Empathic Animal Encounters: Thomas Mann’s Herr und Hund and the ‘Animal Turn’ around 1900

Abstract

The article on empathic animal encounters argues for an ‘animal turn’ around 1900. With regard to two important essays by Hermann Bahr from 1909 and Oskar Walzel from 1918 the paper shows how the take on the animal fundamentally changes at the beginning of the 20th century. In literature nonhuman animals achieve their own rights, they no longer function as substitutes for humans as was the custom in fables. Most notably the animal’s perspective comes to the fore. The following analysis situates Thomas Mann’s animal story Herr und Hund (engl. Bashan and I) within this ‘animal turn’. Whereas Mann’s text has been repeatedly criticized for enacting an authoritarian relationship between master and subservient dog, the essay shows through recourse on contemporary zoological knowledge, that the empathic encounters between human and nonhuman animals of Mann’s text deconstruct this figure of auctoritas. The in-depth analysis of Bashan and I demonstrates how the text’s narrative strategies implement concepts of ‘becoming with’ (Haraway), co-constitution, and animal agency in the relation between ‘the master’ and his dog.