to recognize that appearances can be
deceptive to a radical degree. Thinking the opposite can be a productive, if
unedifying route to the truth:

Wenn am Anfange das ganz groe Warenhaus wie ein Werk des
Hochmuts und einer sndhaften menschlichen Herausforderung aussah,
so erkennt man mit der Zeit, da es nur ein ernormes Gehuse der men-
schlichen Kleinlichkeit und Bescheidenheit ist; ein riesiges Eingestndnis
der irdischen Billigkeit. (W 3:82)

[If at first the really big department store looked like a work of overween-
ing pride and of sinful human self-assertion, then with time it becomes
apparent that it is just an enormous shell for human pettiness and mod-
estness; a massive admission of earthly cheapness.]

Closely related to these two pieces are his 1922 article Wolkenkratzer
(W 1:76567; Skyscrapers: H, 11114) which, though skeptical of human
endeavor, takes a more lyrical and uplifting line, and the review of Werner
Hengemanns Das steinerne Berlin (1930; W 3:22831; H, 12528),
which brings the contradictions of the time and place into even sharper
focus. Roth plays with words and meanings, but it is a serious game, which
shows that these are illogical and irrational times.
The Berlin selection by Bienert, translated by Hofmann, concludes
with Das Autodaf des Geistes (The Auto-da-F of the Mind), first pub-
lished in French in Cahiers Juifs in 1933 (W 3:494503; H, 20717). This
takes us beyond the Weimar Republic and is a clear example of Roths shift
toward the rational discourse of the essay in the face of growing National
Socialist irrationality. In exile he turned to the essay as a form of intellectual
resistance.43 It is the form he used too in Betrachtung an der Klage-
mauer (Wailing Wall, 1929) to attack Zionism and in Dichter im Dritten
Reich (Poets in the Third Reich, 1933) to attack Gottfried Benn for
betraying his art and language (W 3:8689; H, 4550; W 3:48187). In a
120
HELEN CHAMBERS

plea for others to share his clear-sightedness and willingness to speak out,
Roth writes,

Das geistige Europa kapituliert. Es kapituliert aus Schwche, aus

Trgheit, aus Gleichgltigkeit, aus Gedankenlosigkeit (es wird Aufgabe
der Zukunft sein, die Grnde dieser schndlichen Kapitulation genau zu
erforschen). (W 3:494)

[The European mind is capitulating. It is capitulating out of weakness.

Out of sloth, out of apathy, out of lack of imagination (it will be the task
of some future generation to establish the reasons for this disgraceful
capitulation).] (H, 207)

There is no need to comment on the accuracy of this prediction. Celebrat-

ing and reviewing the German Jewish contribution to literature, he further
observes,

Das unbestreitbare Verdienst der jdischen Schriftsteller fr die deutsche

Literatur besteht in der Entdeckung und literarischen Auswertung des
Urbanismus. Die Juden haben die Stadtlandschaft und die Seelenland-
schaft des Stadtbewohners entdeckt und geschildert. Sie haben die ganze
Vielschichtigkeit der stdtischen Zivilisation entschleiert. (W 3:501)

[The great gain to German literature from Jewish writers is the theme of
the city. Jews have discovered and written about the urban scene and the
spiritual landscape of the city dweller. They have revealed the whole diver-
sity of urban civilisation.] (H, 215)

Although he was writing of numerous others, this contribution was made

not least by Roth himself in his nonfiction. It is a massive, multifaceted
contribution that merits the close attention of historians, sociologists, and
literary and cultural critics of the Weimar Republic.
Important as it is for an understanding of Weimar Germany, Roths
reportage speaks distinctly to later times too. In a recent review, Nadine
Gordimer notes of his comments on the exploitation of nature that it is as
if he foresaw theme parks.44 His reflections on monuments and public
buildings anticipate current debates on Holocaust memorials and parlia-
ment buildings, while articles on immigrants, racism, war victims, retail
complexes and mass commercialization, traffic, and popular culture remain
relevant in the twenty-first century. The crude, homogenized peddling of
industrialized amusement he observed in Berlin nightclubs in the 1930s,
and saw replicated across Europe has now spread worldwide through TV
channels and chains of leisure providers (W 3:211; H, 172). The problems
of modernity and, in the mean time, postmodernity, are his specialty. His
pieces, by virtue of their linguistic polish and precision, their poetic melody
and rhetorical finesse unerschpfliche Flle in knappster Konzentra-
tion (W 2:327; inexhaustible abundance in highly concentrated form) was
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
121

his artistic ideal are strong examples of conscious resistance against

hypocrisy and the devaluation of language (W 2:327). The style is the mes-
sage and, as he said of Caruso, an artist is in touch with eternal things (W
1:625). The artist and seer to Roth are one and the same (W 2:325) and he
was a seer in both senses: an acute observer for whom vision was both phys-
ical and metaphysical, for whom the surface was the gateway to further lev-
els of comprehension and to visions of the future, whose mediation was his
personal aesthetic and ethical mission; Der Rahmen ist der Stil, bin ich
(B, 111; The framework is the style, which is myself).

Notes
1
Joseph Roth, Briefe (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970) 87, Roths
emphasis. Subsequent references to this volume are cited in the text using the
abbreviation B and the page number. In English as Joseph Roth, What I Saw:
Reports from Berlin, 19201933, translated by Michael Hofmann (London:
Granta, 2003), 1516. Subsequent references to this edition are cited in the text
using the abbreviation H and page number. For the purposes of a close reading of
the text, it has not always been possible to work with Hofmanns translation,
which at times, as here, is idiomatic rather than precise, and loses some of the
original sense: I draw the face of the times. The significance of face is
addressed in the discussion of Spaziergang. Where no page reference for the
translation is given, it is my own.
2
Es ist mein Bemhen, die Deutschen von ihrem Aberglauben zu heilen, die
Kunst sei etwas Abseitiges, die Literatur ein Ornament des Lebens, eine Sache der
stillen Abende und der Frauen. Die Literatur ist ntig wie eine Maschine, ein Win-
terrock und eine Medizin. (Joseph Roth, Perlefter. Fragmente und Feuilletons aus
dem Berliner Nachla [Leipzig: Kiepenheuer, 1978], 247).
3
Joseph Roth, Werke, edited by Fritz Hackert and Klaus Westermann (Cologne:
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 19891991), 3:453. Subsequent references to this edition
are cited in the text using the abbreviation W and the volume and page number.
4
See Joseph Roth, Joseph Roth in Berlin: Ein Lesebuch fr Spaziergnger, ed.
Michael Bienert (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996), 5859, for details.
5
Irmgard Wirtz, Zur Poetik von Joseph Roths journalistischem Frhwerk, Lit-
eratur und Kritik 29 (1994): 3949 considers some of the parallels in particular in
relation to the discourse of the city (in Heines case, Paris) as a new manifestation
of the Zeitgeist (42). See also David Bronsen, Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie
(Munich: DTV, 1981), 8788.
6
Bronsen, Joseph Roth, 185207.
7
Hubert Lengauer, Das Wiener Feuilleton im letzten Viertel des 19. Jahrhun-
derts, Lenau-Forum 9/10 (1977/78): 6077, 69.
8
See Lengauer, Das Wiener Feuilleton, 63.
9
Wirtz, Zur Poetik, 44.
122
HELEN CHAMBERS

10
His last contribution to the Berliner Brsen-Courier appeared on 15 April 1923
(W 1:98688), not in August 1922, as Schweikert suggests (Uwe Schweikert,
Der rote Joseph: Politik und Feuilleton beim frhen Joseph Roth [19191926],
in Joseph Roth, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold [Munich: Edition Text Kritik, 1982],
4055; here, 47).
11
See Klaus Westermann, Joseph Roth, Journalist: Eine Karriere, 19151939 (Bonn:
Bouvier, 1987), 4245.
12
See Roths account of this, W 1:502; H, 17981.
13
Bronsen, Joseph Roth, 240.
14
A number of Roths subsequent works share with Hiob a legendary or fairy-tale
tone. This can be seen as a strategy for turning away from the horrors of the pre-
sent and for dealing in an oblique way with the problem of evil and the search for
order in a world where rational moral standards have been abandoned. These
include Das falsche Gewicht, Die Geschichte von dem 1002. Nacht, and Die Legende
vom heiligen Trinker.
15
Juden auf Wanderschaft (Berlin: Die Schmiede, 1927). It has recently appeared
in English as The Wandering Jews, translated by Michael Hofmann (New York:
Norton, London: Granta, 2001). Individual chapters had appeared as articles in
the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1926 and 1927.
16
Corrected typescript and proofs held in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach.
94.114.8.
17
Produced by Knorr & Hirth, who published the Mnchner Neueste Nachrichten,
for whom Roth was working at the time. The reprints are from the Frankfurter
Zeitung and other sources.
18
The three Roth works are Michael Bienert, ed., Joseph Roth in Berlin, Helmut
Peschina, ed., Joseph Roth Kaffeehaus Frhling: Ein Wien-Lesebuch (Cologne:
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003), and Ralph Schock, ed., Briefe aus Deutschland
(Blieskastel: Gollenstein, 1997).
19
Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic
Sourcebook (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1994), contains trans-
lated excerpts from Der Kulturbolschewismus, 16971, and Juden auf Wan-
derschaft, 26367. Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, eds., The Metropolitan
Project: Berlin and Vienna, 18801940 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of
California P, forthcoming) contains translations of Wenn Berlin Wolkenkratzer
bekme . . . , Das ganz groe Warenhaus, and Bekenntnis zum Gleis-
dreieck.
20
On the dramaturgy of the texts, see Schock, in Roth, Briefe aus Deutschland,
161.
21
Dietmar Goltschnigg, Zeit-, Ideologie- und Sprachkritik in Joseph Roths
Essayistik, Literatur und Kritik 25 (1990): 12436; here, 12425.
22
See Irmgard Wirtz, Joseph Roths Fiktionen des Faktischen: Das Feuilleton der
zwanziger Jahre und Die Geschichte von der 1002. Nacht im historischen Kontext
(Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1996) for a New Historicist discussion of the relationship
between fact and fiction in Roths feuilleton cycles Wiener Symptome and
Berliner Bilderbuch.
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES: JOSEPH ROTHS WEIMAR JOURNALISM
123

23
Egon Erwin Kisch, Wesen des Reporters, first published in Das Literarische
Echo in 1918, repr. in Literarische Reportage, ed. Erhard Schtz (Frankfurt am
Main: Diesterweg, 1979), 42.
24
Roth lived an itinerant existence all his adult life, staying in hotels or with friends.
He had no permanent library and kept his belongings in three suitcases, making
use of the Preuische Staatsbibliothek when he was in Berlin, so it is not surprising
that he did not have Rodes book to hand.
25
See Thomas Dllo, Zufall und Melancholie: Untersuchungen zur Kontingenzse-
mantik in Texten von Joseph Roth (Mnster: Lit, 1994), chap. 4, esp. 8388, for a
discussion of Roths texts in the context of Walter Benjamins notion of the flaneur,
and also Ulrike Steierwald, Leiden an der Geschichte: Zur Geschichtsauffassung der
Moderne in den Texten Joseph Roths (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1994),
140.
26
Emphasis J. R.
27
Was ich sehe, ist der lcherlich unscheinbare Zug im Antlitz der Strae und des
Tages (W 1:564). The published translation here too goes for an idiomatic solu-
tion over a more precise rendering (What I see is the day in all its absurdity and
triviality [H, 23].). This is perhaps not surprising, as the intricacy of Roths style in
his nonfiction is particularly hard to replicate in translation. For the purposes of my
analysis the following is closer to the original: What I see is what is absurdly incon-
spicuous in the countenance of the street and the day.
28
As, for example, in Peter Altenberg, Bei dem Photographen (At the Photogra-
phers), in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Werner J. Schweiger (Vienna and Frankfurt am
Main: Lcker/S. Fischer, 1987), 1:13134.
29
Georg Bchner, Werke und Briefe (Munich: DTV, 1965), 120.
30
See, for example, W 1:79; H, 90.
31
Hofmanns translations, purposeful bustle and full of the delights of idleness
(H, 23) miss part of the point.
32
See Dllo, Zufall und Melancholie, 86.
33
Mit diesem Zufall, der ihm eine Nagelfeile in die Hand gespielt hat, und durch
diese geringfgige Handlung des Nagelfeilens hat er symbolisch tausend soziale
Stufen bersprungen. (W 1:565; The coincidence that has left the nail file in his
possession and the trifling movement of filing his nails are enough to lift him about
a thousand social classes: H, 25).
34
Er hrt nicht den Pltscherklang der Welle und wei nicht, da wichtig das Zer-
platzen einer Wasserblase ist. The poetic rhythm and tone of the original are diffi-
cult to capture in translation. I suggest: (He neither hears the splashing sound of
the wave, nor knows the importance of a bursting bubble). An dem Tage, an dem
die Natur ein Kurort wurde, wars aus (The day nature turned into a resort, that
was it). Infolge aller dieser Tatsachen ist mein Spaziergang der eines Griesgrams
und vollstndig verfehlt (In consequence of all of these facts, my walk proves to be
that of a curmudgeon and utterly futile). W 1:567; translations HC.
35
See Steierwald, Leiden an der Geschichte, 127, on the tragicomic aspect of Roths
journalism.
124
HELEN CHAMBERS

36
See, for example, Der Mann im Friseurladen (The Man in the Barbershop),
W 1:62123; H, 13134 and his reports on the trial of Rathenaus murderers,
W 1:87388.
37
See, for example, Das Hakenkreuz auf Rgen (W 2:21416; The Swastika on
Rgen).
38
Prmm, for example, sees a development from cultural critical reasoning in the
twenties to cultural critical despair in the thirties, arguing that in the end Roth is
using his own descriptive techniques as an aesthetic weapon to fend off the negative
sides of the city (Karl Prmm, Die Stadt der Reporter und Kinognger bei Roth,
Brentano und Kracauer: Das Berlin der zwanziger Jahre im Feuilleton der Frank-
furter Zeitung, in Die Unwirklichkeit der Stdte: Grostadtdarstellungen zwischen
Moderne und Postmoderne, ed. Klaus R. Scherpe [Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988],
80105; here, 84, 86).
39
Prmm, Die Stadt der Reporter und Kinognger, 82.
40
See, for example, Ilse Planke, Joseph Roth als Feuilletonist (diss., Friedrich-
Alexander Universitt, Erlangen-Nrnberg, 1967), 165; Prmm, Die Stadt der
Reporter und Kinognger; and Carl Wege, Gleisdreieck, Tank und Motor: Fig-
uren und Denkfiguren aus der Technosphre der Neuen Sachlichkeit, Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschrift 68 (1994): 30732.
41
Wege, Gleisdreieck, 322.
42
The translation transposes the last two items (H, 121).
43
See Goltschnigg, Zeit-, Ideologie- und Sprachkritik, 125.
44
Nadine Gordimer, The Main Course, review of What I Saw: Reports from
Berlin, 19201933, accessed 7 March 2003 on http://www.threepennyreview.com/
samples/gordimer_sp03.html.
6: Ernst Jnger, the New Nationalists,
and the Memory of the First World War

Roger Woods

E RNST JNGER IS CHIEFLY KNOWN FOR his writings in the years of the
Weimar Republic, when he was one of the leading figures of the Con-
servative Revolution, the cultural and political movement that served as
intellectual vanguard of the right.1 Embracing some of the best-known
writers, academics, journalists, politicians, and philosophers of the period,
the Conservative Revolution produced a flood of radical nationalist writ-
ings in the form of war diaries and works of fiction, political journalism,
manifestos, and theoretical tracts outlining the development and destiny of
political life in Germany and the West. During the Weimar years the Con-
servative Revolutionaries became the major innovative interpreters of the
First World War for the Right, sometimes associating themselves closely
with the paramilitary war veterans organization, Stahlhelm, and with the
NSDAP, which they briefly saw as a revolutionary party that embraced
their ideals. Examining the tensions in their portrayal of the war and their
political exploitation of the war experience sheds light not just on their
personal preoccupations but also on the political culture of the Weimar
years.
Among the Conservative Revolutionaries it is particularly Ernst
Jnger whose work displays these tensions. In the Weimar period Jnger
was the most significant representative of that branch of the Conservative
Revolution known as new nationalism, which sought to carry forward
military values and structures into peacetime society, and which redefined
socialism in terms of the community of frontline soldiers. The following
analysis concentrates on Jngers accounts of the First World War, but,
as will become clear, the tensions and contradictions contained in his
writing also feature in the work of other new nationalists, so that what
emerges is a group identity based in part on a typical patterning of the war
experience.
Jnger was born in Heidelberg in 1895, and he enlisted as a volunteer
on the first day of the war at the age of nineteen. By the end of the war he
had reached the rank of temporary company commander. He was
wounded some seven times, and in 1918 he was awarded the pour le
126
ROGER WOODS

mrite, the highest military honor of the time. He remained in the Reich-
swehr until 1923, and during those years he worked on revising infantry
training methods. As a young writer he attracted the attention of the read-
ing public with his first account of his war experiences, In Stahlgewittern
(Storms of Steel), published in 1920. It was popular in its time, reaching
sales of around a quarter of a million by 1945, and he followed up this first
work with many more accounts of the war, ranging from war diaries such
as Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Struggle as Inner Experience, 1922),
Das Wldchen 125 (Copse 125, 1925), Feuer und Blut (Fire and Blood,
1925) and the novel Sturm (Storm, 1923) to the edited collection of
essays Krieg und Krieger (War and Warriors, 1930), and essays in political
journals and Die Standarte, the supplement to Stahlhelms newspaper.
This body of work established Jnger as the leading right-wing writer from
the generation that had fought in the war and was openly hostile to
Weimar democracy.
Jngers thinking on politics and culture culminated in Der Arbeiter
(The Worker, 1932), seen by his harshest critics as a blueprint for the Nazi
state. Although Jngers early enthusiasm for the Nazis as comrades in the
nationalist struggle against Weimar democracy and the West had turned to
hostility in the later years of the Weimar Republic, a fundamental similarity
of outlook at the level of political philosophy meant that there was no clear
break until shortly before the party came to power. In 1939 Auf den Mar-
morklippen (On the Marble Cliffs) appeared, an account of how an ordered
society is overrun by the anarchic Mauretanians. With its emphasis on the
need for morality and for control of animal instinct, the book was not only
an indirect attack on the Nazis but also a move away from Jngers original
low regard for moral categories in the face of natural self-assertion.
Jnger spent most of the Second World War as an officer in occupied
Paris. In 1942 he published Grten und Straen (Gardens and Streets), an
unenthusiastic account of his experiences in the first years of the war. The
book was banned in 1943 after he refused to remove a reference to a pas-
sage on tyranny that he had quoted from the Bible. During the war Jnger
worked on the essay Der Friede (The Peace, 1945), which he regarded as a
form of opposition to Hitlers regime, but after the war the Allies imposed
a ban on his publishing anything in Germany, which lasted until 1949. In
the years until his death in 1998 Jnger traveled widely and wrote accounts
of his experiences, but he mainly made the headlines whenever he was the
recipient of a public honor. The decision to award him the Goethe Prize of
the City of Frankfurt in 1982 was particularly controversial and revived the
debate about his antidemocratic stance in the Weimar Republic. In his later
years Jngers admirers included Helmut Kohl and Franois Mitterand,
both of whom visited him in his Wilflingen home.
The following analysis concentrates on Jngers portrayal of the First
World War in his war diaries and a novel written in the early years of the
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
127

Weimar Republic. Critics often see in this portrayal a one-dimensional

political exploitation of the war, yet Jngers war writings and those of the
new nationalists as a whole are more complex and ambiguous than most
critics have allowed them to be. Although these writings are at their most
revealing when treated as a single complex cultural and political phenom-
enon, there is a tendency for commentators to indulge in a snapshot
approach to these sources on the First World War, homing in on individual
statements or fragments of text and constructing an account of attitudes
towards the war that overlooks the complex dynamics of the sources used.
By this method a simplified version of Jngers view of the First World War
emerges: it has been argued that he sees war as myth and not as the suffer-
ing and dying of countless people, and in this he is contrasted with Remar-
que.2 More generally, it has been suggested that books on the First World
War written in the Weimar years fall into one of two categories: they show
it either as a heroic event or as senseless torture. In nationalist writings on
the war it is said to be a test of manhood and heroism, in pacifist writings,
the collapse of humanity.3 The soldierly nationalism of the Conservative
Revolution has been cited as an example of violent manliness and explained
as a reaction against a social modernization that called traditional male
roles into question.4 One sociological study claims that In Stahlgewittern
celebrates a heroic ideal of soldiers immune to the fear of death and the
horror of killing. For Jnger, it is argued, the slaughter and death had not
been in vain.5 Jngers war, suggests one historian, was idealized and trans-
figured: in stark contrast to the pacifist interpreters of war, he and his fel-
low new nationalists sought to blot out the suffering and destruction it
caused and to concentrate on its positive aspects.6
This is a convenient categorization on the new nationalist side, war
as an opportunity to show ones heroism, as a glorious test of courage, and
on the pacifist side, war as bringer of pointless death and suffering. The
questionable sociological conclusion often drawn from this categorization
is that the new nationalists positive view of the war could only be main-
tained because those who promoted it had been officers, and the war experi-
ence of officers had been fundamentally different from that of the ordinary
enlisted men.
Yet this categorization does not take into account the complexity of
the productive tensions lying at the heart of much new nationalist writing
on the war. The profound unease in new nationalist accounts of the war is
not acknowledged.7 Where commentators do deal with interplay of
responses, they detect only marginal doubts about the wars meaning,
doubts that the new nationalists have little trouble in brushing aside. But
the balance of responses is rather more even than these interpretations
allow, and analysis of this more even balance sheds light on the roots of
what is undoubtedly correctly seen as a predominantly heroic presentation
of the war.
128
ROGER WOODS

In Jngers work one can trace without difficulty a development, typ-

ical of much new nationalist writing, from high expectations of the war
to the disillusionment that sets in when he is confronted with its reality.
For example, in the opening pages of In Stahlgewittern, Ernst Jnger
describes the enthusiasm with which he greeted the news of the outbreak
of war:
Aufgewachsen im Geiste einer materialistischen Zeit, wob in uns allen die
Sehnsucht nach dem Ungewhnlichen, nach dem groen Erleben. Da
hatte uns der Krieg gepackt wie ein Rausch. In einem Regen von Blumen
waren wir hinausgezogen in trunkener Morituri-Stimmung. Der Krieg
mute es uns ja bringen, das Groe, Starke, Feierliche.8

[We grew up in the spirit of a materialist age, and in all of us there lived a
yearning for the unusual, for great adventure. Then the war took hold of us
and intoxicated us. We marched off in a shower of flowers, as if drunk, like
gladiators about to die. The war just had to provide that great, powerful,
solemn experience.]

Yet he writes that after a short period with the regiment he and the other
new recruits lose nearly all the illusions with which they had started out:
instead of encountering the dangers they had hoped for, they find filth,
work, and sleepless nights (St, 6). Jnger rapidly comes to realize that tra-
ditional chivalry, glory, and heroism have little place in modern warfare,
which is dominated by an impersonal form of battle that consumes men as
it does munitions (St, v). At this level we see how the new nationalists
encounter one aspect of the crisis of modernization in the pre-Weimar
period: Jnger is well aware of the pacifist argument that in modern war-
fare technical progress results in meaningless slaughter and suffering.9
Jngers profound disillusionment distances him from those with
whom one might have expected him to share a view of the war, and it
places him in surprising company. For while this perspective marks his war
off from the war as retold in the more rigid form of the military memoir,10
it establishes close links with the anti-war authors of the Weimar years. The
possibility of meeting a meaningless death in fact runs both through
Jngers work and that of anti-war writers such as Erich Maria Remarque,
whose Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) first
appeared in 1929 and angered so many in the nationalist camp. Remarque
emphasizes also that mere chance decides whether one will live or die.11
Similarly, Edlef Kppens anti-war novel, Heeresbericht (Military Report,
1930), had senseless death as one of its major themes.12
Put in most general terms, Jngers writings convey a sense not only of
the wars meaning but also of its futility, not only a sense of community in
war but also a sense of isolation. They portray war not merely as a splendid
adventure in which heroic young men can prove themselves but also as a
profoundly disturbing event because in war pure chance governs ones
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
129

fate: a soldier may stay alive by the grace of kleine Umstnde (little cir-
cumstances) or Zufall (St, 63, 119; chance), and may die from a wound
inflicted by ein sinnloses Stck Blei (St, 133; a meaningless fragment of
lead). The wounds of a dead soldier are sinnlos (meaningless).13 Con-
templation of the chaos of war can result in a laming mood of melancholy
(St, 67). And the war that had promised to bring the mental relief of total
commitment within a community of men could also bring ein
unbeschreibliches Gefhl der Einsamkeit (indescribable feelings of isol-
ation).14 In Sturm, the novel serialized for the Hannoverscher Kurier in
1923, Jnger describes how, when death hung over the trenches like a
storm cloud, each man was on his own; surrounded by howling and crash-
ing, dazzled by flashes of light, he felt nothing within himself but isolation
beyond measure (Sturm, 12).
The need to make sense of the war is complicated by the fact that
Jngers writing on the First World War goes through a systematic rejec-
tion of all those conventional sources of meaning that the more tradition-
bound nationalists were intent on upholding during the Weimar years.
Death on the massive scale encountered in the First World War is not, for
example, rendered meaningful by recalling Germanys purpose in going to
war. This point is partly a political one that emerged after the war not
least because the war had been lost and it was a psychological necessity for
Jnger to find its meaning outside the framework of victory. Jngers fel-
low new nationalist writer, Franz Schauwecker, makes the connection
between loss of meaning and the lost war when he describes the emotions
of the soldiers returning home after the war: he writes that all at once the
effect of the enormous demands made upon them erupted. Suddenly
everything had been in vain. The world seemed to have no meaning.15
But the feeling that the war had no meaning affected the new nation-
alists even while it was being fought, and this sense of futility could often
outweigh the idea that if Germany achieved its aims, the suffering would
be justified. New nationalists actually spent very little time discussing the
aims of the war, and Jnger conveys their mood well when he recalls that
soldiers greeted such discussions with an ironic smile. Similarly, in a contri-
bution to the new nationalist journal, Deutsches Volkstum, Rudolf Huch is
tempted to side with Remarque when he recalls a meeting of 1917 at
which politicians told businessmen of the need to secure certain territories
without which, comments Huch, the Germans had got on well enough
before the war.16 The wish to rescue something from the war without
resorting to conventional nationalism is an important distinguishing fea-
ture of Jngers work and that of his fellow new nationalists.
Despite Jngers doubts about the meaning of the war, there is a clear
tendency for the positive elements to come to the fore. The switch from
expectations of the war to disillusionment with its reality is not the last
stage in the development of his attitude towards it. He finds other sources
130
ROGER WOODS

of meaning in the war: he portrays it as a natural event, as the reenactment

of a noble tradition, and as the expression of the inevitable fate of the
nation. Historians have sought to explain why this version of the war
should emerge. Modris Eksteins sees the tendency of soldiers who wrote
about the war to classify what were totally new experiences according to
previously existing categories as an instinctive reaction,17 whereas George
Mosse suggests cause and effect when he examines the role of nature in
war books and argues that it helped to mask the reality of war.18 Mosses
argument is plausible, but one can take it further by demonstrating the
masking process at work at the level of texts. Precisely how do alternative
views of the wars meaning develop? And what can a study of the ways in
which they emerge tell us?
In Sturm Jnger compares war to a storm. War indiscriminately
stamps its path through human existence like a tropical hurricane destroy-
ing the brilliant flora and fauna. Jnger points out that nature accepts this
destruction and merely brings forth new and more beautiful creations, but
he asks whether that is any comfort for the individual (Sturm, 61). Splen-
dor may be senselessly shattered in war, yet by his use of natural imagery
Jnger establishes the beginnings of a positive interpretation of this
destruction. Qualified by the idea that such an impersonal overall view of
the war offers little comfort to the individual victim, the natural analogy is
offered here only tentatively a fact that reflects the uncertainty in
Jngers mind about its worth. Elsewhere Jnger is able to invoke natural
imagery with greater strength of purpose in order to counterbalance the
notion that chance governs ones fate in war. Jnger thus describes in In
Stahlgewittern the feeling of being confronted with something as
inescapable and absolutely inevitable as an eruption of the elements (St,
5152).
This natural image conveys the idea that the war and the soldiers fate
in it are inescapable. What is natural is inevitable, and against a background
of meaninglessness and chance the vocabulary of the counterimage
of war in Jngers work inevitability lends a kind of meaning. Jnger
himself makes these associations clear in the preface to a book he edited on
prominent individuals in the First World War: for the person who sees
nothing accidental in any phenomenon, including war and armies, who
sees rather the expression of life in all its might and harshness, but also
lifes meaning, which is far removed from any practical considerations
for this person, writes Jnger, even the death of an individual, however
cruel and irreparable it may seem if one just thinks of the personality
involved, can never be random or meaningless. This perspective, like any
that is founded on inevitability, provides a more profound consolation and
a greater sense of certainty.19
That Jngers use of natural analogy and his recognition of the chaotic
element of war are related, more precisely that the former is often
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
131

prompted by the latter, is suggested in Sturm when the central character

reflects on his narrow escape from death in the front line:
Es schien ihm seltsam, da er hier sa. Wie wenig hatte daran gefehlt, da
es ihn getroffen htte. Da er jetzt mit verkrampften Gliedern am Boden
lag wie der Tote, ber den er im Graben gestolpert war. Mit groen
sinnlosen Wunden im Krper und schmutzigem, von dunkelblauen Pul-
verkrnern gesprenkeltem Gesicht. . . . Nicht der Tod schreckte ihn,
der war ja bestimmt , sondern dieses Zufllige, . . . Dieses Gefhl,
Werte zu bergen und doch nicht mehr zu sein als eine Ameise, die der
achtlose Tritt eines Riesen am Straenrande zertrat. Wozu, wenn es einen
Schpfer gab, schenkte der dem Menschen diesen Drang, sich in das
Wesen einer Welt zu bohren, die er niemals ergrnden konnte? War es
nicht besser, man lebte wie ein Tier oder wie eine Pflanze im Tal als
immer mit dieser furchtbaren Angst unter allem, was man auf der Ober-
flche handelte und sprach? (Sturm, 5657)

[It seemed strange to him that he was sitting here. How close he had
come to being hit. How easily it could have been him lying on the
ground with twisted limbs like the corpse he had stumbled over in the
trench. With great meaningless wounds in his body, and his dirty face
spotted with dark blue powder grains . . . It was not death that frightened
him that was bound to come sooner or later but this element of
chance, . . . this feeling that he embodied certain values and yet was no
more than an ant to be trampled at the roadside by a careless giant. Why,
if there was a creator, did he give man this urge to bore deep into a world
he could never understand? Was it not better to live like an animal or like
a plant in the valley than to be consumed by this terrible anxiety that
lurked beneath the surface of everything one did and said?]

The element of chance governing his survival in battle has a discon-

certing effect upon Sturm. The wounds that killed the soldier are mean-
ingless, for they too were inflicted by mere chance. Sturm distinguishes
between the thought of death itself, which is tolerable because ultimately
inevitable, and random death in war. The vision of chaos follows directly
from this perception and can only burden man with an acute feeling of
fear, for it must make him aware of the precariousness of his situation. Just
how profound this fear is becomes clear in a later essay by Jnger, in which
he reveals the source of his image and records his response: the image of
soldiers as ants being trampled by a giant is based on his response to Alfred
Kubins 1914 picture, Der Krieg (War). Jnger describes how the picture
shows an army with flags and lances, like ants scarcely visible on the
ground. This army faces a giant figure wielding a weapon that is half club
and half butchers knife. The figure is more or less normal down to the
waist, but it has the feet of an elephant, one of which is raised over the
army and about to crash down indiscriminately. Jnger explains that Kubin
portrays the two aspects of Mars: as master of the sword and of the
132
ROGER WOODS

butchers knife, and he concludes that the nightmare wins out; terror and
existential dread are dominant.20
In Sturm the intolerable emotion of fear provokes the vision of an
alternative mode of existence that provides security by eliminating human
consciousness. It is the natural mode of existence. And this is the aspect of
mans existence in war and of war itself that Jnger pushes to the forefront
of his accounts. The character Falk elaborates upon the point when he says
that sometimes he wishes he were a simple animal or a plant. He hates the
thought of any development towards higher sensibilities for this could only
serve to increase ones sense of anguish (Sturm, 82). It is this simple form
of animal consciousness that emerges in Jngers accounts of war as a sus-
taining force. In Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis the unwelcome diversifica-
tion of existence is said to be replaced by just a few basic drives with the
advent of war:

Wir sind zu verstelt; der Saft steigt nicht mehr in die Spitzen. Nur wenn
ein unmittelbarer Impuls uns wie Blitz durchbrennt, werden wir wieder
einfach und erfllt . . . Im Tanze auf schmaler Klinge zwischen Sein und
Nichtsein offenbart sich der wahre Mensch, da schmilzt seine Zersplit-
terung wieder zusammen in wenige Urtriebe von gewaltiger Strke.21

[We have split into too many branches; the sap no longer climbs to the
tips. Only if we are shot through with a direct impulse like a bolt of light-
ning will we become simple and fulfilled once again. . . . In the dance on
the narrow blade between existence and non-existence true man reveals
himself, his fragmented being once more fuses into a few basic drives of
enormous strength.]

The theme of chance and the use of natural imagery alone do not dis-
tinguish Ernst Jnger and his fellow new nationalists from other writers on
the war, yet the specific functions of these elements certainly do: when
Remarque, for example, states that it is mere chance that decides whether a
soldier will live or die, he concludes that this makes the soldier indifferent;
Remarque blames the war for destroying a whole generation, including
those who escaped the grenades.22 For the new nationalists, however,
chance is countered by inevitability, and the main source of this inevitabil-
ity is to be found in the supposedly natural roots of war.
This patterning also occurs in the work of Oswald Spengler, famous
for his monumental Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West),
which appeared between 1918 and 1922 and which suggested an
inevitability about the rise and fall of cultures. Spengler writes that whereas
plants have no choice, men and animals do. In times of stress they seek to
escape the freedom this gives them and to revert to a rooted, plant-like
existence. Spengler connects this with overcoming a sense of self and with
the unity that a regiment of soldiers can feel as it advances under fire.23
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
133

Kurt Hesse, a lieutenant in the Reichswehr, quotes Ernst Jngers argu-

ment that because we are humans the time will always come when we
attack each other. Significantly, this point comes after a reflection on the
forces in war that the traditional soldierly virtues cannot match. Human
action and natural events are ultimately not at odds, says Hesse, and it is
from this position that he derives his conviction that the war was a mean-
ingful event: Nur eine Tatsache von Wert: Da die Vorgnge, die sich
whrend der viereinhalb Jahre des Krieges abgespielt haben, natrliche
gewesen sind (The only thing that matters is that the events that unfolded
during four and a half years of war were natural).24
Jnger states that he took a notebook with him when he went to war,
in order to make notes on his daily experiences, and that he knew the
things that awaited him would be unique and later irretrievable.25 The
intention of recording the unique experience of wartime is echoed in In
Stahlgewittern, where it is the yearning for the unusual that makes the
prospect of war so enticing. Yet it is clear that Jngers wish to see his indi-
vidual experience as necessary and meaningful must lead him away from his
declared principles. For necessity and meaning are to be found in the sug-
gestion that ones actions in war follow an archetypal pattern. Thus he
writes in Das abenteuerliche Herz (The Adventurous Heart, 1929) that his
experiences are typical among his generation; they are a variation that is
bound up with the motif of the times, or they are like a species, an odd one
maybe, but one that does possess the characteristics of the genus. Jnger
concludes that when he considers his life, he is not actually referring just to
himself, but to what lies beneath this self, and to what everyone else can
identify with precisely because it is in its truest and least random form.26
This mentality suggests why the need to view individual experience as
meaningful resulted in the past being incorporated into the present, even
though the reality of modern warfare had cast doubt on the appropriate-
ness of traditional images of war, and the links between trench warfare and
traditional warfare had been seen to be tenuous. A mood is endowed with
greater meaning if it is felt to have been the mood of countless generations
of soldiers in the past: Am Abend sa ich noch lange in jener ahnungsvollen
Stimmung, von der die Krieger aller Zeiten zu erzhlen wissen (St, 11; In the
evening I sat for a long time in one of those moods suffused with foreboding
of which warriors through the ages can tell).
Jnger in fact enters a timeless world as a soldier, seeking not the
unique but the typical experience, as when he meets up with his comrades
for a drinking session after battle. This ritual is described as one of the
finest memories of old warriors. The comrades would laugh like lan-
squenets at the dangers they had survived, take a swig from a full bottle to
toast the dangers they had yet to meet, and care nothing if death and the
devil themselves were looking on, so long as the wine was good. That was
ever the warriors way (St, 79). Jngers commentary on an evening of
134
ROGER WOODS

reunion makes of the event a stylized ritual. His appeal to the tradition of
the soldier type, accentuated by the use of a vocabulary more suited to ear-
lier forms of battle (the lansquenet was a foot soldier in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries), establishes the authoritative framework within which
the death of ones comrades can be seen as meaningful. The impersonal,
eternal qualities of the soldier transform the desolation of war and lend
meaning to what is elsewhere seen as futile suffering.27
The political response of Jnger and the new nationalists to the war is
determined in part by the simple fact that Germany did not emerge as the
victor: Kurt Hesse sets out the problem and reveals the mental process by
which a solution is reached. In Der Feldherr Psychologos (General Psychol-
ogos) he asks whether the fact that the war was lost is sufficient reason to
see this episode in the history of the nation as a negative experience. One
must try, he argues, to establish what positive aspects of the war remain.
After listing just how much Germany did lose in the war, he asks whether
there must not be some gain to emerge from a struggle that was kept up
with so much spiritual and physical effort. His suggestion of where mean-
ing is to be found helps explain a key feature of new nationalist writings
on the war. If the war was lost there must be a new battle cry: es gilt,
geistige Werte zu annektieren! (we must annex spiritual values).28 In this
suggestion we see how failure in the world of actual military power
prompted the new nationalists to internalize the war experience: why, for
example, Ernst Jnger called his war book of 1922 Der Kampf als inneres
Erlebnis (Struggle as Inner Experience). In this inner experience the
best qualities of the soldier courage, heroism, selflessness become
ends in themselves.29 Franz Schauwecker describes the situation of the
Germans in the war and concludes that they were fighting against hope-
less odds. In such a situation there is no point in fighting on. Yet if
fighting on has no point, says Schauwecker, it does have a meaning.
This meaning resides in the courage and commitment of the soldiers who
fight the losing battle.30
Werner Best, who went on to draw up the Boxheim Papers on Nazi
plans in the event of a communist revolution, pursues this idea when he
explains that new nationalism sees the world as dynamic, consisting of ten-
sion, struggle, and turbulence. He quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, referring to
the world as perpetually creating and destroying itself. And he quotes
Ernst Jngers dictum from Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis: Nicht wofr
wir kmpfen, ist das Wesentliche, sondern wie wir kmpfen (The crucial
thing is not what we are fighting for, but how we fight). Extending the
logic of his thinking, Best concludes that the aims of any struggle are
ephemeral and ever changing, and for this reason the success or failure of
the struggle is not important.31 Opponents of new nationalism argued that
there was a causal connection between such thinking and the lost war: in a
hostile essay in the liberal journal Das Tagebuch, Karl Tschuppik characterized
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
135

the new nationalist idea of war being beyond the will of man and a primi-
tive force as the philosophy of defeat.32
What is clear is that the new nationalists heroic portrayal of war does
not directly tackle the insight into its futility: the feeling of ones own
insignificance in war is not conquered by fixing ones gaze on a higher goal
but is suppressed when writers revert to a preconscious, animal existence.
The reaction to the problem that the stated aims of the war are insufficient
to make sense of death on the huge scale encountered in the First World
War is not to find some other, worthier, aim but to suppress the problem
and make war an end in itself. The individuals fate is not rendered mean-
ingful. Rather, the individual is disregarded and the focus switches to the
typical or the collective experience.
Crucially, the political response to the war was also influenced by the
postwar situation of the new nationalists in what they regard as the alien
environment of the Weimar Republic. Jnger shows how, as far as the new
nationalists are concerned, giving way to their nagging doubts about the
meaning of the war would be tantamount to conceding the superiority of
the thinking that underpinned the Weimar Republic. He writes that any
philosophy that sees the death of millions in war as meaningless must be a
philosophy devoid of God, spirit, and heart, and it must also be fundamen-
tally barren. He attributes this philosophy to liberalism in all its forms, and
claims that one of the leading politicians of the Weimar Republic, Walther
Rathenau, embraces this view of the war.33 Significantly, however, he also
acknowledges his own mixed feelings about the war: wurde unser Herz
noch nie von jenem Gefhl der Leere belagert, das uns zur bergabe auf-
fordert, indem es uns listig zuflstert, es sei doch irgendwie alles umsonst
gewesen? (were our hearts never besieged by the feeling of emptiness urg-
ing us to surrender by insidiously whispering to us that it [sacrifice in war]
was somehow really all in vain?)34
The view of war as natural and self-justifying was further developed in
the Weimar period in order to cope with what the new nationalists saw as
the spread of alien Western values across the German border. Two expres-
sions of these alien values were the war-guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty
and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which outlawed war. Thus a key fea-
ture of the new nationalist view of the war is the irrelevance of moral cate-
gories. A. E. Gnther, coeditor of the Conservative Revolutionary journal
Deutsches Volkstum, felt uneasy about German propaganda that proclaimed
Germany did not start the war. This propaganda presented the German
cause not as the inner experience of the nation but as a legal dispute,
which, like any other, could be lost by trickery. It was dangerous to concen-
trate on the morality of self-defense. A nations right to exist includes attack,
yet, unlike in Mussolinis Italy, this was not driven home in the German
public sphere as the philosophy of the nation. Referring to Germanys efforts
to refute the war-guilt charge, Gnther records his amazement at seeing
136
ROGER WOODS

German historians and politicians rummaging in piles of documents, seri-

ously engaging in a search for the truth. He cites Thomas Manns essay on
Frederick the Great, which had set out what was wrong with an approach
based on the question of guilt. Mann had argued rather in vitalist terms of
the rights of those things that have become and the rights of those
things that are just becoming. This, suggests Gnther, is the proper
perspective for studying events. Germanys rights in fact lie beyond all
morality.35
The rise of class-based socialism in the postwar period preoccupied
Jnger and his fellow new nationalists, and it led them to construct their
own German socialism on the basis of the shared experience of the war.
Frontline socialism rather than class-based socialism is blended with an
assertive nationalism to provide the new nationalists remedy for the ail-
ments of the Weimar Republic. Kurt Hesse recalls how in war social issues
took a back seat, even among the workers. What arose in their place was a
consciousness based on national unity.36 The earliest political pronounce-
ments of the new nationalists are not always thought through, however.
The new nationalists generally agree that the social issues must be faced,
and that decent opportunities must be created for workers. But Franz
Schauwecker seems to surprise himself when he concludes that commu-
nism alone holds the key to dignity in life.37 He therefore goes on to say
that such talk is high treason and out of the question for the present.
Moreover, the new nationalists politicization of the war relied heavily on
selective memory: in order to produce their harmonious vision of a future
state they had to suppress their own awareness of how the community of
the front could disintegrate along class lines.
That Jnger and his circle were engaging in a political exploitation of
the First World War was clear in the minds of their readers. In 1930 Walter
Benjamin published Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (Theories of
German Fascism), a review article of Krieg und Krieger, a volume of essays
edited by Jnger in the same year.38 Benjamin first registers his surprise
that although the contributors to the volume fought in the war, they claim
that it is not particularly important in which century one fights, or for what
ideas or with what weapons. They almost seem to regard the soldiers uni-
form as the highest goal, with the circumstances in which it is worn being
of secondary importance. Benjamin explains this attitude as a symptom of
youthful excess, culminating in a cult and an apotheosis of war, and an
uninhibited transfer of the principle of art for arts sake to war.39 He quotes
the new nationalists argument that war is beyond reason and has its own
logic that is inhuman, unbounded, and gigantic, like a volcano or eruption.
War as the metaphysical abstraction proclaimed by the new nationalists is
for Benjamin an attempt to project natural laws onto technology, and he
offers a partial interpretation of these attitudes when he sees a link between
losing the war and this brand of hysteria that perverts it into a victory.40
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
137

Benjamin pleads for rationalism in the face of the new nationalists

mystification of the war experience: all the light that language and reason
can provide must be directed against the irrational memory of a war that
was in reality a last chance for nations to settle their relationships with each
other. In this early confrontation with new nationalism Benjamin registers
its aestheticization of war, and his thoughts on the origins of this aesthet-
icization take his analysis beyond moral indignation and towards an expla-
nation: the new nationalists processing of the memory of war is shaped by
their need to convert a defeat into a victory. Benjamin also makes the con-
nection with interwar politics when he characterizes the new nationalists
front-line soldier as the model for fascism.
The very popularity of new nationalist writings on the war indicates
that tensions and problems existed not just in the minds of a relatively
small (but prolific) group of novelists, diarists, and political journalists.
As one historian has pointed out, the urge to find a higher meaning in
the war experience that would make sense of the enormous sacrifices
was widespread in the postwar period, particularly among veterans.41 But
so too was the unease about this higher meaning. The tendency for the
frontline community and the home front to disintegrate into class-based
groupings has been well documented by historical research,42 and this
tendency found its concrete expression in the emergence of not one but
two opposing large-scale veterans organizations in the post-war
period Stahlhelm and Reichsbanner.43 The initial upsurge of interest
in pacifist ideas in the Weimar Republic, followed by the increasing isol-
ation of the Nie-wieder-Krieg-Bewegung (No-More-Wars Movement)
and the remilitarization of public opinion around 1929, suggest that the
internal wranglings of the new nationalists contain elements of a micro-
cosm of Weimar political culture, a political culture that was ultimately
receptive to the transformation and suppression of the realities of the war
experience.44

Notes
1
This is Walter Struves assessment of their role in Elites against Democracy: Lead-
ership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 18901933 (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1973), 227.
2
Martin Greiffenhagen, Das Dilemma des Konservatismus in Deutschland
(Munich: Piper, 1971), 277.
3
See, for example, Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer
Republik (Munich: Nymphenburg, 1968), 95.
4
Detlev Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 11011.
138
ROGER WOODS

5
Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar
and the Third Reich (Cambridge, London: Cambridge UP, 1984), 7275.
6
Wolfram Wette, Ideologien, Propaganda und Innenpolitik als Voraussetzungen
der Kriegspolitik des Dritten Reiches, in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite
Weltkrieg, ed. Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 10 vols. (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 1979), 1:48.
7
Thus, when Modris Eksteins comments in general terms on the conservative view
of the war as a necessity, tragic of course, but nonetheless unavoidable, he does
not exploit the interpretative potential of what is, in the case of the Conservative
Revolution, a development of the themes of necessity and inevitability (Rites of
Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age [London, New York: Ban-
tam, 1989], 287).
8
Ernst Jnger, In Stahlgewittern (Hanover: published privately, 1920), 1. Subse-
quent references to this work are cited in the text as St followed by the page number.
9
Ernst Jnger, Der Pazifismus, Die Standarte 11 (15 November 1925): 2. For a
discussion of the theory of modernization as applied to the Weimar Republic, see
Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 87190. George Mosse gives a convincing
account of the First World War as a modern war characterized by organized
mass death in his Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New
York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990), 3.
10
See Martin Travers, German Novels on the First World War and Their Ideological
Implications, 19181933 (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, 1982). Travers demon-
strates that military memoirs presented a paradigmatic view of war. This form sur-
vived through the First World War to emerge in the memoirs of Hermann von Stein,
for example, who had command of the XIV Reserve Division in a Bavarian Regi-
ment. His is above all an orderly view of war, in which all the events described have a
beginning, a middle, and an end. The typical memoir, argues Travers, does not rec-
ognize (does not have the categories to recognize) the less paradigmatic features of
war the fortuitous, the random, the anomic, and the personal torments of hunger,
fear, and pain (German Novels on the First World War, 23). See also Hans-Harald
Mller, Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), on senior officers
writing military memoirs in order to justify strategic decisions in the war (22).
11
See, for example, Erich Maria Remarques account of how the soldiers are made
indifferent by the fact that they can do little to avoid being killed: it is chance that
kills them or keeps them alive (Im Westen nichts Neues [Frankfurt am Main: Ull-
stein, 1976], 76).
12
See Michael Gollbach, Die Wiederkehr des Weltkrieges in der Literatur (Kron-
berg: Scriptor, 1978), 116. Travers has pointed out that Ludwig Renns Krieg
(War) stresses the formlessness of war and the soldiers struggle to survive in an
environment governed by the random and fortuitous, by the failure of purpose and
the subversion of order (German Novels on the First World War, 68). See also Paul
Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford
UP, 1975) on the gap between expectations and reality, which became such an
important feature of British writing on the First World War (3435). Fussell also
reports on the elaborate rumors that circulated in the war about how the Germans
gained information on the position of enemy artillery. These rumors reflected the
 JNGER, THE NEW NATIONALISTS, AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
139

need to make sense of events that would otherwise seem merely accidental or
calamitous (121).
13
Ernst Jnger, Sturm (Olten: Oltner Liebhaberdruck, 1963), 5657. Subsequent
references are given in the text as Sturm followed by the page number.
14
Ernst Jnger, Feuer und Blut (Magdeburg: Stahlhelm, 1925), 1617.
15
Franz Schauwecker, Deutsche allein (Berlin: Frundsberg, 1931), 9.
16
Rudolf Huch, Im Westen nichts Neues, Deutsches Volkstum 11, no. 8
(August 1929): 598603.
17
Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 155.
18
Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 107.
19
Ernst Jnger, ed., Die Unvergessenen (Berlin and Leipzig: Andermann, 1928), 12.
20
Ernst Jnger, Alfred Kubin, Neues Forum 154 (October 1966): 629.
21
Ernst Jnger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Berlin: Mittler, 1922), 116.
22
Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues, 5, 76.
23
Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Munich:
DTV, 1973), 2:55859.
24
Kurt Hesse, Der Feldherr Psychologos: Ein Suchen nach dem Fhrer der deutschen
Zukunft (Berlin: Mittler, 1922), 139.
25
Quoted in Armin Mohler, ed., Die Schleife: Dokumente zum Weg von Ernst
Jnger (Zurich: Arche, 1955), 55.
26
Ernst Jnger, Das abenteuerliche Herz (Berlin: Frundsberg, 1929), 6.
27
Karl Prmm makes a similar point about In Stahlgewittern in his Die Literatur
des soldatischen Nationalismus der 20er Jahre (19181933), 2 vols. (Kronberg im
Taunus: Scriptor, 1974), 1:11415.
28
Kurt Hesse, Der Feldherr Psychologos, 135.
29
Mller also sees a connection between Jngers failure to assign a meaning to the
war and his raising of soldierly qualities to the status of self-justifying values (246).
30
Franz Schauwecker, Der feurige Weg (Leipzig: Aufmarsch 1926), 132.
31
Werner Best, Der Krieg und das Recht, in Krieg und Krieger, ed. Ernst Jnger
(Berlin: Junker & Dnnhaupt, 1930), 15152. Michael Gollbach (Die Wiederkehr
des Weltkrieges, 156) notes a similar process at work in Franz Schauweckers Auf-
bruch der Nation (Berlin: Frundsberg, 1930).
32
Karl Tschuppik, Nicht daran denken, nicht davon sprechen? Das Tagebuch
12 (September 1931): 143843. Tschuppik makes his view of the vitalist inter-
pretation of the war clear when he adds that this idea is part of the megalomania
of inferior generals, politicians who are incapable of thought, and their literary
followers.
33
See Jnger, Vom absolut Khnen, Standarte 20 (12 August 1926): 462, and
Die totale Mobilmachung, in Jnger, Krieg und Krieger, 29.
34
Ernst Jnger, Die Opfer, Der Vormarsch 6 (November 1927): 114.
35
A. E. Gnther, Die Intelligenz und der Krieg, in Krieg und Krieger, 91, 9697.
140
ROGER WOODS

36
Kurt Hesse, Der Feldherr Psychologos, 142.
37
Franz Schauwecker, Der feurige Weg, 169.
38
Walter Benjamin, Theorien des deutschen Faschismus, Die Gesellschaft 2
(1930): 3241, reprinted in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Hella
Tiedemann-Bartels (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972), 3:23850. Subsequent
references are to the 1972 edition.
39
Benjamin, Theorien des deutschen Faschismus, 240.
40
Ibid, 242, n. 2.
41
Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 6. The broader significance of the new nationalist device
of describing the war in premodern terms is reflected in the style of many monu-
ments that were erected after the First World War and portrayed soldiers armed
with swords rather than modern weaponry. Our analysis of the evolution of mean-
ing in new nationalist texts on war supports Mosses interpretation of this phenom-
enon as the result of a confrontation with a new kind of mechanical warfare, which
resulted in an urgent need to mask death (101).
42
See Jrgen Kocka, Klassengesellschaft im Krieg, 19141918 (Gttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), esp. 4057, on the growing militancy of workers during
the war, shortages of food resulting in strikes among munitions workers in Berlin,
war weariness, and the desire for peace among the workers. Kocka also examines
the unequal provision made for officers and men at the front, a phenomenon mir-
rored at home by the easier life for those who could afford black market prices.
43
See Wette, Ideologien, Propaganda und Innenpolitik, 7881.
44
Gollbach points out that from 1929 onwards the market share of nationalist anti-
democratic war books was overwhelming and made the proportion of books criti-
cal of the war insignificant. Gollbach takes this as an indication of the
popularization of antidemocratic and nationalist slogans, ideas, and groups in the
process of political polarization at that time (276).
7: Innocent Killing: Erich Maria
Remarque and the Weimar
Anti-War Novels

