The Unknown Future: Premonitions between Prophecy and Pathology, 1750 to 1850

Tomasz Kurianowicz

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2020

© 2020

Tomasz Kurianowicz

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

The Unknown Future.

Premonitions between Prophecy and Pathology, 1750 to 1850

Tomasz Kurianowicz

My dissertation The Unknown Future examines the notion of Ahnung or Ahndung (in English: premonition) in German literature, philosophy, anthropology, and the sciences around 1800. Focusing on the heated debates among philosophers, writers and intellectuals as to whether humans can attain knowledge about the future, I trace the notion of Ahnung as it traverses various discourses. In doing so, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of a new historicism and expand studies written by Stefan Andriopoulos, Joseph Vogl, Eva Horn, Michael Gamper and other scholars, explicitly referring to and expanding the literary theory concerning “poetologies of knowledge.“ Specifically I show how after 1750 religious models of prophecy were no longer easily accepted. At the same time, new statistical and mathematical models of prognosis were rising -- even as doubts remained about their ability to fully grasp the progression of time. Within these conflicts between traditional religious models and the new exact sciences, the concept of ‘premonition’ seemed to offer various thinkers and writers evidence for a prognostic capability of the soul that challenged rational, mathematical and statistical models of probability as the sole means for predicting the future. The hope was that premonitions could provide a supersensory knowledge based on fleeting, opaque glimpses into the progression of time. In chapter 1, I examine how philosophers discussed the phenomenon of premonitions and juxtapose Johann Gottfried Herder’s supportive perspective on premonitions in his essay On Knowing, Sensing, Wishing, Hoping, and Believing (1797) with Immanuel Kant’s dismissive claims in his study Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). In chapter 2, I discuss major anthropologies and their representation of premonitions, specifically Karl Philipp Moritz’s Journal for the Experience and Knowledge of the Soul (1783-1793). Moritz not only presents interesting case studies of prognostic premonitory experiences, but also discusses them in a poetological context and defends them as valid prophetic narratives. My third chapter turns to a set of critical questions. If literary, poetic, and more generally narrative modes of expression are

key instruments for articulating the prophetic power of premonitions – as Herder, Moritz and von Arnim argue – how are premonitions depicted in literature? Attending to three exemplary texts by Ludwig Tieck (The Story of Mr. William Lovell), Heinrich von Kleist (The Earthquake in Chili), and E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Sandman), the final chapter demonstrates how premonitions in literary texts question dominant mathematical and rational perspectives on the world. At the end of my dissertation, I briefly discuss the history of weather-based literary tropes between 1750 and 1850 and show why the limited ability to foresee the weather propelled discourses on supersensory knowledge, namely: premonitions. In the end, my dissertation shows how premonitions became a predominant literary technique for critically exploring the unknown progression of time and for questioning the objectifying impulses of a scientific world-view.

This dissertation was advised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Andriopoulos and Prof. Dr. Oliver Simons.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations p. iii

Acknowledgements p. iv

Dedication p. v

Introduction Premonitions: A Supersensory Countermodel to Statistics and Probability p. 1

Chapter 1: Philosophy

Johann Gottfried Herder’s Two Essays on Ahn(d)ung p. 26 Immanuel Kant: Ahndung as a False Fantasy of Unconscious Memory p. 40 Jakob Friedrich Fries: Premonitions as Metaphysical Insight p. 48 Achim von Arnim: Premonition as an Epistemological Principle for Art p. 56

Chapter 2: Psychology Karl Philipp Moritz: Anthropology and Philosophy as a Resource for Premonitory Experiences p. 72 Karl Philipp Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde p. 82 Karl Philipp Moritz’s ‘Revision of the Revision’ p. 89 Karl Philipp Moritz: Poetry as Supersensory Knowledge p. 95

Chapter 3: Literature Premonitory Literature – Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell Premonitions Between Epiphany and Insanity p. 102 Premonition as a Source for Manipulation? p. 117

i

Premonitory Literature – Heinrich von Kleist: The Prognostic Capacities of the Soul Probability and Premonition: Differences and Similarities p. 126 Premonitions of the Improbable: Heinrich von Kleist: Improbable Veracities p. 135 Heinrich von Kleist: The Earthquake in Chile p. 138 Heinrich von Kleist’s Understanding of the Horrors of History p. 142

Premonitory Literature – E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman p. 146 Meteorological and Nature Tropes as Symbols of Premonitions: A Historical Analysis of Meteorology and its Epistemological Crisis p. 148 Stormy Iconography: Caspar David Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer and the Darkness of Premonitions p. 162 The Crisis of Meteorology and Weather Metaphors in The Sandman p. 169 The Ambiguity of Nathanael’s Destiny: The Transgressvie Meaning of Premonitions p. 177

Conclusion Premonitions in Today’s Pop Culture and World Politics: Jordan Peele’s Horror Movie Us (2019) p. 191

Liiiterature p. 201

ii

List of Illustrations

- Caspar David Friedrich: Der Mönch am Meer, 1808–1810 (state before restauration), oil on canvas 110 × 171,5 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, picture source WikiCommons (copied on 1st of March 2020): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_M%C3%B6nch_am_Meer#/media/Datei:Caspar_David_Fried rich_-_Der_M%C3%B6nch_am_Meer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

- Jordan Peele: Us, 2019, Amazon Streaming, Screenshots, streamed in March 2020 on www.amazon.com

iii

Acknowledgments

I thank Professors Stefan Andriopoulos, Columbia University, and Oliver Simons, Columbia University, for their willingness and enthusiasm to advise this dissertation over the course of the institutionally tumultuous years we experienced together. Their intellectual work falls nothing short of inspirational. I also thank Professor Andreas Gailus, University of Michigan, for helping me to develop in 2012 and 2013 this dissertation topic during my first two semesters in the United States as a visiting PhD student from the Freie Universität Berlin. While in graduate school, many fabulous people crossed my path and were of invaluable help. I would like to mention a few: Christoph Schaub who is one of the smartest literary scholars I have ever met and a thriving professor of literary studies. I thank him for his support, the good conversations we had (in New York, Wilhelmshaven or Berlin) and his willingness to listen and to give sensitive advice, which helped me to believe in myself. Simon Walsh, who is one on the brightest intellectuals I have ever known. He helped me particularly strongly in the end-phase of this dissertation and made me overcome difficult challenges even in the darkest and most difficult times. His help (and his Koala stamps) will remain unforgotten. My thankfulness for his support and all our intense discussions over (low quality) beers – either in Ann Arbor or Adelaide, New York or Berlin – goes beyond words. Landon Little who supported me as a good friend with his wise Californian words and smiles, warm hugs and phrases, his coolness and positive attitude, and his American apple pies after long days of work. Wojciech Adomas who listened to my problems in little Polish bars in Greenpoint, New York, while helping me to concentrate on the good things in life. My best friend Boban Dukic, Anne Röhrborn, my good and very talented friend Samuel Thoma, Niklas Straetker, Xan Holt, and Michael Watzka. Thank you for your sound advice and friendship over the last decade. I also owe a big thank you to my family, whose emotional and financial support made graduate school achievable in the first place. My parents came from Poland to Germany in the late 1970s with nothing more than a suitcase and helped me to establish my career through love and big sacrifices. I cannot put in words how much I appreciate their uncompromising support. At the end, I want to thank most eagerly my twin sister Katerina who is always at my side – in my heart and my thoughts. Having her in my life is the greatest gift. You all made this possible. Without you the world would be an empty place.

iv

To my mother Anna, my father Janusz, my twin sister Katerina and my brother Piotr.

v

Introduction Premonitions: A Supersensory Countermodel to Probability

So viel ist wohl gewiß, daß in besonderen Zuständen die Fühlfäden unserer Seele über ihre körperlichen Grenzen hinausreichen können und ihr ein Vorgefühl, ja auch ein wirklicher Blick in die nächste Zukunft gestattet ist...

—Eckermanns Gespräche mit Goethe, III. Teil, 7. Oktober 1827

My dissertation explores the concept of Ahndung at the intersections of various discourses in German culture during Romanticism. In English, Ahndung means premonition; in contemporary German orthography it is rendered Ahnung. My undertaking will allow us to reevaluate and rethink the distinctions drawn between knowledge and belief in the period beginning in 1750 and ending in 1850. Furthermore, my analysis allows us a new assessment of literary history and also opens up a better understanding of the decisive changes in how Western societies perceived the possibilities of human agency and time. Why did the phenomenon of Ahndung spark so much excitement and discussion between 1750 and 1850? Why did different disciplines perceive the phenomenon so differently? Why did so many writers and intellectuals believe that premonitory experiences and visions presaged the future? And why did this mode of premonition take on a distinctly supersensory form? In the hope of answering these questions, I will explore three disciplinary fields in which the phenomenon of Ahndung played a major role: philosophy, psychology, and literature. First I concentrate on philosophical studies. In analyzing various philosophical and poetic instances of premonitory experiences, these works partially affirmed premonition’s prophetic capacities.1 I then turn my attention to texts by psychologists. In examining psychological pathologies— including case studies of “foreboding madmen,” medical reports of “premonitions of death,” and oral and written prophecies about the end of time—most of these studies took a negative approach to the discussion. Lastly, I examine literary texts that enacted a specific form of premonitory knowledge. Adopting an affirmative perspective on premonitions, such works

1 Herder, for instance, investigates “Ahndungen” in his study Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft; Über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben. / Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft; Über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Günter Arnold and others, Frankfurt am Main 1985-2000, here: vol. 8, p. 283-301. 1 sought to build an arsenal of prophetic wisdom. Simultaneously reflecting upon and propelling the discourse on premonitions, these three fields interrogated premonition’s significance for how people perceived and understood destiny and encountered obscure, unplaceable times. Methodologically, I draw on the “poetologies of knowledge,” developed by the literary scholar Joseph Vogl and others. Furthermore, I draw on the theories of Stephen Greenblatt and his understanding of “The New Historicism” and “cultural poetics.”2 This allows me to show how the different fields of philosophy, psychology and literature reciprocally shaped one another within wider the context of Western modes of accounting for, and dealing with, the future. Why concentrate on the phenomenon of premonitions? Why analyze a phenomenon, which, at least from today’s perspective, seems obscure and unscientific? As I will show, focusing on premonitions allows us to understand how fundamental boundaries between knowledge and belief shifted in Western societies. The theological or theodical worldview that prevailed at the beginning of the eighteenth century assumed a world presided over by God. This conception was summed up in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s well-known statement on how God had created “the best of all possible worlds.”3 The modern societies that emerged the nineteenth century, in contrast, began to acknowledge the world’s contingency and malleability: increasingly, worldly realities were seen as resulting from human actions and decisions. This recognition of the human capacity to shape and order the world had a huge impact on the ways in which Western societies perceived time—above all the future—and possibilities for directing it. The modern subject sought to establish a new position in time and space beyond the God-centered, theological worldview. The German scholar Reinhart Koselleck argues that between 1750 and 1850 this secular turn gave rise to the idea of human progress. The perfection of humanity was no longer deferred as something that would come about only in the hereafter. Instead, it was understood as the ultimate telos of human history. In his influential study Vergangene Zukunft (1979), Koselleck narrates this transition:

Terminologisch wurde der geistliche ‚profectus’ durch einen weltlichen ‚progressus’ verdrängt oder abgelöst. Die Zielbestimmung einer möglichen Vollkommenheit, die früher nur im Jenseits erreichbar war, diente seitdem einer irdischen

2 Catrherine Gallagher, Stephen Greenblatt: Practicing New Historicism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000. 3 Donald Rutherford: Leibniz and the rational order of nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, p. 1. 2

Daseinsverbesserung, die es erlaubte, die Lehre von den letzten Dingen durch das Wagnis einer offenen Zukunft zu überholen. Schließlich wurde, zunächst von Leibniz, der Zielpunkt der Vollkommenheit verzeitlicht und in den Vollzug des weltlichen Geschehens hereingeholt (...). Wie Lessing folgerte: Ich glaube, der Schöpfer mußte alles, was er erschuf, fähig machen, vollkommener zu werden, wenn es in der Vollkommenheit, in welcher er es erschuf, bleiben sollte.4

Referring to Lessing, Koselleck emphasizes that, for the first time, the process of infinite perfection became a goal to be realized on earth, not in heaven. God was no longer seen as determining the future; that role was now reserved for modern humanity itself. In narrating this transition, I am also following arguments put forward by literary scholar Caroline Domenghino, who published Knowing Without Knowledge, the first major study of premonitions in 2012. In the introduction, she stresses how

up until the sixteenth century, Christianity’s conception of history was marked by the expectation of Judgment Day. The Reformation and the subsequent wars fundamentally changed this outlook. The fact that wars in the name of religion did not end in doomsday enabled a theology-free conception of the history of mankind. The modern secular state was born, and as a result the understanding of the future changed. Religious prophecies about the end of time didn’t fulfill themselves, and instead, a new conception of time and history arose. Rational prognosis becomes the form of prediction that adequately represents the societal-political changes and the new attitude towards the future.5

It was no coincidence, I hope to demonstrate, that the concept of Ahndung became so fruitful in discussions and debates around 1800. During this era, concepts of providence and revelation came to seem antiquated. Increasingly seen as relicts of an outdated metaphysical worldview, theological ideas were subjected to scrutiny and criticized for their inability to

4 Reinhart Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 362. 5 Caroline Domenghino: Knowing without Knowledge: Ahnung in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Literature form the Englighenment to Romanticism, dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing 2011, p. 6. 3 explain the course of history in scientific terms. As Eva Horn explains, between 1750 and 1850 intellectuals began to regard the future as an open horizon. No longer limited by the metaphysical borders or rules imposed by Christian orthodoxy, the future became a space of unlimited possibilities for human progress:

Als Anbruch der Moderne versteht die sogenannte ‚Sattelzeit’ um 1800 Zukunft nicht mehr als adventus, sondern als Möglichkeit – und damit auch als offenen Horizont der großen Umwälzungen, der neuen Aufbrüche und Ordnungen (...).6

As Pim den Boer has shown, this transitional period saw “the modernization of German socio- political vocabulary,” through which “key concepts were created or old concepts received new meaning.”7 This ‘Sattelzeit’ or ‘saddle-time’ (Koselleck) of intellectual transition is the context in which discourses surrounding premonitions evolved and came to the fore.8 In fact, since the seventeenth century modern societies had been moving toward an understanding of the world based upon mathematical principles and calculation (Kalkül).9 Marshaled to give rational shape to the progression of time, these principles did not depend on what were increasingly seen as unfounded religious beliefs or opaque concepts such as God’s impenetrable will. New forms of premonition appeared during this saddle-time; they arose, I argue, as a transgressive phenomenon that reflected epistemological uncertainties of the era. Epistemologically, premonitions drifted between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief.’ In this way, they highlight a broader crisis in which human capacities for knowledge were subjected to intense critical reflection and heated debate. I follow Horn’s, Domenghino’s, Koselleck’s common premise that the discussion surrounding the limits of human knowledge between 1750 and 1850 resulted from the waning of the theological worldview. Despite this, in this period many traditional Christian beliefs had not

6 Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, p. 49. 7 Pim den Boer: National Cultures, Transnational Concepts: Begriffsgeschichte Beyond Conceptual Nationalism, in: Javier Fernandez Sebastian (ed.): New Approaches to Conceptual History. Political Concepts and Time, Cantabria University Press, Santander (Spain) 2011, p. 205-223, here: p. 210. 8 Literary critics refer to this term following the explanation of Reinhart Koselleck in his book Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. See: Reinhart Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989. 9 Sybille Krämer: Berechenbare Vernunft. Kalkül und Rationalismus im 17. Jahrhundert, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991. 4 yet been fully replaced by modern, secular ideas. This uncertainty as to the proper basis and definition of epistemological categories provoked interest in transitory, ambiguous phenomena such as premonitions, as well as more obscure techniques including seeing ghosts and clairvoyance, as Stefan Andriopoulos has shown.10 That said, an increasing number of philosophers and literary authors claimed that premonitions were not just another occult phenomenon. Rather, they saw premonition as a legitimate epistemological capacity, an intellectual faculty that has its own distinct power and logic. Unlike practices of seeing ghosts and clairvoyance, having a premonition was seen as a supersensory process—an intellectual experience based on the wisdom of the soul. Moreover, I will show how premonitions had a very different, and perhaps even unique import in relation to these adjacent occult practices, for they brought into focus the epistemological ambivalence characteristic of the age. A premonitory experience might be a divine moment, a prophetic epiphany. But it might also be distinctly secular experience in that it need not be associated with either metaphysical forces or indeed the influence of any other third party, as it is the case in animal magnetism or clairvoyance. Premonitions, in other words, were seen as both extremely obscure and valid. Certainly, the authors, philosophers, and psychologists who argued for their existence had difficulties defining them. Nonetheless, authors of such prominence as Heinrich von Kleist and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe saw premonitions as epistemologically valid. This dissertation shows how premonitions, as they most commonly appear in the literature, reflected a moment of transition between a prophetic and secular view of the future. Partly prognostic and partly prophetic, premonitions exhibit the uncertainty that defined the so- called ‘saddle time.’ As literary scholar Stefan Willer has shown, thinkers in this period struggled to find suitable ways of understanding and defining the future. On the one hand, there was a need to grasp the future as the result of past and present time, as dictated by the theological tradition and exemplified in Leibniz’s understanding. On the other hand, the future had to be completely open and independent. Freed from the metaphysical confines imposed by a Christian worldview, it was to present a tabula rasa for humans—and humans alone—to fill in as they took charge of their history. Willer traces this quandary in conceptions of futurity back to the

10 This is also, more generally, the description of the poetics of Romantic Literature: „Romantic fantastic fiction not only dramatizes repression but also expresses an epistemological crisis that originated in Kant’s philosophy.“ See: Marc Falkenberg: Rethinking the Uncanny in Hoffmann and Tieck, P Lang, Bern 2005, p. 27. 5 work of Johann Gottfried Herder and Immanuel Kant, two philosophers with opposing approaches to history and time. As Willer notes:

Die Zukunft sollte sich aus vergangenen und gegenwärtigen Zuständen ableiten lassen, aber trotzdem ganz anders werden als diese. Wie spannungsreich diese Lage war, lässt sich den Veröffentlichungen Immanuel Kants und Johann Gottfried Herders entnehmen – zweier philosophischer Antagonisten, die sich am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in ihrem jeweiligen Spätwerk (...) vielfach mit Fragen der Zukunftsbestimmungen befassten.11

Numerous media and cultural theorists have analyzed how, despite the modernizers’ stated intensions, the onset of modern rationality could not do away with its spectral and metaphysical heritage.12 Quite the contrary: in their attempt to separate the spheres of reason and superstition, and to marry prognosis with mathematical calculation, self-consciously modern intellectuals such as Kant were constantly accompanied by irrational ideas13 and what Oliver Simons has described as “disruptive noise.”14 It should come as no surprise, therefore, that many writers in this period were eager to explore Ahndungen in their search for an alternative, supersensory model for approaching the future. Far from being determined by statics, rationality, mathematics, and theories of probability, this technique was based on knowledge of the soul—that is, emotions and intuition. Here I follow Caroline Domenghino, who captures premonitions’ unique epistemological status with regard to the future in the following manner:

11 Stefan Willer: Zwischen Planung und Ahndung. Zukunftswissen bei Kant, Herder und in Schillers „Wallenstein“, in: Daniel Weidner, Stefan Willers (eds.): Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfügungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Künsten, Wilhelm Fink, München 2013, p. 299-324, here: p. 301. 12 Stefan Andriopoulos shows, for instance, that Kant is not able to generate a pure secular understanding of man’s will, but he situates it between a material and a spiritual world. See: Stefan Andriopoulos: Kants Gespenster. Optische Medien, Metaphysik und Geistersehen, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder (eds.): Kollektive Gespenster. Die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfassbare Körper, Rombach, Freiburg i. Br. / Berlin 2006, p. 51-73, here: p. 73. 13 The valuation of “Ahndungen” in Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht is as ambivalent as his valuation of ghosts in Kant’s Träume eines Geistersehers [1766]. 14 Oliver Simons defines „Störgeräusche“ as “disruptive noise,” which accompanied the enlightened discussion on the capacities of reason. Oliver Simons: Botschaft oder Störung? Eine Diskursgeschichte des ‚Rauschens’ in der Literatur um 1800, in: Monatshefte, vol. 100, no. 1, University of Wisconsin Press 2008, p. 33-47. 6

By contrast with assumptions and prognoses, which are futuristic calculations based on reason and previous experiences, premonitions claim to foresee the future without drawing, at least not consciously, on such cognitive material.15

In many literary texts, premonitory knowledge is expressed in a narrative form. The emotional forebodings experienced by literary characters exemplify a prognostic technique that abandons the scientific worldview, for which every event can be explained rationally. Premonitions should be understood as a counter-model to this new, secular worldview. Neither driven by theological beliefs alone, nor based solely on a rational mindset, premonitions rather draw on the emotional and cognitive abilities of the soul.16 In this way, they probe both the rational and metaphysical spheres. This is why I put such emphasis on the fact that premonitions are an ambiguous, boundary phenomenon based on supersensory knowledge. For many thinkers between 1750 and 1850, supersensory knowledge represented a paradoxical link between two entities, namely the soul and the mind. Discussions among philosophers, writers, and intellectuals interested in premonitions at the time, therefore, revolved around the question of whether such supersensory knowledge truly exists. Why did supersensory knowledge provoke so much debate between 1750 and 1850? Why were these discussions so heated? If one assumes that, in investigating sensory dispositions and inner feelings, the human soul can catch glimpses of the future, then experiences of premonition (through which one knows the unknown or has prescience of nescience) come precariously close to affirming irrationality.17 They imply that the soul has cognitive and prognostic capacities. This implication is one reason why many rational philosophers—such as Kant and anthropologists including Justus Christian Henning—sharply rejected the validity of premonitory experiments,

15 Caroline Domenghino: Knowing without Knowledge: Ahnung in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Literature form the Englighenment to Romanticism, dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing 2011, p. 1. 16 It is interesting to see that Kant stands on the side of probability theorists in order to understand the course of history — he argues for the use of statistics —, whereas Herder thinks of history like of an arbitrary autobiography, a slowly unfolding novel. This difference was analyzed by Rüdiger Campe. He writes: „Die Statistik der Ehen, Geburten und Tode ist (bei Kant, TK) Gegenstück zu Herders quasi autobiographischem Roman der ‚Natur’.“ Rüdiger Campe: Wahrscheinliche Geschichte – poetologische Kategorie und mathematische Funktion, in: Joseph Vogl (ed.): Poetologien des Wissens, diaphanes, München 1999, p. 219-230, here: p. 214. 17 Stefan Willer writes: „Somit kommen – auf je eigene Weise – Momente der Spekulation und der Ahnung ins Spiel, des fiktionalen Entwerfens und des performativen Erzeugens von Zukünftigkeit.“ Stefan Willer: Vom Nicht- Wissen der Zukunft, Prognostik und Literatur um 1800 und um 1900, in: Michael Bies / Michael Gamper (eds.): Literatur und Nicht-Wissen. Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930, Berlin / Zürich 2012, p. 171-196, here: p. 195. 7 insisting that ‘premonitions’ were not a suitable object of debate and discussion.18 Other scholars, however, were more than willing to entertain the legitimacy of premonitions and explore their utility in prognosis. These figures include Johann Gottfried Herder, the Romantic scientist Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries, theologian Johann Friedrich von Meyer,19 and distinguished authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Achim von Arnim, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Heinrich von Kleist. This body of thinkers was open to the occult and conscious of the limits of science. Arising between science and spirit, premonitions were just the right phenomenon through which these thinkers could articulate their dismay at the spread of objectification as encapsulated in the natural sciences. Against this backdrop, premonitions proved especially fertile theme in literature. Indeed, writing about premonitions represented a highly creative and truthful way of confronting risky and radically open futures. Writers like Tieck, Goethe, Kleist,20 Hoffmann, and Arnim became interested in the phenomenon as they began to realize that the future cannot be fully understood or foreseen through mathematical practices or prognostic models.21 These writers acknowledged the limits of natural sciences, which, they noted, could not capture transcendental truths. Accordingly, literary engagements with premonitions became a way of experimenting with different, new, and as-yet unproven forms of knowledge. Premonitions, many writers hoped, might allow access to hidden, transcendent, or otherwise unknown regions of reality.22

18 Justus Christian Hennings wrote one of the most influential anthropologies on premonitions. See: Justus Christian Hennings: Von den Ahndungen und Visionen, In der Mengandtschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1777. / Kant exposes his concerns in his anthropology. See: Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts- Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820. 19 Jakob Friedrich Fries: Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung, bey Göpferdt, Jena 1805. / Regarding ‚Ahndungen’ and their prognostic validity Fries writes: „In Absicht der eingeborenen Empfindung von der Geisterwelt und der schauerlichen Ahndung von der Möglichkeit ihres Sichtbarwerdens, welche so genau mit dem Gefühl für Gott und Religion zusammenhängt, berufe ich mich schlechthin auf das menschliche Herz, auf die eigene Erfahrung eines Jeden, der von Liebe zur Wahrheit beseelt, von keinem Vorurthel verhärtet, sich das sokratische und auch biblische ‚Erkenne dich selbst’ einen der theuersten Grundsätze seyn läßt.“ See: Johann Friedrich von Meyer: Hades: ein Beytrag zur Theorie der Geisterkunde; nebst Anhängen: öffentliche Verhandlungen über Swedenborg und Stilling, ein Beyspiel des Ahndungsvermögens und einen Brief des jüngern Plinius enthaltend, bey Johann Christian Hermann, Frankfurt am Main 1810, p. 21-22. 20 See: Lucian Hölscher: Die Entdeckung der Zukunft, Wallstein, Göttingen 1999. / See: Katharine Weder: Kleists magnetische Poesie. Experimente des Mesmerismus, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008. 21 „In diesem Sinne verkörpert das pathologische Moment des Nichtwissens nicht nur das Andere des Wissens, es markiert zugleich dessen Grenze, einen ebenso fundamentalen wie unbestimmten Ort, an dem sich der philosophische Anspruch auf Evidenz im Dunkeln des Nichtbegrifflichen verliert.“ Achim Geisenhanslüke: Dummheit und Witz. Poetologie des Nichtwissens, Wilhelm Fink, München 2011, p. 11. 22 Achim von Arnim calls the sphere, where the secrets of the world are hidden, the „fourth dimension“ (as we will later see in this dissertation). 8

Premonitions, then, were simultaneously a symptom of an epistemological crisis, presenting a potential solution to it.

