Nathan und seine Erben: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Toleranzgedankens in der Literatur. Festschrift für Martin Bollacher by Oxana Zielke

Abstract

MLR, I03. I, 2oo8 269 fromdidactic and bucolic poetry thekind of sentimentalized view of nature that the eighteenth century loved. Atherton does not tell the story of thepoetic reception ofVirgil, the detail of how poets continued to read and find inspiration in theAeneid: that storywould be a less public and perhaps even a subterranean one of thepersisting influence of the 'wielder of the stateliestmeasure I evermoulded by the lips ofman'. Nor is thePentheus story without itsproblems. As Atherton admits, most German philhellenism-there are exceptions such asHolderlin-involved looking atGreece through the lens ofRome: Goethe's Iphigenie, forall its talkof 'das Land der Griechen', speaks a Latinate lan guage. None the less this is an admirable, sophisticated, and rewarding study of an important phenomenon. KING'S COLLEGE LONDON MATTHEW BELL Nathan und seine Erben: Beitrdge zur Geschichte des Toleranzgedankens in der Li teratur.Festschrift furMartin Bollacher. Ed. by OXANA ZIELKE. Wiirzburg: Konigshausen& Neumann. 2005. 195 pp. E36. ISBN 978-3-8260-29go-I. This collection of essays was initiated by the faculty of philology of the Ruhr Universitat Bochum to celebrates the sixty-fifth birthday of their respected colleague Martin Bollacher. Edited byOxana Zielke with the assistance ofThorsten Meier, the volume presents another contribution to theongoing discussion of thenotion of toler ance. Bollacher's lifelong teaching and research returned over and again toquestions of humanity and tolerance. His subjects range fromVoltaire and Lessing toCanetti. The editors note in theirpreface that theyhave attempted to include essays that reflect Bollacher's areas of scholarly interest as well as his contacts with differentcultures: Bollacher has taught at universities in Japan, Korea, India, theUnited States, and elsewhere. The ten essays struggle todefine tolerance. The authors underscore thatwe can no longer operate with a concept of tolerance as defined in the eighteenth century, but insteadmust negotiate definitions that range from tolerance as acceptance or respect to tolerance as a disciplinary or even repressive discourse in the sense ofHorkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse. For this reason a central concern of the volume is to trace the development of the concept of tolerance that established itself in literarydiscourse with Lessing's Nathan derWeise (I779). The depiction in literature and othermedia of the possibilities and limits of tolerance, especially in the encounter between self and other, is the focus of themajority of the essays. Regina Grundmann demonstrates in the firstcontribution that religious-philoso phical texts ofmedieval Spain thematized and discussed the central question from Nathan der Weise regarding the truth of the three revealed religions. Grundmann investigates the inter-religious concept of tolerance in themagnum opus of Jehuda Halevi, theKusari, which was probably written between I I2o and I 140. She finds thatwithin Jewish theological writings of the Middle Ages therewere clear parallels toLessing's later thought,notmerely in thewritings of Maimonides but also inothers such as those ofHalevi. The three following essays focus on Lessing's Nathan. Jost Schneider discusses Lessing's models of tolerance thatalso contain within themselves theirown limits.Thorsten Meier analyses the failed premiere of theplay in I783 and suggests that the audience's lack of interestwas not due to the drama's theme, as other scholars have proposed, but because its aesthetics were ahead of its time. Paul Gerhard Klussmann's essay carries the subtitle'Lessings Nathan derWeise imDDR Theater'. This issomewhat misleading, sinceKlussmann focuses on the fourstagings at theDeutsches Theater, Berlin. Here a broader discussion ofGDR stagingswould 270 Reviews have been welcome. Although therehas been recentwork along these lines byHans Joachim Kertscher and Thomas Fox, the topic of Lessing in theGDR remains a desideratum for researchers. The last essay of interest to scholars of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature isbyHarro Muiller-Michaels, focusing on Herder and his contemporaries. The second part of the Festschrift will have a special appeal to those concerned with racism,minority discourse, and notions of difference and diversity as presented in twentieth-century literature and other media. The complex interplay of power and otherness informsUwe-K. Ketelsen's excellent essay 'DerWille zur Bewahrung von Differenz'. Ketelsen's study corresponds well with the following contribution on racism and media byManfred Schneider, who presents a thought-provoking analysis of the 'Entgastung' of theJews inEurope. Giinter Ahrends' sessay on ethnic difference in...