Brian Murdoch

E RICH MARIA REMARQUES Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the

Western Front), published in both German and English in 1929, is
arguably the best-known of all Weimar novels. Certainly it is one of the
few German novels of the period to have achieved the status of an inter-
national classic, and it remains, further, one of the most read antiwar nov-
els in any language. Assessing the status of Erich Maria Remarque
(18981970) specifically as a Weimar novelist, however, is not straightfor-
ward. In the simplest of definitions a writer publishing between the
formal declaration of the Weimar Republic in July 1919 and Hitlers elec-
tion as chancellor in January 1933 Remarque is represented by a lim-
ited number of novels only. Technically, the first of these is Die
Traumbude (A Den of Dreams), which appeared in 1920, but it is a
romantic Knstlerroman (artists novel) that might equally well have
appeared in the late nineteenth century, and was in any case published
under the authors birth-name of Erich (Paul) Remark. It did appear, nev-
ertheless, within the period of the Weimar Republic and in a sense it is of
that time in that it represents a form of escapism back to a prewar period
in which young aesthetes, artists and musicians, could be concerned about
stormy affairs and then find true love at the deathbed of their closest
friend. The writing, though, is mannered and dated, and it is no surprise
that the work was not highly regarded; the very negative opinion of one
critic in particular weighs heavily against it: that of Remarque himself,
who dissociated himself from it by adopting for his later works an older
version of his family name and taking as a middle name that of his mother.
Die Traumbude was only republished in 1998, in a volume that also con-
tains his second novel, Gam (a name), written probably in 1923/24 but
not published until it appeared in the retrospective collection of his early
work at the end of the twentieth century, and also his third, which did
appear during the Weimar Republic, albeit not in book form. Station
am Horizont (Horizon Station) appeared as a serial in the magazine Sport
im Bild between 1927 and 1928, and although Ullstein did acquire the
142
BRIAN MURDOCH

rights, it was never published as a separate novel. A much later novel,

Der Himmel kennt keine Gnstlinge (Heaven Has No Favorites, 1961), is
linked with it. In terms of quality, Remarques own judgment on the first
and his failure to publish the second are entirely acceptable.1
Very different indeed is the case of the work that establishes Remar-
ques importance as a Weimar novelist, Im Westen nichts Neues, which
appeared first in serial form in the Vossische Zeitung in 1928, and then in a
slightly changed book version in January, 1929. The period was one in
which a large number of novels concerned with the First World War were
published (and not only in Germany), although novels of the war had
begun to appear during the war itself and in the years that followed.2 Two
years later, in 1931, another work appeared, Der Weg zurck (The Road
Back), and it is important (though they are often kept apart) to consider
this together with the by then world-famous Im Westen nichts Neues, even
if the international fame of the first was never remotely matched by the sec-
ond.3 The second novel is a continuation of the first: its action begins just
after, and indeed refers to, the death of the principal character in the first
novel. Both novels are concerned principally with the First World War as
the major shared and formative experience of those in the new republic.
Der Weg zurck documents the life in the immediate postwar period of a
character who might as well be the fallen narrator of the first: their age,
experience, background, and homes are the same, and even the names are
obliquely linked, Paul Bumer and Ernst Birkholz.4
By the time Remarques next novel, Drei Kameraden (1937; Three
Comrades, 1938), appeared, however, the Weimar government was gone,
and this work, though in a sense a further sequel, had to be published in
Amsterdam. Only two major works, then, appeared as novels during the
period, and neither has a contemporary theme. Im Westen nichts Neues is
set in the last year of the 191418 war, although it looks back to 1916. Der
Weg zurck is set in the year following the last month of the war, taking us
into the beginnings of the Weimar Republic. Both works are historical
novels and are not actual eyewitness reports from the war and immediate
postwar period as such, although the first in particular is often taken that
way, and works were published at the same time that do present themselves
precisely as eyewitness reports. In an absolute sense, both novels, and the
first in particular, are against war as such. Two more specific questions may
be asked of Remarques works as novels of the First World War, however:
first, to what extent their presentation of and confrontation with a war that
was still very much in the minds of its citizens reflects Weimar views of the
war and its ending; and second, whether aspects of the novels can be
related to the Weimar Republic itself.
Taking Remarque as a Weimar novelist in a somewhat broader sense,
later novels of his also have a bearing on the period. Drei Kameraden has
to do, to an extent, with the mental and physical displacement of soldiers
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
143

after the war, and even Remarques novel of the Second World War, Zeit zu
leben und Zeit zu sterben (1954, translated as A Time to Love [sic] and a
Time to Die), albeit set in wartime Nazi Germany, shows parallel attitudes
to war as such.5 Later still, Der schwarze Obelisk (1956, The Black Obelisk,
1957), is set in the Weimar Republic, so that it follows Der Weg zurck in
historical sequence, although it is inevitably affected by hindsight after
another war and the experience of Nazism. The central figure, however,
Bodmer, is a close match for Bumer and Birkholz.
Im Westen nichts Neues and Der Weg zurck, though, are Remarques
major contributions to the Weimar novel as such. The first presents the war
through the eyes of a young soldier, Paul Bumer, who has under the
influence of a crassly nationalistic teacher joined the army after the start
of the war straight from high school, and who recounts his experiences,
sometimes as flashbacks, of many aspects of the war, from basic training to
coming under fire in the front line. The narrative alternates between scenes
of warfare at the front with periods of respite behind the lines, with some
French girls, at home on leave, or on one occasion defending a food store.
Against these scenes are set others at the front on wiring or sentry duty,
under heavy fire in a dugout, and on a reconnaissance patrol (during which
Bumer kills a Frenchman in a panic). He is wounded and experiences a
military hospital. Gradually his immediate circle of fellow soldiers, some
schoolfriends, others from different walks of life, are all killed, the last of
them the older man Katczinsky, Bumers mentor. Bumer himself, now
alone, is killed at the end of the work, just before the end of the war, and
the last few lines of the novel are in another voice.
Such a bare description of the work conveys little except, perhaps, to
indicate that it holds the interest by rapid and varied scene changes. In fact
its structure is deceptively simple; because it is so skillfully done, the work
had general appeal and thus became extremely popular, but this itself led to
critical suspicion, and indeed to its dismissal as serious literature, in spite of
the fact that the subject could scarcely be more serious. It is, as indicated, a
first-person narrative, a work effectively with only one character, a young
soldier. This aspect of the fictionality is maintained carefully; the narrative
does not (apart from the final third-party comment) ever come out of
character. A young man is caught up in a war for which he can bear no
responsibility. Although clearly intelligent, just out of a classical Gymna-
sium, his experience of life itself is, as he well knows, limited. But he can
observe the war and also think about it from a limited perspective. Critics
who leveled the charge at Remarque that some of the characters encoun-
tered by the reader are less fully drawn than others failed to appreciate the
consistent viewpoint.6 Bumer is naturally more aware of some things and
some people than of others; he knows his schoolmates well and he gets to
know other immediate comrades, but will do little more than register the
presence of a graybeard, or of an unpleasant major he meets once only,
144
BRIAN MURDOCH

or indeed of an attractive French girl. If the war is to be presented as the

experience of a single young man, then that single character must be
entirely believable, and the sole grounds for real criticism would be if
Bumer were to be unusual in any way. That he is not permits general iden-
tification with him, and indeed multiplication by the kind of numbers his-
tory tells us took part in the war at that level. Bumer thus shows no
unrealistic prescience about the postwar years, and indeed, part of the
point of the novel is that he cannot really imagine the years after the war,
and by the end the war is still going on and he is dead. The final narrator
may speculate on Bumers death, but the reader should be aware that it
can only be speculation. Within the novel, Bumer comments on a variety
of aspects of the war as he sees them, making clear its brutalizing effect
upon a sensitive young man, the consequent devaluation of practically
everything in his life before, social or educational, and what war as such
actually means. War is to kill or be killed, or almost worse to maim or
be maimed: erst das Lazarett zeigt, was Krieg ist (only the hospital
shows you what war really is), says Bumer, going on to note that there are
thousands of hospitals like this one. That realization leads him to a further
comment on the way the war has affected him, and the passage is an
important one:

Ich bin jung, ich bin zwanzig Jahre alt; aber ich kenne vom Leben nichts
anderes als die Verzweiflung, den Tod, die Angst und die Verkettung
sinnlosester Oberflchlichkeit mit einem Abgrund des Leidens. Ich sehe,
dass Vlker gegeneinandergetrieben werden und sich schweigend, unwis-
send, tricht, gehorsam, unschuldig tten. (260)

[I am young, I am twenty years of age; but I know nothing of life except

despair, death, fear, and the combination of completely mindless superfi-
ciality with an abyss of suffering. I see people being driven against one
another, and silently, uncomprehendingly, foolishly, obediently and inno-
cently killing one another.] (186)

The reference to innocent killing could refer either to those killing or those
being killed. This is the experience of his whole generation, he goes on,
and he blames the generation before: what would their fathers do, he asks,
if they were to be held to account? No answer is given in the novel,
of course, but the thought is significant for the Weimar Republic. The
young soldiers in the novel have grown up with killing as their principal
occupation and their knowledge of the world is limited to death. In asking
what will happen afterwards and what will become of them, Bumer
expresses, though he himself dies, the views of the survivors who were still
young at the birth of the Weimar Republic. The despairing tone is histori-
cal and acceptable within the context, but it can function as a warning in
the contemporary world, and indeed in general terms. Bumer presents
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
145

the facts of the war to the reader, but he is himself unable to think clearly
about many aspects of it, something that becomes clear when he and his
fellow soldiers attempt discussions, which end invariably with the circular
and ultimately meaningless assertion it is no more than that that
Krieg ist Krieg (war is war). The reader derives from Bumers experi-
ences the universal message that war is a human disaster and that there
should be no more war, the pacifist-liberal message that ensures the
continuing importance of the work. It is perhaps still necessary to point
out, finally, that Bumer is a character in a novel, and is not Remarque,
even if the authors own experiences contributed to Bumer, Birkholz, and
Bodmer.
Indeed, to refer to Im Westen nichts Neues as a first-person novel with-
out further qualification requires expansion to illustrate the skill with
which the work is fashioned and the way in which it could be read never-
theless on a universal level, and not just in Weimar Germany. Although
Bumer is an individual, he is also part of a larger force, and the novel con-
tains a series of concentric rings, at the center of which is Bumer himself.
Much of the novel, indeed, is a first-person plural narrative, and most of
the chapters begin with the pronoun wir, a pronoun that is both
ambiguous (since it can be exclusive, not you, or embracing, all of us)
and also variable. It is always entirely clear what is meant, however, and
Remarque manipulates its use for effect. When the work begins, the wir
refers, for example, to the remains of the company that has just returned
from the front, but it can also mean as the broadest of the rings, we
humans (as opposed to the animals they become). Further, it can mean
we, the Germans (an idea Remarque even permits the soldiers to play
with grammatically at one point), or we the German army. It can also
refer to ordinary soldiers (on the German or even on both sides). Moving
inwards from the company, the first person plural may refer to the entire
platoon, or to the subgroups within it, of the former high-school boys, or
the wider group of friends including Tjaden and Westhus, who are not
from that background, and Katczinsky, who is older. Even closer to the
center, wir can refer to Bumer and Katczinsky, two friends once per-
ceived (in an image Remarque was fond of) as two sparks of life on a noc-
turnal battlefield. In the brief final chapter, Bumer is alone, now that most
of his closest friends, last of all Katczinsky, have fallen, and becomes, as it
were, a first person singular, though he is aware that behind his individual-
ity is a separate and independent life force: dieses, was in mir Ich sagt
(288; my conscious self, 207). But he falls, and now becomes the subject
of a third-person narrative in an objective report on his death and the lack
of official comment upon it. To the bare facts of his death is added a spec-
ulation that can carry none of the direct verisimilitude of the rest of the
novel.7 It also takes us back to a prefatory motto before the start of the
book, a statement about the novel, fixed in the reality of the present and
146
BRIAN MURDOCH

referring to a whole generation of survivors, those still alive and reading

the work in the Weimar Republic.
Bumers inability, while taking part in the war, to rationalize his
thoughts about it is made clear in his view of the enemy. The concept is, in
the first instance, an abstract, since the principal enemy faced by the sol-
diers is death itself. In a different sense, the real enemy of Bumer and his
fellows is their immediate superiors (noncommissioned officers, that is,
since he and the reader rarely even see anyone of higher rank).8 The
declared enemy is usually invisible; there are references to the guns, but
Bumer himself encounters directly only the single poilu he kills, and later
on a group of Russian prisoners of war. The absence from these texts of a
picture of the enemy is one of the principal features of the antiwar novel,
especially significant in the Weimar context, of course, as an outwardly
directed policy message. It is also part of the general antiwar statement in
the context of modern warfare, and a feature too of antiwar narrative in
other languages.9 The term antiwar, incidentally, is itself slightly ambigu-
ous, and might refer to a standpoint taken against war in general or against
seeing any merit in the First World War; the term is not necessarily the
same as pacifist, though there is often an overlap.
Of the enemies actually encountered by Bumer, only the Frenchman
has a name, Grard Duval, and he is literally thrown together with Bumer
when the latter falls upon him in a shell crater and in panic stabs him.
Trapped with the dying man in the shell hole, Bumer promises all kinds of
things, most specifically that there must be no more war; the basic pacifist
message is addressed to the reader, and it was of special relevance in the
period in which the novel was published. When he returns to his own lines
and tells others about the experience, Bumer is shown a sniper cold-
bloodedly picking off soldiers from the opposing trenches. In the face of
this reality, Bumer realizes that even though he could not do such a thing,
he has to suppress for the moment any questioning of war as such, since
that way madness lies. The motif of the sniper does recur after the war, in
Der Weg zurck, where the questioning takes on a completely new tone in
peacetime, and has even more significance in the Weimar context.
On duty guarding some Russian prisoners, Bumer has more time,
since he is behind the lines, and he is able to speculate a little but not
much more on the nature of war. Again he realizes that it would lead to
madness to pursue his ideas while the war is still on (the central figure in
Edlef Kppens Heeresbericht [Higher Command, 1930] does indeed suffer
a mental breakdown), but Bumer promise himself that he will retain his
thoughts until after the war. The passage merits citing:

Ein Befehl hat diese stillen Gestalten zu unsern Feinden gemacht; ein
Befehl knnte sie in unsere Freunde verwandeln. An irgendeinem Tisch
wird ein Schriftstck von einigen Leuten unterzeichnet, die keiner von
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
147

uns kennt; und jahrelang ist unser hchstes Ziel das, worauf sonst die Ver-
achtung der Welt und ihre hchste Strafe ruht. (19394)

[An order has turned these silent figures into our enemies; an order could
turn them into friends again. On some table, a document is signed by
some people that none of us knows, and for years our main aim in life is
the one thing that usually draws the condemnation of the whole world
and incurs its severest punishment in law.] (137)
He realizes that it is not yet the time to think this through, and in the
historical context of the book the matter has to be shelved. In the context
of the reader in the Weimar Republic, though, it was appropriate that
thought should now be given to this faux-naif view of the way in which
governments declare war. The question of murder as a crime is also raised
within the context of the war in Der Weg zurck.
The basic and most immediate form of prose war description is prob-
ably the diary: soldiers kept them and many were published, either after the
death of the writer in battle (these are the most immediate that by the
nationalist nature poet and novelist Hermann Lns [18661914] is an
example) or later, in which case they may well have gone through a filtering
process by the diarist, as Ernst Jnger commented of his own In Stahlgewit-
tern (1920, Storm of Steel, 1929), perhaps the best known. Hans Carossas
Rumnisches Tagebuch (1924, A Roumanian Diary, 1929) and Rudolf
Bindings Aus dem Kriege (1925; translated as A Fatalist at War, 1929) are
further examples. The diary form could also be entirely fictitious, as in the
case of Adrienne Thomass Die Katrin wird Soldat (1930, translated as
Cathrine Joins Up, also as Katrin Becomes a Soldier, both 1931). Im Westen
nichts Neues is not a diary but a fiction, though it strives for the immediacy
of the direct narrative, almost as reportage, while avoiding too much detail
of time and place and permitting both flashbacks and an arrangement of
contrasting scenes.10 In fact the structure of the work is as skilled as the con-
sistency with which the central character is presented. The chapters vary in
length considerably, the longest being a central chapter set at the front line
and presenting the experience of the horror of war in a way that is some-
times metaphorical (Die Front ist ein Kfig [103; The front is a cage,
72]) and sometimes physically, visually, and acoustically descriptive:
Die stickige Luft fllt uns . . . noch mehr auf die Nerven. Wir sitzen in
unserm Grabe und warten nur darauf, da wir zugeschttet werden.
Pltzlich heult und blitzt es ungeheuer, der Unterstand kracht in allen
Fugen unter einem Treffer . . . Es klirrt metallisch . . . (113)

[The stifling air . . . gets on our nerves even more . . . Its as if we were
sitting in our own grave, just waiting for someone to bury us.
Suddenly there is a terrible noise and flash of light, and every joint in the
dugout creaks under the impact of a direct hit . . . There is a metallic rat-
tling. . . .] (79)
148
BRIAN MURDOCH

The description of the dugout as a grave is significant; later on, the men
take cover in blown-up graves, where they literally join the exhumed dead.
Bumer comments that even an old man (by which he means someone
other than a recruit, and loss of youth is a recurrent theme) might have his
hair turned gray by the experience of a bombardment. There is always
commentary within the immediacy, but it is subtly done. A good example
is in a passage early in the work, when Bumer visits a dying friend in a field
hospital, and states, as it were, to the reader, that this man is twenty and
does not want to die, adding that the whole world ought to be led past his
bed. This, of course, is just what Remarque does in the novel. Themes
once stated are picked up and reiterated, often in more concise form, like
themes in a fugue, as the last stages of the war and the real time of the
novel from 1917 to 1918 progress. The gradual attrition, Bumers
increasing despair at what will come after, and the way he is increasingly
forced to confront his own thoughts on the war are examples of this, and
Bumer develops throughout the novel.
It needs to be reiterated that the objective final statement in the work
is full of irony. Bumer has in death einen so gefaten Ausdruck, als wre
er beinahe zufrieden, da es so gekommen war (288; an expression that
was so composed that it looked as if he were almost happy that it had
turned out that way, 207). The subjunctive and the word beinahe must
not be overlooked, but the reader is aware that the composed look on his
face might equally derive from the resigned calm that he has achieved. He
does indeed not have to face the miseries faced by all of the characters with
some, little, or no success in the sequel; but the reader knows that he did
not want to die, since he had established an objective attitude towards
himself that depended upon the unquenchable quality of the life force, the
Funke Leben, as he had referred to himself earlier in a scene with
Katczinsky, and which Remarque would use as the title for his concentration-
camp novel of 1952, Der Funke Leben (Spark of Life). The interpretation of
what has been referred to simply as the rictus sardonicus11 is as ambiguous
as the comment that there was nothing new to report that day: nichts
Neues zu melden, nothing new to report, can mean, of course, that the
death of one soldier is not newsworthy, though he has been the subject of
an entire novel that is actually called a Bericht, or report. Or it can mean
that this pointless death just before the armistice is nothing new on the
front.12
For the survivors, of course, the struggle went on. In the short intro-
ductory statement that Remarque placed at the very beginning of the
book, Im Westen nichts Neues is related to the authors present and thus to
the Weimar Republic, which contained so many of those who were
destroyed by the war even if they escaped its shells. The novel ends before
the Treaty of Versailles and thus focuses entirely upon the war, without ref-
erence to its beginning or to its end. The young central figure and his
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
149

immediate associates may be viewed, then, simply as victims of a set of cir-

cumstances quite outside their control. The attitude to war as such is clear
that it is unequivocally evil and destructive, physically and psychologically,
and the only good thing that came from it was a sense of comradeship, a
much-cited comment from the novel, but hardly one that justifies the war,
although it has sometimes been taken that way. Nor does the comradeship
endure: in this novel it is obliterated by the war itself, as all those close to
Bumer are killed, and in the sequel it soon breaks down. The attitude to
the First World War is that it was a hideous waste of life and a betrayal of a
whole generation, something that the new Weimar Republic had (now) to
put behind itself.
There was, however, considerable debate after the war and especially
after Versailles as to whether Germany had or had not actually been
defeated. After all, the army was still on French soil. In 1919 Hindenburg
gave Germany the Dolchstolegende, the notion that Germany had been
stabbed in the back by revolutionaries at home, ascribing the idea to an
(unidentified) British general.13 Remarque permits Bumer to make it clear
that the blockade, lack of supplies, fresh (American) troops, and their own
exhaustion had caused the defeat, rather than military inferiority. The later
condemnation by the Nazis of Remarques supposed defeatism expressed
in the work failed to notice that Bumer says quite unequivocally at the
end of the work, though it is slipped into an extended passage of apparent
despair: wir sind nicht geschlagen, denn wir sind als Soldaten besser und
erfahrener; wir sind einfach von der vielfachen bermacht zerdrckt und
zurckgeschoben (280; We havent been defeated, because as soldiers we
are better and more experienced; we have simply been crushed and pushed
back by forces many times superior to ours, 201). That specific message
voiced ten years after the war was clearly comforting, even though the end
result of being defeated by weight of numbers still constitutes, after all, a
defeat. Remarque even allows a nicely ironic comment on the idea of
whether or not Germany was defeated in Der Weg zurck, when Birkholz
thinks back to the last essay he had written at school in 1916, on the sub-
ject of why Germany was to win the war. He recalls that it was given a B
minus, and thinks to himself that this was a reasonable enough grade in
view of what has happened since. It has been noted that complementary
myths about the war dogged the new republic:14 that the German army
had been stabbed in the back by socialist political forces at home,
rendering defeat inevitable; and that they had not really been defeated by
the allies at all. Not only is neither view accurate, but neither need have any
real connection with the two prevailing attitudes in the Weimar Republic
to the war and to war as such. One was that the First World War was a bap-
tism of fire, from which the nation could emerge tested and strengthened;
the other (less comforting and ultimately rejected in political terms) was
that it had been such a waste of life that it should not happen again.
150
BRIAN MURDOCH

Unlike, for example, Ernst Glaeser in Jahrgang 1902 (Class of 1902,

1928), Remarque does not show us the outbreak of war and the universal
eagerness to enlist, and the war is already under way when Bumer joins,
something that distances his generation completely from any guilt. But in
any case, the blame for the war as such is laid firmly at the militaristic world
of Wilhelmine society, reinforced by those in authority over the young,
notably the teachers. Bumers teacher, Kantorek, drives them to enlist,
and is satisfyingly paid back by being ridiculed later in the work when
he, as an ageing reservist, is drilled by one of his former pupils. However,
that ridicule does not cancel out the bitterness of the condemnation of the
thousands of Kantoreks who drove the young men to their deaths.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, the focal point and embodiment of that society, actually
appears in the work, seen from a distance inspecting the troops, something
that happens in other war novels, but the militarism has been filtered
through the authority figures the teachers, the priests, the politicians
who had been trusted by the young combatants to guide them into life.
The condemnation of these figures by the generation (in the words of
Remarques motto) who were destroyed by the war, was made in a num-
ber of novels of the period.15 The moral betrayal of a generation, as well as
its physical destruction, is the key to most of the Weimar pacifist novels.
But there is in neither of Remarques war novels any hint of that notion of
a stab in the back. The only criticism that Remarque permits Bumer to
make of those in Germany itself is aimed, not at political movements with
an interest in beginning, maintaining, or stopping the war, but at prof-
iteers: Die Fabrikbesitzer in Deutschland sind reiche Leute geworden
uns zerschrinnt die Ruhr die Drme (274; The factory-owners in Ger-
many have grown rich while dysentery racks our guts, 197). The profiteers
are also pilloried in the second novel, notably the unpleasantly arrogant
Onkel Karl, who had been a senior quartermaster during the war and had
clearly lived very well, continuing to do so afterwards.
The death of Bumer at the end of Im Westen nichts Neues is a deliber-
ate closure. Bumer dies before the end of the war, just possibly content at
not having to face the future (though we have just seen his affirmation of
the life force within him). His death may even be viewed as an expiation for
the death of Duval, the only named enemy soldier (just as Ernst Graeber
who has killed a German soldier in Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben, also
dies at the end of that work). The internationalism of the work is impor-
tant, and it was indeed appropriate for a Weimar liberal novel to proclaim
to the world that the ordinary soldier in the German army was virtually
identical to all the other combatants, as a way of diminishing German mil-
itarism. Indeed, there were critics abroad who deplored the way in which
the enemy was rendered too harmless by the book.16 It has to be recalled,
however, that the Weimar anti-war novel was part of an unusually inter-
national literature. It did, it is true, take a long time before anthologies of
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
151

war poetry began to include works from all the combatant nations, but in
the case of the novel, the way in which the universality of the experience of
the trenches overrode other considerations was underscored by the appear-
ance in German translation during the Weimar period of large numbers of
war novels from abroad. Equally, not just Remarques, but virtually all
other contemporary German war novels were (as is evident from the texts
referred to here) translated into English, as well as into French and other
languages, many of them in 1929. To give just two examples, one from
each side, Alexander Moritz Freys still unjustly neglected novel Die
Pflasterksten was translated as The Crossbearers, and Evadne Prices Not so
Quiet . . . as Mrs Biest pfeift. Neither was in the forefront of war literature
in the period, though they sold relatively well.17
A contemporary German critique of the Weimar war novels referred to
the way in which, through them, die Vergangenheit, drckend und
qulend wie ein Alptraum, wird endgltig zu Grabe getragen (the past,
depressing and agonizing as a nightmare, is at last laid to rest).18 This is the
essence of Remarques and the other antiwar novels for their time; in the
context of another war, the term Bewltigung der Vergangenheit would be
used, and after the Second World War would be applied by writers to the
question of how Germany had come to accept Hitler, but the Weimar
Republic needed to cope in the first instance with the nature of the war
itself. The antiwar novels, while serving as a reminder of the reasons
behind the rootlessness of those now entering maturity in a new society,
helped them to get it out of their system. What the pacifist war literature
did not do at least not to any great extent, and certainly not overtly
was to try to justify (or deny) the loss of the war, or to seek to promote a
way of avenging the perceived shame of the Treaty of Versailles. Weimar
pacifist war literature is a literature of closure, but not of the backward
look. Even within the consistent historical context, Bumer constantly
looks forward to the time after the war, even though he cannot conceive of
what it will be like. Those who survived the war as Bumer should have,
and as Ernst Birkholz, the central figure and narrator of Der Weg zurck
actually does view the postwar period without expectations and often
without an aim, but they look forward. The rootlessness and aimlessness of
the generation of those who went from school into the war is a theme of
many of Remarques later novels, and the central figure in Der schwarze
Obelisk shows the same qualities. But when they do look back they realize
that the prewar world is completely gone, and the war itself, once they
have come to terms with details, has to be remembered only as a warning
that it should not happen again. There was, of course, a different approach,
which did look back to a perceived and supposedly reclaimable past glory,
and hence concentrated upon the obliteration of what was seen as the
shame of Versailles, a treaty that, it was claimed, had imposed unreasonable
conditions upon an undefeated army.
152
BRIAN MURDOCH

If Im Westen nichts Neues shows us a Weimar writer trying to cope with

the facts of the war experience as such, Der Weg zurck shows us the work-
ing out of the problems that Bumer did not survive to face. The second
novel is of considerable importance, and it is important, especially in the
context of Weimar literature, that it be regarded not so much as a sequel
but more as the second part of one work, even if it did not enjoy the inter-
national reputation of Im Westen nichts Neues. It picks up on ideas that
were deliberately shelved in wartime, and also corrects possible misinter-
pretations that might have arisen from the first novel. Bumer dies, but his
alter ego Birkholz, very much like him in background, experience, and
indeed home address, observes in practice what Bumer speculated upon
at the end of the first novel. It is worth citing Bumers views again. If we
had returned in 1916, he says, we should have created a real revolution,
but now we are
mde, zerfallen, ausgebrannt, wurzellos und ohne Hoffnung. Wir werden
uns nicht mehr zurechtfinden knnen.
Man wird uns auch nicht verstehen. [. . .] Wir sind berflssig fr
uns selbst, wir werden wachsen, einige werden sich anpassen, andere sich
fgen, und viele werden ratlos sein; die Jahre werden zerrinnen, und
schlielich werden wir zugrunde gehen. (28687)

[weary, broken-down, burnt-out, rootless and devoid of hope. We shall

no longer be able to cope.
No-one will understand us. [. . .] We are superfluous even to our-
selves, we shall grow older, a few will adapt, others will make adjustments,
and many of us will not know what to do the years will trickle away,
and eventually we shall perish.] (206)

Bumer comments right away that maybe this is just melancholy, which
will vanish; but the words have been spoken. The wir in this case refers
to Bumers exact contemporaries; those slightly older may have had jobs
and families before the war, and those who come after will push them
aside, but the various possibilities he gives for a reaction are observed by
Birkholz in Der Weg zurck. Remarques sequel to Im Westen nichts Neues
is in many respects even more of a Bericht, a report on how the road back
had to be taken by those destroyed by the war, even though they were not
killed. It presents to the reader once again a variety of experiences facing
the former soldiers as they return to life in Germany. The novel opens with
the last days of the war, the suddenness of the peace, and then with the
march home. But Birkholz and his comrades are not the first, and society is
already under way again. The question is always whether or not the return-
ing soldiers can cope with the changes (and in some cases the lack of
change) in society, and the changes in their own personalities and attitudes.
Novels of the war itself, like Im Westen nichts Neues, looked back; the para-
dox of Der Weg zurck is that, although still a historical novel at the time it
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
153

was written, it shows the ex-soldiers learning that they have to go forward.
To summarize the answer very succinctly: the lesson that Birkholz (and the
reader) learns is that the way back into life could not involve actually going
backward because the war had changed everything.
The characters parallel those in the first novel. Birkholz and Bumer
are, as indicated, pretty well the same person, though Birkholz refers to the
deaths of Bumer and the others. Tjaden survives anyway, and the
resourceful Katczinsky and the strong Haie Westhus, both killed in the first
novel, are merged and replaced by a younger but equally capable and prag-
matic ex-soldier, Willy Homeyer. The main characters try initially to take
up things where they left off, but they soon realize that they cannot. This
can be positive, for example, in the way they now react to their old teach-
ers, who no longer exercise the same authoritarian control over them, and
against whom they can now assert themselves. But the much vaunted com-
radeship of the trenches quickly breaks down, as those with a business
sense are already making deals at the end of the war and do well for them-
selves later. Der Weg zurck demonstrates that having been a good soldier
is no guarantee of doing well in postwar society, just as the first novel
showed that being good at mathematics at school would not save you from
being killed at the front. New social divisions open up, and the political
chaos and polarization after the war sets former comrades against one
another, until one of Birkholzs immediate group is shot dead by another
when they find themselves on different sides of the barricades. This is the
first of several significant shots fired in a novel that is set, ostensibly, in
peacetime. The birth of the Weimar Republic comes about under fire as
the echoes of the war take a very long time to die away.
Some scores concerned with the war itself are settled, but although
this can be interpreted on an individual level as a form of closure, it can
also serve to indicate how much things have moved away from the war in a
very short time. In an echo of the revenge taken on a drill corporal in the
first novel, the soldiers beat up a former sergeant, who during the war had
caused the death of one of their friends. At first they are reluctant, because
the sergeant is now an innkeeper and therefore not really the same person.
Only his army trousers indicate that the guilt of the wartime happenings is
still there, which provides the impetus to punish him after all; the initial
reluctance is as important as the revenge.
Various scenes in Im Westen nichts Neues are deliberately picked up.
Bumer had demanded, for example, that all the world be shown a dying
man in a field hospital, and had later taken the reader, as it were, on a tour
of the military hospital in which he himself was being treated. Birkholz
takes the reader to an asylum, where those literally driven mad by the war
maintain the delusion that it is still going on, and he observes too the post-
war situation of the war-wounded, the real results of the war, as they actu-
ally parade past as part of a demonstration. So too, where Bumer had
154
BRIAN MURDOCH

been unable because of the immediate pressure of the war to think through
a given theme, these ideas are now worked out through Birkholz in the
later novel. After the Duval incident, Bumer needed to cling to the circu-
lar war is war argument simply to be able to carry on, and hence was
made to watch the sniper at work. With the Russian prisoners, he drew
(and then withdrew from the implications of) the parallel between killing
in war unschuldig tten and murder. In the new novel, one of Birk-
holzs friends, Albert Trosske, kills a man he finds with his girlfriend, and
at the trial he draws a distinction between this man, whom he hates, and
the men he has killed in the war but did not hate. Again the reader is made
aware of the inconsistency. Just before the trial, too, Birkholz visits a for-
mer sniper and finds him insisting still that the statement war is war
eradicates any need for reflection at all. For the former sniper, the argu-
ment that he was only obeying orders justifies his own pride in his achieve-
ments, which he parades much as if it had all been some kind of shooting
match (an idea played with in Glaesers Jahrgang 1902), albeit with live tar-
gets. The sniper Birkholz visited is a family man with a small daughter, and
he dismisses anyone who thinks differently from himself as a Bolshevik.
The small picture of the sniper, Bruno Mckenhaupt, is an indictment of
an attitude to the war that was itself a widespread method of coping with
the past; but the argument upon which it is based is still a circular one. War
is not justified simply by saying that it is what it is. Mckenhaupts con-
science is clear because it has never troubled him; he could be the sniper
from the first novel, and he represented a widespread attitude in the
Weimar Republic, an attitude Remarque wanted increasingly to highlight
at the time of the second novel.
If some of Birkholzs colleagues do well, others do badly either finan-
cially or personally, and some do not survive at all. An older soldier, a
countryman, finds that his wife has been (briefly) unfaithful while he was
away, and he cannot forgive her in spite of her patent remorse; not only
does the relationship effectively break down, but they move away from the
country to the town, where they remain unhappy. This is not just a per-
sonal tragedy of the war but indicates a larger-scale breakdown in society.
Of the others, two commit suicide, unable to cope with the experience of
the war. Birkholzs sensitive friend Ludwig, who was a lieutenant, has con-
tracted syphilis during the war a fairly obviously symbol that he himself
interprets as having the war still in his blood. He cuts his wrists to exorcise
this ongoing disease and to get the war out of his system in a literal sense.
Another comrade, Georg Rahe, tries to go backward by rejoining the
army, since this is all he now knows, and when this does not work, he
returns to France to commit suicide by shooting himself. The phenom-
enon of survivor guilt was not uncommon after the First World War.
Birkholz and his closest friends survive, but sometimes only with diffi-
culty. Birkholz himself, for example, after trying to be a teacher, finds that
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
155

he cannot behave toward children as teachers behaved towards him, and he

undergoes a kind of breakdown. The gulf that has now opened up between
those at home and those who were soldiers and suffered the psychological
damage of the war (a gulf already visible in the home scene in Im Westen
nichts Neues) is summed up at a dance by a girl he knew before, who tells
Birkholz: Sei doch mal ein bichen flott! (208; liven up a bit). Eventu-
ally he realizes that he is not just wasting his time with her, but, in his
words, that he has been knocking vainly at the doors of his youth. He is
still young, but those doors are closed. He bids the girl (but not just the
girl) an exaggerated farewell, because he has discovered that

ein stiller, schweigender Krieg auch in dieser Landschaft der Erinnerung

gewtet hat, und da es sinnlos von mir wre, weiter zu suchen. Die Zeit
steht dazwischen wie eine breite Kluft, ich kann nicht zurck, es gibt
nichts anderes mehr, ich mu vorwrts, marschieren, irgendwohin, denn
ich habe noch kein Ziel (209)

[a quiet, silent war raged over this landscape of memory as well, and it
would be senseless for me to carry on searching. Time is like a broad
canyon between then and now, and I cant go back, so there is nothing
but to go forwards, marching, somewhere or other, because I have no
fixed goal. . . .]

The passage is one of the most important in the book, a stage in the learn-
ing process begun by Bumer in the earlier novel and relevant to the set-
ting up of the Weimar Republic.19 The new republic had to look forward,
but of course, too many elements in it looked backward instead to Ver-
sailles. When writers like Remarque looked into the future from the van-
tage point of 1930, this was already apparent, and they saw how the future
would be determined by those who refused to let go of the past.
Der Weg zurck is set in the period from the end of 1918 (the war is
not yet over in the prologue, though Bumer, who died in October, is
already dead) to 1920. The chronology is quite clear. At the very end of
the work it is said of one of the characters that: Vor einem Jahr noch lag
der da . . . mit zwei Kameraden allein in einem Maschinengewehrnest . . .
und ein Angriff kam (348; Only a year ago he was still in the trenches . . .
with two others in a machine gun nest . . . under attack). Only the epi-
logue, the brief Ausgang, is set in the spring of 1920, given that the char-
acters speak of themselves as kaum erst raus (364; barely out) of the forces.
Through Birkholzs eyes we see the confused politics at the birth of the
Weimar Republic; just like Bumer in the first novel, Birkholz makes judg-
ments to an extent and lays open questions for the audience. The revolu-
tionary chaos of the soldiers councils are shown, principally to
demonstrate the breakdown of comradeship and the emergence of social
realignments, both on a personal level and in the wider sense.
156
BRIAN MURDOCH

Neither Birkholz nor Bumer provides direct political arguments,20

and indeed their immaturity is part of the point of both novels, though
they do mature in the course of the works. Bumers discussions with other
soldiers permit Remarque to pose questions for the benefit of the audi-
ence, however, so that the reader can provide the answers. Sometimes
those answers are clearly directed, at others they are more complex. Simi-
larly, in the second work Birkholz and the audience are party to a discus-
sion between the two former soldiers, Ludwig Breyer, who has brought
syphilis back from the war, and Georg Rahe, who will ultimately return to
France to commit suicide, both of whom are in the event unable to look
forward and are drawn back incessantly to the war. The presentation of
their views is of great importance. Rahe comments on the confused polit-
ics: Sieh dir an, wie sie sich bereits gegenseitig in den Haaren liegen,
Sozialdemokraten, Unabhngige, Spartakisten, Kommunisten (230;
Look at the way they are already at each others throats, Social Democrats,
Independents, Spartacists, Communists), but Breyer sees the blame in
themselves. Just as Bumer had commented that the soldiers would have
einen Sturm entfesselt (let loose a storm), had they been allowed to
return in 1916, whereas by 1918 they are now too defeated in themselves,
Breyer says of the situation in 1919:

Wir haben mit zu wenig Ha Revolution gemacht, und wir wollten

gleich von Anfang an gerecht sein, dadurch ist alles lahm geworden. Eine
Revolution mu losrasen wie ein Waldbrand, dann kann man spter zu
sen beginnen; aber wir wollten nichts zerstren und doch erneuern. Wir
hatten nicht einmal mehr die Kraft zum Ha, so mde und ausgebrannt
waren wir vom Krieg. (230)

[Our revolution didnt have enough hate in it and we wanted to be just

from the beginnings, and so it all flopped. A revolution should roar away
like a forest fire, and then after that you can start to sow seeds again. Only
we didnt want to destroy anything, just renew. We didnt even have the
strength to hate, because we were so tired, so burnt out by the war.]

In spite of the failure of the revolution, Breyer goes on to say that it is still
possible to get things right by hard work, even though he himself cannot
go on and commits suicide, as does Rahe later. But Birkholz, the listener
(representing the reader), does not, and he carries the message on and
transmits it symbolically to Weimar in 1931.21 By then, however, it was his-
torically too late for such a message: indeed, the revolution had not been
radical enough and too many earlier elements and attitudes had survived
too well. We need cite only the title of a documentary novel by Theodor
Plievier in this respect, a novel that appeared just before Hitler took power:
Der Kaiser ging, die Generle blieben (1932; translated as The Kaiser Goes,
the Generals Remain, 1933). Remarque himself summed it up once again
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
157

in his later novel about the Weimar Republic, Der schwarze Obelisk: Die
Revolutionre selbst waren von sich so erschreckt, da sie sofort die
Bonzen und Generle der alten Regierung zu Hilfe riefen . . . und die
deutsche Revolution versank in rotem Plsch, Gemtlichkeit, Stammtisch
und Sehnsucht nach Uniformen und Kommandos (The revolutionaries
frightened themselves so much that they soon called in the bigwigs and
generals from the old regime to help them . . . and the German revolution
sank into red plush, coziness, the local pub and a longing for uniforms and
orders).22 Birkholz survives and goes forward, but without aims or hope.
One problem with Der Weg zurck is the question of narrative per-
spective. Although it is ostensibly a first person narrative once again (using
both the singular and the plural forms), Remarque appears to break this
perspective in a few cases. The story of the older man whose wife has
deceived him, Breyers suicide, and finally that of Georg Rahe, all seem to
be told from an omniscient point of view, although Bethke is visited by
Birkholz and presumably told him his story, and Birkholz falls into a fever
after Breyers suicide, so that the description forms part of his feverish
dreams.23 Rahes suicide, though, is different, since he is alone and on the
battlefield when he kills himself with the third shot fired in the work. The
first kills Max Weil, shot by a former comrade now on a soldiers council;
with the second Albert Trosske kills his rival in love, provoking the debate
about killing. Rahe, though, might almost be viewed as the last casualty of
the war, and thus this actual break from the narrative perspective is an
effective one, matching, perhaps deliberately, the death of Bumer, which
was also presented with a shift of perspective. It is apart from an epi-
logue the last section in the work. The war is over for Rahe as it was for
Bumer, but now it is also over for Birkholz and the others.
Equally significant, however, is the conclusion of Der Weg zurck, and
this Epilog (matching a Prolog set before the end of the war) is perhaps the
part most closely related to the contemporary Weimar situation, although
within the narrative timescale it is still not long after the close of the hostil-
ities, in the spring of 1920. Birkholz and his few remaining immediate
friends are out for a walk in the country. He notes that wir sehen uns nur
noch selten (359; we rarely see each other any more), and indeed there is
throughout the work a kind of attrition parallel to that in Im Westen nichts
Neues, as even the surviving former comrades-in-arms drift apart. The for-
mer soldiers watch a group of young Wandervgel, presumably some of
those members of the youth movement taken over after the war by the
Freikorps, being drilled as if at the front. When the ex-soldiers object, they
are mocked as cowards and Bolsheviks. The prewar Wandervogel and Frei-
deutsche Jugend movements were, in the general chaos, often taken over by
different political extremes. By 1926 the Hitler Youth was already in being,
but it did not really become prominent until 1933. There were independ-
ent right (and left) wing paramilitary youth groups from 1919, however,
158
BRIAN MURDOCH

some associated with the Stahlhelm.24 The final prognosis, then, is a

gloomy one, clearly visible in 1931, but with its roots clearly there in 1920.
From the perspective of 1919, the ex-soldiers could not see the future
clearly; they learned only that they must look forward. When they did look
forward, however, already in 1920 and certainly in 1931, the future
was bleak as the next generation harked back to a war they had not
experienced.
The publication of Im Westen nichts Neues was a literary event, partly
because of the hype with which that publication was surrounded it
appeared first in a magazine, and only after that as a printed book, and was
an enormous success from the start. There followed a great furore, which
has been well documented.25 Stories began to circulate about the genesis
of the work, and indeed about its author, who was praised and attacked in
about equal measure. Remarques most famous novel led to bitter rejoin-
ders, straightforward parodies, and a number of obvious imitations, as well
as polemical writings purporting to offer the truth about the author and
his book. Many imitated the style and even the typography and design of
the Ullstein cover. Some of the texts involved are worthless, others not
without their point.26 When in 1930, too, Lewis Milestones American
film All Quiet on the Western Front appeared, showings in Germany were
famously disrupted by the Nazis.27 A stop was put to all this on May 10
1933 when Remarques book was burned on account of its literarische
Verrat am Soldaten des Weltkrieges, fr Erziehung des Volkes im Geiste
der Wahrhaftigkeit (literary betrayal of the soldiers of the war, and to edu-
cate the people in the spirit of truthfulness).28 Of course, this was in world
terms completely ineffective. The banning of Remarques novels in the
Third Reich, novels that had been translated on publication into many of
the major languages, became, in literary terms, a badge of honor. Remar-
que himself spent the war in exile in the United States, and after the war he
lived and wrote there or in Switzerland, where he died in 1970.
Im Westen nichts Neues was not the first of the Weimar antiwar novels
by any means, and the years from 1927 to 1933 were immensely produc-
tive of works of this kind. Remarques work is, however, pivotal. He knew
and may be presumed to have reacted to earlier texts (indeed he reviewed
some); some later works clearly show the influence of his work, and others
more or less exactly contemporary with Im Westen nichts Neues demon-
strate a noteworthy synchronicity of style and approach. There are also
several features common to a great number of Weimar antiwar novels,
before and after Remarques. In any survey of literature in Weimar Ger-
many, and the war novels in particular, however, it is important to recall
that very large numbers of German publications, including novels, diaries,
memoirs, and factual works concerned with the war, appeared between the
early 1920s and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. In the earliest stage
after the war it was largely a literature of justification, which Hans-Harald
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
159

Mller categorizes mainly as militaria, with the fictional treatment of the

war from the negative point of view coming in any real degree only after
1927, and then provoking a reaction from the political right.29
Before Remarque, the best-known antiwar novel in Germany and
abroad was Arnold Zweigs Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (trans-
lated as The Case of Sergeant Grischa, 1927), the only book of his war quar-
tet to be published in the Weimar period. The style of this novel with an
omniscient and philosophical narrator and a focus upon one single incident
treated in detail contrasts with Remarques faster-paced and wider-ranging
immediacy. It remains with Zweigs Erziehung vor Verdun (Education
before Verdun, 1935) a work of major importance, and it has some
features in common with Remarques work, but in other respects they are
not really comparable. Slightly earlier or exactly contemporary works by
four other writers are closer, however, all of them, significantly, giving the
most attention to the ordinary soldier.30 Georg von der Vrings Soldat
Suhren (Private Suhren, 1928) appeared in 1927 and was reviewed by
Remarque. It is also a first-person narrative by a private soldier, but it lacks
the pace and variety of Im Westen nichts Neues, and allows the personality of
the central character to dominate to too great an extent. As a small exam-
ple, Suhren cites his own poetry; Bumers poetry exists, but it has been
rendered obsolete by the war and remains in a drawer at home, so that the
reader does not hear it. Suhren, von der Vrings eponymous hero, has
more in common with the central figure of Remarques somewhat dated
Traumbude than with Bumer.31 Far more successful was Ludwig Renns
Krieg (War, 1929), together with its sequel Nachkrieg (After War, 1930),
the works that match Remarques perhaps most closely. Renn was the
pseudonym of Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golenau, from an aristocratic
family, who had been a lieutenant in the war. The work, however, is direct,
in accordance with the neue Sachlichkeit, the new objectivity, and presents
the war through the eyes of the fictionalized author-narrator, Ludwig
Renn. In Nachkrieg we see the political tensions at the start of the Weimar
Republic in an amount of detail which is only sketched in Der Weg zurck.
Interestingly, although it is as antiwar as Remarques work, it was taken, as
Ulrich Broich has made clear, as a glorification of the comradeship and loy-
alty of the German soldier. Whereas Renn looks at the entire war, another
work first published in July, 1929 but written, according to its preface (and
perhaps distancing itself deliberately from Remarque, in 1928), Ernst
Johannsens Vier von der Infanterie (1929, Four Infantrymen on the West-
ern Front), successfully filmed as Westfront 1918, concentrates (as the film
title and subtitle of the book implies), on the last year of the war. Again
looking at a group of ordinary soldiers, the antiwar pessimism and resigna-
tion to the belligerence of the human condition that is there too in, say,
Zweigs far broader novels, is made very clear here.32 The fourth work, a
significant one for the Weimar Republic, is slightly different and has been
160
BRIAN MURDOCH

referred to already. Ernst Glaesers Jahrgang 1902 is a novel of the home

front, presenting the war very effectively through the eyes of a schoolboy
who grows up during the war. The novel moves from the Schtzenfest
mentality of the opening through to justification and then to breakdowns
in society. More than any other works, perhaps, this text apportions blame,
as a former left-wing activist, now a soldier, writes a letter home listing as
those who brought the war about the military leaders, the politicians, and
the industrialists; at the same time the young narrator is clear on the guilt
of the teachers, the clergy, and the press, which he summarizes in a con-
demnation of the earlier generation. The work uses as a motto the succinct
statement in the work itself by another child: la guerre, ce sont nos
parents.33
As far as later novels are concerned, the style and approach of Im
Westen nichts Neues itself was echoed quite specifically by Theodor Plievier
in his novel of the German fleet, Des Kaisers Kulis (The Emperors Coolies)
in 1930; the work shows clearly the exploitation of naval ratings (many of
those at the center of the work were merchant seamen drafted into the
imperial navy) and again the real conflict is between officers and other
ranks. On the face of it less directly influenced by Remarque, but influ-
enced nonetheless, is Adrienne Thomass Die Katrin wird Soldat, which is
cast as a diary by a girl from Alsace who joins the war as a nurse. The Alsa-
tian setting of the novel makes for an interesting view of the enemy, but
the work as a whole bears out Remarques belief, shared to some extent by
Glaeser in Jahrgang 1902 and certainly by Frey in Die Pflasterksten, that
only the field hospital really shows what war is like. Thomass central figure
experiences this from behind the lines, and she dies before the war is over,
after the man she loves has fallen. The negative-resigned attitude to the
war is more in accord here with the attitudes in Johannsens Vier von der
Infanterie than with Bumer, in spite of the latters death. The influence of
Im Westen nichts Neues was not restricted to German works. The fact that
it was widely and immediately translated meant that the technique of offer-
ing a worms-eye view, essentially, that is, a victims view of the war from a
single standpoint, even by a woman, was adopted elsewhere. Reference has
been made already to Helen Zenna Smiths Not So Quiet . . . , the title of
which makes the influence clear.34
There are various features that link the antiwar novels of the late twen-
ties and early thirties. The depiction of war as negative, completely devoid
of any heroic aspects at all (heroic, that is, in the sense, of glorifying: those
shown do not lack courage, of course) is the principal feature, coupled
with the lack of any real Feindbild (image of the enemy) in historical terms.
Weapons and death are the enemies, as is the military machine as such,
seen at its closest in the conflict between the ordinary soldier and his
immediate superiors. A further feature is the generalization of the ordinary
soldier and the perceived (sometimes overtly mentioned) interchangeability
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
161

of the British, French, and German frontline soldiers. The comradeship of

the war is a corollary of this, but in spite of exaggerated claims for it, it is
always the togetherness of the condemned, powerless to influence their
own fate. The ordinary soldier was a victim, and this is relevant to the way
in which the antiwar novel of the Weimar Republic tried to overcome the
past by focusing upon those not responsible for the war. Guilt lay with the
generation before, those in authority who abused their responsibility
towards the young by promoting or condoning the war. The novels in
question are full of such characters, often teachers. Heinrich Bll, after the
Second World War, made a similar point in his brilliant short story Wand-
erer, kommst du nach Spa . . . (Tell them in Spa . . .), in which the
narrator is a severely wounded schoolboy soldier brought back to a tempo-
rary field hospital set up in the classical Gymnasium he had left only three
months before. Bll uses this to represent in a small space the complete
betrayal by an older generation and its values as put across in a school of a
youth who could bear no responsibility for the Third Reich. So too, in the
Weimar war novel, Bumer (like Birkholz) goes straight from school to the
front when the war is already in progress, and he has no influence upon
and indeed little perspective of the war. The same applies with Plieviers
merchant sailors and the private soldiers in Johannsens Vier von der Infan-
terie and many other works. Glaesers central figure in Jahrgang 1902 is a
schoolboy throughout, and Adrienne Thomass Katrin is not only young
but also a woman. Freys Die Pflasterksten is about non-combatant
stretcher bearers, under fire but not actually fighting. This distancing of
the characters from responsibility culminates in the somewhat unusual
brief novel by Ernst Johannsen, Fronterinnerungen eines Pferdes (Frontline
Memoirs of a Mare, 1929), a work perhaps understandably, but in fact
quite unjustly, neglected. It is not a sentimentalized animal tale, but rather
a vehicle for Johannsen to play with the idea of man in war behaving liter-
ally bestially. But it uses the fact that thousands of horses were killed in
the war (they appear in several novels, not just in Im Westen nichts Neues,
though the scene there is a famous one), and Johannsen has a horse or
more properly and quite significantly a mare as the narrator of his sec-
ond war presentation. This ploy enables Johannsen to show us the war
(albeit realistically) from the point of view of a completely uncomprehend-
ing victim, even less able to influence things that the infantrymen.35 War
itself is seen as something all too human, however, and it is another feature
of these novels that war can be seen as something visited upon the soldiers,
either produced at the stroke of a pen (as in Remarque) or more generally
an illness, something inside the human body, as in Zweig and Johannsen.
Remarques novels differ in attitude from some of those discussed: there
is a greater pessimism, for example, in Ernst Johannsen, in Adrienne
Thomas, and in Edlef Kppen than in either of the two works, in spite of
Bumers death. The insistence on the spark of life is a positive note in spite
162
BRIAN MURDOCH

of everything. Remarque is and the point needs to made also a great

writer, his novels showing complexity of structure, skill, and consistency of
presentation, as well as presenting ideas for the reader to consider, all within
a framework that maintains interest. Remarque tried to come to terms with
the war, both as closure for those who had been part of it and to warn the
future. The antiwar stance was also a message for the policy-makers of the
new republic. Im Westen nichts Neues in particular went, furthermore,
beyond the borders of that new republic and into the canon of world litera-
ture. Im Westen nichts Neues and its sequel exorcised the war for the gener-
ation that survived its shells. The prediction that some would adapt and
others go under is worked out in Der Weg zurck. Both works blame fairly
and squarely the generation before, and both criticize those who profited
from the war; the attitudes of that earlier generation and the profiteers them-
selves were still to be found in the new republic. There are messages of com-
fort in the first novel. The war may have slaughtered the innocents (and
worse, made them slaughter others), but the German soldiers were not
defeated, whatever history actually says. The line taken is somewhat casuistic,
but the soldiers are shown as having done their duty. No one deserts, except
for one farmer who cracks and returns to Germany not to Holland for
the harvest. The underlying theme of the universality of the ordinary soldier
and the determination that there should never be another war is an appro-
priate message not only to Weimar, but also from Weimar for the outside
world, while the broader message, that war is an evil per se, has maintained
the value of Im Westen nichts Neues. That work was a historical novel from
the start, and historical novels give different messages to different presents.
There will probably be no more wars in the trenches, but the betrayal of one
generation by another, the arbitrariness in the way in which wars begin, and
the fact that much of the fighting is done by the uncomprehending young
these are lasting themes. If separated from the first novel, Der Weg zurck is
more fixed in its own time and less universal than the earlier work. Birkholz,
the narrator, may have in him the spark of life, the force that will carry him
on, but Remarque allows others to put a more pessimistic view of the
Weimar Republic: Breyers view that the revolution was not strong enough
led (partly) to his own suicide. That he was right was becoming clearer by
1931, but Birkholz carried on (in the figure of Bodmer in Der schwarze
Obelisk) through the Weimar Republic, and he lived on precariously under
the Nazis and through the war, in the figure of Pohlmann in Zeit zu leben
und Zeit zu sterben. It is a double irony that Pohlmann had been a teacher
until his dismissal by the Nazis, and that his part was played in the 1958 film
by Remarque himself. But however historically fixed the second novel may
be, it too has a general application, even if it is only in the confirmation of
the old adage that the lesson of history is that men never learn.
It has to be borne in mind that the Weimar antiwar novels were part of
a literary scene that included also triumphalist-heroic or genuine adventure
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
163

stories about the war, and also works that are not so easily classified.
Remarque referred in his review of Jngers In Stahlgewittern to its
wohltuender Sachlichkeit (comforting objectivity; see note 31). Remar-
que was at pains to indicate (though the comment appeared in the
motto only in the English, and not the German printed edition) that
war was not an adventure, even if Im Westen nichts Neues has been accused
of having passages where the war might be seen that way. The meal
cooked by the men when they are guarding a supply store is usually cited,
but it is presented as a temporary idyll and Bumer is wounded almost
immediately afterwards. There is nothing of the adventure in Remarques
novels.
In historical terms the antiwar novels failed in their intent just as the
Weimar Republic failed, for reasons that many of these writers foresaw. The
British satirist Peter Cook once gave a famously ironic credit to those pre-
war German cabarets who did so much to combat Hitler and prevent the
outbreak of World War Two, and of course the antiwar novels of the
Weimar Republic gave way to the pro-war attitudes of the right after
1933.36 Der Weg zurck ends with Birkholz, left alone, just as Bumer was,
stressing that das Leben ist mir geblieben. Das ist beinahe eine Aufgabe
und ein Weg (36667; I still have life. That is almost a task, almost a
path). But by then it was already too late, and Kosole, one of his friends,
had just commented of the boys playing soldiers: Ja . . . so geht es wieder
los (364; Yes, thats the way it starts again).

