Die Provinz des Weiblichen: Zum erzählerischen Werk von Clara Viebig / Terroirs au féminin: La province et la femme dans les récits de Clara Viebig by Volker Neuhaus, Michel Durand

Abstract

MLR, I0I .4, 2006 I I77 misconceptions-though themost deliberately polemical contribution of the volume, on the 'Absence of Drama', is based on an inappropriate presumption. However, just as the Camden House Companion toGerman Realism, I848-I900, edited by Todd Kontje (2002), is not somuch a 'Companion' as a snapshot of current thinking and current trends inRealism research, so this literary history of the nineteenth century is not really a literary history so much as a reflection on literary history with only occasional informative highlights. In short, as regards this volume, the whole is re grettably less than the sum of its parts. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, MAYNOOTH FLORIAN KROBB Die Provinz des Weiblichen: Zum erzahlerischen Werk von Clara Viebig/Terroirs au feminin: la province et la femme dans les recits de Clara Viebig. Ed. by VOLKER NEUHAUS and MICHEL DURAND. (Convergences, 26) Bern: Peter Lang. 2004. xx+28o pp. SwF 76; E52.40; ?35. ISBN 3-906770-I7-6. This volume of essays is the outcome of a symposium held in 2002 tomark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Clara Viebig, who, from the late I8gos when she began her writing career through to the I930s, was one of themost popular German authors of her generation. Although her marriage to the Jewish publisher Theodor Cohn (who died in I936) was early on noted disapprovingly by Adolf Bartels in his racist history of German literature, Viebig was never banned during the Third Reich, and even after her son's emigration in I936 her work continued to be published and she was celebrated by the press on her eightieth birthday in 1940 as aHeimat writer. The title of this volume might seem to confirm the prevalent literary-historical as sociation of Viebig with Heimat writing. Yet, asMichel Durand notes, of the twenty six novels Viebig published exactly half are set in Berlin. Despite the title, Viebig's provincial writing forms the topic only of the third, closing group of essays. The first section, headlined as Viebig's position in literary history, has contributions by Michel Durand on the Berlin novels, by Simone Orzechowski on illness and crime in Viebig's social novels, and by Hugo Aust on Viebig's historical novels, which form a significant element in her output. A second section, devoted to the topic of femininity, has contributions by Caroline Bland on sexuality and motherhood, by Helga Abret on themotif of the beautiful female murderer in the historical novel Charlotte von WeiJ3 (I929), and abrief but amusing sketch by Volker Neuhaus placing Viebig'sAbsolvo te (1907) in a tradition of 'Bovarysme' and themisunderstood woman, which, straining the concept somewhat, the author links backwards toWerther's Lotte, then forwards toAgnes Matzerath. (Rather than herself, in awelcome twist Viebig's heroine poisons her husband.) The final section begins with a discussion by Maria-Regina Neft on whether Viebig's Eifel stories and novels, the earliest basis of her popularity and still perhaps the best-known of her works, could furnish source material for ethnogra phers, concluding not surprisingly that though interesting, sometimes even amusing, the author's stance of cultural superiority over the 'children' of the Eifel colours her fictions, which, soNeft argues, belong more to the Heimat mode than toNaturalism. Jiirgen Macha reaches a contrasting view of Viebig's Eifel texts, which he sees as naturalistic in tendency and as valuable source material for dialect studies. Between these two enquiries come Georg Guntermann's essay on the role of nature in the Eifel stories, notably 'DasWeiberdorf', perhaps Viebig's most radical work, and Maria Wojtczak's interesting essay, from a Polish viewpoint, on Viebig's stories and novels set in the province of Posen-along with the Eifel and Berlin, the third main location in her writing. Can the once popular Viebig be recuperated from the obscurity which has befallen her work since I945? In his comments on the crisis in the genre of historical fiction II78 Reviews precipitated by the political upheavals of the twentieth century, Hugo Aust suggests that even in their time Viebig's historical novels were already out of date. For read ers in search of a good read in city literature of the past...