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UC Irvine Flashpoints UC Irvine FlashPoints Title Epic and Exile: Novels of the German Popular Front, 1933-1945 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1dw7t2cv ISBN 978-0-8101-3149-1 Author Bivens, Hunter Publication Date 2015-07-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Epic and Exile 8flashpoints The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/flashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Founding Editor; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Nouri Gana (Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) A complete list of titles begins on page 289. Epic and Exile Novels of the German Popular Front, 1933–1945 Hunter Bivens northwestern university press ❘ evanston, illinois this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation. Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2015 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2015. All rights reserved. Digital Printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bivens, Hunter, author. Epic and exile : novels of the German Popular Front, 1933-1945 / Hunter Bivens. pages cm. — (FlashPoints) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8101-3148-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8101-3149-1 (ebook) 1. Exiles’ writings, German—History and criticism. 2. Anti-fascist movements in literature. 3. German fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Marchwitza, Hans—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Seghers, Anna, 1900–1983—Criticism and interpretation. 6. Claudius, Eduard—Criticism and interpretation. 7. Brecht, Bertolt, 1898–1956—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series: FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) PT749.A56B58 2015 833.912099206914—dc23 2015011480 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.4811992. Contents Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix Introduction: “A Feeling for History”: The Popular Front Novel 3 1. Epic Forms and the Crisis of the Novel 31 2. After the Revolution: Hans Marchwitza, The Kumiaks 52 3. The Tasks of Emigration 86 4. Place and Plot: Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross 112 5. Ghostly Solidarities: Eduard Claudius, Green Olives and Bare Mountains 154 6. Die Deutsche Misère? Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children 188 Epilogue: The “Immense Window of Change”? 225 Notes 237 Index 281 Acknowledgments Research for this book was made possible by the financial support of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the Humanities Division of the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Humanities Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). I would also like to thank the German Academy of the Arts Literature Archives and the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin for their valuable assistance. I have presented portions of this project at conferences of the Ger- man Studies Association and the American Comparative Literature Association as well as at UCSC. I am grateful for the productive com- ments that I have received from colleagues in these venues. I am also very honored to have had the chance to discuss this project in its early stages with Simone Barck and Ursula Heukenkamp, two of the most important literary critics of the former German Democratic Republic. I am also indebted to readers of drafts of chapters and interlocutors over the years that I have been working on this project, especially Katie Trumpener and Loren Kruger for their guidance in my formation at the University of Chicago, as well as Robert von Hallberg, Eric Santner, David Levin, and Andreas Gailus. In addition, I am grateful to Leslie Morris for encouraging me in my studies early on. I owe a significant debt to the intellectual generosity of the UCSC Literature Department, particularly Loisa Nygaard, Tyrus Miller, Susan Gillman, Christopher Connery, Bali Sahota, and Gopal Balakrishnan in the History of Con- scious Department for conversations and suggestions that have shaped viii ❘ Acknowledgments this work, as well as current and former graduate students in the Lit- erature and History of Consciousness departments at UCSC, particu- larly Johanna Isaacson, Evan Calder Williams, Erik Bachmann, Erica Smeltzer, Maya Gonzales, Madeline Lane McKinley, and Jeb Perucker. I would also like to thank John Urang for many years of intellectual camaraderie, as well as Benjamin Robinson, Helen Fehervary, Jamie Trnka, and many others. I am grateful to Edward Dimendberg for his careful reading of this manuscript. Finally, of course, thanks to my friends and family for their patience and support. Abbreviations AP Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer.” In Selected Writings. Vol. 2, Part 2, 1931–1934. Ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 768–82. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999. AR Peter Weiss, The Aesthetics of Resistance. Vol. 1. Trans. Joachim Neurgoschel. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. BB Alfred Döblin, “Der Bau des epischen Werks.” In Aufsätze zur Literatur, 109–32. Olten: Walter Verlag, 1963. GE Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Geschichte und Eigensinn. Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 1981. GO Eduard Claudius, Grüne Oliven und nackte Berge. Halle: Mitteldeutscher-Verlag, 1976. HN Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel. Trans. Hannah Mitchell and Stanley Mitchell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. HT Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times. Trans. Neville Plaice and Stephen Plaice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. IN Alexander Abusch, Der Irrweg einer Nation: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der deutschen Geschichte. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1946. x ❘ Abbreviations K Hans Marchwitza, Die Kumiaks. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1955. MC Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years’ War. Trans. Eric Bentley. New York: Grove, 1966. ML Helga Gallas, Marxistische Literaturtheorie: Kontroversen im Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller. Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1971. MT Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2001. NOD Ernst Bloch, “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics.” Trans. Mark Ritter. New German Critique no. 11 (Spring 1977): 22–38. PR Bertolt Brecht, “Popularity and Realism.” In Aesthetics and Politics, by Theodor W. Adorno et al., 79–85. New York: Verso, 1977. RB Georg Lukács, “Realism in the Balance.” In Aesthetics and Politics, by Theodor W. Adorno et al., 28–59. New York: Verso, 1977. SC Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross. Trans. James A. Galston. Boston: David R. Godine, 2004. ST Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nicolai Leskov.” In Selected Writings. Vol. 3, 1935–1938. Ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002. TN Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico- Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971. Epic and Exile Introduction: “A Feeling for History” The Popular Front Novel Alain Badiou frames the 1930s as the pivotal moment in the short twen- tieth century, the Soviet century shaped by the energies unleashed by the Great War and the October Revolution and the attempts to contain and turn back this revolutionary wave.1 In this short century, the 1930s is the switching between the epic and the tragic, the moment where the Soviet century becomes indistinguishable from the totalitarian cen- tury as the emancipatory claims of the revolution find themselves at an impasse. “In the century, 1937 is a year of no little importance,” Badiou writes: It is the metonymical year in which something essential unfolds; an absolute distillate of the essence—of an excess in the essence—of the Stalinist terror, the year of what is called the “Great Terror.” Things begin to take a wrong turn in the Spanish Civil War, which is like an internal miniature of the entire century, since all of the century’s major political actors are present within it (Communists, fascists, international workers, farmers in revolt, mercenar- ies, colonial armies, fascist states, “democracies,” etc.). It is the year in which Nazi Germany enters irreversibly into the preparations for total war. It also represents the major turning point in China. In France, it becomes evident that the Popular Front
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