'Die Wunde Lenz': J. M. R. Lenz. Leben, Werk und Rezeption by Inge Stephan , Hans-Gerd Winter (review)

Abstract

862 Reviews readings that do much to revise received ideas about this period, its debates, views (e.g. on universalism and race), and participants. Indeed, his chapter on Saul Ascher, usually viewed as a minor figure protesting against 'Germanomanie' and promoting an early formof reformJudaism, reveals Ascher to be a profound and incisive philoso? pher. These discussions?together with Hess's demonstration that recent treatments of Germany's colonial 'fantasies' tend to overlook how German visions of colonial power were also projected onto Jews?make this a very timely and important book for students not only of German Jewish history and literature, but also of the En? lightenment, modernity, and colonialism. University of Virginia Jeffrey A. Grossman 'Die Wunde Lenz': J. M. R. Lenz. Leben, Werk und Rezeption. Ed. by Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter. (Publikationen zur Zeitschrift fiir Germanistik, N.F. 7) Bern, Berlin, and Brussels: Peter Lang. 2003. 507 pp. SwFio7;?69. ISBN 303910 -050-5. This collection of papers is from a conference held in 2002 in Berlin for the 210th anniversary of Lenz's death. An unusual number to celebrate, but Lenz is an unusual writer and the papers cover an unusually wide range of aspects of his life, work, and reception, so itwill be best ifthey are brieflysummarized here. The firstfour deal with editorial aspects. Christoph Weiss reports on the preparation of a critical edition in the wake of the facsimile edition, alluding to problems of evaluation and attribution. Gesa Weinert introduces the critical edition of Lenz's poetry, soon to appear and to include unknown works and versions of poems, while Heribert Tommek reassesses Lenz's Moscow writings and activities, warning of the dangers of seeing them from the perspective of their culmination in his legendary madness. Gert Vonhoff gives us a profile of a projected digital edition of Lenz's works which is to be along the lines ofthe Gutzkow edition. The next section ('Leben und Werk') has the largest number of contributions, opening with Inge Stephan's examination of two poems, her starting point being the claim made by various writers that Lenz's perspective is that of the outsider. Her thesis that he writes from a female perspective is contested elsewhere in this volume. Hans-Gerd Winter looks at Lenz's story Der Landprediger as a text based on and concerned with memory, whose narrator evinces an ironical, critical distance from Lenz's enlightened preacher. Roland Krebs explores in another of Lenz's stories, Zerbin, the influence of Marmontel and argues that in Lenz's hands the moral tale becomes a crime story a la Schiller. Giinter Niggl's essay on social criticism in the plays seems to me to be going over well-ploughed ground and coming too easily to the conclusion that Die Soldaten ends tragically, without taking account of comedy, parody, and irony. There are two essays on Lenz and Plautus, one by Angela Sittel providing a close comparison of Die Aussteuer and Aulularia, complementing the broader one by David Hill highlighting the theme of power in Lenz and his greater realism. Hans Graubner compares Lenz's and Hamann's views in matters oftheology (regarding the fallibility of patriarchal authority), sexuality, and views of the body (a more positive moral evaluation evolves in both cases), but also stresses the divergence of the two writers. Heinrich Bosse examines parallels between Lenz, Merck, and Kaufmann, all of whom practised the art of provocation, but Lenz was best at it. Heinrich Bosse considers Lenz's financial problems in Konigsberg and the identity of the von Berg family in Der Hofmeister, while Hans-Ulrich Wagner continues this line of investigation, looking at Lenz's earnings and career problems which feed into his works. James Gibbons uncovers the last draft of a letter from Lenz to the Comte de Maurepas, helping to give us a more rounded picture of Lenz's reform projects. MLRy 100.3, 200S 863 Gibbons's essay is complemented by Brita Hempel's in the next section ('Freundschaft , Liebe, Sexualitat'), and it too draws on unpublished material. She concludes that in the short fragmentary text 'Loix des femmes Soldats' written in connection with Uber die Soldatenehen, Lenz endorses...