'Mit Geschichte will man etwas': Historisches Erzählen in der Weimarer Republik und im Exil (1918-1945) by Ulrich Kittstein

Abstract

288 Reviews JohnNeubauer's 'Zitiert und vorzitiert: Kafka und die Vaterbilder bei Danilo Kis und P&ter Esterhazy'; and Riidiger Zymner's 'Coetzee und Kafka'. All in all, this is a challenging volume which presents awealth of new perspectives and specialist discussion. The diachronic approach isparticularly illuminating, high lighting as itdoes the shiftingperceptions and evaluations ofKafka's work. Scholars in the fieldwill findmuch here to enhance the ongoing debate surrounding a figure who was, as thisvolume proves, asmuch a reader as awriter of texts. UNIVERSITY OF WALES BANGOR CAROL TULLY 'Mit Geschichte will man etwas': Historisches Erzdhlen inderWeimarer Republik und im Exil (I9I8-I945). By ULRICH KITTSTEIN. Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neu mann. 2006. 378 pp. ?48. ISBN 978-3-8260-3323-0. 'Bei der Aufreihung der Daten fingt schon das Manover an. [. . .] Mit Geschichte will man etwas.' D6blin's pithy comments in 'Der historische Roman und wir' ( 936) pre-empt the 'linguistic turn' in history with their insistence that narratives of the past are constructed by theirauthors; theyare the starting-point for Ulrich Kittstein's study of such narratives inGerman from I9 I8 to 1945. The study's backdrop is the 'crisis ofHistorismus' after the First World War, a sense thatmany previous givens of historical scholarship were now suddenly open toquestion. In similar terms to the theorists of the 'linguistic turn',writers on history in the Weimar Republic rejected the assumption that scholarly writing can fullyor accurately recreate the past, em phasizing instead the subjective role of thehistorical author: 'AlleHistorie istAuslese und Umformung eines ungeheuren Materials, das seinerseits aus einer unendlich breit und tief str6menden Masse bewegten Lebens hervorragt oder herausgezogen werden kann', wrote Ernst Troeltsch ('Die Krisis des Historismus', Die neueRund schau, 23 (1922), 572-90 (p. 577)). Kittstein examines works that both defined this challenge to thewriting of history and attempted to answer it. After a brief introduction (Part I) the study considers the relationship between li teraryand historical narrative (Part II), pointing out the treatmentof the theme, rare in its time, inDroysen's Historik (I857-82), and evaluating the provocative theses ofHayden White. The following section (iii. i) is an informative presentation of the 'crisis ofHistorismus' itself.The bulk of the study examines firstbiography (III.2) and then the novels of authors in exile (III.3) as case studies in historical narrative during the 'crisis'. Biography, which boomed in the Weimar Republic, is represented by the popular works of Emil Ludwig and the ensuing debate on 'historische Bel letristik',Brecht's Die Geschafte desHerrn Julius Caesar, Heinrich Mann's Henri IV (read alongside Georg Lukacs's critique of its firstpart inDer historischeRoman), and Siegfried Kracauer's Jfacques Offenbach und das Paris seinerZeit. The following section, on historical narratives in exile, examines Stefan Zweig's Erasmus von Rot terdamand Castellio gegenCalvin, Feuchtwanger's Der falscheNero and Waffen fur Amerika, and Doblin's Amazonas trilogy; it also presents theoretical reflections by these threeauthors on thenature of history and thehistorical novel. This is a valuable study. It puts the 'linguistic turn' in context by pointing out some of itsprecursors in the Weimar Republic and before; itsapproach-interpreting literature as a formof historical writing-enables it tohighlight lesser-known texts, reveal unconventional perspectives on itsmaterial, and connect and compare texts not usually studied together.The approach comes into itsown in the discussion of exile literature:Kittstein counters the charge that turning tohistory in exile was an irresponsible flightfrom realityby demonstrating a variety of strategies bywhich exile authors constructed the past in direct engagement with Nazism. The tenet that the MLR, 103. I, 2oo8 289 telling of history iscontingent on the tellerunderpins thispoint. Kittstein's descrip tionof himself as 'inerster Linie Literaturwissenschaftler' (p. I I) isborne out by the strengths of the book; it isnone the less to itsdetriment thathe does not also analyse the narrative writings of historical scholars. The promise of a broad conception of 'historisches Erzahlen', suggested by the discussion inPart ii, isnot fulfilled in the analytical Parts III.2 and III.3, and one of the book's most interesting suggestions that literature responded to the 'crisisofHistorismus' whereas thehistorical profession could (orwould) not-thus remains untested and underdeveloped: amissed opportu nity,perhaps, to turngathered studies on a common theme into awider interpretation...