Consumption and Consummation: Domestic Tales of the Economic Miracle in Arno Schmidt's Das steinerne Herz1

Abstract

In this article I read Arno Schmidt's 1956 novel Das steinerne Herz: Historischer Roman aus dem Jahre 1954 nach Christi as a social commentary on the dynamics of gender relations during the time of the emerging West German economic miracle. I focus on Schmidt's presentation of the reinstatement of traditional bourgeois gender norms in Germany during the 1950's culture of female domesticity. To make my case, I concentrate upon the way Schmidt organizes the novel around genre conventions, a decision that reinforces the novel's specific, parodic realism. I argue that the novel's parody is designed to highlight how the reinstatement of male authority in the private sphere coincided with relationships based upon exchange values. The West German 1950s are thereby depicted as a time during which notions of gender and consumption were intrinsically connected in an environment where economic restoration outweighed most other social considerations.