Sentiment Media: Franziska zu Reventlow and the Gender of Genre in Modernism1

Abstract

On December 30, 1893, the 22-year-old Franziska zu Reventlow writes to the editor of the highly influential Naturalist journal Die Gesellschaft, Michael Georg Conrad, Es gibt so vieles, was man gerne kunstlerisch gestalten mochte und es wenigstens noch nicht in der Malerei ausdrucken kann. Da drangt es mich machtig dazu, es zu schreiben. Und wenn man es schreibt, so will man es auch nicht liegen lassen, einmal aus gemeiner Vernunft und praktischer Uberlegung und dann kommt einem, wenigstens mir, auch oft das Bedurfnis, das, was man vom Leben und von den Menschen gelitten hat, hinauszuschreien, um sich Luft zu machen, damit die gleichgultigen Menschen sich einmal umdrehen, um zu sehen, wer denn da geschrien hat. Ich furchte nur, das ich meine Sachen nie an eine Zeitung loswerde, aber ich kann nicht anders schreiben. (Briefe 283) Reventlow's professed inability to write in a different way (anders) confronts us with questions of form, genre, and style. Her phrasing (Ich furchte) leaves it open whether she cannot or does not want to write differently in order to comply with the norms that would lead to publication of her work in a newspaper. At the end of the quote, she expresses a need to scream her suffering into the world and at the indifferent (gleichgultige) people. This rapid climactic progress from modest statement to distinct screaming must have perplexed the teacher and journalist Conrad. Just what kind of things (Sachen) could he expect from such a writer? By 1893, Franziska Countess zu Reventlow was looking back on an unusual trajectory for a privileged young woman's life in Wilhelmine Germany. Born into a severely restrictive aristocratic family, she eschewed conformist gender roles, including an upper class marriage. Instead, she requested and eventually received her certification as a school teacher for girls, although she never actually secured a position. When she was discovered to be a member of the Lubeck Ibsen-Club where she read Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Zola, a scandal ensued, followed by her escape from a vicarage, her engagement to a man of the lower classes, and the study of art in Munich. Scandal accompanied von Reventlow throughout the rest of her life. Indeed, it formed and continues to form the mythic image of her bohemian existence as the years between 1893 and 1918 (the year of her death) were marked by divorce, incessant poverty, numerous love affairs, pregnancies and a child out of wedlock, solitude, and illness. The enduring legacy of this woman bohemian who spurned convention has produced a somewhat skewed reception that is influenced by the entertainment value of her life rather than by a critical analysis of her work. Only recently have scholars begun to look at the discrepancies between her seemingly rhapsodic existence and the more complex intersections between her personal politics and the historical background represented in her writing. My reading of Reventlow's works thus draws upon Katharina von Hammerstein's examination of Reventlow's Transformation von personlich Erlebtem in off entlichen Auiserungen von subversiver politischer Qualitat (290). I would like to push von Hammerstein's politicization of Reventlow's writing further to call attention to the reciprocal aspect of the media whereby once the personal becomes public the public takes an interest in the intimate lives of the protagonists it now knows. Reventlow was well aware of the potentially titillating facts and facets in her everyday life; although life in Munich's Schwabing area around 1900 allowed for an avant-garde life style, the conservatism of Wilhelmine Germany was felt everywhere. A disinherited baroness and unwed mother living in sin with artists of dubious character certainly served to satisfy the public's delight in gossip. Even today's critical evaluation of Reventlow's literary oeuvre is usually inspired by her biography, often sidelining a close reading of the texts as artistic constructions in favor of highlighting those parts that help us read historical everyday information on her own and others' lives. …