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The Astrological Imaginary in Early Twentieth–Century German Culture

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The Astrological Imaginary in Early Twentieth–Century German Culture The Astrological Imaginary in Early Twentieth–Century German Culture by Jennifer Lynn Zahrt A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German and the Designated Emphasis in Film in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Niklaus Largier, Co-Chair Professor Anton Kaes, Co-Chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan Spring 2012 ©2012 Jennifer Lynn Zahrt, All Rights Reserved. Abstract The Astrological Imaginary in Early Twentieth–Century German Culture by Jennifer Lynn Zahrt Doctor of Philosophy in German and the Designated Emphasis in Film University of California, Berkeley Professor Niklaus Largier, Co-Chair Professor Anton Kaes, Co-Chair My dissertation focuses on astrological discourses in early twentieth–century Germany. In four chapters, I examine films, literary texts, and selected academic and intellectual prose that engage astrology and its symbolism as a response to the experience of modernity in Germany. Often this response is couched within the context of a return to early modern German culture, the historical period when astrology last had popular validity. Proceeding from the understanding of astrology as a multiplicity of practices with their own histories, my dissertation analyzes the specific forms of astrological discourse that are taken up in early twentieth–century German culture. In my first chapter I examine the revival of astrology in Germany from the perspective of Oscar A. H. Schmitz (1873–1931), who galvanized a community of astrologers to use the term Erfahrungswissenschaft to promote astrology diagnostically, as an art of discursive subject formation. In my second chapter, I discuss how Paul Wegener’s Golem film cycle both responds to and intensifies the astrological and the occult revivals. As the revivals gain momentum, Wegener explicitly depicts seventeenth-century astrological and occult practices with the intention of generating a “purely filmic” experience. I provide new insight into Wegener’s last Golem film through the film architect Hans Poelzig’s personal investment in both baroque architecture and contemporary astrology. My third chapter explores Aby M. Warburg’s lifelong preoccupation with the investigation of astrological symbolism in art. This pursuit led him to create an institution that has played a pivotal role in the material conditions of possibility for people to study the history of astrology, even today. In my fourth chapter, I investigate the many references to astrological phenomena in Walter Benjamin’s intellectual work. I read his work on mimesis and experience alongside his practice of graphology in order to situate him in the debates brought up in the first chapter on the idea of astrology as an Erfahrungswissenschaft. My dissertation reveals how aspects of astrological discourse— specifically its approaches to issues of legibility and interpretation—constructively informed and shaped the middle brow (Schmitz) and the high brow (Warburg), the cinematic (Wegener) and the literary (Schmitz), the institutional (Warburg) and the philosophical (Benjamin) realms of early twentieth–century German culture. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2: Oscar A. H. Schmitz and Narratives of Astrological Experience 10 CHAPTER 3: Staging Early Modern Magic and Science in Paul Wegener’s Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920) 41 CHAPTER 4: Aby M. Warburg, Cultural Institutions, and Celestial Hermeneutics 73 CHAPTER 5: Walter Benjamin, Astrology, and Reading What Was Never Written 101 CONCLUSION 125 BIBLIOGRAPHY 127 i LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 2.1: Cover of Oscar A. H. Schmitz’s Der Geist der Astrologie (1922)...... 14 FIGURE 2.2: Cover of Elsbeth Ebertin’s Der Mars im Todeshause (1924)............ 39 FIGURE 3.1: Screenshot from Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)............ 56 FIGURE 3.2: Woodcut of the constellation Cygnus................................................. 57 FIGURE 3.3: Screenshot from Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)............ 58 FIGURE 3.4: Screenshot from Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)............ 63 FIGURE 3.5: Screenshot from Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)............. 