Lotte In Weimar Research Articles

The Mind in Exile: Thomas Mann in Princeton

The two new books published by Stanley Corngold in 2022 are dedicated to Thomas Mann and the European refugee scholars who met and cooperated at Princeton University and the city’s Institute for Advanced Studies during the Second World War. Among the two publications, the book reviewed here foregrounds Mann’s Princeton oeuvre rather than his interactions with other émigré intellectuals. Corngold holds the magnifying glass over the writings that emerged from the two and a half years—28 September 1938 to 17 March 1941—that Mann spent in Princeton as lecturer in the humanities. Himself affiliated with Princeton University for decades and overseeing many courses on European and German literature, Corngold’s aim ‘is to shape a cultural memory of Thomas Mann during his American exile in Princeton’ and to bring to the fore ‘what can be remembered of Mann’s work and personality in Princeton today’ (p. xi). Corngold has divided his study into five chapters. Chapters 2 and 4, analysing (respectively) Mann’s political and literary writings of the Princeton months, are by far the longest and form the heart of the book; chapters 3 and 5, each only a few pages long, may be described as their conclusions. Corngold begins by recounting Mann’s steps in the US until he received the offer of a teaching position at Princeton, an opportunity mediated by the writer’s ‘determined patroness’ (p. 2) Agnes E. Meyer. Meyer also secured ‘a substantial one-year’s grant for him from the Rockefeller Foundation to support the appointment’, Corngold explains (p. 3). Mann’s time in Princeton was divided between artistic and political work. One novel was completed here, Lotte in Weimar, along with numerous lectures, speeches, newspaper articles and pleas before the American authorities for European friends fleeing from the Nazis. It was ‘a stunningly productive period’, as Corngold quotes his protagonist (p. 211).

Celebrity and the Cultural Nation.Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar

Abstract Mann’s 1939 Goethe novel, Lotte in Weimar, is a valuable text through which to understand the role of celebrity in the literary and political landscape of the early 20th century. I explore the ways in which an engagement with the field of Celebrity Studies makes possible a reading of Mann’s Goethe as a palimpsest of the historical celebrity author, Mann, a 20th century celebrity author, and Hitler, Germany’s most famous politician in the media age. Mann’s own experiences in the spotlight, especially those gathered in his exile years, inform the social and familial relationships at the center of the novel. Furthermore, Mann takes an ironic stance towards the “Goethe Mythos,” thereby undermining the validity of the cult of genius and inviting a reading that recognizes its shared features with the cult of modern celebrity that made possible Hitler’s rise to power.

Two banks of the same river. Thomas Mann and his publishers Samuel Fischer and Gottfried Bermann Fischer

The enduring collaboration between the outstanding German writer and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann and the Frankfurt-based publishing house S. Fischer Verlag started in the late 19th c., with the publication of Mann’s early novella Little Herr Friedemann [Der kleine Herr Friedemann]. The year 1897 marked the start of Mann’s correspondence with Samuel Fischer and then his successor Gottfried Bermann Fischer, which spanned more than fifty years; the committed publisher saw to the publication of such landmarks of 20th-c. German literature as Buddenbrooks [Buddenbrooks — Verfall einer Familie], The Magic Mountain [Der Zauberberg], Lotte in Weimar , the four installments of Joseph and His Brothers [Joseph und seine Brüder], Doctor Faustus [Doktor Faustus], and Felix Krull [Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull]. The novels appeared in print even during the author’s enforced emigration at the time of Nazi persecution. Resulting from this collaboration with the publisher, which exemplifies preservation and propagation of German literature’s humanistic traditions, was the fact that, upon Mann’s death, none of his completed works ended up locked up in his desk — all having been published.

Thomas Mann’s Moses and Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism in the context of ‘Germany’s suicide’

Written during his American ‘exile’ and depicting an alternative story of the prophet Moses, T. Mann’s little studied novella The Tables of the Law [Das Gesetz] (1943) is compared with S. Freud’s Moses and Monotheism [Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion] (1939), his last work completed before his death. The author traces a number of significant parallels: in particular, Moses’s origins in the highest classes of Egyptian society. Mann sees the figure of Moses in The Tables of the Law as one of the purest and most vivid embodiments of creative principles, going back to his own period of ‘playing Goethe.’ Moses is yet another of his powerful, harmonious and optimistic characters from the 1930s–1940s (Joseph in the four-part novel Joseph and His Brothers [Joseph und seine Brüder] or Goethe in Lotte in Weimar), with roots in the majestic Dutchman Peeperkorn from The Magic Mountain [Der Zauberberg] (1924). Instead of engaging in a direct polemic with corresponding ideological dogmata, the two books written by the giants of Germanspeaking culture in Nazi times reveal a profound examination of not fully recognized and therefore still dangerous sources of Nazi ideology on the mythological level in mankind’s collective unconscious.

