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Franz A. Birgel Muhlenberg College

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Franz A. Birgel Muhlenberg College Werner Herzog's Debt to Georg Buchner Franz A. Birgel Muhlenberg College The filmmaker Wemcr Herzog has been labeled eve1)1hing from a romantic, visionary idealist and seeker of transcendence to a reactionary. regressive fatalist and t)Tannical megalomaniac. Regardless of where viewers may place him within these e:-..1reme positions of the spectrum, they will presumably all admit that Herzog personifies the true auteur, a director whose unmistakable style and wor1dvie\v are recognizable in every one of his films, not to mention his being a filmmaker whose art and projected self-image merge to become one and the same. He has often asserted that film is the art of i1literates and should not be a subject of scholarly analysis: "People should look straight at a film. That's the only \vay to see one. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates. And film culture is not analvsis, it is agitation of the mind. Movies come from the count!)' fair and circus, not from art and academicism" (Greenberg 174). Herzog wants his ideal viewers to be both mesmerized by his visual images and seduced into seeing reality through his eyes. In spite of his reference to fairgrounds as the source of filmmaking and his repeated claims that his ·work has its source in images, it became immediately transparent already after the release of his first feature film that literature played an important role in the development of his films, a fact which he usually downplays or effaces. Given Herzog's fascination with the extremes and mysteries of the human condition as well as his penchant for depicting outsiders and eccentrics, it comes as no surprise that he found a kindred spirit in Georg Buchner whom he has called "probably the most ingenious writer for the stage that we ever had" (Walsh 11). It was not Buchner the revolutionary author of Der hessische Landbote, or as East German critics claimed, Buchner the precursor of Marxism, who appealed to Herzog, the least politically active filmmaker of the New German Cinema, but rather, Buchner the fatalistic determinist and satirist of scientific empiricism. Living in a small village in Bavaria where he spent much of his time reading and then later studying literature for a brief period, Herzog's ex-perience of Buchner apparently constituted a literary Urerlebnis which functioned both as an inspiration in his onn creative process and as a confirmation of his own worldview. Both Biiclmer' s Woyzeck and Herzog's films are characterized by short, dense lines of dialogue and visionary images, whereby the director's apocalyptic "\isions bear more than a _ 6 Annual ofForeign Films and Literature (/ 998) superficial resemblance to Wo~-Leck ' s hallucinations. Like Buchner's protagonist. Herzog's heroes are, on the basis of narrati\'c and character motivation. largely inaccessible and enigmatic outsiders who arc out of sync with society and engage in a fai1ed rebellion against e;o..1crnal forces detcnnining their fate and against the indifference of the cosmos. And like Woyzeck, their isolation forces them to retreat into silence and into their own Yisionary inner world. Gh·en his admiration for the ninteenth-century author, Herzog's spiritual pilgrimage on foot from Munich to Paris in November and December of 1974 (so that the ailing Lone Eisner would recover) may even be interpreted as a reenactment of Johann Michael Reinhold Lenz' winter travels as described in Buchner's biographical novella Lenz. However, this fascination with Buchner constitutes not only a personal preoccupation but also a part of a strategy to gain acceptance. On several occasions. Herzog placed himself and the other filmmakers of the New Gennan Cinema in the tradition of what he calls legitimate German culture, "in the sense that Kleist, Buchner and Kafka are legitimate" (Kent 19). Woyzeck constituted a literary subtext in many of Herzog's films long before he eventually filmed the play. References to Buchner aboWld already in his first feature film, Lebenszeichen (Signs of Life, 1968), in which the protagonist's name Stroszeck alludes to Woyzeck, especially if one thinks of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck. Very loosely based on von Arnim 's Der tolle Jnva/ide aufdem Fort Ratonneau, the film owes, except for the main characters and the basic dramatic situation, more to Buchner than to von Amim. In the play, Woyzeck says to the Doctor: ''Wenn die Sonn in Mittag steht und es ist, als ging' die Welt in Feuer auf, hat schon eine fiirchterliche Stimme zu mir geredt" (Buchner 120). Like Woyzeck., the displaced soldier Stroszeck inLebenszeichen appears to hear that voice, and during what seems to be an eternal high noon, he