Notes
1
Erich Maria Remarque, Frhe Romane, ed. Thomas F. Schneider and Tilman
Westfalen, vol. 1 of Das unbekannte Werk (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch,
1998). Die Traumbude was published in Dresden: Verlag Die Schnheit, 1920 as
the fourth in their Bcherei der Schnheit. Oddly enough it was translated at the
time into Bulgarian, Latvian, and Russian, as well as Dutch: see Thomas F. Schnei-
der and Donald Weiss, eds., Erich Maria Remarque, Die Traumbude . . . Bibliogra-
phie (Osnabrck: Rasch, 1995). Gam survives in a typescript in the Remarque
archive in New York, and Station am Horizont appeared in seven episodes between
25 November 1927 and 17 February 1928. All three works were published in
2000 in a Russian translation (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000). See Wilhelm von Stern-
burg, Als wre alles das letzte Mal: Erich Maria Remarque; Eine Biographie
(Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998) on the early works. Der Feind presents a
final interesting and relevant case: it is not a novel and it was first published in 1993
in German, but not in Remarques text, since the stories that make up the volume
were published originally in English translation in the USA. Remarques original
texts were not published in German and are not extant. The stories do, however,
complement the narratives of Im Westen nichts Neues and Der Weg zurck. The
Enemy and other stories, translated by A. W. Wheen, appeared in Colliers
164
BRIAN MURDOCH

between 1930 and 1931; retranslated as Der Feind: Erzhlungen by Barbara von
Bechtolsheim (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1993).
2
For a succinct introduction to the novels of the period, see the introduction by
Thomas F. Schneider and Hans Wagener in their important collection Vom
Richthofen bis Remarque: Deutschsprachige Prosa zum 1. Weltkrieg (Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi, 2003). Perhaps the two most useful earlier works are Hans-
Harald Mller, Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986) and Ann P.
Linder, Princes of the Trenches (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996). Further
introductions to the novels of the period include J. Knight Bostock, Some Well-
Known German War-Novels, 19141930 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1931); William K.
Pfeiler, War and the German Mind (New York: Columbia UP, 1941, repr., New
York: AMS, 1966); Wilhelm J. Schwarz, War and the Mind of Germany I (Frankfurt
am Main: Lang, 1975); Michael Gollbach, Die Wiederkehr des Weltkriegs in der
Literatur: Zu den Frontromanen der spten Zwanziger Jahre (Kronberg im Taunus:
Scriptor, 1978); Holger Klein, ed., The First World War in Fiction (London: Macmil-
lan, 2nd ed. 1978); Charles N. Genno and Heinz Wetzel, eds., The First World War
in German Narrative Prose: Essays in Honor of George Wallis Field (Toronto: U of
Toronto P, 1980); Michael P. A. Travers, German Novels of the First World War
and Their Ideological Implications, 19181933 (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1982); Margrit
Stickelberger-Eder, Aufbruch 1914: Kriegsromane der spten Weimarer Republik
(Zurich and Munich: Artemis, 1983); Herbert Bornebusch, Gegen-Erinnerung: Ein
formsemantische Analyse des demokratischen Kriegsromans der Weimarer Republik
(Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1985); Thorsten Batz, Allgegenwrtige Fronten
sozialistische und linke Kriegsromane in der Weimarer Republik, 19181933 (Frankfurt
am Main: Lang, 1997); Horst D. Schlosser, ed., Das deutsche Reich ist eine Republik
(Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2003), the latter with essays on Jnger and Remarque.
3
Texts are cited from the first Ullstein book editions under their Propylen
imprint: Im Westen nichts Neues (Berlin: Propylen, 1929), translated as All Quiet
on the Western Front by A. W. Wheen (London: Putnams, 1929; the first American
edition published by Little, Brown in Boston was expurgated); new translation
with the same title by Brian Murdoch (London: Cape, 1994). Der Weg zurck
(Berlin: Propylen, 1931), translated as The Road Back by A. W. Wheen (London:
Putnams, 1931). Translations of Im Westen nichts Neues are from my published
translation; other translations are my own. In references to other war novels, an
English translation of the title is given, followed by the year of original publication
in German. In general, if an English translation has been published, the year of the
first German publication is given, then the English title, in italics, and then the year
of publication of the translation.
4
There is an increasingly large number of books on Remarque, of which the fol-
lowing is only a selection (listed alphabetically): Anton Antkowiak, Erich Maria
Remarque: Leben und Werke (Berlin: Volk & Wissen, 1965; West Berlin, Das
europische Buch, 1983); Christine Barker and Rex Last, Erich Maria Remarque
(London: Wolff, 1979); Franz Baumer, E. M. Remarque (Berlin: Colloquium,
1970); Richard Arthur Firda, Erich Maria Remarque: A Thematic Analysis of
His Novels (Bern: Lang, 1988); C. R. Owen, Erich Maria Remarque: A Critical
Bio-bibliography (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984); Thomas Schneider, Erich Maria
Remarque: Ein Chronist des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bramsche: Rasch, 1991); Harley
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
165

U. Taylor, Erich Maria Remarque: A Literary and Film Biography (Bern: Lang,
1989); Tilman Westphalen, ed., Erich Maria Remarque, 18981970 (Bramsche:
Rasch, 1988). In addition to the biography by von Sternburg noted above, see also
Hilton Tims, The Last Romantic: A Life of Erich Maria Remarque (London: Con-
stable and Robinson, 2003).
5
For recent comment on these links, see Hans Wagener, Erich Maria Remarque,
Im Westen nichts Neues Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben: Ein Autor, zwei
Weltkriege, Remarque-Jahrbuch 10 (2000): 3152.
6
Thus Bostock, German War Novels, 9, commented that the situations are not
worked out in detail, and the characters are mere types. Possibly pardonable in
1931, views like this persisted for a long time.
7
I have discussed the question of the use of wir elsewhere: Brian Murdoch,
Narrative Strategies in Remarques Im Westen nichts Neues, New German Studies
17 (1992/3): 175203. See also Sternburg, Biographie, 16970, and Harald
Kloiber, Struktur, Stil und Motivik in Remarques Im Westen nichts Neues,
Remarque-Jahrbuch 4 (1994): 6578, esp. 68.
8
Schwarz, War and the Mind of Germany I, 2627, points out that Remarque is
positive in both novels about lieutenants, but most of those (few) mentioned have
risen through the ranks.
9
See Holger M. Klein, Grundhaltung und Feindbilder bei Remarque, Cline and
Hemingway, Krieg und Literatur 1 (1989): 722.
10
See my paper Paul Bumers Diary in Brian Murdoch, Mark Ward, and Mag-
gie Sargeant, eds., Remarque Against War (Glasgow: Scottish Papers in Germanic
Studies, 1998), 123. There is a discussion there of Lnss diary. On the question
of fictive directness, see Ulrich Broich, Hier spricht zum ersten Mal der gemeine
Mann: Die Fiktion vom Kriegserlebnis des einfachen Soldaten in Ludwig Renn,
Krieg, in Schneider and Wagener, Vom Richthofen bis Remarque, 20716, and
Manfred Hettlings interestingly titled Arrangierte Authentizitt: Philipp Witkop,
Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten, in the same volume, 5170. Witkops collection
was first published in 1916 as Kriegsbriefe deutscher Studenten, then in 1928 with
the amended title; it was translated as German Students War Letters by A. F. Wedd
(London: Methuen, 1929).
11
Richard Arthur Firda, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Twayne, 1993),
51, sees the ending as the expression of a delusive retarding moment as in classi-
cal tragedy, a pessimistic answer to those who saw the war as a source of patriotic
rebirth. This does not take account of the recurrent idea of the spark of life, and
(although the book considers Remarques other works, in spite of its title), does not
draw the connection between Bumer and Birkholz, falling into the not unusual
(but not particularly useful) mode of linking Birkholz and Remarque instead.
12
This takes us back to the title of the work in German. See Uwe Zagratzki,
Remarque und seine britischen Kritiker, Remarque-Jahrbuch 10 (2000): 930,
esp. 2122. All Quiet on the Western Front the title suggested by Herbert Read
is equally ironic and ambiguous.
13
Walther Tormin Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der Weimarer Republik, in
Die Weimarer Republik, ed. Walther Tormin (Hanover: Literatur und Zeitgeschehen,
166
BRIAN MURDOCH

1962, new ed. 1968), 82135, here, 106. The comment was made before a parlia-
mentary commission. Hindenburg gives an emotionally more highly charged ver-
sion in his memoirs, Aus meinem Leben (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1920), 4012, claiming
that the revolution reit [dem deutschen Offizier], wie ein Fremdlnder sagt, den
verdienten Lorbeer vom Haupte und drckt ihm die Dornenkrone des Martyriums
auf die blutende Stirne (rips as a foreigner puts it the well-deserved laurels
from the head of the German officer and presses upon his bleeding brow the mar-
tyrs crown of thorns).
14
John Wheeler-Bennett, Knaves, Fools and Heroes in Europe between the Wars
(London: Macmillan, 1974), 19. Note the name of the six-volume 1921 series Im
Felde unbesiegt! noted by Schneider and Wagener in their introduction to the essay
collection Von Richthofen bis Remarque, 15 and note 16.
15
The idea of a lost generation was not restricted to Germany: see Robert Wohl,
The Generation of 1914 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980). On the betrayal
and rootlessness in Im Westen nichts Neues, see Richard Shumaker, Remarques
Abyss of Time: Im Westen nichts Neues, Focus on Robert Graves and His Contem-
poraries 1,11 (199091), 2436.
16
See Alan Bance, Im Westen nichts Neues: A Bestseller in Context, Modern Lan-
guage Review 72 (1977): 35973; and Richard Littlejohns, Der Krieg hat uns fr
alles verdorben: The Real Theme of Im Westen nichts Neues, Modern Languages
70 (1989): 8994. On the internationalism of the work, see Brian Murdoch:
We Germans . . . Remarques englischer Roman All Quiet on the Western Front,
Remarque-Jahrbuch 6 (1996): 1134.
17
Alexander Moritz Frey, Die Pflasterksten (1929), reprinted in the Verboten und
verbrannt/Exil series (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986), published in English as
The Crossbearers, no translator given (London: Putnams, 1931). Helen Zenna
Smith (i.e. Evadne Price), Not so Quiet . . . (London: Newnes, 1930, repr., Lon-
don: Virago, 1988); trans. into German by Hans Reisiger as Mrs Biest pfeift . . .
(Berlin: Fischer, 1930).
18
Werner Mahrholz, Deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart (Berlin: Sieben-Stbe, 1930),
43233. Mahrholz comments that in reading the Weimar war novels the German
readers must not forget that the defeat was simply a result of the allied blockade. He
notes too that similar ideas are found in all the many translated foreign war novels
that appeared in Germany at the time. Mahrholz (18891930) had been cultural and
political editor of the Vossische Zeitung from 1925 (hence his acquaintance with
Remarque) and his literary history was seen through the press by Max Wieser.
19
Brian Murdoch, Vorwrts auf dem Weg zurck: Kriegsende und Nachkriegszeit
bei Erich Maria Remarque, TextKritik 149 (2001): 1929.
20
This was a criticism leveled at Remarques early novels by critics like Antkowiak;
see on this Hans-Harald Mller, Politics and the War Novel, in German Writers
and Politics 191839, ed. Richard Dove and Stephen Lamb (London: Macmillan,
1992), 10320.
21
On the revolution, see John Fotheringham, Looking Back at the Revolution,
in Murdoch, Sargeant, and Ward, Remarque Against War, 98118; and Anthony
Grenville, Cockpit of Ideologies (Bern: Lang, 1995), 8097. On the theme of the
revolutions and their effect on the Weimar Republic, see Benjamin Ziemann, Die
 ERICH MARIA REMARQUE AND THE WEIMAR ANTI-WAR NOVELS
167

Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg in den Milieukulturen der Weimarer Repub-

lik, in Kriegserlebnis und Legendenbildung, ed. Thomas F. Schneider (Osnabrck:
Rasch, 1998), 1:24970.
22
E. M. Remarque, Der schwarze Obelisk (1956), ed. Tilman Westphalen
(Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), 2829. We may recall that left-wing crit-
ics often reproached Remarque for not being political enough; as an observer,
however, the argument is that the returning soldiers were not radical enough. See
Theodor Plievier (who also wrote as Plivier), Der Kaiser ging, die Generle
blieben, ed. H. H. Mller (1932; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1981).
23
See Murdoch, Vorwrts auf dem Weg zurck on these points.
24
See Peter D. Stachura, The German Youth Movement, 19001945 (London:
Macmillan, 1981), 4045.
25
See Thomas F. Schneider, Erich Maria Remarque: Im Westen nichts Neues: Text,
Edition, Entstehung, Distribution und Rezeption (19281930) (Habilitationsschrift,
University of Osnabrck, 2000) on the textual history. I am grateful to Dr. Schnei-
der for his assistance. On the reception of the work see Hubert Rter, Erich Maria
Remarque: Im Westen nichts Neues (Paderborn: Schningh, 1980); Brian Murdoch,
Remarque: Im Westen nichts Neues (Glasgow: Glasgow U French and German Pub-
lications, 1991, 2nd ed. 1995); as well as Barker and Last, Erich Maria Remarque,
and Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring (London: Black Swan, 1990), 368417.
Eksteinss reading of Remarques novel is an important one. See further Manfred
Kuxdorf, Mynona versus Remarque, Tucholsky, Mann and Others: Not So Quiet
on the Literary Front, in The First World War in German Narrative Prose: Essays
in Honor of George Wallis Field, ed. Charles N. Genno and Heinz Wetzel (Toronto:
U of Toronto P, 1980), 7192; and Thomas Schneider, Die Meute hinter Remar-
que, Jahrbuch der Literatur der Weimarer Republik 1 (1995): 14370.
26
I have listed most of the relevant works in my Remarque: Im Westen nichts Neues
(Glasgow: U of Glasgow P, 2nd ed. 1995), 11, and in my edition of the text itself
(London: Methuen, 1984), 46. Titles range from Im Westen wohl was Neues to Hat
Erich Maria Remarque wirklich gelebt? and usually they do not repay the effort of
finding them. I have discussed one of the more interesting (Vor Troja nichts Neues) in
detail in All Quiet on the Trojan Front: Remarques Soldiers and Homers Heroes
in a Parody of Im Westen nichts Neues, German Life and Letters 43 (1989): 4962.
27
There are many studies of the film: see in particular Brbel Schrader, ed., Der
Fall Remarque (Leipzig: Reclam, 1992) and John Whiteclay Chambers, All Quiet
on the Western Front (1930): The Anti-war Film and the Image of the First World
War, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 14 (1994): 377411.
28
Ulrich Walberer, ed., 10. Mai 1933. Bcherverbrennung in Deutschland und die
Folgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1983), 115.
29
See Mller, Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller, for the clearest survey: see also the
review by Hermann Glaser in Die Zeit, 16 October 1987, 49.
30
It is, of course, impossible to cover here all the anti-war novels of the period
between 1929 and 1933, but reference at least must be made to Edlef
Kppens Heeresbericht (1930; Higher Command, 1931), a work that incorporates
contemporary materials and consequently differs in style from many of the others,
and Ernst Wiecherts Jedermann: Geschichte eines Namenlosen (1931), two impressive
168
BRIAN MURDOCH

but now little-known novels. Freys Pflasterksten, about non-combatant stretcher-

bearers, has been referred to already and belongs in the same category.
31
On Zweigs war novels see Georg Salamon, Arnold Zweig (Boston: Twayne, 1975),
3974. The two mentioned were translated by Eric Sutton in 1928 and 1936. Georg
von der Vrings Soldat Suhren was translated by Fred Hall in 1929. The Zurich edition
(Zsolnay, n.d.) of Soldat Suhren claimed it to be die Geschichte des unbekannten
deutschen Soldaten, the tale of the unknown German soldier, something of a clich,
but applied famously by Walter von Molo to Remarques novel too; the Vienna edi-
tion (Strom-Verlag, 1929) called it der erste deutsche Kriegsroman (the first Ger-
man war novel). Remarque reviewed the work fairly positively for Sport im Bild in
Berlin in 1928, but noted that the war was rather in the background. See Fnf
Kriegsbcher, in Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 4, Kurzprosa und Gedichte, ed. Tilman
Westphalen and Thomas Schneider (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1998),
31213. Two of the other works were by Jnger. The editors note on page 526 that
Remarque was accused of assembling his own novel from parts of those reviewed.
32
On Renn, see Broich, Der gemeine Mann. The two novels were translated by
Willa and Edwin Muir in 1929 and 1931. On Johannsen, see Brian Murdoch,
Habent sua fata libelli: Johannsens Vier von der Infanterie and Remarques Im
Westen nichts Neues, Remarque-Jahrbuch 5 (1995): 1938 and also Tierische
Menschen und menschliche Tiere, in Schneider and Wagener, Von Richthofen bis
Remarque, 24960. Johannsens novel appeared in 1930 in a translation by A. W.
Wheen, who had also translated Remarque (and Plievier). It is worth noting that
Wheen himself served (in the Australian Forces) from 1915 mainly in the ranks,
though he was commissioned in 1918. I am indebted for information on Wheen to
his great-nephew, Ian Campbell.
33
Glaesers novel Jahrgang 1902 (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1928), was translated in 1929
by Willa and Edwin Muir and is discussed by Thomas Koebner, Ernst Glaeser: Reak-
tion der betrogenen Generation, in Zeitkritische Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed.
Hans Wagener (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975), 192219 and in detail by Stickelberger-
Eder in Aufbruch 1914. For the passage referred to, see the reprint (Frankfurt am
Main: Ullstein, 1986), 198. Remarque again reviewed the work (this time for the Vos-
sische Zeitung) and stressed its importance (Kurzprosa und Gedichte, 31415).
34
See Maggie Sargeant, Roman der deutschen Kriegsflotte oder Roman der
geschundenen deutschen Arbeiter, in Schneider and Wagener, Von Richthofen bis
Remarque, 35974, for a consideration of Des Kaisers Kulis as a war novel and as a
Weimar novel. On Thomas, see the paper by Helga Schreckenberger, ber
Erwarten grauenhaft, in the same collection, 38798, and also my Hinter die
Kulissen des Krieges sehen: Evadne Price, Adrienne Thomas and E. M. Remar-
que, Forum for Modern Language Studies 28 (1992): 5674.
35
Murdoch, Tierische Menschen. Linder, in Princes, discusses the idea of the
victim, but (like most critics) does not mention Johannsens Fronterinnerungen.
See also the interesting contemporary paper by William Rose, The Spirit of Revolt
in German Literature from 1914 to 1930, in his Men, Myths and Movements in
German Literature (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931), 24572.
36
See Herbert Reads essay The Failure of the War Books, in his A Coat of Many
Colours (London: Routledge, 1945), 7276, on Remarque.
8: In A Far-Off Land: B. Traven

Karl S. Guthke

1.

I N THE SPRING OF 1926 the fledgling Socialist publishing house

Bchergilde Gutenberg in Berlin dramatically enlivened the literary
scene by bringing out, within a few weeks of each other, two novels, Das
Totenschiff (The Death Ship) and Der Wobbly (The Wobbly) one about
the life of an American sailor aboard a dilapidated freighter destined to be
scuttled in an insurance fraud scheme, the other about the adventures of
an American hobo in the hinterland of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas
on the Gulf of Mexico. The name of their author, B. Traven, was
unknown, except to readers of the Socialist daily Vorwrts, where, since
February 1925, three vignettes of Mexican life and history had been pub-
lished and the first part of Der Wobbly had been serialized that summer as
Die Baumwollpflcker (The Cottonpickers). The author didnt remain
unknown for long. Like a bracing breeze from nowhere, the two novels,
especially Das Totenschiff, had an immediate and powerful impact far
beyond the membership of the trade-union oriented book club that Die
Bchergilde served. By the time Traven died in Mexico City in 1969, his
books were selling by the millions, in many languages. As early as 1950,
American college students could learn intermediate German from a text-
book containing parts of Das Totenschiff; from 1971 on, they could study
advanced Spanish from a textbook edition of Travens Macario, and by
the end of the century, at least one of Travens stories, Assembly Line,
first published in the second edition of Der Busch (The Bush) in 1930 as
Der Groindustrielle, was required reading in some American high
schools, as was Die weie Rose (The White Rose, 1929) in some German
high schools. John Hustons The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948),
produced with at least some input from Traven himself, was, and still is, a
cult film.
In the literary and sociopolitical landscape of Germany, Traven
loomed largest after the demise of the Empire and before the Nazis rise to
absolute power. To be sure, he did not come into full view until the second
half of the Weimar Republic. But, in a sense, he was present at its very
inception, or its prelude, and actively so. Under the fake-looking name of
170
KARL S. GUTHKE

Ret Marut (which he had used from 1907 to 1915 as an actor in various
provincial theaters, and since 1912 as the author of short prose fiction
printed mostly in newspapers and magazines)1 he had published, and writ-
ten virtually single-handedly, an anarchist-leftist journal in Munich, begin-
ning in September 1917. Acerbic in its criticism of the social and political
life of the waning years of the imperial regime, it was called Der Ziegelbren-
ner (The Brickmaker), obviously with a view to providing building mater-
ials for the construction of a postwar, post-dynastic Germany. The time for
this renewal arrived even before the capitulation: on 7 November 1918 the
Republic was proclaimed in Munich. Maruts Ziegelbrenner declared its
solidarity, seeing nothing less than die Welt-Revolution beginning at
that very moment. Marut himself played a highly visible role, primarily as
censor-in-chief, in the Central Committee of each of the two successive
Bavarian Rterepubliken, republics relying for their authority on the coun-
cils of workers, soldiers, and farmers that were established at the outbreak
of the revolution. When the revolution failed, on 1 May 1919, Marut was
arrested in a Munich street and would, he had reason to believe, have been
condemned to death by the cigarette-smoking lieutenant who summarily
sentenced the prisoners in a court-martial improvised in the Royal Bavarian
Residence if he had not managed to give his captors the slip at the last
moment. Wanted for high treason by the Bavarian authorities, Marut went
underground, sheltered by friends in various parts of Germany until,
after escaping first to London, where he eked out a precarious existence
without papers from August 1923 to April 1924, he turned up in the
Tampico region of Tamaulipas in the summer of 1924, working at odd
jobs and beginning to write prose works in German under the name of
B. Traven, works that clearly continue the critical sociopolitical stance of
Ret Marut.
By the time the Weimar Republic drew to its close, the inauspicious
and highly provincial literary beginnings of Ret Marut had blossomed into
the world fame of B. Traven. To hear Die Bchergilde, the publishers in-
house journal, tell it in 1931, vor fnf Jahren war Traven noch ein
unbekannter Mann, heute ist er eine Gre in der Weltliteratur (five years
ago, Traven was a nobody, today he is a major player in world literature),
with translations into eleven languages published or in preparation.2 And
just as Marut was more than a bystander in the unsettled political climate
out of which the Weimar Republic grew, so Travens work produced dur-
ing the mid- and late twenties and early thirties seven novels, a volume
of stories and a kind of travelogue raisonn, all except Das Totenschiff about
the wilds of Mexico was intimately and critically connected with the
sociopolitical life of the increasingly turbulent Weimar Republic, notably
with its left-of-center ideological factions. Less concerned with language in
the sense of le mot juste and stylistic artistry than with a stirring story line
implying a social message, these books were a rousing appeal to a sense of
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
171

personal responsibility vis--vis the rampant Republikmdigkeit, that

hedonistic apathy of the only seemingly golden twenties. In their refresh-
ingly offhand and down-to-earth manner, they championed the downtrod-
den, the disenfranchised, and the ignored of early twentieth-century
society proletarians one and all, whether they were stateless sailors or
itinerant American laborers in the oil fields near Tampico or, beginning in
1931 with Der Karren (The Carreta), indios enslaved by their colonial
Spanish masters. Only now and then was there a touch of sentimentality or
a fleeting sense of melancholy or suspicion of hopelessness in an otherwise
forthright advocacy of the underprivileged.
When the bell tolled for the Weimar Republic, it tolled for Traven. His
books were among the first to be burnt by the Nazis in May 1933. The
anti-fascist barbs of his novel Regierung (Government, 1931) in particular
were indeed hard to miss.
But then, right after their seizure of power, which was soon followed
by their seizure of Travens publishing house, the Nazis had also made an
effort to acquire his books, or rather some of them, for sale under the new
regime much to Travens disgust, of course; but why had the Nazis
been interested? Their inconsistency throws additional light on the nature
of the works that had captivated such large audiences (nearly half a million
copies of the German originals alone were sold by the spring of 1936).3
For apart from their implied or even overt denunciation of mentalities and
conditions repressing the proletariat, anywhere in the world, Travens
books were a good read, without degenerating into Unterhaltungslite-
ratur, light reading material. They were teeming with exotic adventures
and stirring exploits by a cast of characters rarely if ever encountered in
German literature, high modernist or otherwise. Moreover, there was the
much-touted mystery about the author, which cannot have been detri-
mental to the sales either. The more successful the books turned out to be,
the more the readers clamored for information about the author, and the
more he or was it she, Traven once suggested in order to throw pur-
suers off his scent mystified his identity. In fact, he developed mystifica-
tion into a cottage industry that grew ever more elaborate and intricate
and obsessive over the years. Only on his deathbed did he allow his
identity with Ret Marut to be made public. Until then he had usually
claimed to be an American of Norwegian descent, born in Cook County,
Illinois, in 1890, instead of somewhere in (northern) Germany in 1882
(his spoken German places him in the Lbeck region of Holstein). On one
occasion he revealed that the B. in B. Traven did not stand for Bruno;
but in any case, in private life he was T(raven) Torsvan or Hal Croves,
while the name entered on his birth certificate, if there ever was one,
remains unknown to this day, as does his birthplace, parentage, education,
and occupation prior to 1907 when Ret Marut stepped into the flood-
lights of the Municipal Theater of Essen.
172
KARL S. GUTHKE

The circumstances of the genesis of his works, on the other hand, he

eagerly disclosed, sensing the appeal of the offbeat and exotic to German
readers for whom the Mexico of bandits, gold-diggers, cotton pickers,
ox-drivers, and Indians was a far-off land.4 To the editors of Westermanns
Monatshefte he wrote on 21 July 1925:

Eine andere interessante Geschichte waere, Ihren Lesern mitzuteilen,

unter welchen Muehsalen im Dschungel ein Manuskript geschrieben
wird, besonders wenn der Schreiber nicht mit jener kostspieligen Aus-
ruestung ausgestattet ist, wie sie reiche amerikanische Universitaeten oder
reiche Privatliebhaber in Deutschland zur Verfuegung stellen. Bis zu
welch kleinem Umfang eine Tropenausruestung hinuntergespart werden
kann infolge Mangel an Mitteln und uebergrosser Abenteuerlust, darf ich
nicht einmal Ihnen mitteilen, um nicht fuer einen glatten Luegner gehal-
ten zu werden.

[It would make for another interesting story to inform your readers of the
hardships one must endure to write a manuscript in the jungle, particu-
larly when the writer does not enjoy the expensive amenities which rich
American universities or rich German patrons would supply. Lest I be
held for a liar, I cannot tell even you just how much one can skimp when
putting a tropical outfit together if one has no means, but more than
enough of an adventurous spirit.]5

Writing to his editor at the Bchergilde on 5 August 1925, he reported:

Die Novelle Im tropischen Busch [later Der Nachtbesuch im Busch]

wurde gleichfalls und zwar urspruenglich englisch im Dschungel
geschrieben. In Ihrer kleinen Zeitschrift schreiben Sie ueber die geistigen
Qualen, die ein Schriftsteller zu erleiden hat, um sein Werk zu gebaeren.
Zu diesen geistigen Qualen, die unertraeglich sind, kommen hier, bei mir
wenigstens, physische Qualen, die ich vielleicht einmal in Ihrer Zeitschrift
veroeffentliche. Qualen, die ihre Ursache in dem tropischen Klima und in
der tropischen Umgebung finden. Zu arbeiten in diesem Klima, auf den
gluehenden Feldern, das macht mir wenig aus. Aber schreiben in diesen
Laendern, wenn man nicht in einem modernen Hotel wohnen kann, son-
dern in Barracken oder Huetten wohnen muss, das ist die Hoelle. Nicht
nur das Hirn, nein ebenso sehr die von Mosquitos und anderem Hoellen-
gelichter zerstochenen und blutenden Haende und Beine und Backen
rebellieren gegen den Schreiber und gegen das Zusammenhalten des
Gedankengefueges und der notwendigen Farbengebilde.

[The novella Im tropischen Busch [original title of Der Nachtbesuch

im Busch (The Night Visitor)] was also written in the jungle, and
originally in English. In your little magazine you write about the intellec-
tual torments a writer must undergo in order to bring his work into the
world. To these intellectual torments, which are unbearable, are added, at
least in my case, physical torments which I might one day describe in your
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
173

magazine. Torments caused by the tropical climate and the tropical

environment. Working in this climate, in the simmering fields, does not
bother me all that much. But writing in such countries, when one cannot
stay in a modern hotel, but must live in shanties or huts, that is truly a
living hell. Not only the brain, but also the hands and legs and cheeks,
bleeding from the bites of mosquitoes and other demons, rebel
against the writer and against his ability to control his thoughts and their
images.]6

Earlier in this letter he discussed Der Wobbly:

Den Roman schrieb ich in einer Indianerhuette im Dschungel, wo ich weder

Tisch noch Stuehle hatte und mir ein Bett aus zusammengeknuepften Bind-
faden in der Art einer noch nie erlebten Haengematte selbst machen musste.
Der naechste Laden, wo ich Papier, Tinte oder Bleistifte kaufen konnte, war
fuenfunddreissig Meilen entfernt. Ich hatte gerade sonst nichts anderes zu
tun und hatte ein wenig Papier. Es war nicht viel und ich musste es auf bei-
den Seiten beschreiben mit einem Stueck Bleistift und als das Papier zu
Ende war, musste auch der Roman zu Ende sein, obgleich er dann erst
anfangen sollte. Ich gab das Manuskript, das ich in der unleserlichen Form
niemand haette einsenden koennen und das so niemand gelesen haette,
einem Indianer mit, der zur Station ritt, und sandte es nach Amerika zum
Abschreiben in der Maschine.

[I wrote the novel in an Indian hut in the jungle, where I had neither
table nor chair, and I had to make my own bed out of string tied together
in the form of a hammock the likes of which has never before been seen.
The nearest store where I could buy paper, ink, or pencils, was thirty-five
miles away. At the time I had nothing much else to do, and had some
paper. It wasnt much, and I had to write on both sides with a pencil, and
when the paper was used up, the novel had to come to a close as well,
although it really was just getting started. As I never could have submit-
ted the manuscript to anyone in its illegible state, and as no one would
have read it had I done so, I gave it to an Indian, who rode to the station
and sent it to America to be typed.]7

The milieu that generated Travens fiction is powerfully evoked in the open-
ing paragraph of Der Nachtbesuch im Busch (The Night Visitor):

Undurchdringlicher Dschungel bedeckt die weiten Ebenen der Fluge-

biete des Panuco und des Tamesi. Zwei Bahnlinien nur durchziehen
diesen neunzigtausend Quadratkilometer groen Teil der Tierra Caliente.
Wo sich Ansiedelungen befinden, haben sie sich dicht und ngstlich an
die wenigen Eisenbahnstationen gedrngt. Europer wohnen hier nur
ganz vereinzelt und wie verloren. Die ermdende Gleichfrmigkeit des
Dschungels wird von einigen sich langhinstreckenden Hhenzgen
unterbrochen, die mit tropischem Urbusch bewachsen sind, der ebenso
174
KARL S. GUTHKE

undurchdringlich ist wie der Dschungel, und in dessen Tiefen, wo immer

Dmmerung herrscht, alle Mysterien und Grauen der Welt zu lauern
scheinen. An einigen gnstigen Stellen, wo Wasser ist, sind kleine India-
nerdrfer ber die Hhen verstreut; Wohnpltze, die schon dort waren,
ehe der erste Weie das Land betrat. Sie liegen fernab der Eisenbahn. Auf
Eselskarawanen werden die Waren, die hier gebraucht werden, haupt-
schlich Salz, Tabak, billige Baumwollhemden, Zwirnhosen, Musselin-
kleider, spitze Strohhte fr die Mnner und schwarze Baumwolltcher
fr die Frauen herbeigebracht. Als Tausch werden Hhner, Eier, Esels-
fllen, Ziegen, Papageien und wilde Truthhne gegeben.

[Impenetrable jungle covers the broad plains along the Panuco and
Tamesi rivers. Just two railway lines cross this ninety-thousand-square-
kilometer stretch of the Tierra Caliente. The settlements which do exist
have nestled themselves timidly near the few train stations. Europeans live
here only very sparsely and virtually lost to each other. The tiring mono-
tony of the jungle is interrupted by a few long ranges of hills covered with
tropical bush as impassable as the jungle, and in its depths, which are
always enveloped in twilight, all the mysteries and horrors of the world
seem to lie in wait. At a few favorable spots where there is water one finds
small Indian villages scattered among the hills, settlements which were
there before the first white man ever arrived. They lie far from the railway.
Mule carts bring what goods they need, mainly salt, tobacco, cheap cot-
ton shirts, work pants, muslin dresses, pointed straw hats for the men and
black cotton scarves for the women. In trade they offer chickens, eggs,
young donkeys, goats, parrots, and wild turkeys.]8

Mexico, though not the hut in the hinterland of Tampico, remained

Travens home for the rest of his life. From the late twenties on, he was
often to be found in Mexico City; about 1930 he moved to Acapulco,
where he managed an orchard; after his marriage to Rosa Elena Lujn in
1957, his domicile was in Mexico City, where he eventually acquired a
modern three-story house in upscale Calle Ro Mississippi. While he
frequently traveled up and down his chosen homeland, especially to
the state of Chiapas on the border of Guatemala, in search of material for
his books, he returned to Germany only once, in 1959, for the premiere of
the Totenschiff film starring Horst Buchholz. He had become a stranger in
the homeland that he had written about early on; the great mystery man of
twentieth-century literature was now the author of Mexican novels.

2.
Das Totenschiff, arguably his most famous book, was in fact the exception
to the rule. Purporting to be the yarn of an American sailor, and no doubt
in large parts autobiographical, Travens first novel is not set in Mexico,
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
175

unlike the rest of his fiction (with the exception of his final novel, Aslan
Norval, of 1960, which is generally considered to be a failure). Chock-full
of crassly realistic accounts of the colorful if backbreaking daily lives and
labors of the lowest of the low in the social world of the merchant marine,
Das Totenschiff is also a philosophical reflection on the tyranny of the sup-
posedly enlightened and humane capitalist state bureaucracy. It is a tyranny
over those of its subjects who have, for one reason or another, not only
been reduced to powerlessness but also deprived of their identity as a result
of the loss of their identity papers. Such is the fate of the crew of the
Yorikke a crying shame in social terms, but also the cue for a searching
examination of the existential mode of the nonperson in the modern
world: must the outsider succumb to sheer nonexistence, or can he learn,
contre coeur, to love his condition, to master his life by creating a proud
new identity out of this very namelessness, thus finding a fresh life and a
new sense of self-worth and even of community with other nobodies in
the Yorikkes no-mans-land of the living dead? Clearly, this theme points
back to the social and political conditions of Europe that the author was
leaving behind him as he wrote Das Totenschiff. (An English version was
begun in Brixton prison, London, where Marut was held 192324 for fail-
ing to register as a foreigner.)
Nonetheless, the anarchist temper of the first novel foreshadows the
Mexican ones to follow, with the significant difference that Mexico rein-
forced the transformation, already incipient in Das Totenschiff, of the indi-
vidual anarchist Ret Marut into the anarcho-syndicalist Traven, who
was more concerned with authentic forms of community life (Indian style)
than with the needs and desires of the subjectivist self (which had been a
keyword for Marut in his Munich days when he had published a home-
made journal entitled Der Selbe).9 Das Totenschiff, then, being no longer
German and not yet Mexican, is the product of a transitional phase.
The first of the Mexican novels, Der Wobbly (1926), was written too soon
after Maruts arrival (and suggests too much of a transcription of diaries
kept in the early months of the authors life in the New World) to allow his
characteristic new theme the communality of the indios lifestyle versus
European and American moneygrubbing and selfishness to come into
its own. Instead, one colorful episode loosely follows the other in the life
of a happy-go-lucky gringo living a hand-to-mouth life as an itinerant oil
driller, unskilled baker, cattle driver, and cotton picker in the bush
beyond Tampico, enjoying a country where nobody cares or asks about
ones papers or real name. The native population comes into sight only
marginally. This changes with Die Brcke im Dschungel (The Bridge in the
Jungle, 1929; serialized, in a shorter version, in Vorwrts in 1927) and the
two novels to follow: Der Schatz der Sierra Madre (The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre, 1927) and Die weie Rose (The White Rose, 1929). In all
three, the Indian idyll, austere as it is in its own way, is threatened by the
176
KARL S. GUTHKE

presence of Americans who are out to exploit its resources and civilize
the native population. The American boots worn by a normally barefoot
muchacho, causing his death as he slips off the unsafe bridge built by an
American oil company, disrupting the tranquil life of the preindustrial
community . . . the yen of the civilized for money working havoc with
the lives of gold diggers from north of the border, though one of them
overcomes the curse of lucre by seeing the wisdom of living, for the rest of
his life, in the sustaining harmony of a primordial Indian community . . .
the destruction of such family based agricultural community life, anchored
deep in history though it is, through American greed for the oil beneath
the nourishing land wherever Traven looks, he perceives the clash of
cultures, the tragic threat to the native population. Yet, for all his misgiv-
ings about the future of the idealized Indian life, he is not without hope
(buoyed by his understanding of the social reform policies of the Mexican
federal government at the time) for the survival of the Indians archaic
existence under the onslaught of industrial ruthlessness driven by con-
sumerist demands. Their form of communal living Traven tends to see as a
panacea for all the shortcomings of modern industrial civilization. He edi-
torializes in Die Brcke im Dschungel:

Der Fluch der Zivilisation und die Ursache, warum die nicht-weien
Vlker sich endlich zu rhren beginnen, beruhen darin, da man die
Weltanschauung europischer und amerikanischer Gerichtsaktuare,
Polizeiwachtmeister und Weiwarenhndler der ganzen brigen Erde als
Evangelium aufzwingt, an das alle Menschen zu glauben haben oder aus-
gerottet werden.

[The curse of civilization and the reason nonwhite peoples are finally
beginning to rouse themselves, is that people are forcing upon the whole
rest of the world the views of European and American court stenogra-
phers, police sergeants, and drapers as if it were the word of God, which
all men must believe or else be wiped out.]10

Travens first book to appear in the 1930s, Der Karren (1931), initi-
ated a coherent series of six novels culminating, in 1940, in Ein General
kommt aus dem Dschungel (General from the Jungle) and including, mid-
way, the grimmest and (thanks to the film based on Travens own script)
best-known of the sequence: Die Rebellion der Gehenkten (The Rebellion of
the Hanged, 1936). In these volumes, Travens confidence that a change
for the better lies just ahead for the Indian population seems to be some-
what shaken. For these crassly realistic novels, intended to document
present conditions (though the scene is set in the years immediately preced-
ing the national revolution of 1910), focus on the plight of the indios in the
backward state of Chiapas, who are brutally worked to death in the mon-
teras, the mahogany-logging camps, or at least in one of them. An appeal
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
177

for reform is implied, of course; and as such, it is not exclusively local or

national; for there are not a few hints that what is at stake is the liberation of
the oppressed everywhere, including, pointedly, in Germany, whose nazifi-
cation Traven followed with concern. Yet the Mexican Revolution, which
Traven, according to his understanding of the historical event, shows to be
growing out of the inhumane conditions that he describes in great and hor-
rid detail, fails in the end.11 But it should be noted that the resignation
implied in this ending of the sweeping epic is significantly offset by the idyll
of communal life that some of the revolutionaries achieve as they desist
from pursuing their uprising further.12 Here, too, then, Traven still clings to
his cherished panacea, even in the face of a realistic appraisal of the endur-
ing powers of adverse tendencies and circumstances.

3.
Among the numerous books published in quick succession from 1926 to
1940, one does not fit the description of Travens literary output offered so
far. This volume, Der Busch (1928; enlarged from 12 to 20 stories, 1930) is
not a novel but a collection of stories about Mexico, frequently reissued in
several languages.13 Most of them are familiar to English-speaking readers
from The Kidnapped Saint and Other Stories, The Night Visitor and Other
Stories, and Stories by the Man Nobody Knows.14 Unlike the novels preceding
or following, the short fiction of Der Busch for the most part avoids the
sometimes ham-fisted sociopolitical editorializing from Travens leftist ideo-
logical stance. Instead, it is by and large a record of the European refugees
encounter with the indigenous population, its mores and culture and history,
told in an unpretentious, at times rough-and-tumble style, often without
subtlety of diction, but full of down-to-earth idiomatic German, sprinkled
with the usual anglicisms, not to mention Travens familiar irony, sarcastic
humor, and outrageously grotesque turns of phrase, which sometimes rub
shoulders with bits of Wilhelmine high-school erudition (120, 134, 165).
Of course, the novels following Das Totenschiff were set in Mexico as
well. But to the extent that they significantly focused on the native popula-
tion, they fitted the image of the indios into the ideological framework of a
somewhat schematic conflict of exploitative Yankee business mentality on
the one hand and the native values of deep-rooted communality and respect
for individual worth on the other. The six montera novels, too, are clearly
driven by Travens sociopolitical agenda. It is only in Der Busch, with its more
occasional pieces, that the author focuses more on the mind and the reali-
ties of the far-off land that he like the protagonist of Maruts German
Fairy Tale Khundar had absconded to. At the same time he is to all appear-
ances still, as he was in Der Wobbly, somewhat personal in an autobiographical
way (introducing even a mule named Bala after the mule of his own Chiapas
178
KARL S. GUTHKE

diaries [152] and a narrator earning his keep by giving English lessons
[157], as Traven did in his early years in Mexico).15 And throughout, the
author-narrator is more relaxed in that he wields less fiercely the ideological
axe that he felt he had to grind in earlier (and later) works. What takes over
now is Travens sharp-eyed narrative exuberance. In a series of telling
vignettes of the life of the natives, he focuses on his encounter with the (as
he often puts it) pure-blooded Indian other, in the bush in Mexico
where, according to the American Song that serves as the overture of the
volume, he finds himself trapped, for better or for worse.
Der Busch, then, is an account of total immersion in the fremde Land
(183). And yet the narrator (who is often a first-person narrator whom, for
all our narratological sophistication that has become de rigueur, we may to
some extent identify with Marut-Torsvan-Traven himself) does not go
native. Far from it: he is critically alert to the strange and sometimes child-
ish ways and values of his new neighbors, but he is no less, and no less criti-
cally, aware of his own European or (as he claims) American cultural heritage
and perspective. For there are references, throughout these Mexican stories,
not only to Mexican pre- and post-Revolutionary history and politics (to
Presidents Porfirio Daz, and Plutarco Elas Calles, for example) but also to
American, European, and specifically German conditions, customs, and facts
of socio-political life.16 The fact that these short narrative pieces are told
from a European perspective is never lost sight of, but neither is awareness
that this perspective can be reversed to show European-American-German
ways as they are perceived with the eyes of the inhabitants of a far-away
country with a very different culture. As a result of this dual perspective,
both cultures are critically brought into clear focus, mutually questioning
each other with their distinct cultural assumptions. It is this dual perspective,
too, that lends Der Busch not only its internal coherence and unity (which
give it a place of honor alongside the novels, which, for their part, tended
to dissolve the overall narrative sweep into incoherence) but also its intense
appeal to readers outside Mexico, and in Germany in particular. For it was
here, during the Weimar Republic years of sociopolitical experimentation
and an attempted revolution of values and mores that Travens, the ex-
Germans, challenge to conventional ways, derived from his refreshing expe-
riences in an alien Wunderland (198), could fall on eager ears. What
exactly, then, was the critical image of the nonwhite other with which the
celebrity author from nowhere confronted his German audiences?

4.
The world the narrator finds himself in is distinctly that of the indios, in their
jungle habitat, with only the very occasional mestizo, Spaniard, or Ameri-
can farmer or businessman thrown in. These stand out like a sore thumb,
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
179

reaffirming the predominance of the indigenous population living in the

bush. One of them is the narrator, Gale, the only white man for many
miles around, a long and often impassable way from doctors, railways, roads,
or shops. And a fremdes Land (183), a strange world it is in the eyes of the
narrator. He appreciates far-away Mexico for its lack of streetcars, automo-
biles, telephones (16), and other sine qua nons of that andere Welt (152),
America and Europe. But alienation persists: Man ist ein Fremder, und man
befindet sich unter einer fremden Rasse, die anders denkt und anders urteilt
(13; One is a stranger, and one finds oneself among an alien race that thinks
and judges differently). When Gale witnesses native dances in the nocturnal
jungle, with the shrill and screeching pitch of their music, reminiscent, he
thinks, of the war cries of the Aztecs, which sent shudders down the con-
quistadors spine, he feels that ich in einer andern Welt lebte, da Jahrhun-
derte mich von meiner Zeit, Tausende von Meilen mich von meiner Rasse
trennten, da ich auf einem andern Erdball lebte als dem, auf dem ich
geboren worden war (21; that I lived in a different world, that centuries
separated me from my time, thousands of miles from my race, that I did not
live on the planet I was born on). And, of course, it works the other way
around as well: when an indio finds out that the American lives all by himself
in the bush, with no woman around to cook frijoles and bake tortillas for
him, he stand einer ihm vllig fremden Welt gegenber (86; found him-
self facing a completely alien world), much as his ancestors did when they
first set eyes on a horse brought along by the white men: surely a god to be
worshipped and to be offered a tribute of the most beautiful flowers until
he dies of starvation (Die Geburt eines Gottes [A New God Was Born]).
Understanding across the cultural barriers, this case shows, is virtually
impossible (as postmodern discourse theorists will be gratified to observe).
The impasse extends in particular to the encounter of emotions. True, the
indigenous tribes have largely discarded their traditional costumes and cul-
tural paraphernalia for Western dress, boots, soap, perfumes, even Western
dance-hall music, but their minds remain terra incognita:

Die wahren Motive einer Handlung zu ergrnden, die der Angehrige

einer Rasse begeht, die nicht die unserige ist, ist ein trichtes Beginnen.
Vielleicht finden wir das Motiv, oder wir mgen glauben, da wir es
gefunden haben, aber wenn wir versuchen, es zu begreifen, es unserer
Welt- und Seeleneinstellung nahezubringen, stehen wir ebenso hoff-
nungslos da vorausgesetzt, wir sind ehrlich genug, es einzugestehen ,
genau so, als wenn wir in Stein eingegrabene Schriftzeichen eines ver-
schollenen Volkes entziffern sollen. Der Angehrige der kaukasischen
Rasse wird, wenn als Richter ber die Handlung des Angehrigen einer
andern Rasse gesetzt, immer ungerecht sein. (5455)

[It is foolish to try to get to the bottom of the true motivations of the
action of a member of a race that is not ours. Maybe we discover the
180
KARL S. GUTHKE

motivation, or we believe that we have discovered it, but if we try to grasp

it, to bring it in line with our worldview and mindset, we dont stand a
chance presuming we are honest enough to admit it no more than
if we had to decipher the chiseled inscriptions of a lost civilization. The
Caucasian, sitting in judgment on the conduct of one of another race, will
always be unjust.]

Der Busch is teeming with the cross-cultural misunderstandings, both

touching and grim to the point of grotesqueness, that result from attempts
to overcome this impasse: Gale lives by himself in his grass-covered cot-
tage, overjoyed to be far from the curses of everyday civilization, but in
Indianertanz im Dschungel (Indian Dance in the Jungle), his Indian
neighbors conclude that a solitary man must ipso facto be unhappy, and so
they try to cheer him up . . . in Die Wohlfahrtseinrichtung (The Welfare
Institution), a whole village have their teeth pulled because they have paid
for the privilege of medical care . . . in Familienehre (Family Honor), an
Indian family rejoices when a skinny uncles dead body swells up in the
tropical heat so that the white-tie-suit handed down by an overweight
white merchant will actually fit and thus ensure that the funeral service is a
huge social success, and so on.
A noteworthy feature of the quoted statements about the strangeness
of Mexico is the reference to the race of the natives as well as that of the
newcomers, suggesting that race is at the bottom of the intercultural dif-
ference in outlook, behavior, and attitudes. These statements are by no
means isolated instances; nor is the insistence that the Indians the gringo
encounters are not mestizos but pure-blooded, Vollblut-Indianer, even
ungetrbtes indianisches Vollblut (28, 18). On the face of it, Rasse is
of course a biological term, as it is also in Travens nonfiction book on
Mexico, Land des Frhlings (Land of Springtime, 1929).17 But perhaps one
should keep the connotations of the Spanish word raza in mind here as
well, which are in fact rather more cultural than biological. For on occasion
Traven seems indeed to at least hint at that dimension, as when he has an
uneducated Indian associate technological competence and financial greed
with the white race (153). This is corroborated by the distinction that is
elaborated more than the mere catchword race that is, the distinction
between (European-American) Zivilisation and natural indigenous
Indian ways. This distinction still serves as the overall conceptual frame-
work for the stories, as it did for the novels, but more unobtrusively so,
as it is overshadowed by the richness and variety of human experience.
Civilization versus Nature is, of course, a time-honored contrast; but Tra-
ven in the Busch stories does not merely revive a tired clich, precisely
because he gives the wealth of his observations its due.
For one thing, Travens Indians are definitely not the noble sav-
ages, that construct of the European imagination, which to some extent
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
181

owes its existence to the discontent of Europeans with their own mores.
True, the Indian tribe that elevates the Spanish horse to the rank of a god
is touchingly gastfreundlich (hospitable) and full of Gte und
Friedensliebe (24; kindness and love of peace); another tribe thinks
nothing of treating the gringo holed up in his cottage in the wilderness as
one of their own, inviting him to their ritual dance. True, also, as early
travelogues often pointed out, prudishness is unknown to the natives,
and, like animals, they have an uncanny sense of hearing beyond the reach
of the white man (Indianertanz im Dschungel), to say nothing of their
fabulous health and longevity, which offers the narrator a welcome oppor-
tunity for time-honored satire on the medical profession (162). Further-
more, there is something appealingly authentic about the unrestrained
emotionality of the Indians, exemplified by the uncontrolled shrieks of
horror in the face of personal tragedy, like the loss of a child or another
loved one:

Der Schrei Teofilias kam nicht von dieser Welt, in denen die Gefhle und
Empfindungen der kaukasischen Rasse wurzeln. Man falle nicht in den
Irrtum, anzunehmen, da diese Gefhlserregung Teofilias Komdie oder
Verstellung war, um vielleicht das Mitleid ihrer Herrin wachzurufen.
Dieses Stadium der Zivilisation, wo man mit vorgetuschten Gefhlen
Geschfte macht, Geldgeschfte oder Gefhlsgeschfte, haben die Indi-
aner noch nicht erklommen. Ihre uerungen des Schmerzes oder der
Freude sind noch echt, wenn sie uns auch manchmal geknstelt oder
bertrieben erscheinen, weil sie in andern Instinkten wurzeln. (80)

[Teofilias scream did not come from this world, in which the feelings and
sensations of the Caucasian race are rooted. One should not make the
mistake of presuming that Teofilias emotional outbreak was a farce or
pretense, designed, perhaps, to arouse sympathy for her. The Indians have
not yet reached that stage of civilization where one simulates feelings to
conduct business, financial or emotional. Their cries of pain or of joy are
still genuine, even if they sometimes strike us as artificial or exaggerated,
because they are rooted in different instincts.]

