Literature of Warning: the State-Private Network, Cultural Patronage, and the Emergence of Foundation Literature During the Cold War
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Literature of Warning: The State-Private Network, Cultural Patronage, and the Emergence of Foundation Literature during the Cold War A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Amanda Niedfeldt IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Under the supervision of Dr. Paula Rabinowitz February 2021 Copyright © 2021 by Amanda Niedfeldt All rights reserved “But how impossible it must have been for them not to budge either to the right or to the left. What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism…to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (74) i Acknowledgements I must first thank Paula Rabinowitz for her support and patience through the journey of this project, especially for understanding, better than I, that all aspects of our lives shape our work and our ability to see it through. Thank you for supporting me throughout the process, even going the extra mile to help me access archival sources out of my physical reach. Thank you also for encouraging me to push against bureaucratic boundaries from day one and supporting me in spreading my net wide both intellectually and professionally, by doing so I have been able to grow not only academically, but also as a person. Thank you also to my committee members Siobhan Craig, Leslie Morris, Jani Scandura, and Frances Vavrus for your questions, feedback, and particularly your patience as the end date of this project was shifted around the calendar while 2020 unfolded. Each of you has provided insightful and thought-provoking discussions at crucial points of my graduate education, which have helped me develop and strengthened this project. I would also like to thank my high school English teacher Mr. Jim Keeney, undergraduate mentors Dr. Audrey Fessler and Dr. Patricia Quinn, and the prudent opportunities of the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program. Without all of them, I likely would not have begun my first degree or endeavored to complete this one. Many thanks to the University of Minnesota English Department for consistent support through travel grants and also to the Rockefeller Archive and Modernist Studies Association for their generous financial support. Without these grants the project would have been impossible. I would also like thank all of the archives and archivists that hosted me, especially the late Thomas Rosenbaum at the Rockefeller Archive, who pointed me to the most useful files, many of which I did not even know I would need. Many thanks also to Michael P. Hehl and Gregor Baszak at the Literature Archive of Sulzbach-Rosenberg for the generosity of their time and attention not only in helping me navigate Walter Höllerer’s papers, but also in showing me the charm of Sulzbach-Rosenberg and welcoming me to my first ever Stammtisch. Thank you also to the British Library for existing. The ease of accessing such a range of necessary texts made it not only possible, but also affordable to finish my dissertation in the United Kingdom. Many thanks to the estates of Ingeborg Bachmann, Heinrich Böll, Walter Höllerer, Henry Miller, Andrzej Wirth, and the Rockefeller Archive Center for particular permission to include quotations from their materials. Every effort has been made to secure all rights of included sources. Finally, I would like to thank my dearest loved ones for their support throughout this long journey. Thank you especially to my parents and my sister for always encouraging me in my interests and trusting me in my decisions. Your enduring support and love have made all of the difference in my ability to choose adventure and challenge again and again in my life, in all its forms. Und vielen, vielen Dank to my partner and wife, Gisela. Thank you for patiently answering my unending questions on German vocabulary and for advising on and improving many of my translations, though of course all errors and oversights are my own. Thank you for supporting me through this multi-year journey, for your patience in my absences both physically and mentally, and for artfully convincing me, more than once, that I must finish this. You were right and I am grateful. ii Abstract The literature on the cultural Cold War acknowledges that American philanthropic foundations provided funding to various Cold War projects, but does not provide a close analysis of the foundations’ involvement or examine how philanthropies and government agencies coordinated their funding, let alone consider the influence it had on writers and their work. This gap in analysis overlooks the intricacies of the foundations’ relationship with the American state and the role philanthropies played in circulating culture and building artistic networks throughout the Cold War. This dissertation begins to close that gap by examining the establishment of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence program by the Ford Foundation in 1963, focusing on its first two years of writing residences before the program was transferred to the German Academic