Wirklichkeit und Literatur: Strategien dokumentarischen Schreibens in der Weimarer Republik by Matthias UeckerRealistisches Schreiben in der Weimarer Republik. (Schriften der Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft, 5) by Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus

Abstract

602 Reviews insights into the relationship between literature and media technology and should open further avenues for reading Kafka's work in the context ofmedia studies. University of Miami Markus Zisselsberger Wirklichkeit und Literatur: Strategien dokumentarischen Schreibens inderWeimarer Republik. ByMatthias Uecker. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. 2007. 567 pp. 87.20; ?51. ISBN 978-3-03911-057-5. Realistisches Schreiben in der Weimarer Republik. Ed. by Sabine Kyora and Stefan Neuhaus. (Schriften der Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft, 5) Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2006. 340 pp. 39.80. ISBN 978-3-8260-3390-2. The issue of realism in literaturewas far from new in theGermany of the 1920s, but it was debated with particular intensity in thatperiod for reasons which are clearly connected to the circumstances of the time. 'Sachlichkeit', with itswide range of semantic resonances, became a focal term fordiscussions about attitudes to lifeand political issues in thewake of the First World War, aswell as forconceptions ofwhat cultural activity and artistic representation ought to be about. In a literary context this trendwas associated with a complex and ideologically inflected proliferation of programmatic statements as well as a strong tendency among younger authors to favour documentary approaches towriting.While thepractice of documentary writ ing continued during the 1930s, not least as an instrument of political propaganda both forand against National Socialism, theprogrammatic positions associated with Neue Sachlichkeit were vehemently challenged from a variety of perspectives from the late 1920s onwards, and the debate about them had effectivelyexhausted itself by the time theNazi regimewas installed in 1933. Matthias Ueckers book conducts a methodical review of the issues associated with Neue Sachlichkeit as a literary phenomenon. It closely examines the terms of the debate about documentary writing and its role in challenging traditional conceptions of literature,and itgives thorough accounts of the impact of documen tary approaches on the plays and novels as well as on the literary reportage of the Weimar period. It also relates these phenomena to parallel developments in film, in the production of illustrated books, and in journalism. In places the exposition of key ideas isperhaps over-dependent on a narrow range of authors (Egon Erwin Kisch, Erik Reger, Siegfried Kracauer, and Joseph Roth are particularly favoured). But Ueckers close attention to the precise nuance ofmany aspects of the polemics and thepractice ofwriters in the 1920s makes itthe sort of book that scholars would be well advised to consult in futurewhen checking their own thinking about what was really at stake in the literarydebates of the time. The book does, however, have limitations. The absence of an index makes it difficult to use in a targeted way; and given its focus on factors that prompted debate about the nature and function of literature, it isunfortunate that it makes no reference to thework ofHarro Segeberg on how authors of the period interacted creatively with such new media as radio (Segeberg, Literatur imMedienzeitalter: Literatur, Technik und Medien seit 1914 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge MLR, 104.2, 2009 603 sellschaft, 2003)). But themost serious constraint on the effectiveness of Uecker's analysis arises from his choice ofmethodological orientation. Some twelve pages of his opening chapter, inwhich he reviews possible theoretical approaches to his subject, are given over to an admirably cogent account of the limitations ofNiklas Luhmann's systems theory as an instrument foranalysing the functions of literature (Luhmann speaks of art ingeneral as a 'system', rather than literature inparticular; when applied to literature,his thinking is liable to generate tautological definitions; it makes no allowance for the role of the author as an individual; and itsfundamental conception of a system stabilizing itself 'autopoietically' in response to challenges from its environment is of limited value when considering the nature of literature as a system of communication with open and diffuse boundaries towards other domains of social activity). And yet Uecker cleaves to the notion of literature as a 'system' defending itself against encroachment by other 'systems'. The reason for this appears to be that themodel of 'literature' he has adopted is firmlybased on the notion of 'truth' rather than 'reality' as the hallmark of literarywriting, as arti culated in the aesthetic thought of Schiller and Hegel. A sense of binary opposition between thismodel of'literature...