Yes, then, there is a certain naivet unspoilt by civilization about

some of the indios that come into focus in Der Busch, but clever is the
observer who can tell where it shades into deviousness or where an inno-
cent becomes a clever crook. The familiar schematic dichotomy of the per-
versions of civilization and the innocence of man in the state of nature
breaks down time and again. In Die Wohlfahrtseinrichtung, mentioned
above, one begins to have ones doubts about the real motivation for the
seemingly nave communal wish to have ones perfectly healthy teeth
pulled. For the upshot is that, through their later demand to have their teeth
put back into their jaws, the natives, threatening an uprising, bamboozle
182
KARL S. GUTHKE

the American mining company into granting higher wages, while the
matter of the teeth is not brought up again. Naivet or cunning manipula-
tion of the gringos?
Cunning is everywhere in the Mexican bush and its villages, and all too
often it is hard to draw the line between criminal fraud and mere devious-
ness when it comes to outwitting the white man, even one so well-disposed
to the Indians as Gale. In Ein Hundegeschft (Selling a Dog), the
Indian Ascension, a clever practitioner of double-talk, contrives to buy a
puppy from the American newcomer with the Americans own money.
This transaction, commercially complicated and logically sophisticated as it
is, does, on the part of Ascension, have a sort of innocent joy of virtual
trading about it. We find a similar tone in one of the longer stories, Der
aufgefangene Blitz (When the Priest is Not at Home), which foregrounds
Cipriano, a Vollblut-Indianer of long-time service as factotum to the
mestizo village priest. Given this constellation, it is not hard to guess who
gets the better of whom by hoodwinking him. Ciprianos negligence leads
to the partial burning of the churchs statue of the Virgin Mary, but he
keeps his mouth shut when the vox populi proclaims that the mishap was a
matter of the mother of God sacrificing herself in order to deflect a bolt of
lightning from the rest of the church. The priest and the clerical adminis-
tration profit handsomely from the much-touted miracle that so clearly
favored them. Needless to say, it is the Indian, Cipriano, the man of indigen-
ous common sense, who emerges as the real hero, fooling the European
and mestizo authorities by not confessing his sacrilegious, if accidental,
mutilation of das Allerheiligste, which represents Sinn und Inhalt der
ganzen Religion (34; the most holy object, the meaning and content of
the entire religion).

Die Kirche wurde eine fette Pfrnde. Und eine fette Pfrnde ist sie heute
noch.

Es ist menschlich durchaus zu verstehen, da Cipriano niemals etwas

sagte. Denn wie durfte er, der einfache Indianer, der weder lesen noch
schreiben konnte, den Bischfen und anderen groen Herren der Kirche,
die hierherkamen, um Messe zu lesen und zu firmen, in das Gesicht
hinein sagen, da hier ein kleiner Irrtum unterlaufen sei. Die Bischfe
wrden ihn ausgelacht haben, und sie wrden gesagt haben, er sei zu alt
geworden und darum schwach im Geist. Und als echter Vollblut-Indianer
wute er wohl zu schweigen, wo es nicht notwendig schien zu reden und
wo gar kein Vorteil fr irgend jemand darin lag, Dinge zu verwirren, die
groe geistliche Herren, tausendmal klger als er, als zu gttlichem Recht
bestehend betrachteten. Es war nicht seine Aufgabe, Religionen zu
reformieren. Nach guter Indianerlebensauffassung dachte er, da man die
Dinge am besten lt, wie sie sind, solange sie einem selbst keine Unbe-
quemlichkeiten bereiten. (43)
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
183

[The church became a cash cow. And a cash cow it is to this day.

It is quite understandable, in human terms, that Cipriano never said a

word. For how could he, a simple Indian who could neither read nor
write, tell the bishops and other great men of the Church who came here
to celebrate Mass and confirmations, to their faces, that a little error had
been made here. The bishops would have laughed at him, and they would
have said he was getting old and feeble-minded. And as a genuine full-
blooded Indian, he knew to keep quiet when it seemed unnecessary to
speak and where there was no advantage in confusing things that the
great holy men, a thousand times wiser than he, viewed as an act of God.
It was not for him to reform religions. In his fine Indian attitude, he
thought things are best left as they are, as long as they dont cause one
any inconvenience.]

Ciprianos expert deviousness may still be passed off as obliquely ingra-

tiating. But it gets worse. Crooks rule the day in Der Eselskauf (Burro
Trading), where the unsuspecting newly arrived gringo pays various own-
ers several times for the same mule that nobody wants. Theft and armed
robbery are the order of the day in the bush. If one needs to organize a
wedding on a shoestring, a nearby American farmer will find that two of his
cows are missing (54). Worse still, Der Banditendoktor (Midnight Call)
suggests in its concluding section, where a chief of police reveals his monu-
mental incompetence, that organized banditry is rampant. And it was
always so, and in all classes of society. If Porfirio Daz had shot all bandits,
we hear, not a single Mexican would have survived (105), and the exploita-
tion of all classes by industrial concerns from north of the border doesnt
help matters (107). Violence is the law of the land. Weddings are a risk
one may end up with a bullet in the heart, even the bridegroom, or, more
rarely, the bride (135). Elections are no safer stabbing is common at
political speech-making (16970). When Gale, in Der Banditendoktor, is
called in to save the life of a wounded bandit, he more or less expects it to
be good business practice for the bandits to shoot him for his efforts (177):
after all, he might talk, and zwischen einer intelligent gefhrten Ruber-
bande und einer gewissen Sorte von Bankgeschften, wo der Prsident im
eleganten Automobil fhrt, ist der Unterschied nicht so gro, wie man
meint (178; the difference between an intelligently run gang of robbers
and certain transactions of banks whose president rides in an elegant auto-
mobile is not as big as one thinks). Brecht would have understood. Actually,
shooting, ubiquitous as it is, is a relatively mild form of brutality in the
fremde Welt (strange world) of the hinterland of Tampico. Take the
Indian in Die Medizin (Effective Medicine), whose wife has run away
and who, prompted by his belief in the superiority of the weie Rasse
(153), now expects the gringo to tell him where she is, or else schlage ich
Ihnen den Kopf ab (154; Ill chop your head off). Die Geschichte einer
184
KARL S. GUTHKE

Bombe (The Story of a Bomb) takes the prize in this category. When the
Indian Guido Salvatorres discovers his wife has run away and shacked up
with another man, he, with routine competence, throws a homemade
bomb into his rivals hut while a party is in progress; none of the survivors,
not even his unfaithful wife, will give evidence against him in court; acquit-
ted, he finds himself another wife the next day, only to be blown to bits by
a tin-can bomb of similar design in his hut the same evening.
It is a macho world. If a woman a mestiza, significantly, not an
Indian thinks otherwise, she will be taught a lesson. Die Bndigung
(Submission) is The Taming of the Shrew, Mexican-style. A parrot, a cat, a
favorite horse are shot point-blank for what is perceived as disobedience
the bride gets the point and mends her ways in a matter of minutes. Would
Don Juvencio really have shot Doa Luisa too, if she had not brought him
his coffee as ordered? Of course he would have, he says; for after all, the
worst that could have happened to him would have been the death penalty,
whereas a good horse is very hard to find (145). Strangely, this matter-of-
fact statement, with its bizarre variation on ordinary logic, is interpreted to
be das innigste Liebesgestndnis, das ein Mann einer Frau nur machen
kann (the most tender confession of love a man can make to a woman,
145). The fremde Welt has a psychology all of its own.
Human relationships, it must be said, are among the most alienating
features of the new life that the narrator finds himself thrown into. As Die
Geschichte einer Bombe, where wives are changed more quickly and
more casually than shirts, or Familienehre, where the human loss is so
gloriously outweighed by the sartorial gain, or one or the other of the rest
of the stories touched upon might already have suggested: for all their pas-
sionate nature, human relationships are only skin-deep or seem to be.
Wives are chosen according to the value of the gifts to her family that the
prospective bridegroom can afford, and if one daughter is too expensive, it
is: Ich kann auch die da nehmen (I might just as well take that one
there), namely the older and less pretty and therefore bargain-priced sister
(52). Here is the concluding observation on the Indian in Die Medizin
who threatened to chop the gringos head off if he didnt reveal the where-
abouts of the Indians wife who had eloped with another man: the gringo
sends him to a village some 600 miles away, confident that he will find a
new woman en route:

Er ist ein starker und gesunder Bursche. Er wird keine fnfzig Meilen gehen
und dann irgendeine Arbeit finden. Oder er stiehlt einem Farmer eine Kuh.
Inzwischen hat er Tortillas gegessen und Frijoles. Und wenn er Arbeit hat,
hngt ihm am nchsten Tage eine neue Mujer ihren Sack mit dem Son-
ntagskleide, den Strmpfen und den Schuhen in seine Htte. (156)

[He is a strong and healthy fellow. He wont go fifty miles before he finds
some kind of work. Or hell steal a farmers cow. Meanwhile he will have
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
185

eaten Tortillas and Frijoles. And when he has found work, the next day a
new wife will hang her bag, packed with her Sunday dress, stockings,
and shoes, in his hut.]

To be sure, there is also sympathy with the indios, but while that does
not make the motivation for their not always admirable behavior any more
intelligible to the western observer, it does make it more plausible by
throwing into relief the hardships these people are laboring under. They
are oppressed and exploited by both the government and the Church.
The agencies of the state are corrupt and incompetent, and it is the
destitute Indians who bear the brunt of the pervasive malaise (though
there appears to be confidence that the new president, Calles [192428],
will make a difference [108]). The broadest pageant of corruption on all
levels of government and society, including the army, is painted in Diplo-
maten (The Diplomat), a story about a valuable pocket watch stolen at a
presidential ball in Chapultepec Castle and retrieved by means of thorough
familiarity with the forms and ubiquity of corruption. The overwhelming
majority of the population, the hungry and illiterate indios, this story
reveals, are exploited by the miniscule ruling class, which in turn is aided
and abetted by American industrial and business interests the classic
proletarian-capitalist dichotomy with its inherent social injustice. These
conditions, to be sure, are presented as those prevailing under Porfirio
Daz, the dictator overthrown by the 1910 revolution after decades of dic-
tatorship. But there is a reminder elsewhere that the unsuspecting indigen-
ous tribes had been ausgebeutet (exploited) even in the days of Crtez
(25), and there are precious few indications that life has since changed sig-
nificantly for the Indian proletariat as Traven calls it, his Marut vocabu-
lary still intact (46, 99). (The very first story sets the scene, with somewhat
heavy-handed symbolism, when an Indian youngster dies as a result of the
imperious ministrations of a would-be medical man who is introduced sim-
ply as ein Spanier [13].) Indeed, the real revolution of the indigenous
population is still to come; but heute (today) in the 1920s, the exploi-
tative class structure can already to seen to wanken under the Ansturm
(reel under the attack) of the Indian masses (99). This attack is nothing less
than a heldenhafter Kampf um ihre geistige und wirtschaftliche
Befreiung (46; heroic fight for their intellectual and economic liberation)
and that, in turn, is part of a worldwide awakening of colonized popula-
tions ready to throw off the yoke of Zivilisation forced on them by white
exploiters. As the ghost of the Pakunese prince puts it in Der Nachtbe-
such im Busch: Aber knnen Sie nicht hren, Senjor, wie alle nichtweien
Vlker der Erde ihre Glieder regen und strecken, da man das Knacken der
Gelenke ber die ganze Welt vernehmen kann? (201; But, Seor, cant
you hear all nonwhite peoples of the earth move and stretch their limbs so
that one can hear the cracking of the joints all over the world?). This, then,
186
KARL S. GUTHKE

is the overall sociopolitical and historical situation the indios are trapped in,
exploited by foreign business interests and oppressed by the domestic rul-
ing class propped up by corrupt and incompetent government agencies
such as the police and the military (see, for example, 183). Is it a wonder
that the proletarians, too, in their small-time manner, try to exploit the
exploitable the gringo, for example, to whom they sell a mule they dont
own, whom they threaten with a machete for failing to do the impossible,
whom they are likely to shoot even if he heals a wounded bandit, and
so on?
On the other hand, the natives, while no unadulterated noble sav-
ages, do have their own set of values with which to challenge the mores of
the powerful, be they foreign or domestic. But, of course, they are pre-
cisely the ones that are threatened by the power of the local or central gov-
ernment. These values are those of self-effacing family and community life,
with its awareness of the worth of individual selves, their feelings, aspira-
tions, and ways of living, even the things of their daily experience. Their
chance of surviving in a country increasingly taken over by American-style
business and industrialization is slim. Still, in Der Groindustrielle, one
of the most widely read of the stories under its English title, Assembly
Line, it is the indigenous values that triumph over the business mentality
imported from El Norte. The bast baskets that the indio weaves in his vil-
lage in the state of Oaxaca are kleine Kunstwerke (146; little works of
art), Volkskunst (147; folk art). Recognizing this, an American entre-
preneur offers to buy thousands of them only to be told, after due con-
sideration, that the more baskets he would buy, the more each would cost.
This flies in the face of the basic commercial assumptions of mass produc-
tion, but the Indian has his reasons. Such a vastly increased manufacturing
scale would wreck his family and social life because his immediate and
extended family would have to be drawn into the business full-time, which
in turn would mean that their cornfields and their cattle would not be
attended to. But the more significant reason is cultural in yet a different
way: mass production of untold identical items would replace the beauty of
objects that are truly one of a kind. Aber sehen Sie, Senjor, tausend Krb-
chen kann ich nicht so schn machen wie zwanzig. Die htten alle ausge-
sehen eines wie das andere. Das htte mir nicht gefallen (151; But, you
see, Seor, a thousand little baskets will not turn out as beautiful as twenty.
They would all look the same. I wouldnt have liked that). Not compre-
hending such lack of greed, the businessman returns to New York; Indian
self-sufficiency and wisdom win the day, but will they win the days to
come?18
Another oppressive and exploitative power has only been touched
upon so far, in Der aufgefangene Blitz institutionalized religion. In
this case, too, the indios emerge as superior in more respects than one.
The pattern of domination is only a matter of surface conformity, at best.
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
187

The Catholic Church, its functionaries, its teachings, its rituals, and its
hierarchy are accepted by the native population; yet in their hearts they
know better, and remain Indian. No amount of repressive indoctrina-
tion, brutal as it can be (and what missionizing is not), will change the
overt or instinctive allegiance to the old gods or prevent the appropriation
of Catholicism by the Indians for their own purposes in a sort of counter-
colonization. If a saint who is called upon and paid to help find a
lost watch doesnt perform, he will be punished by being dunked and
then dumped in a stinking snake-infested well just like the underper-
forming peons on any Spanish-run hacienda (Der ausgewanderte Anto-
nio [The Kidnapped Saint]). Conversely, if a burglar does not pay the
appropriate saint his promised share of the loot, who can expect the bur-
glar not to be caught by the police (Spiegesellen [Accomplices])?
Believers in Catholic supernaturalism are put in their place by native real-
ism and common sense, as Der aufgefangene Blitz shows amusingly:
faced with natural facts, such as a bolt of lightning, the narrator com-
ments, an Indian Catholic will always revert to his pagan way of think-
ing, trotz aller christlichen Erziehung (36, cp. 38; in spite of all
Christian education). In other words, miracles, divine interventions, dont
happen in Mexico (3840). Church officials who dont understand such
down-to-earth native wisdom end up with a lot of egg on their faces, tar-
gets of Travens irony. The priest in the tale about the bolt of lightning
deflected by the Virgin Mary is proud to have been honored by this
milagro (miracle) that will bring in so much money from believers in
miracles; the priest in the story about the failure of Saint Antonio to find
a lost watch will make the most of the miraculous emigration of the
saint from his church to the bottom of the abandoned well this clearly
supernatural event will cure his parishioners of their verdammenswerten
Unglauben (77; damnable unbelief). Such deft touches remind the
reader: in this Indian world, European religion is but a veneer, which
cracks easily. What opens up between the cracks is that history (pre-
history in Western terms) which nurtures the culture of the indios, no
matter how deprived of dignity they may seem at the present time. A bit
like Napoleon lecturing his soldiers in front of the towering Egyptian
pyramids that thousands of years of history are looking down on them,
the narrator of Nachtbesuch im Busch reminds us of the six thousand
years of hohe Kultur (advanced culture) that look down on us in
Mexico from its pyramids:

Ich war nicht wenig erstaunt, als ich vernahm, da diese Leute die Ver-
gangenheit ihres Volkes gut kannten. . . . Viele jener Indianer beteten
noch ihre alten Gtter an, whrend alle brigen die Hunderte von Heili-
gen, die ihnen ganz unbegreiflich erscheinende unbefleckte Empfngnis
sowie die ihnen ebenso unverstndliche Dreieinigkeit derart mit ihrer
188
KARL S. GUTHKE

alten Religion verwirrt hatten, da sie in ihren Herzen und ihren Vorstel-
lungen die alten Gtter hatten, whrend sie auf den Lippen die Namen
der unzhligen Heiligen trugen. (199)

[I was not a little astonished to hear that these folks knew the past of their
people well. . . . Many of those Indians still prayed to the ancient gods,
while all others had confounded the hundreds of saints, the (to them
totally incomprehensible) immaculate conception and the equally incom-
prehensible trinity with their ancient religion so that in their hearts and
minds they had the ancient gods, while the names of countless saints were
on their lips.]

Faced with dogmatic specifics of Christian theology, Indian religious

common sense soundly triumphs over the logical gobbledygook of the
Church. Ciprianos wisely unspoken arguments in Der aufgefangene
Blitz against the Christian belief in Providence and the Christian Gods
double-dealing are highly amusing (35, 40). Christian and Indian religious
conceptions meet head-on, however, in an important story not mentioned
so far, Indianerbekehrung (Conversion of Some Indians). An Indian
chief inquires whether the local missionary can offer bessere Gtter
(better gods). The answer, the chief concludes after listening respectfully, is
no, and much to the credit of Indian concepts of a worthwhile life it is.
The indignities suffered willingly by Jesus dont make him a role model, let
alone an appropriate god, for Indians. How can God the Father, who lets
us commit sins and makes us suffer or even damns us for them, be a
god of love, or an almighty god, for that matter? Such divinities bear no
comparison with the sun god of the Indians, who is apotheosized in a pas-
sage of radiantly poetic prose in which Indianerbekehrung culminates.
This truly great god of the Indians dies every night in deep golden
beauty, only to rise again from the dead the next morning with equal
splendor (193): Tausche deinen Gott nicht, mein guter Sohn, denn es ist
kein grerer Gott als dein Gott (194; dont give up your god, my dear
son, for there is no greater god than your god). So the Conversion of
Some Indians is in fact non-conversion; if anyone is converted, it is the
narrator, who comments in mock-seriousness that good Christians will
have to put up with the fact that they wont meet these wonderful people
in paradise at the end of time, since they are beyond wahres Heil (true
salvation) and will probably not even have much of a chance to do any-
thing about it, given the raschen Zerfall der katholischen Kirche in Mex-
ico (194; the rapid decay of the Catholic Church in Mexico). Small
wonder that the clerics fear die alten indianischen Gtter (the old Indian
gods) more than Satan (28).
These ancient Indian gods, however, are not only the gatekeepers of
an Indian heaven; they also inspire a way of life on earth one that signifi-
cantly challenges the Western one, both in religious and in social respects.
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
189

For they provide an alternative both to the Catholic Church, sterile in its
self-serving ritual, and to the ruthlessly profit-minded capitalist-industrial
complex. This is the message (in Nachtbesuch im Busch) of the ghost of
the pre-conquista Panukese prince buried in a mound near Gales hut in
the jungle of Tamaulipas. His peace has been disturbed by the gringo who
robbed the mummy of the precious gifts it had been interred with:

Im Angesicht der Ewigkeit zhlt nur die Liebe, die wir gaben, die Liebe,
die wir empfingen, und vergolten wird uns nur in dem Mae, als wir
liebten. Darum, Freund, geben Sie mir zurck, was Sie mir nahmen, so
da, wenn am Ende meiner langen Wanderung vor dem Tore stehend ich
gefragt werde: Wo sind deine Beglaubigungen?, ich sagen kann:
Siehe, o mein Schpfer, hier in meinen Hnden halte ich meine
Beglaubigungen. Klein sind die Gaben nur und unscheinbar, aber da ich
sie tragen durfte auf meiner Wanderung ist das Zeichen, da auch ich
einst geliebt wurde, und also bin ich nicht ganz ohne Wert.

Die Stimme des Indianers verhauchte in ein Schweigen. (217)

[When we face eternity, only love will count, the love we gave, the love
we received, and we will be rewarded only to the extent that we loved.
Therefore, my friend, return to me what you took away so that when at
the end of my pilgrimage I am asked at the gate: Where are your cre-
dentials? I can say: Look, o my Creator, I am holding my credentials in
my hands. The gifts are small and inconspicuous, but the fact that I was
allowed to have them with me on my pilgrimage is an indication that I
too was loved once, and so I am not entirely worthless.

The voice of the Indian fell silent.]

It is a silence worth pondering. To be sure, this story easily the

most richly textured, the most topical, and deservedly the most famous of
all concludes by making light of the Americans hallucination of a pre-
Columbian prince: Nehmen Sie sich ein nettes, nicht zu dreckiges Indi-
anermdel in Ihre Strohbude. Als Kchin. Dann erscheinen Ihnen keine
toten Indianer mehr. (220; Take a nice, not too filthy Indian girl into
your straw hut. As a cook. Then no dead Indians will haunt you any
longer.) But ghost or no ghost the depth of the past, of indigenous cul-
ture and wisdom, has been opened up in a flash that haunts the readers
memory.
Ridding himself of excess ideological baggage and at the same time
controlling his urge to spin yarns of stirring adventures of swashbuckling
desperados, Traven, in Der Busch, re-created in telling detail the strange
and exciting world of the far-away country with which he had cast his lot.
This world is a powerful challenge to the cultural assumptions or givens
of the Europe he left behind, the Europe of his readers at the time. And
190
KARL S. GUTHKE

readers he had from the first in fact, an ever swelling stream of them.
Not only were the stories of Der Busch among the most widely read of all
of Travens works, and in several languages at that, they still are (as a glance
at Trevertons bibliography will quickly confirm).19 Looking back on
Travens entire oeuvre, which is increasingly gaining recognition as a signal
contribution to the serious literature of the world, one may well wonder
whether Traven did not make his most significant and most lasting impact
with his short fiction, rather than the full-length novels.

Notes

A version of this chapter focused on the epistemology of the encounter with the
other is included in my book Die Erfindung der Welt: Globalitt und Grenzen in
der Kulturgeschichte der Literatur (Tbingen: Francke, 2005).
1
Some were collected in Der blaugetupfte Sperling (The Blue-Spotted Sparrow,
1919); the epistolary novella An das Frulein von S. . . (To Miss von S. . .) came
out in 1916 under the pseudonym Richard Maurhut.
2
Quoted from Karl S. Guthke, B. Traven: Biographie eines Rtsels (Frankfurt am
Main: Bchergilde Gutenberg, 1987), 435. Translations are my own, unless indi-
cated otherwise.
3
Ibid.
4
I take this phrase from the concluding sentence of Maruts tale Khundar in
Ziegelbrenner, vol. 4, issues 2634, page 72 (repr., Berlin: Guhl, 1976). For con-
text, see Guthke, B. Traven, 255.
5
Guthke, B. Traven, 347; translation taken from B. Traven: The Life behind the Leg-
ends, trans. Robert C. Sprung (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), 220.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., 347 and 221, respectively.
8
Der Busch (Berlin: Bchergilde Gutenberg, 1930), 195; Guthke, B. Traven: The
Life behind the Legends, 21920.
9
On this transformation, see Heidi Zogbaum, B. Traven: A Vision of Mexico
(Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1992), xxi.
10
Die Brcke im Dschungel (Berlin: Bchergilde Gutenberg, 1929), 170; transla-
tion taken from Guthke, B. Traven: The Life behind the Legends, 216.
11
For a reading of the series as a statement of Travens disappointment with the
Revolution and its aftermath, see Zogbaum, A Vision of Mexico, 200202, 208,
20911.
12
Zogbaum sees this return of some of the revolutionaries to communal life as a
sign of complacency and acquiescence to the system that they have vowed to
destroy (A Vision of Mexico, 202).
13
Edward N. Treverton, B. Traven: A Bibliography (Lanham, MD, and London:
Scarecrow, 1999), 10312. My references are to the enlarged edition of Der Busch
 IN A FAR-OFF LAND: B. TRAVEN
191

(Berlin: Bchergilde Gutenberg, 1930). Some of the stories of Der Busch had been
published previously in periodicals. See the textual apparatus in volume 2 of Tra-
ven, Erzhlungen, ed. Werner Sellhorn (Zrich: Limmat, 1968). Jrg Thunecke
elaborates on Michael Baumanns discovery that five of the Busch stories (Die
Dynamit-Patrone, Der Wachtposten, Die Wohlfahrtseinrichtung, Die
Geschichte einer Bombe, and Familienehre) had been told in Owen Whites A
Glance at the Mexicans, The American Mercury, 4:14 (February, 1924): 18087
(Jrg Thunecke, ed., B. Traven the Writer/Der Schriftsteller B. Traven [Notting-
ham: Edition Refugium, 2003], 3745). A detailed comparison of the texts is still
outstanding. Thunecke reports few actual contacts. Until an exhaustive compara-
tive study is available, it is, in principle, not impossible that Traven might have
heard these anecdotes independently. Further study should reveal what Traven
made of what he read (if he read these texts). In the meantime, one might con-
clude that Traven chose these anecdotes because they conveyed reactions to
Mexico that he shared in some measure subject to his own rearticulation of
them, or even thematic reorientation, as in Die Wohlfahrtseinrichtung referred
to below. In any case, this has nothing to do with the so-called Erlebnistrger-
Hypothese in that it presupposed manuscripts (of novels, at that); see Dictionary
of Literary Biography, vol. 9, part 3, p. 103 (Detroit: Gale Research Comp., 1981).
14
Traven, The Kidnapped Saint and Other Stories (New York: Hill, 1975), The
Night Visitor and Other Stories (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), and Stories by the
Man Nobody Knows (Evanston, Illinois: Regency, 1961). The English titles of indi-
vidual stories cited in what follows are those used in these volumes. However, some
Busch stories are not included in them; so their English titles are my own improvi-
sations.
15
Zogbaum, A Vision of Mexico, 21. To be sure, Traven taught an American
farmers daughter, whereas the narrator in Der Banditendoktor teaches bandits
eager to rob American residents in their own language. Other possibly autobio-
graphical asides remain tantalizing, as, for example, the confession of the first-
person narrator that from early on he had to be reisefertig (ready to travel) at all
times (163). (Was his mother a traveling actress, as has been surmised?)
Zogbaums book (note 9) contains a chapter on Travens Discovery of the Mexi-
can Indian, which does not, however, touch upon the points made here.
16
For references to Europe, see 22, 75, 91, 117, 127, 137; to the United States,
23, 68, 100, 163, 165, 197; and to Germany, 137, 147, 214.
17
See Karl S. Guthke, Rassentheorien von links: Der Fall B. Traven, in K.S.G.,
Die Entdeckung des Ich (Tbingen: Francke, 1993), 23542.
18
Scott Cook, B. Traven and the Paradox of Artisanal Production in Capitalism:
Travens Oaxaca Tale in Economic Anthropological Perspective, Mexican Stud-
ies/Estudios Mexicanos, vol. 11, issue 1, 75111.
19
Treverton, B. Traven, 10312.
9: Weimars Forgotten Cassandra:
The Writings of Gabriele Tergit in
the Weimar Republic

Fiona Sutton

T HE WRITINGS OF JOURNALIST AND NOVELIST Gabriele Tergit during the

Weimar Republic exhibit a powerful urge to chart and evaluate the
conflicts arising from shifting social and cultural values and from contem-
porary economic and political instability. Although Tergit wrote feuilletons
(subjective impressions), travel reports, and reviews, her main focus as a
journalist during the Weimar Republic was reporting from the law courts
at Moabit in Berlin, because she felt they offered her insight into the
essence of the age: Moabit ist seit einigen Jahren Quelle fr die Erkennt-
nis der Zeit (For some years now, Moabit has been the source for under-
standing our time).1 It is in these civil and criminal trials that conflicts of
shifting social values are thrown into sharp relief, where some resolution
must be sought for the aftermath of political turmoil, and where both
poverty and the desire to take full advantage of the new opportunities in
the Weimar Republic spill over into theft, fraud, and murder. The question
of an appropriate response to a crisis-ridden modern age is also at the heart
of Tergits first novel, Ksebier erobert den Kurfrstendamm (Cheesebeer
Conquers the Kurfrstendamm, 1931).2

Better Late than Never:

Biographical Overview
Gabriele Tergits success was at its height during the Weimar Republic. In
her autobiography, she refers to her time as legal correspondent for the
left-liberal newspaper Berliner Tageblatt3 from 1925 until 1933 as her
seven years of plenty.4 In the late 1920s, she also began contributing art-
icles to Carl von Ossietzkys Die Weltbhne. Moreover, Ksebier was well
received by critics upon its initial publication and extracts from the novel
appeared in the Social Democratic publication Vorwrts (ES, 172). Tergit
received enthusiastic letters from readers of the book, although plans for a
film version and translations were never realized.5
194
FIONA SUTTON

Success had come quite late to Tergit, or rather had been postponed as
a result of her own feelings of inadequacy. Her first article, Frauendienst-
jahr und Berufsbildung (Womens Year of Service and Vocational Train-
ing, 1915), had appeared in a supplement of the Berliner Tageblatt as early
as 1915, when she was twenty-one, under her real name of Elise
Hirschmann. By her own account, she was overcome with a sense of her
own ignorance on the eve of publication and resolved to further her edu-
cation by completing her high-school leaving certificate. She went on to
university studies in history, philosophy, and sociology, which she com-
pleted in 1925 with a doctoral dissertation on Karl Vogt, scientist and lib-
eral member of the short-lived (184849) Frankfurt Parliament. During
this period, she wrote some feuilletons for the Berliner Tageblatt and
began submitting articles on trials from Moabit to the Berliner Brsen
Courier in 1923. She adopted the pseudonym Gabriele Tergit to spare the
sensibilities of her bourgeois Jewish family, who were reserved about her
chosen career. The first name was an old favorite of hers and the surname
was an inversion of the syllables in Gitter (here: trellis), a word she chose
while seated near a garden trellis. Tergit also published as Thomasius, a
reference to Christian Thomasius (16551728), professor of law at Halle
University and an enemy of superstition and prejudice, famed for his vigor-
ous opposition to the persecution and burning of witches.6 However,
whereas Thomasiuss work is reputed to have been influential in bringing
an end to witch trials in Prussia, Tergits articles and her one novel pub-
lished during the Weimar Republic represent vain calls to reason in the
increasingly volatile political and economic atmosphere.
Nonetheless, her work represented enough of a threat to the Nazis
that they ordered her arrest on 4 March 1933. Remarkably, the interven-
tion of local police deterred the SA and Tergit was able to flee that night to
Czechoslovakia, where she wrote for the Prager Tageblatt. In 1934 she
joined her husband, the architect Heinz Reifenberg, whom she had mar-
ried in 1928, and their son Peter in Palestine. Her feuilletons and articles
from this period chart the challenges facing the new immigrants from all
parts of Europe.7 In 1938, the family moved to London where Tergit took
British citizenship; after 1945, she only returned to Germany as a visitor.
For twenty-five years Tergit played a pivotal role in supporting other
German writers in exile and, as secretary of the branch for German writers
in exile of the writers association PEN, devoted a huge amount of time to
maintaining a network of contacts.
In common with many writers who went into exile, Tergit found it dif-
ficult to reestablish herself with her audience in her native country once
dislocated from the context, material, and readership that had stimulated
her writing. None of her subsequent publications found the same resonance
as Ksebier, not even her epic second novel, Effingers (The Effingers,
1951), which traces the history of a German family from 1871 to 1945.
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
195

She also published short texts on the cultural history of the bed and of
flowers, but these did not have the contemporary relevance of her Weimar
writings.8
It was only in the wake of renewed public and academic interest in the
Weimar era during the 1970s that Tergits work saw a revival in popularity
and, although Effingers was reissued, it was Tergits Weimar writings that
caught the imagination of the critics and the public.9 The elderly Tergit
was fted in mainstream magazines such as Der Stern as the discovery of
the year in 1977, and she was flown to Berlin to give readings.10 However,
this interest remained largely confined to the daily and weekly press. It is
only in recent years that Tergits oeuvre has become the subject of acade-
mic attention, largely within the context of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Object-
ivity) or literary presentations of the city, although Eva-Maria Mockels
monograph explores power relationships in Tergits literary writings.11
Jens Brning has made a considerable contribution to focusing interest on
Tergits work through his editions of her journalism, and increasing aware-
ness of the author was also demonstrated by the recent naming of a prom-
enade after Tergit near the new Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
Tergit died in London on 25 July 1982, leaving an extensive body of
writing housed at the German Literary Archive in Marbach am Neckar and
at the German Exiles Archive in Frankfurt am Main. It includes two unpub-
lished novels, sketches of radio plays, a drama, and literary and historical
essays.12 Her autobiography, Etwas Seltenes berhaupt: Erinnerungen
(Something Rare Indeed: Memoirs, 1983), was published posthumously.

The View from Moabit

The reports of the legal proceedings Tergit witnessed in Moabit, of which
she wrote, Res gestae, die Epoche selber, steht tglich vor Gericht (WS,
138; Res gestae, the age itself, stands daily before the court) are testimony
to the extent to which Tergit was enthralled by the insight they offered
into contemporary life. Key preoccupations that run through Tergits legal
reports include the abortion laws, the rise of paramilitarism, the growing
power of advertising, fraud, and the legal system itself. Although these
concerns may sound somewhat generalized and abstract, it is important to
note that Tergit always emphasizes the individual circumstances of wit-
nesses and defendants. With clear empathy and a sharp eye for the humor-
ous and ridiculous, she captures the human emotions and motives, the
greed, jealousy, desperation, or vanity displayed by those in the courtroom.
Her reports gain immediacy through the dialogue and keen physical
descriptions. As Egon Larsen observes, Tergits focus brought a breath of
fresh air to legal reporting, then dominated by middle-aged men with a
legal background who discussed often arcane points of law in jargon.13 The
196
FIONA SUTTON

contemporary with whom Tergit had most in common was Paul

Schlesinger (18781928), legal reporter for the Vossische Zeitung from
19211928 under the name Sling. It is the combination of astute observa-
tion, humanity, and consciousness of the wider context that lends to Ter-
gits legal journalism its continuing resonance and interest for the modern
reader.
Before considering the reports themselves, it is useful give some brief
consideration to the legal world of the Weimar Republic. It was beset by
many of the fissures and tensions related to the shifting status of age, gen-
der, and social position, which, Detlev Peukert argues, were caused by the
rapid pace of modernization in the Weimar Republic.14 The old educated
elites of the Wilhelmine Empire had not been dislodged from their pos-
itions in the judiciary by the revolution and counterrevolution that marked
the early years of the Republic.15 Loyal to Wilhelmine ideals and disturbed
by what its members perceived as the disintegration of accepted social val-
ues and morality in mass society, the judiciary remained a notorious
stronghold of inflexible conservative and anti-Republican views at the very
time that the legislature was often seeking to liberalize or to introduce new
laws to protect the underprivileged, such as new employment rights.
According to Peukert (22021), this coincided with a shift away from the
legal positivism of the Wilhelmine era towards a greater emphasis upon the
discretion of individual judges and their assessment of specific cases.
Tergits comments upon these developments in her articles make it
clear what a double-edged sword the reliance on the discretionary powers
of the judges could be. Two reports from 1926 illustrate this point and
indicate that Tergit was not content with simply recording her observa-
tions but sought to influence the publics opinion of the justice system by
means of trenchant commentary. In each case a transvestite is accused of
offending public decency and of soliciting on exactly the same street cor-
ner in Berlin (WS, 6062, 6566). The first case, involving a male trans-
vestite, is dismissed, whereas the female transvestite in the second case is
sentenced to three weeks imprisonment. Tergit is astonished by the dis-
crepancy in the sentencing and calls for the law to be clarified. In another
article about a young woman who has killed her newborn baby, Tergit
protests at what she perceives to be an unnecessarily harsh sentence in the
light of expert psychiatric testimony of the defendants post-natal emo-
tional instability (WS, 12628). She names the judge, complaining that
this is the second recent such case in which he has handed down a severe
sentence.
On the other hand, the discretionary power of the judges sometimes
mitigates the impact of a particular law. Perhaps surprisingly, given the
conservative attitudes of the judges, this occurs with respect to the contro-
versial Paragraph 218 of the German penal code, which criminalized abor-
tion and the display and sale of contraceptives. Popular opposition to the
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
197

paragraph brought some minor amendments to the law in 1926, and the
pro-choice campaign gathered momentum again with the economic
depression in 1931.16 Tergit frequently reports on abortion trials, but she
reserves her criticism for the law itself, often praising the judges for what
she considers to be their humane administration and interpretation of
Paragraph 218. In one case where two short sentences of probation are
given, she comments it is ein Urteil, das gefllt erscheint, mehr um dem
Buchstaben des Gesetzes zu gengen, als aus berzeugung von der Straf-
barkeit dieser Handlung (WS, 117; a judgment that seems to have been
passed more to fulfill the letter of the law than from the conviction that
this action should be punished). This emerges again in another case of
1931 where a young woman dies from infection at the hands of an
untrained backstreet abortionist. Tergit feels that the sentences are fair,
turning her criticism on the politicians who have failed to abolish the law
(WS, 142).
Nonetheless, these cases are exceptions in Tergits depiction of the
attitudes of male judges towards women. For the most part, she is critical
of their conservative and condescending attitude, which is at odds with the
increasing emancipation of women in the Weimar Republic. In one trial,
female witnesses are asked to explain their feelings about an event rather
than to provide an objective description of the facts, and Tergit notes with
heavy irony: Gefhl und Empfindung, das sind die richtigen Frauen-
vokabeln (WS, 69; Feeling and sensation thats the right kind of
vocabulary for women). In an article devoted to women in the courtroom,
Tergit asserts that the legal apparatus is populated almost exclusively by
male judges and lawyers. The only exceptions are the occasional female lay
judge, the odd defense lawyer, officials from the juvenile court support ser-
vice, and the daily cleaners (WS, 17375). In addition, Tergit lists the
crimes for which women defendants mostly appear in court as abortion,
prostitution, procurement, infanticide, theft, and defamation. Significantly,
the first four of these crimes are linked to female sexuality and mother-
hood, which became fiercely contested focal points of anxieties and aspira-
tions about modernization in Weimar public discourse.17 Moreover, they
highlight the conflicting values held by the judges and those who appear
before them, particularly as the young women often have a very pragmatic
attitude towards their sexuality. The largely conservative attitude of the
judges in sentencing those who committed these crimes, as evinced in the
conviction for the female transvestite described above, gave some legi-
timacy and force to those who advocated a return to the traditional role of
wife and mother.
Another key area in which Tergit is highly critical of the use judges make
of their discretionary powers is the partisan sentencing for political violence
and racially motivated assaults. Such cases constitute a recurrent theme of
Tergits legal journalism from 1925 onwards, although her anxiety about the
198
FIONA SUTTON

leniency shown towards right-wing perpetrators of violence becomes more

pronounced during the late 1920s and 1930s when political gang warfare
and paramilitarism were escalating. Tergit writes a series of three articles on
one particularly horrific case in which a gang of around thirty Nazis hunted
down, fatally stabbed and then lynched a Communist newspaper vendor, as
well as wounding those who tried to intervene. Tergit concludes with the
despairing comment: so zart kann man das Faustrecht, das sich in Deutsch-
land ausbreitet, nicht bekmpfen (WS, 134; such gentle measures cannot
curb the rule of force that is spreading across Germany). In another trial for
murder, Tergit is horrified at the broad interpretation of self-defense (WS,
149). Statistical evidence shows that the Weimar judiciary was indeed more
lenient in cases of political violence involving radical right-wingers than
those involving Communists or Social Democrats, which provided the
endorsement and sanction of the law for right-wing paramilitarism.18
Despite this, Tergit still values the ideal of allowing judges discretionary
powers to weigh each individual case on its merits, as she laments the intro-
duction of special fast-track trials to deal with the growing political violence
under the emergency decrees of 1931. In Tergits view, the reduction of vio-
lent street crime brought about by the emergency procedures has been
bought at the price of the fair administration of justice; she feels this cost
could have been avoided if the judges had acted more responsibly at an ear-
lier stage (WS, 180). Despite her experiences, Tergit continues to have faith
in the ideal of a neutral, impartial judge.
In reporting on these political crimes, Tergit frequently highlights the
self-delusional behavior of those involved, arguing that they have forgotten
that they are unemployed, salesmen, post office officials or book-keepers
and perceive themselves first and foremost as soldiers in the Communist or
Nazi cause. She pinpoints their use of military terminology the language
is that of field kitchens, entrenchments, military rank, and fallen comrades
and enemies (WS, 13032, 16668). This psychosis allows them to absolve
their consciences, according to Tergit: for example, one man insists that he
did not flee from a crime, but was reassigned to Mecklenburg.
Moreover, the delusional heroic self-image of these vigilantes is rein-
forced by the publicity of a trial. Tergit emphasizes the youth of those
involved in these crimes, noting in one instance that they are alles Milch-
gesichter (WS, 130; all baby-faces), who seek direction from leadership fig-
ures. She thereby touches on the widely discussed question in Weimar about
a generation of youth who had grown up without father figures as a result of
the First World War, and who were perceived to be wild and out of control.19
Young men commit political violence, Tergit claims, from an urge to show
off and a craving for renown among their peers (WS, 168). One Nazi writes
to the Communist press to brag of his crimes whilst another self-proclaimed
professional political criminal brings his own entourage to court to provide
press reports on his martyrdom. Tergit describes this as ein besonderer
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
199

Zweig der Reklame (WS, 57; a specialist branch of advertising), thus

pinpointing the insidious interconnection between politics and advertising.
Tergit considers this abuse of trial publicity to be so rife that she advocates
not prosecuting weak cases, as they merely encourage others (WS, 138).
The most carefully orchestrated performance in court is undoubtedly
that of Adolf Hitler in January 1932 during a libel suit. Tergit describes how
Hitler is granted exceptional treatment by being allowed to enter the court
before the press and other onlookers. Tergit is furious as this creates the
effect that the cluster of press is forming a guard of honor when Hitler and
his entourage pass into the court. She claims the whole trial is staged als
htte man ein Interesse daran, Hitler als knftigen Monarchen zu zeigen!
(WS, 170; as if they had a stake in presenting Hitler as the future monarch!)
and she is suspicious of the motives of the judicial authorities who allow
themselves to be manipulated for such an obvious political purpose.
The preoccupation in these articles with the growing significance of
reputation over reality and the power of appearances in the Weimar Repub-
lic is part of a wider concern in Tergits journalism about the preference for
form over content in modern life. For instance, she reports on a case where
the machinery of the law rolls into operation around a phantom incident
(WS, 5253). The accused has been arrested for obstructing police
inquiries, but had only asked why the police were questioning him.
Throughout the whole trial, no one learns what the original incident is and
Tergit wonders if it had even occurred. It is not only the law whose self-
sustaining machinery can function without any real cause. In Kantinen im
Monde (WS, 14041; Canteens on the Moon), Tergit reports on a fraud
trial in which a long chain of construction contracts and subcontracts are
agreed on the strength of a rumor that the Berlin transport authorities are
planning a subway extension. A whole machinery of business is thus gener-
ated around a nonexistent product, which collapses when it emerges that
no extension will take place.
Tergits legal journalism demonstrates an underlying concern with the
growing predominance of appearance over content and of self-perpetuat-
ing systems in the Weimar Republic. This concern also constitutes the
mainspring of Ksebier, as will be discussed below. The authors anxieties
about the failure of the law to regulate and keep pace with rapidly shifting
social values and about the rising tide of political violence are also mani-
fested in her first novel. However, within the novel, Tergit connects these
developments explicitly with the process of modernization itself.

Ksebier A Roman--Clef?
Tergits first novel not only shares preoccupations with her journalism:
many of the passages are adapted or even taken verbatim from her feuilletons
200
FIONA SUTTON

or other articles.20 The short chapters in Ksebier are reminiscent of news-

paper articles and the punchy headings read like captions or headlines. As in
her journalism, Tergits extensive use of dialogue in her first novel creates a
sense of directness and immediacy for the reader. In addition, the action
radiates out from the offices of the fictional Berliner Rundschau newspaper,
which is portrayed as one of the main catalysts of modernization.
The novel charts the meteoric rise of folksinger Georg Ksebier to
national, and even moderate international, stardom and his equally swift
return to obscurity. However, the singer himself remains largely in the
background and the author concentrates instead upon the extensive mer-
chandising operation surrounding Ksebier in order to highlight the role
of the modern mass media in turning popular culture into a commodity.
Tergit focuses on the involvement of the professional circles of journalists,
lawyers, and architects, together with financiers and speculators, in gener-
ating a short-lived economic boom based on Ksebier. Moreover, those
who profit most from this boom are connected to the rise of Nazism.
Spanning the period from early 1929 to May 1931, the novel charts the
transition in the Weimar Republic from relative political and economic sta-
bility into its final crisis-ridden phase.
In her autobiography, Tergit describes how the precise nature of her
subject matter was suggested to her by a conversation she had with Walter
Kiaulehn, her friend and colleague at the Berliner Tageblatt. On the day
following the publication of an article by Heinrich Mann about the popu-
lar entertainer Erich Carow, Kiaulehn informed Tergit that a journalist had
already clinched a publishing deal for a book on Carow and was asking for
contributions. This example of canny profiteering crystallized ideas that
Tergit had been considering for some time:

Ich plante schon lange eine Satire auf den Betrieb, den ich fr den Zer-
strer aller echten Werte hielt, um etwas Nichtexistierendes zu
schreiben. . . . Aber ich erkannte, da ein Buch, aus dem man nicht
erfhrt weswegen telefoniert, telegrafiert, in Autos gerast wird ein
Kafka-Thema , unmglich ist. (S, 7778)

[For a long time, I had been planning a satire on speculation, which I

considered to be responsible for destroying all genuine values, in order to
write about something non-existent. . . . But I realized that its impossi-
ble to write a book in which the reader doesnt discover why people are
telephoning, sending telegraphs, and racing around in cars its really a
subject for Kafka.]

As we have seen, these concerns are evident in Tergits journalism, particu-

larly in the reports outlined above of a phantom crime and a phantom
business deal that trigger a wider machinery into action. Here Tergit links
these to modernizing processes that accelerate the pace of life.
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
201

Nonetheless, aware of the connection with Carow, Kiaulehn himself

reviewed the novel as a roman--clef, a genre in which the characters are
thinly disguised replicas of real-life individuals. He drew comparisons
between Tergits characters and figures in Berlin literary, journalistic, and
social circles. Tergit claims in her autobiography that most of the subse-
quent reviews of the novel revolved around the Ksebier-Carow connec-
tion, thereby obscuring the central issues she wished to raise (ES, 80).
There are undeniably some superficial parallels between Ksebier and
Carow, but Ksebier is not sufficiently developed as a character to warrant
being termed a copy of Carow. Virtually no attention is devoted to his per-
sonal history, his inner thought processes, or his responses to his fame. In
fact, there are only two brief conversations, covering four pages, in which
Ksebier speaks at all (K, 17174). This represents a stark contrast to Lion
Feuchtwangers portrait of the morose, ambitious, and greedy folksinger
Balthasar Hierl in Erfolg (Success, 1931).21 However, despite Tergits
protests, the roman--clef label has remained remarkably tenacious in
reviews of the novel since it was reissued in 1977.22
It must be stressed that Tergit uses not only Ksebier, but also the cen-
tral Berlin street of the title, the Kurfrstendamm, as a vehicle to highlight
the impact of modernizing processes and the increasing predominance of
form over content in the Weimar Republic. As in her legal journalism, she
also links these developments to the growing success of the radical right
wing in the final critical phase of the Weimar Republic.
The phenomenon to which both Ksebier and the Kurfrstendamm
are subject in the novel can be described as the process that sociologist
Anthony Giddens refers to as disembedding.23 According to Giddens,
social relations in the premodern world are connected by presence: social
interactions occur within a localized context with all parties physically pre-
sent. The advent of modernity, however, permits social relations to occur
between absent others (CM, 18) or people who are not always, and
may never have been, physically present in the same place. Moreover,
locale or place becomes increasingly phantasmagoric, or structured by dis-
tant social influences and economic relations. Giddens terms this process
disembedding or the lifting out of social relations from local contexts
of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space
(CM, 21). He proceeds to identify two key types of mechanism that both
prompt and depend upon disembedding: symbolic tokens such as money,
and expert systems of professional or technical knowledge, such as con-
struction or air travel. Whereas premodern social relations are character-
ized by presence alone, disembedding mechanisms enable modern social
relations to conjoin instantaneity and deferral, presence and absence
(CM, 25). The following discussion will consider how the novelist traces
the impact of such time-space transformations, upon art in relation to
Ksebier, and upon locale in relation to the Kurfrstendamm.
202
FIONA SUTTON

From Ksebier to Mickey Mouse

Ksebiers rise to stardom involves disembedding, as he is separated from
his local context and his act is redistributed in various ways across time and
space. His initial appeal derives from the genuine, unpretentious nature of
his act. He represents an old, authentic Berlin where space is still identified
with place and where social relations are still predominantly characterized
by presence. The narrator twice mentions the singers Schnauze (K, 50;
literally: snout), emphasizing his rootedness in the city and in a very specific
milieu, Berliner Schnauze being the term both for the dialect and for the
particular kind of assertive attitude and sharp wit associated with Berliners.
Ksebiers popularity amongst his original working-class audience in Hasen-
heide springs from his expression of concerns specific to their locale, as he
adapts songs about the Charleston by substituting lyrics on social security
and debt. The playwright Otto Lambeck, whose report for the fictional
Berliner Tageszeitung triggers Ksebiers fame, admires the strong sense of
shared values between singer and audience: Hier, lange vergeblich
gesucht, . . . wchst Selbstironie und Galgenhumor und das Glck der
Gemeinschaft (K, 53; The self-irony and gallows humor and community
happiness for which I have sought so long in vain are growing here).
Yet Lambecks report is, paradoxically, the catalyst for the separation of
space and place, since it makes Ksebier known beyond his own district to
people widely dispersed in time and space. Rich, fashionable Berliners
flood the venue in Hasenheide in search of authenticity and a sense of
community, thereby unwittingly destroying these very qualities. Trans-
planted from his locale to the Wintergarten theater, the singer refrains
from amending the Charleston song to spare the sensibilities of his new
audience, taking out the element of self-mockery that was so important in
establishing his popular appeal. Fashionable Berlin soon tires of the novelty
and on the opening night of a new theater specifically designed for Kse-
bier, the narrator comments that there is no contact between singer and
audience (K, 257). The contrast with the original scene described by Lam-
beck could not be greater. Overall, Tergit illustrates how Ksebiers
authenticity is undermined as he is lifted out of those local social relations
that originally produced his popularity.
Nevertheless, it is the image of Ksebier as a genuine Berliner that is
turned into a commodity for the public through the mass media and enter-
tainment industries, which burgeoned during the Weimar Republic. In an
echo of the famous themed Haus Vaterland venue, the theater constructed
for Ksebier on the Kurfrstendamm recreates the interior of the Hasen-
heide bar. In a film operetta, he plays the part of an everyday plain-speaking
Berliner who gets into all sorts of scrapes at the court of a young Austrian
archduke. Records and radio broadcasts serve to bring his voice to the
masses, and his image is reproduced in every conceivable manner from
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
203

photographs, portraits, films, and books to the character merchandising of

dolls, cigarettes, books, balloons, pens, and shoes, until there is vom Boden
bis zum Himmel nichts als Ksebier (K, 192; nothing but Ksebier between
earth and heaven). The transfer of information via mass media and mass con-
sumerism functions as a disembedding mechanism, tearing Ksebier from a
particular place and making him simultaneously accessible to huge numbers
of people who may be at a great spatial distance from each other.
In her presentation of Ksebiers career, Tergit identifies a central
process involved in the transition from traditional to advanced modern
societies. In describing the commodification of popular culture and the
cult of celebrity, Tergit pinpoints a key structure of modern life that devel-
oped during the Weimar Republic. It was not only the oft-mentioned
Erich Carow who enjoyed sudden popularity as a typical Berlin character:
the artist Heinrich Zille, whose work focuses on life amongst the urban
poor, was also the subject of all manner of marketing ploys. These included
the creation of bars with a Zille theme and the manufacture of dolls, balls,
cigarettes, and liquor that were sold in the Berlin souvenir shops of the
1920s.24 So we can see that Tergit highlights a widespread and nostalgic
fascination with the authentic and with social relations based on place,
which had, paradoxically, sprung up in the very city associated with the
cutting edge of modernity and which continues as the heritage industry in
our own day. Ultimately, Tergits novel reveals how the fad for Ksebier, a
real singer whose act depended on his presence in a particular locale, is
superseded by a craze for Mickey Mouse, a cartoon drawing whose rela-
tionship with the audience is determined by absence from the start. Pre-
cisely the same set of goods are produced for Mickey Mouse as for
Ksebier, illustrating Tergits view that the whole process only requires the
most spurious rationale to function. There are clear parallels between Ter-
gits presentation of the loss of the authentic and Walter Benjamins analy-
sis of the destruction of the aura of a work of art in Das Kunstwerk im
Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction, 1938).25 Nonetheless, they link this develop-
ment to fascism in different ways. Benjamin argues that fascism attempts to
reinstate the aura in order to distract the masses from the revolutionary
potential offered by technically reproducible art (such as Mickey Mouse).
Tergit, on the other hand, links the destruction of the authentic with the
preference for style over substance that paves the way for fascisms success,
a point I will return to later.