65 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Among the many wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with while writing this dissertation, special thanks are due to the following individuals: Andrea Albrecht, Donald Backman, Nicholas Baer, Sarah Bailey-Felsen, Emily Banwell, Christian Blohmann, Jeremy Brett, Steve Choe, Jean Day, Julia Ebeling, Melissa Etzler, Dayton Henderson, Jason Kooiker, Julie Koser, Wendy Lesser, Verónica López, Simone Marx, Kristin Miller, Mari Mordecai, Tobias Schlobach, Margaret Strubel, and Gabriel Trop. Niklaus Largier and Tony Kaes, the co-chairs of my dissertation committee, provided me with a constant source of encouragement, inspiration, and productive intellectual exchange. I am also grateful to Jonathan Sheehan, my outside field member, as well as John L. Heilbron and Jane O. Newman, who offered invaluable feedback and insightful questions on my topic. Institutionally, the Beinecke family graciously provided me critical support during the first four years of my graduate studies under the auspices of their Beinecke Fellowship. Several Max Kade and DAAD fellowships allowed me to spend time in libraries in Berlin, Leipzig, and Wolfenbüttel, and in the archives of the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The German department at UC Berkeley was also generous in their grant support of my work. My thanks also extend internationally: In Berlin, during the fall of 2008 I participated in the PhD Network, “Das Wissen der Literatur,” with Joseph Vogl. And in the United Kingdom, at the University of Wales Trinity St. David, I am grateful to Nicholas Campion, Bernadette Brady, Darrelyn Gunzberg, and the many enthusiastic colleagues at the Sophia Centre for Cosmology in Culture. Over the last years of writing this dissertation, my family and friends never waivered in their support. I’d especially like to acknowledge and thank Stephen Gerard Gross and the late Corinne Sinclair Crawford. Both born on the same day, these two souls have filled my life with erudition, humor, and priceless lessons in strength and humility. Above all, this dissertation owes a great debt to Gary David Lorentzen. His intellectual passion directly inspired me to pursue not only German studies, but also the history of astrology. I dedicate this iteration of the work to him. iii For Gary iv CHAPTER 1: Introduction On the cusp of the Great War, in a fleeting scene of the film Der Golem (1914), a twentieth-century scholar struggles to complete his magum opus on medieval magic.1 Writing madly, fighting pangs of hunger, he realizes he can no longer stave off his corporeal needs. As an intertitle reads, “the starving scholar must sell a part of his beloved books in order to complete his cataclysmic new work on medieval black magic and sorcery.”2 In due course, the man sells the grimoire with the instructions for animating the Golem to the antique dealer who has just conveniently acquired the Golem’s clay form. This early filmic episode about a historian of medieval magic tells of the influence of the interest in esotericism and its transmission in Germany before the Great War. Unfortunately the film by German actor and writer Paul Wegener has been lost, and although a few film stills and a few feet of film survive, no images exist that show how this modern scholar of magic appeared on the screen. What has survived is Wegener’s 1920 film, Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam, which sets the action directly in the seventeenth century itself and portrays a Rabbi using astrological magic to bring the Golem to life. The progression—from depicting a modern scholar of medieval magic to depicting an early modern magician practicing astrology—is emblematic of the trend during the Weimar Republic for writers to explore early-modern European practices such as astrology through their literary, filmic, and cultural historical texts. My dissertation contributes to the emerging academic attention being paid to esoteric practices by focusing specifically on astrological discourse in its historical, socio- psychological, and imaginative roles in early twentieth–century German culture.3 In my 1 First Screenplay for the Golem: Paul Wegener with Henrik Galeen, “Golem I Drehbuch,” 1914. Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. NachlassArchiv. Golem file: 4359. Folder 4.4-80/18,1. 2 Ibid., “Der hungernde Gelehrte muss um sein umstürzendes neuartiges Werk über Schwarzkunst und Zauberei des Mittelalters zu vollenden, einen Teil seiner geliebten Bücher verkaufen.” 3 See most importantly the work of Kocku von Stuckrad, especially Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), edited with Günther Oestmann, and H. Darrel Rutkin, as well as Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others (Leiden: Brill, 2007), edited with Olav Hammer; See also Nicholas Campion and Liz Greene, eds., Astrologies: Plurality and Diversity (Bristol: Sophia Centre Press, 2011); important recent work on European occultism, which is not quite my focus here, can be found in specifically German contexts in Corinna Treitel’s A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern
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