Premonitions: Poetics of the Unknown Much like Stefan Willer, Rüdiger Campe emphasizes how two conflicting interpretative models of history arose in the wake of the theological order. The first can be exemplified by Kant’s Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, which operated within a teleological understanding of history.23 The second stemmed from Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, for which the ultimate purpose of history is indecipherable.24 Premonitions belong to the latter conception. The premise that the future is both radically open and ‘foreseeable’ is, as I have already suggested, paradoxical. How can premonitions be a mode of cognition and prognosis if history lacks certain direction and meaning? Herder solves the philosophical problem by recourse to a rather provocative argument. It is precisely because history and God’s will are obscure or even unknowable, Herder suggests, that the human mind cannot fathom them by means of either everyday language or rational deduction. Bound up with emotions and detached from reason, premonitions do not belong to quotidian discourse or conventional habits of making sense. As an etherial and elliptical mode of knowledge, they seem to be able to grant humans vague but

23 Kant thinks that the course of history is based on rationality and has a final purpose. He writes in his work Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: „Was man sich auch in metaphysischer Absicht für einen Begriff von der Freiheit des Willens machen mag: so sind doch die Erscheinungen desselben, die menschlichen Handlungen, eben so wohl als jede andere Naturbegebenheit nach allgemeinen Naturgesetzen bestimmt. Die Geschichte, welche sich mit der Erzählung dieser Erscheinungen beschäftigt, so tief auch deren Ursachen verborgen sein mögen, läßt dennoch von sich hoffen: daß, wenn sie das Spiel der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens im Großen betrachtet, sie einen regelmäßigen Gang derselben entdecken könne; und daß auf die Art, was an einzelnen Subjecten verwickelt und regellos in die Augen fällt, an der ganzen Gattung doch als eine stetig fortgehende, obgleich langsame Entwickelung der ursprünglichen Anlagen derselben werde erkannnt werden können. So scheinen die Ehen, die daher kommenden Geburten und das Sterben, da der freie Wille des Menschen auf sie so großen Einfluß hat, keiner Regel unterworfen zu sein, nach welcher man die Zahl derselben zum voraus durch Rechnung bestimmen könne; und doch beweisen die jährlichen Tafeln derselben in großen Ländern, daß sie eben so wohl nach beständigen Naturgesetzen geschehen, als die so unbeständigen Witterungen, deren Eräugnis man einzeln nicht vorher bestimmen kann, die aber im Ganzen nicht ermangeln den Wachstum der Pflanzen, den Lauf der Ströme und andere Naturanstalten in einem gleichförmigen, ununterbrochenen Gange zu erhalten. Einzelne Menschen und selbst ganze Völker denken wenig daran, daß, indem sie, ein jedes nach seinem Sinne, und einer oft wider den anderen, ihre eigene Absicht verfolgen, sie unbemerkt an der Naturabsicht, die ihnen selbst unbekannt ist, als an einem Leitfaden fortgehen und an derselben Beförderung arbeiten, an welcher, selbst wenn sie ihnen bekannt würde, ihnen doch wenig gelegen sein würde.“ See: Immanuel Kant: Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784), in: Immanuel Kant’s Werke, sorgfältig revidirte Gesammtausgabe in zehn Bänden, vol. 4, Modes und Baumann, Leipzig 1883, p. 291-311, here: p. 293. 24 Rüdiger Campe: Wahrscheinliche Geschichte – poetologische Kategorie und mathematische Funktion, in: Joseph Vogl (ed.): Poetologien des Wissens, diaphanes, München 1999, p. 219-230, here: p. 214. 9 suggestive impressions of God’s ultimate will or the course of history. The more obscure the premonition, the more truthful it seems. As Herder puts it: „Ahnung der Zukunft ist ein dunkles Gefühl; und je dunkler es ist, oft um so mächtiger, so stärker.“25 As I argue in this dissertation, in many literary texts premonitions turn out to be true. In works such as Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile or Goethe’s Elective Affinities,26 they are presented as a valid mode of cognition, which is able to glimpse the otherwise opaque course of history. Ironically, in many cases premonitions seem to be more insightful than the supposedly scientific or mathematical methods of probability and prognostic calculation that were becoming increasingly established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.27 For authors such as Achim von Arnim, premonitions’ epistemological value mirrors that of the arts. For Arnim, the knowledge created through art transcends the limits of reason. Poetry, it follows, is better able to attain deep human and metaphysical truths than official historiography or scientific analysis, for it has at its disposal poetic, creative, and non-objectifying forms of expression and imagination.28 For many writers, the same held true for premonitions. This is why premonitions play such an important role in literature. Indeed, in the literary domain the prognostic power of premonitions could be depicted and developed without running up against the limits of logic. The intensity of the connections between art and premonition may be unique. Neither clairvoyance, ghostly visitations, telepathy nor any other occult phenomena were thought to have such an affinity with creative expression.

25 Johann Gottfried von Herder: Vom Wissen und Ahnen, in: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, vol. 7, Gotta’sche Buchhandlung, Thüringen 1807, p. 80. 26 In the novella, Donna Elisbaeth’s premonition of the final slaughter comes true. / In a premonition, Charlotte anticipates Ottilie’s final slaughter. 27 Stefan Willer analyzes the failed attempts of prognostic models in Goethe’s work Hermann und Dorothea. He writes: „Dass angesichts dieser radikalen Zukünftigkeit die überlieferten Modelle des Zukunftswissens ihre Geltung verlieren, wird in Hermann und Dorothea immer wieder betont. Selbst die Ableitung unmittelbar bevorstehender alltäglicher Handlungen aus Erfahrungstatsachen unterliegt dem Zweifel, wenn die zu Beginn vom Vater abgegebene Prognose über das Erntewetter (...) Lügen gestraft wird.“ Stefan Willer: Zur literarischen Epistemologie der Zukunft, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janssen (eds.): Wissens-Ordnungen: Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 224-261, here: p. 249. / The book Philosophical Theories of Probability, written by Donald Gillies, gives an insightful overview of the development of probability theories. See: Donald Gillies: Philosophical Theories of Probability, Routledge, London 2000. 28 Koselleck explains Lessing’s opinion that poetry overcomes history in its truthfulness by saying: „Die Dichtung ziele auf das Mögliche und Allgemeine, sie nähere sich der Philosophie, während sich die Historie nur nach dem Verlauf der Zeit richte, in der vielerlei geschehe, wie es sich gerade trifft.’ So konnte noch Lessing, der Aristoteliker der Aufklärung formulieren: Im Gegensatz zum Geschichtsschreiber, der von oft zweifelhaften oder gar unwahrscheinlichen Fakten handeln müsse, sei der Dichter... Herr über die Geschichte; und er kann die Begebenheiten so nahe zusammenrücken wie er will.’“ Reinhart Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 279. 10

For thinkers such as Herder, Arnim, and Kleist, the premonitory experience represents a special cognitive faculty; in many cases, it indicated an intellectual expression of the soul. Unlike comparable occult phenomena, premonitions were thought to bring with them a wealth of meaning that cannot be adequately conveyed either scientifically or through any form of quotidian syntax. The import and intricacies of premonition, these writers held, can be expressed only through the poetic language of art—the only exception being the language of insanity. Accordingly, premonition was presented as a new and privileged form of knowledge. Arnim insisted upon this at length in his correspondence and theoretical texts. In one passage, for instance, he writes: „Ich erwähnte schon, daß ich dieses (die höhere Form des Wissens, TK) durch geistige Berührung ahnde, aber alle geistige Berührung ist nur Ahndung, wenn es sich darstellen sollte den Sinnen und das geschieht in der Kunst.”29 In the light of the close connections between literature and premonition, my account draws upon and refers to the “poetologies of knowledge,” a tradition within literary studies, which was established at the beginning of the present century. As such, this dissertation is informed by a series of studies written and edited by Joseph Vogl, notably Poetologien des Wissens (1999), in addition to works by scholars including Michael Gamper and Stefan Andriopoulos that follow in a similar tradition. The phrase “poetologies of knowledge” names a method and perspective whereby critics approach scientific and psychological texts as works of literature so as to grasp the ways in which they shape knowledge.30 Texts reflect a historical understanding of the world. To reconstruct how the knowledge they embody was historically established, they should be interpreted and decoded as literature, even if they initially had a scientific purpose. Indeed, historical processes of knowledge-formation do not only rely on scientific textbooks and academic writing; they also unfold in and through literature and artistic texts. Hence, any form of knowledge—even the diffusive forms of thought and expression associated with the arts—can be approached in terms of how it spreads and affects other disciplines and areas of thinking. In following the critical tradition focused on unvocering the “poetologies of knowledge,” I aim to historicize texts on premonitions from several disciplines. This allows me to establish analogies among them, identifying the ways in which they reciprocally influenced one another.

29 Manuscript 227 from the Goethe and Schiller archive in Weimar. Reprinted in: Roswitha Burwick: Achim von Arnim. Physiker und Poet, in: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, vol. 26, Duncker & Humboldt, Berlin 1985, p. 121-150, here: p. 149. 30 Joseph Vogl (ed.): Poetologien des Wissens, Diaphanes, München 1999. 11

Still, rather than narrowing my focus to empirically established notions of knowledge, and showing how these emerge through transfers among literature, philosophy, and science, I also mean to show how thinkers and intellectuals engaged with the unknown—that is, obscure, elliptical, or uncertain modes of knowing that were prominent between 1750 and 1850. In the case of premonition, the unknown centrally relates to uncertainties about the future, which could neither be explained by the natural sciences and mathematics, nor fully anticipated and laid out by received theological narratives. My thesis is that uncertainties about the future made the rise of the discourse surrounding premonitions possible. This rise, I claim, was driven by the fact that premonitions were perceived as an alternative model for exploring obscurities and anxieties associated with time. In this dissertation, I draw, first and foremost, upon Joseph Vogl’s book Poetologien des Wissens, Stefan Andriopoulos’s Ghostly Apparitions and a volume edited by Michael Gamper titled Literatur und Nicht-Wissen, Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930. In exploring the sphere of the unknown within literature, the contributors of Gampe’s book identify guiding Poetologies of the Unknown (“Poetologien des Nichtwissens”), in other words: how nescience creates own forms of literary exploration. Premonitions present an especially fertile topic for analysis in the context of this academic debate. Indeed, the uncertainties surrounding the future in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries prompted writers opportunities to explore new modes of narrating time using literary techniques. In this way, literature shaped how Western societies perceived and grappled with the epistemological uncertainties distinctive of their era. Therefore, I approach literature as a laboratory in which scientific developments are reimagined, rethought, and challenged. Michael Gamper justifies this perspective in the following way:

Aufgrund dieser starken Affinität zum Nicht-Wissen kann Literatur eine wissensgeschichtlich prominente strategische Position einnehmen: Sie verwandelt Grenzen des Wissens in Schwellen des Wissens; sie positioniert sich an Orten, wo Wissenschaften keine exakten Ergebnisse erzielen können oder dürfen; sie erzählt fiktionale Geschichten über Problembereiche gegenwärtigen Wissens mit Bezügen

12

zu vergangenem und zukünftigem Wissen; und sie stößt vor in Bereiche, in denen ein verifizierbares Wissen nicht zu erlangen ist.31

The description articulates the epistemological power and experimentalism of not only literature but premonitions too. The future, and the question of how to approach it without falling back on theological narratives, presents one of the most challenging intellectual puzzles that thinkers faced between 1750 and 1850. In this period, the future was increasingly perceived as threatening, opaque, arbitrary, and open to interpretation. Premonitions constitute an attempt to face this interpretative uncertainty. They constituted one possible but not exclusive way of understanding, challenging, and reading what was then a newly continent world. At the same time, the rise of premonitions was also a symptom of a fear in the face of the new uncertainties surrounding time.

Contributions to Existing Research on Premonitions Why do premonitions play such a major role in literature? And why was this particularly true of the late Enlightenment and the Romantic period? In his book Ahnung und Erkenntnis (1996), the literary scholar Wolfram Hogrebe stresses how premonitions were particularly significant for Romantic writers such as Ludwig Tieck and Achim von Arnim.32 Indeed, premonitions’ ambiguous cognitive status enabled these authors to reflect on the impossibility of drawing clear boundaries between knowledge and belief, will and representation. This ambivalence, I argue, is intimately connected to both the emergence of Romantic poetics and what Dorothea von Mücke has described in terms of the crisis of “mediation and communication” between 1750 and 1850.33 Wolfram Hogrebe is the first scholar to dedicate a monograph solely to the topic of premonitions. However, his study presents itself as a first attempt to survey and understand premonitions. Indeed, he himself refers to the book as a “brouillon” or initial draft, which lacks an overarching argument as to how intellectual debates contributed to the predominance of premonitory experiences between 1750 and 1850. Nevertheless, all subsequent work on

31 Michael Gamper: Einleitung, in: Michael Bies / Michael Gamper (eds.): Literatur und Nicht-Wissen. Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930, Diaphanes, Berlin / Zürich 2012, p. 171-196, here: p. 12. 32 Wolfram Hogrebe: Ahnung und Erkenntnis. Bouillon zu einer Theorie des natürlichen Erkennens, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1996. 33 In Tieck’s work, the crisis of communication appears as a shock for the reader: „This shock can be discussed in terms of how it undermines an Enlightenment model of representation and communication.“ Dorothea von Mücke: The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003, p. 58-59. 13 premonitions takes Hogrebe’s analysis as point of departure for further investigation, drawing on the quotations and bibliographical materials given in his book. As such, it is nevertheless important that I summarize the main points of Hogrebe’s study here. Hogrebe’s work distinguishes five different types of premonition: sensory, diagnostic, explanatory, contextual, and prognostic. These strict demarcations, I claim, do not hold. Premonitions are characterized precisely by their blurriness and ambiguity of meaning. Accordingly, these five types of premonition overlap with and sometimes contradict one another. Premonitory experiences, I claim, amount to a form of questioning that denies or challenges calculative models that seek to measure and to order an objectified world. Above all, they critique the mathematical worldview. Sorting premonitions into neat categories cuts against their very nature. As I have already mentioned, Hogrebe indicates the importance of premonitions for the development of Romanticism in German literature. He also suggests why premonitions became so important for Romantic writers. The literary confrontation with premonitions, for Hogrebe, represents a crucial step toward modern modes of approaching and perceiving reality. Indeed, he claims that the writing of premonitions reflects an awareness that knowledge is bound up with historical conditions, that it can be challenged by revolutionary scientific discoveries or political developments. Referring to Robert Musil, Hogrebe describes the emergence of premonitions as a rise of a ‘sense of possibilities’ (Möglichkeitsdenken) as opposed to transhistorical ethical or epistemological imperatives, which are governed by a ‘sense of reality’ (Wirklichkeitsdenken). For Hogebre, therefore, the poetology of premonitions occasions a wider exploration of this crucial epistemic turn from reality to possibility around 1800 and its consequences for Romantic literature. Hogebre:

Wer noch der Ahnung fähig ist, hat Chancen, Neues zu entdecken, und hebt den Kopf und sieht die Welt im Lichte einer Möglichkeit, die nichts lassen muß, wie es ist. Die poetische Theorie der Ahnung seit ihren Anfängen (…) ist in Konkurrenz zur überlieferten Inspirationstheorie immer zugleich eine Theorie der Abstandnahme gewesen (…); eines Heraustretens aus Verbindlichkeiten, aus routinierten

14

Bezüglichkeiten. (...) Die poetische Theorie der Ahnung ist Erkenntnistheorie für opake Kontexte, in denen uns gleichwohl ein Licht aufgehen kann. 34

Caroline Domenghino has undertaken a second major analysis of premonitions, a dissertation titled Knowing without Knowing: Ahnung in Pilosophy, Aethetics, and Literature From The Enlightenment to Romanticism (2012). This study builds and expands upon Hogrebe’s Ahnung und Erkenntnis. Although it contains some very interesting analyses, Domenghino concentrates on the narratological structure of premonitions and how they function as a form of storytelling. She is less interested in the urgent epistemological problems that premonitions posed for the fields of psychology, philosophy, and literature and attempts to locate the concept of premonitions within clear boundaries, thereby joining Hogrebe in overlooking their refusal to yield to categorical imperatives. In contrast to Domenghino and Hogrebe, this dissertation demonstrates that premonitory experiences can only be understood through a historiographical and epistemological perspective. This approach looks at the contexts in which premonitions arose and how the discourses surrounding premonitions reciprocally influenced the fields of psychology, philosophy, and the arts. In adopting this approach, I do not want to reduce premonitions to one all-encompassing definition or rigid typology; rather, I mean to explore various contemporary understandings of the phenomenon. We can only understand why premonitions became so popular toward the end of the eighteenth century, I claim, if we acknowledge how different fields shaped each other – by means of a directional exchange. Indeed, by foregrounding interactions among psychology, philosophy, and literary practice, I show how intellectuals incited each other to develop new epistemological models and alternative theories of truth and truthtelling. Accordingly, this dissertation shows how premonitions were a reaction against and counter to probability theory, the natural sciences, and the mathematical grasp of the world on which they were premised. Subsequent to Caroline Domenghino’s dissertation, a series of important studies on premonitions have been published, establishing the topic as a distinct area of interest. Stefan Willer’s monograph Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfügungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Künsten (2013), for instance, analyzes the role of premonitions in the work of

34 Wolfram Hogrebe: Ahnung und Erkenntnis. Bouillon zu einer Theorie des natürlichen Erkennens, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 89-90. 15

Schiller, Herder, and Kant.35 Furthermore, the literary scholar Philipp Theisohn dedicates a chapter to premonitions in his habilitationsscript, Die kommende Dichtung: Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450 – 2050 (2012).36 In addition, Norman Kasper’s study on premonitions hones in on Ludwig Tieck’s early work.37 Other influential scholars have contributed to research on premonitions. Urs Büttner’s studies of Arnim thematize the topic, for instance, as did Walter Pape and Antje Arnold in editing a collection of essays titled Emotionen der Romantik (2012).38 Despite the many insights that feature in this suite of studies, they have not developed in dialogue with each other. For the most part, each work pitches itself as an isolated inquiry. In this dissertation, therefore, I set out to center the debate on premonitions. In establishing an overview of the field and advancing my own argument as to premonitions’ import, I mean to unfold a new understanding of premonitions and their role and significance in literature. Despite being the object of intense scrutiny in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, premonitions were forgotten in the twentieth century. Only now, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, is the topic again slowly garnering interest in cultural and literary studies. By linking discrete studies and encompassing a variety of authors, I want to reconstruct their significance and put premonitions in a broad perspective.

Chapter Outline Following this introductory chapter, in chapter 1 I analyze how philosophers thought about and discussed the phenomenon of premonitions. Johann Gottfried Herder’s perspective is particularly interesting. Above all in his essay Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben (1797), the philosopher describes premonitions as an ambiguous epistemological concept that hovers between prophetic and prognostic thinking, secular knowledge and metaphysical belief. For Herder, foreknowledge of the future presupposes a genius spirit able to perform metaphysical speech acts, in which language is used in poetic and arbitrary, if not erratic, new ways.

35 Stefan Willer: Zwischen Planung und Ahndung. Zukunftswissen bei Kant, Herder und in Schillers „Wallenstein“, in: Daniel Weidner, Stefan Willers (eds.): Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfügungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Künsten, Wilhelm Fink, München 2013, p. 299-324. 36 Especially interesting is chapter IX: „Die Weissagung als ‚schöpferischer Akt’, p. 265-317, „Ahnung und Form“, p. 268, and „Novalis, die Zukunft und der romantische Zeitbegriff“, p. 273. See: Philipp Theisohn Die kommende Dichtung. Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450-2050, Wilhelm Fink, München 2012. 37 Norman Kasper: Ahnung als Gegenwart. Die Entdeckung der reinen Sichtbarkeit in Ludwig Tiecks frühen Romanen, Wilhelm Fink, München 2014. 38 Walter Pape, Antje Arnold (eds.): Emotionen in der Romantik: Repräsentation, Ästhetik, Inszenierung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012. / Urs Büttner has also an essay on Arnim in this volume. 16

Herder shows how the genius poet alone has the ‘magic voice’ able to sing ‘the premonitory message’ (“der Ahnung vorsingende Zauberstimme”). In fact, this theory rejects mathematics’ and statistics’ exclusive claims to knowledge of the future. Instead, Herder tries to establish an epistemological method that includes metaphysical wisdom. At the same time, though, he wants to erect a philosophy that goes beyond the antiquated theological worldview in the tradition of Leibniz. In Herder’s perspective, the genius poet is the only figure able to connect with higher truths. In and through their ecstatic speech, the poet can experience and express premonitory moments. On this view, as a method of foreboding the future that combines secular and metaphysical wisdom, prognostic premonitions belong to literature. Or, to put this differently: despite being a secular figure, the poet connects with transcendental forces, which he or she articulates in poetic language. I will compare Herder’s approach to premonitions with that taken by Kant. In Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1796/97), the philosopher explores premonitions’ prognostic power. Kant’s argument runs directly counter to Herder’s account. Indeed, Kant defends a thinking of the future based solely on mathematical probability and statistics. In this conception, premonitions have no right to exist. For Kant, premonitions are a merely psychological phenomenon, without epistemological relevance. I show how Kant interprets premonitory experiences from a psychological point of view, from which they are nothing more than a misperception on the part of the mind that can be explained rationally. Significantly, Kant’s critique of prognostic premonitions is also directed against Herder’s understanding of premonitions. Indeed, Kant dismisses of Herder’s concept of the poeta vates, as defined in his essay Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben (1797). Herder himself wrote of the disappointment he felt upon reading Kant’s negative review of Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, noting his surprise at the harsh tone of the critique.39 Comparing Kant’s and Herder’s respective accounts of premonitions helps us to grasp wider differences between their views on history and possibilities for human agency. The contrast between the authors serves to exemplify the opposition between the two main philosophical

39 Herder writes to his friend Johann Georg Hamann the following passage: „In Jena ward vorigen Jahrs eine Literaturzeitung mit so großem Pomp angekündigt, an der auch Kant als einer der ersten Mitarbeiter genannt war. Und sie da im 4ten u. 5ten Stück erscheint eine Rezension der Ideen, so hämisch u. verdrehend u. metaphysisch u. ganz außer dem Geist des Buchs von Anfang bis zu Ende, daß ich erstaunte, aber an nichts weniger dachte, als daß Kant, mein Lehrer, u. den ich nie wissentlich mit etwas beleidigt habe, eines so niederträchtigen Werks fähig sein könne.“ Herder to Johann Georg Hamann, 14th of February 1785. Quoted after Arnold: Briefe 5, p. 105 ff. 17 schools of the time, especially with regard to the validity of prognostic premonitions and futurology. Given Kant’s dismissal of premonitory knowledge, it is surprising that of all possible writers it should be Jakob Friedrich Fries—who considered himself a post-Kantian—who consolidated philosophy’s preoccupation with premonitions. Fries’s study Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung (1805) can be read as a Kantian defense of premonitions. What is more, the work represents a reaction against the triumph of scientific probability theories and their impact on rational philosophy, which Fries saw as undermining the Christian worldview. My analysis of Fries’s arguments emphasizes just how persistently the concept of premonition influenced philosophical discourse from the beginning of the nineteenth century until at least 1850. Indeed, Fries found the concept of Ahndung so fruitful that Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung presents it as a key epistemological category. The philosopher defined premonition as an epistemological phenomenon in its own right, emphasizing its ability to bridge the widening gap between knowledge and belief, secular and metaphysical worldviews. Like many other writers and philosophers of the time, Fries was sure that the turn toward the natural sciences would be detrimental to belief in divine truth. His interest in premonitions, then, was bound up with his skepticism of mathematical thinking. 40 At the end of chapter 1, I attend to a passage by Arnim, whose work encapsulates the ways in which the philosophical discourse around premonitions slowly came to influence poetic practice. Despite being a physicist well versed in modern scientific theories, later in his life Armin turned to literature and explored the prognostic capacities of literary techniques. Indeed, Armin would come to affirm premonitions’ epistemological superiority over science and assert their ability to state higher truths. I show how Arnim first began to explore premonitions in a philosophical context before beginning to weave ideas of the premonitory into his literary writing. This transfer of premonitory knowledge from science to literature and back again is striking. Arnim’s interest in transcendental philosophy was driven by the idea that a metaphysical worldview might be

40 The Prussian philosopher Gottfried Zapf (1745-1818) anticipated Fries’ belief in the existence of premonitions in his study Betrachtungen über die Fortdauer nach dem Tode. He wrote the following paragraph, which reminds of passages by Fries: “Da in der Welt ohne den Einfluß der göttlichen Vorsehung nichts geschehen kann, so ist es gewiß, daß auch diese oft bange, oft heitere Vorempfindungen und Ahndungen bestimmt seyn mußten, unser Theil zu sein.” See: Gottfried Zapf: Betrachtungen über die Fortdauer nach dem Tode, vol. 2, in Commission bey Heinrich Gräff, Leipzig 1808, p. 241. 18 regained. Frustrated by the deductive and speculative models that predominated in science, he believed that poetry—and in particular its use of premonitions—might help him to establish an overarching theory as to how knowledge can be structured in a way that retained connections with metaphysical truths. In von Arnim’s later poetic texts, therefore, premonitions play a prominent role. Like Herder, von Arnim believed that the poet is able to embrace premonitory experiences and thus gesture toward the existence of an alternative reality, a higher truth. He describes premonitions in terms of getting in touch with ‘the fourth dimension,’ a realm of possibilities. As such, Arnim’s works resonate strongly with Hogrebe’s account of premonition as the experience of potentialities rather than realities. These potential realities can be ‘forefelt’ (“geahndet,” as Arnim states it) within a literary frame. As Herder also claims, the artist is able to connect with a higher wisdom through writing. In this line of thought, dreaming is prized over rational thinking, premonitions over calculation and prognosis. In tracing the origins of Armin’s philosophical understanding of premonitions, in chapter 2 I turn to psychology. I demonstrate how case studies of premonitory experiences drawn from psychological journals shaped how Arnim, Herder, and other philosophers perceived and understood premonitions. At the end of the eighteenth century, the disciplines of psychology and philosophy were in close dialogue with one another. In this context, I analyze how and why rational philosophers argued against the validity of premonitory wisdom. Kant’s argument against premonitions in his Anthropologie (1796/97), for instance, is permeated by the idea that premonitions are largely figments of the imagination (Hirngespinste), illusions produced by madness and unworthy of philosophical exploration. My analysis stresses how this rationalist mindset was directly linked to contemporaneous discussions of premonitions in psychology. In exploring this connection, I show why premonitions became an object of heated discussion in psychological journals and how authors took psychological case studies of madmen as a repertoire of possibilities for their writing. In this way, I argue, premonitory experiences were transformed from individual psychological narratives into literary material. Many anthropologists and psychologists discussed premonitions’ prognostic power. As early as 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten dedicated a chapter to premonitions in his study

19

Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus.41 Later, in 1759, Johann Josias Sucro published a book titled Über die Ahndungen.42 Then, in 1775, the anthropologist Jan Christian Hennings published a general study on premonitions under the title Von den Ahndungen und Visionen.43 In fact, eighteenth-century literature brims with texts that treat the power of premonitions in variously scientific and poetic ways.44 Undoubtedly, one of the most fruitful texts for the psychological analysis of premonitions is Karl Philipp Moritz’s anthropological work Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde (1783- 1793). I discuss Moritz’s work in detail. He not only presents interesting case studies of prognostic premonitory experiences, but also defends them as valid prophetic narratives. Significantly for my approach in this dissertation, Moritz places the technique of expressing and experiencing premonitions in a poetological context. Indeed, his theoretical text Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (1788) implicitly draws its epistemological content from the wider philosophical discussion of premonitions and relies on numerous case-studies from the Magazin. Throughout his analyses, Moritz affirms the power of premonitions, emphasizing similarities between insane people’s visionary premonitory experiences and the creative process of the poet. In this way, my discussion of Moritz brings into sharp focus how the discourses of premonitions in philosophy, psychology, and literature reciprocally influenced one another.45 In showing how Moritz incorporated and reflected on the variety of philosophical and psychological arguments for and against premonitions, chapter 2 functions as a hinge between the two broad parts of this dissertation, the first of which focuses on theoretical engagements with premonition, the second on literary case studies. Chapter 3 of the dissertation poses a set of critical questions. If literary, poetic, and more generally narrative modes of expression are key instruments for articulating premonitions’ prophetic power (as Arnim, Moritz, and Herder each

41 Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten: Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus, Heinz Paetzold (ed.), Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1983. 42 Johann Josias Sucro: Über die Ahndungen, J. W. Halle und J. G. Halle, Brandenburg 1759. 43 Jan Christian Hennings: Von den Ahndungen und Visionen, Weygand, Leipzig 1777. 44 The teacher, writer and pedagogue Johann Gottlieb Schummel (1748 -1813) wrote the following passage on premonitions in his essayistic novel Spitzbart, eine komisch-tragische Geschichte für unser pädagogisches Jahrhundert, describing exemplary the perspective on premonitions around 1800: „Ich vermuthe, es ist (...) erwiesen, daß es wirklich Ahndungen giebt.“ See: Johann Gottlieb Schummel: Spitzbart: eine komi-tragische Geschichte für unser pädagogischen Jahrhundert, Weygandsche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1779, p. 155. 45 Moritz’s argument is simple but productive: He says, similarly as Achim von Arnim and Herder do, that an artist needs the idea of an alternate reality in mind before he can produce art. First, the artist experiences a premonition, a vision of his masterpiece. Afterwards, he can start painting or writing. The genius having those premonitions is comparable to a poeta vates: He has access to a higher truth, a higher insight. Through arbitrary language, he is able to express his thoughts and ideas. 20 attest), how are premonitions depicted in literature? How do depictions of premonitory experiences vary in literary texts? In analyzing three case studies of premonitions in literature, I emphasize both the ambiguity of premonitions and how literary framings of them are closely associated with the psychological, scientific, and philosophical discourse. Attending to three exemplary texts by Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist, and E.T.A. Hoffmann, the final chapter of the dissertation shows how literary premonitions work. In particular, I unpack the ways in which they call into question dominant objectifying perspectives on the world. At the beginning, chapter 3 undertakes an analysis of Ludwig Tieck’s epistolary novel William Lovell (1795/96). Before setting off on a bildungsreise, a journey of development, the protagonist William experiences a premonition suggesting that his life will take a fatal turn. This ‘premonition of death’ sounds almost like a case-study excerpted from Moritz’s Magazin, as if the protagonist suffered from a pathology. In a further twist, though, Tieck blurs the meaning of William’s frequent premonitions, problematizing any stable judgment of them. The reader can come to no firm conclusion regarding William’s premonitions. On the one hand, they might truly result from his soul’s prognostic capacities. On the other, he might be a madman who wishes to believe in his own visions and dreams, losing himself in his own prophetic imagination before succumbing to a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy. This very ambiguity and indecisiveness is the source of the novel’s energy and narrative tension. Overall, William Lovell exemplifies the ways in which literary writing has been used to play with premonitions and their prophetic power. Then, I discuss Heinrich von Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile (1807). Interestingly, Kleist also portrays the possibility of foreseeing the future in a narrative frame later, in one of his historiographical texts. In the novella Improbable Veracities (Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten, 1811), Kleist proclaims that it is adventitious happenings, not carefully planned actions, that drive history. For Kleist, premonitions figure a literary means of anticipating these irrational, random occurrences that make up history. This view of the world, which is premised centrally on chance, restores the soul’s transcendent power and looks skeptically upon probability theory’s claims to be able to deduce the future mathematically. Tieck is interested in the inidivual prognostic power of premonitions, Kleist in their historiographical one.

