Friedrich Spielhagen: Novelist of Germany's False Dawn by Jeffrey L. Sammons

Abstract

576 Reviews Friedrich Spielhagen: Novelist of Germany's False Dawn. By JEFFREYL. SAMMONS. (Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, I I7) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2004. XViii+340pp. ?66. ISBN 3-484-32II7-2. There can be no doubt that Friedrich Spielhagen (I829-I9I 1) was one of the most prolific novelists of German Realism and certainly the most important proponent of the German socio-political novel (Zeitroman) in the later nineteenth century. And yet most of his extensive ceuvre is utterly forgotten, buried under the prejudice against German nineteenth-century literature in general and Spielhagen's presumed 'Dichter-Journalismus' (as Wilhelm Raabe called it) in particular. While other Realist writers were rediscovered in the i960s and I970s, this renewed interest in Realist poetics has bypassed Spielhagen, at best touching on his flawed theory of 'objective narration' and using his most successful novels as convenient examples of popular fiction and prevalent discourses. As with many other writers of German nineteenth century narrative obliterated by the canon which emerged with the rise of Germanistik at the end of the nineteenth century, assessments of Spielhagen's place in German literary history in recent research have largely been based on highly selective reading and second- or third-hand judgements. In presenting what is essentially the first comprehensive monograph on Spielhagen since the 1920s, questioning his decanonization and reassessing his novels in in-depth textual aswell as contextual analysis, Jeffrey Sammons is therefore not just redefining research on the author, but also making a vital contribution to the rediscovery of German nineteenth-century literature at large. Readers may not always agree that 'it is not somuch from incapacity as from perverse purposiveness that [Spielhagen] lacks the finesse of Fontane, the experimentalism of Raabe, or [. . .] the edgy humor of Keller' (p. xiii), but Sammons's highly perceptive study of Spielhagen's works cer tainly demonstrates that many of his thirty-eight novels and novellas are crucial for a new understanding of late nineteenth-century literary and cultural developments in Germany, while some are actually worth rereading in their own right. In recon structing Spielhagen's literary development as 'an idealistic and patriotic national liberal who could not adapt his moral and political instincts to the Wilhelminian Reich' (pp. xiii-xiv), Sammons emerges with a quite different Spielhagen from the stereotypes of decanonization, exploring aspects of his novel-writing and emphasiz ing texts which have so far been largely ignored. The two most important of these reassessments are probably the critical dismissal of Spielhagen's 'theory of the novel and his practice of literary criticism' as a 'disaster area', which is quite out of line with the author's own practice of writing (p. xiii), and the focus on the forgotten later novels from the i88os and I8gos, where Spielhagen isbeginning to redefine his socio-political thinking and his style of writing in the face of growing Wilhelminian anti-liberalism and the challenge of French literary modernism. Sammons's critical rereading of Spielhagen's ceuvre broadly follows the author's development, while the middle section of his study explores recurring motifs and themes in thewider contexts of German Realism. The first section charts Spielhagen' s life and the beginnings of his writing up to his early literary success in the I86os with novels such as Problematische Naturen (1862), In Reih'und Glied (i 866), and Hammer und Amboj3 (1869). As in the book's third section on Spielhagen's later novels, quite a lot of space isgiven to plot summaries as the basis for brief interpretations focusing on key characters, motifs, and themes such as Spielhagen's Goethe reception, his interest in Ferdinand Lassalle as a problematic model of socialist power politics, and his interest in industrialization and technological progress. Although the lack of a reading knowledge of the texts discussed in the audience which the book addresses clearly justifies a narrative approach to textual analysis, the need to manage Spielhagen's complex plots and his extensive character arrangements sometimes leaves Sammons MLR, 10I.2, 2oo6 577 with little space to discuss the literary and cultural traditions and models which the author draws on or to analyse the techniques of his writing inmore detail. This iswhere the middle section of...