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Cologne Carnival's "Alternative" Stunksitzung: Carnivalization? Meta-Carnival? Or Bakhtinian Restoration?

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Cologne Carnival's City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 Cologne Carnival's "Alternative" Stunksitzung: Carnivalization? Meta-Carnival? Or Bakhtinian Restoration? Erik Abbott Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/157 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] COLOGNE CARNIVAL’S 'ALTERNATIVE' STUNKSITZUNG: CARNIVALIZATION? META-CARNIVAL? OR BAKHTINIAN RESTORATION? by ERIK ABBOTT A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 © 2014 ERIK ABBOTT All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Marvin Carlson _________________________ ________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Jean Graham-Jones __________________________ ________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Frank Hentschker Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract COLOGNE CARNIVAL’S 'ALTERNATIVE' STUNKSITZUNG: CARNIVALIZATION? META-CARNIVAL? OR BAKHTINIAN RESTORATION? by ERIK ABBOTT Advisor: Professor Marvin Carlson In the 1820s, Carnival in Cologne, Germany, underwent a series of reforms, ostensibly to bring the festival back to the people. Among the traditions that developed was the Sitzung, a theatrical variety-show event, with music, comic speeches and sketches, dance troupes, and various additional Carnival-related entertainments. The shows, and Carnival itself were, and largely have been since that time, mostly overseen by a Festival Committee and the official Carnival Societies it recognizes. In 1984, a group of mostly students decided to create their own version of a Sitzung, an alternative version, the Stunksitzung. From three inaugural performances, it has grown to presenting over forty performances a year to sell-out crowds of one thousand people per night and to being a popular annual television event. This dissertation considers the history of the Stunksitzung within a frame of Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on Carnival. I examine over two-dozen performance pieces of the Ensemble, and compare and situate the production and its history within Cologne Carnival, in particular the broader dichotomous status of the official versus the alternative, interrogating how alternative the production is, has been, and continues to be. Ultimately, I frame the Stunksitzung within the larger context of Carnival and the particular status it holds in Cologne. iv Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my Committee, particularly my advisor, Marvin Carlson, for the guidance and patience over this long journey. Additionally, I owe a big debt of gratitude to the all of the members of the Stunksitzung Ensemble, past and present, for the access I was granted, the insight and perspectives that were offered, for their extraordinary generosity, and of course for all the laughter. I extend a special thanks to Hans Kieseier for his friendship and support. v For Dena vi CONTENTS Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Chapter 1 Introduction: Carnival Chaos/Bakhtinian Order 1 Chapter 2 Carnivalized Histories: Pointy Hats and Utopian Mythos 76 Chapter 3 Cologne Carnival + The Stunksitzung = “Alternative” = “Bakhtinian” = “Carnivalesque” = “Radical?” 142 Chapter 4 Laughing at Hitler, Lying about Nazism: Carnival’s Essential Contrariness 212 Chapter 5 Conclusion: “Blootwoosch, Kölsch, un lecker Mädche”; Carnival “Occupied” is Still Carnival 265 Bibliography 279 vii Chapter 1 “Introduction: Carnival Chaos/Bakhtinian Order” In From Ritual to Theatre, Victor Turner writes: “By means of such genres as theatre, … performances are presented which probe a community’s weaknesses, call its leaders to account, desacralize its most cherished values and beliefs, portray its characteristic conflicts and suggest remedies for them, and generally take stock of its current situation in the known ‘world.’”1 These processes of probing and calling, of desacralization, of portrayal, and of taking stock are also manifested in Carnival in Cologne, Germany, an event that is itself at once party and celebration, festival and performance. The latter is exemplified in the literal sense of theatrical performance in the Carnival Sitzung, a tradition that has developed in Germany in the last two centuries as a theatrical expression of Carnival. Carnival itself—a swirling performative mélange of parades, costumes, music, and traditions found in numerous cultures—has been described by Peter Burke as “the example par excellence of the festival as a context for images and texts.”2 In examining the Sitzung, a discrete theatrical tradition within Carnival, I shall focus primarily on literal performances of and within the festival. For the purposes of illustration, however, I will secondarily consider carnivalistic/carnivalesque performances that fall outside of Carnival—in particular, film and television performances. These secondary foci will be present mostly in the fourth chapter. Critical to understanding all of the theatrical and performative events will be the interrogation of Carnival itself, including Burke’s framing of it “as a context for images and 1. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ 2. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 259. Hereafter cited in text as P. Burke, Popular Culture. 1 texts.” In particular, the specific object of study here will be Cologne Carnival’s “alternative” Sitzung, the Stunksitzung. To situate the Stunksitzung within Cologne Carnival and to understand that positioning— in other words, to determine where and how it fits into Peter Burke’s vision—it is crucial to undertake a critical interrogation of Carnival in Cologne within the context of Carnival as a phenomenon on a broader scale. This study shall rely upon the application of the work of a number of critics, theorists, and historians to posit a theoretical lens through which the Stunksitzung individually, the Sitzungen as a theatrical form generally, and indeed Carnival as an event can be examined. Although Carnival, the Sitzungen, and the Stunksitzung are, as phenomena, too complex to be explicated by any single theorist, these efforts shall nevertheless be framed around the work of the primary figure in the development of this genre of critical analysis and thought, Mikhail Bakhtin. Arguably, any study of any aspect of Carnival should engage in interpretation and application of the work on Carnival of Bakhtin; however, it must be acknowledged that such engagement treads, perhaps appropriately, upon contested ground. As Caryl Emerson notes in The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, the original Carnivalist’s “legacy has been claimed on all sides.”3 Furthermore, Carnival occupies, in academic terms, the crossroads of anthropology (including folklore), cultural studies, literary theory, and, to make the stew truly liminal, performance and theatre studies. A vital task then will be to disseminate Bakhtin’s initial published thinking on Carnival, as well as the interpretations of them from those who followed— 3. Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 34. Hereafter cited in text as Emerson, First Hundred Years. 2 and to sort out how it fits into this study of a particular slice of a slice of a particular Carnival that is far removed from the Rabelaisian Medieval “carnivalesque” of Bakhtin. Elsewhere I have written that Bakhtin’s “theories on Carnival serve as the ‘fulcrum’ of contemporary Carnival studies.”4 Indeed, Bakhtin stands as the Colossus of Carnival studies, due primarily to his book, Rabelais and His World, published in English in 1968 (and only in Russian in 1965, although it was originally written in the 1930s).5 It is Bakhtin therefore whose work must frame the central arguments of this study. Those arguments will be rooted in Rabelais and His World—as should any contemporary discussion of Carnival. I shall, however, also seek to broaden and deepen that argument beyond Rabelais and to contextualize Carnival, and by extension the Sitzungen in general and the Stunksitzung in particular, within Bakhtin’s wider work, especially that which focuses on “speech genres,” and on literary analysis—especially the novel. Although at first glance Bakhtin’s work may seem to focus only on linguistics and literary criticism, I submit that there is no more appropriate lens for this particular theatrical production, the artists associated with it, the theatrical form in which they are working, and the broader festival/event in which the work has developed and in which it appears. This study will include examples of how Bakhtin’s work has been applied routinely and broadly well beyond 4. Erik Abbott, “Transgressing Transgression: The Stunksitzung, Cologne Carnival’s ‘Alternative’ Sitzung,” in “German Theatre: Beyond the Text,” ed. David Barnett, special issue, Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 1 (February 2008): 100. My article is an introductory exploration
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