21

Indeed, in Kleist’s writings premonitions work against the probable. They may be dissonant and contradictory, certainly, but they are nonetheless true. In fact, they are true not despite their improbability but rather because of it. As Kleist himself puts it: “In der Dissonanz selbst kündigt sich die neue höhere Harmonie des wohlbekannten Meisters an, wenn auch nur als Ahndung.”46 My central example is Kleist’s novella Earthquake in Chile (1807), in which Donna Elisabeth is the only character to foresee the fatal ending awaiting the depraved Chilean society in which she finds herself. Indeed, her premonition casts forward to the novella’s fatal ending, in which the population of the village is murdered en masse. I show how Kleist plays with premonitions and emphasizes their validity for understanding the development of history. Elevating emotions above reason and chance above planning, he puts forward a non-rational approach to historical analysis. Until now, the importance of premonitions in Kleist’s work has been totally overlooked. My study is the first to place Kleist’s understanding of premonitions in the broad context of epistemological debates over knowledge and belief. Moreover, my analysis goes beyond existing research. Philipp Theisohn, for instance, has argued that premonitions have mostly a religious meaning and do not imply a prognostic dimension.47 Having analyzed works by Herder, Arnim, and Hoffmann, he comes to the following conclusion:

Dargelegt haben wir in aller Ausführlichkeit, dass der Ahnungsbegriff, wie ihn die Romantik konstituiert, schon immer auf eine Transzendierung der Gegenwart angelegt ist, also nicht auf die künftige, sondern auf die tatsächliche Struktur der bestehenden Wirklichkeit verweist und somit weniger operative als religiöse Funktion besitzt.48

My study shows that this verdict is only partly correct. Premonitions do indeed commonly have a religious implication; they often refer to metaphysical truths and do not always refer to the future. In many other cases, though, they clearly have a prognostic and operative dimension, granting their receivers an anticipatory sense of the future. This is the case in texts by Kleist, for

46 Heinrich von Kleist: Richard 3. oder von der dramatischen Versöhnung, in: Phöbus; Ein Journal für die Kunst, vol. 2, Dresden 1808, p. 77. 47 Philipp Theisohn: Die kommende Dichtung. Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450-2050, Wilhelm Fink, München 2012, p. 308. 48 Philipp Theisohn: Die kommende Dichtung, p. 308. 22 instance. Although Earthquake in Chile is the clearest demonstration of my argument, Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (1809) also readily supports it. At the end of chapter 3, I analyze premonitions’ prognostic capacities through an interpretation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novella The Sandman (1816) and its bizarre play of premonitory experiences. Before undertaking the analysis, I briefly discuss the history of weather-based literary tropes and metaphors between 1750 and 1850. More specifically, I emphasize their implications for the articulation of premonitions in German literature. This discussion serves to explain why, in literary texts of this period, many characters who experience premonitions draw on meteorology in describing their premonitory epiphanies. I start my analysis with an interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s celebrated painting Der Mönch am Meer (1808-1810). First, I emphasize how the discourse on premonitions pertains not only to literature, but also to the visual arts and particularly music.49 I go on to argue that Caspar David Friedrich’s painting represents a premonitory experience by means of a meteorological iconography akin to that employed in texts by Herder, Kleist, and Tieck. In the painting, a monk stands before a body of water enshrouded in enigmatic clouds. Drawing on Caspar David Friedrich’s letters and analyzing Kleist’s response to the painting, I show why meteorological metaphors arise so frequently in literature as a means for describing premonitions and their uncertain epistemological status. Later in the chapter, I explain how the relations among occultism, astrology, and meteorology were reconfigured as part of the rise of the natural sciences. This relationship mirrors also the turn from prophetic to prognostic thinking. Between 1750 and 1850, the key period for this study, societies began to approach the weather first and foremost as an object of scientific calculation, not metaphysical reflection. Against this backdrop, the interrelations among meteorological tropes, prophecy, and premonitions in The Sandman become especially significant. Attending to tropes of weather, I show how premonitions reflect the epistemological shift from religious to secular thinking, from providence to prognostic knowledge. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s works enroll premonitions to a critique the prevailing mathematical worldview, which measured the world (and the weather) using mathematics and statistics (and scientific gadgets like barometers, thermometers and weatherglasses). Indeed, these distinctly modern,

49 Particularly often premonitions play a huge role in the discussion of musicologists and composers in the second half of the 18th century, for example in the work of Richard Wagner. 23 calculative approaches to the future came together in the new practice of forecasting the weather through modern meteorology. Weather forecasts based on statistics started to be used as a scientific method after 1840. Nevertheless, between 1800 and 1850–the period, which interests me most–first mathematical and probabilistic approaches were already in the making.50 Meteorologists such as Luke Howard started to classify clouds scientifically and to collect data for forecasting weather mathematically. The prominence of weather tropes and premonitions between 1750 and 1850 indicates the ambiguous status of science in this period. It also foregrounds an interesting epistemological paradox: From around 1815, forecasts regarding the future development of the weather were increasingly based on mathematics and probability theory. But while meteorologists were promising to predict the weather with scientific precision, these forecasts were often erratic and inaccurate. In short, in being taken up as the object of scientific calculation, weather exposed the limits of forecasting based on mathematics and probability theories.51 Between 1750 and 1850, many authors took the failed attempt to predict weather precisely with gadgets such as barometers as a proof that the natural sciences had only limited capacities for prediction. My analysis of The Sandman shows how literary depictions of premonitions mirror this crisis of mathematical futurology. One character, the weatherglass merchant Coppelius, more or less personifies the meteorological discipline; it is notable, then, that his status constantly hovers between science and fiction, truthtelling and occultism. At the same time, the sensory premonitions of another character, Nathanael, are being presented as precarious, resolutely non- mathematical, but simultaneously valid and true. Indeed, they are presented as the antithesis of mathematical or scientific prognosis. Despite having set up this opposition, the novella ultimately refuses to draw clear boundaries between science and fiction, prognosis and

50 Katharine Anderson: Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2005. / Another important resource for the development of meteorology was Vladimir Janković’s book Reading the Skies. See: Vladimir Janković: Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820, Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000. / Another important study on weather for grounding the thesis of this dissertation is: Jan Golinski: British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment, University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2007. 51 “The natural philosopher or the seaman, however, emphasizing the importance of natural laws as objects of inquiry and the desirability of studying the origin, size, and progress of individual storms, openly voiced dissatisfaction with the constraints of statistical methods. As Swedish scientist Froih Ehrenheim noted as early as 1824, the arithmetic treatment in meteorology was not as successful as in astronomy (...).” See: Aitor Anduaga: Politics, Statistics and Weather Forecasting, 1840-1910: Taming the Weather, Routledge, New York 2020, p. 53. 24 occultism, premonitions and divination. This blurriness indicates how literature simultaneously propels the prognostic models of modern science and reflects their inherent uncertainties. In concluding my dissertation, I briefly survey the status of premonitions today. I close with a reflection on why premonitions still play a role in contemporary art and culture, appearing, for example, in Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror movie Us.

25

Chapter 1: Philosophy

Herder’s Two Essays on Ahn(d)ung Engaging with Kant’s and Herder’s perspectives on premonitions offers a valuable way of understanding how different philosophical schools defined premonitions around 1800. As I go on to show, while Kant was largely skeptical about premonitions, Herder was convinced of their reality. Herder detailed his understanding of Ahnung in two pieces, both published in 1797: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft and Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben. The two essays address the sense in which premonitions have prophetic capacities and attempt to distinguish them in relation to different epistemological notions, such as predications based on empirical analysis, for instance. Like Kant in his Anthropologie and Tieck and Goethe in their correspondence, Herder also addresses the different spellings of the words ahnden and ahnen and the semantic implications of this. His analysis is straightforward but eye opening. Whereas Herder takes ahnen as a “very proper word, a description for our sense for the future,” he notes that ahnden in contrast is “a word of a very different sense, which means to take revenge or to punish.”52 Unlike Kant and Hoffmann, Herder uses both words as they are understood today, arguing that they should be seen as distinct concepts with quite different semantic implications. He is clear that ahnen is connected to knowledge of the future and this is what interests him the most. The fact that Herder draws a distinction between ahnen and ahnden already indicates that he wants to establish a clear and precise grasp of what premonitions really are. Ironically, Herder’s use of the words ahnen and ahnden is less precise in his literary work. In his poems, for instance, he refers to ahnden where he means actually ahnen.53

52 “Die deutsche Sprache mit allen ihren Schwestern hat ein sehr schickliches Wort, unsern Sinn für die Zukunft zu bezeichnen: Ahnen.” Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 58. „Dem Ahnen steht ein Wort von ganz anderem Sinn zur Seite, Ahnden, d. i. zürnend verweisen, rächen und strafen.“ In: Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, p. 59. 53 Stefan Willer wrote a whole essay on this problem, where he minitually explains the terminology and history of both words „ahnden“ and „ahnen“ and Herder’s understanding of them. See: Stefan Willer: Ahnen und Ahnden. Zur historischen Semantik des Vorgefühls um 1800, in: Ernst Müller (ed.): Forum interdisziplinäre Begriffsgeschichte (FIB), E-Journal (2017), 6th volume / 1, ZFL, Berlin 2017, p. 30-40, Webpage: https://www.zfl-berlin.org/tl_files/zfl/downloads/publikationen/forum_begriffsgeschichte/ZfL_FIB_6_2017_1.pdf 26

In the beginning of his first of the two essays, Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, Herder criticizes philosophers—especially religious ones—who forbid discussion of prognostic knowledge. He openly argues for a critical analysis of proleptic wisdom (Vorwissen), insisting on the importance of thinking about the future:

Warum ist’s nicht gut, sein künftiges Schicksal in diesem Leben vorauszuwissen? Wenn es der Rathschluß, die Fügung, das Werk der höchsten Weisheit und Güte selbst ist, warum nicht? Diese zu wissen, so bald und ganz als möglich, sollte man glauben, kann nie schaden.54

Here Herder uses marine metaphors (as Kleist often does) to convince his readers that an analysis of premonition can help map out the direction of one’s life.55 What is more, it might help one understand the “invisible power” that “navigates the ship” of each human life, as it travels toward death.56 Herder does not think that it is possible for humans to know exactly what will transpire in the future. Nevertheless, he is convinced that history proves that humans can make connections with transcendent truths, allowing them to foresee or at least sense the direction of one’s own destiny. In claiming this, Herder is referring particularly to the practices and experiences of the ancient Greeks. He writes that this ability has been lost in modern times and must be regained. In Herder’s understanding, Ahnung is a supersensory form of knowledge that is connected to God. As such, it allows humans a vague glimpse into the future or what might be called a ‘forefeeling’ of their individual destiny. He writes:

Unser innerer Sinn, sagten die Griechen, spricht mit den Göttern, und ist Weissager der Zukunft. Recht und bescheiden auch von künftigen Dingen zu urtheilen, hielten sie für die schönste Gabe der Himmlischen, die sterblichen Menschen zu Theil

54 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 51. 55 „Mit diesem Schluß der Vorsehung hätten wir ja die Reisekarte unseres Lebens vor uns und sähen, wohin eine unsichtbare Macht das Schiff steure?“ Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 59. 56 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, p. 59. 27

werden könne, und stellten beide Abweichungen, den zu kühnen Vorblick sowohl, als den zu trägen Gang der Menschen auf ihren Wege, in das gehörige Licht.57

Still, Herder nowhere provides a clear account of what this ‘inner sense’ for mantic knowledge looks like or how humans might take advantage of it. His definitions are not always consistent—in some cases they are paradoxical and obscure.58 The actual methods to be used to predict and understand the future remain unclear. Nevertheless, Herder’s arguments display a deep skepticism towards the rising importance of the natural sciences, which, now as then, were based on empirical knowledge and mathematics. What is more, they assert the prognostic power of literature and particularly poetry. Herder’s two essays on premonitions are deeply ambivalent for two reasons. First, they try to reject the idea that God does not exist and that mathematical calculation therefore represents the only available method through which to investigate progress in world history. In one passage, he even proposes that a mathematical “science of the future” would be impossible. Calculating our destiny, he conjectures, requires too much inaccessible data, so this operation is for now impossible.59 It would entail, for instance, information concerning every other human being’s actions and passions. As Herder argues:

57 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 66. 58 This is the reason why Kant disagrees with him in so many cases. In his famous review of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, he criticizes Herder’s non-philosophical, paradoxical style: „Der Geist unsers sinnreichen und beredten Verfassers zeigt in dieser Schrift seine schon anerkannte Eigenthümlichkeit. Sie dürfte also wohl eben so wenig, als manche andere aus seiner Feder geflossene nach dem gewöhnlichen Maßstabe beurtheilt werden können. Es ist, als ob sein Genie nicht etwa blos die Ideen aus dem weiten Felde der Wissenschaften und Künste sammelte, um sie mit andern der Mittheilung fähigen zu vermehren, sondern als verwandelte er sie (um ihm den Ausdruck abzuborgen) nach einem gewissen Gesetze der Assimilation auf eine ihm eigene Weise in seine specifische Denkungsart, wodurch sie von denjenigen, dadurch sich andere Seelen nähren und wachsen (S. 292), merklich unterschieden und der Mittheilung weniger fähig werden. Daher möchte wohl, was ihm Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit heißt, etwas ganz Anderes sein, als was man gewöhnlich unter diesem Namen versteht: nicht etwa eine logische Pünktlichkeit in Bestimmung der Begriffe, oder sorgfältige Unterscheidung und Bewährung der Grundsätze, sondern ein sich nicht lange verweilender, viel umfassender Blick, eine in Auffindung von Analogien fertige Sagacität, im Gebrauche derselben aber kühne Einbildungskraft, verbunden mit der Geschicklichkeit, für seinen immer in dunkeler Ferne gehaltenen Gegenstand durch Gefühle und Empfindungen einzunehmen, die als Wirkungen von einem großen Gehalte der Gedanken, oder als vielbedeutende Winke mehr von sich vermuthen lassen, als kalte Beurtheilung wohl gerade zu in denselben antreffen würde.“ See: Immanuel Kant: Kritik des ersten Theils von Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, in: Immanuel Kant’s sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Rosenkranz and Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert, vol. 6, Leopold Voss, Leipzig 1839, p. 339, 59 In the appendix, he changes his opinion and argues for a “science of a next and a further future.“ „Es muss eine Zeit kommen, da es eine Wissenschaft der Zukunft wie der Vergangenheit giebt, da kraft dieser Wissenschaft die 28

Was gehörte nämlich dazu, sein künftiges Schicksal also zu wissen, daß diese Wissenschaft ihren Namen verdiente, mithin uns als solche nützlich seyn könnte? Ungeheuer viel. Ich müßte mein ganzes Daseyn als den Grund meines Schicksals bis auf seine tiefsten Urgründe, alle meine Vorfahren hinauf kennen, um mir das Räthsel zu erklären: warum und wie Ich mit solchen Kräften und Schwachheiten, Anlagen und Lücken, Trieben und Fehlern dabin? Ich müßte das ganze Universum von Umständen wissen, die auf jene gewirkt haben, die auf mich wirken und wie ein Briareus mit Millionen Armen, Fingern, Füßen und Fäden mein Schicksal bestimmen, lenken und leiten werden. Habe ich zu dieser Wissenschaft Kräfte? habe ich zu Erlangung derselben in meinem kurzen Leben Zeit? Ist dies überhaupt dazu eingerichtet? – Auf keine Weise.60

Endlessly shifting, the world is the result of an incalculable multitude of simultaneous actions. Implicitly, Herder queries the worldview of the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), who hoped that humans might foresee the course of history by collecting all accessible data.61 Although Herder rejects a so-called “science of the future,” he is enthusiastic to discuss the idea of anticipating or sensing the future (what he termed “forefeeling”), which preoccupied religious philosophers such as Lessing around 1800.62

edelsten Menschen so gut für die Nachwelt als für sich rechnen: denn Eins wird durch das Andere gestraft und belohnet.“ Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 67-68. 60 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 60-61. 61 „Laplace asked us to imagine a demon who knows the exact position, velocity and mass of every piece of matter in the universe, who knows Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, and who can solve instantaneously and with complete accuracy any computation involving these laws. Then the demon would be able, Laplace asserted, to calculate the exact positions and velocities of all the pieces of matter in the universe for all future and all past times. The whole history of the universe in every detail, the origin of stars, planets, life and man, the rise and fall of empires, would, for the demon, be computable from its exact knowledge of the physical state of the universe at any chosen time.“ Richard Green: The Thwarting of Laplace’s Demon. Arguments against the Mechanistic World-View, St. Martin’s Press, London 1995, p. 13-14. 62 „Doch während sich Lessing in seinem Fragment mit der Position begnügt, es sei für den Menschen nicht nur in eschatologischer, sondern auch in weltlicher Hinsicht besser, seine Zukunft nicht zu kennen, selbst wenn es ‚eine Kunst gäbe, das Zukünftige zu wissen’, bemisst sich für Herder das Nichtwissen-Sollen einzig und allein nach dem Nichtwissen-Können.“ Stefan Willer: Zwischen Planung und Ahndung. Zukunftswissen bei Kant, Herder und in 29

All of which means that Herder finds himself trapped in a paradox: although he is convinced that people can forefeel events in the future, he does not want to rely solely on statistical knowledge when it comes to analyzing the direction of human life. On one side, he rejects philosophers who approach the future in exclusively rational terms. On another, he refuses to deal solely with speculation, astrology, or other occult practices. Indeed, he unequivocally rejects all such intellectually underdeveloped methods of spiritual prognosis, referring explicitly to “Chiromantie, Metoposcopie, Auspicien und Auguralkünste.”63 He mounts this critique in the following way:

Nicht das hat die Astrologie verächtlich und lächerlich gemacht, daß sie sich mit der Wissenschaft der Zukunft beschäftigte, sondern daß sie sich mit ihr grundlos beschäftigte, daß sie Wissenschaft derselben in Combinationen suchte, wo sie nicht zu finden war. Ein Gleiches ist’s mit der Chiromantie, Metoposcopie, mit Auspicien und Auguralkünsten. Man suchte Vorbedeutungen, wo keine seyn konnten und hintergieng die Gemüther durch eine falsche Wissenschaft, die man für eine wahre hielt oder ausgab.64

Rather than rely on either statistics or occultism alone, Herder argues for an amalgamating method, an analysis of the future that combines both feelings and reason. The epistemological concept of Ahnung resonates strongly with this symbiosis; accordingly, it is Ahnung that Herder presents as the proper method for supersensory prognosis. Given the inherent ambivalence of his undertaking, split as it is between reason and its others, Herder has trouble defining what Ahnungen—forebodings or premonitions—really are. Not belonging to the rational mind, they cannot be translated into rational language. In the first part of the essay Vom Wissen und

Schillers „Wallenstein“, in: Daniel Weidner, Stefan Willers (eds.): Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfügungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Künsten, Wilhelm Fink, München 2013, p. 299-324, here: p. 310. 63 See: p. 57. Herder critizises the ideas of Christian A. Peuschel who explained the methods of fortunetelling with reference to tarot practices or techniques of coffee, face and hand reading. See: Christian A. Peuschel: Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie: mit einer Vorrede, darinnen die Gewißheit der Weißagungen aus dem Geschichte, der Stirn und den Händen gründlich dargethan wird, welcher am Ende noch einige Betrachtungen und Anweisungen zu weißagen beygefügt werden, die zur bloßen Belustigung dienen, Heinßische Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1769. 64 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 62. 30

Nichtwissen der Zukunft, they are variously presented as a feeling, a possible mode of knowing the future, and a supersensory method. Although it cannot be spelled out categorically, this premonitory procedure works in combination with both: sense and reason. In this way, Ahnung enters into a hidden, abstract dialogue with God. Given this, one might suppose that Herder’s essay tilts against reason. Not so: Herder is convinced of the rationality of his approach. Like Kant, he sees the future simply as the result of former actions and decisions, which cumulatively determine destiny. In a wholly conventional manner, Herder holds that an individual’s every action shapes the rest of their life. At the same time, Herder also thinks that the dialectic between past, present, and future cannot be understood mathematically. Exploring time requires a religious or ethical perspective. It is almost as if Herder means to strike a compromise between the metaphysical and secular world. Humans can only know a fraction of their destiny, Herder explains. They cannot hope to attain a clear and complete image of the future, mapped-out in advance; they can only catch a fleeting glimpse of what is to come. Examining Herder’s arguments more closely, it seems that they direct a critique against the mathematical approach to prediction, which leaves no place for divine thinking. Indeed, Herder criticizes mathematical prognosis as an arrogant, all-embracing method, which purports to provide answers pertaining to all spheres of life. Put boldly, for Herder the proposition that mathematical prognosis and probability theory are the only legitimate ways in which to approach the future is nothing short of blasphemous. Instead, he advises his readers to listen to the soul and the ‘inner sense’ (innerer Sinn). Cultivating introspective connections with metaphysical powers and transcendental voices, Herder expands, might help people make the right decisions in life. It will also expand and correct the dominant mathematical worldview prevailing in the sciences. Instead of seeking to amass and analyze all accessible data, he emphasizes the soul’s prognostic powers and human capacities for introspection. Accordingly, Herder writes:

Thöricht ists, sich um das zu bekümmern, was wir nicht wissen können; träge und verdrossen wäre es, sich um das nicht bekümmern zu wollen, was uns von der Zukunft zu wissen noth ist, was sich von ihr mit der Gegenwart aus der Vergangenheit uns gleichsam aufdringet, was wir uns selbst nur mühsam verhehlen. Unser innerer Sinn, sagten die Griechen, spricht mit den Göttern, und ist Weissager

31

der Zukunft. Recht und bescheiden auch von künftigen Dingen zu urtheilen, hielten sie für die schönste Gabe der Himmlischen, die sterblichen Menschen zu Theil werden könne, und stellten beide Abweichungen, den zu kühnen Vorblick sowohl, als den zu trägen Gang der Menschen auf ihren Wege, in das gehörige Licht.65

As this passage suggests, Herder takes ancient Greek philosophy as the model for this thinking. For the Greeks, he suggests, in forecasting the future it was crucial that one find the right balance between sense and calculation. The first step is introspection and a transcendental turn toward God. Only having first established this basis can one proceed to mathematics. In other words, Herder suggests that old metaphysical or religious horizons of knowledge might be reconciled with statistics and prognosis. The result is what Herder calls “Ethomantie.”66 This neologism combines ethics (religion) and mantics (fortune-telling and mathematics). Grounded in the belief that humans have an individual destiny guided by God’s will, which they are able to foresee vaguely, Ethomantie conjoins metaphysical insight and rational understanding.67 This compromise—between a secular grasp of temporal progression and Herder’s strong religious tendencies—culminates in his interpretation of Ahnungen. As a form of knowledge, Ahnungen can be reduced to neither mathematical nor religious thinking alone. As such, Ahnungen name a distinctly modern epistemological practice. In

65 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 65. 66 Stefan Willer writes: „In Zusammenfassung seiner Überlegungen zur diesseitigen Prognostik steigert er (Herder, TK) sich in einen für ihn charakteristischen terminologischen Überschwang und nennt die allererst zu begründende Wissenschaft der Zukunft ‚Physiokratie im reinsten höchsten Verstande, Ethomantie der Menschheit, die große Nemesis der Zeiten’, wobei er fußnotenweise erläutert, dass mit Physiokratie die ‚Kenntnis der Gesetze der Natur und ihrer Haushaltung’, mit Ethomantie das ‚Voraussehen der Zukunft aus Sitten und Handlungen’ gemeint sei. Herder fährt fort, dass sich aus dieser - in Aussicht gestellten - immanenten Prognostik die transzendente, mit dem ‚Schicksal nach dem Tode’ befasste, ‚leicht und treffend’ ableiten lasse (ebd.). Dennoch entsteht ein nicht zu leugnender Bruch in seiner Abhandlung dadurch, dass nun eine andere Seite seiner Autorschaft gefordert ist, nämlich die professionell und institutionell theologische. Bisweilen scheint er eine ziemlich säuberliche Trennung der Zuständigkeiten von wissenschaftlichem Wissen einerseits, religiösem Glauben andererseits vorzuschlagen. (...) Bei näherem Hinsehen ist allerdings der Glaube nicht das ganz Andere des Wissens, sondern bleibt auf dieses bezogen und wird nur graduell von ihm unterschieden.“ Stefan Willer: Zur literarischen Epistemologie der Zukunft, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (eds.): Wissens-Ordnungen: Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, p. 224-261, here: p. 241. 67 „Die Zukunft erscheint in der Form der Vergeltung oder der Vervollkommnung. Voraussehen der Zukunft wird ‚Ethomantie’, nämlich ‚Voraussehen der Zukunft aus Sitten und Handlungen.’ Das Voraussehen stützt sich auf Physiokratie, d.h. ‚Kenntniß der Gesetze der Natur und ihrer Haushaltung (...)’.“ Wulf Koepke: Nemesis und Geschichtsdialektik, in: Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.): Herder Today. Contributions from the International Herder Conference, Nov. 5-8, 1987, Stanford California, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, p. 85-97, here: p. 94. 32 seeking to trace individual destinies, they paradoxically embody both strains of knowledge. Mathematics and rational thought were in the ascendancy at this time. Taking over the discourse of futurology, they sought to discern metaphysical knowledge in a seemingly world. This is why Herder takes such pains to defend Ahnungen. In concluding the essay, Herder mounts a defense of ethical and religious understandings of the future. Ironically, he expresses hope that humans will become able to measure moral rights with the same precision as scientists measuring physical pressure. Herder effectively underlines his desire to retain science, not abandon it. His point is that science should be combined with a metaphysical perspective that is able to salvage transcendental truths. In this vein, he writes:

Auch, glaube ich, müße eine Zeit erscheinen, da diese Gesetze des politisch- moralischen Rechts und Unrechts dem Menschenverstande so licht und klar vorliegen, als die Gesetze des physischen Drucks und Gegendrucks oder der natürlichen Schwere. Es muß eine Zeit kommen, da es eine Wissenschaft der Zukunft wie der Vergangenheit giebt, da Kraft dieser Wissenschaft die edelsten Menschen so gut für die Nachwelt als für sich rechnen: denn Eins wird durch das andre gestraft und belohnet.68

Herder uses scientific vocabulary as a means of exploring the possibilities of theology and philosophy. He tries to convince his readers that modernity’s turn towards calculability does not need to undermine religious standards, but might rather correct them. Herder hopes that the success of the natural sciences will be also a success for transcendental philosophy.