Ireland, the Irish, and Biofiction

Ireland, the Irish, and Biofiction Michael Lackey (bio) In 2006 the novelist David Lodge confessed that before writing about Henry James, his “concept of what constituted a novel . . . did not include the possibility of writing one about a real historical person.”1 The traditional approach to fiction focused on an actual person was to change the character’s name in order to give the author more creative freedom. One thinks of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are based on Woolf’s parents), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Daisy Buchanan on Ginevra King), and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (Willie Stark on Huey Long). But for Lodge 2004 marked a decisive turning point: In that year James was the protagonist of Colm Tóibín’s The Master, Lodge’s own Author, Author, and Michiel Heyns’s The Typewriter’s Tale.2 Although Lodge focused on the confluence of biographical novels about James in 2004, the collection of contributions to this issue of Éire-Ireland offers another way of thinking about this seemingly sudden aesthetic boom of the literary genre. In 2003 Colum McCann published Dancer, a novel about the Soviet icon Rudi Nureyev. In 2004 Emma Donoghue’s Life Mask, a portrait of the artist Anne Damer, and Tóibín’s The Master also appeared. If we focus only on biographical novels—that is, biofiction—about James, as Lodge does, we might look to that subject’s life and work in order to illuminate the sudden surge and subsequent legitimization of this form in the early years of the twenty-first century. However, this exploration of biographical novels by Irish writers and about Irish subjects offers a different conclusion from Lodge’s suggestion of the year 2004 as a turning point for the form. This issue aims to demonstrate how [End Page 98] the study of Irish biofiction represents a promising field of scholarly inquiry and how understanding the form’s origins, evolution, and current popularity necessitates engagement with Ireland’s politics, religion, and movement toward national autonomy. The biographical novel has in fact been a significant literary genre for many years. Klaus Mann’s Alexander (1929); Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels (1933–43) and Lotte in Weimar (1939); Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934); Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939); Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian (1951); and William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) represent just a few noteworthy examples. Moreover, when we look at the origins and evolution of this literary form from a scholarly perspective, Irish writers played a vital role, using biofiction to create powerful new ways of signifying and being. Their countryman Oscar Wilde, for instance, provided a key theorization of the form and illuminated what the contemporary biographical novel has become; the Mayo-born George Moore, working in the same tradition as Wilde, published biofiction in the form of The Brook Kerith (1916), a novel in which Jesus, having survived the crucifixion, renounces his earlier teachings as dangerously fanatical. The contributions that follow include an essay by Suzanne Hobson analyzing Moore’s The Brook Kerith, a reflection piece by author Sabina Murray on her biographical novel Valiant Gentlemen, and conversations with three Irish biofiction writers of the early twenty-first century—Tóibín, McCann, and Donoghue. Scholars have long had difficulty processing the significance of Moore’s groundbreaking production. But in her contribution to this issue Hobson carefully locates Moore’s novel within a rich tradition of biblical biofiction—enabling readers to understand his novel as a major pioneering work in the subgenre. Murray’s essay, meanwhile, allows us to move beyond Irish authors to consider biographical novels by non-Irish authors about Irish figures (in this case Roger Casement), many of them dissidents within conventional society.3 She reveals the particular relationship [End Page 99] between a major strand of Irish biofiction and the country’s political history as a British colony and its valuation of dissent. Finally, to explore Ireland’s specific contribution to the genesis, evolution, rise, and now prevalence of biofiction, the interviews in this issue consider the ways...

Pink Ink. Zur Funktion der Farbe Rosa in Thomas Manns Roman Lotte in Weimar

This article shows in some detail that the colour pink functions as a leitmotif in Thomas Mann’s 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar. The basic link to Werther is established via the pink ribbon, which is missing on the white dress which the aging Charlotte Kestner wears during a dinner at Goethe’s house in 1816. Mann’s meticulous weaving of a red or even pink thread through the narrative, however, goes far beyond this detail. A closer investigation of the role the colour pink plays in his novel reveals a subtle network of political, erotic and literary allusions, reaching from Goethe’s Divan to James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Apokrypher Modernismus: Thomas Mann und die klassische Moderne by Stefan Börnchen, Claudia Liebrand