Exchange Service, which still runs it today. Analyzing the function and influence of foundations within international artistic affairs during the Cold War period establishes that foundation personnel played key roles in connecting government policy to results on the ground. More broadly, this project explores how foundations built artistic networks and institutionalized art with a range of residency programs, grants, and accolades, setting a precedent, which still functions to this day. Analyzing the participation of Ingeborg Bachmann, Walter Höllerer, Witold Gombrowicz, Piers Paul Read, and W.H. Auden in the Berlin program shows that this new arrangement and the work it propelled resulted in mixed consequences for artists, extending prestige and visibility to certain artists and creating complications for others. Close attention to the Berlin projects elucidates how philanthropic foundations and Cold War networks played an essential role in connecting writers, while also allowing for exploration of how those writers utilized the opportunity in pursuit of their own goals. Ultimately, the analysis of writers’ texts illuminates their awareness of how the political-economic environment was working to shape them into suitable public intellectuals for the postwar age. The writers’ attention to and discussion of their artistic, social, and financial predicaments within their work defines a new subgenre of mid-century twentieth literature: foundation literature. iii Table of Contents Abbreviations and Translations……………………………………………………...V Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One Men with Money: The Ford Foundation………………………………….…………28 Chapter Two Longer Walls and Higher Rooms: Ingeborg Bachmann……………………….……69 Chapter Three Well Formed: Witold Gombrowicz……………………………………………......116 Chapter Four The Ideal Candidate: Piers Paul Read………………………………….........….….156 Chapter Five Cashing In: W.H. Auden…………………………………………………………...203 Conclusion Swindling the Devil………………………………………………….………….…246 Archives Consulted………………………………………………………………...255 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..256 iv Abbreviations and Translations In the interest of brevity and the ease of reading and reference, archival sources are listed in the footnotes. Each footnote lists the specific item location along with an abbreviation of the appropriate archive in which it is resides, as listed below. French and German quotations included in the body of the dissertation are translated into English with the original language appearing in a footnote. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. LIT Ingeborg Bachmann Archive, Literature Archive of the Austrian National Library, Vienna (LIT), Austria. FF-RAC Ford Foundation Archive, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, USA. GFK German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Germany. GLA German Literature Archive, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. LASR Walter Höllerer Archive, Literature Archive Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany. PPR Papers of Piers Paul Read. Special Collections, Leeds University Library, Leeds, United Kingdom. WGA Witold Gombrowicz Archive. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. v Introduction In autumn 1961, Walter Höllerer, a writer and professor at the Technical University of Berlin, was busy scheduling a slew of public readings for the upcoming months. As literary impresario of Berlin, Höllerer hoped that an influx of intellectual life would embolden the city’s spirits and the West’s resolve to support it. The lineup he assembled was impressive, including Nathalie Sarraute, John Dos Passos, Max Frisch, Salvatore Quasimodo, Ingeborg Bachmann, and, he hoped, Henry Miller, whose banned works from the 1930s had finally been published in the United States. Miller was not convinced he could play the role Höllerer imagined. Replying to Höllerer’s impassioned request, Miller wrote: There is one thing I must speak of in connection with your ardent words. Nobody is indispensable! Especially in these times. Even if I were a Mahatma Gandhi I could not change the course of events. And you greatly overestimate, I fear, the influence of “poets” or the literary breed in toto. In these sad times writers come last. The public does not want to listen to writers, but to men of action, to would-be “miracle workers”…I will come, eventually. But it is foolish to believe that I can offer any comfort to the people of Berlin. I am glad to hear that things are quiet there, despite the daily sensational items in the newspapers. I hope and pray that all will turn out well. But with all the horses pulling in different directions, it seems to me we are asking for nothing short of a miracle.1 Höllerer and Miller were diametrically opposed in their belief of the sway a writer might have with the general public and on the political situation of the 1950s and 1960s. They were not alone in their disagreement. By 1961, a large majority of writers and artists had sided with Höllerer’s camp and jumped on the bandwagon of festivals, publications, and tours brandishing the flag of intellectual and artistic freedom for the West.