68 Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 68. 33

The Poet as Seer: Premonitions and Poetry in Herder’s work In an appendix to Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben, Herder puts forward a terminology for human cognition. The essay’s title seems to foreshadow the categories’ normative order.69 In meticulous detail, Herder explains what we can know about the unfolding of the future and which parts of our cognition are responsible for different forms of knowing it. Herder emphasizes the prognostic power of literature. Indeed, for him, moments of prognostic epiphany can only emerge in the literary language of a genius poet. Closely bound up with the emotions, this language is able to express metaphysical truths. I would like to give some examples in which Herder himself acts as a poet in concretely realizing his theoretically proposals. In Herder’s perspective, the most common form of knowledge used to predict the future is Wissen or secular knowledge. Premised on statistics, probability, and calculation, it amounts to a practical analysis of the past and present, which are seen as the basis of future developments. Herder emphasizes the importance of statistical knowledge. Contrary to the reader’s expectations, he praises its use in daily life, arguing that statistics might contribute toward the development of a “science of a near and distant future.”70 Herder writes:

Eine solche Wissenschaft sollte man hervorzutreten nicht abschrecken, sondern auf alle Weise aufmuntern. Sollen über allgemeine Begebenheiten der Natur allein die Raben schreyen? warum soll nicht auch der weissagende Schwan des Apolls seine Stimme erheben und ein Lied singen von dem, was seyn wird, weil das Jetzige so ist und das Vorige so war. Entweder ist alle unser Studium der Geschichte, Statistik und Philosophie nichts; oder es giebt eine solche Wissenschaft der nächsten und einer fernern Zukunft, so weit sie uns angeht. Mag der große Haufe sie verachten, mögen

69 Johann Gottfried Herder: Anhang. Noch einige Worte über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 78. 70 “Wissenschaft der nächsten und einer fernern Zukunft.“ Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Postscenien zur Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. by Johann von Müller, J. G. Gotta'schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart and Tübingen 1828, here: p. 62. / It seems contradictory because Herder starts the first part of his essay, as I described in the previous chapter, with the assumption that „a science of the future“ is impossible because the analyst would need an inaccessible amount of data („Habe ich zu dieser Wissenschaft Kräfte? habe ich zu Erlangung derselben in meinem kurzen Leben Zeit? Ist dies überhaupt dazu eingerichtet? – Auf keine Weise.” (p. 56) Herder seems to speak of two different models of a “science of a future:” a model based on pure probability, which is being developed in the natural sciences, and the second one promoted by him, based on feelings and reason. 34

leidenschaftliche Menschen über sie wegspringen, Genien über sie hinfliegen; für denkende, ruhige Seelen ist sie wenigstens ein Witterungskalender, eine Philosophie der wandelbaren Naturerscheinungen, der Meteore.71

Herder suggests here that statistics could be worthwhile for erracing a truthful meteorology. At the same time, he ranks premonitions above statistical knowledge because they affect the spectator most intensely. This pertains especially to those enigmatic premonitions that dimly foreshadow an infelicitous encounter. As so often, Herder demonstrates his knowledge of history, showing how premonitions have been a recurrent point of interest in the past. Although he admits that in some cases premonitions are pathological symptoms,72 Herder insists that they are important cognitive phenomena, which call out for intelligent interpretation. Despite providing no guidelines for distinguishing between authentic and false premonitions, he maintains that they grant insights into the development of time. Herder describes an important epistemological procedure. If someone experiences a vague but truthful premonition, they should use reason to investigate its hidden meaning, thereby transforming it into a clear vision. The argument is tricky, though: Herder states that only animals have vague insights, which dictate their instinctual responses. Humans, in contrast, are endowed with reason. To understand premonition and their implications, they must therefore question their souls (Gemüth). On these grounds, Herder insists, premonitions should not be interpreted as a blurry dream, but as a reasonable foresight into the future. He articulates his wish that one day humans will not only learn how to decode their dim premonitory insights. What is more, he hopes that they will also recognize God’s higher plan in them and come to understand how to behave in accordance with their destiny. Certain literary characters enact this process in an exemplary way. In taking advantage of premonitions to grasp their destiny, they show how humans might translate premonitory feelings into action. Accordingly, Herder writes:

Ahnung der Zukunft ist ein dunkles Gefühl; und je dunkler es ist, oft um so mächtiger, so stärker. Zuweilen ists eine Krankheit: alsdann wird der Arzt sowenig

71 Johann Gottfried Herder: Anhang. Noch einige Worte über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 78. 72 “Symptom eines kranken Gemüths,” Johann Gottfried Herder: Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft, p. 71- 72. 35

als der Philosoph, Freund und Beichtvater dies Symptom eines kranken Gemüths verachten; vielmehr wird jeder in seiner Art den lehrreichen Wink solcher Ahnung, als eines Selbstbekenntnisses, zur Heilung des Kranken gebrauchen. Sie werden darin wie in einem Traumbuch wenn nicht die Zukunft so die verhüllete Gegenwart und Vergangenheit des Leidenden lesen. – Sonst aber ists eines Jeden Pflicht, Ahnungen, die ihm aufstoßen oder die ihn stille begleiten, anzuhalten, zu befragen und wo möglich in helle Gedanken zu verwandeln. Oefter als man denkt, ist dieses möglich, indem meistens nur unsre Schläfrigkeit daran schuld ist, daß wir träumend ahnen, statt wachend vorauszusehn, ja an dem dunkeln Vorempfinden sogar ein Vergnügen finden. Thiere leitet der Trieb; und auch den Menschen leitet er da, wo er nur Thier seyn darf. Wo er als Mensch handeln soll, wird sich die warnende oder aufmunternde Ahnung ihm in eine hellere Stimme verwandeln, sobald er sein eignes Gemüth zu fragen weiß. Statt coeca futuri könnten wir sagen: hominum mens plena futuri; es schlafen in uns weissagende Kräfte und Geister.73

This is the peak of Herder’s argument: a prophetic spirit—hominum mens plena future— rests in the human soul. The time in which humans will be able to transform dim premonitory messages into clear insights into the future has yet to come. However, it is important to acknowledge that Herder tries to distinguish premonitory experiences (which he terms ahnen, meaning ‘suspecting’) from four other categories: “knowing” (Wissen), “wishing” (Wünschen), “hoping” (Hoffen), and “believing” (Glauben). In this way, Herder can establish premonitions’ specific cognitive status. Having separated premonitory experiences out from other epistemological functions as a distinct category in their own right, he does not need to define them either as false psychological visions or inchoate dreams. Moreover, he is able to reject arguments by enlightened thinkers, for whom premonitions are pathological symptoms. Although Herder admits that such pathological phenomena exist, he nevertheless argues for a rational, prognostic category of premonitions that is embedded within a Christian worldview.

73 “Zuweilen ist’s eine Krankheit, alsdann wird der Arzt so wenig als der Philosoph Freund und Beichtvater dies Symptom eines kranken Gemüths verachten; vielmehr wird jeder in seiner Art den lehrreichen Wink solcher Ahnung als eines Selbstbekenntnisses zur Heilung des Kranken gebrauchen.” Johann Gottfried Herder: Anhang. Noch einige Worte über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807, p. 80. 36

In this appendix of Vom Wissen und Nichtwissen der Zukunft as in many other of Herder’s writings, premonitions entail a “sense” of the future. They connect the recipient to a metaphysical voice, which grants them insight into a forthcoming event. At this juncture, Herder broaches the role of premonitions in literature, mentioning his poem Der Genius der Zukunft (1769), for instance. In this poem, Herder asserts his deep conviction that, for today, only genius artists are able to make predictions, advising and enlightening humans as to their destinies. It is no coincidence that the genius required for premonition is that of the poet. The poet’s omniscience, their metaphysical power, is capable of producing a glowing premonition with a visionary impact. To a certain extent, the poet’s experience is exceptional in that their premonitory exploration results in clear, indeed luminous visions. Normally, premonitions appear as dim impressions gleaned by the inner senses. Herder, though, presents the premonition as a lucid vision, the initial dim message having been transformed by the spirit into a bright prophecy. Without being fully clear, Herder suggests that if we want to understand premonitions, we need to spell them out—not in a language of logics and science, but in the arbitrary and emotional language of poetry. In this way, through literature a premonitory experience can become visionary, its dim implications transformed into a bright message. This would not be possible, in Herder’s understanding, were one to articulate a premonition not through literary speech-acts, but in objectifying logical, rational, and scientific terms. Only through literature can premonitions become visions. For my purposes, the sixth stanza of Der Genius der Zukunft is the most telling: as in Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben, Herder uses a marine metaphor to describe how premonitions work. The speaker of the poem, the ‘lyrical I,’ is a lost sailor. The premonition is delivered by a demon, who rescues the sailor and indicates the correct bearing. Herder writes:

Vom dunkeln Meer vergangener Thaten steigt Ein Schattenbild in die Seel’ empor! Wer bist Du, Dämon? Kommst Du leiten Mein Lebensschiff in die Höh dort auf? In die blaue Nebelferne dort auf, wo Meer und Himmel

37

Verweben ihr Truggewand? Wie oder Flamme des hohen Masts, Mir Irrphantom, und nicht der Errettenden Einer, Der sternegekrönten Götter?74

In this particularly obscure and syntactically erratic poem, the genius is the prophet who is able to survey the past so as to fathom an otherwise dark future. With their feeling for premonitions and ability to transform them into language, the poet is able to navigate life towards the safety of shore. Indeed, in the poem, life is metaphorically described as the “ship of life,” premonition as a guiding light:

Flamm auf, Du Licht, der Zeiten Gesang! Du strahlst Vom Angesicht der Vergangenheit und bist Mir Fackel, meinen Gang dort fürder Zu leiten, dort, wo die Zukunft graut, Wo ihr Haupt der Saum der Wolke verhüllt, wo Erd’ und Himmel Sich weben, als wär’ es Eins! Denn was ist Lebenswissen? und Du, Der Götter Geschenk, Prophetengesicht und der Ahnung Vorsingende Zauberstimme?

Herder introduces a “prophetic face” in the last stanza, before concluding with a happy ending. The poet is able to rescue the sailor lost on the wild, dark ocean, which can be read as an image for daily existence or the challenges and contingency of modern life. The premonition, here, delineates a secure path through a randomly organized world.

74 Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Genius der Zukunft, in: Johann Gottfried Herder: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur schönen Literatur und Kunst, vol. 15, in der I. G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1817, p. 144-147. / The editor says that Herder wrote this poem after a journey on a ship from Livland to Nantes in 1769. It might be the case that Herder saw himself as the outspoken visionary poet. The editor Heinrich Kurz writes: „Im Jahre 1769 während seiner Seereise von Liefland nach Nantes gedichtet, daher die Ode wie Herder selbst bemerkt in Meeresbildern wandelt. In einem aus Nantes geschriebenen Briefe in französischer Sprache nennt er sie une chanson de Francmacons. Herder war im Jahr 1766 zu Riga in den Freimauererorden getreten.“ See: Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Genius der Zukunft, in: Herders Werke, ed. by Heinrich Kurz, vol. 1, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Wien 1870, p. 129. 38

Published long before his two essays on premonition, this poem emphasizes Herder’s hope that in literature premonitions might be openly articulated. In the literary domain, he believes, the paradoxes of a changing world need not be resolved but rather explored, and the future can be paradoxically elaborated without recourse to a theological model. At the same time, Herder expresses his conviction that knowledge of the future is not necessarily bound to occult fantasy. The secondary literature agrees on this point. Stefan Willer brands Herder’s two essays and the poem on premonitions “an anachronistic praise of fortune-telling”.75 Willer presents Herder’s project as a refutation of Lessing’s claim that humans cannot attain knowledge of the future, for that would question God’s ultimate power and hidden will.76 Herder, in contrast, is deeply convinced of the possibility of knowing the future. Willer points out that although he strictly distinguishes the two terms in opening Ueber Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben, Herder sees a connection between ahnen, the experience of premonitions and seeing the future, and ahnden, which means taking revenge. Herder describes the premonition as the anticipation of “nemesis,” that is, God’s impending revenge for one’s past actions and decisions. Despite the fact that Herder uses these terms differently, Willer implies that he believes that the consequences of humans’ actions come back to them in the form of their individual destiny. Based on the course of a given individual’s life, a premonition forecasts their distinct nemesis. Accordingly, Willer emphasizes how poetry functions as a means of elaborating premonitory knowledge and glimpsing nemesis. In his essay Nemesis der Geschichte, Herder argues that if nemesis were not in play then history would be nothing more than a chaotic accumulation of random happenings:

75 „Ein unzeitgemäßes Lob der Wahrsagerei...“ In: Stefan Willer: Zur literarischen Epistemologie der Zukunft, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janssen (eds.): Wissens-Ordnungen: Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 224-261, here: p. 237. 76 Lessing indicates this in his essay Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts. For him, faith means to accept the unpredictable and almost illogical will of God. History does not develop always by moving forward. In the 90th and 91st paragraphs, Lessing calls prophets who want to give simple explanations for human destiny‚ sentimentalists („Schwärmer“). He says: „Und eben das machte sie zu Schwärmern. Der Schwärmer thut oft sehr richtige Blicke in die Zukunft: aber er kann diese Zukunft nur nicht erwarten. Er wünscht diese Zukunft beschleuniget; und wünscht, daß sie durch ihn beschleuniget werde. Wozu sich die Natur Jahrtausende Zeit nimmt, soll in dem Augenblicke seines Daseyns reifen. Denn was hat er davon, wenn das, was er für das Bessere erkennt, nicht noch bey seinen Lebzeiten das Bessere wird? Kömmt er wieder? Glaubt er wieder zu kommen? – Sonderbar, daß diese Schwärmerey allein unter den Schwärmern nicht mehr Mode werden will! §.91. Geh deinen unmerklichen Schritt, ewige Vorsehung! Nur laß mich dieser Unmerklichkeit wegen an dir nicht verzweifeln. – Laß mich an dir nicht verzweifeln, wenn selbst deine Schritte mir scheinen sollten, zurück zu gehen! – Es ist nicht wahr, daß die kürzeste Linie immer die gerade ist.“ See: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, in: Lessings Werke, ed. by Heinrich Kurz, vol. 4, Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, Bildburghausen 1870, p. 612. 39

Entweder ist die Geschichte nichts als eine vernunftlose Wiedererzählung äußerer Zufälle – oder, wenn nichts Zufall, wenn in den Zufällen Geist ist, mit denen Vernunft und Unvernunft, Glück und Unglück ihr Spiel haben, welche andre Göttin könnte der Geschichte vorstehn als Nemesis-Adrastea, die Tochter Jupiter’s, die scharfe Bemerkerin, die strenge Vergelterin, die Höchstbillige, die Hochverehrte!

Herder’s implicit point here, which stems from his understanding of history, is enlightening: if the future is the result of our past decisions, and if God gives us the future we deserve (in form of our “nemesis”), then there must be also a method through which it is possible to investigate this transcendental dialectic between past, present, and future.77 Herder’s philosophy presents literature as the medium in which the unknown future can be explored. Specifically, this is possible by transforming inner, supersensory premonitions into poetry. Literature is the laboratory in which premonitory experience becomes language; literature is the basis for knowledge of the future. As we will see, this affirmation of premonitions will not go unanswered.

Immanuel Kant: Ahndung as a False Fantasy of Unconscious Memory In 1796/97, at the height of his ruminations on premonitions, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. His account is defined in opposition to Herder’s. Indeed, Kant criticizes apologists for premonitions, largely as a means of defending his strict concept of reason, in which speculative or supersensory approaches to time have no place. Still, there are inconsistencies in Kant’s work, which combines a deep skepticism of premonitions with an underlying fascination for the phenomenon. The result is a markedly ambivalent argument as to the possibilities for knowing and anticipating the future. On the one

77 „Ethomanie heißt Voraussehen der Zukunft aus Sitten und Handlungen: Nemesis, die Göttinn, die allen Uebermuth bemerkt und ihn ahndet.“ Johann Gottfried von Herder: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, Siebenter Theil, Gotta’sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart und Tübingen 1828, p. 62. / It is interesting to see how Herder uses the terms „ahnden“ and „ahnen“: For him, ‚ahnen’ is a premonition of ‚Ahndung,’ namely the premonition of a God’s nemesis. To put it differently: We can forefeel the way God will punish us or take revenge for our actions. This is the reason why Herder wants to keep the different spelling of ‚ahnden’ and ‚ahnen’: For him, both terms have different meanings. ‚Ahnden’ is directed to the past, ‚ahnen’ to the future. 40 hand, Kant is convinced that premonitions are not prophetic. On the other, he cannot deny their existence, at least at a psychological level. Kant’s perspective stands in opposition to the many supporters of premonitions. A scientist and mystic named Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, for instance, gave an archetypical defense of the validity of premonitions in his book Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, published in 1808 (ten years after Kant’s Anthropologie). Indeed, this defense serves to exemplify the position with which Kant disagreed so strongly. Schubert describes two categories of premonitions: those that are sick and false, and those that are healthy and true.78 He draws examples from world history in attempting to prove the validity of the latter, truthful class of premonitions. Schubert describes an incident in which people felt a historical event before it could change the outcome of world history. More specifically, he refers to the conquest of North America by European settlers. The North American societies who inhabited the continent before colonization, Schubert claims, sensed the impending invasions in a collective premonitory experience. Accordingly, Schubert writes:

Gesunder und kräftiger Art scheint auch der Geist der Vorahndungen da gewesen, wo er, wie oft geschehen, ganze Völker, ja ganze Welttheile ergriffen. Eine solche Vorahndung hat bekanntlich die Amerikanischen Völker in den entferntesten Theilen des Welttheils, die untereinander schwerlich in unmittelbarer Verbindung gewesen, gleichzeitig auf die Ankunft der Europäer und des Christenthums vorbereitet. Von einer alten, den verschiedensten Völkern bekannten Weissagung angekündigt, trafen diese Kinder der Sonne ganze Länder schon im Voraus zum Gehorsam oder doch zur Furcht geneigt und ohne jenen dunklen Geist der Ahndung, welcher ihnen vorausgegangen, hatten ihre Waffen jene Wunderwirkungen kaum vermocht.79

In this passage, Schubert makes some astonishing claims. He suggests that premonitory experiences can not only jump from one part of the world to another, but forefeel an event before history takes place—in this case by prompting the Native American people to fear the settlers

78 “…kranker und falscher als eine von gesunder und wahrhaft echter Art…”. Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, in der Arnoldischen Buchhandlung, Dresden 1808, p. 90. 79 Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, in der Arnoldischen Buchhandlung, Dresden 1808, p. 91-92. 41 even before they arrived. For Kant, these claims are unacceptable. He dedicates a chapter to repudiating such occult understandings of premonitions. Indeed, he defines the concept of Ahndung as ‘figments of the imagination.’ In opposition to Schubert, Kant discounts any belief in premonitions’ prognostic power. For Kant, Ahndungen are part of the “capability of prediction” (Vorhersehungsvermögen/praevisio), which he divides into two categories. First are empirical predictions: statistical prognoses based on data from the past. Ontologically, previous events repeat themselves in the future in only exceptional cases (exspectatio casuum similium). In clarifying the character of this type of prediction, Kant gives a basic example. A man knows from past nights that he needs a bed in order to sleep and rest. Accordingly, he will not sell his bed even if he finds himself in serious financial difficulties. The expectation of future nights prevents him from making ill-judged risks—such selling his own bed—so as to earn money. This decision is based on a rational expectation of the future and arises from daily routine. Kant explains this type of praevisio in the following passage:

Das empirische Voraussehen ist die Erwartung ähnlicher Fälle (exspectatio casuum similium) und bedarf keiner Vernunftkunde von Ursachen und Wirkungen, sondern nur der Erinnerung beobachteter Begebenheiten, wie sie gemeiniglich auf einander folgen, und wiederholte Erfahrungen bringen darin eine Fertigkeit hervor. (...) In den Tag hinein (ohne Vorsicht und Besorgnis) leben, macht (...) dem Verstande des Menschen eben nicht viel Ehre; wie dem Caraiben, der des Morgens seine Hangmatte verkauft und des Abends darüber betreten ist, dass er nicht weiss, wie er des Nachts schlafen wird.80

In this passage, Kant argues that probable future events should be handled rationally. He suggests that premonitions are acceptable as means of preparing oneself for future risks. Kant also defines two other capabilities of prediction, which are located in the psychological domain. These capacities do not concern the empirical world, but refer instead to individuals’ unconscious sense of their own destiny. At this juncture, premonitions concretely come into play. The first category are premonitions that are based on a feeling (Ahndung / praesensio); the

80 Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820, p. 194. 42 second refers to pre-expectations that are based on psychological causalities (Vorhererwartung / praesagitio). Although Kant discusses neither phenomena in depth, he is very clear that visionary premonitions are figments of the imagination and have no claim to validity. His points are implicitly directed against Herder’s understanding of premonitions:

Man sieht leicht, daß alle Ahndung ein Hirngespenst sei; denn wie kann man empfinden, was noch nicht ist?81

Kant notes that there is no such thing as an anticipatory supersense of what is to come. The only proleptic visions that he deems valid are “dark premonitions” (dunkle Ahndungen) based on causalities.82 In a way, Kant’s argument is paradoxical: on the one hand, he insists that all (!) premonitions are “figments of the imagination.” On the other, he cannot deny that such feelings do exist, at least as psychological phenomena, and that they have a place in the human psychological apparatus.83 Indeed, in his Logik (1800), Kant even concedes that premonitions have a certain epistemological value. “Having a premonition,” he writes, is the sense one has of knowledge before it becomes knowledge proper:

Zuweilen haben wir ein dunkles Vorgefühl von der Wahrheit: eine Sache scheint uns Merkmale der Wahrheit zu enthalten; - wir ahnen ihre Wahrheit schon, noch ehe wir sie mit bestimmter Gewißheit erkennen.84

Kant’s Anthropologie, in contrast, accords premonitions less epistemological value. Here, Kant suggests that only one type of premonition is legitimate. A far cry from the Herderian notion of a metaphysical and poetic capacity for foresight, these premonitions are a method for

81 Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820, p. 99. 82 Later, Kant gives some examples. 83 The scholar and philosophar Giuseppe Motta explains: „Im obigen Satz der ‚Postulate’ bezieht sich Kant auf die Formen einer nicht-natürlichen bzw. widernatürlichen Vergegenwärtigung des Künftigen (die Ahndung bzw. paesensio nach der Anthropologie). Der explizite Gebrauch des Verbs ‚anschauen’ und der Hinweis auf die 'besonderen Grundkräften unseres Gemüths’ weisen auf eine spezifische Wirkung der künftigen Ereignisse auf unser Empfindungsvermögen hin. Eine solche Kausalität lässt sich als solche wohl denken (sie ist möglich); sie kann aber in keiner Weise erfahren oder bewiesen werden. Sie ist daher ein leeres Hirngespinst.“ Guiseppe Motta: Die Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt, Walder de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 235. 84 Immanuel Kant: Logik, in: Immanuel Kant: Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Wilhelm Weischedel, Darmstadt 1983, vol. 5, p. 495 (A 100). 43 making banal provisions for the future. Nevertheless, Kant does not deny the importance and benefits of such premonitions. But what about “dark premonitions”? What kind of premonitions are these and how are they perceived? Kant assumes that dark premonitions draw their substance from unconscious traumas. If someone whose close relative died of a fever in the past, for example, then they might unconsciously experience a “dark premonition” should anyone else they know fall ill in the future. This mechanism could be interpreted as a psychological warning signal, which draws on past trauma as a means of approaching an unknown future. It uses past experiences to direct the individual away from suffering. At least for Kant, then, a premonition is no irrational or occult ‘forefeeling.’ It is rather an explainable symptom of a trauma resulting from past suffering. That someone might have forebodings about the future having previously witnessed a deadly fever-attack is perfectly explainable. Unconsciously triggered, premonitions remind their recipients of potential risks awaiting them in the future. In this vein, Kant writes:

Sind es aber Urtheile aus dunkelen Begriffen eines solchen Kausalverhältnisses, so sind es nicht Vorempfindungen, sondern man kann die Begriffe, die dazu führen, entwickeln und, wie es mit dem gedachten Urtheil zugehe, erklären.85

Kant’s main contention is simple. For him, every premonition is rationally explainable. To understand a premonitions’ cause, we need only look to the biography of its receiver. In Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Kant warns against approaching the future by speculation. This comes even more clearly into focus where Kant joins the heated debate surrounding the spelling of Ahndung. As we already know, at the turn of the century the word Ahndung had yet to establish itself. Some philosophers would write Ahnung without a “d” in the contemporary manner; the majority employed the archaic spelling, Ahndung. In contemporary German, the word has exclusively a juridical connotation: Today, Ahndung means in German ‘legal punishment.’ Kant considers Ahnung, the new spelling, incorrect. In wanting to retain Ahndung’s etymological

85 Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820, p. 99. 44 association with legal prosecution, he spurns any newer spelling. In an important footnote, he explains:

Man hat neuerlich zwischen etwas Ahnen und Ahnden einen Unterschied machen wollen; allein das erstere ist kein deutsches Wort, und es bleibt nur das letztere. - Ahnden bedeutet so viel als Gedenken. Es ahndet mir heißt: es schwebt etwas meiner Erinnerung dunkel vor; etwas ahnden bedeutet jemandes That ihm im Bösen gedenken (d. i. sie bestrafen). Es ist immer derselbe Begriff, aber anders gewandt.86

Kant rejects Herder’s distinction between ahnden and ahnen because he wants to throw cold water on the popularity of premonitory concepts and the wider discussion surrounding them. It is important to attend closely to the nuances of Kant’s argument to the discursive motif at stake here. Kant traces both terms back to their origins, underscoring the relevance of the past in defining Ahndung as a future-directed memory. He refers again to the example glossed above. Past experiences of fever shape one’s reception of all future fevers. He presents Ahndung as a form of evil remembrance (böses Gedenken). As such, it is an operation of the memory and not a spiritual capacity of fortune telling. Interestingly, the same structure is also implied in the legal term Ahndung—at least in Kant’s perspective. For instance, in inflicting (ahnden) a punishment, a judge recalls the culprit’s past misdeed and intervenes in his future. The criminal’s future responds to his past; his criminal past is directly linked to his future punishment. This is a form of nemesis enacted by humans, not God; a form of legal, not divine, retribution. This circling dialectic among past, present, and future is also in play when it comes to recipients of premonitory experiences: drawing on past trauma, foresight changes an individual’s perspective on their future. Memories of fatality or misfortune grant the recipient insight into what will happen, determining their behavior and shaping the future. They cannot meet the future in an easy, open manner. Rather, the recipient’s is restricted by premonitory expectations (Ahndungserwartung). To refer to Kant’s example one last time, someone traumatized by fever cannot approach another fever neutrally, in an undetermined and semantically open manner. They are always unconsciously reminded of their past traumatic experiences, which determine

86 Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 99. 45 their perspective on, and responses to, all other phenomena that might be associated with this trauma. In this way, Kant explains premonitions using psychological terminology and a theory grounded in human perception.87 For Kant, the future is not open, but determined by the past. It is one segment of a chain of events that extends back into past decisions and experiences. In emphasizing the continuum between past and future, Kant seeks to keep discussion of the future in a rational register, as distinct from arbitrary conjecture. Speculation and sensory fortune-telling are alien to him. In addition, in putting so much emphasis on the older spelling of Ahndung, he shows how both juridical and epistemological premonitions are always bound to the past and mediated through memory.88 He opposes Herder’s distinction between ahnden and ahnen because he is afraid that Ahndung might lose its resonance with the past. In this way, Kant fears, Ahndung might establish itself as an occult, unexplainable prognostic operation based purely on irrationality and emotion. This is why he fights so strongly against a new usage of the term. Interestingly, in a chapter titled “Von der Wahrsagergabe” (§34), Kant posits an example that could be read as a sophisticated commentary on Herder’s poem Das Genie der Zukunft, which I have discussed in the previous section. Kant refers to Herder’s poem so as to illustrate premonitory vision. Whereas in Herder’s case the genius poet is portrayed as a (good) demon who is able to predict the future by means of his inner senses, Kant only makes fun of this image:

Das Aeusserste der Ungereimtheit oder des Betrugs im Wahrsagen war wohl dies, dass ein Verrückter für einen Seher (unsichtbarer Dinge) gehalten wurde; als ob aus ihm gleichsam ein Geist rede, der die Stelle der Seele, die so lange von der Behausung des Körpers Abschied genommen habe, vertrete; und dass der arme Seelenkranke (oder auch nur Epileptische) für einen Energumenen (Besessenen) galt, und er, wenn der ihn besitzende Dämon für einen guten Geist gehalten wurde, bei den Griechen ein Mantes, dessen Ausleger aber Prophet hiess. - Alle Thorheit musste erschöpft werden, um das Künftige, dessen Voraussehung uns so sehr interessirt, mit

87 At least in his Anthropologie. In his text Logik, premonitions have a different status. 88 Kant uses the term “der Erinnerung dunkel vorschweben.” 46

Ueberspringung aller Stufen, welche vermittelst des Verstandes durch Erfahrung dahin führen möchten, in unseren Besitz zu bringen. O curas hominum!89

Kant leaves no doubt as to what he thinks about premonitions. For him, there is no such thing as a feeling for fortune or the future, although he cannot deny the psychological existence of premonitions. Only reason and calculation can anticipate what the future might look like. He strongly supports mathematical, statistical approaches to managing risks in a contingent world. Furthermore, he does not believe in the concept of nemesis, as Herder did. Nevertheless, Kant is unable to overcome inconsistencies in his argument. As Stefan Andriopoulos has shown in his book Ghostly Apparitions, Kant’s claims to practice a purely rational philosophy contain contradictions. Andriopoulos explains that Kant was unable to deny that the human soul interacts with two opposing forces, a ‘general’ and ‘private’ will. In fact, the general will is made up of the will of other people, from whom the subject receives impressions that guide them through the world. Here, Kant assumes the existence of ghostly apparitions. This contradicts the thesis that he puts forward in Anthropologie, in which he denies any influence of metaphysical forces in human affairs. This means, Stefan Andriopoulos writes, that

Kant formulates the assumption that “the human soul, even in this life, stands in an indissoluble community with all the immaterial natures of the spirit world—that standing in a mutual interaction with these natures, it both has an effect upon them and receives impressions from them.90

Notably, the idea of being influenced by ‚immaterial natures’ resembles the Gothic notion of the ‘invisible hand,’ which guides those in contact with the ‘fourth dimension’ through the visible world without their knowledge of it. As we will see, the general will could be understood as the transcendent power with which the subject communes during premonitory experiences. For Kant, such unconscious communication is theoretically impossible. Herder and other writers discussed in this dissertation, however, take another view on the possibility of connecting with the general will. They believe not only that an external metaphysical power exists, but that

89 Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820, p. 102. 90 Stefan Andriopoulos: Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media, First edition, Zone Books, New York 2013, p. 26. 47 human might communicate with it. Comparing Kant’s position with Herder’s, it becomes clear why the two philosophers had such strong opinions on premonitions. Whereas Kant argues for a statistical approach to the future (at least in his Anthropologie), Herder is convinced that the soul is able to deliver prognostic knowledge of the general will. In opposition to Kant, Herder believes in a science of a future. Stefan Willer agrees on this:

Die hier rekonstruierte Debatte ist systematisch wie historisch aussagekräftig für den Zusammenhang von Begriffsgeschichte und Zukunftswissen. (...) Kants Folgerung, das Zukunftswissen letztlich auf die „Erwartung ähnlicher Fälle“ zu beschränken, steht exemplarisch gegen Herders Hochschätzung des dunklen Zukunftssensoriums, der schicksalhaften Kausalität und des Vertrauens auf eine dereinst zuverlässigere „Wissenschaft der Zukunft“.91

With this “science of the future,” literature comes into play. As we will see, Herder’s belief in premonitions found its way into literary texts. By means of literature, premonitory visions are able to evolve.