904 Reviews it iswell worth our attention. This is a lively and insightful work of criticism, scholarship, and creative translation. University of California, Los Angeles Kathleen L. Komar Apokrypher Modernismus: Thomas Mann und die klassische Moderne. Ed. by Stefan Bornchen and Claudia Liebrand. Paderborn: Fink. 2008. 333 pp. 39.90. ISBN 978-3-7705-4673-2. 'Apocryphal Modernism* as a label forThomas Mann seems like a reading against the grain'. The deliberately counter-intuitive titlemay cause surprise among the agreeably non-fashionable majority ofMann scholars, yet nevertheless has a lot to offer.This essay collection can be read as an innovative addition and not simply as a mannered counter-reaction to Riidiger Gorner's Thomas Mann: Der Zauber des Letzten (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005; reviewed inMLR, 102 (2007), 896-98). Thomas Mann is seen not only as a 'Spatling der Zeiten', but also as an author of classical modernism and consequently as an author of the twentieth-century avant-garde. Notions of lateness and endings are followed by new beginnings; arriere-garde and avant-garde are inextricably intertwined. The ingenious neologism Apokrypher Modernismus tries to highlight the subtle layers ofmodernism inThomas Mann's writings, fromwhich new strands of research can be excavated. The aim of the underlying concept of avant-garde in thevolume is at least twofold: a plausible connection between Thomas Mann's literarywritings and the experimental avant-garde is established and given unprecedented emphasis. Moreover, avant-garde forms of literary theory and methodologies come into play as a new research agenda. This essay collection has high methodological ambitions and incorporates relevant developments in literary theory into Mann scholarship, from post structuralism and deconstruction to cultural studies, gender studies and inter sections between literature and politics, economy, and ethnography. The opening essay by Bernd Hamacher turnsGorner's Zauber des Letzten into a 'Zauber des Ersten' and 'Zauber des Nachsten'. His reflections on Thomas Mann as an author of the literary avant-garde from the perspectives of reception and production and Mann's inherent understanding of an epigonal 'Genieasthetik' are original and cast a new light on Mann's ingenious transformations of his literary idols, especially Dostoevsky. An interesting, but at times far-fetched, reading of Mann as a postmodernist is provided byMichael Butter.While literary strategies of postmodernism are undeniably applicable toDoktor Faustus, Butter's bold as sertion thatMann is neither a realist nor an author on the verge between realism and modernism and his argument forMann's neorealism are problematic and cannot convince as a whole. Stefan Bornchen's in-depth reading of Buddenbrooks through the lens of cultural theory focuses on the two school scenes, emphasizing the themes of phallocratic law and order, emergent chaos, ambivalence of the signifiers, and a carnivalesque undermining of the symbolic order, which result in MLR, 105.3, 2010 905 amodern crisis of representation. Oliver Kohn provides a rewarding interpretation ofWalsungenblut as a paradigm of 'ApocryphalModernism'. He gives a fascinating account of the concatenated discourses of anti-Semitism and aesthetic decadence, which ismainly based on a literal reading of Nietzsche's Antichrist, where Jews are depicted as theatrical decadents and life-affirmingnon-decadents alike. Kohn then focuses onMann's modernist innovation in the incest scene, which breaks the Freudian fatherly law by following a late Romantic, theatrical father's imperative: Wagner's incestuous mythical act of foundation ismimicked and results in an act ofmodernist fiction.Claudia Liebrand presents a substantial interpretation of Lotte inWeimar with a threefold agenda. She firstfocuses on Mann's wordplays with his signifiers and shows a disturbingly close connection toKafka andWalser. As a second step, she examines the complex interplay of individual, collective, and cul turalmemory ofGoethe. Thirdly,Mann's novel is explored on the level of genre?a virtual etude on facts and fiction between Alexandrianism and avant-garde. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht draws analogies between the alluring atmosphere, the shiftingweather conditions, and sensual moods inDer Tod inVenedig and the psy chological self-reflection of the protagonist. He strongly argues for the?hitherto underrated?significance of the aesthetic category of 'Stimmung' both in general and in relation to the dramatic development ofmoods in the novella. His observa tions end on a slightly anachronistic twist, as Thomas Mann's...

