Romantischer Antisemitismus von Klopstock bis Richard Wagner by Wolf-Daniel Hartwich

Abstract

268 Reviews was more extensive, and in the longest section of the book he examines thewhole of Tieck's dramatic work from the unfinished and heterogeneous fragments of his student period to the 'Diumchen' fairy talewritten for his Phantasus collection in I8 I I.Tieck scholars will welcome this in-depth examination ofTieck's drama, which closes a gap. Yet here a heavy hand seems to be atwork. While Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva is certainly an important and wrongly neglected work, as Roger Paulin firstargued inhis Tieck biography, it isdifficult to justify thedevotion of sixty pages to the derivative juvenilia which Tieck produced in the 17gos before he found his own voice, some ofwhich were not even published inhis own lifetime. Further substantial sections of the book deal with Arnim, Brentano, and Eichen dorff,while passing reference is also made to the dramas of Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Karoline von Giinderrode, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. It is in these later sections of thebook thatScherer's definition ofRomantic drama becomes ques tionable. On the one hand, the dramas written by Eichendorff inhis lateryears have so much of a religious and ideological agenda that it seems one-sided to interpret themmainly in formal terms and to place them in the category of 'Spielgemalde', even iftheyare satirical and whimsical inparts. On theother, the 'Schicksalsdramen' of Zacharias Werner are so obviously Romantic in their themes and their choice of subject-matter that it is difficult to justify their exclusion from a study, as stated in the subtitle, of the 'Drama der Romantik'. Scherer's extensive, not to say diffuse,monograph includes a substantial excur sus on dramatic elements in threeRomantic novels and a coda on the influence of Romantic drama in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even the decision not to discuss Werner itself merits six pages of justification. A more concise version of Scherer's undoubtedly thoughtful findingswould have been welcome. At the same time,despite themany perceptive observations about individual texts, thebook does not offer the 'Gesamtdarstellung zu einer Gattung' which its cover claims. UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER RICHARD LITTLEJOHNS Romantischer Antisemitismus von Klopstock bisRichard Wagner. By WOLF-DANIEL HARTWICH. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2005. 277 pp. ?49.90. ISBN 978-3-525-20840-3. JosefKorner, the great Romantic scholar,may well have feltjustifiedwhen in Mar ginalien: Kritische Beitrage zur geistesgeschichtlichenForschung (Frankfurt a.M.: Schulte-Bulmke, 195o) he drew a direct linkbetween the anti-Semitism of theGer man Romantics and what was tobe called theHolocaust. He had of course written on the subject, but he had also survived Theresienstadt. K6rner's position deserves our respect. Later commentators may, however, wish to distinguish social and religious anti-Semitism in the period I785-I850 from later rabid and murderous manifesta tions in the twentieth century.This iscertainly thegeneral line taken in Wolf-Daniel Hartwich's highly informative study, even if itoccasionally puts him on a collision course with authorities such as Thomas Nipperdey or Paul Lawrence Rose. Rather, Hartwich isat pains topoint out that statements inimical to Jews, from I785 to I850, need to be differentiated and referred to their original contexts. Later misappropri ations (especially of Richard Wagner) by theorists of race do not justify reducing such statements to some kind of ideological teleology.Thus Wagner's notorious Das Yudentum inderMusik (i 850) was written by aman who enjoyed good relationswith individual Jews, actually admired Jewishmusic and its traditions, and was sympa thetic to its liturgical revival, indeed borrowed motifs from it,and who studied the Kabbalah as a source forhis last opera, Parsifal. At the same time, Wagner saw the MLR, I02.1, 2007 269 Jews of his century as deracinated and over-individualized, cut off from their reli gious and cultic origins, and in need of redemption. This 'Erlosung' is part of the greatmission of themusical drama of the future.Like this or not, it isnot the stuff of the later circle aroundWinifred Wagner. Hartwich's 'Romanticism' is a commodious term,beginning with Klopstock and ending with Wagner, referring more to long lines ofmythological continuity than to historical chronology. It follows in this respect his earlierDeutsche Mythologie (Berlin and Vienna: Philo, 2000). He can nevertheless identify twomajor strands that...