Jakob Friedrich Fries: Premonitions as Metaphysical Insight Of all people, it was a Post-Kantian thinker who brought premonitions back into the discourse of enlightened philosophy and argued strongly for a positive revision of premonitory experiences. Eight years after the publication of Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, the scholar Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843) brought out an analysis in which premonitions play a major role. Indeed, they prominently figure in the work’s title, Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung (1805). Here, Fries presents premonitions as an epistemologically significant transitory phenomenon poised between knowledge and belief. As such, the premonition is a transcendental concept, which bridges secular and metaphysical philosophy. In fact, Fries is the first thinker to undertake a thorough philosophical analysis of premonitions. At the beginning of his study, he expresses regret that philosophy takes interest

91 Stefan Willer: Ahnen und Ahnden. Zur historischen Semantik des Vorgefühls um 1800, in: Ernst Müller (ed.): Forum interdisziplinäre Begriffsgeschichte (FIB), E-Journal (2017), 6th year / 1, ZFL, Berlin 2017, p. 30-40, Webpage: https://www.zfl-berlin.org/tl_files/zfl/downloads/publikationen/forum_begriffsgeschichte/ZfL_FIB_6_2017_1.pdf 48 only in knowledge and belief. Premonitions, in contrast, have always regarded as misleading— something best left to “sentimentalists and poets.”92 In approaching premonitions as supersensory knowledge (Wissen durch Gefühl), Fries argues both for and against Kant. Drawing on his pertinent insights, I delineate a third philosophical perspective on premonitions and their implications for philosophical discourse. For Fries, a premonition is knowledge mediated through feeling and cannot be proven empirically. Nonetheless, premonitions dictate how we perceive the world; as such, they are constitutive of all human perception. What is more, Fries understands premonitions as a form of epiphany, stressing how they cannot be described in rational terms. Fries belongs to the tradition of romantic philosophy, in which German-speaking writers ruminated on the emotional dimension of aesthetics and the importance of feelings in perceiving reality.93 Besides reason, the soul and humans’ emotional apparatus were seen as crucial for knowledge. To understand these fairly new distinctions, it is important to acknowledge that Fries presupposes that the human mind is capable of two forms of insight. First, it can empirically grasp the external world. Second, it can metaphysically sense the existence of God. Like Herder, Fries takes premonitions to mediate between these poles. Although premonitions result from empirical experience (the perception of nature), they ineluctably lead the spectator to one conclusion: that only God can fully explain the world’s existence. After all, Fries sees metaphysics as the grounds of all human truth seeking. Nature’s unlimited power and beauty provokes the unconscious premonition that only God, by virtue of his omniscience, knows how and why the world exists:

Wir haben im Glauben die Idee einer höheren Welt, aber wir wissen dieser in der Natur weder Begriff noch Bedeutung zu geben, es bleibt uns nichts übrig, als ein Gefühl, wodurch wir sie in der Schönheit und Erhabenheit der Natur ahnden.94

92 He uses the terms “Dichter und Schwärmer,” Fries p. 63, and he might be referring here to Kant’s critique, where premonitions are portrayed mostly as pathologies. 93 Friedrich Schlegel was one of the Romantic philosophers, who stressed the importance of feelings for human perception: “Friedrich Schlegel, basing his philosophy of the synthesis of reason and emotions firmly upon Kant’s faith in reason, sought to overthrow the extremism of Storm and Stress, and wanted to prove to adherents of the philosophy of feeling up to dominate over reason, such as Herder and August Wilhelm Schlegel (...).“ Kathleen Wheeler: Introduction, in: Kathleen M. Wheeler (ed.): German aesthetic and literary criticism: The Romantic Ironists and Goethe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, p. 2. / Similar assumptions were proposed by English Romanticists such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 94 Jacob-Friedrich Fries: Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung, bey J. C. G. Göpferdt, Jena 1805, p. 107. 49

Still, Fries does not mean to deny the wisdom of science. Humans can, he insists, measure and analyze the world. And yet, despite scientists’ noble attempts to grasp the world’s physical and chemical composition, the human understanding of things will only ever be partial. Absolute wisdom remains elusive. In a way, premonitions are distinctly modern: they teach us that, however much theoretical knowledge humans amass, it will never be comprehensive in practice. Human knowledge cannot fully explain every aspect of life. What is more, knowledge is—to a significant degree—historically relative, arbitrary, and changeable. The mystery of knowledge, for Fries, implies the existence of a supernatural power, a metaphysical force, which structures the world and constitutes the human mind such that it falls short of absolute knowledge. In this way, Fries defends the existence of God every bit as forcefully as Herder. Both thinkers posit limits to human knowledge. The difference between them lies in how Fries uses ‘premonition’ as a philosophical and metaphysical term. Herder, in contrast, takes premonitions as the basis for his account of poetic prophecy. It is this difference that makes Fries more of a Kantian than a Romantic thinker. Fries has his own take on premonitions and wants to obstruct prophetic, speculative, or occult perspectives. Nonetheless, his work is more open to premonitory experiences than Kant’s. For Kant, premonitions only exist in the psychological domain. In Fries’s perspective—and this is his main point of difference with all other philosophers of the time—premonitions are not a concrete prognostic imagination of a certain future. Rather, the insights they provide work on an abstract philosophical level: they are a form of emotional epiphany through which the receiver becomes aware of a higher, transcendent truth, which cannot be explained and articulated in rational terms. Metaphysically, this felt knowledge predicts that there is a future beyond time and space. Implicitly, this means heaven or hell. It also brings the realization that absolute wisdom is not accessible to science. To put this differently: Premonitions are, for Fries, knowledge beyond knowledge. Accordingly, the Kant-scholar Frederick C. Beiser concludes:

The main reason Fries introduces the concept of Ahndung is to define the mental state characteristic of religion. Religion, he insists, should not be reduced to metaphysics or ethics. Rather, its distinctive characteristic is a kind of attitude or mental state towards life and existence. This mental state consists not in knowledge,

50

still less in action, but in a kind of feeling, a responsiveness or sensitivity to the world.95

Like Herder’s position, this line of argument could be seen as a compromise with modernity, an attempt to defend God’s existence in a secularized world. On the one hand, it implies that humans can acquire knowledge through science. On the other, it suggests that humans run up against the limits of knowledge with the formulation of each new scientific theory. People can come to realize this through premonitory experiences, which ultimately attest to God’s mighty Will. Fries also calls this form of knowledge “the realization of infinity in the finite” (Ahndung des Ewigen im Endlichen).96 Such realization is by no means occult; rather, it is negative knowledge, a transcendent knowledge mediated through the belief in God. Formulated differently, it is the awareness of the limitations of human knowledge. Fries defines this dialectic as the “principle of premonition” (das Prinzip der Ahndung). Premonitory emotions correct pure empirical knowledge, questioning its results by embracing the importance of religion. Theodor Elsenhans explains this in the following way:

Diese intelligible Welt ist nur eine der Erscheinung angebildete Idee des Ewigen; auch sie kann so, wie wir sie uns vorstellen, nicht an sich sein, sondern wir brauchen diese Idee nur als Regulativ für unsere Handlungen in der Erscheinungswelt, indem wir ihr im Blick auf die höchsten Zwecke folgen. Daher erheben wir uns, von jedem “Grundsatz der Vollendung” geleitet noch über diese intelligible Welt zur Idee der Gottheit, in welcher die vollkommene Ordnung der Dinge ewig besteht, und daher die ideale Ansicht ihre Vollendung findet. Bildet die Grundlage der logischen Ideen das Prinzip des spekulativen Glaubens, so bewegen wir uns mit dieser religiösen Ansicht der Dinge im Gebiet der Ahndung.97

95 Frederick C. Beiser: The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, p. 71. 96 „Die Erkenntniss durch reines Gefühl nenne ich Ahndung des Ewigen im Endlichen. Ein Gegenstand unsers Wissens, und unsrer Anschauung wird nur das Einzelne und Endliche in der Natur; für den Glauben hingegen können wir das Ewige nur durch die Idee des Nicht-Endlichen denken, wir denken uns nur die Aufhebung der Schranken des endlichen Seyns für das ewige Seyn, ohne eine positive Vorstellung des Ewigen.“ Jakob Friedrich Fries: Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung, bey J.C.G. Göpferdt, Jena 1805, p. 176. 97 Theodor Elsenhans: Fries und Kant: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zur systematischen Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Severus Verlag, Hamburg 2010, p. 330. 51

In mediating between the ‘higher’ level of metaphysical perfection and the empirically given world, Ahndung provides a solution for a problem within philosophy and literature between 1750 and 1850. The problem is this: the secularization and Enlightenment underlines reason but in the same time this rational philosophy also discovers the limits of it. In the religious sphere, on other hand, cognitive barriers do not need to be explained. Quite the opposite, they underline God’s unlimited wisdom. The discourse surrounding premonitions developed along these lines – as the hope that there might be a metaphysical technique to explore future not rationally but supersensory and metaphysically—through the inner senses without empirical knowledge. Indeed, the literary scholar Phillipp Theisohn explains the transitory function of premonitions in similar terms:

In die Lücke zwischen kritischer Rationalität und moralischem Handeln, zwischen reiner und praktischer Vernunft tritt die Ahndung als jene Apparatur, der “nur durch Gefühl ohne Anschauung und Begriff” die Einheit von Idee und Natur zugänglich wird.98

In a way, then, the appearance of premonitions was part of an ironic twist in intellectual history. As human knowledge becomes more precise through the development of mathematics and the natural sciences, it also becomes more irritating and paradoxical. Established as part of the emergence of Romantic philosophy, this point was developed in response to Kantian thought. In this context, Ahndung represents a strategy for grappling with the unknown and reducing the risk of chaos brought on by science—a world abandoned by basic beliefs and a supertheory based on God.99 Broaching this risk in their book Romantische Wissenspoetik, Gabriele Brandstetter and Gerhard Neumann explain the rise of polyfocalization in Romantic literature. Multiple perspectives, they claim, arose in response to scientific attempts to objectify the world from a single, all-knowing standpoint:

98 Philipp Theisohn: Die kommende Dichtung. Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450-2050, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2012, p. 245. 99 „Für einige romantische Naturforscher kann die Einheit der Natur nur aus einem metaphysischen Grund gewonnen werden. Naturphilosophische Spekulationen führen auf die Spur dieses Grundes, deduktive Hypothesen- und Theorienbildung schaffen bestenfalls Näherungswerte, die letzten Bedingungen der Natur lassen sich jedoch vom Menschen nicht erfassen.“ Jürgen Daibler: Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, p. 80. 52

Eines der wichtigsten Prägemuster solcher Umfunktionierung ist dabei etwa dasjenige der Polyfokalisierung von Wahrnehmung (der Romantik, TK), das paradoxerweise vor dem Hintergrund der gerade systematisch entwickelten Idee der Zentralperspektive in Geltung gesetzt wird.100

Fries counters science’s central perspective by emphasizing religious perception, in which aesthetics plays a major role in attempts to fathom the truth of the world. He writes:

Es gibt in unserem Geist eine Region der Ueberzeugung über alle Wissenschaft hinaus, in der an die Stelle der theoretischen Unterordnung aller Anschauung unter mathematischen Gesetze der Physik (...) eine ästhetische Unterordnung derselben Anschauung unter die Ideen tritt.101

Here Fries articulates a clear hierarchy: the human imagination stands above all physical knowledge. Created by God, the imagination is capable of metaphysical epiphanies. These claims were highly controversial. Fries’s Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung was criticized for opening the door to mystification and irrationality.102 In his later works, Fries consistently refuted those critiques. He insisted that, far from affirming the irrational, he was interested in building a modern philosophy of reason that confronted emerging questions in the fields of both religion and science. He emphasized premonitions so as to underline the aesthetic dimensions of knowledge and how every observation of nature is mediated through imagination.103 This is a radical thought, through which Fries stresses the importance of subjectivity in organizing objective knowledge. Through premonitions, Fries can also explain why humans have a sense for beauty; why rational beings need imagination to understand facts; and how aesthetics interacts with the construction of scientific theories. Although he does not

100 Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerhard Neumann: Romantische Wissenspoetik: Die Künste und die Wissenschaften um 1800, in: Gaberiele Brandstetter, Gerhard Neumann (eds.): Romantische Wissenspoetik: die Künste und die Wissenschaften um 1800, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, p. 9-13, here: p. 9. 101 Jacob-Friedrich Fries: Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung, bey J. C. G. Göpferdt, Jena 1805, p. 176. 102 https://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/philo/geldsetzer/homepag6.html 103 The power of imagination is discovered and discussed in the 18th century, see Gabriele Dürbeck: Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung. Perspektiven der Philosophie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1750, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1998. 53 want to jettison science, he clearly grasps its limits. In fact, not every enlightened philosopher was happy that Fries recognized premonitions’ epistemological legitimacy. Having recourse to premonitions seemed to threaten the hope that the natural sciences would establish comprehensive objective knowledge. This is why his study was never broadly accepted in scientific discourse, despite being read enthusiastically, particularly by Goethe.104 Urs Büttner suggests what was at stake in Fries’s turn to premonitions. Fries found himself trapped in a paradox, Büttner exsplains, in that he had to mediate between the scientific ambition to establish absolute knowledge and humanities disciplines’ increasing recognition of the plurality of subjectivity. Büttner concludes:

Die nachkantische Epistemologie sieht sich der Schwierigkeit ausgesetzt, die Objektivität naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung angesichts pluraler Subjektivitäten zu begründen.105

This paradox might be seen as a sign of an emergent epistemological problem at the time: the arbitrariness of signs and scientific theories.106 If objectivity comes to be seen as not only unattainable but partly a construction, the result of multiple speech acts, then the imagination becomes relevant for understanding how truth is built through language. At the same time, truth becomes erratic, historically variable, and difficult to grasp. The line between truth and fiction, objectivity and subjectivity, thins. This is why art—as a medium of idealist reflection—becomes centrally important in epistemological reflection around 1800. Urs Büttner writes:

104 “Das Verhältnis von Glaube und Wissen ist auch ein Grundproblem in der Philosophie von Jacob Friedrich Fries, der 1801-1805 in Jena dozierte. Sein Werk‚ ‘Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung’, Jena 1805, befindet sich unter Goethes Büchern.“ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Werke. Kommentare und Register. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, vol. 10, Autobiographische Schriften II, C.H. Beck, München 1981, p. 577. / There is also a letter from F. H. Jacobi to Jacob Fries, where he explains that Goethe got Fries’s study and liked it: „Ihre Schrift ‚Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung’ hatte ich auf meiner Reise hierher zu Dresden gekauft, unterwegs darin gelesen, und zu Weimar mit Goethe, der sie gerade damals erhielt und großes Wohlgefallen daran hatte, mancherlei gesprochen.“ F.H. Jacobi to J.F. Fries, 26./27.11.1807, in: Renate Grumach (ed.): Goethe. Begegnungen und Gespräche, vol. V, Walter de Gruyter, 1985 Berlin, p. 607. 105 Urs Büttner: „Durch die Kunst läst sich dieses ahnden“: Achim von Arnim im Kontext zeitgenössischer Konzepte von Gefühlserkenntnis der Kunst, in: Antje Arnold, Walter Pape (eds.): Emotionen in der Romantik. Repräsentation, Ästhetik, Inszenierung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 139-155, here: p. 139. 106 The arbitrariness of knowledge is already a problem in Kant’s work. See: Arsenij Gulyga: Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought Birkäuser, Boston / Basel / Stuttgart 1987, p. 89. Here: „All of our knowledge begins with experience, Kant says, but it is not limited by it. A large part of our knowledge proceeds directly from our cognitive activity and therefore has an a priori character, i.e., it lies outside of experience. Empirical knowledge is arbitrary and therefore contingent: a priori knowledge is universal and necessary.“ 54

Dagegen rehabilitiert sie (die nachkantische Philosophie, TK) den Idealismus der Naturbetrachtung auf dem Feld der Kunst. Die epistemologische Strategie dabei ist, Erkenntnisvermögen, meist im Zusammenspiel von Gefühl mit der Einbildungskraft, zu suchen und aufzuwerten, die einerseits jenseits der für die naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis beanspruchten liegen, aber diesseits von ‘Schwärmerei’ und ‘Wahn’, und sich von diesen abtrennen lassen. Die Kunst kann dann selbstbewusst ihren Autonomieanspruch aufgrund ihrer spezifischen Epistemologie vertreten.107

The emancipation of imagination (Einbildungskraft) was a side effect of the emancipation of science, for which every imaginable experiment was now legitimate. Alongside this, however, the imagination came to threaten the consistency of scientific results. No longer metaphysically grounded, interpretation became at least partially arbitrary. For Fries, premonitions reflected the paradoxes of truth under these conditions. Premonitory experiences, he claimed, overcome the arbitrariness of perception by grounding it in religious beliefs. Fries introduces the experience of the premonition as an abstract operation, comprising an internal intellectual epiphany based on the wisdom of God. In the following section I turn to writers and intellectuals who adopted a similar and, at the same time, slightly different approach. Like Fries, they perceived premonitions from a metaphysical perspective and used the concept to counter the idea that mathematics and the natural sciences are the only means of establishing truth. Most writers, however, saw premonitions as even more than an epistemological operation that serves to direct the intellect to God and the afterlife. Indeed, they believed that premonition represents a truly prophetic capacity, which enables human to communicate supersensorily with higher truths and thus predict—or at least sense—the dark, inexplicable future. Literature and poetry were the spheres in which this future might be mapped out.

107 Urs Büttner: „Durch die Kunst läst sich dieses ahnden“: Achim von Arnim im Kontext zeitgenössischer Konzepte von Gefühlserkenntnis der Kunst, in: Antje Arnold, Walter Pape (eds.): Emotionen in der Romantik. Repräsentation, Ästhetik, Inszenierung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 139-155, here: p. 139. 55

Achim von Arnim: Premonition as an Epistemological Principle for Art As we have seen, Fries defined premonitions as an epistemological experience signaling the impossibility of humans attaining absolute knowledge. In this section, I would like to discuss this argument’s philosophical consequences for the arts, in which premonitions were frequently depicted as an epistemological epiphany—that is, as knowledge beyond knowledge. My questions are these: if metaphysical epiphanies transcend mathematical knowledge, what does this mean for literature and poetry? If literature was taken as a means of premonitory experience and epiphany, how might it be put to use? There are many examples that one might use to demonstrate the increasing significance of art for epistemological discourse, and its confrontation with premonitions, in this period. The work of Achim von Arnim (1781–1831) encapsulates this development, for he discusses premonitions in explaining art’s relevance to both scientific exploration and the conceptualization of knowledge. Arnim made these contributions as both a writer and trained physicist. In fact, he viewed himself as being first and foremost a scientist, having written influential scholarly books such as Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen (1799) and scientific essays published in Annalen der Physik.108 However, after first meeting Goethe in 1800 and experiencing difficulties in understanding natural phenomena from a transcendental perspective, Arnim shifted his focus from science to literature.109 This change of emphasis was the result of an existential crisis. Measuring the world through inductive experiments, as a scientist Arnim had avoided all forms of speculation. What he could not explain, however, was the metaphysical significance of scientifically established information. This led Arnim in a new direction. As Roswitha Burwick writes:

Neben den frühen, noch der Aufklärung verpflichteten Ideen eines Bildungsbürgertums als erstrebenswertes Ziel finden sich in den Aufzeichnungen der Studienzeit immer häufiger Zweifel über die Möglichkeit des Erkennens, Wissens und der Wissensvermittlung. Die Erkenntnis, daß eine sichere heuristische Methode in den Naturwissenschaften nur bedingt möglich ist, führte ihn (Armin, TK)

108 Achim von Arnim: Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen, bey Johann Jacob Gebauer, Halle 1799. 109 „Nach dem Ende des Studiums verzichtete Arnim bekanntlich auf eine naturwissenschaftliche Karriere zugunsten der dichterischen.“ In: Hein Härtl: ‚Amazonenrepublik’ und ‚Raum von vier Dimensionen’, in: Walter Pape (ed.): Raumkonfigurationen in der Romantik, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009, p. 112. 56

schließlich dazu, seine Ideen über die komplexe Wechselwirkung zwischen den Kräften und der Materie mit seinem poetischen Programm und seiner kulturpolitischen Vision einer idealen Endzeit zu verschmelzen. 110

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the natural sciences underwent a tremendous change: experiments constantly established new knowledge, which superseded received beliefs. In this context, Arnim becomes intellectually unsettled. To him, the world seemed to divide into two spheres: one composed of ideas and knowledge, and another of physical appearances. Arnim sought out a theory for the sphere of ideas. As he puts it:

[D]ie gesamte Naturkunde zerfiel mir in zwei getrennte Welten in Erscheinungen und in ein oberstes Prinzip, oder allgemeinste Ansicht und mein unablässiges Bemühen war, jene unter allgemeinen Gesetzen zu verbinden und dann hieraus abzuleiten, da jede neue Erscheinung ein neues Gesetz hervorbrachte und ein altes störte, so war ich den neuen Beobachtungen nicht gewogen [...]. [I]ch hätte gar gerne etwas entdeckt, aber ich merkte nicht, wie mir die Induktion immer in den Weg trat.111

This passage indicates how Arnim finds the process of “induction”—the core of scientific experiments at this time—problematic.112 Scholars suggest that his paralysis resulted from a subject-object problem, namely that attending to parts cannot able explain the whole.113 As Jürgen Daiber concludes:

110 Roswitha Burwick: „Sein Leben ist groß weil es ein Ganzes war.“ Arnims Erstlingsroman Hollin’s Liebeleben als „Übergangsversuch“ von der Wissenschaft zur Dichtung, in: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Klaus Stein, Michael Gerten (eds.): „Fessellos durch die Systeme“. Frühromantisches Naturdenken im Umfeld von Arnim, Ritter und Schelling, Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt 1997, p. 49-91, here: p. 50-51. 111 Quoted after: Benjamin Specht: Physik als Kunst: Die Poetisierung der Elektrizität um 1800, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, p. 274. 112 Benjamin Specht explains this problematic perspective on induction in his chapter on symbolic theory. See: Benjamin Specht: Physik als Kunst: Die Poetisierung der Elektrizität um 1800, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, p. 274. 113 „Die Erkenntnis der Grenze einer rein aufklärerisch-empirischen Experimentation, soviel sollte gezeigt sein, ist bei Achim von Arnim durch die konstitutive Trennung von Subjekt und Objekt im Akt des Experimentierens markiert. Diese Grenze kann mit den Mitteln der Naturforschung nicht überschritten werden. Die Hinwendung zur Poesie - als einer von der Methodik der Naturwissenschaft strikt getrennten Sphäre - wird von Arnim zum geistigen Fluchtpunkt.“ Jürgen Daibler: Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, p. 156. 57

So vehement von Arnim (...) gegen das deduktive und spekulative Vorgehen (...) opponiert, so vehement er die induktive Methode gemäß seiner Vorbilder (...) in den Experimenten der Jahre 1798-1807 praktiziert, so sehr wird er sich im Laufe der Zeit der Grenzen dieser Methode schmerzlich bewußt. Die exakte Beobachtung der einzelnen Naturphänomene liefert zwar jederzeit überprüfbares Datenmaterial, doch der Zwang zur Konzentration auf die Einzelerscheinungen legt dem Naturforscher zugleich eine enorme geistige Beschränkung auf.114

As his published works of the period between 1799 and 1801 indicate, Arnim became increasingly frustrated with the natural sciences. In fact, he experienced a crisis of knowledge. His first essays seem to borrow their vocabulary from scientific handbooks. Indeed, this is suggested by their very titles: Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen (1799), for example, or Vorschläge zur Vervollkommnung der Areometer (1799). After meeting Goethe, his works adopt a literary approach. They indicate Achim’s discomfort with the natural sciences and his increasingly critical view of attempts to measure the world mathematically. This shift towards a more philosophical and metaphysical perspective is indicated in titles of his next group of works: Ideen zu einer Theorie der Magneten (1799), Anmerkungen zur Licht-Theorie (1800), and Aphorismen über Licht (1801). In these works, Arnim begins to develop a poetic perspective on scientific problems. He frequently mentions his irritation with mathematical science and the inductive approach—this crops up in an unpublished letter, for instance. He describes how the natural sciences are “a cruel business,” in that they require scientists to concentrate solely on particular phenomena without any regard to notions of wholeness. In this vein, Arnim writes:

Der Naturforscher, in die Mitte des großen Ganzen frey strebender Thätigkeiten gestellt übt das grausame Geschäft, einzelne Momente herauszuheben; das Einzelne

114 Jürgen Daibler: Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, p. 153. 58

erstirbt unter seiner Arbeit, weil er es aus dem Totalverhältnisse riß, das Ganze, weil er es in das Einzelne zerlegte.115

In attempting to bridge the gap between part and whole, Arnim introduces the phenomenon of premonition. In his work, the term serves as a bridge between terrestrial and transcendental knowledge. It also provides a means of describing how the arts function as a form of epistemological experience. In a diary entry, probably written after his journey through England between July 1803 and July 1804, Arnim distinguished between historical and mathematical truth.116 Historical truth, he writes, is arbitrary. At the same time, Arnim underlines his skepticism of scientific progress, presenting himself as a thoroughly Christian thinker. To exemplify his theory of knowledge, he imagines an entirely new social situation, a state of Amazons. This world would be governed by another order of truth to that which prevails in modernity. In the “state of Amazons” truth would be connected to metaphysical principle and natural phenomena reflect their relation to God. His name for this alternative reality, imbued with metaphysical truth, is the fourth dimension. This concept is key to understanding Arnim’s account of premonitions. For him, the fourth dimension signals the possibility of different realities, which can be grasped through premonitory experiences. Armin is convinced that although time and space seem to be based on three dimensions, in fact they are framed by an invisible fourth dimension. This dimension of ghosts and spirits holds the three other dimensions together. He writes:

Daß dann auch der Raum mehr als drey Dimensionen haben muß und die Zeit mehr Evoluzionen als Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft und das Denken ausser dem Objekt und Subjekt noch ein drittes kennen muß, ist wohl gewiß. Nähern wir uns vielleicht dem? In demselben Raume, den wir jetzt erfüllen kann, also vielleicht ein andrer höherer Raum coexistiren für höhere Anschauung die Form, dasselbe mit der

115 Achim von Arnim: Unveröffentlichte Texte und Fragmente aus dem Goethe-und-Schiller-Archiv Weimar (GSA 03/209,3), in: „Fessellos durch die Systeme“, p. 467. 116 „Zwischen 1801 und 1804 unternahm der dem Schriftstellertum nun voll Ergebene eine Bildungsreise, die ihn u. a. nach Frankreich, in die Schweiz und durch England führte.“ Sebastian Wendt: Achim von Arnim: Der tolle Invalide auf dem Fort Ratonneau: Eine Interpretation, epubli 12.12.2012, p. 4. 59