Thomas Mann's 'The Magic Mountain': A Casebook by Hans Rudolf Vaget

MLR, 104.3, 2009 913 Thomas Manns 'The Magic Mountain: A Casebook. Ed. by Hans Rudolf Vaget. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. viii+275 pp. ?15.99. ISBN 978-0 19-530474-9. Books in theCasebooks inCriticism series 'introduce readers to the essential criti cism on landmark works of literature and film' involumes inwhich a distinguished scholar who is an authority on the texthas collected themost elucidating and dis tinctive scholarly essays on thatwork and added key supporting materials'. Among the key task for each volume is the editor's substantial introduction that considers the key features of thework' and the contextualization of 'its cultural import and contemporary reputation' and a surveying of 'themajor approaches that have in formed thework's critical history'. There can be no doubt that thisparticular volume brilliantly succeeds in all respects in that ambition. Of its ten contributions five are (revised) reprints from international journals and publications, dating with one significant exception from the last fourteen years; the other five, including two by the editor,were specially written for this casebook, which is a truly outstanding example of lucid introduction and ground-breaking challenging scholarship. Itdoes indeed 'inspire further critical forays into some of the unmapped territories of this great mountain of a book' (p. 3), which could so easily leave the reader of TheMagic Mountain stranded. Thomas Mann liked to think that even hismost difficultfiction, such as Lotte in Weimar, shared something of the excitement of stories of adventure, of Indianergeschienten, as itcaptivates the reader. Hans Rudolf Vaget's volume helps us to unlock that secret of this extraordinary Bildungsroman. It is centred around the hermetic mountain world of a tuberculosis sanatorium in which the male neophyte, losing all sense of time, undergoes a transformation and initiation, until a clap of thunder breaks the spell and the events of the FirstWorld War erupt.He disappears on thebattlefields of Flanders. The titles of the ten contributions clearly reflect the stimulating wide range of aspects of the novel: 'Telling Timelessness inOer Zauberberg (Dorrit Cohn), 'Pho tography and Bildung in TheMagic Mountain (Eric Downing), 'Thomas Mann's Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of theWeimar Republic' (Anthony Grenville), 'The "Magic Mountain Malady": The Reception of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain in theMedi cal Community, 1924-2000' (Malte Herwig), 'Modern Masculinities on theMagic Mountain' (Todd Kontje), 'Naphta and his Ilk: JewishCharacters inMann's The Magic Mountain (Franka Marquardt and Yahya Elsaghe), 'Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and Identity inDer Zauberberg (Nancy. Nenno), 'The Magic Mountain: A Humoristic Counterpart toDeath inVenice (Ellis Shook man), 'Death, Knowledge, and the Formation of Self: TheMagic Mountain (Martin Travers), and 'TheMaking of TheMagic Mountain and '"Politically Suspect": Music on theMagic Mountain' (both byVaget). Itwould now be a pleasure to discuss the novel with readers informed by this slim volume so rich innew insights. University of Nottingham Hinrich Siefken ...

A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann by Herbert Lehnert, Eva Wesseli, Thomas Mann

MLR, I02.2, 2007 573 significant contribution to both Sebald scholarship and critical theory, its argument is thus not always easy to follow. MARBACHAMNECKAR BEN HUTCHINSON A Companion tothe Works of ThomasMann. Ed. by HERBERT LEHNERT and EVAWES SELL. (Studies inGerman Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2004. xviii+345 pp. $90; ?65. ISBN 978-I-57II3-2I9-2. This collection of essays formspart of aCamden House series inwhich twenty-seven volumes have appeared since 1999 and which will eventually provide a panorama of the accepted peaks ofGerman and Austrian literature fromHartmann von Aue to Thomas Bernhard and beyond. A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann seeks to 'address scholars, teachers, students ofGerman or comparative literature' as well as 'themany readers ofMann's writings [. . .]who do not readGerman' (p. vii). It aims to 'inform the reader of thepresent state of research on Thomas Mann's work and to present new views' (p. 2 I).Most of the seventeen contributions to thisvolume achieve these goals admirably, in a stylewhich isboth scholarly and accessible. No companion to theworks ofThomas Mann can hope to be comprehensive, of course. As Herbert Lehnert acknowledges in his introduction, 'Thomas Mann research has become so vast thatan overview isno longer useful' (p. 2 i). Lehnert's introduction nevertheless provides a succinct overview ofMann's intellectual biography and literarycareer in itscultural and political context. Thereafter thevolume adopts a broadly chronologi cal approach to Mann's writings, from 'Gefallen' ( 894) to 'Die Betrogene' (I954), by way of essays on all the major fictional textsaswell as discussions of selected themes in Mann's ceuvre such as female identities (Hannelore Mundt) and his performances as a public speaker (Manfred Dierks). Readers keen to see contemporary literary theory applied to Mann's textswill be largely disappointed. Almost without exception, the contributions provide good, general introductions to the texts under discussion and new insights for the specialist, or both. Excellent examples of the formerare Ehrhard Bahr's essay on art and society inMann's early novellas and Clayton Koelb's dis cussion ofDer Tod in Venedig, both ofwhich present lucid expositions of the texts togetherwith introductions to the interpretative issues which have traditionally sur rounded them.Contributions which are likely tobe of greater interest to the specialist include Hans Rudolf Vaget's rereading ofDoktor Faustus, Eva Wessell's discussion ofDer Zauberberg's affinitieswith Mann's essayistic reflections on the First World War, and Hans-Joachim Sandberg's stimulating consideration ofMann's abandoned novel on Frederick theGreat and itsplace in the genesis and architecture ofDer Tod inVenedig. Refreshingly, thevolume also contains erudite appraisals of novels which have tended to remain on themargins ofThomas Mann reading lists, ifnot ofMann scholarship, including the Joseph tetralogy (Peter Piitz), Lotte inWeimar (Werner Frizen), and Felix Krull (Egon Schwarz). The critical apparatus isgenerally helpful and well conceived, though it isodd that the bibliography ofMann's works (pp. ix-xv) provides theirEnglish titleswhile the index lists only the original German ones. The volume's methodology is robustly contextual and, with the exception of Lehnert's introduction, Dierks's analysis of Mann's late politics, and Wessell's discussion of thewar essays, focuses largely on Mann's fiction-to the extent that amore accurate title might be A Companion to the Fictional Works of Thomas Mann. The essays are all firmlyembedded in the context ofMann's intellectual and emotional biography and of his attitudes to political and cultural developments. The best contributions will help thenew reader of individual textsbyMann to achieve a deeper understanding of theircomplexities and their joys. 574 Reviews However, it is slightly regrettable that,with the exception of Lehnert's brief intro duction, the volume tends not to address questions of larger coherences or patterns inMann's work. There is no sustained attempt to present thematic or formal con nections between textswhich are discussed sowell in isolation, yetwhich, together, often present a confusing labyrinth to students approaching Mann for the firsttime. Mann's intellectual influences, his essays on politics, philosophy, and literature, and his diaries and letters are all referred tomany times in the course of this volume. However, littleattempt ismade to argue either foror against the existence of broad patterns within Mann's ceuvre...

Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory by John J. White

896 Reviews to be temporally displaced Germans. Elsaghe sets aside the Joseph novels, focusing on works dealing with Germans since i87.I (The notable exception is a chapter on Lotte inWeimar, which serves as a coda to the book and takes up Mann's sense of competition with and inferiorityto Goethe. Even here the feeling is that true Germans have become a thing of the past.) Modern Jews are the most marginal of allMann's Germans. Elsaghe's exemplary Jew is Kunigunde Rosenstiel, thrice marginal: as Jew and woman and, even more beyond the pale, as a woman who writes. Elsaghe seizes on her as a stereotypical representative of the Jewish people as awhole forMann's imagination. She is female, an intimate of historical suffering (a 'Klageweib'), and strives in vain to assimilate toGermanness. This desire ismanifest in her sycophantic relationship to Leverkiihn asGerman composer, but is especially strong in her feeling for the German language: she writes him impeccably elegant letters. However, these letters have no content or significance. Since his Mann genders Jews as feminine, it might have been interesting to hear what Elsaghe would say about Mann's view of Kafka's writing. He is silent on such matters, but he does suggest thatMann, even in later works, views Jews as basically alien toGerman culture. And Elsaghe's Mann is also hostile to the idea that women might be able to write. The most far-fetched chapter takes an unassuming line from 'Beim Propheten' and speculatively inflates it to a full-scale assault on Franziska von Reventlow as awriting woman. Elsaghe does not discuss women who paint, though, just as he does not discuss the presumably defective Germanness of Austrians. The unclarified critical assumption of Elsaghe's book appears to be that novels in general andMann's novels in particular-because of their 'Popularitiitund Kanonizi tiit'-function as amode of social control, in this case regulating national identity by fixing its limits. The novel defines by force of high cultural prestige what is and what is not acceptably German forMann and his vaguely adumbrated audience. Elsaghe takes it as his task to expose the workings of this social control through 'ideologiekritische Relektiire' (p. I). However, he does not take up the nature of the problem itself. Do novels really have such a powerfully ideological effect? Elsaghe isvague on this point. What measure would apply? Or do the novels passively reflect ideology? Or could it be that novels, including 'conservative' ones, have a subversive force, as Bahktin and others propose? What is the role of novelistic irony in an 'ideological rereading' of the sort Elsaghe considers to be amuch-needed correction ofMann criticism? Rather than situate his argument among these larger problems of interpretation, Elsaghe like Coetzee's police commissioner-sticks to the moral high ground of his narrow agenda. And even if his exegeses of marginal figures do not actually present a new picture of Mann and his myriad prejudices, they do add fresh readings of widely overlooked figures. BRANDEISUNIVERSITY STEPHEND. DOWDEN Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory. By JOHNJ.WHITE. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2004. 348 pp. $90; E65. ISBN I-57I I3-076-4. The Grofle kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe (GBA) of Brecht's prodi gious output was rounded off in 2000 with the appearance of an 835-page Register band. The complete set dwarfs the previous Gesammelte Werke of I967. The volumes of theory in the new edition contain roughly I ,700 items, of which amere 300 were published inBrecht's lifetime. Just under a quarter of the pieces are published in the GBA for the first time. It is this wealth of material that has inspired John White to return to themuch-contested area of Brecht's dramatic theory. MLR, I0 1 .3, 2oo6 897 Clearly White cannot deal with each item individually, and so he approaches the task by identifying certain central works chronologically, although he is keen to point out that such amethodology is difficult in that Brecht, the constant reviser and deve loper, did not work in discrete phases. This ismost evident in White's final chapter, which discusses the 'monumental fragment' (p. 255), theMessingkauf project, dating from I939 to...