Constructing the Kurfrstendamm

Like Ksebier, the Kurfrstendamm itself undergoes a modernizing
process in the novel, whereby place is separated from space and the locale
204
FIONA SUTTON

is increasingly structured by distant social influences and international eco-

nomic imperatives. Moreover, like the singer, the physical infrastructure of
the street itself is subject to a cycle of boom and bust in construction and
redevelopment projects, which radiates out to the rest of the city.
This focus on the constantly changing face of the city reflects contem-
porary developments in Berlin. During the Weimar Republic, Berlin was as
much a byword for change, construction, and redevelopment as it has been
during the past decade. In particular, transportation links were extended
and developed to facilitate and accelerate movement within the city and
beyond, while many sites were transformed for mass entertainment and
mass consumption. Along with the Potsdamer Platz and the Alexander-
platz, the Kurfrstendamm was one of the sites where this transformation
was most prominent and which became for many artists and writers a
metaphor for transience, speed, and the ephemeral nature of modern life.
For example, in 1929 Joseph Roth perceives the only permanent charac-
teristic of the Kurfrstendamm to be its capacity for constant renewal:
Unwandelbar ist seine Wandelbarkeit. Langmtig ist seine Ungeduld.
Beharrlich ist seine Unbestndigkeit (Its variability is constant. Its impa-
tience is forbearing. Its fickleness is persistent).26 For Franz Hessel, the
rapid turnover of shops and cafs in this street mu ein sozusagen
unterirdisches Gesetz der Stadt sein (must, so to speak, be a subterranean
urban law).27 Roth and Hessel both view this constant change as the nor-
mal, stable condition of the Kurfrstendamm. The Kurfrstendamm also
functions as a metaphor for transience in Ksebier, nowhere more so than
in the brevity of the singers conquest of this site so confidently proclaimed
by the novels title. However, unlike Roth and Hessel, Tergit portrays
these spatial transformations as more spasmodic and she explicitly connects
them to economic demands and to modernizing processes.
The physical infrastructure of Berlin is depicted in the novel as an elab-
orate network that promotes interaction, mobility, and the traffic of goods
and ideas. The layout of the street encourages fortuitous encounters, and
the Kurfrstendamm constitutes a particularly rich source of such meet-
ings. For instance, the crucial encounter where Frchter draws Lambecks
attention to Gohlischs largely unnoticed article on Ksebier takes place on
the Kurfrstendamm. In the cafs and salons, new contacts and business
arrangements are fostered, and the first soire at Margot Weimanns
home on the Kurfrstendamm generates the deal between banker Richard
Muschler and construction magnate Otto Mitte to build a complex of
apartments, garages, and shops around a theater for Ksebier on the Kur-
frstendamm. The Kurfrstendamm thus operates as the key structural
interconnection and location for traffic and exchange within the novel.
With the Ksebier boom, the Kurfrstendamm enters a frantic period
of reconstruction, with established shops undergoing drastic renovation in
an almost compulsive fashion (K, 175). The narrator ascribes an earlier
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
205

spate of redevelopment on the Kurfrstendamm to the spiraling inflation

that forced property owners to transform residential homes into new sites
of mass consumption and entertainment, including retail outlets for cars,
clothes, shoes, and perfume (K, 175). Space is thus given over to com-
merce and public interaction rather than private use, making it even more
dependent upon economic cycles and upon circumstances beyond the
locale. In the Ksebier boom, the profit from the space is maximized even
during construction by the use of advertising hoardings to conceal the
building work, which heightens the impression that the appearance of the
street is being continually altered. The feverish enthusiasm for redevelop-
ment even generates a rumor that the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedchtniskirche
(Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church) is to be demolished together with the
houses in nearby streets to make way for hotels and offices, new venues of
commercial interaction.
The position of the more enduring and prominent landmarks, around
which the identity of the Kurfrstendamm has previously accrued, is
shown in the novel to have become precarious. The physical infrastructure
of the metropolis not only conducts, and promotes the movement of
goods, people, and ideas, but is itself in a state of constant flux. As with
Ksebier himself, disembedding occurs as a site structured by local rela-
tions becomes increasingly phantasmagoric and subject to changing
socioeconomic relations beyond the locale. This is perhaps most clearly
demonstrated by the impact when the Ksebier bubble bursts and the
property market collapses in the spring of 1930 in response to the world
economic crisis. This distant event has a devastating effect upon the Kur-
frstendamm itself, revealing the flip side of excessive consumption as
exhaustion, crisis, and waste. Muschler compares the sight of the aban-
doned construction projects and the string of for-rent signs on the street to
the devastation wrought by cholera, or an abandoned gold-rush town.
Significantly, all this energetic construction work does not produce
innovative modernist architecture or humane good quality housing,
because of the preference for style over substance. Throughout, Muschler
focuses on the financial side of the theater project, abnegating all responsi-
bility for the design itself, an attitude encapsulated in his oft-repeated
mantra: Beim Bauen ist der Bau gar nicht so wichtig, die Finanzierung ist
alles (K, 129; In construction, the building itself isnt that important
the financing is everything). The narrator comments that the Ksebier
complex is badly designed, with too much emphasis placed upon the visual
impact created by the communal spaces of the building rather than upon
its residential function. The other big construction project in the novel,
the Hohenschnhausen apartments, also sports a beautiful faade, but it
has been built without spaces for children to play, with doors that do not
open properly, and poor natural lighting (K, 182). Form is given priority
over function, and it is the inhabitants who suffer.
206
FIONA SUTTON

Similar tendencies emerge in manufacturing. Duchow, a carpenter,

complains that customers are no longer interested in the quality of goods if
the visual appearance and price are favorable. Max Schulz, who awards the
contracts for the theater complex, relates that a local shoemaker has told
him that style is more important to his customers than comfort or the
health of their feet. Tergit thereby touches on contemporary debates about
the threat to German quality work from the modernizing processes of
standardized mass consumption.28
Significantly, the preference for form over content not only affects the
economic sphere, but, as in Tergits legal journalism, is clearly connected
with the rise of National Socialism. For instance, Schulz is compelled to
award the contract for supplying gas and water to the Ksebier theater to
the lowest bidder, although he is unsure about the reliability of the work,
and this bidder wears his swastika openly on his lapel. The clearest link in
the novel between the emphasis on style over substance and National
Socialism is made through the character of Willi Frchter, who, as his name
suggests, has found his vocation as an agent or a fixer. A ruthless oppor-
tunist who has espoused every popular cause since the First World War,
Frchter is the driving force behind the successful ventures in the Ksebier
boom, with the notable exception of the theater project. Whether his deals
generate films, books, or cigarettes is of no significance to Frchter: they
are all goods to be produced and consumed as quickly as possible before
the public appetite fades.
His final venture in the novel is the rationalization of the Berliner Rund-
schau, which involves emphasizing style over substance. He shifts the
emphasis from the written word to the visual image in the newspaper by
introducing large photographs on the front page, together with sections on
cosmetics, fashion, and gossip. The editor of the feuilleton at the Berliner
Rundschau, Georg Miermann, links the increasing importance of appear-
ance in the Weimar Republic and Frchters general mode of operating to
the rise of National Socialism. Miermann claims that the NSDAP is a party
that has made showmanship its central policy and that epitomizes die Form
als Inhalt (K, 218; form as content). He also thinks it is pure chance that
Frchter, with his confident bluster and hypocrisy, has not yet joined the
NSDAP, describing him as gefhrlich. Er untersttzt jede Bewegung, die
man hemmen mte. Er ist fr Bluff. Er ist fr Trommeln (K, 215; dan-
gerous. He supports every movement that should be stopped. Hes for bluff.
Hes for drums). This echoes Tergits description of the knstlich aufgezo-
genen Betrieb (WS, 170; artificially created commotion), the pomp and
circumstance designed to create the impression of Hitler as a leader in wait-
ing during his appearance at Moabit. Unlike Walter Benjamin who considers
that fascism seeks to uphold the aura of the work of art, Tergit indicates that
fascisms success derives from its ruthless, irresponsible appropriation and
exploitation of modernizing developments for personal or political gain.
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
207

The close of the novel is unremittingly bleak and almost apocalyptic.

The whole of Berlin is drawn into the collapse of Muschlers bank, precipi-
tated by the failure of the Ksebier theater project. Frchters final under-
taking in the novel is to preside over the demolition of the Berliner
Rundschau buildings, as his rationalization measures have brought about
the newspapers demise and left its staff unemployed. For-rent signs, rub-
ble, and unfinished projects have superseded the glamour of the Kurfrs-
tendamm. Cafs and other public spaces have been taken over by the
aggressive behavior of those leaving political meetings, and gangs of polit-
icized youths roam the streets spoiling for a fight. It is a stark warning of
what was to become an even starker reality.

Conclusion
In her autobiography, Tergit writes that in her later years, she was often
haunted by the thought of how she sat so close to Hitler during the libel
trial in 1932 that she could have easily shot him at point-blank range and
thus spared the death and suffering of many millions around the world.
This regret over a lost opportunity for action and her sense of survivors
guilt is a harsh self-judgment that does not do justice to the commitment,
engagement, and sense of social responsibility that Tergit displays in her
writing. These qualities were responsible for her putting a whole series of
highly controversial, uncomfortable issues on the public agenda in the
Weimar Republic, including the abortion laws, the impact of the judiciarys
conservative attitude upon proliferating street violence, turning popular
culture into a commodity, the influence of advertising and the cult of
celebrity, and the question of how to accommodate shifting values in the
modern world. With her writing, Tergit sought not only to make these
issues known and accessible to a wide readership but also to influence pub-
lic debate and to warn of their future implications. Moreover, many of these
issues are still at the heart of social and political debates in our own time,
which lends a continuing resonance to Tergits analysis of them. Tergits
voice was powerful and authoritative enough that the Nazis endeavored to
silence it at the first opportunity. As such, her contribution is worthy of
continued attention in academic debates about the Weimar Republic.29

Notes
1
Gabriele Tergit, Wer schiet aus Liebe? Gerichtsreportagen, ed. Jens Brning
(Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 1999), 80. Hereafter referred to as WS.
2
Gabriele Tergit, Ksebier erobert den Kurfrstendamm: Roman (Berlin:
arani, 1997). Originally published by Rowohlt in 1931. Hereafter referred to
208
FIONA SUTTON

as Ksebier in the text and as K followed by page numbers in parenthetical refer-

ences.
3
According to Kurt Koszyk, the Berliner Tageblatt, alongside the Frankfurter
Zeitung, represented left-wing democratic journalism in the Weimar Republic. See
Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse, 19141945: Geschichte der deutschen Presse; Teil III
(Berlin: Colloquium, 1972), 216.
4
Gabriele Tergit, Etwas Seltenes berhaupt: Erinnerungen (Frankfurt am Main:
Ullstein, 1983). Hereafter referred to as ES. Unless otherwise stated, all sub-
sequent biographical details provided about Tergit are taken from this
autobiography.
5
Eva-Maria Mockel, Aspekte von Macht und Ohnmacht im literarischen Werk
Gabriele Tergits (Aachen: Shaker, 1996), 5657.
6
Jens Brning, Vorwort, in WS, 512; here, 9.
7
Gabriele Tergit, Im Schnellzug nach Haifa, ed. Jens Brning (Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer, 1998).
8
Gabriele Tergit, Das Bchlein vom Bett (Munich: Langen-Mller/Herbig, 1954);
Gabriele Tergit, Kaiserkron und Ponien rot Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Blumen
(Cologne: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 1958); Gabriele Tergit, Das Tulpenbchlein
(Hanover: Landbuch-Verlag, 1965).
9
I have come across only one review of Ksebier between 1932 and 1977: Peter
Zapfel, Wiedersehen mit Ksebiers Kurfrstendamm, Die Kultur, April 1955: 10.
10
Nicolaus Neumann, Comeback der alten Dame, Der Stern, 24 March 1977,
18591.
11
See, for example, Fiona Littlejohn, Mobility in the Metropolis: Responses to
the Changing City in Gabriele Tergits Ksebier erobert den Kurfrstendamm and
J. B. Priestleys Angel Pavement, New Readings 5 (1999): 3950; Erhard Schtz,
Romane der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Fink, 1986); Inge Stephan, Stadt ohne
Mythos: Gabriele Tergits Berlin-Roman Ksebier erobert den Kurfrstendamm, in
Neue Sachlichkeit im Roman: Neue Interpretationen zum Roman der Weimarer
Republik, ed. Sabina Becker and Christoph Wei (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler,
1995), 291313; Heide Soltau, Die Anstrengungen des Aufbruchs: Romanau-
torinnen und ihre Heldinnen in der Weimarer Zeit, in Deutsche Literatur von
Frauen, ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich: Beck, 1988), 2:22035.
12
Brning, Vorwort, 10.
13
Egon Larsen, Die Welt der Gabriele Tergit: Aus dem Leben einer ewig jungen
Berlinerin (Munich: Frank Auerbach, 1987), 12.
14
Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der Klassischen Mod-
erne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987).
15
For a more detailed discussion of the attitudes of the judiciary during the Weimar
Republic see Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 21922, and V. R. Berghahn, Mod-
ern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century (2nd ed.,
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), 7677, 82, 120.
16
Marsha Meskimmon, We Werent Modern Enough: Women Artists and the Limits
of German Modernism (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 10612.
 THE WRITINGS OF GABRIELE TERGIT IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
209

17
Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 10111; Katharina von Ankum, Introduc-
tion, in Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, ed.
Katharina von Ankum (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: U of California P,
1997), 111.
18
Up to 1921, 13 murder cases involving left-wingers were brought to court
which imposed eight death sentences and a total of 176 years imprisonment; by
contrast some 314 murders committed by right-wingers led to one life sentence
and a total of 31 years imprisonment. Also in later years, a political murder perpe-
trated by a Communist earned either a high prison sentence or the death penalty;
right-wing Feme murderers, on the other hand, tended to be let off very lightly
(Berghahn, Modern Germany, 76).
19
Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 94100; Berghahn, Modern Germany, 120.
20
Compare, for example, the flnerie of Otto Lambeck or Lotte Kohler in Ksebier
(3537 and 9093) with Tergits feuilletons Vorfrhlingsreise nach Berlin and
Eingewhnen in Berlin, in Atem einer anderen Welt: Berliner Reportagen (Air of
Another World. Berlin Reports), ed. Jens Brning (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1994), 1721.
21
Lion Feuchtwanger, Erfolg: Drei Jahre Geschichte einer Provinz; Roman (Berlin:
Aufbau, 1999).
22
See, for example, Margarete Dierks, Berlin-Romane und Blumen-Kul-
turgeschichte, Frankfurter Hefte 36 (1981): 6568; Horst Hartmann, Eine
goldene Seifenblase platzt, tat, 17 March 1978, 14; Hedwig Rohde, Es lag was
in der Luft, Tagesspiegel, 9 September 1977, 4; Schtz, Romane der Weimarer
Republik, 15557.
23
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1990).
References to this work in the text are given using the abbreviation CM and the
page number.
24
Matthias Flgge, Heinrich Zilles grafische Zyklen und sein Werk der zwanziger
Jahre, in Heinrich Zille, 18581929, ed. Renate Altner et al. (Berlin: Berlin-
Information, 1988), 165206.
25
Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzier-
barkeit, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rudolf Tiedemann and Hermann
Schweppenhuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 1.2:471508.
26
Joseph Roth, Der Kurfrstendamm, in Werke (Cologne and Amsterdam:
Kiepenhauer & Witsch and Allert de Lange, 1991), 3:98100; here, 100. First
published 1929.
27
Franz Hessel, Spazieren in Berlin: Beobachtungen im Jahr 1929 (Berlin: Morgen,
1979), 132. First published 1929.
28
Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of
Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), 84103.
29
I gratefully acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council for support-
ing the doctoral research upon which this chapter is based.
10: Radical Realism and Historical
Fantasy: Alfred Dblin

David Midgley

B EFORE THE PUBLICATION OF Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), the work

for which he is most commonly remembered, Alfred Dblin already
had an established reputation as a radical literary experimenter. He had
been engaging forcefully in the cultural debates of the Berlin avant-garde
since around 1910, and the novels he published from 1915 on were
uncompromising in their depiction of the materiality of human existence
and of the capacity of human beings, individually and collectively, for
extreme forms of behavior. Dblins historical vision, coupled with his
energetic pursuit of innovative narrative techniques, made him an inspir-
ational figure for the rising generation of the 1920s, among them Bertolt
Brecht. At the same time, however, Dblins epic imagination was also
engaging with metaphysical questions the place of humankind in the
cosmos and the intimate connections between human endeavor and the
forces of nature and it might be argued that his later writings bring a
consummation of tendencies that can already be detected in his publica-
tions of the Weimar period, but toward which the intellectual climate of
that time had been inhospitable. His trilogy November 1918 (193950)
combines a remarkably detailed account of the historical situation from
which the Weimar Republic had emerged with a personal quest for reli-
gious orientation on the part of the main protagonist. Following his con-
version to Catholicism in 1941, indeed, Dblins writings are generally
characterized by a spiritual earnestness, and reflect critically on the implica-
tions of his own modernism; however, his last novel, Hamlet oder Die
lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (Hamlet, or The Long Night Comes to an
End, 1956), which contains much anguished reflection on fundamental
aspects of human existence, and relations between the sexes in particular,
nevertheless retains something of the vibrancy and vigor of his earlier nar-
rative fiction.
Alfred Dblin was born in Stettin in 1878. His father abandoned the
family in 1888, and his mother moved with the five children to Berlin,
where Alfred received most of his education, qualifying as a doctor in
1905. While his own marriage to a fellow medical student, Erna Reiss, was
not a happy one, his early experience of family breakdown led him in later
212
DAVID MIDGLEY

life to place family commitment above other emotional attachments. After

gaining experience in psychiatric hospitals at Regensburg and at Buch, near
Berlin, he ran a general practice in Berlin from 1911 to 1914 and again
throughout the Weimar period. In the First World War he served as a med-
ical officer in the German army, and in 1918, while serving in Alsace, experi-
enced the dissolution of the imperial regime. While he maintained a
critical attitude towards all forms of political organization, he was a com-
mitted democrat and republican,1 a lively critic of political and cultural
developments in the early 1920s, and a combative member of the Prussian
Academy of the Arts from 1928 to 1933, a period when, like other
German institutions, it was being undermined by anti-republican machin-
ations.2 The publication of Berlin Alexanderplatz in 1929 became the
occasion for a fundamental breach with the Communist writers who criti-
cized the work, and Dblin subsequently remained generally wary of
Communist-led activities, although, after the Second World War, he found
it easier to publish his novels in the GDR than in the West.
In 1933 Dblin escaped to Zurich, and subsequently to France, with
his family. He took French citizenship in 1936, and two of his four sons
fought in the French army against Nazi Germany in 1940. Although the
family had been fully integrated into German Protestant society in Berlin,
Dblin showed interest in his Jewish roots during the 1920s, publishing an
account of his travels in Eastern Europe in 1924; and from 1933 to 1937
he was active in the Jewish territorialist movement, which was seeking pos-
sible locations for a Jewish homeland other than Palestine. As a refugee in
France in 1940, however, he experienced the need to revise his worldview
significantly, and this led to his adoption of the Catholic faith in 1941.
Fleeing again, this time to the United States, he was initially given a con-
tract of employment with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, but
effectively lived there in total obscurity dependent on state benefits for the
next four years. In 1945 he returned to France and served as a cultural offi-
cer in the French-occupied zone of Germany, but between then and his
death in 1957 he never regained the measure of literary recognition he had
enjoyed during the Weimar period.
In the period before the First World War, Dblin was closely associated
with the avant-garde periodical Der Sturm (The Storm), in which several
of his early stories were published. The exhibition of Italian Futurist art
that the Sturm circle, led by Herwarth Walden, organized in Berlin in
1912, indirectly prompted Dblin to issue his most important early pro-
grammatic statements. He enthusiastically welcomed the dynamism of
these paintings for example those of Umberto Boccioni, who is famous
for his attempts to represent the bustling simultaneity of city streets on his
canvasses because he felt that they had broken decisively with the trad-
ition of perspectival depiction and its assumption of a fixed viewpoint. But
when he subsequently encountered the novel Mafarka by the leading
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
213

Futurist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he was disappointed, finding it

marred by tired metaphors and an outmoded aestheticism and therefore
unable to live up to its avant-garde aspirations.3 Dblin concluded his cri-
tique of Marinetti in Der Sturm by proclaiming his own Dblinism as an
alternative to Futurism, and the watchwords of Sachlichkeit and
Dinglichkeit both referring to the materiality of the empirical world
that he invoked along the way are indicative of the principle he held to
in his own early fiction. This amounts to a radical naturalism, to observing
the phenomena of the natural world and seeking the words nouns and
verbs above all that will let objects and events speak for themselves. In
the Berlin Program he published in Der Sturm in 1913, Dblin enjoined
his fellow authors to learn from his own professional discipline, psychiatry,
in order to move beyond the rationalized abstract terms that dominated
conventional psychological narrative at the time:
Man lerne von der Psychiatrie, der einzigen Wissenschaft, die sich mit
dem seelischen ganzen Menschen befat; sie hat das Nave der Psycholo-
gie lngst erkannt, beschrnkt sich auf die Notierung der Ablufe, Bewe-
gungen, mit einem Kopfschtteln, Achselzucken fr das Weitere und
das Warum und Wie. Die sprachlichen Formeln dienen nur dem
praktischen Verkehr. Zorn, Liebe, Verachtung bezeichnen in die
Sinne fallende Erscheinungskomplexe, darber hinaus geben diese primi-
tiven und abgeschmackten Buchstabenverbindungen nichts. Sie geben
ursprnglich sichtbare, hrbare, zum Teil berechenbare Ablufe an,
Vernderungen der Aktionsweise und Effekte. Sie knnen nie und nim-
mermehr als Mikroskope oder Fernrohre dienen, diese blinden Scheiben;
sie knnen nicht zum Leitfaden einer lebennnachbildenden Handlung
werden.4

[We should learn from psychiatry, the only science that concerns itself
with the psychic reality of the individual human being in its entirety. It has
long since recognized the naivety of psychology, and confines itself to
noting processes and developments with a shake of the head, a shrug
of the shoulders for everything else and the whys and wherefores. Lin-
guistic formulations serve only the purposes of practical communication.
Anger, love, contempt are terms for complex phenomena that our
senses register; beyond that, these primitive and worn-out combinations
of letters yield nothing. They denote processes, changes in action and
effect that were originally visible, audible, and up to a point measurable.
These opaque disks can never serve as microscopes or telescopes; they
cannot become the guiding thread for any act of representing life.]

What Dblin was advocating in 1913 went further than this insistence
on precise observation and notation, however. In order to convey
the impression of a world speaking through the text, he wanted to suppress
the sense of a narrating presence entirely, to break the hegemony of the
author, as he put it. The steinerne Stil (stony style) he envisaged in his
214
DAVID MIDGLEY

Berlin Program would only be achieved by merging that narrating iden-

tity with the objects to be presented: ich bin nicht ich, sondern die Strae,
die Laternen, dies und dies Ereignis, weiter nichts (I am not myself, but
the street, the lamps, this or that event, nothing more).5 It was a policy
that ostensibly modeled itself on scientific observation, but which also left
open the way to the speculative investigations into nature philosophy and
the relation between self and world that Dblin was to publish alongside
his major novels of the 1920s.
Dblin began writing prose fiction when he was still at school, and
these early texts the short story Modern and the novel Jagende Rosse
(Galloping Stallions, 1900) already show him to be exploring the rela-
tionship between cultural constraints and biological impulses on the one
hand, and between individual human identity and the broad realm of
nature on the other. In his mid-twenties Dblin wrote a second novel, Der
schwarze Vorhang (The Black Curtain), in which an adolescent boy is con-
fronted with the demons within himself impulses to perform destructive
acts, coupled with his awakening fascination for the opposite sex. The nar-
rative style of this work already comes close to the principle of exact psy-
chiatric observation that Dblin later outlined in his Berlin Program,
with no concession to the conventional expectation of a continuous narra-
tive thread.6 The intensely introverted love-hate relationship that the boy
develops with a young woman culminates in extreme possessiveness and
self-destruction on his part; he kills her by biting through her carotid
artery and throws himself on the funeral pyre on which he burns her body.
Der schwarze Vorhang was written 19023 and serialized in Der Sturm in
191213, but the radically episodic character of the narrative, together
with the dark nature of its subject matter, prevented its publication in book
form until 1919, when Dblins literary reputation was already well estab-
lished. The close association between vitality and aggression, between sex-
uality and violence, were to become perennial themes in his works.
The short stories published under the title Die Ermordung einer But-
terblume (The Murder of a Buttercup) in 1913, after some of them had
previously appeared in Der Sturm, illustrate the young Dblins wit and his
eye for the revelatory power of grotesque incidents, as well as his preoccu-
pation with the lack of clear boundaries between normal and pathological
behavior. The title story, for instance, describes the onset of a condition of
compulsive neurosis in a respectable middle-aged businessman, Michael
Fischer, who finds himself assaulting a buttercup with his walking-stick.
Instead of providing the reader with preconceived explanations for Fis-
chers actions, Dblins text presents events as if the consequences of those
actions are taking the protagonist himself unawares; it is as if his conscious
self is totally dissociated from his own motor reflexes. What might appear
an utterly trivial incident acquires a deeper comic significance when Fischer
tries to regain his self-control in the sort of authoritarian manner we might
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
215

expect him to adopt in the workplace, seeking to show his thoughts who
is boss and put his own feet in their place. Modes of behavior that
belong in the sphere of formal social relations become ludicrous when
transferred into the domain of his private fantasy: he devises elaborate ges-
tures of remorse towards the plant he has decapitated, and even sets up
procedures for paying it compensation. By the end of the story his behav-
ior has become quite manic, and he disappears into the forest in search of
further buttercups to murder. A poignant counterpart to the title story is
Die Tnzerin und der Leib (The Dancer and the Body), in which an
accomplished dancer falls into a terminal sickness at the age of 19. What
she has achieved by the exercise of discipline and sheer willpower over her
body has led to a fatal loss of personal identity and vitality. Fuller accounts
of these and other early works by Dblin, supported by a comprehensive
bibliography, can be found in Gabriele Sanders recent book, Alfred Dblin.7
The work that really established Dblins reputation, and brought him
the Fontane Prize in 1916, was Die drei Sprnge des Wang-Lun (1916;
translated as The Three Leaps of Wang-Lun, 1991), the first of his works to
be published by the prestigious S. Fischer Verlag. Although the way
Dblin deploys Taoist concepts in this novel has been questioned in recent
years by Chinese scholars,8 his choice of a quasi-mythical Chinese setting
appears to have liberated his imagination to depict the human potential for
extremes of behavior, while also providing him with rich opportunities for
reflecting issues of power distribution in his own society. Wang-Lun, a fish-
ermans son, grows up as a prankster and a thief, but his physical strength
and his general demeanor lead others to look to him for leadership. When
a friend is killed by an imperial officer, Wang-Lun avenges that death by
killing the murderer and then flees with a band of followers to the moun-
tains, where he is initiated into the doctrine of nonviolence by a former
Buddhist monk. Oppression by the imperial regime makes it impossible to
maintain this nonviolent doctrine in practice, and Wang-Lun eventually
dies leading an insurrection, which is defeated amid increasingly brutal
atrocities on either side. Published early in 1916,9 the year of the notorious
mass offensives at Verdun and on the Somme, the work caught the
wartime mood with its themes of power, injustice, the ultimate futility of
violent action, and the dialectic relation between force and renunciation.
Critics were also favorably impressed by the vividness of Dblins descript-
ive writing and his innovative way of evoking crowd behavior, which have
often been interpreted as the fruit of his earlier critique of Marinettis
Mafarka. The merging of the fate of the individual into that of a mass
movement is a feature of Die drei Sprnge des Wang-Lun that anticipates
Dblins treatment of the relationship between the individual and the
modern city in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (Wadzeks Struggle with the
Steam Turbine, 1918), the second novel Dblin wrote during a particularly
216
DAVID MIDGLEY

energetic phase between 1912 and 1915, exemplifies his tendency to swing
from one extreme to another between one work and the next. By contrast
with the broad historical sweep of Die drei Sprnge des Wang-Lun, it
focuses narrowly on the private war of a Berlin industrialist, Franz Wadzek,
against his chief competitor (the manufacturer of the steam turbine men-
tioned in the title) and the power of the monopoly capitalism he repre-
sents. Dblin was evidently attracted by the tragicomic potential of
Wadzek as a Quixotic figure who subsides into petit-bourgeois obscurity
and escapes to America at the end of his struggle; that aspect of the
novel its repudiation of tragic heroism was one reason why Dblins
writing appealed to the young Brecht.10 In retrospect it is also possible to
recognize Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine as an important experi-
ment on the way to Dblins evocation of life in the industrial city in Berlin
Alexanderplatz.11 But critics at the time felt, rather, that in this instance
Dblin had simply succumbed to his own appetite for grotesque character-
ization.12
By the end of the First World War, then, Dblin had established him-
self as an incisive critic of conventional literary writing and a pioneer of
innovative narrative techniques, but his standing as a novelist was as yet
uncertain. Not until Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte vom Franz
Biberkopf (1929; translated as Alexanderplatz, Berlin: The Story of Franz
Biberkopf, 1931) was he to achieve a major marketing success, and his rela-
tions with the S. Fischer Verlag became strained in the meantime.
Throughout the Weimar period, however, he made significant contribu-
tions to cultural debates, and in particular to discussions of how the func-
tion of literature should be conceived in relation to modern thinking about
human nature and the world at large.
Long before Brecht and Piscator were thinking in terms of epic the-
ater as the means of transcending the limitations of conventional drama,
Dblin was promoting the idea of epic writing as part of his campaign
against subjectivism in the novel. In 1919 he crossed swords with his fel-
low novelist Otto Flake, whose programmatic foreword to his novel Die
Stadt des Hirns (The City of the Brain, 1919) spoke of wanting to put the
reader into a philosophical state. Dblin took this as an opportunity to
challenge, once again, the principle of a sovereign authorial intellect, and
to insist that epic writing should not be subordinated to an ethical purpose
but should communicate in ways that were sinnlich anschaulich (imme-
diate to the senses) and affective.13 In the lecture he gave at Berlin Univer-
sity in December 1928, Der Bau des epischen Werks (The Structure of
the Epic Work), he also emphasized the sense in which nature itself was the
great creator of epic works, and spoke of the individuality of the author as
one of the facts that should be allowed to speak through the text, but
not to dominate it.14 Radicalism, for Dblin, really meant going back to
basics. What distinguished the epic writer from the novelist as traditionally
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
217

conceived, he argued, was the ability to pass beyond mere mimesis and
present fundamental and exemplary aspects of human existence through
whatever subject matter was being treated (BeW, 21819). Sweeping aside
all niceties about the formal distinctions between epic, dramatic, lyric, and
reflexive writing, he spoke of the epic mode as an infinitely flexible way of
writing, capable of integrating all manner of linguistic material to its pur-
poses, and as free as linguistic communication can be to play on the imagi-
nation of the reader or listener (BeW, 22426). As Dietrich Scheunemann
and others have shown, Dblins emphatic proclamation of these views can
be seen as a major contribution to the transformation of the novel in par-
ticular, and to the modernist revolution in literary writing in general.15
While his programmatic writings do not, of course, automatically account
for the way he wrote in practice, they do help us to recognize clearly some
aspects of what he accomplished in his novels of the 1920s.
It was with reference to his novel Wallenstein (1920) that Dblin, in
his 1928 lecture, chose to illustrate his own experience of the writing
process and of the authors relation to his material. He explained that he
saw a role for the authors conscious intellect in the initial search for likely
material on which his imagination could go to work, and in the critical
assessment of the text produced; but in the actual creative process there
came a moment of crystallization or visionary cohesion that defied expla-
nation (BeW, 23034). In the case of Wallenstein, that moment had come
when, after a period of exploratory reading, a chance incident triggered his
vision of the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, sailing across the Baltic
Sea with an immense fleet of ships, to intervene in the Thirty Years War
and we can read Dblins description of that vision at the start of book 5 of
the novel.16 The name of Wallenstein would have been familiar to German
readers above all from Schillers dramatic trilogy of 179799, but what
Dblin provides is not the grand tragedy of a historical individual as
Schiller had constructed it but an evocation of history as the vast and
impersonal experience of human populations. His Wallenstein is an
unscrupulous power-monger and profiteer, and while his narrative makes
allusion to the religious conflict with which the Thirty Years War was asso-
ciated, it is much more concerned with the sheer cynicism of power politics
and economic speculation. There is a contrast at the personal level between
the demonic and brutal figure of Wallenstein and the melancholic Emperor
Ferdinand II, on whom the narrative increasingly comes to concentrate;
but the depiction of each is expressly linked with primal natural forces.
Wallenstein is imagined as a reptilian creature emerging from the swamp,
and Ferdinand, after gradually abandoning his aspirations to political influ-
ence, eventually retreats into a forest and becomes enthralled by a hobgob-
lin, who murders him. That surreal moment apart, Dblins narrative
broadly reflects the record of historical events from the Battle of the White
Mountain (1620) to the death of Ferdinand (1637), but he dispenses with
218
DAVID MIDGLEY

all mention of dates in the text and his evocation of events dwells on the
capacity of mankind for collective brutality. When the personal story is
complete, on the final page of the text the butchery is set to continue
unabated.
Wallenstein is generally seen as Dblins darkest novel. Frequently the
narrative flow is halted by sustained descriptions of carnage, pillage, pesti-
lence, putrefaction, and sadistic acts, such as the graphically detailed
account of the burning of a Jewish couple at the stake as a public spectacle
(Wa, 43945). It is particularly from such passages as these in Wallenstein
that W. G. Sebald illustrates his case for accusing Dblin of an obsessive
fascination with violence and of turning cruelty into an aesthetic experi-
ence.17 Sebalds claim, on the final page of his study, that the aims of such
literature are indistinguishable from those of inhumane political ideologies
is unsustainable in the light of Dblins record as a writer and a person; but
he has a serious point when he argues that Dblins evocation of such vio-
lence in connection with the religious fervor of the seventeenth century
confers an apocalyptic atmosphere on the work, which indicates, perhaps, a
readiness to understand the mortification of the flesh as preparing the way
for spiritual regeneration (Wa, 51, 81, 158). Other commentators have
stressed what was instantly apparent to reviewers in 1920: Dblins Wal-
lenstein is an indirect way of conveying the sheer awfulness of the war of
attrition he had witnessed on the Western Front in the First World War,
including the wholesale dislocation of societies that it entailed, and the
desperateness of the search for alternative ways of living that it brought in
its wake admittedly perceived as a cycle of violence.18 In the context of
Hans Vilmar Gepperts broad-based study of historical fiction (1976), the
aestheticization of horror in Dblins Wallenstein appears as an effective
means of subverting other ways of looking at history that might seduce us
with their aesthetic coherence.19
Having drawn on distant historical experience to conjure up his bleak
vision of human existence in Wallenstein, Dblin then let his imagination
play on possibilities that lay in the distant future in Berge Meere und Gigan-
ten (Mountains Oceans and Giants, 1924). This work begins with an evo-
cation of the First World War as a distant memory, but the scenario it
presents is again clearly inspired by the experience of intensive techno-
logical warfare. The colonization of Africa and Asia by the nations of Europe
has been taken to its logical conclusion, and the technological expertise of
the western world has increasingly been put to work in harnessing natural
energy sources. Over a period of centuries, wealth has increased, but so too
have social disparities, and as the worlds population becomes concentrated
in huge city-states, the technocratic senates that rule over those states
become increasingly adept and increasingly ruthless at quelling and divert-
ing social conflict. Eventually, in the twenty-sixth century, the senates in
Europe achieve monopoly control over food supplies by secretly developing
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
219

the means to produce synthetic foodstuffs, and popular unrest is diverted

into a massive war against Asia the Uralic War for the control of
mineral deposits. There is a backlash against the devastation caused by that
war, however, and again the scenario reflects the anti-technological
impulses that became strong in Germany around the time of the First
World War, and which are very apparent in the works of such Expressionist
dramatists as Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller around 1920. In Dblins
novel, it is in the city-state of Berlin, under the leadership of a figure who
carries the name of an ancient Babylonian deity, Marduk, that the campaign
to abandon industrialism and return the population to agricultural produc-
tion gains the upper hand. But what follows is a reversion to the behavior
patterns of the Thirty Years War, as Dblin had previously depicted them,
with warring groups vying for dominance and taking vengeance on
each other with sadistic brutality. Once again, Dblin is unflinching in his
depiction of the destructive effects of the lust for power combined with
sexual aggression.20
It is the way Dblin imagines the path of humanity beyond that phase,
however, that gives this work its distinctive character. The scenario he
devises surpasses the technological fantasies of Marinetti and the science-
fiction writers of the day in particular ways, and is clearly also designed to
counter their affirmative character.21 He envisages London maintaining its
capacity for shrewd political management under rapidly changing historical
circumstances and becoming the focus for the next technological grand
venture, which ends in a cataclysmic confrontation between human
willpower and the very forces of nature. It takes the form of a project to
harness the heat from Icelands volcanoes in order to thaw Greenlands ice
cap and thus to provide further territory for colonial exploitation. The suc-
cess of this venture results in ecological disaster not, as we might easily
imagine it, in the form of rising sea levels and climatic change, but in the
unleashing of primeval creatures from the permafrost, hybrid monsters
that endanger all life forms in Europe by triggering the hypertrophied
growth of any limb or organ with which they come into contact. Dblins
imagination, in Berge Meere und Giganten, has gone to work, not only on
the known properties of elements and organisms of the natural world and
the human potential to exploit them, but also on the mythic potential of
the relationship between human inventiveness and the biological sphere of
which it is part. He imagines the power-hungry future leaders of Europe
responding to this new crisis by turning themselves into massive biological
fortifications the giants of the works title by amalgamating their
bodies with the natural environment, laying waste the human societies out
of which they have emerged in the process, and continuing their power
struggles among themselves in their new guise. Not only the name of the
anti-technological leader Marduk, but also certain attributes of the
giants carry echoes of the myths of antiquity, particularly the cult of
220
DAVID MIDGLEY

Cybele and the worship of mountains, rocks, water sources, and fire as fea-
tures of mother earth.22
Mythic thinking is also fundamental to the resolution of the conflict
between human ambition and the world of nature Dblin describes at the
end of the work. In part, the scope for such resolution is kept before the
readers mind by descriptive passages that evoke a bountiful and ultimately
benevolent nature, particularly as suggested by the landscape of southern
France. More specifically, Dblin introduces an exotic and stereotypically
feminine demigod figure, Venaska, who counters the destructive fury of
the giants with her unfailing erotic power. But among the humans who
remain, too, the mythic awareness of the experiences they have shared
becomes the key to safeguarding a future life against technological folly
without lapsing into the illusion of an idyllic harmony with nature. The
survivors of the Greenland expedition, led by the Scandinavian engineer,
Kylin, who had masterminded the splitting of the Iceland volcanoes, com-
mit themselves to a bond of fellowship in the sign of the sundered moun-
tain and the flame. It is under this sign, symbolizing their determination to
preserve the knowledge of the potential for catastrophe and the need for
remorse, that they reestablish their communities in a regenerating natural
world. They go forward conscious that they themselves are the custodians
of the flame of destruction and the spark of life.
In 1932, Dblin published a shortened version of this work under the
title Giganten (Giants). It is recognized to be an uneven, and perhaps hastily
written, attempt to recast the work in a more popular mode, but it also
shows how the controversies of the Weimar period had persuaded him that
he ought to draw a clear line between himself and the purveyors of cultural
pessimism by making his convictions about the future role of technology in
society plain. The revised version ends with Kylins group restoring industrial
culture, but placing it in the service of humanity at large, rather than that of
a technocratic elite. It is also clear from his long essay Der Geist des natu-
ralistischen Zeitalters (The Spirit of the Naturalist Age), which appeared in
Die neue Rundschau (The New Review) in 1924, that Dblin positively wel-
comed the scientific materialism of the modern age, including what he saw
as its political manifestation in Soviet Russia, and in that context he firmly
endorsed the culture of technology and physicality that was challenging the
abstract values of traditional humanism in postwar Germany.23 But at the
same time he continued to reach out for a metaphysical worldview that
would resolve the tensions between materialistic and spiritualistic concep-
tions of human existence. It is in his writings on this subject that we find
strong affinities with the Romantic nature philosophy of Schelling
(17751854) and Fechner (180187). In Das Ich ber der Natur (The I
above Nature, 1927) and Unser Dasein (Our Existence, 1933), Dblin
makes the case, not just for viewing the universe as coherently ordered, but
for conceiving all elements of the natural world as beseelt (animate). He
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
221

analyses human individuality into its component parts, and sees it as related
through each of these to the Ur-Ich, or prime mover, behind the material
world, which itself stands in a relationship of mutual dependency with all
individual phenomena. Dblins arguments on these points are unlikely to
appear wholly convincing to either scientists or philosophers, but they repre-
sent his personal attempt to resolve the intellectual puzzle about how the
human mind could aspire to comprehend the natural world while yet being
part of it and subject to the impulses of its own biological nature.24 In Unser
Dasein he also sets out his thinking about the resonance that may exist
between all domains of the natural world, animal, vegetable and mineral;25
and this thinking has been seen to provide an important clue to the organi-
zation of the underlying themes in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
In 1927, the year he published Das Ich ber der Natur, Dblin also
published Manas, a verse epic based on Hindu myths and legends. Because
it is in verse, and because of its exotic subject matter, it has tended to be
viewed as something of an anachronistic extravagance within Dblins oeu-
vre, and within twentieth-century narrative writing generally, although its
vivid and incantatory language was hailed at the time by Robert Musil as
an extraordinary achievement in a scientific age.26 Dblin himself consid-
ered it important enough to make it the starting point for the afterword he
wrote for Berlin Alexanderplatz when it was reissued in the GDR in
1955,27 and his reasons for doing so undoubtedly relate to a dimension of
Berlin Alexanderplatz that might not be immediately obvious to the unini-
tiated reader: Manas was again an attempt to evoke elemental aspects of
human existence. It tells the story of a prince who enters the kingdom of
the dead in order to take upon himself the burden of all the suffering in the
world, is destroyed by the experience, and is redeemed by the self-sacrifice
of the goddess Savitri, the embodiment of love. The final third of the work
depicts the struggle of the revived Manas to achieve true human identity
by becoming self-aware. Manas can therefore be seen to mark a step
beyond the emphasis on collective action and instinct-driven behavior that
had characterized Dblins earlier works, and towards the balance he
strikes in depicting the relationship between the individual and society in
Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf.
Precisely what prompted Dblin, in his next work, to turn his atten-
tion to the Berlin milieu that was so familiar to him is not certain, but the
enthusiastic reception accorded to Berlin Alexanderplatz, initially in the
form of public readings and extracts published in journals and newspapers
in the course of 1928, suggests that it satisfied a demand for a bold literary
representation of the contemporary world, and of the ambience of Berlin
in particular. As Walter Benjamin emphasized in his review of the work, it
spoke through the substance of life in Berlin and it spoke with the vernac-
ular voice of Berlin.28 While the experimental character of the text and the
scurrilous nature of its underworld plot was received with some degree of
222
DAVID MIDGLEY

irritation and offence by ordinary readers,29 Dblins vibrant diction and

his abrupt juxtaposition of disparate texts and utterances were recognized
as conveying the excitement of life in the city, its opportunities and its dan-
gers. Axel Eggebrecht caught the spirit of that perception nicely when he
wrote that Dblin used styles in the way that other people use the tram,
letting each one take him just as far as he wanted to travel, then hopping
onto another.30 Benjamin in particular took up the points that Dblin had
been making in his programmatic texts about the nature of epic writing,
related them to his actual practice in Berlin Alexanderplatz, and summed
up the difference between this work and the conventional novel in a highly
suggestive opening conceit: whereas the novelist took the reader on a jour-
ney across an ocean, he wrote, the writer of epic lay on the seashore and
gathered together what the ocean yielded up.31
Put simply, Berlin Alexanderplatz tells the story of an unskilled worker,
Franz Biberkopf, who has served a term in prison for the unpremeditated
killing of his girlfriend, and now confronts the city anew, resolved to lead an
honest existence. The preambles to the nine books that make up the work
repeatedly allude to Biberkopfs attempts to conquer the city, and to the
fact that each attempt to assert himself individually leads to catastrophe.
After falling in with a gang of criminals, Biberkopf loses an arm when he is
pushed out of a getaway car. After establishing a seemingly stable relation-
ship with a new girlfriend, Mieze, he carelessly boasts about her and shows
her off to one of the criminals, Reinhold, who proceeds to abduct and mur-
der her. Biberkopfs idea of rebuilding his life is shown to be too strongly
rooted in old attitudes of mind, including the unqualified trust he places in
male companionship a habit nurtured by his previous wartime experi-
ence. While Dblin liked to underline his commitment to his programmatic
conception of epic writing by making it sound as if this personal narrative
was merely a concession to conventional taste wished on him by his pub-
lisher, the manuscript evidence suggests that it was part of his conception of
the work all along.32 The parallel between Biberkopfs story and that of
Manas is apparent in the way the old Biberkopf has to be broken before a
new Biberkopf can emerge; and Dblin evokes that process of destruction
and renewal (at a point in the story where Biberkopf is lying in a comatose
state in the psychiatric hospital at Buch) by introducing the allegorical fig-
ure of Death the Reaper, who first drives away old iniquity in the form of
the Whore of Babylon, and then slices away at Biberkopfs personality so
that it can arise anew, as it were, from primal substance.
When the book appeared in 1929, it attracted some sharp criticism for
focusing on a criminal milieu rather than that of the class-conscious workers
of Berlin. Writers within the German Communist Party in particular used this
publication as an opportunity to draw a clear distinction between their own
ideology and that of the liberal bourgeoisie, which in their view Dblin rep-
resented.33 Berlin Alexanderplatz does have a political as well as a moral
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
223

dimension, but a subtler one than these authors were demanding.34

Biberkopfs personal encounters bring him into contact with both the anar-
chist left and the vlkisch right. There are intermittent reminders of the con-
ditioning experience he has undergone in the First World War notably at
points where his mood is one of masculine self-affirmation, or insecurity, or
when he is responding to political taunts from others and these are marked
in the text by motifs from such patriotic hymns as Max Schneckenbergers
Die Wacht am Rhein (The Watch on the Rhine, 1840). It is the refrain
from that song in particular that is modified on the closing pages of the work
to signal the awareness of civic responsibility to which he has now awakened:
instead of Schneckenbergers vow of vigilance on behalf of the Fatherland, we
have an articulation of Biberkopfs new-found critical awareness: Lieb Vater-
land, kannst ruhig sein, ich hab die Augen auf und fall so bald nicht rein.
(Dear Fatherland, rest assured, my eyes are open and I wont be taken in.)35
Such deployment of allusive material shows clearly what makes Berlin
Alexanderplatz different from a conventional social novel of the time, or
indeed from the documentary approach to writing that was favored by
many young authors in the 1920s. The montage effects that Dblin cre-
ated, sometimes quite literally by pasting fragments of text into his
manuscript, serve two broad functions. One is to make the fate of
Biberkopf as an individual seem less important by emphasizing other
aspects of the life of the city that are often remote from his personal experi-
ence. The episode at the end of book 5 that leads to the loss of his right
arm culminates, for example, not with a description of Biberkopfs per-
sonal catastrophe, but with the evocation of a new dawn and the arrival in
Berlin of an international celebrity. The other obvious function of the
montage elements is to evoke the sense of underlying connections the
resonances of which Dblin speaks elsewhere between Biberkopfs
story and other dimensions of human life and material existence generally.
Otto Kellers detailed study of the thematic links between these montage
components has shown that whether they refer to heroes of antiquity, or
biblical figures, or contemporary boxing champions, they are largely
arranged around such antithetical principles as conquest and sacrifice,
chastisement and healing, death and rebirth, decay and regeneration.36
The Alexanderplatz itself, which gives the work its title, is presented at the
start of book 5 as a site of demolition and redevelopment, which is
precisely what it was at the time the work was written; and when Dblin
interpolates passages from the Old Testament Books of Jeremiah and
Ecclesiastes, or amended versions of the stories of Job and Isaac, then these
elements, too, can be seen to contain subtle allusions to the dialectic play
of natural forces in human life, and to the need to surrender self-importance,
which is a key part of Biberkopfs learning experience.
Dblin openly acknowledged in 1932 that the German translation of
James Joyces Ulysses (1927) had stimulated him to experiment more
224
DAVID MIDGLEY

freely,37 and another conceivable influence on his practice in Berlin

Alexanderplatz is John Dos Passoss Manhattan Transfer.38 But the mon-
tage technique he displays is recognizable as a radicalization of his own
practice in earlier works, and the themes he presents in the work are mani-
festly his own. Perhaps the most important quality that Berlin Alexander-
platz shares with the works of Joyce and Dos Passos is the way that it
focuses attention, not just on the distinctive character of modern city life,
but on the ways in which the substance of that life is itself linguistically
mediated. Dblins text makes this apparent, not only through the mon-
tage of official documents, newspaper cuttings, advertising slogans, and
snatches of popular song, the sources for which have now been largely
identified in the recent annotated edition of Berlin Alexanderplatz by
Werner Stauffacher (1996), but also in those passages that speak as if with
an authorial voice. It is notable, for example, that the didactic manner he
adopts for his opening presentation of Biberkopfs story quickly moves
into modes of discourse that recognizably belong to quite specific forms of
social presentation, such as those of the fairground ballad-monger and the
boxing commentator. Fragments of discourse with such specific character-
istics do not merely interrupt and interact with the narrative; the act of nar-
ration itself moves easily in this work from one manner of speaking to
another, and in doing so, draws attention to the implications of adopting
one way of talking about an event rather than another. Recent scholarship
has therefore moved beyond trying to identify a central meaning in this
work, one that might be associated with a particular authorial position, and
has sought rather to interpret what is conveyed by the interaction of the
diverse elements within the text with each other and with the texts to
which they allude.39 It is for such reasons as this that Berlin Alexanderplatz
is likely to retain its canonical status, not just as a literary monument of its
times, but as a landmark text in the emergence of a self-conscious intertex-
tuality in modernist writing.

Notes
1
Cf. Erich Kleinschmidt, Dblin-Studien II: Es gibt den eisklaren Tag und
unseren Tod in den nchsten 80 Jahren; Alfred Dblin als politischer Schrift-
steller, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 26 (1982): 40127.
2
See Inge Jens, Dichter zwischen rechts und links (Munich: Piper, 1971). For
Dblins biography up to 1933, see also Leo Kreutzer, Alfred Dblin: Sein Werk bis
1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970).
3
Alfred Dblin, Futuristische Worttechnik: Offener Brief an F. T. Marinetti, in
Schriften zu sthetik, Poetik und Literatur (Olten/Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter,
1989), 11319; here, 117.
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
225

4
Dblin, An Romanautoren und ihre Kritiker, in Schriften zu sthetik, Poetik
und Literatur, 12023; here, 12021.
5
Dblin, An Romanautoren, 122.
6
In a later programmatic note, Dblin was to insist that a novel was not worth its
salt unless it could be cut into sections like an earthworm and go on living. See
Bemerkungen zum Roman (1917), in Schriften zu sthetik, Poetik und Liter-
atur, 12327; here, 126.
7
Gabriele Sander, Alfred Dblin (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001), 100131.
8
Cf. Sander, Alfred Dblin, 138, 36667.
9
1915 is the date shown in the first edition of the work, but publication was
delayed by wartime conditions.
10
See Bertolt Brecht, Werke (Berlin and Frankfurt am Main: Aufbau/Suhrkamp,
1994), 26:153; cf. also 167.
11
Cf. Sander, Alfred Dblin, 14142.
12
See Ingrid Schuster and Ingrid Bode, eds., Alfred Dblin im Spiegel der zeit-
genssischen Kritik (Bern: Francke, 1973), 5261.
13
Dblin, Reform des Romans, in Schriften zu sthetik, Poetik und Literatur,
13751; here, 13840.
14
Dblin, Der Bau des epischen Werks, in Schriften zu Asthetik, Poetik und Lit-
eratur, 21545; here, 22628. Further references to this work are given in the text
using the abbreviation BeW and the page number.

