GERMAN LITERARY FAIRY TALES, 1795-1848 by CLAUDIA MAREIKE
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ROMANTICISM, ORIENTALISM, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: GERMAN LITERARY FAIRY TALES, 1795-1848 By CLAUDIA MAREIKE KATRIN SCHWABE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Claudia Mareike Katrin Schwabe 2 To my beloved parents Dr. Roman and Cornelia Schwabe 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisory committee chair, Dr. Barbara Mennel, who supported this project with great encouragement, enthusiasm, guidance, solidarity, and outstanding academic scholarship. I am particularly grateful for her dedication and tireless efforts in editing my chapters during the various phases of this dissertation. I could not have asked for a better, more genuine mentor. I also want to express my gratitude to the other committee members, Dr. Will Hasty, Dr. Franz Futterknecht, and Dr. John Cech, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, invaluable feedback, and for offering me new perspectives. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the abundant support and inspiration of my friends and colleagues Anna Rutz, Tim Fangmeyer, and Dr. Keith Bullivant. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my family, particularly my parents, Dr. Roman and Cornelia Schwabe, as well as to my brother Marius and his wife Marina Schwabe. Many thanks also to my dear friends for all their love and their emotional support throughout the years: Silke Noll, Alice Mantey, Lea Hüllen, and Tina Dolge. In addition, Paul and Deborah Watford deserve special mentioning who so graciously and welcomingly invited me into their home and family. Final thanks go to Stephen Geist and his parents who believed in me from the very start. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................6 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 2 ROMANTIC NOSTALGIA: LONGING FOR THE FAIRY TALE MORGENLAND ........31 3 BETWEEN BIEDERMEIER AND EXOTICISM: FANTASMATIC ESCAPES TO THE INTOXICATING WORLD OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS .........................................69 4 THE PLACE OF THE ORIENT IN THE QUEST FOR GERMAN NATIONAL IDENTITY ............................................................................................................................113 5 WOMEN IN KUNSTMÄRCHEN UNVEILED: COLONIAL AND EROTIC FANTASIES .........................................................................................................................154 6 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................201 APPENDIX: EUROPEAN REPRESENTATIONS OF ORIENTAL WOMEN.........................206 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................208 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................219 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page A-1 The Grand Odalisque (1814) painted by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. ....................206 A-2 Odalisque and Slave (1842) painted by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. ......................206 A-3 Harem (1851) painted by Théodore Chassériau. .............................................................207 A-4 The Toilette of Esther (1841) painted by Théodore Chassériau. .....................................207 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ROMANTICISM, ORIENTALISM, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: GERMAN LITERARY FAIRY TALES, 1795-1848 By Claudia Mareike Katrin Schwabe May 2012 Chair: Barbara Mennel Major: German My dissertation explores the relationship between Orientalism, German Romanticism, and national identity by examining German Kunstmärchen (literary fairy tales). In my study, I claim that literary fairy tales idealize the ancient Orient and reflect the Morgenland (morning-land) as an exotic realm, in which the harmony between nature and spirit has been preserved, and as a utopian fantasy world that is the home of poetry, wisdom, and mystery. In this context, I question Edward W. Said‘s socio-historical generalizations regarding Orientalism as a Western form of domination over the East. Specifically, I use German Kunstmärchen of the Romantic period to criticize Said‘s assertions concerning the intellectual and cultural supremacy of Westerners in literary works since German Romantic tales shed a positive light on ―the Orient‖ and ―Orientals,‖ exhibit no disdain for Otherness, and even provide a critical lens through which to view Western society and its power structures. From Novalis‘s Heinrich von Ofterdingen (Henry of Ofterdingen, 1802), Achim von Arnim‘s Melück Maria Blainville (1812) and E.T.A. Hoffmann‘s Der goldne Topf (The Golden Pot, 1814) to Wilhelm Hauff‘s Märchenalmanache (Fairy Tale Almanacs, 1825-1827), I show how Kunstmärchen with Orientalist motifs served as vehicles for fantasmatic escapism during the Romantic era, became ―the opium‖ for the German 7 people against the economical meagerness of the time, and reconfigured the idea of the Oriental woman. 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In einem ächten Märchen muß alles wunderbar, geheimnißvoll und zusammenhängend seyn; alles belebt, jedes auf eine andere Art. Die ganze Natur muß wunderlich mit der ganzen Geisterwelt gemischt seyn. Das ächte Märchen muß zugleich prophetische Darstellung, idealische Darstellung, absolut nothwendige Darstellung seyn. Der ächte Märchendichter ist ein Seher der Zukunft. Alle Märchen sind nur Träume von jener heimathlichen Welt, die überall und nirgends ist. Die Sieste des Geisterreichs ist die Blumenwelt. In Indien schlummern die Menschen noch immer, und ihr heiliger Traum ist ein Garten, den Zucker- und Milchseen umfließen. [In a true fairy tale everything must be marvelous, mysterious, and connected; everything must be animated, everything in a different fashion. The whole of nature must be interwoven in a wondrous manner with the entire spirit world. The true fairy tale must be at once a prophetic representation, an ideal representation, and an absolutely necessary representation. The true poet of a fairy tale is a seer of the future. All fairy tales are only dreams of that familiar world of home which is everywhere and nowhere. The siesta of the spirit realm is the world of flowers. In India the people still slumber and their sacred dream is a garden surrounded by lakes of sugar and milk.]1 —Novalis, Blüthenstaub-Fragments2 Inspired by Johann Wolfgang Goethe‘s (1749-1832) Das Märchen (The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily) of 1795, German poet Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), alias Novalis, called for the absolute fairy tale, a canon of poetry, which comprises the universal integration of fantastic elements.3 In his works, the Romantic philosopher also speaks of the principal duty of the fairy tale writer, which lies in the redemption of the world through a new Golden Age. Given the interest of the Romantics in the exotic Other and the longing for distant lands during the early-nineteenth century, it is not surprising that 1 Throughout this dissertation translations from the German or French are my own if they are not followed by page numbers referencing a published translation. 2 The quote was published in 1798 in the literary journal Athenaeum. Novalis, Novalis Schriften, 2: 230-31. 3 Goethe‘s Märchen was first published in 1795 at the end of his collection Unterhaltungen Deutscher Ausgewanderten (Conversations of German Refugees) in Friedrich Schiller‘s German magazine Die Horen (The Horae or Hours). The story revolves around the crossing and bridging of a river, which represents the divide between the outer life of the senses and the ideal aspirations of the human being. 9 many Kunstmärchen (literary, original, or poetic fairy tales) of that period are inextricably intertwined with ―the Orient,‖ as well as with specific symbols and motifs, such as the Blue Flower, the hermit, the poet, the wanderer, the dream, nature, love, music, poetry, mystery, myth, destiny, the supernatural, and the marvelous. In this dissertation, I analyze these guiding themes of Romanticism in literary fairy tales written by Novalis, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773- 1798), Ernst Theodor Amadeus ―E.T.A.‖ Hoffmann (1776-1822), Achim von Arnim (1781- 1831), and Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827) in connection with the Romantic movement, whose followers associated the ancient Orient with the mythical origin of Western civilization. This dissertation investigates the relationship between German literary fairy tales of the Romantic period, the Orientalist paradigm, and the formation of a German national identity. My work contributes to the understanding of the genre of the Kunstmärchen, brings a new perspective to the scholarly discourses on Orientalism and Othering, and sheds light on various philosophical, political, and socio-historic factors that influenced Romantic writers in early-