German Classicism and the French Revolution

High, Jeffrey L. Schillers Revolutionskonzept und die Französische Revolution, Studies in German Language and Literature, vol. 35 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). Pp. 175. $109.95 Wilson, W. Daniel, ed. Goethes Weimar und die Französische Revolution: Dokumente der Krisenjahre (Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2004). Pp. 741. €74.90 As dominant literary icons in the history of German identity, Schiller and Goethe have been used again and again as referees to decide current issues in Germany, especially in the realm of politics. During the 19th century, the German revolutionaries of 1848 rallied around Schiller as a symbol of political freedom during the Schiller celebrations of 1859, while Goethe played a major role in the establishment of the ideological foundation of the German Empire of 1871. The standard Goethe biography of 1895 by Albert Bielschowsky reminded the German educated middle class that "without Goethe, [there was] no Bismarck" and likewise "without Goethe no German Reich!" The statues of Goethe and Schiller standing together, hand in hand, created by Ernst Rietschel and erected in front of today's Weimar National Theater in 1857, became a symbol of German identity. During the 20th century, Goethe's name was invoked in 1919, when the constitution of the Weimar Republic was ratified and its first president was elected, and again in 1949, when two German states were founded during the Cold War and both claimed to embody his heritage on their side of the iron curtain. While the Nazis had little use for Goethe, they celebrated Schiller as a fore-runner of their so-called "national revolution." Hitler placed red roses on Schiller's desk in the Schiller house in Weimar in 1934, while Thomas Mann completed his Goethe novel The Beloved Returns: Lotte in Weimar during his exile in Princeton in 1939, presenting a highly critical assessment of German nationalism during the Wars of Liberation (1813–1815). The Goethe and Schiller celebrations during the last fifty-six years have offered ample evidence of the ideological exploitation of these two national icons for political causes. Therefore it makes sense to combine the above titles for a review, especially since they are dealing with Schiller's and Goethe's relationship to the French Revolution, which is an ideal litmus test for their political stance. Both were affected [End Page 134] and deeply influenced by the French Revolution. Schiller was even inducted as honorary citizen of the French Republic in 1792—together with numerous other intellectuals and revolutionaries, among them Thomas Paine and George Washington. Research has shown that the nomination of Schiller was based on a poor translation of Die Räuber and a melodramatic production of the play as Robert, chef des brigands in Paris in 1792 that presented the dramatic characters as Jacobins. Jeffrey L. High's monograph is an attack on the traditional paradigm of a three-stage development of Schiller's concept of revolution: first his pro-revolutionary stance in his early dramas, then his disappointment by the French Revolution in 1793, and finally his escape into aesthetic theory. High seeks to replace this paradigm with a new reading that includes Schiller's major works before and after the French Revolution. His macro-analysis has all the benefits of a comprehensive documentation that includes not only Schiller's works and letters, but also the comments of his contemporaries with regard to Schiller's reactions. Moral-aesthetic education was most important for Schiller, and any rebellion that did not pass the test of avoiding barbarism was to be condemned. The French Revolution did not pass this test, while the Swiss, Dutch, and American revolutions did. Schiller had planned to write a treatise in defense of Louis XVI, but the king's execution took place before his German defender was able to begin this task. Schiller's position is often contradictory, and it takes a highly differentiated approach to show his opposition to feudalism, on the one hand, and his defense...

'Doktor Faustus' zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Eine quellenkritische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Thomas Manns literarischem Selbstbild (review)