15
See Viktor Zmegac, Alfred Dblins Poetik des Romans, in Deutsche Roman-
theorien, ed. Reinhold Grimm (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1968), 2:34164;
Dietrich Scheunemann, Romankrise: Die Entwicklung der modernen Romanpoetik
in Deutschland (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1978); Judith Ryan, From Futur-
ism to Dblinism, German Quarterly 54 (1981): 41526; Erich Kleinschmidt,
Dblin-Studien I: Depersonale Poetik; Dispositionen des Erzhlens bei Alfred
Dblin, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 26 (1982): 383401.
16
Dblin, Wallenstein (Olten/Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter, 1965), 489. Further
references to this work are given in the text using the abbreviation Wa and the page
number.
17
Winfried G. Sebald, Der Mythos der Zerstrung im Werk Dblins (Stuttgart: Ernst
Klett, 1980), 4951, 15660.
18
See Dieter Mayer, Alfred Dblins Wallenstein: Zur Geschichtsauffassung und
Struktur (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1972), esp. 94117 and 14651; Adalbert
Wichert, Alfred Dblins historisches Denken: Zur Poetik des modernen Geschichtsro-
mans (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978); and Klaus R. Scherpe, Ein Kolossalgemlde fr
Kurzsichtige: Das Andere der Geschichte in Alfred Dblins Wallenstein, in
Geschichte als Literatur: Formen und Grenzen der Reprsentation von Vergangen-
heit, ed. Hartmut Eggert et al. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990), 22641.
19
Hans Vilmar Geppert, Der andere historische Roman (Tbingen: Niemeyer,
1976), 10714 and 161 (cited in Sander, Alfred Dblin, 154); cf. also Harro
Mller, Die Welt hat einen Hauch von Verwesung: Anmerkungen zu Dblins
historischem Roman Wallenstein, Merkur 39 (1985): 40513.
226
DAVID MIDGLEY

20
Cf. Klaus Mller-Salget, Alfred Dblin: Werk und Entwicklung (Bonn: Bouvier,
1972), 21618 and Ardon Denlinger, Alfred Dblins Berge Meere und Giganten:
Epos und Ideologie (Amsterdam: B. R. Grner, 1977), 3844 and 5560.
21
Cf. David Midgley, Writing Weimar: Critical Realism in German Literature,
19181933 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 32227; see also Peter Sprengel, Kn-
stliche Welten und Fluten des Lebens oder: Futurismus in Berlin: Paul Scheerbart
und Alfred Dblin, in Faszination des Organischen: Konjunkturen einer Kategorie
der Moderne, ed. Hartmut Eggert, Erhard Schtz, Peter Sprengel (Munich: Iudi-
cium, 1995), 73102.
22
Cf. Denlinger, Alfred Dblins Berge Meere und Giganten, 8193.
23
Dblin, Der Geist des naturalistischen Zeitalters, in Schriften zu sthetik,
Poetik und Literatur, 16890.
24
For a concise summary of this dimension of Dblins thinking, with references to
further secondary literature, see Sander, Alfred Dblin, 31226.
25
Alfred Dblin, Unser Dasein (Olten/Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter, 1964),
16875.
26
See Schuster and Bode, Alfred Dblin im Spiegel der zeitgenssischen Kritik,
18792; Robert Musil, Gesammelte Werke (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978), 2:167480.
27
Alfred Dblin, Nachwort, in Schriften zu Leben und Werk (Olten/Freiburg im
Breisgau: Walter, 1986), 46365.
28
Walter Benjamin, Krise des Romans, in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1972), 3:23036; here, 233; also in Schuster and Bode, Alfred
Dblin im Spiegel der zeitgenssischen Kritik, 24054; Matthias Prangel, ed., Mate-
rialien zu Alfred Dblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1975), 10814.
29
See Werner Stauffacher, Nachwort des Herausgebers, in Alfred Dblin, Berlin
Alexanderplatz (Zurich and Dsseldorf: Walter, 1996), 83775; here, 85354; cf.
Prangel, Materialien, 6061.
30
Axel Eggebrecht, Alfred Dblins neuer Roman, in Die literarische Welt 5
(1929), no. 45:56; here, 6; also in Prangel, Materialien, 6266.
31
Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, 3:230.
32
Cf. Sander, Alfred Dblin, 176; Stauffacher, Nachwort des Herausgebers,
86465.
33
See Prangel, Materialien, 88100.
34
Cf. Klaus Mller-Salget, Alfred Dblin: Werk und Entwicklung, 2nd ed. (Bonn:
Bouvier, 1988), 34556. See also J. H. Reid, Berlin Alexanderplatz a Political
Novel, German Life & Letters 21 (1968): 21423; Matthias Prangel, Franz
Biberkopf und das Wissen des Wissens: Zum Schluss von Dblins Berlin Alexan-
derplatz unter der Perspektive einer Theorie der Beobachtung der Beobachtung,
in Gabriele Sander, ed., Internationales Alfred Dblin-Kolloquium, 1995 (Jahrbuch
fr Internationale Germanistik, Reihe A, 43) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 16980;
Anke Detken, Zum Politischen in Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatz und Die Ehe
Versuch einer Revision, in Engagierte Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen, ed.
Stefan Neuhaus et al. (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2002), 6988.
 RADICAL REALISM AND HISTORICAL FANTASY: ALFRED DBLIN
227

35
Dblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 454.
36
Otto Keller, Dblins Montageroman als Epos der Moderne (Munich: Fink, 1980);
see also David Midgley, The Dynamics of Consciousness: Alfred Dblin, Berlin
Alexanderplatz, in The German Novel in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Realism,
ed. David Midgley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1993), 95109.
37
Dblin, Mein Buch Berlin Alexanderplatz: Schriften zu Leben und Werk,
21517; here, 217. See also Breon Mitchell, James Joyce and the German Novel,
19221933 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1976).
38
See Joris Duytschaever, Joyce Dos Passos Dblin: Einflu oder Analo-
gie? in Prangel, Materialien, 13649.
39
Cf. Gabriele Sander, Erluterungen und Dokumente: Alfred Dblin, Berlin
Alexanderplatz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998), 21620. See in particular Harald Jh-
ner, Erzhlter, montierter, soufflierter Text: Zur Konstruktion des Romans Berlin
Alexanderplatz von Alfred Dblin (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984); Klaus
R. Scherpe, Von der erzhlten Stadt zur Stadterzhlung: Der Grostadtdiskurs in
Alfred Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatz, in Diskurstheorien und Literaturwis-
senschaft, ed. J. Fohrmann and H. Mller (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988),
41837 (In English, The City as Narrator: The Modern Text in Alfred Dblins
Berlin Alexanderplatz, in Modernity and the Text, ed. Andreas Huyssen and David
Bathrick [New York: Columbia UP, 1989], 16279); Midgley, The Dynamics of
Consciousness; Ernst Ribbat, Die Wirklichkeit der Zitate: Dblins diskontinuier-
liche Rede, in Gabriele Sander, Internationales Alfred Dblin-Kolloquium, 1995,
11529; Gabriele Sander, Dblins Berlin: The Story of Franz Biberkopf, in A
Companion to the Works of Alfred Dblin, ed. Roland Dollinger, Wulf Koepke, and
Heidi Thomann Tewarson (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), 14160.
11: Vicki Baum: A First-Rate
Second-Rate Writer?

Heather Valencia

V ICKI BAUM (18881960) WAS AUSTRIAN BY BIRTH and spent her first
twenty-eight years in Vienna. She lived in Germany from 1912 until
1932, then in the United States until her death in 1960. Before moving to
Germany she had published little apart from some short stories and arti-
cles, but during her Weimar period she wrote five volumes of novellas and
eleven novels, including her two most successful works. The themes of the
major works reflect many contemporary concerns and prevailing literary
trends. In order to place Vicki Baum in context, it is helpful to review these
aspects of Weimar society.
In the early 1920s, the Expressionism of the previous decade began to
give way to a more sober view of art and literature, based on the intent to
convey an authentic picture of contemporary society. The term Neue Sach-
lichkeit the New Objectivity described this trend. This turning away
from the visionary effusions of Expressionism was undoubtedly inspired not
only by disillusionment with such idealistic dreams, following the failure of
the revolutionary hopes of 1919, but also by the economic and political tur-
moil of the early years of the Weimar Republic. Moreover, the concept of
art as the province of the privileged was being challenged by social and
technological developments. Cheaper printing methods and the conse-
quent expansion in books, newspapers, and magazines went hand in hand
with a fast-developing mass readership. Since the nineteenth century, liter-
acy had grown dramatically; this, coupled with increased leisure resulting
from shorter working hours, created a greater demand for reading material,
with middle-class women constituting a substantial proportion of the read-
ing public.1 The idea of a popular literature that would address the concerns
of this expanding readership was a key element of the literary New Object-
ivity. Hermann Kesten expressed this as a program for Weimar literature:

Die Kunst soll wieder ein Handwerk werden, . . . eine Produktion, die
sich wie jede andere an dem Bedarf des Konsumenten regelt; eine
Ttigkeit, die der Raschheit und Beweglichkeit unseres Daseins
entspricht, deren Ergebnisse sich in der Regel mit dem Tag verbrauchen,
fr den sie entstanden.2
230
HEATHER VALENCIA

[Art should become a craft again, . . . a product that, like any other, suits
itself to the needs of the consumers, that reflects the speed and mobility
of our existence, and whose products are usually used up on the day for
which they came into existence.]3

In the development of mass popular literature and modern marketing

methods, the publishing house of Ullstein played a seminal role. Founded
in 1848 by Leopold Ullstein as a wholesale newspaper business, the firm
later began publishing newspapers, magazines, and cheaply produced
books, becoming by the end of the 1920s the largest publishing house in
Europe. They serialized and promoted their novels in the many daily and
weekly newspapers and magazines that they produced for a wide range of
readers. They inaugurated the mass production of widely available inex-
pensive books, which Reclam, Fischer, and other publishers then copied,
marking the beginning of the modern paperback industry in Germany. The
family firm had a liberal philosophy, coupled with an advertising strategy
based on psychological insight and up-to-date marketing theory Her-
mann Ullstein was conversant with the writing of Henry Ford and visited
America in order to study marketing techniques. By signing herself exclu-
sively to Ullstein in 1926, Vicki Baum became part of the development of
popular mass culture and modern media marketing: she became an Ull-
stein brand name. From both a literary-critical and sociohistorical stand-
point, therefore, the phenomenon of Vicki Baum is a paradigm of
significant cultural developments in the Weimar Republic.
Born Hedwig Baum on 24 January 1888 in Vienna, to Jewish parents,
she grew up in a dysfunctional, though relatively affluent, family, feeling
lonely and unloved throughout her childhood. Her father was a self-
centered hypochondriac and bully who scorned literature; in her memoirs
Baum calls him her only real enemy.4 Her mother suffered from depressive
illness for most of Baums childhood, spending a lengthy period in a sana-
torium. At her mothers instigation, Baum left school when she was thir-
teen to study the harp for six years at the Vienna Conservatory. In 1906
she married Max Prels, a minor writer, for whom she started writing stories
and articles that appeared under his name in various journals. They were
divorced in 1910.
In 1912 Baum was engaged as a harpist in the orchestra of the Hofthe-
ater, Darmstadt, and she married its conductor, Richard Lert, in 1916.
Her first novel, Frhe Schatten: Das Ende einer Kindheit (Early Shadows:
The End of a Childhood) had been published in 1914,5 and after her mar-
riage she gave up her musical career, devoting herself to writing and her
family (she had two sons). Between 1916 and 1926 they lived in Darm-
stadt, Berlin, Kiel, Hanover, and Mannheim.
In 1921 and 1922 Ullstein published two of her early novels, Der Ein-
gang zur Bhne (The Stage-Door) and Die Tnze der Ina Raffay: Ein
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
231

Leben (The Dances of Ina Raffay: A Life).6 At this point Baum, not wish-
ing to be exclusively identified with the populist publisher, placed her next
four books, which she considered of greater literary merit, with the
Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, a publisher of more serious literature.7 In 1925
she won a literary prize for her story Der Weg (The Way); since Thomas
Mann, whom Baum revered, was the chief judge, she regarded this as a
sign of her acceptance in the sphere of high literature.8 In 1926, how-
ever, the insecurity of her husbands professional position in Mannheim,
coupled with the enticing prospects that Ullstein held out to her, per-
suaded her to sign a contract with them, and from 1926 until 1931 she
worked as an editor and writer for various Ullstein newspapers and jour-
nals. Her major novels were published by Ullstein until her departure for
America.
In 1929 her most famous novel, Menschen im Hotel (translated as
Grand Hotel) appeared.9 Gustav Grndgens and Erwin Piscator staged a
dramatized version in Berlin in 1930. In the same year an English transla-
tion of the play was a Broadway hit; the film version, Grand Hotel, starring
John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo, was
made in 1931. Vicki Baum visited New York at the invitation of Nelson
Doubleday, the novels American publisher, after which, fearing future
developments in Europe, she migrated with her family to the United States
in 1932. Her work was banned by the Nazis, but continued to be pub-
lished in Europe by Querido, an Amsterdam publisher of exile literature.
Baum lived in Hollywood, becoming a US citizen in 1938, and writ-
ing a further sixteen novels. After 1941 she wrote almost entirely in Eng-
lish, though the unfinished draft of her posthumously published memoirs,
Es war alles ganz anders: Erinnerungen (It Was All Quite Different: Mem-
oirs, 1987) was in German. She died on 29 August 1960.
Vicki Baums memoirs illuminate her perception of herself as a writer.
She made no secret of the fact that she wrote for money, but stressed that
her works were always executed with care: Jedesmal, wenn ich unbedingt
Geld verdienen mute, habe ich Bcher geschrieben, die nicht mehr sein
wollten als gut lesbar und unterhaltsam Entspannungslektre. Nie aber
habe ich dabei geschludert. Ich habe auch diese leichte Lektre immer so
gewissenhaft und sorgfltig wie mglich gearbeitet (Alles, 463; Whenever
I had to earn money, I wrote books that did not aspire to be anything
more than very readable and entertaining leisure reading. But I was
never sloppy. Even this light reading I crafted as conscientiously and care-
fully as I could). Her often-quoted assessment of herself as a first-rate
second-rate writer is in fact the later English translation of her remarks:
Ich wei, was ich wert bin; ich bin eine erstklassige Schriftstellerin zweiter
Gte. (Alles, 377; I know what I am worth; I am a first-class writer of the
second rank). Baum, who, as seen above, was confident in her own crafts-
manship, almost certainly did not intend to convey the rather pejorative
232
HEATHER VALENCIA

coloring of the English term second-rate. She was simply emphasizing

that she did not aspire to the status of great writers like Thomas Mann,
ranking herself rather among Weimar writers like Erich Kstner, Hermann
Kesten, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Erich Maria Remarque, who might be
designated in English as middlebrow.
Nevertheless, there were several works of which Baum wrote: Sie
waren, wenn man mir die Vokabel verzeihen will, Literatur (Alles, 325;
They were, if you forgive me the expression, literature). She felt that these
had not been valued as they deserved, at least partly because of the image
created by her association with Ullstein; she described herself as a cat with
a tin can tied to its tail because of being eternally labeled as the author of
Menschen im Hotel.10 Implicitly therefore she still espoused traditional
ideas of higher and lower literature, and felt a certain sense of injustice
at being confined by the critics within the latter category.
In order to explore these aspects of Baums work, I will discuss three
of her major Ullstein novels: Feme (1926, translated as Secret Sentence,
1932),11 stud.chem. Helene Willfer (1928, translated as Helene, 1932),
and Menschen im Hotel, as well as the earlier novel Ulle, der Zwerg (Ulle,
the Dwarf, 1924), one of the works that Baum regarded as literature.
These four novels span the time from the turbulent early years of the
Weimar Republic to the end of its middle period of relative stability in the
later twenties. I will explore the range of themes and the narrative methods
in these works and attempt to determine the characteristics that made the
Ullstein novels so successful, and that place her within the genre of popu-
lar literature. A comparison of these works with Ulle, der Zwerg will reveal
whether or not there are intrinsic differences between it and the other
works, thus determining whether her definition as a popular writer and
exclusion from the canon of good literature is justified.
Feme, Baums only novel with an overtly political theme, was the first
novel to be published by Ullstein under the 1926 contract.12 Before
appearing in book form it was serialized in the Berliner Illustrierte without
the benefit of much advance publicity, and it never achieved the huge suc-
cess of the other Ullstein novels. The political assassination in the novel is
obviously based on the assassination of the German foreign minister, Wal-
ter Rathenau, in 1922, and its aftermath. It is one of the very few novels of
the period, as Hans-Peter Rsing points out,13 that dealt with the secret
right-wing organizations in the Weimar Republic, such as the Organisation
Consul, which was responsible for many political murders, including
Rathenaus.
The novel tells the story of Joachim Burthe, a young law student from
a patrician family in a state of decline as a result of the political and eco-
nomic circumstances. Joachim, who is involved with a secret right-wing
organization, assassinates the minister whom the group holds responsible
for the social malaise of the times. The focus of the novel is Joachims fate
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
233

after the murder, his development into what the professor who saves his
life calls ein ganzer Mensch (F, 265; a complete human being). The tri-
partite structure emphasizes the stages of this development: the first sect-
ion, Tat (Deed) describes the background to Joachims act, and the
murder itself. The second and third parts, Flucht (Flight) and Shne
(Expiation), describe the physical and emotional hardships he suffers dur-
ing his years as a fugitive, until he achieves inner peace in a small Baltic fish-
ing village, where he lives an exemplary life and dies a heros death. The
questions to be considered are how Vicki Baum interprets this ambitious
and topical political theme, and indeed whether Feme can justifiably be
called a political novel.
The early Weimar period is authentically portrayed. The figure of the
minister himself is closely modeled on Rathenau: like the latter, he is a sen-
sitive, solitary figure who models his ideas on Goethe, writes books of
political philosophy, is aware of the danger from the Right, but refuses to
have a bodyguard with him on the day of his murder. Even small details,
such as the rain on the day of the murder and Burthes posing as a tele-
phone engineer, are based on the Rathenau case.14
Baum draws a convincing picture of the decline of the formerly afflu-
ent and noble Burthe family, which has been forced to sublet part of its
apartment to a working-class family. Their changed circumstances are
clearly conveyed through the scene of the family meal, where everything
emphasizes the contrast with their former social status: the tarnished silver
with the family crest, the patched and darned napkins, and the horrible
tinned food that his mother has to prepare on a gas burner in the only
room.
Baum integrates other common Weimar themes convincingly into the
narrative. She illustrates the economic situation by describing the poor
health of the Burthes tenant, Schliepke, which is due to the low wages and
bad working conditions in the gasworks, and shows the dark side of daily
life in the militias fatal wounding of Schliepkes brother-in-law during a
strike. She contrasts the lives of the workers and the affluent lifestyle of the
directors of industry, exemplified by Dr. Thelmann, a company lawyer who
prudently puts his money immediately into objects and keeps a mistress.
She takes up the motif of industrial unrest again in the second part of the
novel, when the fugitive Burthe is working in a coalmine. She graphically
describes the exhausting routine of the work, the comradeship between the
Kumpels (the miners) and the political fervor of the revolutionary Hille,
who is later killed in a confrontation with the director.
Baum presents Joachim Burthes psyche and the circumstances leading
up to the murder very convincingly. The sensitive young man is deeply dis-
turbed by the degradation of his family, which they ascribe to the republi-
can regime, represented by the minister. Baum signals Joachims despair by
various motifs: his lying on an unmade bed without removing his boots
234
HEATHER VALENCIA

reflects the disorder in his own life, while his unfocused desire to act is
expressed by his vague utterance Es mu etwas geschehen (F, 9; some-
thing must happen); moreover, the print that hangs on his wall, The
Farewell of Schills Officers, is a transparent symbol of nationalistic hero-
ism.15 Joachims frustration is symptomatic of the malaise of the lost gen-
eration, which Remarque was to depict three years later in Im Westen
nichts Neues,16 and which Gregor von Askanius, Joachims idol and fellow
revolutionary, describes here, albeit from a different political standpoint:

Es ist schade, sagte Askanius, da du nicht an der Front warst. Es ist

berhaupt ein Jammer um euch junge Leute, die ihr den Krieg nicht
mehr richtig erlebt habt. Vorher, da wart ihr Kinder und wit nicht mehr
viel, wie es war. Dann hat man euch hergeholt mit euren siebzehn Jahren,
unterernhrt und wacklig, wie ihr wart, und hat euch gedrillt. Vielleicht
haben ein paar von euch die Nase in die Etappe gesteckt, das war alles.
Dann ist die groe Schweinerei gekommen, und jetzt sitzt ihr da und
wit nicht, wohin mit euch und eurer Jugend und eurem Drang, etwas zu
tun. (F, 2728)

[Its a shame, said Askanius, that you werent at the Front. Its a real
pity that you young people didnt really experience the war. Before it you
were children and didnt really know what it was like. Then you were
called up when you were seventeen, undernourished and shaky as you
were, and were drilled. A few of you just managed to poke your noses
into the trenches, that was all. Then this whole mess started and now you
are all sitting there at a loss to know how to cope with your youth and
your need to do something.]

It is very credible that Joachim should be drawn to the older, charis-

matic, ostensibly daring figure of Askanius.17 In a conversation that leads
to Joachims decision to assassinate the minister, Baum makes it clear that
Askanius is deliberately manipulating the younger man: Joachim ballte
die Fuste, und wahrscheinlich hatte Askanius die Geschichte zu keinem
andern Zweck erzhlt, als damit Joachim Burthe die Fuste ballen sollte
(F, 2526; Joachim clenched his fists and probably Askanius had told the
whole story for the very purpose of making Joachim Burthe clench his
fists). Joachims confused feelings for a Russian singer, Jelena Maikova,
also play a decisive role. His uneasy awareness that her erotic power over
him is degrading leads him to attempt to block out his emotions by flight
into what Baum defines as die kindliche Romantik seiner Geheimbn-
delei (F, 38; the child-like romanticism of his conspiratorial activities).
Jelenas taunting finally provokes him to action.
Since this is a novel of self-discovery and redemption, it is important
for Baum to enlist the readers empathy with the protagonist; therefore she
portrays him, not as a ruthless political killer, but as an understandably
deluded young man, which is rather too obviously emphasized in the
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
235

original subtitle, Bufahrt einer verirrten Jugend (Penitential Pilgrimage

of Erring Youth).18 She employs various narrative strategies throughout to
strengthen the readers identification with her hero. From the outset, she
establishes a confidential, chatty tone, through which the reader is drawn
into a relationship with the author and is predisposed to accept her judg-
ments, which she gives liberally in the form of direct authorial interven-
tion. The most striking example is just before the murder, where, in order
to forestall the readers rejection of the murderer, she intervenes and
instructs the reader how to interpret the character. In a long paragraph she
describes him as an ordinary young man who is too much influenced by
other people, allowing himself to be dazzled but without yet having the
wisdom to judge. She sees him as a young idealist with a misguided sense
of honor that forces him to pursue this cause (F, 64). She reinforces this
emphasis on his youth frequently throughout the book, referring to him as
the young Joachim Burthe or the young man, and attempts to gain her
readers sympathy for him with her motherly address to the character him-
self: Du bist im Grunde ein schwacher . . . durch Trume irregeleiteter
Mensch. (F, 120; Basically you are weak . . . and led astray by your
dreams.) He is portrayed as the hunted wolf with whom author, and thus
readers too, identify, while the police hunting him down with their dogs
are the enemy other.
The second section graphically describes Joachims sufferings during
his flight through Germany; he is constantly on the run, using false identi-
ties, and suffers from terrible hunger, cold, and sleeplessness, but the com-
radeship he finds when working in the coal mine is a turning point. We see
his gradually awakening love for life and for humanity: he sings for joy even
in the cruel conditions of the mine. His political perceptions have changed,
and when the activist Hille considers violent revolution to cure the injus-
tice of capitalism, Joachims reaction is uncompromising: Mit Sprengen
und Schieen und Gewalt wird nichts besser, glaub mir, damit wird nichts
anders, gar nichts, das kann ich dir sagen. (F, 167; Through explosions
and shooting and violence nothing improves, believe me, that changes
nothing at all, I can assure you of that.) At this point his view is based on
his pragmatic experience of the failure of his action to achieve political
change, but a gradually more mystical, redemptive idea emerges. Burthe
achieves enlightenment through various spiritual experiences. His stay in a
little south German town19 is an epiphany: both the medieval Madonna in
the church and the music of Beethoven played by an amateur quartet speak
to his soul. His visit to his old home shows him how his act has destroyed
his family, but his conviction that there is a purpose in his having been
spared to expiate his deed tempers his growing awareness of guilt. His
encounter with a religious community of social outcasts reinforces the idea
of passive suffering. The climax of these experiences is his period as a gar-
dener in a sanatorium run by the enlightened Professor Lenzberg, who
236
HEATHER VALENCIA

gives him the chance to become purified and whole by allowing him to
escape, nursing him back to health when he is wounded, and acquainting
him with the ministers humanity and philosophical writings. The latters
stoical philosophy becomes his murderers lodestone from now on.
The reader first hears the details of the murder in Joachims confession
to the professor. Joachim was unable to shoot the minister in the back, but
waited until he was face to face with him, thereby forming some kind of
relationship between them. After firing the shot, he ran to cradle the dying
mans head on his lap. The minister himself seemed to regard the deed as a
release, saying Danke (thank you) to his murderer with his dying breath.
This act of confession is a further stage in Joachims redemption, and also
performs the function of emphasizing his innate goodness, preparing the
ground for his elevation to almost saintly status in the final section.
The third part of the novel completes the redemption of the hero, in a
timeless idyll in a North German fishing community. Joachim arrives here
after ten years in America and elsewhere. He now fearlessly uses his own
name, but the community calls him Voss because he takes on responsi-
bility for the farm and fishing boat of a widow whose husband of that name
had fallen into the canal while drunk. Joachim takes on this mans lowly
life, redeeming himself through his self-sacrificing labor for the widow and
son, and through his renunciation of the young girl with whom he falls
passionately in love. Finally, the noble nature of Joachims drowning sym-
bolically redeems the previous Vosss ignoble end. At the end of the novel
the estate manager writes to Professor Lenzburg that he considers Joachim
Burthes debt to society to have been paid in full, both by his life and his
death.
Despite its absorbing plot, authentic portrayal of early years of the
Weimar Republic, and persuasive doctrine of expiation and redemption,
the novel leaves certain political and moral issues unresolved. Though the
initial portrayal of Joachims malaise and his motivation for the political
murder is convincing, it does not go beyond the purely psychological. At
no point does he seem to have any concept of how the death of the minis-
ter will improve the situation in Weimar Germany. The message of the
novel is rather ambivalent: on the one hand, it is clear that the action
against the minister was to be rejected, both from a political point of view
(the point is made that after his death the situation in Germany deterio-
rates), and from a philosophical one: Joachim, our identification figure, in
his enlightened state espouses the philosophy that harm results from vio-
lence, and that only passive suffering is a valid stance. Strangely, however,
the ethical issue of murder is deliberately played down: the revelation that
the minister was grateful to be relieved of his burdensome life turns the
murder almost into an act of mercy. As Rsing rightly points out, Vicki
Baums project is to concentrate not on the political issue but on the
purification and redemption of the hero, and from this perspective the
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
237

murder has a positive purpose, since it leads eventually to the whole, puri-
fied human being (NG, 148). Though Feme begins as a novel of the New
Objectivity that poses complex moral and political questions, Baum blurs
or even bypasses these, conveying a comforting message for the readership.
The novel begins in a realistic contemporary setting but floats off into
a vague, timeless idyll in a Utopian rural society. This was almost unavoid-
able for a concrete reason: the date of the murder in the novel can be taken
to approximate to the date of Rathenaus death in 1922, and the date of
Joachims death can be fairly accurately pinpointed as 1939, since inform-
ation is given of time elapsed at various stages of the narrative. But Feme was
published in 1926. This means that Baum had to imagine a setting of the
future. The unreality of this Germany of the late thirties without Hitler,
the Nuremberg Laws, or the threat of war jars on the postwar reader and
contrasts uneasily with the authentic setting of the novels beginning.
Baum was probably aware of this structural problem and the other short-
comings in the novel, for it is the only one of her major works that she
does not mention in her memoirs.
Baum did discuss stud. chem. Helene Willfer20 in her memoirs with her
customary honesty, judging it to be a work of uneven quality, which, how-
ever, in her opinion captured the sweat, smell, and feeling of the working
atmosphere of impecunious students (Alles, 340). In both parts of the judg-
ment she was accurate. The novel follows the career of Helene, a recently
orphaned and independent-minded doctoral student in chemistry in a
south German university town, who is strongly attracted to her Professor,
Valentin Ambrosius.21 He, however, is obsessed by his passion for his wife,
a violinist, who rejects him. Helene is loved by a medical student, Fritz
Rainer, a sensitive, unhappy young man, who longs to become a musician
and feels himself deeply unsuited to medicine. Helene becomes pregnant by
Fritz, and after repeated unsuccessful attempts to secure an abortion, she
makes a suicide pact with him. At the last moment, Helenes desire to live
overwhelms her and though Fritz dies by his own hand, she escapes. After a
spell in a remand prison, and a court hearing, she is released. Meanwhile
Professor Ambrosius, whose wife has deserted him for another man, has
made an unsuccessful suicide attempt and is left almost blinded.
Helene goes to Munich to start her research again. She gives birth to
her son, whom she names Valentin, and gains her doctorate. Ambrosius
secures a research post for her in a private laboratory in an idyllic country
setting belonging to the elderly Professor Kbellin, who is researching an
anti-aging drug. Helene and her colleague, a Japanese scientist, make the
breakthrough to produce the drug. Helene secures a highly paid and inde-
pendent position with the company that is licensed to produce the drug,
Vitalin, commercially. The novel ends with Helenes chance meeting
with Ambrosius when they are both on holiday in the same hotel on the
Italian Riviera. Helene decides to try the experiment of life with him.
238
HEATHER VALENCIA

It is clear that several of the contemporary issues typical of the New

Objectivity are central to the novel: Helene represents the independent
New Woman on an equal footing with her male colleagues and determined
to succeed despite almost insurmountable obstacles (sich durchsetzen [to
win through] is a recurring motto of hers). Baum deals with the issue of
unmarried motherhood through Helenes difficult experiences. The anti-
abortion Paragraph 218 of the penal code was a controversial issue during
the Weimar Republic, and the section of the novel depicting Helenes visits
to various types of abortionist is dramatic and convincing. That Helene suc-
ceeds in creating the anti-aging medicine is in tune with the optimistic
belief in scientific progress, while the frank allusion to sexual issues such as
lesbianism, venereal disease, uncontrollable male sexual obsession and frus-
tration, and female sexuality are also in the spirit of Weimar.
Some of these aspects of the novel were the focus of Ullsteins carefully
planned advertising campaign for Helene Willfer. The book was finished
two years before its publication in 1928, and Baum suggests that the delay
was because the subject matter was considered too daring at first (Alles,
341), but Lynda King convincingly argues that it was a strategy to establish
the image of Vicki Baum herself in the eyes of her readers, in line with the
Ullstein marketing philosophy (BSD, 82). To this end, articles by Baum
appeared in Ullstein publications between 1927 and 1929 on topics like
research into rejuvenation, modern young people, and the New Woman,
which would establish Baums credentials as an expert on these subjects.
The topical theme and the novels authenticity were stressed in the adver-
tisements for the serialization in the Berliner Illustrierte. In March 1929
the paper also contained an interesting cigarette advertisement showing a
beautiful Helene Willfer posing in a laboratory, having ostensibly
invented a new slimming cigarette. This shows that by 1929 Helene
Willfer was a well-known name and the advertisers were exploiting the
scientific authenticity that people believed the novel to embody.
The main identification figure is Helene: she is hard-working, cour-
ageous and true to herself, tough and yet sensitive, full of motherly affection
for those who need it, but with a sensual nature. Ambrosius describes her
to Yvonne, his wife, as ein Stck ordentliches Schwarzbrot (a slice of
good brown bread), and this quality of wholesomeness contrasts clearly
with the fickle, egotistical, amoral Yvonne.
Her two lovers, Ambrosius and Rainer, are clearly delineated as oppos-
ites. Ambrosius is large and strong, a scientist and practical man, whereas
Rainer is a slight, oversensitive young man, unsuited to the exigencies of a
career in medicine. Helenes feelings for him are essentially motherly,
whereas in Ambrosius she seeks the protective love of the father whom she
has just lost.
The development of these personal relationships is a central thread of
the action. The novel opens with an encounter between Helene and
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
239

Ambrosius on a train journey from Frankfurt to Heidelberg, which intro-

duces the two main characters and reveals important features of the back-
ground situation: the recent death of Helenes father, her impecunious
state, and her feelings for her professor. The contrasts between the couple
are also clearly delineated: their ages, their social positions, wealth, and
lifestyles. Particularly significant is the conversation about their viewpoints
on life, where Helenes statement Ich mu immer etwas haben, auf das
ich schnurgerade hinsteuern kann (I must always have something that I
can aim absolutely straight towards) contrasts with his view: Die Umwege
sind es, die das Leben wertvoll machen (HW, 15; Its the detours that
make life worthwhile). The rest of the novel then follows the detours that
both characters take until they find each other.
Helenes detour into a relationship with Fritz Rainer is indirectly
caused by Ambrosius: at a musical evening at his house, she realizes that he
does not really see her as a desirable woman; at the same time she is
seduced by Rainers music into imagining that she loves him. The develop-
ment of the sexual relationship between them, leading to her pregnancy, is
due mainly to Helenes motherly pity for Rainers unhappiness.
The next significant encounter between Helene and Ambrosius is
another train journey. Both have been in Frankfurt as a result of cata-
clysmic events in their lives: Helene to seek an abortion, Ambrosius to con-
front his wife and her lover. The traumatized state of both characters leads
to a moment of physical closeness, but they revert immediately to their
professional relationship; this further retards their final recognition of their
true feelings, and both characters embark on the suicide attempts that, for
different reasons, do not succeed. It is significant that Helenes escape is
due to a conscious act of will that leads her to rethink her life and accept
her baby, whereas Ambrosius, having described in the witness stand the
efficient method by which a scientist would commit suicide, bungles his
attempt to kill himself with a revolver.
From this point on, Helene is in control of her life, while Ambrosius is
a broken man. His physical near-blindness is mirrored by his continuing
failure to recognize her. He becomes, however, the unconscious instru-
ment of their final union by sending her to Professor Kbellin, which will
lead to her success and indirectly to his own improved health through the
drug Vitalin. When they meet in Italy, he truly sees her for the first time
as she comes out of the sea the Venus symbolism is very clear and
they are finally united. The theme of the Umwege is taken up again by
Ambrosius. After admitting that the detours took him away from where he
should really have been going, he sums up the journey by saying Aber
dann, am Ende wird alles gut, wie im Mrchen. Und man sieht, da die
Umwege doch zurechtgefhrt haben, trotz allem.22 (HW, 304; But in
the end everything has turned out well, like in a fairy tale. And we see that
the detours did lead to the right place in spite of everything.)
240
HEATHER VALENCIA

As in Feme, the central theme of the novel is a journey of self-discovery.

What role do the other themes play and how are they presented and woven
into the action? The treatment of the scientific theme is an excellent exam-
ple of Vicki Baums ability to exploit a topic that was in tune with the
contemporary mood, both to develop the action and to give her work
the topicality and social relevance that was demanded by Ullstein and by
the ideas of the New Objectivity. Their common devotion to chemistry
unites Helene and Ambrosius from the beginning and differentiates them
from their other partners, and it is through chemistry that Helene ulti-
mately finds herself and becomes independent. With the introduction of
the youth-elixir Vitalin, however, the scientific theme enters the realm of
myth and fairy tale.23 Readers see the period of research in Kbellins labo-
ratory principally from the perspective of Helenes little son, and therefore
they too have a childs-eye view of everything that is going on. They hear
Helenes comforting and simplified explanation of her animal experiments
Die Muslein kommen alle in den Musehimmel. Die Muslein mssen
uns helfen, und das tun sie gern (HW, 26364; the little mice all go to
mouse heaven. The little mice have to help us and they like doing it) and of
the juice that comes from the glands to make the medicine. The
reader is thus simultaneously put in the superior position of partnership
with the narrator, understanding more than the child and smiling at his
innocence, and at the same time to some extent infantilized, in that the
simplified explanations give us, like the child, the illusion of understanding
a complex process, but with all the awkward moral issues removed.
Baum reintroduces an adult perspective in Helenes interview with the
directors of the company that will mass-produce the drug. The description
of the drug is peppered with scientific terms that create the impression of
authenticity and give the general reader the illusion of participating in a
genuine scientific discussion. Finally, Ambrosiuss miraculous recovery
through taking Vitalin again belongs to the realm of fairy tale, ensuring
the happy ending of the novel. Through these strategies Baum has har-
nessed the complex issues of scientific development to the needs of her
novel.
On sexual issues, Baums stance is ambiguous. She does not condemn
premarital sex, but she does not take a decisive stand on the issue of
womens freedom to abort an unplanned pregnancy. In a long passage
(HW, 12526), which Nottelmann has analyzed in detail (SE, 1057), the
author characteristically intervenes, addressing the heroine and in so doing
presenting to the reader Helenes insoluble problem with the pregnancy.
This passage reinforces the readers sympathy with the character, preempt-
ing our possible criticism of her actions. It also indirectly implies support
for the legalization of abortion, in that Baum defines Helenes actions as
necessary, but they are only achievable through schmutzige und dro-
hende Umwege (HW, 126; dirty and dangerous detours). However, it is
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
241

not clear whether the perspective here is Helenes or Baums, so the mes-
sage is ambiguous. The negative presentation of the illegal abortionists is
clear: they are stereotyped, reprehensible figures. The good female doc-
tor does not, though, as one might expect, reject the restrictive law that
prevents her from helping Helene. She shows sympathy, but she herself is
morally against abortion: Ich halte es fr unmoralisch, sich einer Verant-
wortung auf diese Weise zu entziehen. . . . Die Hrten des Lebens sind es,
an denen man wchst und stark wird. (HW, 136; I regard it as immoral to
withdraw from a responsibility in this way. . . . it is the difficulties of life
that help one to grow and become strong.) Despite the fact that these
words in fact mirror Helenes own stoical philosophy of life, they do not
prevent her from desperately seeking another abortionist, and it is only the
police raid on the ex-midwifes house following the death of her previous
client that prevents Helene from going through with the backstreet
abortion.
It is not until she is in prison after the death of Rainer that Helene
experiences a renewed passion for life, which coincides with the first move-
ments of her baby and gives her the strength to start again. After this, the
novel unequivocally reinforces the joy of motherhood, even under the
almost impossibly difficult circumstances that Helene suffers before find-
ing her secure post with Professor Kbellin. After this turning point, the
idyllic relationship between Helene and her little boy reinforces the
positive image of motherhood.
Other sexual issues are introduced but similarly blurred. For example,
the frustrated lesbian Gudula Rapp is treated ambivalently by the author:
in one of Baums typical addresses to her character (HW, 168) she arouses
the readers sympathy for this sad, unfulfilled person, who struggles with
poverty, loneliness, and an intractable research topic. Her sexual orienta-
tion is however here defined by the narrative voice as an abseitige und
kranke Neigung (a perverse, sick inclination) (HW, 168). She is simply
written out of the novel, leaving for Berlin where she will find anonymity.
Another problem of sexual morality, the bourgeois norms imposing
sexual abstinence on young people, is touched upon. In a short cameo, the
student Marx, frustrated by a long engagement without sexual fulfillment,
once visits a prostitute and contracts venereal disease. Friedel, his fiance,
learns the truth in a farewell letter written by Helene and forgives him. The
problems of Gudula Rapp and Marx are, on the whole, extraneous to the
main action and no clear stance is taken on these controversial issues of
social morality.
Unclear messages are given on two further moral issues. The first is the
suicide pact. As was the case in Feme with regard to the ethical issue of
murder, so here there is no evidence that either Rainer or Helene has any
moral qualms about their planned suicide. Rainer has just learned that his
father has terminal cancer; his father charges him with carrying on his
242
HEATHER VALENCIA

studies in order to provide for the family, making it clear that he has
bravely rejected the temptation to end his own life immediately, for the
sake of his family. Rainer is very moved by this, and yet soon afterwards he
decides to escape this burden through suicide, adding, presumably, to the
anguish of his dying father and family: neither he nor Helene seems aware
of any moral dilemma here. Similarly, the only allusion to the unborn child
that is being killed is Rainers emotional utterance shortly before the sui-
cide attempt: Es ist ein unbeschreiblich schner Gedanke, da du ein
Kind in dir trgst (HW, 173; It is an indescribably beautiful thought that
you are carrying a child inside you). Neither these two moral issues, nor
any kind of real regret at Rainers death, nor doubts of her own actions in
the matter seem to enter Helenes consciousness in the course of the novel;
this is inconsistent with the conscientious and upright character Baum
portrays.
The final debatable issue in the novel is its ending, where the New
Woman seems in the end to be just another romantic heroine who happily
gives up her hard-won independence for the man she loves. Helene has in
fact always been strongly influenced by male figures: her father, Ambro-
sius, Kbellin, even, for a short time, Rainer. After the turning point in the
prison, however, she gradually gains independence, and her great scientific
success enables her to be absolutely sovereign over her life, as is demon-
strated by her ability to insist on her own terms when negotiating with the
directors of the chemical works. Finally, however, she succumbs to the
sense of protection that Ambrosius gives her, and to his need for her: Du
mut alles lassen und bei mir bleiben. Keine Umwege mehr . . . Du wirst
mir helfen, man mu mir helfen. . . . Ich habe eine groe Arbeit vor. Ich
kann sie ohne dich nicht machen. (HW, 304; You must leave everything
and stay with me. No more detours . . . You will help me, I have to be
helped. . . . I have a great project before me, I cant do it without you).
Though taken aback initially by this apparent request to be his research
assistant, Helene is won over to the experiment when she hears from
him that his great project is not in the field of chemical research but of
life.24 As in Feme, Baum attempts to fuse the treatment of serious social
issues with the conciliatory ending that her readership expected.
In Menschen im Hotel, Baums ability to put her finger on the pulse of
her readership combines with her literary craftsmanship to produce the
most popular of her Ullstein novels.25 The work has a fast-moving plot that
encompasses romance, intrigue, and crime, and an episodic structure remi-
niscent of the techniques of the then burgeoning film industry, which
maintains the momentum of the novel and the involvement of the reader.
The plot focuses on six main characters, who come together during six
days in an elegant hotel in Berlin. This is one of the earliest novels to use a
hotel as the impersonal setting in which a group of strangers can encounter
each other in life-changing ways.26 Some scenes take place outside in the
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
243

city of Berlin, but the majority of the action is in the hotel, which repre-
sents different things for the various people who come into contact with it.
Baum evokes the glitter and bustle of the hotel from the point of view
of its clients and staff, enabling ordinary readers to enter a world normally
closed to them. The omniscient narrator presents the events from the dif-
ferent perspectives of the characters, but in this work the author does not
intervene as obtrusively to guide the reader as in earlier novels, allowing
the characters to speak for themselves. Apart from the narrator, one of the
characters, Dr. Otternschlag, functions as a detached observer of the scene.
He is a physically and emotionally damaged First World War veteran who
sits in the hotel lobby, viewing the comings and goings with a world-weary
cynicism that, in fact, masks his loneliness.
The other characters represent various facets of Weimar society.27 Two
figures embody the decaying and slightly tawdry glamour associated with
Weimar Berlin: Baron von Gaigern, an adventurer and thief, is a dashingly
handsome and fascinating figure, attractive to almost everyone he meets,
from the page boy in the hotel to the beautiful dancer Grusinskaya, who
falls in love with him. A great artist who is past her prime, Grusinskaya is
consumed with anguish over the fading of her popularity. Baum depicts
her despair, followed by her reawakening hope when she and Gaigern
who has come to her room to steal her world-famous pearls unexpect-
edly experience great tenderness together.
In contrast to the fading Grusinskaya, the vibrant Flmmchen is an
engaging representative of the New Woman: she has to make her own way
in life, is honest and realistic, and views her own transactions without illu-
sions: in order to secure a little enjoyment and luxury she has to sell herself
to men like the industrialist Preysing. She does this without compromising
her own inner standards of decency and honesty, refusing to call him du
(the familiar form of you), or indulge what she considers to be his per-
verse fantasies, but conscientiously giving him value for money. She and
Gaigern are similar types, basically self-reliant and optimistic characters
who embrace the modern world (in contrast to Otternschlag, Grusinskaya,
and Preysing, for whom the challenges of modernity are essentially
negative).
Preysing is the director of a small provincial textile business. Pompous
and self-important, he is hated by Kringelein, the character with whom the
reader most closely empathizes. Preysing is essentially a man out of his
depth in the intricacies of modern business, and in the end a pathetic fail-
ure; Baum makes us experience his misery by shifting the perspective to
him before, during, and after his agonizing business meeting. Baum does
intervene to tell us that Preysing is basically ein anstndiger, gutwilliger
und unsicherer Mensch (M, 262; a decent, well-meaning and insecure
person), and she shows him to be a victim of the changing times:
Preysings old-fashioned family firm, representing the solidly bourgeois
244
HEATHER VALENCIA

values of the Empire, which made its fortune in articles like tea towels and
conventional worsted suits, as well as materials for uniforms during the
war, is now being displaced by the demand for modern fashions.
The pivotal figure whose fate impinges on all these characters is the
provincial clerk Kringelein, who worked in Preysings firm for twenty-
seven years. Dying of cancer, he has realized all his assets in order to come
to Berlin to search for real life. Baum carefully constructs this figure and his
circumstances for maximum identification on the part of her public, large
numbers of whom were provincial white-collar workers and lower middle-
class readers. Kringelein is the archetypal little man whose colorless life has
been unremitting drudgery, and who is now making an escape from it.
This creates reader identification from the start, which is intensified when
on several occasions he stands up to Preysing, culminating in an outburst
in which he passionately decries the wrongs done to downtrodden employ-
ees such as himself by bosses like Preysing. His escape into the luxury and
excitement of the hotel and the city of Berlin vicariously satisfies the long-
ings that Ullstein stimulated in its advertising for the novel: Wunschtraum
der meisten Menschen ist es, aus dem eigenen Leben in das eines
Reicheren, Hhergestellten zu fliehen (Most people dream of fleeing
from their own life into the life of someone who is richer and higher in
society).28 Our knowledge of his impending death, which Baum keeps
before our eyes by several episodes of pain and other allusions, ensures our
admiration of his spirit and adds poignancy to his frenzied lust for intense
experience. Finally, the peak of the readers vicarious wish-fulfillment
comes at the end of the novel when Kringelein, rather than the dashing
Gaigern or the affluent Preysing, is successful in love. When Flmmchen
flees to his room after Preysing has murdered Gaigern, Kringelein protects
her and she feels for the first time that she is appreciated for herself: In
Kringeleins Worten entdeckte sie sich zum erstenmal . . . wie einen ver-
grabenen Schatz. (M, 292; In Kringeleins words she discovered herself
for the first time . . . like a buried treasure.)
The main thread of the action is Kringeleins quest; this has striking
similarities with Georg Kaisers 1916 play Von morgens bis mitternachts
(From Morning to Midnight), which is also the story of a little man in
possession of unexpected riches, on a quest for intense experience. Like
Kaisers bank clerk, Kringelein samples various new sensations. As Lynda
King points out the plot is so arranged that he comes in contact with the
representatives of two sides of Berlin and two views of life in Dr. Ottern-
schlag and Baron Gaigern, and he participates in their versions of life in
order to seek fulfillment (BSD, 162). Otternschlags jaded view is that
there is no such thing as real life: Das Eigentliche geschieht immer woan-
ders (M, 49; Real life always happens somewhere else). In the company of
Otternschlag, Kringelein sees the traditional cultural institutions muse-
ums, ballet but with Gaigern he experiences modern Berlin and feels
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
245

alive for the first time. His transformation is symbolized by his purchase,
under Gaigerns influence, of a new wardrobe of expensive clothes. For
Kringeleins experiences with Gaigern, Baum chooses events that exem-
plify the spirit of the modern age and would fascinate the broad readership:
a ride in a fast car, an airplane flight, a boxing match, the erotically charged
atmosphere of the dance. Finally, at a casino, Kringelein wins a large
amount of money that boosts his fast disappearing savings, conveniently
allowing him to plan to take Flmmchen to Paris at the end of the novel.
The new Kringelein who emerges from these experiences is able calmly to
take charge of the situation after Preysings murder of Gaigern, and to
experience with Flmmchen what Gaigern fleetingly had with Grusinskaya:
real affection based on tenderness and respect which for Kringelein is
the real life he was seeking.
The novel has, however, another dimension, which has often been
overlooked. Baum gave the first edition of her novel the subtitle Ein Kol-
portageroman mit Hintergrnden (a trashy novel with enigmas), and
explained in her memoirs that by this label she intended to signal the fact
that she had deliberately used the most hackneyed figures and situations,
which were supposed to be viewed ironically (Alles, 375) but, she
implies, by means of the irony, some deeper meaning is conveyed.29 If the
heart-warming aspects of the novel are examined more closely, it
becomes clear that the life-changing events in the Grand Hotel are all
called into question. Gaigern pays for his great romantic love for Grusin-
skaya with his life: unable to rob his beloved, he tries to steal the money for
his reunion with her in Prague from Preysing, who kills him. Grusinskaya,
whose career has taken an upward turn after her night of love with
Gaigern, phones him; she imagines she is talking to her beloved, but in fact
is speaking passionately to a mute telephone receiver, while his dead body
lies in the hotel. Preysings visit to the hotel to achieve the merger that
would save his business ends with the business in ruins, while he has com-
promised his own strict moral code and is arrested for murder. The out-
come for Flmmchen seems positive, but actually Kringeleins inevitable
death will leave her in virtually the same situation as before. Only
Kringelein has experienced a deeper reality at the end of his life, through
his love for Flmmchen; but even he is not immune from Baums irony.
Though he is the main identification figure, Baum distances the reader
from him: although we empathize with him, together with the hotel staff
we smile at his comic appearance. The reader is amused at the provincial
naivet of his responses to people and events, and even his metamorphosis
into a manly hero at the end of the novel can be seen as tinged with satire.
Most crucially, at the moment of his long-awaited confrontation with
Preysing, his inability to formulate theoretical ideas makes him collapse, as
the narrator comments, into a confusion of Wichtiges und Nebensch-
liches, Wahrheiten und Phantasien, Erkenntnisse und Brotratsch (M, 266;
246
HEATHER VALENCIA

relevant and irrelevant matters, truth and fantasy, insights and office-
gossip). Here Baum avoids developing a trenchant political argument by
rendering the speaker ridiculous.
The attractions of the affluent, racy lifestyle are often shown, through
the perceptions of the characters themselves, to fall short of expectations.
Preysing finds the naked Flmmchen somehow not quite the same as in her
pinup photo. Kringelein complains to Otternschlag that the modern cock-
tail bar is not as thrilling as its popular image, familiar to him from films
and magazines. Otternschlag takes up the example Kringelein gives, that
the bar stools are not as high as he expected, to universalize this principle:
Alles stellt man sich hher vor, bis mans gesehen hat (M, 49; One
always imagines everything to be higher than it is, until one has seen it).
Otternschlag is also an ambiguous figure. Both the too-obvious sym-
bolism of the damaged side of his face and glass eye and the comic rigidity
of his repeated ritual of enquiring in vain whether there is post for him
detract from his tragic status as a damaged war-victim. On the other hand,
it is his nihilistic view of life that brings the novel to a close, as he sits as
usual in the lobby of the hotel watching the revolving door of the hotel,
and of life, constantly turning. But here too Baum ironically calls his view-
point into question by commenting that he was looking at the street with
his glass eye, unable therefore to see that the sun was shining. In the end-
ing, as throughout the novel, Baum communicates with the reader on sev-
eral levels and with multiple perspectives. Menschen im Hotel is artistically
the most sophisticated of her Ullstein products.
In these three novels, we can discern certain common characteristics
that justify Baums inclusion in the category of popular mass literature. She
is a skilful storyteller; her characters are on the whole types, often stereo-
types, easily recognizable to the Weimar reader, but with enough individu-
ality to allow reader identification. She treats complex moral and social
issues of her time, but tends not to develop their implications fully, some-
times using an avoidance strategy, as with Kringeleins tirade, or glossing
over some of the issues to achieve a harmonious resolution, as in Feme or
Helene Willfer. In order to achieve her aim, Baum often too obviously
guides the reader by her authorial comments; Lynda King comments that
telling readers what to think rather than challenging them to think for
themselves is a feature identified with . . . popular literature in general
(BSD, 163). The nature of her characters types of Weimar society
also places Baum in the sphere of the New Objectivity and of the popular
literature of the day.
Ulle, der Zwerg, which appeared in 1924, forms an interesting contrast
to the three later novels.30 Though it shares some of Baums later hall-
marks, it is strikingly different in many respects. The main character is a
dwarf, whose appearance causes shock or distaste among most of his con-
temporaries. The novel consists of five chapters that represent different
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
247

stages in his life, beginning when he is five years old and ending when he is
about to die, in his mid-thirties. Living in a small town, neglected by his
depressed, drunken father, and his sluttish mother, the child Ulle is
shunned by almost everyone. After his fathers death, his mother sells him
to a traveling sideshow, and after years of being exhibited as a freak, he gets
a job as a clown in a circus. A writer, Johannes von Struensee, befriends
him and uses him as the inspiration for a character in his new play. To great
public and critical acclaim, Ulle plays the jester, Biribon, in the production.
Through this experience Ulle is lifted out of his loneliness and meets culti-
vated people who apparently treat him as a friend and equal. His moment
of happiness is brief: he becomes vain and affected, a grotesque parody of
the theatrical personality, and, without his realizing it, is again the butt of
mockery. At the end of the season he is left without a role or any source
of income and his new friends drop him. He goes back to his home town,
and after a fruitless attempt to gain work in his former circus, he finds a
menial job in a cheap sideshow. Promising to return to take up the job, he
goes to revisit his old street. His old house is in disrepair and the one per-
son who had befriended him has gone. At the end of the novel, Ulle,
whose physical deterioration has been advancing since he began working as
an actor, is sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his feet in the gutter
like the five-year-old in the opening scene, inwardly reconciled to his swift-
approaching deliverance from the prison of his life.
The darkness of the theme is reflected in the books motto: Das
Innerste der Welt ist Einsamkeit (The innermost core of the world is
loneliness). Baum conveys the experience of the rejected outsider with
great insight.31 Though the overall narrative perspective is that of the
omniscient narrator, the main focus of the narration is Ulles experience,
and his feelings are described in detail. His sensitivity and intelligence
intensify his loneliness and frustration, as he can see through the evasive or
hypocritical strategies of those around him: when the district nurse
encourages him by saying Waschen mut du dich. Davon wirst du gro
und stark (You must wash yourself. That will make you big and strong),
the childs inner reaction is Ihr lacht mich aus . . . Ihr macht einen Affen
aus mir (U, 42; Youre all making fun of me . . . Youre making a fool of
me). Baum does not simplify or gloss over the issues of social rejection, but
presents them in their complexity: individuals and social institutions are
shown, not as inherently malevolent, but as confused, embarrassed, ignor-
ant, prejudiced, or fearful of the opinions of others. One encounter between
Ulle and a proto-Nazi group of Wandervgel (a German youth movement)
unequivocally points to future developments.
The influence of Thomas Mann is very evident, though not to the
detriment of the novel, for Manns motif of the sensitive social misfit who
at once envies and despises the unthinking blond, blue-eyed integrated
people in society is an appropriate expression of Ulles relationship to
248
HEATHER VALENCIA

normal people. Moreover, this idea of different types in society coincides

with Baums own underlying belief, exemplified in the figure of Ulle, that
our life and fate is somehow predetermined, and that the deciding factor is,
as she describes it at the end of her memoirs: Mut, das Leben zu leben
und das Beste daraus zu machen, komme, was da wolle. (Alles, 473; The
courage to live life and make the best of it, whatever happens).
Before Ulle meets the writer Johannes Struensee, he learns to accept the
loneliness and humiliations of his life with stoical dignity; at the end of the
second chapter he has a revelatory experience; after being rendered uncon-
scious by a blow from the head of the sideshows giant snake, he has a vision
in which all the suffering creatures of the freak show, whispering in a choir,
reveal their kinship to him, culminating in Ulles question: Wie ist mein
Weg, ihr fremden Geschpfe, ihr wissenden Stimmen? (What is my path,
you strange creatures, you wise voices?), and their answer Der Weg ist von
Einsamkeit zu Einsamkeit . . . Es gibt keinen anderen Weg (U, 173; The
path is from loneliness to loneliness. There is no other path).32 This experi-
ence is, however, immediately followed by his meeting with Struensee and
embarking on what can be seen as a detour from his real path.
In this section of the novel Baum analyses the fate and suffering of the
artist. Struensee is closely modeled on Thomas Manns Aschenbach:33 in a
long passage he is described as a master of form and language, whose work
has a cold logical perfection, which, however, is only achieved through the
glhende Qual des Schaffens (U, 17576; the burning torment of cre-
ation). Like Aschenbach he has been suffering from a lack of inspiration
and his latest play is not advancing. When he wanders into the circus and
meets Ulle, a fellow feeling arises between them: the writer also lives with a
glserne Mauer (U, 177; glass wall) between himself and the rest of
humanity. As Ulle becomes more deeply involved with Struensee and his
friends, he is treated as a real human being for the first time; they call him
Herr Moog instead of his normal stage name, Kolibri.
A dual perspective is created: the omniscient narrator focuses at length
on the inner life of Struensee, on his notes on Ulle/Biribon, and on conver-
sations when Ulle is absent, so that the reader sees that Ulle is deceived. Like
Ulle, the artist is trapped in his unchangeable self: he is absolutely unable to
form spontaneous relationships without using the other as raw material.
When the play is finished therefore, the intimate friendship cools; Struensee
has gained what he needed from Ulle, turning him into a fictitious character,
which the real Ulle then plays. His entry ticket into what he sees as real rela-
tionships is, ironically, through playing the role of the lonely dwarf.
When this role is over, he cultivates acceptance by attempting to
assume the persona of the actor, which fails miserably, because for his new
acquaintances Struensees family and friends and the actors Ulle also
fulfils a need. They need him to be different, a tragic figure whom they can
pity and accept, gaining thereby an image of themselves as tolerant, sensitive
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
249

individuals. When he tries to be like them he encounters their ridicule and

even hostility; they resent this pastiche of the actor, with his loud clothes
and raucous camaraderie, which is a grotesque reflection of them-
selves. Ulles disillusionment begins when his joy at experiencing sexual
fulfillment at last is dashed by the realization that he was merely being
exploited by the actress to gratify her appetite for new, extreme experi-
ences, and is complete when he cannot recreate the intimate relationship
with Struensee.
Ulle, der Zwerg is a powerful and uncompromising work of insight and
depth, which, apart from some rather too obvious symbolism and an occa-
sional tendency to the melodramatic, does not exhibit the popular char-
acteristics of the three novels analyzed above. The cover of the Ullstein
edition features a picture of a picturesque gypsy caravan with washing flut-
tering on the line, and the rubric Zwischen Lwenmdchen und der
Riesenschlange erlebt der Clown Ulle Glanz und Elend eines Wanderda-
seins, das von Vicki Baum mit gtiger Zartheit unserem Herzen nahege-
bracht wird (Between the lion-woman and the giant snake, the clown
Ulle experiences the glory and misery of an itinerant existence, which Vicki
Baum, with her gentle tenderness, conveys to our hearts). This attempt to
squeeze the novel into the Ullstein mould represents a distortion of its
powerful theme and somber atmosphere.
Vicki Baums assessment of herself is honest and perceptive: she is a
first-class writer of popular, well-crafted novels. She mirrors the atmosp-
here of Weimar society and writes about topics that were of burning con-
temporary interest at that time. The weaknesses and inconsistencies in her
work stem partly from her desire to reconcile serious writing that deals
meaningfully with social issues with the harmonious ending and lighter
tone that popular literature demands, and partly because the optimistic
outcome reflects her own stoical philosophy of life. As she herself believed,
her range has been underestimated: Ulle der Zwerg and several other
works, such as Zwischenfall in Lehwinckel, 1930 (translated as Results of an
Accident, 1931) and Marion Alive, 1942 (Originally published in English;
German version: Marion lebt, 1942), qualify, even by traditional German
academic criteria, to be considered as serious literature. The works of seri-
ous scholarship by King, Nottelmann, and Rsing indicate that an overdue
reevaluation of her contribution to the culture of the Weimar Republic is
now under way.

