Benn als Reporter: 'Wie Miss Cavell erschossen wurde' by Jörg Döring, Erhard Schütz

Abstract

MLR, 104.4, 2009 1177 his literaryworks on the other. In the end, Bruce settles for 'thehumanist quality of Kafka's cultural Zionism' (p. 201), a formulation that attempts to resolve some of the ambiguities thatmark Kafka's thinking about Jewishness. University College Dublin Anne Fuchs Benn als Reporter: cWie Miss Cavell erschossen wurde\ By JorgDoring and Erhard Schutz. Siegen: Universi. 2007. 120 pp. 8. ISBN 978-3-936533-22-4. The problematic career of Gottfried Benn continues to attract attention not only from scholars ofpoetry but from thosewith a broader interest in the complexities of German culture of the inter-war period. He was a contradictory and divisive figure, and in their carefully researched volume Doring and Schutz take as their starting point an example of the type of controversy thathe provoked?a dispute triggered by an implied criticism of political and 'functional' writing in a 1929 article writ ten in praise of Benn byMax Hermann-Neisse in theNeue Bucherschau. Two of themost prominent left-wing contributors to the journal, the self-styled 'rasender Reporter Egon Erwin Kisch and the poet Johannes R. Becher, resigned inprotest. The ensuing debate focused on interesting questions relating to the purpose' of literature, its usefulness' in a political context, and the aesthetic status of 'sachlich' newspaper reporting,which in the late 1920s was verymuch in fashion. Doring and Schutz present a series of brief chapters exploring, for the firsttime, the full context for thisdispute. Central to this context, they suggest, isBenn's notorious attempt at a form of factual 'reportage' inhis 1928 article about the trial and execution of the British nurse Edith Cavell during the First World War, which he had witnessed first hand in his capacity as amilitary doctor. This article, published in the right-wing National-Zeitung, was in turn provoked by the controversial reception of a film version of theCavell story (Dawn, directed byHerbert Wilcox), and may have been preceded by an unpublished letter sent to theBerliner Tageblatt in connection with the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in theUSA in 1927. The authors, in the central part of their volume, re-create this context in detail and with considerable relish (recounting, for example, their efforts to find the lost letter to the Tageblatt and their viewing of one of the two remaining prints of Dawn), and are able to illuminate some of themajor fault-lines within post-war German culture in the process; these include competing claims on 'truth' and 'his tory',and related debates about law and morality. In their reading of Benn's article, they are able to point to the stylistic and generic features of 'factual' discourse and reportage, but also, by extension, to the problems in Benn's definition ofwriting, which would seem to preclude its ever actually making a difference in theworld. Despite this, the authors, in their conclusion, attempt a tentative defence of Benn's modernity, drawing comparisons between his critique of capitalism and thework ofAdorno and Horkheimer, and suggesting that, despite his scepticism about the ability of reportage to 'reflect' reality,his employment in his writing of a form of montage reflected his sensitivity to 'die Insuffizienz und Absurditat der Gegenwart' 1178 Reviews (p. 82). Although the focus of this volume is unusually narrow for a stand-alone publication, it isboth fairlypriced and, importantly, energetically written and full of interest. It can be wholeheartedly recommended. Royal Holloway, University of London Jon Hughes Margret Boveri/Ernst Jiinger:Briefwechsel aus den Jahren 1946-1973. Ed. byRoland Berbig, Tobias Bock, and Walter Kuhn. Berlin: Landt. 2008. 334 pp. 34.90. ISBN 978-3-938844-09-0. Der stilleBurgerkrieg: Ernst Jiingerund Carl Schmitt imDritten Reich. ByMartin Tielke. Berlin: Landt. 2007. 144 pp. 24.90. ISBN 978-3-938844-08-3. Two recent publications address the dichotomy of private and public with regard to Ernst Jiinger. At the core of the correspondence between Jiingerand the journalist Margret Boveri (1900-75) stands their only meeting. It took place on 13March 1950, at Jiinger's then residence inRavensburg. Boveri, born into a liberal family, had been a foreign diplomatic correspondent for theFrankfurter Zeitung (working out of Stockholm, San Francisco, Madrid, and Lisbon) and was the author of...