MLR, 100.2, 2005 565 arguments increasingly critical?so that the best chapter is the last, on Jeder stirbtfur sich allein. But Wilkes remains too literal and too unliterary in his readings. He looks, forexample, forexplicit 'evidence' of attitudes in Kleiner Mann ? was nun?, whereas in fact, although the point of view is not consistently that of the Pinnebergs, the tale is largely told within a deliberately restricted petty bourgeois mind-set which must appear at least sweetly naive, ifnot downright misguided, to many a more intelligent or more informed reader. One of the charms of the novel is that it thus permits a glimpse of perspectives way beyond the horizons of the Pinnebergs, without, how? ever, making anything explicit. 'Sehen Sie,' Fallada wrote to Bernhard von Brentano in July 1932, 'der Leser zieht ja doch seine Schlusse' (quoted p. 55). St Hugh's College, Oxford Tom Kuhn 'Doktor Faustus' zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Eine quellenkritischeund rezeptionsgeschichtlicheUntersuchung zu Thomas Manns literarischem Selbstbild. By Eva Schmidt-Schutz. (Thomas-Mann-Studien, 28) Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. 2003. 357 PP- ?58. ISBN 3-465-03212-8. Was Thomas Mann a 'classicist' or a 'modernist'? Or is this now an obsolete, and obfuscating, question? Eva Schmidt-Schutz begins her study of Doktor Faustus by tracing the shiftin the critical reception over the last three decades from an emphasis on Mann as a 'traditionalist' (Piitz, Reed, Lange) to one on the 'modernist' (Heftrich, Lehnert, Vaget, Hansen, Dierks) or even 'postmodernist' (Roberts, Renner) aspects of his work. (Oddly, she neglects to mention Franz Zeder's study of the 'sceptical reflexivity' of Doktor Faustus, published under the title Studienratsmusik (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1995).) The author suggests that Mann's relationship to Joyce of? fers a perspective on his own 'modernity', noting that Hermann Broch saw a similar 'claim to religious totality' (whatever that means) at work in the novels of both writers, while Arno Schirokauer was particularly sensitive to the presence of mythic structures at work in Lotte in Weimar, and Harry Levin's critical study of Joyce made a deep impression, as Mann's Die Entstehung des 'Doktor Faustus' makes clear. Levin was right in thinking that Joyce and Eliot were looking for ways of 'making the modern world possible in art' (quoted p. 85); since modernity is, as Baudelaire wrote in 1863, 'le transitoire, le fugitif,le contingent' (the other half, frequently forgotten, being Teternel et l'immuable'). Mann was upset, however, by Levin's failure to understand Doktor Faustus, an incomprehension that has gone on to enjoy a long, if not always distinguished, history. In Mann's letter to Klaus of 27 April 1943, describing Faus? tus as 'eine Kiinstler- (Musiker-) und moderne Teufelsverschreibungsgeschichte aus der Schicksalsgegend Maupassant, Nietzsche, Hugo Wolf ete.', incorporating 'die Idee des Rausches iiberhaupt und der Anti-Vernunft damit verquickt, dadurch auch das Politische, Faschistische, und damit das traurige Schicksal Deutschlands' (cited p. 115 n. 3), Schmidt-Schutz sees an accurate summary of its plot. Yet, as she shows in detail, the context of the novel goes back to Mann's much earlier short story 'Beim Propheten' (1904), with its caricature of Ludwig Derleth; to his general suspicion of the George Circle; to his distinction in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918) between 'reiner und frecher Asthetizismus' and 'der politisierte und moralisierende Asthetizismus' (quoted p. 134); and, of course, his engagement with Nietzsche. De? spite, or rather because of, his doubts concerning the George Circle, represented in the novel by the 'KridwiG-Kreis', it enabled Mann, so the author argues, 'den Weg von alternativen asthetischen Entwiirfen in Opposition zum Biirgertum und allgemeiner Kulturkritik zu praefaschistischem Rigorismus und faszinierter Gewaltverherrlichung zu rekonstruieren' (p. 139). The most densely argued chapter of this 566 Reviews study, however, reconstructs a far more direct intervention in the genesis of Mann's text, the now famous discussions with Adorno about Schoenberg and twelve-tone music theory. For Adorno helped Mann understand how the dodecaphonic system could open up new musical possibilities, as well as running the risk of being a new form of musical totalitarianism. As a result, Mann, far from trying to construct his novel on twelve-tone principles, or offeringa postmodern pot-pourri, conceived...

A Companion to the works of Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann is among the greatest of German prose writers, and was the first German novelist to reach a wide English-speaking readership since Goethe. Novels such as Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and Doktor Faustus attest to his mastery of subtle, distanced irony, while novellas such as Death in Venice reveal him at the height of his mastery of language. In addition to fresh insights about these best-known works of Mann, this volume treats less-often-discussed works such as Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and Felix Krull, as well as his political writings and essays. Mann himself was a paradox: his role as family-father was both refuge and facade; his love of Germany was matched by his contempt for its having embraced Hitler. While in exile during the Nazi period, he functioned as the prime representative of the good Germany in the fight against fascism, and he has often been remembered this way in English-speaking lands. But a new view of Mann is emerging half a century after his death: a view of him as one of the great writers of a modernity understood as extending into our 21st century. This volume provides sixteen essays by American and European specialists.They demonstrate the relevance of his writings for our time, making particular use of the biographical material that is now available. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Manfred Dierks, Werner Frizen, Clayton Koelb, Helmut Koopmann, Wolfgang Lederer, Hannelore Mundt, Peter Putz, Jens Rieckmann, Hans Joachim Sandberg, Egon Schwarz, and Hans Vaget. Herbert Lehnert is Research Professor, and Eva Wessell is lecturer in Humanities, both at the University of California, Irvine.

Understanding Thomas Mann

Understanding Thomas Mann offers a comprehensive guide to the novels, short stories, novellas, and nonfiction of one of the most renowned and prolific German writers. In addition to analyzing Mann's most famous works, including Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus, Hannelore Mundt introduces readers to lesser-known works, among them Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and The Black Swan. In close readings, Mundt illustrates how Mann's masterly prose captures both his time and the complexities of human existence with a unique blend of humor, compassion, irony, and ambiguity. Mundt takes readers chronologically from Mann's literary beginnings in 1894 to his last novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. She considers the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche on the emergence of Mann's literary voice, his conflicted feelings about his bourgeois background, and his life as Germany's representative writer in the Weimar Republic and in exile. Mundt places Mann's works in the realistic and modern traditions and discusses his recurring thematic concerns - the individual's rebellion against oppressive bourgeois conventions and antihumanistic principles, the need for an unremitting questioning of authority and ostensibly absolute truths, and the antagonism between individualistic freedom and social responsibility. In light of the recent publication of Mann's diaries, disclosing his homosexual inclinations, Mundt also identifies the textual strategies he adopted for revealing and simultaneously masking his secret sexuality. Mann emerges from Mundt's analysis as a writer who plays with opposing perspectives in his fictional renderings of both the alienated individual and Germany's cultural and political history. Mundt suggests that the openness of his works, paired with his deep insights into human existence, explains his stature as a literary figure whose importance extends worldwide.