Notes
1
Lynda J. King, Best-Sellers by Design: Vicki Baum and the House of Ullstein
(Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1988), 21. Subsequent references to this work are cited
in the text using the abbreviation BSD and the page number.
250
HEATHER VALENCIA

2
Hermann Kesten, preface to Vierundzwanzig neue deutsche Erzhler, ed. Her-
mann Kesten (Berlin: G. Kiepenheuer, 1929), 7, 9, quoted in BSD, 152.
3
All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.
4
Vicki Baum, Es war alles ganz anders: Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, Munich: Lizen-
zausgabe des Deutschen Bcherbundes GmbH & Co. mit Genehmigung des Ver-
lages Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 1987), 89. Subsequent references to this
work are cited in the text using the abbreviation Alles and the page number.
5
Vicki Baum, Frhe Schatten: Das Ende einer Kindheit (Berlin: Erich Rei Verlag,
1914).
6
Vicki Baum, Der Eingang zur Bhne (Berlin: Ullstein, 1920) and Die Tnze der
Ina Raffay: Ein Leben (Berlin: Ullstein, 1921).
7
Vicki Baum, Die anderen Tage (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1922); Die
Welt ohne Snde: Der Roman einer Minute (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt,
1923); Ulle, der Zwerg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1924); Der Weg
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1925).
8
Thomas Mann, mein groer Schutzheiliger, hatte mich fr wrdig befunden! Er
persnlich hatte mir die Tore zur Literatur geffnet! So wenigstens sah ich das
damals (Alles, 337; Thomas Mann, my great guardian angel, had found me wor-
thy! He personally had opened the gates of literature for me. That, at least, is how
I saw it at that time).
9
The novel, translated by Basil Creighton, became famous throughout the
English-speaking world. Baum, Grand Hotel (London: G. Bles, 1930, and Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1931).
10
It has to be said, however, that neither the works that she placed with the
Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, because she saw them as being of higher literary value (see
note 7), nor the later novel The Mustard Seed (1953), which she published initially
under a pseudonym in order to prove herself and rid herself of the Menschen im
Hotel label, achieved any great success.
11
The word Feme is difficult to translate exactly: it can mean a secret, kangaroo
court, or, in its compound form Fememord, a political assassination. The associ-
ated ein Verfemter means an outlawed person. All these aspects of the term are
relevant to the novels theme. Secret Sentence is the title of the English-language
editions published by G. Bles, London and Doubleday, New York, both in 1932.
12
Vicki Baum, Feme (Berlin: Verlag Ullstein, 1926). References to this work are
cited in the text using the abbreviation F and the page number.
13
Hans-Peter Rsing, Die Nationalistischen Geheimbnde in der Literatur der
Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003) 11. Subsequent refer-
ences to this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation NG and the page
number.
14
Martin Sabrow, Die verdrngte Verschwrung: Der Rathenau-Mord und die
deutsche Gegenrevolution (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999), 33, quoted in NG
273, n. 17.
15
It is a reference to the heroic hussars under Ferdinand von Schill, who took it
upon themselves to charge into battle against Napoleon despite the vacillation of
 VICKI BAUM: A FIRST-RATE SECOND-RATE WRITER?
251

the Kaiser. Many of them were executed by the French, and many opponents of
Weimar saw this historical incident as inspirational. Cf. NG, 140.
16
Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues (Berlin: Propylen Verlag, 1929).
The Propylen Press belonged to the House of Ullstein.
17
Askanius turns out to be an empty poseur who manages to escape with a few
minor charges against him, and eventually makes a fine career in government.
18
The subtitle was not used in any edition of the book.
19
The little town incorporates all the clichs of kitsch romanticism; it is medieval
and described as enchanted with the perfume of the linden-trees, church bells,
the smithy, the potter selling his wares on an old handcart that rattles over the
cobblestones, the old woman at the handloom, and various other attributes
(F, 17476).
20
Vicki Baum, stud. chem. Helene Willfer (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 1928). Refer-
ences to this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation HW and the page
number.
21
The name of the town is not mentioned in the novel, but Baum implies in her
memoirs that it is Heidelberg.
22
It is worth noting that whereas he succumbed to the worst of these detours, his
attempt to commit suicide, which had grievous consequences for him, Helene
drew back from this temptation in time, and also avoided the other path, abortion.
23
Nicole Nottelmann shows that various formulae are used in this novel: those of
the fairy tale, the Entwicklungsroman (novel of personal development), the
romance, the scientific novel, and the crime novel. See Nicole Nottelmann, Strate-
gien des Erfolgs: Narratologische Analysen exemplarischer Romane Vicki Baums
(Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2002), 89109. Subsequent references to
this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation SE and the page number.
24
Several contemporary female readers felt that the author had in the end compro-
mised the New Woman for the sake of the romantic happy ending; see, for exam-
ple, Lucie Becher, in the Schsische Volkszeitung, 17 February 1929, and Gabriele
Reuter in the Vossische Zeitung, 17 March 1929.
25
Vicki Baum, Menschen im Hotel (Berlin: Ullstein, 1929). The edition used here is
published by Fackelverlag, Olten, Stuttgart, Salzburg, 1963. Subsequent references
to this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation M and the page number.
For a much more detailed analysis of Menschen im Hotel than is possible here, see
BSD, 154201 and SE, 14095.
26
Several hotel novels predated Menschen im Hotel, notably Arnold Bennetts
Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), and Joseph Roths Hotel Savoy (1924). Vicki Baum
used this genre in two other novels, Hotel Shanghai (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag,
1939) and Hotel Berlin 43 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1944). The genre is of
course a variant of the many works that use the convention of a group of strangers
being thrown together in a particular setting or for a common purpose, such as
Chaucers The Canterbury Tales (1387), Thornton Wilders The Bridge of San Luis
Rey (1927), Stefan Zweigs Schachnovelle (1942), and, more recently, Ann Patch-
etts Bel Canto (2001).
252
HEATHER VALENCIA

27
Lynda J. King points out, however, that the topical theme was not depicted in
a manner in any way especially tied to Germany in 1929 (BSD, 159). This univer-
sality contributed to the huge international success of Menschen im Hotel.
28
Advertisement for Menschen im Hotel in Vossische Zeitung, 7 April 1929.
29
Nottelmanns analysis of the novel discusses in detail the ironical implications of
the subtitle.
30
The edition used here is published by Ullstein in Berlin, no date. References to
this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation U and the page number.
31
There is undoubtedly an autobiographical and cathartic element in her portrayal
of Ulle: Baum alludes in her memoirs to her constant feeling of being an unloved,
isolated, and ugly child, and asserts about the writing of Ulle, der Zwerg: Wenn
ich . . . ein erwachsener Mensch geworden war, so durch dieses Buch. (Alles,
324; If I . . . had become an adult, it was through this book).
32
The language and surrealism of this episode illustrate most clearly the influence
of Expressionism, which is still apparent in this work.
33
Cf. Thomas Mann, Der Tod in Venedig, 1912.
12: Hans Falladas Literary Breakthrough:
Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben and
Kleiner Mann was nun?

Jenny Williams

S IEGFRIED KRACAUER, IN AN ESSAY IN Die neue Rundschau in June 1931,

identified a new type of writer in Germany, one no longer devoted to
absolute values, who considered that the role of a writer was to be a social
and political commentator.1 The writer Hans Fallada, whose Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben2 (Farmers, Functionaries, and Fireworks) had appeared
in March of that year, was just such a writer.
Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben was the novel that established the literary
reputation of Hans Fallada, the nom de plume adopted by Rudolf Ditzen
(18931947). Thanks to the critical acclaim this work received, Ditzen was
in such demand for short stories and reviews of contemporary literature
that by September 1931 he was finally in a position to fulfill a lifelong
ambition to become a full-time writer. Although not a great commercial
success, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben gave Ditzen sufficient financial secu-
rity to enable him to pay off debts arising from activities that had twice
landed him in jail on counts of embezzlement in the 1920s. In terms of
style, themes, and characterization, this novel paved the way for Ditzens
subsequent literary success, notably with Kleiner Mann was nun?
(1932; Little Man What Now? 1996).3 Gnter Caspar, who edited
Falladas works for the Aufbau publishing house from 1964 to 1998,
describes Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben as the best novel written about
small-town life in Germany during the Weimar Republic.4
Rudolf Ditzen was thirty-seven years old when Bauern, Bonzen und
Bomben was published: he had had to wait a long time for his literary
breakthrough.5 Born in Greifswald in 1893, Ditzen, like many of his con-
temporaries, rebelled against the authoritarianism of Wilhelmine Germany,
personified in his eyes by his father, Wilhelm Ditzen, who pursued a highly
successful legal career that culminated in his appointment to the Imperial
Supreme Court in 1909. Ditzens rebellion initially took the form of exces-
sive smoking and drinking as well as writing Expressionist and mildly erotic
poetry. However, following a near-fatal cycling accident in 1909 and a seri-
ous bout of typhus in 1910, his thoughts turned increasingly to suicide.
254
JENNY WILLIAMS

He was fortunate to survive a suicide pact in October 1911 that took the
form of a duel fought over the honor of a young woman and left his close
friend, Hanns Dietrich von Necker, dead. This brought his education to an
abrupt end some eighteen months before he was due to finish secondary
school and he was admitted to Tannenfeld sanatorium in Thringen as a
patient of Dr. Artur Tecklenburg. On his release in September 1913 he
trained as a steward on a nearby estate and spent most of the First World
War working in agriculture. The death of his younger brother on the West-
ern Front in August 1918 caused Ditzen to fall ill, and while undergoing
treatment for a stomach ulcer he became addicted to morphine.
While the 1920s saw Ditzen publish two Expressionist novels Der
junge Goedeschal (Young Goedeschal, 1920) and Anton und Gerda
(1923)6 he spent almost four years of the decade either in clinics being
treated for alcohol and drug addiction or in prison as a result of criminal
activities to feed his addiction. He emerged from Neumnster prison on
10 May 1928, cured of alcoholism and drug addiction, and after a difficult
period of unemployment he found work with a local newspaper. In April
1929 he married Anna Issel, who brought stability into his life and pro-
vided the support he needed to write. It was Ditzens experience in
Neumnster that formed the basis of Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben.
In January 1930 Ernst Rowohlt, who had published Ditzens first two
novels, offered him a job in his publishing house in Berlin. Rowohlt, who
knew of Ditzens plans for a new novel, gave him the afternoons free in
order to write. One month later Ditzen began Bauern, Bonzen und
Bomben; he submitted it in September 1930. Ditzens next novel, Kleiner
Mann was nun? turned Hans Fallada into an international best-selling
author overnight. Both novels are critical responses to contemporary social
and political issues. In Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben Ditzen turns the spot-
light on the malaise at the heart of the Weimar Republic. In Kleiner Mann
was nun? he depicts the effects of the greatest economic crisis Germany
had ever experienced on the lives of ordinary people. Critics claim with
some justification that Falladas novels are a rich source of information
about the attitudes, behavior, and modes of expression of individuals and
groups who otherwise escape the attention of historians.7
Ditzens success was due largely to the accurate, lively, and sympa-
thetic description of the fate of the little man, the petit-bourgeois, in a
time of great social upheaval. It was to be his great misfortune that this lit-
erary success coincided with the rise of National Socialism, which, once it
had seized power, did not countenance criticism.
In April 1933 Ditzen was arrested by the SA (storm troopers) and held
for 10 days as the result of a malicious denunciation. His realisation that
there was no redress for this injustice in the Third Reich precipitated a ner-
vous breakdown, which lasted into the summer and was compounded by
the death of one of his twin daughters shortly after her birth in July. In
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
255

October Ditzen moved with his wife, three-year-old son, and surviving
baby daughter to a smallholding in the remote hamlet of Carwitz near
Feldberg in Mecklenburg, where he hoped to weather the storm of
Nazism. While initially very happy and productive in his rural idyll, Ditzen
soon discovered that the tentacles of the Nazi party machine reached into
every corner of Germany.
His next novel, Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf frit (Once a Jailbird,
1934), which dealt with the rehabilitation of offenders and the problem of
recidivism was not well received by the critics. Then Wir hatten mal ein
Kind (Once We Had a Child, 1934), which drew inspiration from Wil-
helm Raabe and Jean Paul and was a lifelong favourite of the authors, did
not meet with the approval of the authorities on account of its less than
exemplary protagonist. Ditzens attempt to write a veiled critique of Nazi
Germany in Altes Herz geht auf die Reise (Old Heart Goes on a Journey)
resulted in his being declared an unerwnschter Autor (undesirable
author) in 1935, which caused him to have another nervous breakdown.
After that he adopted a number of survival strategies: he wrote childrens
books, light, ahistorical, entertaining fiction, fictionalized memoirs, and
film scripts, as well as translations.
The one novel of merit that Ditzen wrote between 1935 and 1945 was
Wolf unter Wlfen (Wolf among the Wolves, 1937), which marked a return
to the socio-critical approach of Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, Kleiner
Mann was nun? and Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf frit. In it Ditzen
describes the effects of the economic crises of the Weimar Republic on the
lives of Germans both in the cities and on the land. The Nazi literary
authorities read this work as a critique of the Weimar Republic and were
therefore willing to tolerate it.
Ditzens difficulties as an author were compounded by the denuncia-
tions that became a regular feature of life in Carwitz. His alcoholism and
extra-marital affairs also contributed to the breakdown of his marriage,
which ended in divorce in July 1944. A drunken incident in August 1944
resulted in his admission to a psychiatric prison where, as so often before,
he found salvation in writing. The result, Der Trinker (1950; The Drinker,
1989), is one of the most harrowing literary depictions of alcoholism in
any language.
On his release he remarried and took up residence in nearby Feldberg.
When the Soviet army arrived there in the spring of 1945, Ditzen was
appointed mayor. After suffering a complete nervous breakdown in
August, in September he moved with his wife to Berlin. There he was
sought out by Johannes R. Becher, who provided food, clothing, and shel-
ter and encouraged Ditzen to write. Becher, whose youthful rebellion had
taken a similar course to Ditzens before he channelled his energies into
left-wing politics, viewed Ditzen as part of the antifascist, democratic
cultural movement he was trying to foster in the Soviet sector. Under
256
JENNY WILLIAMS

Bechers patronage Ditzen wrote Der Alpdruck (The Nightmare, 1946), a

semi-autobiographical attempt to address the question of German guilt,
and Jeder stirbt fr sich allein (Everyone Dies Alone, 1947), which por-
trays the (largely ineffectual) resistance of two little people to fascism
and is the first anti-fascist novel of the postwar period.
Despite Bechers support, Ditzen was unable to cope with the moun-
tain of personal and artistic problems he faced in postwar East Berlin. He
indulged, and sometimes shared, his wifes addiction to morphine and
died, a physical and emotional wreck, on 5 February 1947.
As far as Ditzen was concerned, his literary career began with Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben. He rejected his first two novels because es nicht
meine Bcher waren, weil ich sie auf Anregung, auf Befehl fast einer
ehrgeizigen Frau geschrieben habe, weil sie mir suggeriert waren, weil ich
sie nicht aus meinem inneren Antrieb geschrieben habe (because they
were not my books, because I wrote them at the behest, almost on the
instructions of an ambitious woman, because they were suggested to me,
because I did not write them from the heart).8 Both these novels have a
very strong autobiographical dimension. Der junge Goedeschal is a self-
absorbed and passionate account of male adolescence, conveyed in breath-
less Expressionist prose; Anton und Gerda, however, while still dealing
with an adolescent protagonist, shows glimpses of the mature Ditzens
narrative style. Indeed, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben marks the culmin-
ation of a development from Expressionist experimentalist to critical real-
ist, a development that can be traced through Falladas published and
unpublished writings from 1920 to 1931.9
Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben depicts small-town life in Germany
towards the end of the 1920s and in the process reveals the cancer at the
heart of the Weimar Republic. This is a society where everything and
everyone has a price; where corruption in the media and the body politic is
rife; where naked self-interest is the motivation behind most characters
actions and self-advancement at the expense of others is their main goal;
where ends justify means and the weakest go to the wall. The first German
republic is portrayed as being constantly undermined by venality, patron-
age, and the non-consent of large sections of the population to what they
contemptuously call the Judenrepublik (Jews Republic) or the rote
Republik (Red Republic). Agents provocateurs are to be found not only
on the political Right, where they incite the farmers to violent protest, but
also on the political Left, where a policeman, acting on behalf of the
regional government, in which the Social Democrats (SPD) have a major-
ity, colludes in the downfall of an SPD mayor who is perceived not to toe
the party line.
The novel is set in the fictional town of Altholm and owes much to
Ditzens experiences in Neumnster.10 The plot revolves around a farmers
demonstration in Altholm und relates the circumstances before, during,
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
257

and after the event. The farmers, who have been adversely affected by the
crisis in agriculture, are unable to pay their taxes, and the authorities react
by seizing and auctioning their livestock, machinery, and property. The
farmers resist the bailiffs by embarking on a campaign of civil disobedience.
Right-wing elements, sympathetic to the farmers and/or opposed to the
Weimar Republic, plant two bombs aimed at members and employees of
the SPD administration.
One of the farmers leaders, Reimers, is imprisoned in Altholm, and
the farmers plan a mass demonstration in the town to celebrate his release.
The SPD regional government wants to ban the march, but the SPD
mayor of Altholm, who has expended much time and energy on cultivating
good relations with the farming community, refuses to implement a ban.
The demonstration is infiltrated by a right-wing agitator, who designs and
carries a provocative flag that attracts the attention of the police. Because
of the incompetence of the police, a melee ensues, resulting in a number of
casualties. The reinforcements sent by the regional government move in,
disperse the farmers gathering, and impound the flag. This incident,
which causes strong reactions across the political spectrum in both the
town and the surrounding countryside, would probably have had no fur-
ther serious consequences, had not a mischievous anonymous letter
appeared in a local newspaper, purporting to come from a local business-
man, in which the fear was expressed that the farming community might
initiate a boycott of Altholm. The leadership of the farmers movement
needs no further encouragement, and a boycott is introduced.
In the court case arising from the disturbances during the demonstra-
tion, the court finds the Chief of Police objectively in the wrong but sub-
jectively in the right and passes extremely lenient sentences on the leaders
of the farmers movement. The SPD mayor is forced by his party to resign
and is sent to be mayor of another town at some distance from Altholm. As
he leaves, the farmers are assembling for a demonstration that will culmi-
nate in their flag being returned to them. This demonstration, too, has
been banned by the regional government, and the various political factions
in Altholm are positioning themselves to exploit the farmers demonstra-
tion for their own electoral advantage.
Stefan Nienhaus ascribes the novels lack of commercial success in
1931 to the fact that the novel is based on groups of characters the
farmers, the journalists, the various political parties and does not have a
clearly identifiable hero.11 A possible candidate for the title of hero, the
larger-than-life SPD mayor Gareis, who has done much good in Altholm,
often stoops to less-than-honest means to achieve his (mostly) laudable
ends. He is, for example, responsible for the sacking of Max Tredup, the
first in a long line of Falladas little men.
Tredup ekes out a miserable existence selling advertising space in a
right-wing newspaper and supplements his wage by addressing envelopes
258
JENNY WILLIAMS

or taking photographs in order to feed, clothe, and house himself, his wife,
and their two children. A stroke of luck enables him to sell some politically
sensitive photographs to Gareis for 1,000 marks, which he then buries in a
remote location near the coast. Through no fault of his own, he is arrested
and held in prison on suspicion of having planted a bomb and is only
released after the intervention of the prison governor. For Tredup the only
consolation in a hostile and unpredictable environment is to be found in
the bosom of his family. As Liersch observed in his review of the first GDR
edition of the novel, the motif of individual happiness in personal relation-
ships as a response to economic and social crises, which became the hall-
mark of Falladas writings in the 1930s, finds its first expression in Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben.12
Tredup does fulfill his dream to become a journalist, but his happiness
is short-lived, thanks to Gareiss intervention. When Tredup subsequently
goes to retrieve the money he has hidden in order to start a new life for
himself and his family in a different place, he is murdered by a mentally
deranged, avaricious farmer; the farmer comments that some people have
no luck at all (363), which could stand as Tredups epitaph.
The owners, editors, and journalists of the four newspapers in Altholm
are portrayed in an almost entirely negative light. One owner, Gebhardt,
who owns one liberal and one right-wing newspaper, is interested only in
profit: Wenn es Geld bringt, darfst du mir and mich verwechseln (It
doesnt matter how you write, as long as you make a profit), says one of his
editors (140). Stuff, editor of the Chronik, writes adverse reports on busi-
nesses that refuse to buy advertising space, and pens reviews of films he
cannot be bothered to watch. Padberg, the editor of the pro-farmer
Nachrichten, not only reports the news but also takes a leading role in
making it.
The farmers are portrayed as nave in insisting on nonviolent protest
while admitting the agitator and bomber Georg Henning into their ranks.
They are also shown to be easily led and politically disorganized. Only two
farmers are described in any detail: Banz, a loner who hides explosives in
his barn and thinks nothing of murdering Tredup and burying his body,
and Reimers, who is identified in Tredups photograph as resisting the
bailiffs. Reimers refuses to go on the run, is arrested and imprisoned, and
is subsequently the focus of the farmers demonstration. Fallada shows him
to be an astute political thinker as well as a sly old fox who leads the police
a merry dance when they come to arrest him.
Most contemporary critics viewed Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben in a
positive light. Adjectives such as lebenswahr/lebensnah (true to life) and
packend/spannend (gripping) recur in the collection of almost four
hundred reviews in the Hans Fallada Archive. The main point of disagree-
ment among the critics lies in their assessment of the narrative perspective
in the novel. Max Krell, in his readers report on the manuscript, expressed
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
259

the view that despite the narrators attempt at objectivity his sympathies lie
with the farmers.13 Rowohlts pre-launch publicity described Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben as a portrayal of the farmers movement against the
state.14 The choice of title further reinforced the view that the farmers
formed the main focus of the novel. Until recently, the received wisdom in
Fallada research has been that this title was imposed by the Klnische Illus-
trierte, the newspaper that serialized the novel prior to publication. How-
ever, Wilkes has convincingly shown this view to be mistaken by referring
to Ditzens private correspondence, for Ditzen mentions the title Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben in a letter to his sister Elisabeth on 17 July 1930
almost three months before Rowohlt opened negotiations with the Klnis-
che Illustrierte.15
The critic Carl Misch, in the influential Vossische Zeitung, concluded
that Fallada was on the side of the farmers. Peter Suhrkamp, Felix
Riemkasten, and Siegfried Kracauer decided that the narrator had no clear
point of view, although Kracauer suspected that he was sympathetic to the
farmers. Kurt Tucholsky viewed the novel as a depiction of the failure of
German democracy, for which in Tucholskys view the Social
Democrats were to blame. The majority of the right-wing press praised
Falladas sympathetic portrayal of the farmers and, by implication, his cri-
tique of the Weimar Republic. Most left-wing publications criticized the
sympathetic portrayal of the farmers and interpreted the novel as an attack
on the SPD and the Republic; the Communist Linkskurve even went so far
as to title their review A Fascist Farmers Novel.
Heinz Dietrich Kenter, who collaborated with Fallada on a stage ver-
sion of the novel, wrote in Die Literatur in July 1931 that Bauern, Bonzen
und Bomben was primarily about the current state of democracy in Ger-
many. This was the view of Fallada himself, who wrote in a letter to his
brother-in-law, Fritz Bechert, on 26 November 1930, that his aim was to
evoke the reaction poor Germany and not poor farmers. In a letter to
his mother on 29 March 1931 he rejected the idea that he had written a
novel about farmers or that he had adopted an extremely right-wing point
of view.
The question of narrative perspective has been central to the reception
of Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben since its first publication. National Social-
ism regarded the novel as an indictment of the Weimar Republic and, in its
portrayal of the farmers movement, prophetic of the coming revolution.
Reviewers of the 1939 edition, published by Vier Falken Verlag, described
the novel as an important historical document from a terrible period in
German history that had been successfully overcome. Falladas preface to
this edition concludes with the sentence: Wie ein Mahnmal erscheint mir heute
dieses Buch, Mahnmal und Warnung: hier sind wir hindurchgegangen
wir drfen es nie vergessen! (Nowadays this book seems to me like a memo-
rial, a memorial and a warning: this is what we have been through we
260
JENNY WILLIAMS

must never forget it.)16 This is the kind of ambiguity to which non-Nazi
writers who remained in Germany were reduced. Post-1945 this sentence
can read as a veiled attack on the Nazi regime; in the context of 1939 it
could be read as an endorsement of it.
The issue of narrative perspective surfaced in North American Fallada
scholarship in 1990, when Shookman accused Fallada not only of being on
the side of the farmers but also of being anti-Semitic and trying to under-
mine the Weimar Republic in his novel.17 These claims have subsequently
been refuted by Thomas Bredohl, who draws on Falladas correspondence
and other published and unpublished writings of the period, Reinhard
K. Zachau, who bases his argument on an analysis of the novel itself, and
Henry Ashby Turner, who places the novel in its contemporary context and
insists on the distinction between literature and history.18 As Bauern, Bonzen
und Bomben has not been translated into English, discussion of the novel in
the English-speaking world has been restricted to German Studies circles.
The differing interpretations of the narrative perspective in Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben are due to a large extent to the new style of writing
that Ditzen evolved in this novel. After the intensely personal nature of his
first two novels, he was determined that der Autor diesmal im Buch ganz
fehlen [sollte]. Mit keinem Wort sollte er andeuten, was er selbst ber das
Erzhlte dachte, das war Sache des Lesers (the author should be com-
pletely absent in this book. In no way should he indicate his views on the
story: that should be left to the reader).19 An immediate result of this
approach is the preponderance of direct speech: Heidrun Bauer has calcu-
lated that direct speech accounts for some two-thirds of the novel.20 It was
a major achievement to produce credible dialogue for such a wide range of
characters: farmers, journalists, politicians, businessmen, and lawyers. Fal-
lada also succeeds in introducing variation into the speech of individual
characters. Gareis speaks differently to his friend Stein than he does to the
farmers; the businessmen express themselves differently when sober and
when drunk. Furthermore, as Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel has shown, the
rhetoric of the politicians in the novel is entirely authentic.21 Fallada later
confessed how difficult he found it to construct and sustain the dialogue.22
However, this technique attracted such critical acclaim that he continued
to use it in his next two novels, Kleiner Mann was nun? and Wer einmal
aus dem Blechnapf frit.
Nils Arnman has drawn attention to the similarities between Falladas
narrative style and that of Ernest Hemingway.23 Fallada published an essay
on Hemingway in Die Literatur in September 1931, in which he expressed
his admiration for a narrative style in which the narrator is almost com-
pletely absent, there is no description of the emotional dimension of the
story, and the narration is reduced to a minimum. Zachau has remarked
that Fallada could be writing about his own style in this essay as well as
Hemingways.24
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
261

In Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben Fallada not only develops a new

narrative style but also introduces a theme that will become increasingly
important in his fiction: human decency (Anstndigkeit). In Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben the adjective anstndig (decent) is most frequently
used by and in relation to Tredup. Tredup believes that it is decent of Gareis
to stand by Frerksen, the Chief of Police, whose incompetence led to the
disturbances arising from the farmers demonstration. Stuff takes a much
more cynical view and, prophetically, warns Tredup not to rely on Gareis.
When Stuff, Tredups immediate superior, is asked for his opinion of
Tredup, Stuff replies that he is quite a decent fellow as long as he has money
in his pocket (63). However, when Tredup obtains a considerable sum of
money for the photographs he took of the farmers civil disobedience, his
behavior is anything but decent, for he hides it with the intention of using
it at some future date to escape his domestic responsibilities. Gareis inno-
cently tells Elise Tredup about the 1,000 marks her husband has received,
which leads to tensions in their relationship. Not only is Tredups marriage
in difficulties, he is falsely put in prison (where he is terrorized by a mentally
deranged prison guard), and as a result his job is under threat. In an attempt
to establish a more secure existence, Tredup resorts to political mischief-
making. He formulates an anonymous letter to the editor of the Chronik
newspaper, which precipitates the farmers boycott of Altholm in return
Stuff promises to put in a good word for him with the newspapers new
owner. Then the prospect of 100 marks induces him to obtain, by less than
honest means, a letter that can be published as an announcement in the
paper, demanding the dismissal of Gareis and Frerksen. Next Tredup joins
the SPD, and Gareis promises to help him find employment if he can
acquire proof that the official circulation figures for the Chronik are incor-
rect. This Tredup does by stealing the information from the safe in the edi-
tors office. He finally blackmails Stuff in order to get the editors job. As
Tredup becomes more involved in political wheeling and dealing in
Altholm, he begins to drink heavily, visits the towns prostitutes, and even
beats his wife. All pretence of decency is gradually abandoned.
In a letter to his friend Johannes Kagelmacher on 13 April 1930,
Ditzen writes that among the wide range of characters in the novel there are
decent people who sometimes do not act in a decent manner and rogues
who are sometimes forced to act decently. In the novel the narrator explores
the concept of decency in a conversation between Tredup und Frulein
Heinze, an equally poorly paid and exploited employee of the Chronik
(19394). Frulein Heinze, who is forced by financial necessity to supple-
ment her income towards the end of every month by prostitution, contrasts
her behavior, which she still considers decent, with that of Tredup, who
with his drinking, whoring, and political skullduggery can no longer be
considered decent. She asserts that it is possible to be down on your luck
and do things youre ashamed of and still be a decent human being.
262
JENNY WILLIAMS

Finally, Elise accuses Tredup of not being decent: of betraying the

farmers by selling his photographs, and of betraying his wife and children
by squandering his money on women and drink. His response is to beat
her up (226). It is not until Tredup loses his job as editor that he finds his
way back into his family; with Elises help and support he begins to plan a
new life in another town. This potential happy end comes to nothing, for
Tredup is murdered before he can retrieve his money.
In a passage that anticipates Lmmchens conversation with Jachmann
towards the end of Kleiner Mann was nun? as they wait for Pinneberg
to return by train from Berlin, Stuff waits with Elise for Tredup to return
by train from Stolpe. In both passages the women refer to their absent
partners as Junge (boy) and contrast their weakness and vulnerability
with the strength and success of men like Jachmann and Stuff. Lmmchen
rejects Jachmanns advances and Kleiner Mann was nun? ends with the
Pinnebergs retreating from a hostile and cruel world into their happy fam-
ily idyll. In Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben there is no happy ending. Instead,
Stuff invites Elise to move to Stolpe with the children and work as his
housekeeper. Geoff Wilkes sees Stuffs decision to abandon the corruption
of political life in Altholm and direct his energies to the private sphere as an
indication of Falladas interest in personal values as a response to the social
and economic crises of the period.25
In a letter to his parents on 2 March 1930, two weeks after he had
started work on Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, Ditzen declared that the
main difference between this and his previous novels was the complete
absence of an autobiographical dimension. While this holds true for the
plot and narrative style, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben has one autobio-
graphical dimension that is to be found in all the novels that Fallada wrote
during the 1930s: some of the names of characters and places are drawn
from the circle of the Ditzens family and friends. Frerksen (the Chief of
Police) and Blcker (a journalist) are the names of Ditzens brothers-in-
law, Soldin (a policeman), that of a close family friend. Geier (a town coun-
cillor) recalls Ditzens friend Hans Joachim Geyer.26 The SPD Party
Secretary, Nothmann, bears the name of Ditzens landlord at the time he
was writing Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben. The Tredups, like the Ditzens,
live in Calvinstrasse. In Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben Fallada also recycles
names from previous works, a practice which he would continue through-
out his writing career. The name Tredup, for example, appears in both
Die groe Liebe and Der Apparat der Liebe (1924/25).27
The subject matter of Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben was of burning
interest when the pre-launch serialization began in the Klnische Illustri-
erte towards the end of November 1930. That year had seen a further
erosion of democracy in Germany, when President Hindenburg installed
Heinrich Brning as chancellor in March. Brning, who found himself at
the head of a government that did not command a parliamentary majority,
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
263

relied on emergency decrees to secure the passage of legislation. The elec-

tion on 14 September 1930 saw the SPD share of the vote decline by 5.3%,
a downward trend that was set to continue for the following two and a half
years. The NSDAP (National Socialist Party), on the other hand, increased
its share of the vote by 15.7%: the farmers vote was a significant factor in
this increase. The NSDAP had successfully turned the farmers grievances,
so vividly described in Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, to the partys electoral
advantage. With Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben Fallada presented his cre-
dentials as a social commentator and established his reputation as a writer
who was not afraid to tackle controversial issues.
Stylistically, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben marked a new stage in the
development of Fallada as a writer. Influenced by authors such as Heming-
way and by the New Sobriety movement, Fallada shook off the Expres-
sionist subjectivity of his first two novels and here forged a style that
brought him much critical acclaim, a style that he went on to perfect in the
best-selling Kleiner Mann was nun? the following year.
The pre-launch serialization of Kleiner Mann was nun? in the
Vossische Zeitung in the spring of 1932 was hailed by the editor as the most
successful since Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front.28 When the
novel appeared in the shops on 18 June, it soon became clear that it was
going to be a bestseller. By the end of August, 14,000 copies had been
sold, ten newspapers had bought the serialization rights, and seven foreign
publishers had acquired the translation rights. By December, sales had
reached 40,000 and Kleiner Mann was nun? had topped the bestseller
lists in bookshops all over Germany. Hermann Hesse and Carl Zuckmayer
both nominated it their favorite book of the year.
The success of Kleiner Mann was nun? can be attributed to a num-
ber of factors.29 The novels major themes were ones with which readers in
crisis-torn Germany could identify in 1932: the love story of Johannes and
Emma (Lmmchen or little lamb) Pinneberg, their unplanned preg-
nancy and marriage, their ongoing housing problems, the birth of their
first child, the constant threat of unemployment, and the couples determi-
nation to maintain standards of decency and humanity even in the face of
long-term unemployment. In addition to these universal themes, Ditzens
closely observed descriptions of everyday situations add to the realism of
the novel: when Pinneberg and Lmmchen visit a gynaecologist to enquire
about contraception rather belatedly as it turns out Pinneberg uses
the nonexistent and faintly incongruous term Pessoirs instead of Pes-
sare to refer to pessaries (7); Lmmchens first attempts to cook her hus-
bands dinner end in failure (5051; 5657); Herr Lehmanns secretary
enjoys her victory on the telephone over Dr Kussnicks secretary, whom
she clearly regards as her inferior (8687).
Furthermore, the narrators attitude to his characters, which is in turn
sympathetic, indulgent, and ironic, engages the readers interest. The narrators
264
JENNY WILLIAMS

attitude is most clearly in evidence in the chapter headings, which take the
form of a commentary on the narration to come. The heading to the second
chapter provides a good example of the narrators approach: Mutter
Mrschel Herr Mrschel Karl Mrschel. Pinneberg gert in die
Mrschelei (Mother Mrschel Mr. Mrschel Karl Mrschel.
Pinneberg enters Mrschelland). This is the chapter where the petty bour-
geois Pinneberg meets his proletarian in-laws and is shocked and
embarrassed by their working-class habits. By adding the suffix ei to the
surname, the narrator conjures up fairy-tale and Romantic associations that
stand in stark contrast to the reality he is about to describe.
Falladas use of dialogue to carry the plot, which he first demonstrated
in Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, is further developed in Kleiner Mann
was nun? The scene depicted in Mandels department store, where the
salesman Pinneberg attempts to sell an evening suit to a man accompanied
by his wife, mother, and sister marks a high point of this stylistic device.
After the four characters and Pinneberg have been introduced (9596), the
action is carried entirely by direct speech for thirty-nine exchanges before a
short sentence informing the reader of Pinnebergs thoughts. Another four-
teen instances of direct speech follow before a description of the customers
attitudes marks a return to a more conventional pattern of discourse.
A major factor in the success of Kleiner Mann was nun? was
undoubtedly Falladas answer to the question what now? in the title. In a
letter to Herr Benda on 3 November 1932 he wrote: die Lsung, die Erl-
sung kann nur im Privaten liegen. Im Falle Pinneberg ist es Lmmchen . . .
(the solution, indeed salvation, can only be found in the private sphere. In
Pinnebergs case, this means Lmmchen . . .). The highly idealized figure of
Lmmchen, whom more than one reviewer described as a Madonna, is the
real heroine of the novel. It is her patience, diligence, determination, and
devotion to her husband and son that keep the Pinneberg family together.
Looking back over the writing of this novel, Ditzen wrote: Vielleicht wollte
ich einmal ganz im Anfang einen Arbeitslosenroman schreiben, aber
dann ist dies Buch ganz allmhlich und unmerklich Zeugnis fr eine Frau
geworden (Perhaps in the beginning I may have intended to write a novel
about the unemployed, but gradually and imperceptibly this book became a
testament to a woman).30 The woman in question was Ditzens first wife,
Anna, to whom he felt a deep debt of gratitude. Indeed the authors own
marriage, the birth of his son, and his personal experience of unemployment
played a major role in the genesis of Kleiner Mann was nun? The happy
ending, to which the figure of Lmmchen is crucial, obviously made a major
contribution to the popularity of the novel.
The importance attached to decency in Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben is
developed further in Kleiner Mann was nun? While Tredup gradually
abandons decency as he is overwhelmed by forces outside his control, Pin-
neberg clings to decency as a bulwark against the same forces. Even when
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
265

he is unemployed and living illegally on an allotment on the outskirts of

Berlin, Pinneberg does not join the other allotment dwellers on their wood-
stealing expeditions into the forest. Unlike Tredup, Pinneberg manages to
find the answer to what now? in the bosom of his family. In his replies to
readers letters, Ditzen repeatedly emphasized the importance of decency in
private and public life: was wir brauchen und wozu wir kommen werden,
das ist ber alle Parteien und Ideen weg eine Front der Anstndigen
im Lande, eine Front der Menschen, die menschlich denken (What we
need and what we will eventually achieve is above and beyond all parties
and philosophies a front of decent people, a front of human beings
who think in a humane way).31 In its celebration of the triumph of decency
and the power of human love to overcome the problems facing little men
in Germany in 1932, Kleiner Mann was nun? marks a high point in
Ditzens work.32 After 1932 the value of decency becomes increasingly dif-
ficult to uphold, and the private idyll that constitutes the happy ending of
Kleiner Mann was nun? proves increasingly fragile. By 1944, in Der
Trinker, there is no decency to be found, and no happy ending either.
Despite the success of Kleiner Mann was nun? Ditzen remained
unconvinced of the novels literary merit. In a letter to Peter Zingler at
Rowohlt on 9 July 1932 he expressed his view that Bauern, Bonzen und
Bomben was a much better novel. Writing to his friend Johannes Kagel-
macher in October 1932 he described Kleiner Mann was nun? as ein
schwcheres Buch von mir (one of my weaker books). In subsequent
years he became increasingly irritated by the adulation accorded den
waschlappigen Pinneberg, der nur etwas durch seine Frau ist (that wimp
Pinneberg, who only achieves anything because of his wife).33
Putnams bought the English translation rights to Kleiner Mann
was nun? in 1932, and the novel was published in London in March 1933
to critical acclaim. The prestigious Times Literary Supplement wrote on 11
May 1933 of the authors insight and sympathy that combined to pro-
duce a formidable picture.
The first sign that the success of the novel was set to cross the Atlantic
came in April 1933, when the Book of the Month club nominated it as their
choice for June. Ditzens American publishers, Simon and Schuster, had
obtained permission from the author to undertake a number of cuts that
they considered necessary to make the novel acceptable to an American
readership. The most important effect of these cuts was dramatically to
reduce the socio-critical dimension of the novel and, as a consequence,
emphasize the love story. In the process they also excised any reference to
intimate body parts and functions.34 In this context Zachau has drawn
attention to what he perceives as a major difference between American and
European cultures: while European culture tends to see the individual
primarily as a social being who acts in a specific social and historical context,
American culture privileges the great individual who acts and succeeds alone.
266
JENNY WILLIAMS

According to Zachau, American readers were particularly attracted to Kleiner

Mann was nun? because the authors response to the question in the title
was not social or political in nature but rather individual and private.35
The American publishers clearly knew their readers well, for the Simon
and Schuster translation which, incidentally, remained the only transla-
tion available in North America until the new and complete Libris transla-
tion appeared in 1996 sold some 60,000 copies in the first three weeks
and received rave reviews. The New York Times described it as an import-
ant human document, and critics across the states added their superla-
tives, often comparing it to All Quiet on the Western Front.36
When Universal Studios decided to film the novel, the producer, Carl
Laemmle, declared that the question of WHAT NOW? is the WORLDS
DAILY PROBLEM, a problem that men can only hope to overcome by a
courage born of great faith in the hearts of women.37 It was only after the
premiere of the film, starring Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Mont-
gomery, on 31 May 1934, when Universal sent Ditzen some still pho-
tographs, that the author received an inkling of the fate of his novel in
America. Ditzen described the stills as einfach zum Kotzen (sickening)
and expressed his dismay that there was nicht ein Bild, das auch nur eine
Idee von der sozialen Lage der Arbeitslosen gbe (not a single picture
that gives any idea of the social situation of unemployed people).38
In the short space of two and a half years, from January 1930 to June
1932, Ditzen went from being a literary unknown earning 250 marks a
month as a clerk in a publishing house to a bestselling author whose
monthly income averaged more than 1,000 marks. The two novels that
appeared in these years secured his literary breakthrough: Bauern, Bonzen
und Bomben brought his work to the attention of the critics, while Kleiner
Mann was nun? made Hans Fallada a household name.

