Religion and Violence in Heinrich Von Kleist's
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04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06] Revelation in the Public Sphere: Religion and Violence in Heinrich von Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (Eine Legende)” ELISABETH KRIMMER University of California, Davis Ever since the attack on the twin towers on 11 September 2001, the status of reli- gion in the public sphere has been subject to heated debate. For many in the Western part of the world, the process of modernization had long been identified with that of secularization. It was assumed, as Ulrich Beck explains, that there was no longer a need for religion: “Im Sichtschatten schonender Gleichgültigkeit und im Lichte wissenschaftlicher Kritik lösen sich religiöse Glaubensinhalte wie Gletscher bei der Klimaerwärmung auf” (197). After 9/11, however, many diag- nosed the return of religion even in the West, captured in the catchphrase “post- secular society.” Others focused their critical attention not on the West but on Islam, which they saw as beholden to premodern values and consequently in dire need of its own version of the Enlightenment. In this view, the terrorists of 9/11 “were obviously people who rejected modernity in favor of authoritative tradition, discussion and compromise in favor of violencePROOF and coercion, reason in favor of revelation, democracy in favor of theocracy” (Owen and Owen 4). Here, the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, is cited as an antidote to religiously motivated violence (3); religion is cast as the polar opposite of reason and rele- gated to the realm of the private and irrational, while reason is associated with the public sphere and credited with the ability to transform force into rational deliberation. This pat dichotomy has been questioned in recent works by Judith Butler and others.1 But it is little known that even in the eighteenth century, some thin- 1 Butler claims that secularism is not “as liberated from its religious foundations as it purports to be” (71). According to Butler, secularization does not signify the demise of religion but rather PAGEoffers “a fugitive way for religion to survive ” (72). See also Dülmen, who claims that religion provided the foundational impulse for concepts that we have come to perceive as purely secular. For example, the quest for religious self-determination and the growing interiorization of reli- gious practice in Pietism contributed to the eighteenth-century “discovery” of notions of individ- uality and subjectivity (see Dülmen 33). Similarly, Habermas points out that the law itself originates in the sacred (“The Political” 17). seminar 50:3 (September 2014) 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06] 296 ELISABETH KRIMMER kers put pressure on the dichotomy of reason and religion. In the following, I show that Heinrich von Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (Eine Legende)” not only speaks to our current predicament about the role of religion in contemporary Western society but also addresses the interrelation of religion and violence that has been foremost on our minds ever since the terror attack of 9/11. Unlike previous interpreters, I read Kleist’s story as a text about the place of religion in the public sphere of a newly enlightened society whose political pro- cesses are ostensibly defined through the use of reason and discourse.2 As I will show, a crucial question of “Die heilige Cäcilie” concerns an issue that has also preoccupied the thought of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the last decade: namely the status of religious revelation within public, rational dis- course. In other words, the first section of the article asks how a secular society can integrate a discourse that does not speak the language of reason. The second section is concerned with the containment of religiously motivated violence. In discussing questions of religious diversity, it references theories by Ulrich Beck and Charles Taylor. Finally, the third section links religious claims to universal validity, which Beck locates at the heart of religion’s potential for violence, to claims about the authenticity of religious signs. Kleist’s text plays against the background of the Beeldenstorm in the Neth- erlands. Four brothers, inspired by the Dutch example, decide to attack a monas- tery near the city of Aachen. They set the date of the attack for the feast of Corpus Christi and gather a crowd of supporters. As they are about to destroy the church, the leaders of the mob are so movedPROOF by the performance of an orato- rio that they fall to their knees in worship and subsequently convert to Catholi- cism. Because of the extreme nature of their faith, however, they are confined to an insane asylum. In the second part of the story, the brothers’ mother comes to town six years later to inquire about the whereabouts of her sons and is informed 2 There is much in Kleist’s opinions about religion that accords with predominant discourses of the time. In his early letters, Kleist characterized himself as a person who had no truck with