Zeit. Berühren können wir den ebensowenig als tausend mathematische Flächen irgend eine Dicke geben, woher weiß ich aber davon und kann ihn ahnden?117

In his letters, Arnim insists that a fourth dimension exists and that it is just a matter of time before humans find a way of communicating with it. It reminds of Herder’s belief. He is also convinced that humans can already sense this dimension through premonitory experiences. Arnim’s understanding of premonitions is difficult to pin down precisely (he himself, in a letter to Clemens Brentanto, calls his definition “unendlig flüchtich und zerstreut aufgesezt”118). Still, at a minimum we can say that it entails the awareness of a possible but as-yet absent time, a sense of both possibility and the metaphysical. A premonition is a visionary experience, often mediated through literature. Indeed, according to Michael Gamper, this sense of metaphysical possibility was so important among twentieth-century writers, not least Robert Musil, that it became an aesthetic principle in its own right. In fact, this idea had already been established in the eighteenth century. Gamper writes:

Dabei vermag die erzählende Literatur alternative Kausalitäten ins Werk zu setzen, die aus Produzenten- bzw. Rezipientenperspektive wiederum als eher geschlossene oder offene, als auf Eindeutigkeit angelegte und Möglichkeiten ausschließende oder als mehrdeutige oder Möglichkeiten eröffnende Kausalitäten erscheinen können.119

This notion of “alternative causalities” pertains particularly to Arnim’s work. As an imaginative intellectual reflection, his understanding of the fourth dimension cannot be flashed out mathematically. For Arnim, premonitions of the fourth dimension stood hierarchically above mathematical reasoning, entwined as it is with a religious mindset. Around 1800, Arnim presented a poetic theory of that what Fries will later describe in his philosophical texts. Unlike Fries, Arnim affirmed the possibility of communicating with metaphysical powers through poetic

117 This entry was first published in Roswitha Burwick: Achim von Arnim: Physiker und Poet, in: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jarbuch N.F. 26, 1985, p. 149f.. 118 Letter from Achim von Arnim to Stephan August Winkelmann, written between 5th of May 1803 and the middle of May (WAA 31, p. 312 - 339, p. 315). 119 Michael Gamper: Erzählen, nicht lehren!, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (eds.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 84. 60 techniques. He highlighted poetry and literature because he believed that the fourth dimension could only be grasped through premonitory visions, which in turn could be captured and conveyed through art.120 Implicitly, Arnim proposes that poetic language can establish a utopian horizon:

Ich erwähnte schon, daß ich dieses (= die vierte Dimension) durch geistige Berührung ahnde, aber alle geistige Berührung ist nur Ahndung, wenn es sich darstellen sollte den Sinnen und das geschieht in der Kunst. Warum ist ein gutes Bildniß mehr als der Mensch selbst? Wie kann der Mensch darin eine ganze Welt zeigen? Weil inso fern ihm der ideelle Pol (= das Ewige im Menschen) geöffnet der Mensch mehr umfasst als es um in aller Welt sichtbar (ist), er eröffnet allen Wesen diesen ideellen Pol; (...) wo ihnen das Beste was sie gedacht vortrit in der Annäherung zur höheren Dimension.121

This argument is not that dissimilar from Fries’s analysis in Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung, in which premonitions point to forms of infinite knowledge lodged within the finite. The difference between their positions lies in Arnim’s conviction that people can acquire this knowledge. For Arnim, communication with the fourth dimension was not just an intellectual, religious or metaphysical exercise, but is feasible within the arts. To put this differently, Arnim fought against the academic discourse concerned to distinguish scientific and religious knowledge. He did not subscribe to the view that truth could only be gained through the inductive analysis of visible and audible data. Instead, he held that the logic of truth is embedded in the fourth dimension, which is inaccessible to scientific observation and conventional sensory perception. Rather, for Arnim, it can only be grasped by way of an intellectual process, which can then be depicted within arts. Roswitha Burwick puts this in the following way:

120 „Der von Arnim angenommene multidimensionale Raum ist, wie die Untersuchungen Andermatts gezeigt haben, ein entgrenzter und unfester Raum, in dem auch Vorstellungen und Träume, Transzendentes und Transzendentales, das Geheimnisvolle, Jenseitige und Wunderbare Platz haben. Es ist der Raum der von ‚Ahndung’ inspirierten Dichtung.“ In: Hein Härtl: ‚Amazonenrepublik’ und ‚Raum von vier Dimensionen’, in: Walter Pape (ed.): Raumkonfigurationen in der Romantik, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009, p. 114. 121 GSA 03/227 quoted after Roswitha Bruwick: Physiker und Poet, p. 149f. 61

Allein dem Künstler ist es gegeben, diese zu Visionen gewordenen Ahndungen für sich und für andere zu gestalten. Wenn Herder in der Wiederkehr zeitlicher Gegebenheiten, Dauer im Wechsel erkennt und dieses Prinzip auf seine Ästhetik überträgt, kann Arnim vorbehaltlos zustimmen. Doch versteht er den Rhythmus letzlich als Oszillation von Ruhe/Nutrition und Tätigkeit, die nur durch den sie bedingenden Fermentationsprozeß möglich sind.122

Arnim’s outlook closely resembled that of the poet and doctor Stephan August Winkelmann, who wanted to prove that scientific progress is impossible without combining scientific theory and religious philosophy, that no experiment could truly succeed without transcendental imagination and speculation. According to Winkelmann, scholars need an idea of what they are looking for before they can start their analysis. Their thinking is always an aesthetic operation. As Büttner has argued:

Winkelmann will den empirischen Forschern ihre Nähe und Abhängigkeit von der Naturphilosophie klarmachen. Das gegenwärtig hohe Niveau des Naturwissens sei vor allen Dingen dem Abgleich und der wechselseitigen Befruchtung von Arbeiten auf beiderlei Abstraktionsniveaus zu verdanken.123

Although Arnim’s interpretation of Ahndung differs slightly from Winkelmann’s, for both figures premonition provided a counter-model to mathematical thinking. Arnim describes how premonitory insight (Erkenntnis) functions as a form of metamorphosis.124 Understanding is communication with nature, he expands, through which the subject undergoes a process of combining new knowledge. As such, understanding is a constant intellectual exchange. Arnim

122 Roswitha Burwick: Dichtung und Malerei bei Achim von Arnim, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989, p. 250. 123 Heinz Härtl: „Amazonenrepublik“ und „Raum von vier Dimensionen“, in: Walter Pape (ed.): Raumkonfigurationen in der Romantik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2009, p. 111-121, here: p. 114. 124 Achim von Arnim: Landhausleben. Erzählungen. Metamorpohosen der Gesellschaft. Sonntags-Erzählung der Landprediger, in: Achim von Arnim: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 15, Berlin 1846, p. 3. 62 held that subjective thought processes are akin to the growth of organisms, which are born, mature, and die, changing constantly.125 For Winkelmann, Ahndung is the process of recognizing God’s infinitude and the relativity of knowledge. Roswirtha Burwick sums up his perspective:

Wissenschaft, Kunst und Politik als “freye Geistesthätigkeiten” verstanden, bauen auf, “drängen vorwärts”, dienen der Weiterentwicklung des menschlichen Geistes, die auch im Fortschritt der Gesellschaft und ihrer Staatsformen reflektiert ist. Systeme dürfen nicht zu “entgültigen Wahrheiten” ideologisiert, sondern müssen von den nachfolgenden Generationen als dynamische historische Prozesse verstanden und weitergedacht werden.126

Arnim’s understanding of knowledge is premised on the infinite exchange between nature and ideas, as manifested in the unstoppable development of the human mind (Bildung) and contingency of truth. Arnim calls this epistemological dialectic Ahndung:

Das Princip aller Bildung heist in meinem System Ahndung, die Metamorphose wäre ohne dieses Princip nicht vorhanden, eben sowenig ihr Gesetz die Combination, ohne diese Ahndung hätten wir weiter nichts gewiß als was uns Kant’s metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft geben, aus welche Standpunkte ich mich durch mein erstes Buch die Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen zu befreien suchte, weil mich diese Tiefe ohne Grund, diese unendliche Nichtigkeit schreckt. Ich kann es nicht begreifen, daß Kant gedichtet wie seine Bekannte versichern, wie hat er je auf einen Reim hoffen können?127

125 This is also articulated here. See: Achim von Arnim: Landhausleben. Erzählungen. Metamorpohosen der Gesellschaft. Sonntags-Erzählung der Landprediger, in: Achim von Arnim: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 15, Berlin 1846, p. 3. 126 Roswirtha Burwick: „Der Kreis des Wissens dreht sich wandelnd um...“ - Arnims kulturpolitisches Programm in den Berliner Jahren. Die „Kleinen Schriften“ 1809-1814, in: Ulfert Rickels (ed.): Universelle Entwürfe - Integration - Rückzug: Arnims Berliner Zeit (1809-1814), Wiepersdorfer Kolloquium der Internationalen Arnim- Gesellschaft, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2000, p. 4-5. 127 Letter from Achim von Arnim to Stephan August Winkelmann, written between 5th of May 1803 and the middle of May (WAA 31, 236-238, 237). 63

The argument is complicated but eye-opening in that it articulates what is centrally at stake in Arnim’s theory of premonitions. Arnim is afraid of a world abandoned by metaphysical belief; this is why he criticizes Kant and his mathematical and rational analysis, which he presents as lacking “a deeper reason.” To be precise, Arnim sees mathematics as an artificial language of arbitrary symbols. For Arnim, mathematical thinking threatens religious beliefs. This is why the human capacity for premonitions is important to him: it is able to connect natural phenomena with a transcendental logic. His account is closely linked to the “aesthetics of the marvelous” put forward by Romantic writers as Tieck, Novalis, and Winkelmann.128 As Heinz Härtl writes:

Mit der Aufzeichnung Arnims, in der er über einen Raum von „mehr als drey Dimensionen“ spekuliert, konvergiert insbesondere ein etwa zeitgleiches Briefkonzept an Stephan August Winkelmann, das den Terminus „Ahndung“ vor Winkelmanns Begriff der „Metamorphose“ privilegiert. Der von Arnim angenommene multidimensionale Raum ist (…) ein entgrenzter und unfester Raum, in dem auch Vorstellungen und Träume, Transzendentes und Transzendentales, das Geheimnisvolle, Jenseitige und Wunderbare Platz haben. Es ist der Raum der von „Ahndung“ inspirierten Dichtung.129

A scholar specializing in Arnim, Härtl correctly sums up his understanding of premonitions. For Arnim, premonitory experiences take place in the fourth dimension, which is also the place of literature, a transcendental site in which the marvelous moment is able to evolve. Here again, Arnim’s concept of Ahndung is bound up with the Romantic poetics. Literature is the space in which the fourth dimension can be imagined. For Arnim, the world’s changeability is already proof of God’s existence. Premonitions allow humans to glimpse the dialectic of the fourth dimension, to gain a momentary insight into reality’s hidden meaning. This can only be achieved in literature. Indeed, after 1800, Arnim came to privilege a literary

128 „Poetik des Wunderbaren“; see: Stefan Scherer: Über Shakspeare’s Behandlung des Wunderbaren. Witzige Spielgemälde, De Gruyter, Berlin 2003. p. 107. 129 Heinz Härtl: „Amazonenrepublik“ und „Raum von vier Dimensionen“, in: Walter Pape (ed.): Raumkonfigurationen in der Romantik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2009, p. 111-121, here: p. 114. 64 over a scientific approach, intellectual over experimental inquiry, dreaming over seeing. In a letter to Brentano, Arnim states:

Was ist Ahndung […] anders als das Kind, was, um erzeugt zu warden, des Mannes Liebe zum Weibe führt, nicht im Mutterleibe allein drängt es, strebt es, schon im Manne sehnt es sich zu seiner höheren Bildung, so ist das Belebende der Welt ganz eigentlig das Zukünftige, und wie wir sind unser Zustand ist wie das Kind im Mutterschooße oder im Hirne des göttigen Vaters (Dies die Erklärung der alten Mythe von der Geburt der Minerva) die Gedanken sind was zukünftig lebt, darum ist der Gedanken [sic!] das heiligste und höchste der Welt, aus dem Schoosse des Mannes in den Schooß des Weibes vom Schoosse des Weibes in den Schooß der Erde und so in ewiger Kette fort wandeln wir eingeschlossen und befreyt: die Befreyung das Freudige liegt in jedem Steigen also im Uebergange, sey es vom Mann zum Weibe, sey es vom Weibe zur Erde, so ist das Leben das Süsseste als Uebergang betrachtet, aber das Schreckligste wer sich daran anklammern möchte, als wenn ein Mann das Vergnügen der Liebe durch Zurückhaltung verlängern wollte. […] Meine Art des Lebens verhält sich wie Traum zu That […].130

As Arnim sees it, the right “art of living” combines “acting” and “dreaming.” He identifies thoughts and dreams as the basis for future action. In our present thoughts, the seed of progress is intertwined with dreams and fantasies. Together, these shape what is to come. In this light, artistic modes of thinking emerge as prognostic, even prophetic. Arnim broaches the concept of Ahndung in another theoretical text, the preface to the novel Der Kronenwächter (1817). Here, he elucidates his understanding of both literature and the function of a poet. He connects literary writing with the possibility of entering the fourth dimension, which he had already described in his letters. In addition, he approaches the fourth dimension in terms of his understanding of history. Arnim’s argument is tricky: history may seem like an accumulation of facts. In reality, though, it is the inscrutable result of uncountable

130 Letter from Achim von Arnim to Clemens Brentano from the 24th, 26th and 27th of December 1803 (WAA 31, p. 317 f.). 65 actions, decisions, and utopian schemes, which might have been conceived hundreds, even thousands of years before later particular historical events are realized. For Arnim, then, the world results from fortuitous and opaque historical turns. It is run by a mysterious force, which he names the “hidden stealth of the world” (die Heimlichkeit der Welt).131 As a consequence, we cannot grasp the truth of history in symbolic, semantically precise, and determinate language. History can only be conjured up in a poet’s premonitory speech, in and through which truth projects itself as a vague idea, as a sensory feeling. To put this differently, the human mind is unable to explore obscure periods of history unless it detaches itself from an objective, factual approach and delves into fiction instead. Through the fictive sphere one can access the fourth dimension and thereby catch hints of an otherwise inscrutable past. Arnim adopts a distinctive position on historical facts (much like Heinrich von Kleist, as we will see in chapter 3). For Arnim, facts are obscurely intertwined with the past. A set of facts, however, does not provide a transparent and calculable chain of events. Aggregated historical facts are rather an unintelligible, arbitrary mass. Causation might have began hundreds or even thousands years ago—it is impossible for the historical to tell. In additional, historical facts subtly infuse and color the present. Indeed, facts, as obscure particles of history, do not disclose themselves meaningfully: they are not transparent entities that can be unpacked and elucidated. They appear only as fragments of the past and can be decoded only partially through erratic, poetic forms of expression. Transforming facts into literature is literature’s responsibility. The task is that of making dead voices audible. In Arnim’s perspective, history and its traces are only approachable through fragments; historical periods will never present themselves in coherent wholes. As Arnim stresses here, the historian must draw on their “inner view” or “inner intuition” if they are to sense the past:

Sie (die Geschichte, TK) liegt der Eigenheit des Menschen zu nahe, als sie den Zeitgenossen deutlich würde, aber die Geschichte in ihrer höchsten Wahrheit gibt den Nachkommen ahndungsreiche Bilder und wie die Eindrücke der Finger an harten Felsen im Volke die Ahndung einer seltsamen Urzeit erwecken, so tritt aus jenen

131 „Es gab zu allen Zeiten eine Heimlichkeit der Welt, die mehr wert in Höhe und Tiefe der Weisheit und Lust, als alles, was in der Geschichte laut geworden.“ Quoted after: Claudia Nitschke: Utopie und Krieg bei Ludwig Achim von Arnim, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2004, p. 300. 66

Zeichen in der Geschichte das vergessene Wirken der Geister, die der Erde einst menschlich angehörten, in einzelnen, erleuchteten Betrachtungen, nie in der vollständigen Übersicht eines ganzen Horizonts vor unsre innere Anschauung.132

Behind every fact lies a chain of past events that structure present reality. Surprisingly, Arnim’s understanding of history closely resembles Moritz’s. In a text on ancient Rome, Moritz posits a similar conception of intuitive connections among the past periods and the present:

Unsre lebhafte Theilnahme an der Lebensweise und an den Schicksalen eines nicht mehr vorhandenen Volks, läßt uns ein geheimes Band ahnden, wodurch die Nachwelt mit der Vorwelt, gleichwie die lebende Menschheit untereinander, verknüpft ist (…).133

Fiction is necessary in reconstructing history. For Arnim, the obscure voice of the past can only be heard by fantastic, visionary means. Literary forms of expression are the only way in which history can be brought back to life. In Arnim’s perspective, the poet has the authority not only to establish visionary insights into past, but to carry these over into present and the future. Ironically, this is possible by using techniques such as lies, visionary thought, and fictionalization. Metaphysical truths reside in the poet’s lies. Indeed, Arnim stresses how, in comparison to scientific approaches, poetry is the proper means for exploring “the highest form of truth:”

Es gab zu allen Zeiten eine Heimlichkeit der Welt, die mehr wert in Höhe und Tiefe der Weisheit und Lust, als alles, was in der Geschichte laut geworden. Sie liegt der Eigenheit des Menschen zu nahe, als sie den Zeitgenossen deutlich würde, aber die Geschichte in ihrer höchsten Wahrheit gibt den Nachkommen ahndungsreiche Bilder und wie die Eindrücke der Finger an harten Felsen im Volke die Ahndung einer seltsamen Urzeit erwecken, so tritt aus jenen Zeichen in der Geschichte das

132 Ludwig-Achim von Arnim: Die Kronenwächter. Berthold’s erstes und zweites Leben: ein Roman, Maurersche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1817, p. 4. 133 Karl Philipp Moritz: Aνθουσα oder Roms Alterthümer. Ein Buch für die Menschheit, bei Friedrich Maurer, Berlin 1797, p. 2-3. 67

vergessene Wirken der Geister, die der Erde einst menschlich angehörten, in einzelnen, erleuchteten Betrachtungen, nie in der vollständigen Übersicht eines ganzen Horizonts von unsere innere Anschauung. Wir nennen diese Einsicht, wenn sie sich mitteilen läßt, Dichtung, sie ist aus Vergangenheit in Gegenwart, aus Geist und Wahrheit geboren. Ob mehr Stoff empfangen, als Geist ihn belebt hat, läßt sich nicht unterscheiden, der Dichter erscheint ärmer oder reicher, als er ist, wenn er nur von einer dieser Seiten betrachtet wird; ein irrender Verstand mag ihn der Lüge zeihen in seiner höchsten Wahrheit, wir wissen, was wir an ihm haben und daß die Lüge eine schöne Pflicht des Dichters ist.134

Arnim’s conclusion is revolutionary: the poet senses higher truth by introducing “premonitory pictures” (ahndungsreiche Bilder). Arnim calls this process “poetry.” To an outsider, the poet might seem mistaken, their productions mere fictions. Arnim, stresses, however, how the poet’s fictions, indeed their lies, articulate a higher truth. Through the power of imagination, the poet captures more of the truth than a fact-oriented historian, who mistakingly thinks that he can survey history through cold, carefully reasoned analyses of factuality. Here, Arnim accords an elevated role to fiction and imagination, which are presented as a means of transcendental analysis. Poetry allows humans to explore “strange past time” (die Ahndung einer seltsamen Urzeit).135 Interestingly, in concluding the preface of Der Kronenwächter, Arnim calls the poet a seer or prophet. This inspired figure can make sense out of history through “a higher form of seeing.” For Armin, higher truths can be experienced through the medium of poetry:

Nennen wir die heiligen Dichter auch Seher und ist das Dichten ein Sehen höherer Art zu nennen, so läßt sich die Geschichte mit der Kristallkugel im Auge zusammenstellen, die nicht selbst sieht, aber dem Auge notwendig ist, um die

134 Ludwig-Achim von Arnim: Die Kronenwächter. Berthold’s erstes und zweites Leben: ein Roman, Maurersche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1817, p. 5. 135 Arnim: Die Kronenwächter, p. 4. 68

Lichtwirkung zu sammeln und zu vereinen; ihr Wesen ist Klarheit, Reinheit und Farbenlosigkeit.136

It is no coincidence that these themes should appear in the preface to Der Kronenwächter. The first part of the novel is titled Die Nacht zum Neujahrstag 1475 in Waiblingen. It tells the story of the Staufer family and its two male heirs, Berthold and Anton. Both boys fail to lead the family. Although Arnim based much of the work on the Chronicon Waiblingense, the narrative is profoundly mystical and organized like a Romantic fairy tale. Because of this, many readers did not understand the narrative. Despite its obscurity, von Arnim held that this technique of combining facts and fiction, poetry and historiography was the only strategy through he could thoroughly, truthfully, and authentically confront history. The meaning of historical development is not accessible to analytic approaches, he believed, but can only be grasped in “premonitory pictures” (ahndungsreiche Bilder) that distill the “essence” of history. In the preface of the novel, Arnim makes the following remarks on his poetics:

Die Geschichten, welche hier neben der Karte von Schwaben vor uns liegen, berühren weder unser Leben, noch unsere Zeit, wohl aber eine frühere, in der sich mit unvorhergesehener Gewalt der spätere und jetzige Zustand geistiger Bildung in Deutschland entwickelte. Das Bemühen, diese Zeit in aller Wahrheit der Geschichte aus Quellen kennen zu lernen, entwickelte diese Dichtung, die sich keineswegs für eine geschichtliche Wahrheit gibt, sondern für eine geahndete Füllung der Lücken in der Geschichte, für ein Bild im Rahmen der Geschichte.137

Arnim’s turn from the natural sciences to literature can be explained by way of reference to this peculiarly paradoxical understanding of truth and fiction. “Wit” (Wiz) and an “extraordinary gift for combination” (außerordentliche Kombinationsgabe) distinguish not only the poet, who creates fiction; they are also enrolled by the scientist, who established truth through experiments and prior acts of imagination. Therefore, Arnim makes the point that, when it comes to

136 Achim von Arnim: Die Kronenwächter: Berthold’s erstes und zweites Leben, In der Maurerschen Buchhandlung, Berlin 1817, p. 5-6. 137 Achim von Arnim: Die Kronenwächter: Berthold’s erstes und zweites Leben, In der Maurerschen Buchhandlung, Berlin 1817, p. 7. 69 experimentation, a “lucky finding” (glückliches Finden) is made possible by a “lucky invention” (glückliches Erfinden).138 In Arnim’s understanding, fact and fiction become intertwined:

Das Spielen mit Gedanken und Versuchen hat das meiste Neue entdeckt, aber es gehört dazu ein Geist, der ganz beym Spiele sein und ganz darüber stehen kann, in jedes Spiel mischt sich, wenn es unschuldig getrieben wird, die Ahndung, wo aber diese hervortritt, da ermüden die Kinder und die Weisen werden wach.139

The literary scholar Michael Gerten has also emphasized how, for Arnim, scientific inventions result from a particular genius, much as poetic achievements draw on the capacity for premonitory experience:

Armin glaubte allerdings nicht an eine erlernbare wissenschaftliche Logik der Entdeckung, sondern vertritt hier eher den Geniegedanken im Sinne einer unbeabsichtigten und möglichst unreflektierten ‚Kunst’ des Findens und Entdeckens (...). 140

In fact, Arnim defines poetry as a language, through which higher truths can be fathomed. At the same time, he believes in divine inspiration and the poet’s receptivity to metaphysical epiphanies through premonitory experiences. As Martin Neuhold puts it, poetry is based on “unconsciousness and nescience” (Unbewußtsein und Unwissenheit):

So spricht er die für sein Inspirationskonzept notwendige Rezeptivität des Künstlers mitunter als das „Ahndungsvermögen“ an, „ohne das aber auch nicht der kleinste wahre Vers gemacht werden kann (...).“ Im Einklang mit der Tradition der

138 GSA 213, 6; quoted after Roswitha Burwick: Dichtung und Malerei bei Achim von Arnim, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989, p. 42. 139 GSA 213,6; quoted after Roswitha Burwick: Dichtung und Malerei, p. 42. 140 Michael Gerten: „Alles im Einzelnen ist gut, alles verbunden ist groß.“ Ort und Methode der Naturforschung bei Achim von Arnim, in: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Klaus Stein, Michael Gerten (eds.): „Fessellos durch die Systeme“, Frühromantisches Nachdenken im Umfeld von Arnim, Ritter und Schelling, Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt 1997, p. 91-143, here: p. 118-119. 70

Inspirationspoetik steht auch seine Auffassung, daß der „Boden“ der Dichter „das Unbewußtsein und die Unwissenheit“ seien.141

As we have seen, Armin not only proposed a poetics of premonitions, but also experimented in literature himself, creating narratives that combine historiography and fiction. His Kronwächter is an attempt to telling truth through poetry while rejecting an objectifying approach. Armin was not especially interested in defining future-oriented premonitions. He saw premonition as a practice of truth telling that exploits poetic modes of making meaning. By emphasizing the epistemological power of premonition and literature, he criticized deductive approaches to establishing truth, which were increasingly dominating the natural sciences. Accordingly, Armin turned away from physics so as to author premonitory literary works. He hoped to cultivate a poetic genius in his own soul, through which he might have controlled and expressed epiphanic wisdom. As we will see, Arnim’s understanding of literature pervades the other works affirming the power of premonitions that I go on to discuss in the remainder of this dissertation. To grasp the source from which literary discussions and depictions of premonition draw their raw material, I now confront case studies of premonitory experiences, which appear quite frequently in anthropologies published around 1800. One of the most important sources is Karl Philipp Moritz’s Magazin für Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, which is my central point of focus in the next chapter.

141 Martin Neuhold: Achim von Arnims Kunsttheorie und sein Roman „Die Kronenwächter“ im Kontext ihrer Epoche, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1994, p. 29. 71

Chapter 2: Psychology

Karl Philipp Moritz: Anthropology as a Resource for Premonitory Experiences Karl Philipp Moritz (1756–1793) was one of the major eighteenth-century anthropologists to think and write about premonition. He approached the topic from two perspectives: first, that of an anthropologist interested in investigating premonitions’ psychological impact. Second, he approached premonition as a writer and aestheticist, concerned to understand the logic behind premonitory experiences so as to compare them with depictions of premonition in art and literature. As both an anthropologist and writer, Moritz was eager to analyze the ways in which the imagination influences human cognition. Indeed, he was convinced that there must be a deep connection between the prognostic premonitions experienced by ordinary people and artists’ creative premonitions. In pursuing that connection, he clearly distanced himself from a received Christian understanding of the human mind. Instead, he adopted the perspective of a scholar. His aim was to investigate the imagination and other psychological phenomena without recourse to morality or religion. Moritz’s understanding of premonition supplemented Arnim’s perspective. Whereas Arnim explored premonitions’ relation to science, focusing on its capacities for capturing truth, Moritz investigated their psychological background. At the same time, both authors assumed that great writers must be inspired by invisible forces before the process of creativity can begin. Differences and resonances between the two thinkers run through this chapter. Moritz’s arguments are especially important for the present study because they establish an analogy between premonitory visions undergone by insane people and speculative imaginations fostered by creative writers. He discussed the former in Magazin für Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde (1783-1793), which presents a number of case studies; he explored the latter in a short treatise on beauty titled Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (1788). Although Moritz did not explicitly set out the connections between insane and artistic modes of premonition, both of these texts explore the similarities and analogies between aesthetic writings and psychological case studies. Crucially for my discussion, they do so without enforcing the ethical standards normative in the eighteenth century. My purpose is to clarify the analogies that Moritz drew between pathology and poetry by contrasting his aesthetic and psychological texts.

