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Conservative Nationalism and Ice Spaces in Weimar Germany's University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2018 Blood and Snow: Conservative Nationalism and Ice Spaces in Weimar Germany’s Science Fiction Joy Marie Hancock University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Hancock, Joy Marie, "Blood and Snow: Conservative Nationalism and Ice Spaces in Weimar Germany’s Science Fiction. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4984 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Joy Marie Hancock entitled "Blood and Snow: Conservative Nationalism and Ice Spaces in Weimar Germany’s Science Fiction." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Modern Foreign Languages. Daniel H. Magilow, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Luis C. Cano, Sarah V. Eldridge, Amy J. Elias Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Blood and Snow: Conservative Nationalism and Ice Spaces in Weimar Germany’s Science Fiction A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Joy Marie Hancock May 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Joy Marie Hancock All rights reserved. ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Daniel H. Magilow for his exceptional and tireless guidance throughout this project. I owe my knowledge of academic research, my skills as a scholar and my fascination with literary ice tropes to him. Many thanks to my other committee members for their insightful feedback and helpful observations along the way: Dr. Sarah Eldridge, Dr. Luis Cano and Dr. Amy Elias. I am deeply indebted to my husband, who watched this project unfold with patience and unparalleled understanding. Finally, thanks to my family members and close friends for their unwavering support. This project is dedicated to my grandfather, Martin Essigmann, who first set me on this course many years ago. iii Abstract This project examines a fascinating speculative genre of early German science fiction (or SF). Pioneered by speculative author Hans Dominik, the technischer Zukunftsroman (“technical utopian novel”) proved immensely popular throughout the years of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Various Zukunftsroman authors utilized ice “spaces” such as the Arctic or Greenland as key narrative settings. This project argues that literary SF ice spaces shared distinct qualities with the World War I battlefield as put forth in radical right-wing publications by members of Weimar’s “Conservative Revolution.” Conservative revolutionaries belonged to a loose collective of post-World War I intellectuals, philosophers and writers across a wide spectrum of Germany’s social milieu. These intellectuals often wrote of the conflation of Kultur und Technik (culture and technology) that they believed could best be fulfilled through warfare and on the battlefield. In an era marked by the battlefield’s ultimate failure to bring Germany glory, interwar SF writers intercepted and “perfected” the idea of the battlefield by transposing its qualities onto critical ice “spaces of intervention.” From the first Ice Age’s primitive hunting grounds to the farthest reaches of outer space, technological advances framed by bitter ice in the Weimar Republic’s SF novels signaled a selective embrace of industrialization and modernity tempered by conservative beliefs in Germany’s ultimate superiority among the republic’s intellectual elite. Nationalist ideologies just beneath the surface in mainstream culture and pulp SF literature became even more overt with the addition of ice spaces that symbolized both a return to the mythological “German-ness” of the past and highly idealized dreams for the present and future. Interwar German SF, and the ice spaces featured in so many of these novels, nudged the Weimar Republic’s already unstable political climate further in the direction of the far Right. This project situates iv works by mainstream SF authors like Hans Dominik, Hans Friedrich Blunck, and Otfrid von Hanstein in the literary tradition that eased the Nazis’ rise to power in the mid-1930s. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: Why the technischer Zukunftsroman? ................................ ...................1 CHAPTER 1: Methodology, Historiography: Ice Chronotopes, Weimar’s Conservative Dilemma and 1920s Trivialliteratur ................................ ................................ ................................ ......19 Historicizing Ice: Battlefields of Blood and Snow ................................ ....................26 Warriors for Justice and Freedom: Pre- and Posthuman Heroes in 1920s Science Fiction ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ....29 Lies lieber ein gutes Buch als diese Schmöker!: Mass Literature and Censorship in the Weimar Republic ................................ ................................ ................................ .......33 Selling Vengeance, Selling Hope: Post-War Fantasies and Germany’s Mass Reading Public ................................ ................................ ................................ ......................... 42 Conclusion: Extremist Ideologies of Ice ................................ ................................ ....47 CHAPTER 2: Prehistoric Science Fiction Ice: Narratives of Teutonic Barbarism ...............50 Bloodshed and Blond Beasts in Weimar Germany ................................ ....................57 Winter of Frosts and Snowstorms: Alois Sonnleitner’s Die Höhlenkinder in heimlichen Grund (1918) ................................ ................................ ................................ .............66 Forever Shining Ice of the North: Hans Friedrich Blunck’s Gewalt über das Feuer (1926) ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ....77 Conclusion: The Old Blood-Lust of Man ................................ ................................ ..86 CHAPTER 3: Engineered Science Fiction Ice: Narratives of Soldierly Nationalism ...........88 Man as Machinist and Machine: Conservative Technocratic Battlefields .................95 Where Ice Fields Meet the Sky: Hans Dominik’s Die Macht der Drei (1922) .........104 In the Realms of Eternal Ice: Karl August von Laffert’s Feuer am Nordpol (1924)...... ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ....118 Conclusion: Right-Wing Nationalism from the Arctic to Andromeda ...................... 130 CHAPTER 4: Cosmic Science Fiction Ice: Narratives of Pseudo-Scientific Astrofuturism .133 Space as Battlefield of Endless Possibility ................................ ................................ 139 Hot Rockets and Cold Science: Interwar Germany’s Polar Extremes ....................... 143 Venusian Seas of Ice: Otto Willi Gail’s Der Stein vom Mond (1926) ....................... 154 Precious Lunar Snow: Otfrid von Hanstein’s Mond-Rak I (1929) ............................ 165 Conclusion: 1920s Astrofuturism as Bridge to Nazi Ice ................................ ...........172 vi CONCLUSION: Narratives of Aryan Ice and National Socialism ................................ .......175 WORKS CITED ................................ ................................ ................................ ....................184 VITA ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ......202 vii Introduction Why the technischer Zukunftsroman? “Das Eis war einer unserer großen Lehrmeister, wie es der Winter heute noch ist. ... Es hat unseren Willen gestärkt, uns denken gelehrt.” The ice was our greatest teacher, as the winter remains until now. … It has strengthened our will and taught us to think. - Ernst Jünger, An der Zeitmauer, 1959 In light of worldwide sociopolitical developments in the early 21st century, including anti-immigration riots in France, sweeping global economic crisis and an increase in Far Right political victories in America and Western Europe, the complex relationship between mass media and the rise of right-wing nationalism is especially relevant. This project explores this phenomenon in relation to the popularity of an under- investigated genre of pulp science fiction literature that flourished throughout the unstable years of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933). The so-called technischer Zukunftsroman, or technical utopian novel, found a willing audience among the republic’s newly decimated Mittelstand (midde-class), as well as Germany’s youth. Books belonging to the genre overwhelmingly reflected “the anger, disillusionment, and confusion following defeat in
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