Frogs and Salamanders as Agents of Romanticisms

Abstract

Frogs and Salamanders as Agents of Romanticisms Dorothee Ostmeier (bio) “Nicht die Kinder bloß, speist man mit Märchen ab”Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise1 In his lectures at Johns Hopkins Rainer Nägele always astounded me with associations that linked, for example, dogs to melancholy. Of course, this association was not new, but Nägele filtered it out of the Dürer and Benjamin contexts, brought it to the forefront, and fashioned the discussion of the motif so that it stuck with me until now.2 Nägele also used to refer to Sherlock Holmes’ success in detecting what is hidden in all signs. Just as Holmes warned his assistant Watson, Nägele warned us: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”3 The more I teach the more I appreciate this training in drawing surprising connections. This is perhaps one reason why I am writing today about frogs and salamanders as agents of diverse concepts of Natur-, Geist- and Kulturgeschichten, natural history, intellectual history, and cultural history, in the early 19th century. I will first discuss how the Grimm brothers’ concept of nature as culture and their re-vision of their teacher Lorenz Oken’s concept of nature philosophy (Naturphilosophie) as nature poetry (Naturpoesie) is reflected in the tale “The Frog King” (Der Froschkönig). I will then [End Page 670] contrast the Grimms’ frog with the salamander in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Golden Pot.” Hoffmann’s figuration of a fantastic nature—or a natural fantastic—turns the concept of nature poetry upside down. As an enigmatic allegory of the fantastic, the salamander Archivarius Lindhorst replaces the logical structure of the Grimms’ wonder tale through colorful and witty incomprehensibility. I will ask about the functions of these instantiations of the fantastic in the conceptualization of nature in the 19th century. In Grimm and Hoffmann “nature” is portrayed as an agent that transgresses the nature/culture divide as it promotes the superiority of man throughout the rational systems of the Enlightenment.4 In some of the Grimms’ wonder tales, nature promotes and activates social judgment: Marginal figures become established and socially established figures become marginalized. In order to achieve these wondrous changes, nature motifs are at times linked to chance. Hoffmann’s tale subverts this “chance magic” by inscribing the complexity of the fantastic into nature. In 1809 Lorenz Oken published his Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie5, a very detailed and complex system that he dedicated to his friends Friedrich Schelling and Henrik Steffens. The 1809 preface reads like a defense of the term “nature philosophy” against its enemies. Objecting to the accusation of it as a “leere Fantasie” (Oken 1909, V) he asks “den naturforschenden Gelehrten” (Oken 1909, VI)) for more respect and counteracts their misconceptions of his project by explaining his rhetorical strategies: “Ich darf voraussetzen, dass jedermann wisse, dass das, was ich von Gott sage, symbolisch ist, und dass niemand wähne, Gott sei nichts anderes, als das Feuer, was da lodert, das Wasser, was da fliesst, wenn ich mich auf diese Art ausdrücke”(Oken 1909, VI). Parts should not be seen as the whole, and he warns, for example, of viewing the “ganze Thierreich” as “theilweis producirte Mensch”. As the logic of part and whole informs Oken’s concept of nature in general, it is also applied to his zoological system. The section on zoology introduces actual animals as independent as well as parts of the animal kingdom, and the animal kingdom again as essentially one big animal with the human being as the highest part (Oken 1843, 396). Oken distinguishes between the actual animal and the concept of the animal that circumscribes [End Page 671] all animals, including the human being. Paragraphs 3067 to 3070 differentiate between Thierreich, ein Thier, Thierheit, allgemeiner Thierleib, höchstes Thier, Mensch (Oken 1843, 396). This sequence of terms indicates the fluid borders between the various concepts of the animal. All beings are independent and whole and at the same time a part of another whole. Oken registers frogs and salamanders as parts of the second land, fourth circle of Fleischtiere (Oken 1843, 432), not as Eingeweide- Haut- oder Gefühlstiere (Oken 1843...