72

Moritz proposed that the psychological processes at work in the visionary experiences of dreamers and madmen are comparable with the poetic imagination. Moritz’s journal Magazin investigates many case studies in which ordinary people describe their experiences of premonitions and visionary dreams. He then compares these accounts with the psychological processes behind creativity. In the Magazin, Moritz is not primarily interested in whether some ‘chosen’ people truly have a prognostic capacity. His focus is rather the phenomenology of premonition: the ways in which premonitions are experienced and understood. Accordingly, the Magazin presents obscure psychological case studies for theoretical discussion in an anthropological and philosophical register. In so doing, Moritz is uninterested in passing moral judgment. Rather, he seeks to highlight the relevance of premonitory experiences for the disinterested scientific exploration of human cognition and how it shapes creativity. Andreas Gailus unpacks Moritz’s anthropological project in similar terms:

Moritz no longer saw the human mind as an atemporal substance with universal features; for him it was a singular constellation of ideas, which an individual had acquired over time. The study of the mind, therefore, had to follow two paths of inquiry simultaneously: to attend to the behavioral oddities and idiosyncrasies that characterize a specific human being, and to make these features legible by tracing them back through time to the moment of their formation. (…) Both aspects depict a human being as a singular case, and present the case history as the form best suited for revealing the particularity of the self through the narration of specific experiences and detours that comprise a life.142

To understand Moritz’s interest in premonitions, it is important to analyze their role and significance in the Magazin. Before exploring the key ideas about premonitions presented in the Magazin, though, it is crucial that first I show how he approaches the topic in Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, for this treatise suggests why Moritz would go on to dedicate so much space to premonitions in his later journal.

142 Andreas Gailus: Anton Reiser, Case History, and the Emergence of Empirical Psychology, in: David E. Wellbery, Judith Ryan (eds.): A New History of German Literature, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2004, p. 409-10. 73

Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen is a short essayistic work, which Moritz finished writing while being abroad in Italy. In Southern Europe he met writers such as Goethe and Arnim, with whom he discussed the major aesthetic issues of the day. A result of these conversations, the text reflects Moritz’s fundamental understanding of how beauty is produced in art. It also explains how premonitory visions participate in the creative processes of writing, painting, and composition. For my purposes, it is not necessary to unpack the essay in all its detail. Nevertheless, it is important to pinpoint how the essay depicts the differences in how humans represent or practice forms of moral nobility and goodness on the one hand, and how they create beauty on the other. For Moritz, the process by which humans depict moral nobility and goodness begins with a spectator confronting nature and then moves towards imagination (when one sees a noble deed, for example, one then uses this external example to form an image or understanding of nobility in one’s mind). The creation of beauty, in contrast, does not depend on empirical encounters with nature. Instead, it has its roots in the soul: beautiful works of art, literature, or music begin with the imagination, which projects a beautiful entity independently of any external influence. This inner confabulation of beauty is then externalized as it is shaped into a concrete picture or work, which reflects the initial, inner image of the beautiful thing. Moritz’s central point is this: unlike depictions of nobility and the good, which humans derive from the external world, humans imagine beauty autonomously, within themselves. This interior quality they then recreate by crafting art. As Moritz puts it:

Die eigentliche Nachahmung des Schönen unterscheidet sich also zuerst von der moralischen Nachahmung des Guten und Edlen dadurch, dass sie, ihrer Natur nach, streben muss, nicht, wie diese, in sich hinein, sondern aus sich her zu bilden.143

Seen in relation to other aesthetic theories circulating around 1788, Moritz’s point here is singular and revolutionary because it strongly emphasizes the autonomy of the human genius in the production of beautiful art.144 Unreliant on beauty in the world, the artist needs not

143 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 9. 144 This assumption is shared by many scholars. Some of them even see in Moritz’s aesthetics the anticipation of Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical views. „Tzvetan Todorov, in his 1977 Théories du symbole, goes as far as claiming 74 mimetically recreate it, as ancient Greek aesthetic philosophies would suggest. Rather, for Moritz, the artist derives beauty from within their own soul, through contemplation, before imitating this interiority in a sensual work of art.145 Moritz’s aesthetics, then, turns towards the inner soul, a psychological turn. In a way, the artist creates a separate cosmos, defined by beauty, which does without the world and its rules. Such autonomy stems from a basic human drive, which Moritz emphatically names “vigor” or “vitality” (Tathkraft). It is this drive that makes the human mind unique and free, at least in contrast to all of the other species on earth. Moritz continues:

Der Sinn aber für das höchste Schöne in dem harmonischen Bau des Ganzen, das die vorstellende Kraft des Menschen nicht umfasst, liegt unmittelbar in der Tathkraft selbst, die nicht ehr ruhen kann, bis sie das, was in ihr schlummert, wenigstens irgend einer der vorstellenden Kräfte genähert hat. - Sie greift daher in der Dinge Zusammenhang, und was sie sah, will sie der Natur selbst ähnlich, zu einem eigenmächtig für sich bestehenden Ganzen bilden. - Die Realität der Dinge, deren Wesen und Wirklichkeit eben in ihrer Einzelheit besteht, widerstrebt ihr lange, bis sie das innre Wesen, in die Erscheinung aufgelöst, sich zu eigen macht, und eine eigne Welt sich schafft, worin gar nichts Einzelnes mehr statt findet, sondern jedes Ding in seiner Art ein für sich bestehendes Ganze ist.146

that Moritz’s writings seem to contain the seed of the entire aesthetic doctrine of romanticism’. We know Tieck, Wackenroder, both Humboldts, as well as Schelling, Jean Paul and Schlegel visited Moritz’s lectures in Berlin. Parallels to Nietzsche’s thought have been pointed out by Thomas Saine, whose 1971 monograph interprets Moritz’s sublimation of ‚Tatkraft’ into ‚Bildungskraft’ as analogous to Nietzsche's early asethetics: ‚Nur in der Erscheinung, unter der zart gebildeten Oberfläche des schönen Kunstwerks, sind die gefährlich-lebendigen‚ dionysischen’ Elementarmächte gebändigt und geborgen, von denen das Werk aber gerade deswegen seine Kraft und seine Lebendigkeit erhält. Vollendete Bildung ist immer zugleich auch vermittelte Gegenwart des Ungeheuren und Unförmigen.“ See: Edgar Landgraf: The Psychology of Aesthetic Autonomy. The Signature of the Signature of Beauty, in: Anthony Krupp (ed.): Karl Philipp Moritz, Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2010, p. 206. 145 Scholars describe this approach as a compromise between a classicist understanding and the development of a „Genieästhetik“. See: Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile: „Bereits im Titel des Aufsatzes zieht Moritz im Begriff der ‚bildenden Nachahmung’ zwei Theorietraditionen zusammen: - Das Nachahmungspostulat des Klassizismus, das besagt, dass Kunst in der Nachahmung der Natur bzw. seit der Renaissance vor allem der Antike besteht und - den Geniegedanken des Sturm und Drang, der einen Gegenbegriff gegen das starre Nachahmungspostulat darstellt, und nach dem der schaffende Künstler als ein originärer ‚zweiter Schöpfer’ aufzufassen ist.“ Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile: Die schöne Republik: Ästhetische Moderne in Berlin im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006, p. 65. 146 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 9. 75

Human vitality, its “active power” (Thathkraft), reconfigures the received causal relationship between the subject, the singular “I,” and the world. On account of its Tathkraft, Moritz suggests, the subject is sovereign and autonomous; in this, it resembles the power of nature. Tathkraft is therefore a faculty of cognition, which is more important than two other such faculties: the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft) and that of reasoning (Denkkraft).147 Why is Tathkraft so significant? Addressing this question requires understanding the importance that Moritz accorded the human mind and its influence on perception. Moritz writes that both faculties—imagination and reasoning—always rely on the external world, as articulated through the human senses: ordinary ideas are based on what we see and what we hear. Thatkraft is constitutively different in that it has to do with the human mind’s power to create autonomous ideas according to its own logic. This has groundbreaking implications: Moritz argues that human imagination, at its most accomplished, is as creative as God. For this reason, Moritz presents Thathkraft as man’s highest faculty. It signals much more than merely humans’ ability to imitate beautiful things. Indeed, it points to the human capacity to first create beauty, independently from the external world. The scholar Catherine J. Minter agrees on this:

Über die bildende Nachahmung is a difficult essay because it is written in a highly abstract way; however, a number of concrete points can nevertheless be extrapolated from it. First, Moritz believes that artists should imitate nature, or else works of art that themselves embody nature (typically, classical ones); second, he conceives of the creative process as a largely unconscious one in which the artist acts as a vessel for a higher power that works through him; finally, he believes that art improves over the course of time, just as there is constant regeneration and refinement in nature and the universe.148

147 „Die Natur konnte aber den Sinn für das höchste Schöne nur in die Thatkraft pflanzen, und durch dieselbe erst mittelbar einen Abdruck dieses höchsten Schönen der Einbildungskraft fassbar, dem Auge sichtbar, dem Ohre hörbach, machen; weil der Horizont der Thatkraft mehr umfasst, als der äussre Sinn, und Einbildungs- und Denkkraft fassen kann. In der Thatkraft liegen nämlich stets die Anlässe und Anfänge zu so vielen Begriffen, als die Denkkraft nicht auf einmal einander unterordnen; die Einbildungskraft nicht auf einmal neben einander stellen, und der äussre Sinn noch weniger auf einmal in der Wirklichkeit ausser sich fassen kann.“ Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, p. 21-22. 148 Catherine J. Minter: The Mind-body Problem in German Literature, 1770-1830: Wezel, Moritz, and Jean Paul, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2002, p. 111. 76

Moritz’s argument indicates the resonances among Arnim’s, Herder’s, and Moritz’s understandings of the process of literary creation. For each thinker, the genius poet is inspired by an ‘invisible hand,’ a metaphysical force. Significantly for this chapter, Über die bildende Nachahmung both makes recourse to psychological experiences and embeds the autonomous creative processes in the context of premonition. Moritz combines the idea of Thathkraft with premonitions’ cognitive dimensions. For him, a premonition is a vague feeling, an emotional image that forms within the subject. It shows a beautiful piece of art before it is realized through the process of artistic creation. Before it comes to consciousness through premonitory mediation, the artwork exists in the realm of the unconscious. Furthermore, if a beautiful thing is to be effective and pleasing, it must also be contradictory and incomplete. This is because the consciousness, the ultimate source of the artwork, is itself fragmentary, mysterious, and opaque.149 Making an argument that closely resembles Arnim’s aesthetic theory, Moritz suggests that neither works of art nor premonitions can be a closed system. This is because both the human understanding and the world are not limited, fixed, and finite, but rather contingent, infinite and enigmatic. Instead of turning in on itself to make a self-contained world, if it is truly to impress the spectator, a beautiful artwork must vividly reflect the world’s arbitrariness and restlessness. Caroline Domenghino emphasizes how:

there is always an element of irrationality to his creating, because he (the artist, TK) receives his “form-instruction” as a dark, unconscious premonition, from which it follows that he cannot “know or intend the artwork in its perfection,” as Edgar Landgraf astutely notes, “yet he feels that he has to do what he is doing.” (...) The creating genius does not act autonomously in creating autonomous works of art, but is in part a passive subject acted upon by Tatkraft.150

149 He underlines this notion at the end of his essay and says that beauty must reflect not only salvation but also the dialectic between forming and destroying, the beginning and the ending: „So giebt das Schöne, in welches die Zerstöhrung selbst sich wieder auflöst, uns gleichsam ein Vorgefühl von jener großen Harmonie, in welche Bildung und Zerstöhrung einst Hand in Hand, über gehn. Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, p. 50. 150 Domenghino: Knowing without Knowing, p. 139. 77

To realize the artwork’s autonomy and fragmentary beauty, the artist must be guided by a dark premonitory vitality (“dunkelahnende Thatkraft”).151 Achieving higher truth requires that the artist connects with the fourth dimension in a moment of premonition. Accordingly, Moritz writes:

Je lebhafter spiegelnd nun das Organ von der dunkelahnenden Thatkraft, durch die unterscheidende Denkkraft, bis zu dem hellsehenden Auge, und deutlich vernehmenden Ohre, wird; um desto vollständiger und lebendiger werden zwar die Begriffe, aber um destomehr verdrängen sie sich auch, und schliessen einander aus. - Wo sie sich also am wenigsten einander ausschliessen, und ihrer am meisten neben einander bestehen können, das kann nur da seyn, wo sie am unvollständigsten sind, wo bloß ihre Anfänge oder ersten Anlässe zusammentreffen, die eben durch ihr Mangelhaftes und Unvollständiges, in sich selber den immerwährenden, unwiderstehlichen Reiz bilden, der sie zur vollständigen Wirklichkeit bringt.152

At this juncture, it is worth recalling that Herder puts forward a similar idea, writing: “Ahnung der Zukunft ist ein dunkles Gefühl; und je dunkler es ist, oft um so mächtiger, so stärker.”153 Although Moritz’s conception is clearly cognate with this, he puts particular emphasis on aesthetics and fragmentary beauty. For him, genius’s premonitions are all the more vivid and impressive for being mysterious. A beautiful masterpiece must therefore be opaque, fragmentary, and incomplete at the levels of both form and content, for in this way it can affect the spectator with all the intensity of a dark, inchoate premonition. This also means that there is a clear hierarchy between the discrete stages of artistic creation in Moritz’s account. The emotional impulse, the premonitory epiphany, comes first and is most important. The creation of the masterpiece itself is secondary in both sequence and value. The chronology of the creative process is highly important for Moritz. The unconscious, conceived as a mysterious and uncanny sphere of the soul, allows an artist to have a premonition

151 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 18. 152 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 23. 153 Johann Gottfried von Herder: Vom Wissen und Ahnen, in: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, vol. 7, Gotta’sche Buchhandlung, Thüringen 1807, p. 80. 78 of a future masterpiece. This is then realized through the creative will, Thatkraft, and inner imagination of beauty of the artist’s mind. A premonition of beauty, in Moritz’s conception, is as unique and autonomous as God’s creation. It follows its own rules and assumes its own distinct forms. Above all, premonitions of beauty do not result from an intellectual process, what Kant would term the human power of reasoning (“Denkkraft”).154 On the contrary, premonitions suddenly arise and change through the vicissitudes of inner illumination. Illumination, for Moritz, takes the form of an unconscious burst of feeling (“Gefühl der thätigen Kraft”), a dark premonition of the mind, which abruptly appears before the soul (“in dunkler Ahndung, auf einmal vor die Seele tritt”).155 It then guides the artist’s creative decisions like a ghost, spirit, or invisible hand. The masterpiece, then, is already present in the artist’s initial premonition, before the act of its realization (“vor seinem wirklichen Daseyn”).156 Moritz expands:

Da nun aber jene grossen Verhältnisse, in deren völligen Umfange eben das Schöne liegt, nicht mehr unter das Gebiet der Denkkraft fallen, so kann auch der lebendige Begriff von der bildenden Nachahmung des Schönen, nur im Gefühl der thätigen Kraft, die es hervorbringt, im ersten Augenblick der Entstehung statt finden, wo das Werk, als schon vollendet, durch alle Grade seines allmähligen Werdens, in dunkler Ahndung, auf einmal vor die Seele tritt, und in diesem Moment der ersten Erzeugung gleichsam vor seinem wirklichen Daseyn, da ist; wodurch alsdann auch jener unnennbare Reiz entsteht, welcher das schaffende Genie zur immerwährenden Bildung treibt.157

This argument is singular and revolutionary. It proposes that the artist—Moritz is referring here to the artist as a genius—functions as a transcendental medium for metaphysical forces. The artist foresees a masterpiece just as God’s creativity projected natural beauty from its own nature. The artist is struck by a premonition in a moment of sudden illumination. Although Moritz uses different terms, his arguments closely resemble those made by Herder and Arnim.

154 Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena, Verlag von Leopold Voss, Berlin 1878, p. 131. 155 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 23. 156 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, p. 23. 157 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, p. 25. 79

All three thinkers thought that a poet’s premonition is a blurry message sent to the genius artist by a metaphysical force. Beauty stands for itself; it is autonomous.158 For this reason, it cannot be built by the intellect (Denkkraft) or imagination (Einbildungskraft) alone, but must draw on dark, unconsciously received feelings.159 As in Arnim’s poetics, for Moritz the genius artist reaches a higher, uncanny sphere through the process of art-making. In fact, Moritz’s aesthetic theory closely resembles Arnim’s poetics of the fourth dimension. In creating beauty, the artist interacts with the fourth dimension. Drawing on this uncanny, transcendental experience, they can present their readers, viewers, or listeners with the possibility of different worlds and different times.160 (As Wolfgang Hogrebe has shown, this conception can be compared to Musil’s “sense of possibility.”161) Arnim conceives of the realm of truth in terms of the fourth dimension. Moritz, in contrast, terms this transcendental, enlightening sphere the “grand whole.” In obscurely feeling and emotionally reflecting this higher totality, the artist receives dark premonitions:

Von den Verhältnissen des grossen Ganzen, das uns umgiebt, treffen nämlich immer so viele in allen Berühunrungspunkten unsres Organs zusammen; dass wir dies grosse Ganze dunkel in uns fühlen, ohne es doch selbst zu seyn (...): das Organ wünscht, sich nach allen Seiten bis ins Unendliche fortzusetzen. Es will das umgebende Ganze nicht nur in sich spiegeln, sondern so weit es kann, selbst dies umgebende Ganze seyn.162

158 „Das Schöne will eben sowohl bloss um sein selbst willen betrachtet und empfunden, als hervorgebracht seyn.“ (Moritz: Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, p. 39) 159 Scholars emphasize how often the adjective „dark“ pops up in Moritz’ essay: „Wie so oft ist hier ein Terminus aus dem Primärtext direkt in die Sekundärliteratur eingegangen: ‚dunkel’ gehört zu den häufigsten Wörtern in der ‚Bildenden Nachahmung’ (vgl. dazu Jürgen Forhmann, ‚Bildende Nachahmung’, S. 184f.).“ See: Iwan- Michelangelo D’Aprile: Die schöne Republik: Ästhetische Moderne in Berlin im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006, p. 63. 160 The idea of a fourth dimension – a space beyond space – remains vivid through the 19th century as a subject in philosophical discussion. For example, see: Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: „Durch das Ahndungsvermögen, welches so deutlich im thierischen Instinkt sich äußert, eröffnet sich der Seele des Thieres oder des Menschen eine Aussicht in das dem Raume nach Fernliegende, der Zeit nach Künftige.“ Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Erzählende Schriften für christlich gebildete Leser jeden Standes und Alters, Wohlfeile Ausgabe, vol. 3, Palm und Enke, Erlangen 1866, p. 241. 161 I have explained that in my introduction. 162 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 34. 80

As a medium, the genius undergoes premonitory experiences, as a result of which they can reflect the “grand whole” through art. In so doing, they can create a new and exceptional worldview or signal the existence of an alternate reality. Indeed, all of the authors concerned to affirm and defend premonitions’ epistemological power are united in the belief that premonitions are based on a “sense of possibility.”163 As we can see, Moritz held that premonition is neither just a prognostic capacity nor the act of anticipating unknown events in the future. Premonition also encompasses the human imagination’s ability to form a unique idea of a possible future. We might define this as a distinctly utopian form of epiphany: a metaphysical feeling of wholesomeness, under the sign of which the world seems to open up to the possibility of a higher truth. The same feeling, which for Moritz grants insight into “the whole wonderful fabric of human life” (das ganze wunderbare Gewebe des Menschenlebens), is central to the creation of beautiful art:

Er (der Mensch, TK) lernt allmälig das Einzelne im Ganzen, und in Beziehung auf das Ganze, sehen; fängt die grossen Verhältnisse dunkel an zu ahnden, nach welchen unzähligen Wesen auf und ab, so wenig wie möglich sich verdrängen, und doch so nah wie möglich an einanderstossen. Dann steigt in seinen ruhigsten Momenten die Geschichte der Vorwelt, das ganze wunderbare Gewebe des Menschenlebens in alle seinen Zweigen vor ihm auf.164

As this passages indicates, Moritz’s understanding of premonitions is complex and highly specific. While in Italy, where he stayed until 1789, he presented premonition as one of the key organizing principles of his aesthetics. Moritz does not openly address the extent to which his aesthetic ideas were influenced by the large volume of premonitory case studies published in this period. Still, it is possible to trace the impact of ordinary premonitions on Moritz’s aesthetic theory by attending to his journal, the Magazin. It is no coincidence that this is the first journal

163 I refer here to Robert Musils „Möglichkeitssinn,“ spelled out in Robert Musil’s novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. 164 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 35. 81 for psychological case studies in Germany.165 By confronting the human mind’s imaginative power, Moritz begins to understand how thin the boundary separating creativity and insanity is. By engaging with premonitions, the philosopher develops an understanding how the human mind works, which applies not only to ordinary people, but artists and poets too.

Karl Philipp Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde Comparing Moritz’s Magazin with the theory he advances in Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen reveals striking parallels in how both texts deal with premonition. Moritz had little to say about premonitions before returning to Germany from Italy in 1789. His commentaries in the first four volumes of the Magazin are short. For the most part, Moritz shows no interest in paranormal phenomena. This changes after his return from Italy and the publication of Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (1788).166 Although it cannot be said for sure, it may be that Goethe—who was fascinated by premonitions and other occult phenomena167—stimulated Moritz’s interest in the topic.168 Between 1783 and 1793, Moritz used his anthropological magazine to collect many case studies and personal experiences of premonitory experiences and other obscure psychological phenomena. In so doing, he found it important to avoid judging or taking a moral tone when recording these experiences. His goal was rather to create an open and benevolent forum in

165 See: Simon Richter: Pressing Matters: Karl Philipp Moritz's Models of the Self in the „Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde“, in: Simon Richter (ed.): Goethe Yearbook, vol. 11, Camden House, Rochester 2002, p. 133. 166 “In fact, Moritz has little new to say on premonition, until he returns in 1789 from a three year stay in Italy, where he had met Goethe and the vibrant community of German expatriate artists in Rome. Upon return, he launches a great defense of premonition, a defense that primarily occurs at the personal expense of Carl Friedrich Pockels, who had been Moritz’s replacement editor during his absence. (...) During its ten year run, Moritz passed on the editorship to two other people, Carl Friedrich Pockels and Salomon Maimon. Moritz himself only edited and compiled the material in volumes 1 to 4, 7 3 and 8.1.“ See: Domenghino: Knowing without Knowing, p. 102. 167 „Moritz veröffentliche 1788 bis zum 1. Februar einen Aufsatz Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen und war vom 4. Dezember 1788 bis zum 1. Februar 1789 bei Goethe in Weimar zu Gast. Goethe schreibt in dieser Zeit den Artikel Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier, Styl und ca. fünf Monate später in der Zeitschrift Der Teutsche Merkur eine Rezension über den Aufsatz von Moritz. Goethe erinnert sich in Dichtung und Wahrheit an diesen Aufsatz: „Ankunft von Moritz. Wiederaufnahme unserer italienischen Unterhaltungen. Dessen Schrift Über dei bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, das eigentlichste Resultat unseres Umgangs, kommt zu Braunschweig heruas“ (WA I, 53, S. 385).“ Kazunari Hata: Phantasie als Methode der poietischen Wissenschaft Goethes. Naturwissenschaft und Philosophie im Spiegel seiner Zeit, Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2017, p. 37. 168 „Shortly after Goethe met Moritz, this melancholic fellow suffered a badly broken arm. With great solicitude, Goethe visited his new friend, sometimes twice daily, during the six weeks of Moritz’s convalescence. They perhaps spoke about the newly published first sections of Moritz’s powerful autobiographical novel Anton Reiser (1785-90), the eponymous hero of which is transformed by reading Werther.“ Robert J. Richards: The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2002, p. 385. 82 which these paranormal phenomena could be discussed.169 Thanks to Moritz’s morally neutral approach, contemporary scholars now have access to an enormous compendium of non-literary case studies of premonitory experiences. This resource allows us understand how people who were not intellectuals experienced, described, and reflected on premonitions on a daily basis around 1800. These writings significantly influenced thinking about premonition in philosophy, anthropology, and literature. To fully grasp premonitions’ ontological status, I shall retrace the reciprocal influences between these psychological cases studies and intellectual discourse. The first case study explicitly relating to premonitions appears in the Magazin’s second volume, which Moritz published in 1784 in collaboration with his friend, the philosopher and second editor of the Magazin, Karl Friedrich Pockels (1757–1814). This first analysis of a premonitory experience indicates how the phenomenon was generally understood, highlighting the differences between philosophical or literary approaches to premonition and empirical descriptions based on cases studies. Nevertheless, there are some striking similarities between the two approaches, especially regarding the emotional dimensions of premonitory visions, which repay critical attention. The first reflection on premonitions is entitled “Über das Ahndungsvermögen.” The author is a man referred to only by his surname, “Zimmerman.” Accordingly to the personal information given at the bottom of the text, he worked as an accountant in a royal chamber house (“Kammer-Calculator”). In Moritz’s journal, this man presents three stories about premonitory experiences. While one relates to his own life, the other two concern strangers. The encounters could be described as exemplary, even archetypical case studies in that they represent many similar premonitions presented in the Magazin. In his personal story, Zimmerman writes:

Schon in meinen frühen Jahren merkte ich in mir bei gewissen oft ganz gleichgültigen Dingen, ehe ich sie unternahm, eine ungewöhnliche Empfindung dagegen, nicht Abneigung, denn ich hatte Lust dazu, eher eine Art von Warnung;

169 David E. Wellbery: Anton Reiser, Case History, and the Emergence of Empirical Psychology, in: David E. Wellbery, Judith Ryan: A New History of German Literature, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts / London 2004, p. 1782. 83

folgte ich dieser Warnung nicht, so hatte ich allemal Schaden oder Unglück, Verdruß.170

In the following passage, Zimmermann asks as a rhetorical question: is the human soul capable of prediction (Ahndungsvermögen)? At the end of the text, he affirms the existence of this capacity, providing some examples in support of this claim. First, he adopts the perspective of a third-person narrator to recount the story of a priest who experienced a premonition. He interpreted it as a warning signal, dictating that he should act on instinct in a dangerous situation. More specifically, he should jump from the horse-cart on which he was sitting so as to save his own life. He followed the message and, true enough, survived an accident. Zimmermann describes what happened to the cart immediately after the priest jumped:

Kaum war er einige dreißig Schritte gegangen, als der Wagen umfiel, und Tonnen und Kasten, welche der Fuhrmann geladen, herabstürzten. Blieb er sitzen, so wurde er sicher zerquetscht.171

As additional proof for his belief in premonition, Zimmerman tells a second story. A nun once experienced a euphoric feeling whilst praying to God. It convinced her to escape the convent in which she was forced to live. During her time in the covent, she had lost her memory. After running away, she discovered by chance that she had once had a husband, whom she was compelled to leave before being brought to the convent. According to the story, the nun’s escape was a success. During her journey, her predictive powers meant that the nun was able to find her former husband and belongings, after which she lived a happy life in the city of Halberstadt. Zimmerman praises the nun’s capacity for prediction, writing that it allowed her to restore her previous way of life and find peace. “Wahr sind die Geschichten,” Zimmermann concludes.172 The second volume of the Magazin contains another essay on premonitions, written by a relatively obscure writer and poet named Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goekingk (1748–

170 Karl Philipp Moritz: Gnothi sauton oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde als ein Lesebuch für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte, 10 volumes, here: vol. 2, Greno, Berlin 1986, p. 99-100. / In the following footnotes, I will always refer to this edition. 171 Karl Philipp Moritz: Gnothi sauton oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde als ein Lesebuch für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte, 10 volumes, here Moritz: vol. 2, p. 100. 172 Moritz: vol. 2, p. 101. 84

1828).173 In his story, titled “Noch etwas über Ahndungsvermögen” (1784), the poet states that he can enter a prophetic state in which he is able to tell when he will encounter one of his friends.174 Here he recalls an example:

Vor zwei Jahren ging ich, mit meiner Frau am Arme zu Leipzig den Brühl hinauf. Als wir nahe an der Ecke der Heustraße waren, fiel mir, mitten unter einem Gespräche von dem Schauspiele, das an dem Abend aufgeführt werden sollte, die Idee ein, daß der Rath Bertuch aus Weimar mir nahe wäre. Wir waren noch drei Schritte weiter, und um die Ecke gegangen, als Herr Bertuch mit einem male vor uns stand, ob ich gleich weder wußte noch vermuthet hatte, daß er in Leipzig sey. Meine Frau, zu der ich einen Augenblick zuvor gesagt hatte: “Es ist mir, als wenn ich Bertuch hier treffen würde;” erstaunte über den seltsamen Zufall noch mehr als ich selbst.175

Unlike Zimmerman, Goekingk presents a rational explanation for his premonitions. In a first attempt at interpretation, he reflects on the prophetic experience described above by way of reference not to the soul’s predictive powers but rather to a physical reaction. Reminding the reader of his sensitive nose, Goekingk supposes that predicted his friend’s proximity by unconsciously detecting his distinct smell. In this case, Goekingk is convinced that his prediction can be explained rationally by taking into account his acutely sensitive sense of smell:

