Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg 1700-1933 by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 575 One issue that is left open is the very nature of political drama. The implicit defi? nition that it is 'politically committed' (p. 2) is not broad enough to bear the range of examples on offer.Elsewhere, the suggestion that the personal is the political requires more development if it is to expand the reader's understanding. A more detailed in? vestigation of form as political would have been welcome. That said, the virtues of this study?its undergraduate-friendly introductions to a wide range of prominent and more obscure works, the helpful contextual passages, the detailed endnotes?maintain the value of the book as an extremely useful accompaniment for students and those interested in the shape and manifestations of German drama in the last two decades. University College Dublin David Barnett Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg iyoo1933 . Ed. by Peter Uwe Hohendahl. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 69) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2003. 231pp. ?36. ISBN 90-420-1185-8. In a famous 1964 lecture, Percy Ernst Schramm suggested that Hamburg was a unique case in German history: an island of republican virtue that did not share in the absolutist and authoritarian traditions of the rest of Germany. According to Schramm, the city's mercantile vitality gave Hamburg's citizens an international perspective and generated a fierce determination to preserve the city's independence and to maintain the rights of the citizenry to active participation in government. The same attitudes, he suggested, were reflected in a unique cultural scene that was characterized by pri? vate initiatives and by a cosmopolitan and non-national outlook. Finally, an important implication of Schramm's argument was the assumption that the foundations laid in the early modern period sustained Hamburg's liberal traditions and its cosmopolitan culture through both the Second and Third Reichs. This stimulating collection ofessays re-examines the Hamburg myth. Mary Lindemann emphasizes the limitations of political participation in the eighteenth century. Jost Hermand and Katherine Aaslestad document the subtle transformation of com? munal republicanism around 1800. In response to the French Revolution, and to the propagandistic activities of Jacobin enthusiasts locally, the urban elite increasingly came to see the mass of the citizenry as a threat. At the same time new economic opportunities and unprecedented prosperity both appeared to threaten the old com? munity spirit and led to the emergence of a new self-consciously cosmopolitan elite that established itself in grand neo-classical villas along the Elbe (Julia Berger). What effectdid this have on Hamburg's culture? Even in the eighteenth century the pattern is mixed. Both the early opera (David Yearsley) and thejournalistic enterprise Der Patriot in the 1720s (Herbert Rowland) benefited from the active engagement in them of elements of the governing elite and from a sense that they fulfilled a political task rather than being purely commercial ventures. Yet the cultural market was a fickle one. The absence ofofficialSenate sponsorship led to the failure of Lessing's National Theatre project (John McCarthy). Klopstock, by contrast, struck a chord with an au? dience that recognized him as a major public figure (Meredith Lee) and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach flourished in an environment that fostered a commercial dimension to his position as the city's music director (Annette Richards). The shifts around 1800, it is suggested, had cultural implications too. Both Heine (Bernd Kortlander) and Brahms (Celia Applegate) were frustrated in their aspirations to establish themselves in Hamburg, though in the case of Brahms Celia Applegate suggests that the city's lively musical scene cannot be judged by its inability to sustain the career ambitions 576 Reviews of a great composer. Hans Rudolf Vaget provides a fascinating counterpoint to the implication of cultural decline in the nineteenth century in his study of Thomas Mann's development from a negative view of Hamburg's modernity in Buddenbrooks to an appreciation of its liberal Hanseatentum (as the birthplace of Hans Castorp) in The Magic Mountain. Finally JenniferJenkins explores another aspect of Hamburg's modernity around 1900, showing how Frederick Law Olmsted's New York Central Park influenced the development of the innovatory Winterhude Stadtpark. The old Burgerrepublik...