con- ventional religion but rather lived in “goldne Abhängigkeit von der Herrschaft der Vernunft” (2: 484): “Etwas muß dem Menschen heilig sein. Uns beide, denen es die Zeremonien der Reli- gion und die Vorschriften des konventionellen Wohlstandes nicht sind, müssen um so mehr die Gesetze der Vernunft heilig sein” (2: 491). Jesus is stripped of his spiritual meaning and rede- fined as a “Held der Tugend” (2: 495), and religious tolerance is upheld as the highest form of charity. For example, when Kleist visits a hospital, he is particularly taken with the fact that pa- PAGEtients of all religious denominations are welcome: “Dabei ist es besonders bemerkenswürdig und lobenswert, daß die religiöse Toleranz, die nirgends in diesem ganzen Hochstift anzutreffen ist, grade hier in diesem Spital, wo sie so nötig war, Platz gefunden hat, und daß jeder Unglück- liche seine Zuflucht findet in dieser katholischen Anstalt, wäre es auch ein Protestant oder ein Jude” (2: 560). Later in life, however, he was more open towards religious experiences. Shortly before he died, he wrote the following: “Morgens und abends knie ich nieder, was ich nie ge- konnt habe, und bete zu Gott; ich kann ihm mein Leben, das allerqualvollste, das je ein Mensch geführt hat, jetzo danken, weil er es mir durch den herrlichsten und wollüstigsten aller Tode ver- gütigt” (2: 887). On religion in Kleist’s works see Lützeler and Schneider. 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06] Revelation in the Public Sphere 297 by the abbess of the monastery that Saint Cecilia herself conducted the perfor- mance that drove the brothers mad. What sounds like a straightforward plot in this brief summary is anything but clear or linear. To begin with, there are several versions of “Die heilige Cäci- lie.” The first, short version was published in the Berliner Abendblätter on 15–17 November 1810. A longer version was included in the second volume of Kleist’s Moralische Erzählungen in 1811. This second version introduces narra- tive inconsistencies that were not yet present in the first (see Stephens 84) by combining the narration of the events proper with their anamnesis, their “erin- nernde Aufarbeitung” (Neumann 369), by various functionaries of the bourgeois order, including the directors of the insane asylum, the innkeeper, the textile dealer Veit Gotthelf, the abbess, the archbishop, and the Pope.3 In particular, the inconsistencies introduced in the second version extend to the conversion experience, which results in either spiritual enlightenment or insanity, depending on one’s perspective. In a typically ambiguous move, Kle- ist’s text refuses to authenticate the brothers’ vision as divinely inspired (see Laurs 221; Gelus 285; Meier 238) but rather leaves open the possibility that they have simply gone mad. In presenting conflicting explanations of the events, Kle- ist forces the reader to re-enact “the drama of interpretation” (Haase and Freu- denburg 88), or, as Jochen Schmidt puts it, “[d]er Leser muß sich in eine Hermeneutik des Verdachts einüben” (270).4 Repeatedly, the narrator intimates divine intervention, suggesting that God had felled the brothers “wie durch un- sichtbare Blitze” (2:225). Later on, an official version of the legend is formulated by the abbess, who asserts that “Gott selbstPROOF hat das Kloster, an jenem wunderba- ren Tage, gegen den Übermut Eurer schwer verirrten Söhne beschirmt” (227). Even the brothers themselves insist that they owe their conversion to divine agency. Their heightened state of being is evident in a newly found happiness, a “gewisse, obschon sehr ernste und feierliche, Heiterkeit” (220). This serenity is not a momentary aberration but rather a permanent feature of the brothers’ en- lightened state which was to remain with them until their death in old age: “die Söhne aber starben, im späten Alter, eines heitern und vergnügten Todes” (228). Since serenity is commonly associated with spiritual enlightenment, the brothers’ equipoise suggests that they are communing with God. The notion that they are blessed is also in line with their perfect state of health (“körperlich vollkommen gesund,PAGE” 220). Indeed, the brothers themselves are convinced that the citizens of 3 Several critics have drawn attention to the hidden and self-serving agendas that inspired these contrasting versions. Barbara Thums, for example, points to “in der Legendenbildung kaschierte Machtinteressen” of the “Funktionsträger von Politik, Ökonomie, Jurisprudenz, Medizin, Psy- chiatrie und Religion” (518–19). On stylistic differences between the first and second version see Graf 67–68. 4 Wolfgang Wittkowski poignantly summarizes Kleist’s method: “jede festabgegrenzte Sicht, jede Alleinherrschaft irgendeines Standpunktes soll vermieden, ja ausdrücklich bekämpft, ironi- siert werden” (37). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06] 298 ELISABETH KRIMMER Aachen would join them in worship if only they had shared their experience: “wenn die gute Stadt Aachen wüßte, was sie, so würde dieselbe ihre Geschäfte bei Seite legen, und sich gleichfalls, zur Absingung des Gloria, um das Kruzifix des Herrn niederlassen” (220).