Mimetic Desire: Essays on Narcissism in German Literature from Romanticism to Post Modernism

Narcissism and creativity - Jean Paul's Flegeljahre, Wulf Koepke Heidegger's pathological narcissism and his philosophy, Richard Chessick narcissism in Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar, Peter Heller empathy and self in Wolf's Christa T., J. Brooks Bouson Freud and Arnold Zweig, Carole Stone narcissism and object relations in Goethe's creative imagination, Jeffrey Adams Thomas Bernhard - narcissistic alliances and the talking cure, Francis Michael Sharp the healing of a narcissist in Gottfried Benn's novella Der Ptolemaeer, Oskar Sahlberg the Gorgon's gaze in Tieck's Runenberg, Alice Kuzniar pony-tales and incest in Max Frishch's Montauk, Eric Williams.

The Goethe Centenary of 1932 and Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar

The Goethe Centenary of 1932 and Thomas Mann's <i>Lotte in Weimar</i>

Goethe's Werther after two centuries

Goethe's novel The Sufferings of Young Werther appeared two centuries ago; it was published anonymously at Leipzig in September 1774. In the jargon of our day it became an immediate best seller, perhaps the first in world literature. Since there were at that time no book clubs, no television talk shows, no paperback or motion picture rights, no literary cocktail parties, its author (whose identity soon leaked out) was spared those trials and triumphs which his twentieth-century descendants must endure. But his book did enjoy a popularity till then unknown in the history of literature. Two new reprints were issued before the year was out; a French translation appeared within a few months and many more followed; there were translations into English, Russian, and many other European languages. Poems, novels, dramas, musicals, operas, chapbooks were produced dealing with aspects of Werther. Among the notable works of literature that showed the influence of Goethe's novel were Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, Chateaubriand's René, Ugo Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis, Senancour's Obermann, Mickiewicz' Dziady, Flaubert's Education sentimentale. Lamartine, Sainte Beuve, Musset acknowledged the influence of Werther on their early careers. Of the three extant Werther operas, Massenet's (1892) is a major work of art. A Werther film was produced in France in 1938. André Maurois devoted one of his three essays in Méipe (1926) to a retelling of the Werther story. Thomas Mann treated the Werther aftermath in his outstanding novel, Lotte in Weimar (1939).

The “Diseased” Artist Achieves a New “Health” Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar

The “Diseased” Artist Achieves a New “Health” Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar

On Recent Editions of Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann's continuing popularity in Germany is best attested by the number of new editions within the framework of the so-called Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe, of the cheaper special editions of novels (Buddenbrooks, Ki-nigliche Hoheit, Der Zauberberg, Lotte in Weimar, Der Erwiihlte, Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull), of separate editions of short stories (Meistererziihlungen, Tristan, Unordnung und friihes Leid), of pocket editions (Der Tod in Venedig, Herr und Hund), and of text editions (Tonio KrUger, Mario und der Zauberer, Fiorenza). Since new type and smaller print is used in the Stockholm and the special editions, the number of pages is also smaller. As an example, the 1954 Sonderausgabe of Der Zauberberg had 871 pages, subsequent editions only 781 and 658 pages. The greater compactness is also shown in the new Stockholm editions of Lotte in Weimar (1939: 450 pages; 1958: 405 pages), Adel des Geistes (1945: 708 pages; 1948: 692 pages; 1955: 617 pages), Joseph und seine Briider (1952: 2048 pages; 1956: 1830 pages), and Doktor Faustus (1947: 773 pages; 1956: 677 pages). Ausgewiihlte Erzaihlungen of 1945 had 889, those of 1948 had 860 pages, while the 1954 edition, which, of course, no longer contained the Krull fragment, was only 688 pages long. There are other confusing (or amusing) facts connected with recent Thomas Mann editions. In 1949 a Wiener Ausgabe of Lotte in Weimar appeared within the Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe, as if the Stockholm edition, which is now published in Frankfurt, were not enough of a misnomer. In 1955, the Aufbau Verlag in the Russian-held sector of Berlin published, in honor of Mann's eightieth birthday, a twelve-volume edition of his works, entitled Gesammelte Werke. This edition had the help of Thomas Mann himself, who furnished the publishers with lists of misprints and errors he had found in former publications. He also suggested the inclusion or exclusion of certain items. Hans Mayer was general supervisor; he had the cooperation of Erich Neumann, who seems to have been considered by Mann as a vigilant defender of correctness in his books.

On Thomas Mann's "Lotte in Weimar"

On Thomas Mann's "Lotte in Weimar"