Necessary Luxuries Series Editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University
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Necessary Luxuries Series editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought publishes new English- language books in literary studies, criticism, cultural studies, and intellectual history pertaining to the German-speaking world, as well as translations of im- portant German-language works. Signale construes “modern” in the broadest terms: the series covers topics ranging from the early modern period to the present. Signale books are published under a joint imprint of Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library in electronic and print formats. Please see http://signale.cornell.edu/. Necessary Luxuries Books, Literature, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, 1770–1815 Matt Erlin A Signale Book Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library gratefully acknowledge the College of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University, for support of the Signale series. Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2014 by Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Erlin, Matt, author Necessary luxuries : books, literature, and the culture of consumption in Germany, 1770/1815 / Matt Erlin. pages cm — (Signale) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5304-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-7940-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Books and reading—Germany—History—18th century. 2. Books and reading—Germany—History—19th century. 3. Germany—Intellectual life—18th century. 4. Germany—Intellectual life—19th century. I. Title. II. Series: Signale (Ithaca, N.Y.) Z1003.5.G4E73 2014 028'.9094309033—dc23 2014010515 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Ebba Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Guilty Pleasures 1 1. The Conceptual Landscape of Luxury in Germany 24 2. Thinking about Luxury Editions in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Germany 53 3. The Appetite for Reading around 1800 78 4. The Enlightenment Novel as Artifact: J. H. Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere and C. M. Wieland’s Der goldne Spiegel 100 5. Karl Philipp Moritz and the System of Needs 139 6. Products of the Imagination: Mining, Luxury, and the Romantic Artist in Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen 175 7. Symbolic Economies in Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften 203 Conclusion: Useful Subjects? 232 Works Cited 243 Index 259 Illustrations 1. Cover page from Degen’s 1808 edition of Wieland’s Musarion 5 6 2. Making paper 59 3. Illustration from Degen’s 1808 edition of Wieland’s Musarion 6 2 4. “Luxury and Poverty,” ca. 1815 85 5. Johann Friedrich Bolt, portrait of a reader smoking, 1796 94 6. Robinson in skins 131 7. Children of Nature, sitting comfortably 133 8. Hatters, with aprons, 1698 149 9. Mid-nineteenth-century boys’ choir, with coats 150 10. Early nineteenth-century miners 178 11. Ottilie and her Koffer 221 Acknowledgments Like many second books, this one has been a long time in coming. Along the way I have received suggestions and encouragement from many people. I owe the great- est debt of gratitude by far to Ebba Segerberg, my best friend and colleague, and also my wife. She has the dubious distinction of being the only person other than myself to have read every chapter of this book more than once. Her insights and criticisms have been invaluable. It would be nearly impossible to name all the other friends and colleagues who have left their mark on this book. A few, however, deserve special mention. Richard T. Gray and Jonathan Hess have had a profound infl uence on the arguments that take shape in the chapters, and they have also supported the project in a variety of other ways for which I will be eternally grateful. The same can be said of Wolf- ram Schmidgen, my good friend and fellow dix - huitièmist in the English Depart- ment at Washington University. As regards the others, their excellent books and essays are either taken up in the analysis or cited in the notes, and I hope that this form of acknowledgment will serve in lieu of a long list as an adequate expression of my gratitude. Scholarly research in the humanities enjoys the great benefi t of being able to profi t (paradoxically) from nonprofi t institutions. In my case, fi nancial support has been provided by these institutions at all stages of the process. In 2011, I was lucky enough to receive a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humani- ties. Without the luxury of a year of writing made possible by their support, the book would never have been completed. In the early stages of the project, a fel- lowship from the Alexander Humboldt Foundation enabled me to spend a year doing research in Wolfenbüttel and Bonn, where I benefi ted from the advice and mentoring of Jill Bepler and Helmut Schneider, respectively. A subsequent grant allowed me to spend an additional summer in Hannover under the mentorship of Alexander Košenina. Closer to home, I would like to acknowledge the remarkable intellectual com- munity at Washington University in St. Louis. In particular, I would like to thank the members of the Eighteenth-Century Salon, who have read and commented on versions of virtually all of the chapters. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as well as to the graduate and undergraduate students who have participated in my seminars and, through their insightful contributions to our discussions, have helped me to refi ne my ideas. Some of these students have been involved in the project in more direct ways. Julia xii Acknowledgments Wu did an extraordinary job of tracking down and compiling English translations of the German originals for the fi nal manuscript. Additional editorial assistance during the manuscript revision process was provided by Caleb DeLorme. Lastly, I am deeply indebted to Carol Jenkins, who reviewed the entire manuscript prior to submission and made many valuable suggestions for revision. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Kizer Walker, and the editorial board of Signale for their interest in the project. The board also provided a variety of insightful suggestions for improvement of the manuscript, which, together with the incisive comments of the two anonymous readers, enabled me both to strengthen and to add nuance to my claims. Thanks are also due to my copy editor, Marian Rogers, who gave her careful attention to the fi nal preparation of the manuscript for publication. An earlier version of chapter 2 of this book appeared in The German Quar- terly; an earlier version of chapter 3 appeared in Publishing Culture and the Reading Nation: German Book History in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Lynne Tat- lock; chapter 6 , on Novalis, appeared in a somewhat shorter version in German Life and Letters. I am grateful for the permission to make use of this material. I am also grateful to the Kupferstichkabinett, the Kunstbibliothek, and the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung in Berlin, the Sächsische Landesbibliothek— Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, the University of Virginia Library, and the Princeton University Library for their assistance in scanning images and for the permission to reproduce them. There are excuses for spending money on luxury, and then there are reasons. —Acura Spring Sales Campaign 2010 Necessary Luxuries Introduction: Guilty Pleasures The current crisis of the humanities is only the most recent incarnation of a contro- versy that has been ongoing since Plato denied the poets admission to his ideal state. The debate, simply put, concerns the value of literature and the arts; more specifi - cally, it centers on the question of whether artistic pursuits have any demonstrable value for society at all. This book argues that we can better understand what is at stake in attempts to answer this question, as well as why the question itself will not go away, by turning to a moment in German history when it fi rst emerges in mod- ern form. My central claim is that culture is conceived in the period as a form of lux- ury, and that arguments about the validity of cultural pursuits are inseparable from wide-ranging controversies in the period regarding the legitimacy of luxury itself. Eighteenth-century Western Europe, we now know, was the site of a consumer revolution, an era during which a growing group of individuals began to emerge for the fi rst time from what Daniel Roche has called “the stranglehold of scar- city.” 1 Due in large part to the expansion of overseas trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new consumer goods began to shape the everyday lives of increasing numbers of people to a previously unheard-of degree. In the words of the historian Michael Kwass, “Everything from kitchenware to underwear, tables 1. Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 72.