The Trauma of Defeat: Ricarda Huch's Historiography during the Weimar Republic by James M. Skidmore

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 57 from theHebrew, and the INRI and Hiob cycles, draw on deeper wells of experienc and contain poems which are moving testimonies to the anguish of abandonmen the empty heavens, the realityof suffering,and thepoet's role inmediation and pro nouncement (Die Stimme spricht). The long shadow of George himself and of th Master's mannerisms lies overmost of Wolfskehl's poetry, especially the Mittelmeer Zyklus. In those terms itoftenmakes claims togreatness thatcannot be sustained. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ROGER PAULI] TheTrauma of Defeat:RicardaHuch's Historiography during the Weimar Republic.By JAMES M. SKIDMORE. (Canadian Studies inGerman Language and Literature, 50) Bern: Peter Lang. 2005. 215 pp. SwF 67; ?30.20; &46.20. ISBN 978-3 03910-760-5. Ricarda Huch's fame rests above all on her reputation as the best-known German woman writer of her day and a pioneer ofwomen's university education, and on her eloquent resignation from thePrussian Academy ofArts in I933. Her actual works, on the other hand, although ground-breaking, have remained in the shadows. She has been leftout ofmany studies of Weimar and modernist literature as herwritings do not fully fitany established literarypattern of the times; her ambivalent portrayal ofwomen has excluded her from the feminist canon. A fulledition of her correspon dence (current collections are patchy and, in some cases, problematic) and a scholarly study of her aeuvre are both overdue. Skidmore addresses thisdeficitwith awelcome emphasis onHuch's historiography, interpreting the changed accents of herwriting in the I920S as responses to contem porary events.Huch, he argues, believed thatdivision and decline had beset Germany since thedisintegration of themedieval world and had onlyworsened since i87 I, but itwas Germany's collapse in thewar and atVersailles that stirred her to construct an alternative national identitybymeans of positive figures from thepast. Skidmore firstanalyses her contradictory response to the First World War and its aftermath in her autobiographical and literary texts; he then turns to her studies Die Roman tik (I899-I902) and Entpersonlichung (I921) to establish comparisons between her thought before and after thewar. His examination of historical texts in the Weimar period concentrates on her idealization of theMiddle Ages (Deutsche Geschichte, i: Romisches Reich Deutscher Nation) and of nineteenth-century figureswho resisted general trends: Bakunin, Stein, and themarginal 'conservative revolutionaries' of I848. Two finalchapters locateHuch's historical thought in relation to thatof others, by comparison first with Nietzsche's concept of 'monumental' history, and thenwith the contemporary ideas ofMeinecke, Lukacs, and Kantorowicz. This is a valuable study, as Huch's historical writings have so far been under estimated and under-researched. By suggesting external causes forHuch's shifted emphases after I9 I8, itsuccessfully moves away from theone-track concentration on internal development (and on her turbulent personal life)which has often prevented scholarship from seeing her inwider contexts. It still leaves scope, however, for a fuller study ofHuch's historiography; itwould benefit on occasion from a sharper focus, and from correcting some inaccuracies and omissions, not least in the index and bibliography. The disproportionately brief discussion ofHuch's historical texts would be enriched by sustained comparison with other treatments of historical ma terial such as Der grofleKrieg inDeutschland, Wallenstein, and the later volumes of Deutsche Geschichte. Huch's view of Ranke could be treatedmore critically, and the comparisons with Meinecke and Kantorowicz could concentrate more precisely on individual texts, at the expense, ifnecessary, of the section on Lukacs, which 572 Reviews establishes hardly any common ground with Huch's ideas. None the less, this is a persuasively argued study of hitherto unmapped territory,and a useful contribution to the contextualization which Huch has been owed forsome time. THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD STEFFAN DAVIES On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald. By ERIC L. SANTNER. Chicago and London: University ofChicago Press. 2oo6. XXii+ 2 I9pp. $20; ? I3. ISBN 978 0-226-73 503-0. Eric Santner's new book develops lines of thought pursued inhis study On thePsy chotheologyofEveryday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 200I) and more recently in his contribution to The Neighbor: Three Inquiries inPolitical Theology, co-edited with Slavoj Zizek and Kenneth Reinhard (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2oo6). The basic intuition at the heart of this 'psychotheology', he...