rebels against the ~ppressive landscape, the s~rc~ng heat and suffocating atmosphere. He 1s the first of many whose tltamc yet absurd revolt against the cosmos is destined for failure. The circle, which appears as an objective correlative to Woyzeck 's increasing madness, as he sees Marie dancing with the drum major and the wor~ "i~er zu" (BUchner 125} are repeated first by Marie ~s the couple turns m ctrcles and later by Woyzeck-·tltis circle can be found m almost. all of Herzog's films as his recurring trademark leitmotif. Although 1t cannot be argued that the circle motif is specifically bo •ed •\ hn · · ITO\\ f. rom BuC ~r, 1t IS noteworthy that both the writer and the filmmaker use u ~sa negati\'e symbol. Fr~m the whirling windmills in Lebenszeichen (\\here they c:ause Stroszeck s insanity) to the turning flags in Cobra Verde ( 1987). the cucle reappears as an image of stasis and stagna t.1on as we JJ as F Birge/: Werner Jlerzog 's Debt to G. Biichner 7 of chaos and madness. 1 Herzog's version of the Kaspar Hauser story (commonly known in the U.S. as The 1\~vstery ofKaspar Hauser and in England as The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1974) begins with a slightly modified line from Buchner's Lenz: "Horen Sie dcnn nicht die entsetzliche Stimmc, die um den ganzen Horizont schreit und die man gewohnlich die Stille heifit'' (Buchner 84) while one sees a panorama shot of tall wheat being blown by the wind--a beautiful yet enigmatic image. Already the actual title of the film, Jeder jiir sich und Gott gegen aile (Everyman for Himself and God against A/f) refers to humanity's alienation in a hostile universe. Like H'oyzeck, this film presents a protest not only against society, but also against the cosmos. Herzog himself has described the universe as a ''glatte Fehlleistung ... ein absoluter Murks ... keine hannonische Weltordnung .. nur Murks ... ein Durcheinander'' (Rost 92)? After Kaspar is attacked for the first time, there is a cut to a shot of clouds, as if to ask the heavens for an answer. and after the second attack, the film cuts to a swan in a pond and then to a shot of grass and trees blowing in the wind, implying nature's indifference to what has just happened. Images from Woyzeck echo throughout the film, such as Kaspar being put on display at the fair and the image of the horse and monkey, two creatures the barker at the fair in the play presents in his ironic commentary on human nature and the progress of civilization. After Kaspar, the young Mozart, and Hombrecito run away from the fair (in a scene reminiscent of the Keystone Cops-style chase in Murnau's Nosjeratu, a film remade by Herzog in 1978), the to\\-11 scribe proudly proclaims: "Ein schones Protokoll, ein genaues Protokoll! lch werde ein Protokoll schreiben, "ie man es nicht aile Tage erlebt." These words recall the equally ironic courtroom scene which is sometimes staged as the final scene of JVoyzeck when the clerk states: "Ein guter Mord, ein achter Mord, ein schoner Mord, so schon als man ihn nur verlangen tun kann; \vir haben schon lange so keinen gehabt" (Buchner 254 ). One of the most obvious thematic parallels is the negative depiction of science. Both Woyzeck and Kaspar become objects of scientific investigations, whereby they are dehumanized and elicit our empathy. For Herzog, the metaphysical world of dreams and the imagination hold more truth than positivistic or empirical knowledge. The director's rejection of modern scientific investigation is perhaps best presented inNosferatu where Van Helsing argues that vampires cannot exist from a scientific standpoint. Like Lucy who sacrifices herself in this film, the viewers are lead, as she Annual of Foreign Fi lm5 and Literature (1 998) savs. •·to believe tllose things which'' they .. kllow to be untrue.·· In Jeder flir si ~h und Got/ gegen aile, the satire on science reaches its climax in the to\\n scribe's writing down of the autopsy report concerning Kaspar's defonncd brain as if it were an explanation for his unusual behavior. The film 's final spoken words arc those of the scribe who begins his statement with the now familiar words: ''Ein schones Protokoll. cin genaues Protokoll! lch werdc zu Protokoll geben. dafi man an Hauser Defonnationen entdeckt hat. Wir habcn endlich fur diesen befremd.lichcn Menschen eine Erklarung, \\ie man sie bcsser nicht finden tw1 kann., . Here Herzog not only presents an indictment of society's search for simple solutions, but also of its absurd penchant for keeping meticulous written records. Since he had already twice appropriated the words of the courtroom scene for Jeder fUr sich und Gott gegen aile, Herzog did not include this scene later in his filmed version of Woyzeck, but rather superimposed the words on the top half of the screen before it goes black.
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