Notes

The author wishes to express her gratitude to Ms. Erika Becker of the Hans Fallada
Archive, Carwitz, for her assistance in the preparation of this essay.
1
Siegfried Kracauer, ber den Schriftsteller, Die neue Rundschau 42, no. 6
(1931): 86062.
2
The edition cited in this essay is Hans Fallada, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben
(Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1964). All page numbers refer to this edition.
3
Hans Fallada, Kleiner Mann was nun? (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1932); In English,
Little Man What Now? trans. Susan Bennett (London: Libris, 1996).
4
Gnter Caspar, Nachwort in Hans Fallada, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben
(Berlin: Aufbau, 1964), 61976; here, 675.
5
The following biographical survey is based on Jenny Williams, More Lives Than
One: A Biography of Hans Fallada (London: Libris, 1998). See also Werner Liersch,
 HANS FALLADAS LITERARY BREAKTHROUGH
267

Hans Fallada: Sein groes kleines Leben (Hildesheim: Claasen, 1993); Hans Fal-
lada: Sein Leben in Bildern und Briefen, ed. Gunnar Mller-Waldeck and Roland
Ulrich, with a foreword by Uli Ditzen (Berlin: Aufbau, 1997).
6
Hans Fallada, Das Frhwerk (Berlin: Aufbau, 1993), 2 vols.; vol. 1, Die Romane.
7
See particularly Henry Ashby Turner, Fallada for Historians, German Studies
Review 26, no. 3 (2003): 47792.
8
Hans Fallada, Wie ich Schriftsteller wurde, in Lieschens Sieg und andere Erzh-
lungen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1980), 189230; here, 195.
9
Roland Ulrich, Gefngnis als sthetischer Erfahrungsraum bei Fallada, in Hans
Fallada: Beitrge zu Leben und Werk, ed. Gunnar Mller-Waldeck and Roland
Ulrich (Rostock: Hinstorff, 1995), 13040.
10
For a detailed discussion of the relationship between fact and fiction in Bauern,
Bonzen und Bomben, see Martin Sadek, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben: Realitt und
Roman, in Hans Fallada: Werk und Wirkung, ed. Rudolf Wolff (Bonn: Bouvier,
1983); Tom Crepon and Marianne Dwars, An der Schwale liegt (kein) Mrchen
(Neumnster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag, 1993); Michelle Le Bars, Die Landvolkbewe-
gung in Schleswig-Holstein: Geschichte und Literatur, in Gunnar Mller-Waldeck
and Roland Ulrich, Hans Fallada: Beitrge zu Leben und Werk, 6799.
11
Stefan Nienhaus, Was heit und wie wird man ein volkstmlicher Autor? ber-
legungen zur Unterhaltungsliteratur in der ersten Hlfte des 20. Jahrhunderts am
Beispiel Hans Falladas, Hans Fallada Jahrbuch 4, ed. Patricia Fritsch-Lange and
Erika Becker (Neubrandenburg: federchen Verlag, 2003), 15570. In a letter to his
parents on 13 July 1930 Ditzen himself expressed the fear that the novel might
have too many characters.
12
Werner Liersch, Die dritte Dimension: Hans Fallada: Bauern, Bonzen und
Bomben, Neue Deutsche Literatur 7 (1965): 16772. For a detailed discussion of
this motif, see also Geoff Wilkes, Hans Falladas Crisis Novels, 19311947 (Bern:
Peter Lang, 2002).
13
Letter from Max Krell to Ernst Rowohlt, 18 July 1930. All the letters cited in
this essay are to be found in the Hans Fallada Archive, Carwitz, Mecklenburg.
14
Letter accompanying promotional materials, 12 May 1931. This and the reviews
discussed below are all to be found in the Hans Fallada Archive.
15
Geoff Wilkes, The Title of Hans Falladas Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, Jour-
nal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 88
(1997): 9799.
16
Hans Fallada, Bauern Bonzen und Bomben (Berlin: Vier Falken Verlag, 1939).
17
Ellis Shookman, Making History in Hans Falladas Bauern, Bonzen und
Bomben: Schleswig-Holstein, Nazism and the Landvolkbewegung, German Studies
Review 13, no. 3 (1990): 46180.
18
Thomas Bredohl, Some Thoughts on the Political Opinions of Hans Fallada: A
Response to Ellis Shookman, German Studies Review 15, no. 3 (1992): 52545;
Reinhard K. Zachau, Neue Angriffe auf Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, in Hans
Fallada Jahrbuch 1, ed. Rainer Ortner and Gunnar Mller-Waldeck (Neubranden-
burg: federchen Verlag, 1995) 7994; Henry Ashby Turner, Fallada for Historians.
268
JENNY WILLIAMS

19
Hans Fallada, Heute bei uns zu Haus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981), 23.
20
Heidrun Bauer, Zur Funktion der Gesprche in den Romanen Hans Falladas,
diss., University of Vienna, 1971.
21
Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel, Hans Falladas Roman Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben:
Zum Genretypus und zum Erzhlmodell, in Gunnar Mller-Waldeck and Roland
Ulrich, Hans Fallada: Beitrge zu Leben und Werk, 4566.
22
Hans Fallada, Wie ich Schriftsteller wurde, 2089.
23
Nils Arnman, Die Funktion der Kinder in den Texten Hans Falladas, in Gun-
nar Mller-Waldeck and Roland Ulrich, Hans Fallada: Beitrge zu Leben und Werk,
15571.
24
Reinhard K. Zachau, Wohnrume in A Farewell to Arms und Kleiner Mann
was nun? in Patricia Fritsch-Lange and Erika Becker, Hans Fallada Jahrbuch 4,
5766; here, 59.
25
Geoff Wilkes, Hans Falladas Crisis Novels, 19311947, 3637.
26
For an account of Geyers life and friendship with Ditzen, see Hannes Lamp,
Fallada unter Wlfen (Friedland: Verlag Druckerei Steffen, 2002), 18, 2224,
2629, 3942, 11617.
27
Hans Fallada, Die groe Liebe, in Das Frhwerk (Berlin: Aufbau, 1993), 2 vols.,
2: 11374; Hans Fallada, Der Apparat der Liebe, in Das Frhwerk 2:175280.
28
Letter from Monty Jacobs to Hans Fallada, 24 June 1932.
29
The edition cited in this essay is Hans Fallada, Kleiner Mann was nun? (Rein-
bek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978). All page numbers refer to this edition. For a
more detailed discussion of its success, see Jenny Williams, Some Thoughts on the
Success of Hans Falladas Kleiner Mann was nun? German Life and Letters 40,
no. 4 (1987): 30618.
30
Letter to Herr Hnich, 17 October 1932.
31
Letter to Dr. Zellner, 27 November 1932.
32
For a detailed discussion of the role of personal values in Falladas work, see
Wilkes, Hans Falladas Crisis Novels, 19311947.
33
Letter to Dr. Gawronski, 6 April 1936.
34
For a more detailed discussion of the American translation, see Jenny Williams,
Hans Fallada in englischer bersetzung: Zu Problemen der literarischen bertra-
gung, in Dokumentation: Referate und Reden gehalten anllich der Grndung
der Hans-Fallada-Gesellschaft e.V. am 21. Juli 1991 (Feldberg: Fallada-Archiv,
1991), 3850.
35
Reinhard K. Zachau, Lmmchen als Vamp: Der Hollywood-Film Little Man,
What Now? in Hans Fallada Jahrbuch 3, ed. Patricia Fritsch and Roland Ulrich
(Neubrandenburg: federchen Verlag, 2000), 24763.
36
For an account of the novels reception in the United States, see Thomas Peter,
Hans Falladas Romane in den USA, 19301990 (Ume: Ume University, 2003).
37
Cited in Zachau, Lmmchen als Vamp, 254.
38
Letter to Ernst Rowohlt, 27 July 1934.
Contributors

PAUL BISHOP is professor of German at the University of Glasgow, where he

teaches German language, German literature, and comparative literature.
His publications include books and articles on Weimar classicism, analytical
psychology, and intellectual history, as well as Jung in Contexts: A Reader
(1999) and A Companion to Goethes Faust: Parts I and II (2001).
HELEN CHAMBERS is professor of German at the University of St Andrews,
Scotland GB. She has published widely on nineteenth and early twentieth-
century German and Austrian narrative and reportage, especially on
Theodor Fontane, Joseph Roth, and Gabriele Tergit. Her books include
The Changing Image of Theodor Fontane (Camden House, 1997) revised
and translated as Theodor Fontane im Spiegel der Kritik (Knigshausen and
Neumann, 2003). She is editor of Co-existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth
in Retrospect (Ariadne, 1991).
ROLAND DOLLINGER is associate professor of German at Sarah Lawrence
College. He is the author of Totalitt und Totalitarismus im Exilwerk
Dblins (1994) and co-editor of A Companion to the Works of Alfred Dblin
(2004) and Philosophia Naturalis (1996), in addition to having authored
articles on contemporary German literature. He also gives lectures on
German-Jewish history and culture for the New York Council of the
Humanities.
KARIN V. GUNNEMANN is assistant professor of German literature at Agnes
Scott College, Georgia. She is the author of Heinrich Manns Novels and
Essays: The Artist as Political Educator (Camden House, 2002). She is cur-
rently doing research on the perceptions of Germany expressed in the
works of German exile writers in Hollywood during the 1940s.
KARL S. GUTHKE is Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture at
Harvard University, Corresponding Fellow of the British Institute of Ger-
manic Studies, and a member of Sidney Sussex and Magdalene Colleges at
Cambridge University. His publications include Schillers Dramen (2nd
expanded edition, 2005); Trails in No-Mans Land; Last Words; The Gen-
der of Death; Epitaph Culture in the West (2003; Sprechende Steine, 2006);
Die Erfindung der Welt: Globalitt und Grenzen in der Kulturgeschichte
der Literatur (2005); and Das deutsche Brgerliche Trauerspiel (6th revised
edition, 2006).
270
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

KARL LEYDECKER is Reader in German and Head of the School of European

Culture and Languages at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England.
Until 2005 he was Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Reli-
gions, and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Stirling in
Scotland. In 2001 he spent a semester as visiting professor at the University
of California at Davis. His main areas of research and publication include:
divorce in German literature from 1780 to 1933; German drama and social
history 18901933; Expressionism; Ernst Toller; Hermann Sudermann;
the history of German-English literary translation.
DAVID MIDGLEY is University Reader in German Literature and Culture,
and Fellow of St. Johns College, Cambridge. He has published widely on
German authors of the period 18901945, and his most recent book,
Writing Weimar: Critical Realism in German Literature, 19181933
(2000), is a broad-based study of the literature of the Weimar Republic in
relation to its social and cultural context.
BRIAN MURDOCH is professor of German at the University of Stirling, Scot-
land, and has published extensively on medieval German and comparative
literature. In the modern field he specializes in literature and the world
wars and has published articles on a number of the Weimar pacifist writers.
On Remarque he has produced in addition to numerous articles a mono-
graph on and an edition and new translation of Im Westen nichts Neues. He
has recently completed a full-scale study of Remarques novels.
FIONA SUTTON works in international relations for the city government of
Leeds in the UK, with particular responsibility for managing projects with
partner cities in Germany and the USA. Her Ph.D. research at the Univer-
sity of Nottingham, completed in 2002, focused on models of modernity
in selected novels of the late Weimar Republic.
HEATHER VALENCIA, formerly lecturer in German, is now an Honorary
Research Fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Her main research
interests are German Jewish writers and modern Yiddish literature. Her pub-
lications include articles on the Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever and on Yid-
dish writers in Weimar Germany and London. She is the author of the book
Else Lasker-Schler und Abraham Nochem Stenzel: Eine unbekannte Freund-
schaft (1995) and co-author of the book Sprachinseln: Jiddische Publizistik in
London, Wilna und Berlin 18801930 (1999). Her English translation of
Esther Singer Kreitmans novel Diamonds is to be published in 2006. She is
currently working on Yiddish women writers after the Holocaust.
JENNY WILLIAMS is associate professor and Head of the School of Applied
Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University, Ireland. She
has written widely on Hans Fallada and on translation. She published the
first biography of Hans Fallada in English, More Lives Than One (1998),
 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
271

which appeared in German in 2002 as Mehr Leben als eins. She also co-edited
Die Provinz im Leben und Werk von Hans Fallada (2005). In the field of
Translation Studies she co-authored The Map: A Guide to Doing Research
in Translation Studies (2002) and has translated The Fishermen Sleep by
Sabine Lange (2005).
ROGER WOODS is professor of German at the University of Nottingham
(UK). His current research interests are the conservative revolution in the
Weimar Republic, East German intellectuals before and after unification, and
autobiography in twentieth-century Germany. Recent publications include
Nation ohne Selbstbewutsein: Von der Konservativen Revolution zur Neuen
Rechten (2001). Professor Woods has just completed a full-length study of
the German New Right: The Fractured Mind: The New Right in Germany as
Culture and Politics.
Index
abortion, 93, 19597, 207, 23741,
251
Adler, Alfred, 92
Adolphus, Gustavus, 217
advertising, 11, 39, 40, 113, 114, 195,
199, 205, 207, 224, 230, 238,
244, 257, 258
Aeschylus, works by: The Persians, 62
Alexander, Duke Karl, 64, 65, 67
Altenberg, Peter, 1023, 109, 110,
111, 123
Alter, Reinhard, 42
Altner, Renate, 209
America, 8, 76, 85, 88, 97, 114, 173,
179, 216, 230, 231, 236, 266
Ankum, Katharina von, 209
anti-Semitism, 8, 39, 63, 64, 66, 77,
87, 90, 91, 106, 117
Antkowiak, Anton, 164, 166
Arbeiter- und Soldatenrte, 3, 26, 155,
157
architecture, 9, 12, 52, 117, 205
army, 2, 3, 4, 23, 30, 37, 62, 73, 104,
131, 143, 145, 149, 150, 151,
153, 154, 185, 212, 255
Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, 122
Arnman, Nils, 260, 268
Aschheim, Steven E., 58
assassination, 6, 52, 90, 232, 250
assimilation of Jews, 63, 66, 81, 96
authoritarian personality, 20
avant-garde, 11, 31, 61, 66, 211, 212,
213
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 52
Bachmann, Holger, 15
Baeck, Leo, 92
Balzac, Honor de, 19, 34
Bance, Alan, 15, 17, 60, 166
Barker, Christine, 164, 167
Barrymore, John, 231
Barrymore, Lionel, 231
Bars, Michelle Le, 267
Bathrick, David, 81, 227
Batz, Thorsten, 164
Bauer, Heidrun, 260, 268
Bauhaus, 12
Baum, Vicki, 6, 11, 13, 14, 17,
22952
Baum, Vicki, works by: Die anderen
Tage, 250; Der Eingang zur Bhne,
230, 250; Es war alles ganz anders:
Erinnerungen, 231, 232, 237, 238,
245, 248, 250, 252; Feme, 6,
23237, 240, 242, 243, 246, 250;
Frhe Schatten: Das Ende einer
Kindheit, 230, 250; Hotel Berlin
43, 251; Hotel Shanghai, 251;
Marion Alive, 249; Menschen im
Hotel, 231, 232, 24246, 250, 251,
252; The Mustard Seed, 250;
stud.chem. Helene Willfer, 232,
23742, 246, 251; Die Tnze der
Ina Raffay: Ein Leben, 23031,
250; Ulle, der Zwerg, 232, 24649,
250, 252; Der Weg, 231, 250; Die
Welt ohne Snde, 250; Zwischenfall
in Lehwinckel, 249
Baumann, Michael, 191
Baumer, Franz, 164
Baumgartner, Hans Michael, 60
Bauschinger, Sigrid, 59
274
INDEX
Bavaria, 3, 28, 49, 70, 73, 74, 76, 82,
170
Bavarian Republic, 1, 3
Bayerdrfer, Hans-Peter, 97
Becher, Johannes R., 25556
Becher, Lucie, 251
Bechert, Fritz, 259
Bechtolsheim, Barbara von, 164
Becker, Erika, 266, 267, 268
Becker, Sabina, 16, 208
Beer-Hall Putsch, 7, 30, 56, 74, 105
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 51, 235
Benjamin, Walter, 50, 59, 60, 103,
115, 123, 13637, 140, 203, 206,
22122, 226
Benjamin, Walter, works by: Krise des
Romans, 226; Das Kunstwerk im
Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit, 203, 209;
Theorien des deutschen
Faschismus, 136, 140
Benn, Gottfried, 119
Bennett, Arnold, works by: Grand
Babylon Hotel, 251
Bergengruen, Werner, 17
Berghahn, V. R., 208, 209
Berlin, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15,
16, 17, 22, 30, 39, 47, 49, 72, 77,
86, 95, 10124, 140, 168, 169,
193209, 211, 212, 216, 219, 221,
222, 223, 226, 231, 24144, 254,
255, 256, 262, 265
Berndt, Wolfgang, 81
Bertaux, Flix, 29, 34, 36, 39, 42
Bertaux, Pierre, 42
Best, Werner, 134, 139
Betz, Albrecht, 83
Beutner, Eduard, 97
Bienert, Michael, 108, 119, 121, 122
Binding, Rudolf, works by: Aus dem
Kriege, 147
Bismarck, Otto von, 23
Boccioni, Umberto, 212
Bode, Ingrid, 225, 226
Bhme, Jakob, 82
Bll, Heinrich, 161
Bll, Heinrich, works by: Wanderer
kommst du nach Spa . . ., 161
bookclubs, 12, 16, 63, 169
Brne, Ludwig, 71
Bornebusch, Herbert, 164
Bostock, J. Knight, 164, 165
Brecht, Bertolt, 10, 12, 33, 72, 73,
78, 81, 98, 116, 183, 211, 216,
225
Brecht, Bertolt, works by: Trommeln
in der Nacht, 10, 98
Bredel, Willi, 17
Bredohl, Thomas, 260, 267
Breloer, Heinrich, 42
Brenner, Michael, 66, 81
Brentano, Bernard von, 106, 124
Briand, Aristide, 3637, 42
Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, 208
Broch, Hermann, 73, 82
Brockmann, Stephen, 15, 16
Broich, Ulrich, 159, 165, 168
Bronnen, Arnolt, 52
Bronsen, David, 105, 121, 122
Brckner, Egon, 82, 83
Brning, Heinrich, 9, 262
Brning, Jens, 195, 207, 208, 209
Buber, Martin, 82, 89
Buchholz, Horst, 174
Bchner, Georg, 112, 123
Buck-Morss, Susan, 60
Buddha, 50, 65
Buddhism, 50
Bullivant, Keith, 15, 17
cabaret, 9, 11, 16, 52, 118, 163
Calles, Plutarco Elas, 178, 185
Campbell, Ian, 168
capitalism, 21, 29, 30, 31, 36, 40, 71,
74, 76, 83, 191, 216, 235
Carossa, Hans, works by: Rumnisches
Tagebuch, 147
Carow, Erich, 200201, 203
Caruso, Enrico, 121
Caspar, Gnter, 253, 266
Catholic Church, 18789
censorship, 25, 37, 68
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 66
Chambers, John Whiteclay, 167
Chaucer, Geoffrey, works by: The
Canterbury Tales, 251

Clason, Synnve, 82
Cohen, Shaye J. D., 83
colonialism, 171, 219
colonies, 4, 21, 23
colonization, 187, 218
commodification, 203
communism, 136
Communist Party, 2, 39, 75, 222
Communists, 5, 8, 27, 49, 75, 156,
198, 209, 212
Conrad, Robert C., 59
Conservative Revolution, 13, 52,
12540, 271
Cook, Peter, 163
Cook, Scott, 191
Corkhill, Alan, 97
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Count, 36
Crawford, Joan, 231
Creighton, Basil, 250
Crepon, Tom, 267
Curtius, Ernst Robert, 9
Dada, 10
Dahrendorf, Malte, 58
Dawes plan, 7, 33
Delabar, Walter, 16
democracy, 39, 1942, 54, 55, 61,
126, 137, 259, 262
Denlinger, Ardon, 226
design, 9, 12
Detken, Anke, 226
Deveson, Richard, 15
Daz, Porfirio, 178, 183, 185
dictatorship, 9, 2931, 34, 3941, 71,
75, 185
Dierks, Margarete, 209
Dietschreit, Frank, 81, 82, 83
Dimendberg, Edward, 15, 43, 44, 122
Ditzen, Anna, 254, 264
Ditzen, Rudolf. See Fallada, Hans
Ditzen, Uli, 267
Dix, Otto, 12, 16
Dblin, Alfred, 19, 37, 68, 73, 80,
109, 21127
Dblin, Alfred, works by: Der Bau
des epischen Werks, 21617, 225;
Berge Meere und Giganten, 21820,
226; Berlin Alexanderplatz, 11, 13,
INDEX
275
68, 211, 212, 215, 216, 22124,
226, 227; Die drei Sprnge des
Wang-Lun, 66, 215, 216; Die
Ermordung einer Butterblume,
21415; Der Geist des
naturalistischen Zeitalters, 220,
226; Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht
nimmt ein Ende, 211; Das Ich ber
der Natur, 22021; Jagende Rosse,
214; Manas, 221, 222; Modern,
214; November 1918, 211; An
Romanautoren und ihre Kritiker,
(Berlin Program,) 21314, 225;
Der schwarze Vorhang, 214; Die
Tnzerin und der Leib, 215;
Unser Dasein, 22021, 226;
Wadzeks Kampf mit der
Dampfturbine, 21516;
Wallenstein, 21718, 225
Dolbin, Ninon, 56
Dolchstolegende, 4, 149, 150
Dollinger, Roland, 82, 227
Donahue, Neil H., 15
Dos Passos, John, 224, 227
Dos Passos, John, works by:
Manhattan Transfer, 224
Doubleday, Nelson, 231
Dove, Richard, 15, 166
Dllo, Thomas, 123
Duytschaever, Joris, 227
Dwars, Marianne, 267
Eberle, Matthias, 16
Ebert, Friedrich, 2, 3, 104
economic crisis, 89, 39, 205, 254
Edict of Nantes, 41
Edschmid, Kasimir, 17
Eeden, Frederik van, 59
Eggebrecht, Axel, 222, 226
Eggert, Hartmut, 225, 226
Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von,
51
Einstein, Albert, 39
Eisner, Kurt, 3, 26, 27, 49
Eksteins, Modris, 130, 138, 139, 167
elections, 3, 5, 8, 9, 38, 68, 141, 183,
263
emancipation of women, 13, 197
276
INDEX
Englert, Josef, 52, 57, 60
epic writing, 12, 211, 21617, 222
Evans, Richard J., 16
Expressionism, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 20,
26, 45, 46, 72, 87, 105, 219, 229,
252, 253, 254, 256, 263
Fhnders, Walter, 17
Fallada, Hans, 6, 25368
Fallada, Hans, works by: Der
Alpdruck, 256; Altes Herz geht auf
die Reise, 255; Anton und Gerda,
254, 256; Der Apparat der Liebe,
262, 268; Bauern, Bomben und
Bonzen, 6, 25368; Die groe
Liebe, 262, 268; Jeder stirbt fr
sich allein, 256; Der junge
Goedeschal, 254, 256; Kleiner
Mann was nun?, 25355, 260,
26366, 268; Der Trinker, 255,
265; Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf
frit, 255, 260; Wie ich
Schriftsteller wurde, 267, 268;
Wir hatten mal ein Kind, 255; Wolf
unter Wlfen, 255
fascism, 21, 33, 49, 52, 57, 76, 87,
91, 136, 137, 203, 206, 256
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 220
Ferdinand II, 217
Feuchtwanger, Lion, 12, 14, 6183,
95, 99, 201, 209, 232
Feuchtwanger, Lion, works by: Erfolg,
7177, 82, 83, 201, 209; Exil, 71,
82; Die Geschwister Oppermann, 71,
81; Die hliche Herzogin, 63,
6971, 72, 81; Heinrich Heines
Fragment: Der Rabbi von
Bacherach, 61; Jefta und seine
Tochter, 81; Jud Sss, 62, 6371,
72, 7980, 81, 82; Die Jdin von
Toledo, 81; Der jdische Krieg,
7780, 83; Kalkutta, 4. Mai, 81;
Die Konstellation der Literatur,
73; Die Kriegsgefangenen, 62;
Moskau 1937: Ein Reisebericht fr
meine Freunde, 83; Nationalismus
und Judentum, 79; PEP: J. L.
Wetcheeks amerikanisches Liederbuch,
83; Die Petroleuminsel, 81; Der
Roman von heute ist international,
73; Die Shne, 77; Der Tag wird
kommen, 77, 80; Thomas Wendt,
62, 68, 81; Der tnerne Gott, 62;
Vasantasena, 62, 66; Versuch einer
Selbstbiographie, 65; Vom Sinn
und Unsinn des historischen
Romans, 81; Warren Hastings, 62,
81
Feuchtwanger, Marta, 62, 81
feuilleton, 11, 14, 10124, 19399,
206, 209
film, 911, 15, 37, 65, 76, 77, 86,
114, 116, 15859, 162, 165, 167,
169, 174, 176, 193, 202, 203, 206,
231, 242, 246, 255, 258, 266, 268
Finnan, Carmel, 17
Firda, Richard Arthur, 164, 165
First World War, 1, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20,
21, 24, 26, 28, 40, 45, 46, 47, 48,
53, 56, 61, 62, 66, 68, 69, 73, 74,
87, 89, 90, 96, 104, 115, 117,
12540, 14168, 142, 146, 149,
154, 198, 206, 212, 216, 218,
219, 223, 243, 254
Fischer, Samuel, 86
Flake, Otto, 216
Flake, Otto, works by: Die Stadt des
Hirns, 216
flaneur, 110, 112, 123
Fleier, Marieluise, 17
Flgge, Matthias, 209
Fohrmann, J., 227
Ford, Henry, 230
Fotheringham, John, 166
France, 4, 19, 20, 23, 29, 36, 37, 39,
41, 42, 46, 101, 104, 154, 156,
212, 220
Frank, Bruno, 80
Franzos, Karl Emil, 66
Freedmann, Ralph, 59
Freikorps, 3, 4, 6, 27, 157
French revolution, 19, 28
Freud, Sigmund, 69
Frey, Alexander Moritz, works by: Die
Pflasterksten, 151, 160, 161, 166,
168

Frisby, David, 122
Fritsch-Lange, Patricia, 267, 268
Fussell, Paul, 138
Ganghofer, Ludwig, 72
Garbo, Greta, 231
Garrin, Stephen H., 99
Gay, Peter, 1, 14
Geheeb, Reinhold, 60
Genno, Charles N., 164, 167
George, Stefan, 51
Geppert, Hans Vilmar, 218, 225
Geyer, Hans Joachim, 262, 268
Giddens, Anthony, 201, 209
Gill, Anton, 3, 6, 9, 14, 15
Gilman, Sander, 81
Glaeser, Ernst, works by: Jahrgang
1902, 150, 154, 160, 161, 168
Glaser, Hermann, 167
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 20, 48,
51, 55, 57, 60, 126, 233
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, works
by: West-stlicher Divan, 48
Gollbach, Michael, 138, 139, 140,
164
Golenau, Arnold Friedrich Vieth von.
See Renn, Ludwig
Goltschnigg, Dietmar, 108, 122, 124
Gordimer, Nadine, 120, 124
Gray, Ronald, 56, 60
Great Depression, 8, 72, 197
Greiffenhagen, Martin, 137
Grenville, Anthony, 15, 166
Grimm, Gunter E., 97
Grimm, Reinhold, 59, 225
Gropius, Walter, 12
Grosz, Georg, 12, 16, 31
Grbel, Paula, 109
Grndgens, Gustav, 231
Gnther, A. E., 13536, 139
Guthke, Karl S., 13, 190, 191
Habsburgs, 41, 69, 70, 101, 103, 104,
106
Hackert, Fritz, 121
Hahn, Michael, 16
Hall, Fred, 168
Hamilton, Nigel, 44
INDEX
277
Hammerschmidt, Jrg, 14
Handel, Georg Frideric, works by:
Rodelinde, 52
Harlan, Veit, 65
Hartmann, Horst, 209
Hasenclever, Walter, works by: Der
Sohn, 10, 97
Hauff, Wilhelm, works by: Jud S,
64
Haupt, Jrgen, 43
Heartfield, John, 11
Heidegger, Martin, 5253, 60, 96
Heidegger, Martin, works by: Sein und
Zeit, 5253, 60, 96
Heine, Heinrich, 62, 71, 81, 89, 102,
109, 116, 121
Heine, Heinrich, works by: Lorelei,
117; Reisebriefe, 102
Held, David, 42
Hemingway, Ernest, 165, 260, 263
Hengemann, Werner, works by: Das
steinerne Berlin, 119
Hepp, Michael, 98
Herf, Jeffrey, 60, 138
Hermand, Jost, 12, 15, 16, 59
Herodotus, 102
Herzog, Werner, films by: Jeder fr
sich und Gott gegen alle, 86
Hesse, Hermann, 1, 10, 13, 4560,
85, 263
Hesse, Hermann, works by: Demian,
13, 4750, 58, 59, 60; Im
Frhling 1915, 45; Gebet, 50;
Das Glasperlenspiel, 5657, 60;
Herbstabend im fnften
Kriegsjahr, 45; Im vierten
Kriegsjahr, 45; Klingsors letzter
Sommer, 50; Krankheit, 50;
Krisis, 51; Media in vita, 50; Die
Morgenlandfahrt, 56; Narzi und
Goldmund, 56; November 1914,
45; O Freunde, nicht diese Tne,
46; Den Pazifisten, 46; Peter
Camenzind, 47; Rohalde, 58;
Siddhartha, 49, 50, 51, 59; Der
Steppenwolf, 5156, 59, 60, 68;
Zarathustras Wiederkehr, 46, 50
Hesse, Johannes, 47
278
INDEX
Hesse, Kurt, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140
Hesse, Kurt, works by: Der Feldherr
Psychologos, 134, 139, 140
Hessel, Franz, 204, 209
Heyl, Bettina, 16
Hiller, Kurt, 26
Hindenburg, Paul von, 2, 9, 56, 104,
149, 166, 262
Hindenburg, Paul von, works by: Aus
meinem Leben, 166
Hirschmann, Elise, 194
historical novel, 12, 16, 25, 41,
6183, 142, 152, 162
Hitler, Adolf, 4, 7, 8, 9, 21, 30, 32,
38, 39, 40, 41, 56, 57, 71, 74, 79,
87, 104, 105, 126, 141, 151, 156,
157, 163, 199, 206, 207, 237
Hitler Youth, 157
Hoffmann, Johannes, 3
Hofmann, Michael, 119, 121, 122,
123
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 86
Holborn, Hajo, 43
Hlderlin, Friedrich, 51
Holocaust, 120
Hsia, Adrian, 58
Huch, Ricarda, 92
Huch, Rudolf, 129, 139
Huston, John, films by: The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre, 169
Huyssen, Andreas, 227
Ihering, Herbert, 80
Impressionism, 111
inflation, 45, 6, 7, 14, 30, 31, 43,
63, 73, 205
Isenberg, Noah, 81
Issel, Anna. See Ditzen, Anna
Jaeger, Stefan, 81
Jacobs, Monty, 268
Jacobs, Wilhelm G., 60
Jacobsohn, Siegfried, 62, 80
Jhner, Harald, 227
Jahnn, Hans Henny, 17
Jay, Martin, 15, 43, 44, 122
jazz, 10, 52, 54
Jean Paul, 255
Jens, Inge, 224
Jews, 4, 6, 8, 22, 23, 39, 57, 6183,
86, 8890, 9498, 1017, 120,
122, 194, 212, 218, 230, 256
Joeris, Christa, 98
Johannsen, Ernst, 161, 168
Johannsen, Ernst, works by:
Fronterinnerungen eines Pferdes,
161, 168; Vier von der Infanterie,
159, 160, 161, 168
Jones, Geraint Vaughan, 99
journalism, 14, 15, 17, 10124, 125,
19599, 200, 201, 206, 208
Joyce, James, 50, 82, 224, 227
Joyce, James, works by: Ulysses, 223
judicial system, 23, 38, 73, 76, 82
judiciary, 7, 196, 198, 207, 208
Jung, C. G., 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58,
59, 92
Jnger, Ernst, 13, 52, 12540, 147,
163, 164, 168
Jnger, Ernst, works by: Das
abenteuerliche Herz, 133, 139; Der
Arbeiter, 126; Auf den
Marmorklippen, 126; Feuer und
Blut, 126, 139; Der Friede, 126;
Grten und Straen, 126; In
Stahlgewittern, 126, 127, 128, 130,
133, 138, 139, 147, 163; Der
Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, 126, 132,
134, 139; Krieg und Krieger, 126,
136, 139; Sturm, 126, 12932, 139;
Das Wldchen 125, 126
Jung-Neugeboren, Hilde, 59
justice, 7, 19, 24, 26, 27, 30, 33, 35,
37, 38, 40, 41, 61, 76, 91, 93,
9496, 99, 196, 198
Kaech, Ren, 99
Kaes, Anton, 15, 43, 44, 122
Kafka, Franz, 17, 63, 200
Kaiser, Georg, 10, 19, 219, 244
Kaiser, Georg, works by: Gas I, 10;
Gas II, 10; Die Koralle, 10; Von
morgens bis mitternachts, 244
Kagelmacher, Johannes, 261, 265
Kapp Putsch, 5, 7, 28
Karlstetter, Klaus, 97

Karlweis, Marta, 86, 97
Karrenbrock, Helga, 17
Kstner, Erich, 17, 232
Kstner, Erich, works by: Fabian, 16
Keller, Otto, 223, 227
Kellogg-Briand declaration, 8, 135
Kenter, Heinz Dietrich, 259
Kerbs, Diethart, 16
Kernyi, Karl, 59
Kesten, Hermann, 107, 229, 232, 250
Keun, Irmgard, 17
Keyserling, Hermann Graf, 52, 59, 92
Keyserling, Hermann Graf, works by:
Das Ehe-Buch, 92, 99
Kiaulehn, Walter, 200201
Kierkegaard, Sren, 53
King, Lynda, 238, 244, 246, 249, 252
Kisch, Egon Erwin, 103, 109, 123
Klages, Ludwig, 52, 60
Klein, Holger, 164, 165
Kleinschmidt, Erich, 224, 225
Kloiber, Harald, 165
Kniesche, Thomas W., 15, 16
Kocka, Jrgen, 140
Koebner, Thomas, 168
Koester, Rudolf, 97, 99
Kollwitz, Kthe, 39
Konzett, Matthias, 14, 59
Kpke, Wulf, 81, 82, 83, 227
Kppen, Edlef, 161
Kppen, Edlef, works by:
Heeresbericht, 128, 146, 167
Korrodi, Eduard, 58
Koszyk, Kurt, 208
Kracauer, Siegfried, 103, 124, 253,
259, 266
Kraus, Karl, 1023
Krell, Max, 258, 267
Kreutzer, Leo, 224
Krings, Hermann, 60
Kubin, Alfred, 131, 139
Kubin, Alfred, picture by: Der Krieg,
131
Kuhn, Heribert, 58, 59, 60
Kuxdorf, Manfred, 167
Laemmle, Carl, 266
Lamb, Stephen, 15, 166
INDEX
279
Lamp, Hannes, 268
Landauer, Gustav, 1, 3, 68
Landscheidt, Martina, 98
Lang, Fritz, films by: Metropolis, 10,
15
Lang, Josef, 47, 48
Laqueur, Walter, 15
Lareau, Alan, 16
Larsen, Egon, 195, 208
Lasker-Schler, Else, works by:
Hebrische Balladen, 66
Last, Rex, 164
League of Nations, 8
legal system, 14, 93, 95, 195
Lenau, Nikolaus, 51
Lengauer, Hubert, 103, 121
Lert, Richard, 230
Levesque, Paul, 66, 81, 82
Leydecker, Karl, 13, 98
Liebknecht, Karl, 2, 3, 47, 49
Liersch, Werner, 258, 266, 267
Linder, Ann P., 164, 168
Lindner, Martin, 16
Littlejohn, Fiona, 208
Littlejohns, Richard, 166
Lns, Hermann, 147, 165
Lorm, Hieronymous, 103
Ludendorff, Erich von, 2, 7, 105
Lujn, Rosa Elena, 174
Luxemburg, Rosa, 2, 3, 47, 49
Mahrholz, Werner, 166
Mann, Heinrich, 1, 14, 1944, 68, 80,
95, 99, 200
Mann, Heinrich, works by: Das
Bekenntnis zum bernationalen,
40; Dichtkunst und Politik, 37,
43; Diktatur der Vernunft, 30,
43; Dresdner Rede, 29; Eugnie
oder die Brgerzeit, 34, 35; Geist
und Tat, 20, 26, 42; Die
Gttinnen, 62; Die groe Sache, 34,
35; Der Hass: Deutsche
Zeitgeschichte, 40, 44; Die Jugend
des Knigs Henri Quatre, 4142,
44; Kaiserreich und Revolution,
2728; Die kleine Stadt, 19, 42, 44;
Kobes, 21, 3133; Letzte
280
INDEX
Warnung, 37, 43; Macht und
Mensch, 2728, 43; Mutter Marie,
34, 35; Der Untertan, 2026, 27,
38, 42, 43; Die Vollendung des
Knigs Henri Quatre, 41; Voltaire-
Goethe, 20; Wir whlen, 38;
Zola, 20, 36
Mann, Thomas, 10, 17, 20, 26, 42,
43, 47, 49, 51, 58, 59, 68, 85, 86,
9091, 92, 97, 136, 231, 232, 247,
248, 250
Mann, Thomas, works by:
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen,
43, 90, 98; Joseph tetralogy, 49; Der
Tod in Venedig, 252; Der
Zauberberg, 17, 51, 68
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 213,
219, 224
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, works by:
Mafarka, 21213, 215
marriage, 13, 9194, 96, 98, 99,
107
Marut, Ret. See Traven, B.
Marx, Karl, 75
Marxism, 33, 73, 75, 76
Masaryk, Jan, 36
mass media, 200, 2023
Matijevich, Elke, 16
Matthias, Josef Ben, 77
Matthias, Josef Ben, works by: The
Jewish War, 77
Mayer, Dieter, 225
Melis, Urban van, 16
Meskimmon, Marsha, 208
Mexican Revolution, 177
Michels, Volker, 58, 59, 60
Mickey Mouse, 2023
Midgley, David, 13, 16, 226,
227
Milestone, Lewis, films by: All Quiet
on the Western Front, 158
Miller, Henry, 50
Minden, Michael, 15
Misch, Carl, 259
Mitchell, Breon, 227
Mockel, Eva-Maria, 195, 208
modernism, 50, 60, 61, 81, 111, 138,
171, 205, 208, 211, 217, 224
modernity, 11, 15, 17, 33, 5153, 60,
7071, 74, 76, 110, 120, 201, 203,
209, 227, 243
modernization, 70, 127, 128, 138,
196200, 209
Modick, Klaus, 82, 83
Mohler, Arnim, 139
Molo, Walter von, 168
Molt, Emil, 49, 57, 59
Monakow, Constantin von, 96
montage, 11, 13, 73, 22324, 227
Montgomery, Douglass, 266
Mosse, George, 130, 138, 139, 140
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 52, 55,
57
Muehlon, Johann Wilhelm, 4950
Mhsam, Erich, 1, 48, 68, 80
Muir, Edwin, 168
Muir, Willa, 168
Mller, Hans-Harald, 138, 139, 159,
164, 166, 167
Mller, Harro, 225, 227
Mller-Salget, Klaus, 226
Mller-Waldeck, Gunnar, 267, 268
Munich, 1, 3, 7, 26, 28, 49, 56, 62,
68, 72, 74, 75, 80, 86, 87, 105,
107, 170, 175, 237
Munich revolution, 3, 2628, 49, 62,
68, 170
Murdoch, Brian, 13, 164, 165, 166,
167, 168
Murnau, F. W., films by: Nosferatu, 10
Musil, Robert, 50, 106, 221, 226
Musil, Robert, works by: Der Mann
ohne Eigenschaften, 106
Mussolini, Benito, 135
mysticism, 48, 68, 82, 96
Napoleon, 187, 250
National Socialism, 14, 20, 24, 30, 31,
3641, 49, 5657, 7177, 79, 80,
117, 118, 119, 206, 254, 259
nationalism, 8, 21, 28, 29, 36, 39, 40,
71, 7880, 12540
Necker, Hanns Dietrich von, 254
Nelson, Don, 59
Neubauer, Hendrik, 16
Neubauer, Martin, 91, 97, 98

Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity,
New Sobriety), 12, 15, 16, 72,
105, 111, 124, 159, 195, 208,
229, 237, 238, 240, 246, 263
Neuer, Johanna, 58
Neuhaus, Stefan, 226
Neumann, Nicolaus, 208
New Objectivity. See Neue Sachlichkeit
New Sobriety. See Neue Sachlichkeit
New Woman, 13, 238, 242, 243, 251
Nienhaus, Stefan, 257, 267
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 46, 51, 52, 55,
58, 65, 134
Nietzsche, Friedrich, works by: Also
sprach Zarathustra, 46
Nolan, Mary, 209
Nordau, Max, works by: Die
conventionellen Lgen der
Kulturmenschheit, 92
Noske, Gustav, 3
Nottelmann, Nicole, 240, 249, 251,
252
Novalis, 51, 52
November revolution, 23, 6, 21,
2628, 43, 49, 74, 15557, 166,
196
NSDAP (Nazi party), 8, 9, 38, 56, 74,
125, 206, 255, 263
Oram, Caroline, 83
Ortner, Rainer, 267
Orwell, George, works by: 1984, 32
Ossietzky, Carl von, 193
outsider, 14, 51, 57, 59, 67, 69, 70,
80, 87, 175, 247
Owen, C. R., 164
pacifism, 4546, 62, 89, 103, 12728,
137, 145, 146, 15051
Palmr, Torsten, 16
Pannwitz, Rudolf, 57
paramilitarism, 125, 157, 195, 198
Patchett, Ann, works by: Bel Canto,
251
patriotism, 6, 25
peace, 4, 26, 29, 37, 41, 50, 80, 126,
140, 146, 152, 153, 181
penal code, 196, 238
INDEX
281
Peschina, Helmut, 122
Peter, Thomas, 268
Petersen, Klaus, 14
Peukert, Detlev, 9, 15, 61, 80, 137,
138, 196, 208, 209
Pffflin, Friedrich, 59
Pfeiler, William K., 164
photography, 11, 16
Pinthus, Kurt, 10, 51, 59
Piscator, Erwin, 12, 16, 33, 216, 231
Planke, Ilse, 124
Plievier, Theodor, 161, 167
Plievier, Theodor, works by: Der
Kaiser ging, die Generle blieben,
156; Des Kaisers Kulis, 160
pogrom, 70
Popular Front, 41
Polgar, Alfred, 1023
postmodernity, 120, 124, 179
Prangel, Matthias, 226, 227
Prels, Max, 230
Price, Evadne. See Smith, Helen Zenna
Prinzhorn, Hans, 60
proletariat, 21, 28, 31, 73, 171, 185,
186
Proust, Marcel, 50
Prmm, Karl, 118, 124, 139
Prussian Academy of Arts, 37, 38, 39,
51, 56, 96, 212
psychoanalysis, 5051, 57, 69
Raabe, Wilhelm, 255
radio, 11, 32, 37, 40, 54, 167, 195,
202
Rterepublik, 3, 49, 170
Rathenau, Walther, 6, 71, 90, 98, 124,
135, 232, 233, 237, 250
Rathgeber, Paul, 58
Read, Herbert, 165
rearmament, 40
Reh, Albert, 59
Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, 93, 99
Reichsbanner, 137
Reid, J. H., 226
Reifenberg, Benno, 114
Reifenberg, Heinz, 194
Reinhart, Georg, 59
Reinhart, Hans, 50
282
INDEX
Reisiger, Hans, 166
Reiss, Erna, 211
Remarque, Erich Maria, 13, 14,
12729, 132, 138, 14168, 232,
234
Remarque, Erich Maria, works by:
Drei Kameraden, 142; Der Funke
Leben, 148; Gam, 141, 163; Der
Himmel kennt keine Gnstlinge,
142; Im Westen nichts Neues, 128,
138, 139, 141, 142, 14368, 234,
251, 263, 266; Der schwarze
Obelisk, 143, 151, 157, 162, 167;
Station am Horizont, 141, 163; Die
Traumbude, 141, 159, 163; Der
Weg zurck, 142, 143, 146, 147,
149, 151, 15258, 159, 162, 163,
164, 166, 167; Zeit zu leben und
Zeit zu sterben, 143, 150, 162, 165
Renn, Ludwig, works by: Krieg, 138,
159, 165; Nachkrieg, 159
reparations, 4, 6, 7, 28, 29, 30, 37
Reuter, Gabriele, 251
Ribbat, Ernst, 227
Richards, David G., 58
Riemkasten, Felix, 259
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 57, 86
Ringelnatz, Joachim, 80
Rinser, Luise, 56
roaring twenties, 52
Roche, Mark, 42
Rode, Walter, 109, 123
Rodewald, Dierk, 97, 98
Rohde, Hedwig, 209
Rolland, Romain, 59
Romanticism, 56
Rorrison, Hugh, 16
Rose, William, 168
Rosenberg, Alfred, 49
Rosenberg, Alfred, works by: Der
Mythus des zwanzigsten
Jahrhunderts, 49
Roth, Joseph, 1, 14, 17, 10124, 204
Roth, Joseph, works by: Architektur,
118; Das Autodaf des Geistes,
11920; Bekehrung eines Snders
im Berliner UFA-Palast, 116;
Bekenntnis zum Gleisdreieck,
118, 122; Betrachtung an der
Klagemauer, 119; Das XIII.
Berliner Sechstagerennen, 116;
Dichter im Dritten Reich, 119;
Ein Unpolitischer geht in den
Reichstag, 117; Einer liest
Zeitung, 115; Das falsche Gewicht,
122; Feuilleton, 111; Flucht ohne
Ende, 105; Das ganz groe
Warenhaus, 11719, 122;
Gesang mit tdlichem Ausgang,
117; Die Geschichte von dem 1002.
Nacht, 122; Hiob, 101, 106, 122;
h-moll Symphonie, 114; Hotel
Savoy, 105, 251; Juden auf
Wanderschaft, 1067, 108, 122;
Die Kapuzinergruft, 106; Der
Kurfrstendamm, 209; Die
Legende vom heiligen Trinker, 122;
Nonpareille aus Amerika,
11415; Panoptikum: Gestalten und
Kulissen, 107; Radetzkymarsch,
101, 106; Die Rebellion, 105;
Rechts und Links, 105; Reise nach
Kultur-Wien, 109; Rundgang um
die Siegessule, 117;
Schillerpark, 11617;
Spaziergang, 108, 11116,
11819, 121; Das Spinnennetz,
105; Das steinerne Berlin, 117,
119; Wolkenkratzer, 119; Zipper
und sein Vater, 105
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, works by:
Confessions, 51
Rowohlt, Ernst, 254, 259, 267, 268
Ruhr, 6, 8, 29, 31, 36, 73, 76
Rsing, Hans-Peter, 232, 236, 249,
250
Russia, 25, 104, 220
Rter, Hubert, 167
Ruttmann, Walther, films by: Berlin:
Die Sinfonie der Grostadt, 11
Ryan, Judith, 225
Sabrow, Martin, 250
Sadek, Martin, 267
Saenger, Hilde, 57
Salamon, Georg, 168

Salomon, Ernst von, 6
Salomon, Ernst von, works by: Die
Gechteten, 6
Sander, Gabriele, 215, 225, 226, 227
Sargeant, Maggie, 165, 166, 168
Schfer, Regina, 99
Schauwecker, Franz, 129, 134, 136,
139, 140
Scheidemann, Philipp, 2
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
von, 60, 220
Scherera, Jrgen, 15
Scherpe, Klaus R., 124, 225, 227
Scheunemann, Dietrich, 15, 217, 225
Schill, Ferdinand von, 234, 250
Schiller, Friedrich, 55, 217
Schiller, Friedrich, works by: An die
Freude, 46
Schlesinger, Paul, 196
Schlesinger, Sigmund, 103
Schlosser, Horst D., 164
Schmidt-Henkel, Gerhard, 260, 268
Schneckenberger, Max, works by: Die
Wacht am Rhein, 223
Schneider, Thomas, 163, 164, 165,
166, 167, 168
Schneider-Handschin, Esther, 99
Schnittkin, Theodor, 51
Schock, Ralph, 122
Schnert, Jrg, 98
Schnfeld, Christiane, 17
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 68
Schrader, Brbel, 15, 167
Schreckenberger, Helga, 168
Schuster, Ingrid, 225, 226
Schtz, Erhard, 15, 16, 123, 208,
209, 226
Schwarz, Wilhelm J., 164, 165
Schweiger, Werner J., 123
Schweikert, Uwe, 122
Schweppenhuser, Hermann, 59, 209
Sebald, W. G., 218, 225
Second World War, 17, 25, 57, 62, 72,
80, 91, 126, 143, 151, 161, 212
Seghers, Anna, 17
Sellhorn, Werner, 191
Shanks, Hershel, 83
Sheppard, Richard, 98
INDEX
283
Shookman, Ellis, 260, 267
Shumaker, Richard, 166
Siegel, Rainer-Joachim, 108
Skierka, Volker, 81, 82, 83
Smith, Helen Zenna, 168
Smith, Helen Zenna, works by: Not so
Quiet . . ., 151, 160, 166
Social Democrats, 2, 3, 5, 21, 23, 30,
41, 156, 198, 256, 259. See also
SPD
Soltau, Heidi, 208
Sombart, Werner, 66, 82
Sombart, Werner, works by: Die Juden
und das Wirtschaftsleben, 82
Sontheimer, Kurt, 137
Sorge, Reinhard, works by: Der Bettler,
10
Soviet Union, 75, 83, 220
Spartacus League, 2, 3
Spartacus uprising, 2, 47, 49
Speidel, Ludwig, 103
Spengler, Oswald, 7, 52, 59, 132
Spengler, Oswald, works by: Der
Untergang des Abendlandes, 7, 52,
60, 132
Speyer, Julie, 86
SPD (Social Democratic Party), 3, 5,
104, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263
Spitzer, Daniel, 103
Sprengel, Peter, 226
Sprung, Robert C., 190
Stachura, Peter D., 167
Stadler, Ernst, 10
Stahlhelm, 5, 125, 126, 137, 158
Stalin, Josef, 41, 83
Stauffacher, Werner, 224, 226
Steierwald, Ulrike, 123
Stein, Gerd-Dieter, 97
Stein, Hermann von, 138
Stengel, Birgit, 90, 98
Stephan, Inge, 208
Sternburg, Wilhelm von, 82, 83, 163,
165
Stickelberger-Eder, Margrit, 164, 168
Stinnes, Hugo, 7, 31
Strau und Torney, Lulu von, 47, 58
Stresemann, Gustav, 5, 8, 3031, 43
Struve, Walter, 137
284
INDEX
Stuckel, Eva-Maria, 60
Sudermann, Hermann, 13, 98
Suhrkamp, Peter, 9, 259
Sullavan, Margaret, 266
Sltemeyer, Ingrid, 107
Sutton, Eric, 168
Swales, Martin, 17
Szeemann, Harald, 58
Taylor, Harley U., 165
technology, 11, 12, 15, 52, 60, 116,
118, 136, 138, 220
Tecklenburg, Artur, 254
Tergit, Gabriele, 1, 11, 14, 95, 99,
193209
Tergit, Gabriele, works by: Das
Bchlein vom Bett, 208; Effingers,
19495; Eingewhnen in Berlin,
209; Etwas Seltenes berhaupt:
Erinnerungen, 195, 201, 208;
Frauendienstjahr und
Berufsbildung, 194; Kaiserkron
und Ponien rot, 208; Kantinen
am Mond, 199; Ksebier erobert
den Kurfrstendamm, 193, 194,
199209; Im Schnellzug nach
Haifa, 208; Das Tulpenbchlein,
208; Vorfrhlingsreise nach
Berlin, 209
Tewarson, Heidi Thomann, 227
theater, 912, 15, 16, 33, 43, 5156,
62, 63, 80, 86, 170, 171, 202,
2047, 216
Thirty Years War, 21719
Thoma, Ludwig, 72
Thomas, Adrienne, 161
Thomas, Adrienne, works by: Die
Katrin wird Soldat, 147, 160, 161
Thomasius, Christian, 194
Thunecke, Jrg, 191
Tiedemann, Rolf (aka Rudolf), 59,
209
Tiedemann-Bartels, Hella, 140
Tims, Hilton, 165
Toller, Ernst, 1, 3, 10, 12, 68, 80, 97,
98, 219
Toller, Ernst, works by: Der deutsche
Hinkemann, 98; Hoppla, wir leben!,
12, 16; Masse Mensch, 10; Die
Wandlung, 10, 97
Tormin, Walther, 165
Trakl, Georg, 10
Traven, B., (also known as Ret Marut),
1, 13, 14, 16991
Traven, B., works by: Aslan Norval,
175; Assembly Line, 169, 186;
Der aufgefangene Blitz, 18283,
186, 18788; Der ausgewanderte
Antonio, 187; Die Bndigung,
184; Der Banditendoktor, 183,
191; Die Baumwollpflcker, 169;
Die Brcke im Dschungel, 175, 176,
190; Der Busch, 169, 17790;
Diplomaten, 185; Der
Eselskauf, 183; Die
Familienehre, 180, 184, 191; Die
Geburt eines Gottes, 179; Ein
General kommt aus dem Dschungel,
176; Die Geschichte einer
Bombe, 18384, 191; Der
Groindustrielle, 169, 186; Ein
Hundegeschft, 182;
Indianerbekehrung, 188;
Indianertanz im Dschungel, 180,
181; Der Karren, 171, 176;
Khundar, 177, 190; Land des
Frhlings, 180; Macario, 169; Die
Medizin, 183, 18485; Der
Nachtbesuch im Busch, 172, 173,
185, 189; Die Rebellion der
Gehenkten, 176; Regierung, 171;
Der Schatz der Sierra Madre, 175;
Spiegesellen, 187; Das
Totenschiff, 169, 170, 17475, 177;
Die weie Rose, 169, 175; Der
Wobbly, 169, 173, 175, 177; Die
Wohlfahrtseinrichtung, 180,
18182, 191
Travers, Martin, 138
Travers, Michael P. A., 164
Treaty of Versailles, 4, 6, 28, 135, 148,
149, 151, 155
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 66
Treverton, Edward N., 190, 191
Trommler, Frank, 15
Tschuppik, Karl, 13435, 139

Tucholsky, Kurt, 15, 62, 98, 103, 167,
259
Turner, Henry Ashby, 43, 260, 267
Uka, Walter, 16
Ullstein, Hermann, 230
Ullstein, Leopold, 230
Ulrich, Roland, 267, 268
unemployment, 8, 15, 72, 198, 207,
254, 26366
Unger, Thorsten, 15
United States, 7, 10, 11, 41, 50, 63,
77, 85, 114, 158, 191, 212, 229,
231, 268
United States of Europe, 36, 40
USPD, 3, 5
Valentin, Karl, 72
Vienna, 36, 70, 86, 103, 104, 107,
109, 122, 229, 230
Vogt, Karl, 194
Vollmer, Hartmut, 16
Vring, Georg von der, 159
Vring, Georg von der, works by: Soldat
Suhren, 159, 168
Wagener, Hans, 164, 165, 166, 168
Wagner, Richard, 68
Walberer, Ulrich, 17, 167
Walden, Herwarth, 212
Wall Street collapse, 8
Wallace, Edgar, 35
Wandervgel, 157, 247
Ward, Mark, 165, 166
Wassermann, Jakob, 1, 9, 10, 13, 14,
62, 63, 8599
Wassermann, Jakob, works by:
Andergast trilogy, 85, 94, 96, 99;
Brgerliche Ehe: Offener Brief an
den Grafen Keyserling, 99; Caspar
Hauser oder Die Trgheit des
Herzens, 86, 88, 94, 95; Christian
Wahnschaffe, 87, 97; Engelhart oder
Die zwei Welten, 97; Etzel
Andergast, 85, 94, 96; Faber oder
Die verlorenen Jahre, 9192; Der
Fall Maurizius, 66, 85, 87, 91,
9496, 98, 99; Das
INDEX
285
Gnsemnnchen, 87; Die Geschichte
der jungen Renate Fuchs, 86, 97;
Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz,
85, 94, 96, 99; Der Jude als
Orientale, 89, 98; Die Juden von
Zirndorf, 86, 88; Laudin und die
Seinen, 9294, 95, 97, 99; Der
Literat oder Mythos und
Persnlichkeit, 89, 98; Das Los der
Juden, 8889, 98; Der Mann von
vierzig Jahren, 92; Mein Weg als
Deutscher und Jude, 8890, 97, 98;
Melusine, 86; Teilnahme des
Dichters an der Politik, 90, 98;
Der Wendekreis, 91
Weber, Marianne, 57
Wedekind, Frank, 80
Wege, Carl, 118, 124
Wegener, Franz, 60
Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, 42
Weigand, Heinrich, 51
Weimar constitution, 13, 28, 29, 30,
43
Weimar culture, 912, 14, 15, 16, 209
Wei, Christoph, 16, 208
Weiss, Donald, 163
Weiss, Walter, 97
Welti, Helene, 59
Wenger, Ruth, 51
Westermann, Klaus, 108, 121, 122
Westfalen, Tilman, 163
Wette, Wolfram, 138, 140
Wetzel, Heinz, 164, 167
Wheeler-Bennett, John, 166
Wheen, A. W., 163, 164, 168
White, Alfred D., 14
White, Iain Boyd, 122
White, Owen, 191
Wichert, Adalbert, 225
Widdig, Bernd, 14
Wiechert, Ernst, works by: Jedermann:
Geschichte eines Namenlosen, 167
Wiene, Robert, films by: Das Cabinet
des Dr. Caligari, 10
Wieser, Max, 166
Wilder, Thornton, works by: The
Bridge of San Luis Rey, 251
286
INDEX
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 2, 19, 21, 22, 24,
25, 48, 150, 205
Wilhelmine Empire, 36, 40, 61, 71,
196
Wilhelmine Germany, 7, 47, 253
Wilkes, Geoff, 259, 262, 267, 268
Willett, John, 11, 15
Williams, Jenny, 6, 266, 268
Wilson, Colin, 51, 59
Wilson, Woodrow, 27
Wirtz, Irmgard, 121, 122
Witkop, Philipp, 165
Wohl, Robert, 166
Wolff, Rudolf, 97, 98, 267
Woltereck, Richard, 50
Wolzogen, Ernst von, 86
Wundberg, Gotthart, 43
Wrzbach, Eugen, 58
youth, 89, 3437, 47, 85, 97, 136,
14348, 155, 157, 16062, 167,
198, 207, 23435, 241, 247
Zachau, Reinhard, K., 260, 26566,
267, 268
Zagratzki, Uwe, 165
Zapfel, Peter, 208
Zaratin, Italo, 59, 60
Zeller, Bernhard, 59
Zeltner, Hermann, 60
Ziegler, Theobald, 50, 59
Ziemann, Benjamin, 166
Zille, Heinrich, 203, 209
Zimmerman, Michael E., 60
Zimmermann, Manfred, 64, 81
Zingler, Peter, 265
Ziolkowski, Theodore, 59
Zionism, 79, 89, 119
Zipes, Jack, 81
Zmegac, Viktor, 225
Zogbaum, Heidi, 190, 191
Zola, Emile, 20, 3435, 36
Zola, Emile, works by: Jaccuse, 40
Zuckmayer, Carl, 263
Zweig, Arnold, 63, 66, 80, 159, 161,
168
Zweig, Arnold, works by: Erziehung
vor Verdun, 159; Das ostjdische
Antlitz, 66; Der Streit um den
Sergeanten Grischa, 159
Zweig, Stefan, works by: Schachnovelle,
251