In diesem Ahndungsvermögen habe ich nie etwas Wunderbares gesucht, denn ich bin in dem Punkte so ungläubig, und halte von Ahndungen, Visionen so wenig, daß ich lieber zu jeder andern Erklärungsart meine Zuflucht nehmen, als glauben würde, meine Seele habe ein privates Vermögen in diesem Stücke.176

173 „Goeckingk war (...) das Mitglied des Halberstädter Dichterkreises mit der größten Ausstrahlung.“ Wolfgang Adam, Siegrid Westphal (eds.): Handbuch kultureller Zentren der Frühen Neuzeit: Städte und Residenzen im alten deutschen Sprachraum, vol. 1, De Gruyter, Berlin and Boston 2012, p. 732. 174 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 2, p. 118. 175 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 2, p. 118-119. 176 Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goekingk: Noch etwas über Ahndungsvermögen, in: Karl Philipp Moritz (ed. et al): Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, vol. 2, bey August Mylius, Berlin 1784, p. 119. 85

Despite this incredulity, Goekingk insists that predictive premonition has been proven in at least one case. He recalls how one of his acquaintances could sense where corpses are buried, through premonition. Goekingk writes that he has observed his friend’s morbid talent with his own eyes.177 The poet concludes this account by remarking:

Ich kann allenfalls selbst dafür einstehen, daß das Publikum noch einst nähere Nachricht von diesem Todtenschauer erhalten wird, mit vielen und völlig glaubwürdigen Zeugnissen bestätiget, welche die Sache selbst außer allem Zweifel setzen.178

The third and fourth volumes of the Magazin present a number of similar case studies and personal entries that detail premonitions from the perspectives of both believers and skeptics. Moritz’s co-editor, Pockels himself, opens the fifth volume of the journal with a probing investigation of premonition’s potential for prophecy, discussing the reliability of the case studies described in former volumes. The essay breaks sharply with Moritz’s aim of curating a neutral, non-judgmental journal, in which paranormal phenomena could be discussed without moral reproof. Indeed, Pockels calls his essay a “revision,” opening with a harsh dismissal of the premonitory phenomenon:

Der – wahrlich sehr unphilosophische – Glaube an Ahndungen ist so alt und allgemein als der Glaube an Gespenster. Die Neigung der Menschen zum Außerordentlichen und Wunderbaren; die so natürliche Begierde, Andern von sich etwas Sonderbares erzählen zu können, aber von Andern erzählen zu hören; das fürchterlich angenehme Gefühl erschüttert zu werden, und vornehmlich auch die

177 „Ich will Ihnen von einem weit merkwürdigern Ahndungsvermögen noch ein paar Worte sagen, das ich mir auf eben die Art erklärt habe. Für die Wahrheit kann einer der berühmtesten Schriftsteller Deutschlands die Gewähr leisten, der mir aber die Bitte, ihn öffentlich nennen zu dürfen, deshalb abgeschlagen hat, weil viele sonst seinen Freund, den es betrift, leicht errathen würden. Dieser letztre hat das Vermögen: zu ahnden, wo ein Körper begraben liegt. Unter mehreren Beispielen, wo seine Vermuthung und Anzeige sich bestätiget hat, nur Eins. Er saß einst mit seinem Freunde, dem Schriftsteller, in dem Lustgarten des letztern. Er äußerte eine Unruhe, die zu sichtbar war, als daß man ihn nicht nach der Ursach hätte fragen sollen. Er gestand also endlich, daß an der Gartenmauer ein menschlicher Lärper begraben liege. Auf der angezeigten Stelle fand man wirklich das Gerippe eines Menschen, ohne daß man hätte muthmaßen können, wie es dahin gekommen sei, oder wie lange es da gelegen habe.“ Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 2, p. 120-121. 178 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 2, p. 121. 86

Meinungen von höhern auf uns würkenden Geistern, haben gewiß das Meiste dazu beigetragen, jenen Glauben auszubreiten, wohin man noch die Neigung, seinen Voreltern in Absicht der unter sich zugetragenen Ahndungen nicht zu widersprechen, rechnen kann.179

Pockels stresses that there is no such thing as foreseeing the future. He is certain that, for the most part, premonitions either arise from poor mental health or are purely coincidental.180 In a rather Kantian move, he argues against the validity of premonitory prognoses, adopting psychological categories that had been established by Enlightenment thinkers including the psychologists Ernst Platner (1744–1818) and Justus Christian Hennings (1731–1815), and the theologian and anthropologist Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–1779). Like Kant, Pockels explains emotional predictions by way of reference to past traumas, insinuating that these experiences resurface in the false guise of dark predictions:

Hat diese und jene Person, deren Ahndungen eingetroffen sind, auf seine Art und Weise ihr Unglück durch vorhergegangene und gegenwärtige Umstände oder auch Gemüthslagen vermuthen können; hat insbesondere in Absicht der letzern die Seele nicht die dunkle Vorstellung eines Unglücks repetirt, das sich schon einmahl mit der Person zutrug, und sich in einer gewissen Zeitfolge wieder zutragen konnte oder mußte?181

The remainder of Pockels’ arguments reiterate this central point. He tries to show how premonitions either result from or misconstrue melancholy, déja-vu, hypochondria, or flights of fancy. Sometimes, he suggests, premonitions are self-fulfilling prophecies. For Pockels, people who experience premonitions only retrospectively imagine that they have predicted a given

179 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 5, Pockels: p. 1-2. 180 „In den drei ersten Bänden der Erfahrungsseelenkunde sind viele Beiträge über die Ahndungen abgedruckt worden, davon einige in der That sonderbar genug sind; andere enthalten ganz gewöhnliche und leicht zu erklärende Vorhersagungen unglücklicher Begebenheiten, woran nicht so wohl jenes erträumte Vorhersehungsvermögen der Seele, als eine melancholische Stimmung des Gemüths, und der bloße Zufall Theil hatte.“ Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 5, Pockels: p. 3. 181 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 5, Pockels: p. 5. 87 event. In reality, premonitions are present fantasies projected onto the past.182 He presents both premonitions themselves and their interpretation as acts of sense-making in response to often chaotic, contingent, and fatals event. He sees premonitions of death, in particular, as symptoms of mental pathologies, experienced by irritated or misguided souls. On these grounds, Pockels rejects the validity of prognostic visions. In his essay, Pockels examines almost all of the premonitions detailed in the Magazin’s first three volumes. Regardless of whether they are regular premonitions or premonitions of death, he seeks to explain them rationally.183 For example, he discusses the case of a twenty- four-year-old boy presented in the second volume. In this case study, an anonymous third-person narrator recounts the boy’s biography. The narrator then relates rumors that the boy has predicted the time and place of his own death. Pockels dismisses the validity of this suggestion. Instead, he argues that the boy merely created a vivid fantasy, which he came to believe so strongly that eventually it made him ill and subsequently died. This interpretation does not rule out the possibility of self-fulfilling-prophecy: it could be that the idea of his death might became so real and vivid for the boy that it precipitated a fatal illness.184 For Pockels, the reason that the boy’s prediction came true is that he fell victim of his own imagination. In addition, Pockels reminds us that the boy had lost his brother some days before his visionary experience, meaning that he was in a melancholic mood when he predicted his own future demise. This traumatic experience brought about a decline in his mental health, ultimately leading to his death.185

182 „Wir finden überall Leute, die nach einem erlittenen Unglück gleich mit der Sprache fertig sind, das hat mir wohl geahndet, es war mir so bange ums Herz, ich hatte an keinem Orte Ruhe.“ Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs- Seelenkunde, vol. 5, Pockels: p. 6. 183 The latter are the most common premonitory prophecies around 1800. 184 This is the reason why many anthropologists warn against premonitions, such as Sucro and Hennigs. The 18th century discovers the incalculable power of imagination. 185 „Seine Seele beschäftigte sich damahls gewiß mit dem Tode seines Bruders; der Tag, die Stunde seines Abscheidens und die Art seiner Krankheit schwebte ihm vor den Augen, er liebte auch wahrscheinlich seinen Bruder herzlich, und wünschte, daß er ihn bald wieder sehen mächte. Aus diesen Vorstellungen und Empfindungen entstand sein angezeigter Traum auf die natürlichste Weise; allein, wird man sagen, der Traum war nichts Sonderbares; aber das genaue Eintreffen desselben. Auch dieß nicht. Der junge Mensch hielt nun einmahl vermöge seines Traums seinen Tod für ein gewisses Ding, der Gedanke, daß er gewiß an dem und dem Tage sterben müsse, lag beständig in seiner Seele, er ängstigte und beunruhigte sich darüber, sein Blut wurde erhitzt und nach und nach durch seine ängstliche Phantasie seine Gesundheit untergraben. Seit einem halben Jahre hatte er schon von Kopfschmerzen gelitten. Er kommt an das Grab seines Bruders, nach seiner geträumten Rechnung hatte er nur noch acht Tage zu leben, dieß setzt seine Einbildungskraft vollends in die größte Bewegung, die vielleicht noch entfernt liegende Krankheit seines Körpers wird nun auf einmahl durch den Gang nach dem Kirchhofe beschleunigt, und er stirbt endlich würklich um die bestimmte Zeit, und an der nehmlichen Krankheit wie sein Bruder, - und wer weis denn endlich, wie viel andere Nebenumstände den Tod des Jünglings zufällig befördern holfen?“ Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 5, Pockels: p. 13. / Interestingly, in Goethe’s Elective Affinities Charlotte – who 88

As this skeptical account makes clear, Pockels shares the views of other major psychologists and anthropologists of the time. Like Kant, these figures were concerned to reduce belief in prophecy or reasoning premised on magic or superstition. Still, despite Pockels’ intervention, some other contributors to the Magazin sought to defend premonitory prognoses. Indeed, in a letter to the editors published in the fifth volume, one anonymous writer openly disagrees with Pockels. He describes premonitions as a sudden burst of visionary insight:

Es strahlt auf uns gleich dem Blitze, wenn wir es am wenigsten vermuthen. In einem Augenblicke trifft und verläßt es uns. – Die schleunigen Vorboten meine ich, die plötzlichen Ahndungen, die uns gewisse Dinge vorher verkündigen. (…) Ja, wenn wir am wenigsten daran denken, wenn wir sogar fröhlichen Muthes sind, wird uns bisweilen ein Strahl dieses himmlischen Lichts treffen, und uns entdecken, was geschehen soll. – Oft wissen wir selber nicht, daß sich dergleichen geäußert, bis die vorher verkündete Begebenheit sich wirklich zugeträgt. Dann erneuert sich das Andenken daran, und straft uns gleichsam, daß wir nicht aufmerksam dabei gewesen sind.186

As I go on to show, Moritz’s perspective on premonitions was remarkably similar to this account. Having already written his treatise on beauty, which draws significantly on the notion of premonition, Moritz intervened against Pockel’s revisionist critique of premonitory experiences. In so doing, he presented his case for their validity.

Karl Philipp Moritz’s ‘Revision of the Revision’ The account of premonition that Moritz puts forward in the Magazin is intimately tied to his theory of beauty. It differs markedly from Pockels’ critical position, which I described in the previous section. Drawing on his various anthropological, philosophical, and poetic interests, Moritz engaged with the question of premonitions’ epistemological value. Especially after his return from Italy, Moritz’s perspective was surprisingly positive.

experiences most frequently all the premonitions in the book – is also described as a person who lost all of her siblings. 186 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 6, p. 71. 89

Moritz’s first evaluation of the human capacity for premonitions comes in the form of a short essay, published in the first volume of the Magazin (1783). It is presented ahead of a report by a man named D. Knape, who claims to have correctly predicted the winning numbers in a lottery. In his essay, Moritz engages with the question of whether the soul truly has a supernatural capacity for prophecy. Although he ultimately answers negatively, Moritz is concerned to emphasize his doubts. Indeed, his argument is highly ambivalent. He is, as Lothar Müller has put it, “discreet in his quest to enlighten,” refusing “quick rationalizations for inexplicable phenomena, and seeking instead to ‘keep the concept of nature open.’”187 Moritz’s essay, which was published five years before his treatise on beauty, opens with the following question: “Hat die Seele ein Vermögen, künftige Dinge vorher zu sehen?”188 His answer runs as follows:

Ich meines Theils zweifle sehr daran, vielleicht deswegen, weil ich es, in so mancherlei Rücksicht, nicht wünsche. Allein es kömmt freilich hiebei auf Thatsachen an. Und wer weiß, ob es nicht, bisher noch unbekannte und ungenutzte Seelenfähigkeiten geben mag; die eben dadurch ihre allgemeine Wirksamkeit verloren haben, weil sie zu wenig gebraucht worden sind; so wie unsre linke Hand am Körper, bloß wegen Mangel des Gebrauchs schwächer und unbehülflicher ist, als die rechte. In dieser unpartheiischen Rücksicht also sollen mir wirkliche Fakta sehr willkommen seyn, welche ein solches Vorhersehungsvermögen der Seelen zu beweisen scheinen, wozu auch folgender Aufsatz gehört, der mir von dem Herrn D. Knape gütigst mitgetheilt ist.189

This attitude is remarkably open. Unlike Pockels, Moritz argues from the perspective of a philosopher interested in the possibility that humans might foresee the future. As an anthropologist and creative writer, he emphasizes his willingness to listen to people who believe in this capacity. After 1789, having recently returned from Italy, Moritz’s ambivalent openness toward premonition becomes an outright affirmation of them. Indeed, I argue that it is no

187 Domenghino: p. 69. 188 Moritz: Seelenkunde, vol. 1, p. 70. 189 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 1, p. 70-71. After these remarks, the case study of Knape begins. 90 coincidence that this radical turn in Moritz’s position occurred at this specific moment: Moritz’s rejoinder to Pockel’s essay, I claim, is closely connected to the publication of his treatise on beauty and his time in Italy, where he engaged with various philosophical questions and authors. His theory of beauty was written toward the end of his time in Italy, immediately before he resumed work as the Magazin’s main editor. In using the title Revision über diese Revisionen des Herrn Pockels in diesem Magazin, Moritz presents his essay as a revision of Pockel’s initial revision. The text challenges Pockels’ dismissal of premonitions, which had been published during Moritz’s absence in Italy. In that period, Pockels had been responsible for selecting case studies and commentators for volumes three to four. Moritz writes his revision of the revision so as to make clear that he does not share Pockels’ views. Stating that he wants to take over as the journal’s main editor in the future, he endorses an open-minded approach to dark, rationally inexplicable psychological phenomena.190 Far from condemning irrational feelings, Moritz is eager to investigate them on the grounds that they form part of the human condition, that they guide our actions whether we want them to or not. Accordingly, Moritz writes:

Ich würde über Ahndungen mich nicht in einem so entscheidenden Tone erklärt haben, als Hr. P. gleich in dem ersten Aufsatze gethan hat, und muß mir also diesen Gegenstand zur eigenen Ausarbeitung vorbehalten. Es läßt sich über diese Sache nicht so leicht weg räsonniren, wenn es einem um Wahrheit zu thun ist.191

Moritz stresses that he and Pockels understand the Magazin’s purpose differently. He sees it not as an outlet for moral judgment, but as a compendium facilitating open discussion. Its goal, he explains, should not be to pronounce on whether phenomena such as premonitions are good or bad, useful or useless. Instead, the Magazin’s should limit its focus to how they function and why so many people experience them or believe in their existence. Moritz demands more

190 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 7, p. 1-2. „Mit dem Schluß des vierten Bandes mußte ich den Faden fallen lassen, den ich nun mit dem Schluß des siebenten Bandes wieder aufnehme, nachdem ich während eines dreijährigen Aufenthalts in Italien, von der Fortsetzung dieses Magazins durch Herrn Pockels, keine Zeile zu Gesicht bekommen habe; und nunmehr, da ich dieses Magazin wieder allein herausgebe, mit einer Revision über die Revisionen des Herrn Pokels nothwendig den Anfang machen, und ohne Umschweife dabei zu Werke gehen muß, um über den eigentlichen Zweck dieses Magazins mich deutlich zu erklären.“ 191 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 7, p. 3 91 objectivity from his colleagues, an unbiased perspective on all psychological phenomena, whatever their effect is on the human mind. With this in mind, Moritz writes:

Es ist hier nicht die Frage, ob es den Menschen nützlicher sei, wenn sie an Ahndungen glauben, oder nicht daran glauben, sondern ob und in wie fern diese Erscheinung in der Natur unsers Wesens würklich gegründet oder nicht darin gegründet sei?192

Here again Moritz underlines his main point: those scholars who condemn premonitions are every bit as biased as people who believe in superstitions.193 He defends those who contributed personal descriptions of premonitory experiences to former volumes of the Magazin. He does this not only because he wants to defend his project, which is to foster a neutral approach toward psychological phenomena. He also wants to know how the human mind really works. More specifically, he is interested in how the imagination suffuses knowledge and how premonitions in particular guide the intellect as it comes to grips with an uncertain future. Moritz argues that it is impossible to judge premonitions because they stand above human imagination: “Der Mensch redet freilich gar zu gern über Sachen, unter denen er steht, und welche doch eigentlich über ihm sind.”194 Ekbert Faas sums up Pockels’ and Moritz’s discrepant attitudes:

Karl Philipp Moritz, friend of Goethe and founder of this Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, had a strong interest in phenomena like self-fulfilling prophecies, prophetic dreams, or religiomania and dealt with them frequently in his journal. But during his absence in Italy, K. F. Pockels, in assuming Moritz’s editorial functions, subjected his predecessor’s labor to a systematic review, pouring scorn on all superstitious beliefs and particularly on any credence in premonitions. But matters did not end there. Once returned from abroad, Moritz regained full control of his journal and opened his new reign with a “Review of the Reviews of Herr Pockels,”

192 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 7, p. 3. 193 „Es gibt eine Sucht, viele Dinge leicht erklärlich zu finden, eben so wie es eine Sucht giebt, viele Dinge unerklärlich zu finden - und man fällt sehr leicht von einem Extrem aufs andere.“ Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs- Seelenkunde, vol. 7, p. 4. 194 Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 7, p. 4. 92

accusing his substitute editor of moral bigotry, rationalist dogmatism, and, above all, an unscientific attitude. Further instances of similar disagreement run through the extensive literature in which such nineteenth-century alienists as L.F. Lélut, A. Bierre de Boismont, and James Braid applied their psychiatric insights to supernatural and religious issues.195

Above all, the Magazin is a resource for exploring occult phenomena. But Moritz’s had another motivation in revising Pockel’s essay, namely, that premonitions were significant for his understanding of aesthetics, which he was formulating at around the same time as his “revision.” Observing that Moritz wrote this intervention against Pockels shortly after the publication of his aesthetic treatise makes it clear why he was so concerned to defend the existence of premonitory experiences. For Moritz, without premonitory creativity and the imagination, there would be no art, literature, or music. As Albert Meier puts it:

Als ernsthafter Streitpunkt erwies sich im Magazin mit der Zeit das Problem, ob es Ahndungen geben könne (...). Moritz bleibt in dieser Hinsicht nachdrücklich offen und widerspricht seinem Vertreter Pockels dezidiert: „Ich würde über Ahndungen mich nicht in einem so entscheidenden Tone erklärt haben“ (MzE 7.3,3). Während es Pockels um die Bekämpfung des Aberglaubens gegangen war, warnt Moritz vor allzu schnellen Urteilen: In der Tat müsse „am Ende sich alles natürlich erklären lassen“ (4), doch jede plumpe Rationalisierung bringe die Gefahr mit sich, alles „fernere Nachdenken über die Natur unsers Wesens“ einzuschränken und in der Folge davon sogar Poesie und schöne Künste zu negieren, weil diese von der Einbildungskraft abhängen.196

Moritz’s revision does not explicitly state the motivation behind his arguments for the validity of premonitions. If we compare his treatise on beauty with his revisionist intervention in the Magazin, however, the connections are clear. In both works, Moritz affirms premonitions,

195 Ekbert Faas: Retreat into the mind, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988, p. 11. 196 Albert Meier: Karl Philipp Moritz, Reclam, Stuttgart 2015, p. 115-116. 93 whether they are experienced by ordinary citizens, as described in the Magazin’s case studies, or artists, as thematized in Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen. The relationship between understandings of premonition put forward in these two works, I would suggest, can be understood in the following way: in experiencing a premonition, the artist invents a new reality, the idea of a future piece of art. The ordinary dreamer undergoes a similar process in experiencing a predictive premonition. Although Moritz is unclear as to whether he thinks that humans have a capacity for prognostic knowledge, the psychological dialectic at work is similar in both cases. Moritz suggests that, when it comes to both artists and people more generally, a premonition is an unconscious creative experience of the soul, which refers to an as- yet unknown future. Only a few poets, Moritz suggests, are capable of having their artistic practice led by extraordinary premonitions. They are the chosen ones who fulfill the role of the genius artist. As such, their craft is guided by a transcendent power, channelled through premonitory experiences (ahndende Thatkraft). This capacity for premonition distinguishes genius artists from dilettantes. Extrapolating from this, I think that it is reasonable to suppose that Moritz’s perspective on ordinary people experiencing premonitions was similar: some chosen people are able to predict their future. It follows that Moritz would support the existence of this capacity. Even were this is not the case, the alternative interpretation would be similarly eye opening: namely, that those whose stories are collected in the Magazin believed so strongly in their premonitions that their belief turns premonitory ideas into reality. This realization of an inner idea closely resembles the way which the artist, for Moritz, brings a premonitory vision into being through the power of the imagination. In this way, Moritz underlines the imagination’s creativity and transformative power, which manifests itself regardless of the subject’s conscious intentions. With premonitions experienced by both artists and others, the direction of development is similar. The receiver of the premonition creates a new world inside of their soul, which then changes the external world in the future, through their projections, actions, and beliefs. For Moritz, this is what connects creative and prognostic premonitions. Both are tied to the power of imagination and directed towards the future. Through them, the power of imagination challenges and often transforms reality. Hence, Moritz emphasizes language’s power to create reality. For him, storytelling is as relevant to the exploration of truth as scientific experiments. The literary scholar Michael Gamper suggests that this is why so many philosophers and authors working

94 around 1800 were so eager to explore the possibilities of the imagination as the basis of narratives:

Erzählen bezeichnet in dieser Verwednung (…) nicht bloß eine ästhetische Praktik, vielmehr wird es fruchtbar gemacht für die Ergründung von Konstellationen des Wissens, in denen andere Erkenntnisformen an ihre Grenzen stoßen.197

I will show how for Moritz “storytelling,” in combination with premonitory experiences, represents a means of seeking truth. As such, it implies nothing less than a capacity for foreseeing the future.

Karl Philipp Moritz: Poetry as Supersensory Knowledge Moritz’s work was not the first anthropological exploration of premonitions; indeed, his account was part of a broader discussion in anthropology around the beginning of the nineteenth century. As early as 1759, the scholar Johann Josias Sucro articulated the idea that feelings and the imagination are the source for all conceptions of the future. In his study Ueber die Ahndungen, he writes that “Empfindung und Einbildungskraft sind die Unterlagen von den Vorstellungen, die ich mir von der Zukunft mache.”198 Like many influential anthropologists of the time, Sucro distinguished between premonitions based on emotional foresight and the rational capacity for making empirical predictions (Vorhersehungsvermögen). Sucro saw premonitions as dark visions: in sharp contrast with rationally calculated predictions, which are based on empirical observations, premonitions are based on emotions and cannot be explained rationally. The anthropologist Ludwig Heinrich

197 Michael Gamper: Erzählen, nicht lehren!, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (eds.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 94. 198 Johann Josias Sucro: Über die Ahndungen, J.W. Halle und J.G. Halle, Brandenburg 1759, p. 25. / Sucro had, like most anthropologists, a negative opinion about premonitions. He considered them to be dangerous for the receivers, who tend to lose themselves in the world of imagination. On the same page, he continues: „Ich sehe einen Menschen, der von aller menschlichen Gesellschaft sich entfernet, der durch einen thörichten Ehrgeiz sich an seinen Schreibtisch fesseln läßt, der mit lauter Speculationen sich beschäftigt. Hier habe ich eine Empfindung. Meine Einbildungskraft führt mir eine Erfahrung wieder ins Gemüth, die ich von dergleichen Gelehrten gehabt habe; daß sie nämlich sich ungesund machen, und endlich gar Kandidaten des Tollhauses werden. Hier entsteht die Vorhersehung: der gute Strephon, der sich unter seine Bücher vergräbt, der auf die Monadenjagd ausgeht, und dem Reiche der Möglichkeit alle Vergnügungen im Reiche der Wirklichkeit aufopfert, wird endlich seine Gesundheit verlieren, wird, ach besänn er sich doch.“ 95

Jacobs (1759–1827) shared this perspective. Here he underlines the obscure origins of each premonitory experience:

Es giebt Ahndungen, die uns in der Ferne Begebenheiten sehen lassen, wovon uns die Gründe unbekannt sind. Ja, die meisten Ahndungen sind von dieser Art. Sie warnen uns gemeiniglich vor einem Unglück, wozu wir gar keine Veranstaltungen in unsrem gegenwärtigen Zustande entdecken, oder wovon die Gründe so weit zurück in dem vergangnen zu suchen sind, daß wir uns ihrer gar nicht mehr erinnern.

For Jacobs, having a premonition means acquiring knowledge of future events. This knowledge is rooted in neither the present nor the past. Indeed, paradoxically enough, premonitory knowledge is nescient. Still, despite having no clear grounds, this knowledge is not necessarily untrue. Justus Christian Hennings followed up on this idea in a study titled Von den Ahndungen und Visionen (1777), in which he described premonitions as purely emotional insights, which resonate with the mind. He writes:

Die innere Ahdnung erfolgt bloss durch unvermuthete innere Empfindung, die uns etwas Künftiges fürchten oder hoffen läßt. Z.B. ein Mensch empfindet eine Angst, ohne die Ursache angeben zu können, und fürchtet daher ein künftiges Unglück.199

This is the reason that Sucro calls premonitions “dark pre-recognitions” (dunkle Vorauserkennungen).200 Indeed, Sucro recognizes a hitherto unacknowledged realm in the human soul. Today, we might call this realm, which seems to have been new to scholars of the time (including Moritz) the unconscious. The philosopher Johann Georg Sulzer (1720-1779) expressed it in a similar way:

Ich füge noch hinzu, daß nicht bloß die Vorstellung einer Idee, sondern alle andere Handlungen der Seele dunkel seyn können. Es giebt dunkle Urtheile, die wir fallen, ohne uns dessen bewußt zu seyn, dunkle Empfindungen, ein dunkles Verlangen und

199 Justus Christian Hennings: Von den Ahndungen und Visionen: Die Voraussehungen und Ahndungen, vol. 2, in der Weygandschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1783, p. 418. 200 Johann Josias Sucro: Über die Ahndungen, bey J. W. Halle und J. G. Halle, Brandenburg 1759, p. 51. 96

einen dunklen Abscheu (…). Kurz alle Kräfte der Seele können sich auf zweyerley Art äußern; auf eine deutliche und so, daß wir wissen was wir thun (…); oder auf eine dunkle Art und so, daß wir selbst nicht wissen, wie die Sache in uns vorgeht.201

In Sulzer’s text, the unconscious part of the soul is presented as an unknown entity. Humans may not entirely grasp what happens within them, but the soul nevertheless interacts with cognition. This uncertainty as to the soul’s power, suggests Sucro, is the source of dark premonitions, which embody a form of knowledge beyond reason. Moritz also recognizes this dark realm, introducing the unconscious as an important field of epistemological study. Moreover, as the Magazin makes clear, premonition plays a significant role in Moritz’s understanding of history. If knowledge is partly based on unconscious feelings, then historical analysis must encompass the emotional and irrational if it is to understand human progress. Being familiar with both ordinary and poetic forms of premonition, Moritz was able to combine both tropes. Drawing on this, he undertook an examination of the significance of dark emotions in history. In a crucial scene of Moritz’ semi-autobiographic novel Anton Reiser (1790), his protagonist Anton experiences a premonition aged ten. This sudden premonition could be described as a reflection on historical contingency. Before this moment of premonitory revelation, Moritz’s protagonist introduces the idea of “blind fate.” He projects this notion of contingent fatality onto an otherwise harmless scene of flowers in a meadow, which he divides into two opposing armies in his imagination:

Wenn er (Anton) auf der Wiese ging, so machte er eine Scheidung und ließ in seinen Gedanken zwei Heere gelber oder weißer Blumen gegeneinander anrücken. (…) Dann stellte er eine Art von blinden Fatum vor, und mit zugemachten Augen hieb er mit seinem Stabe, wohin er traf. Wenn er dann seine Augen wieder eröffnete, so sah er die schreckliche Zerstörung, hier lag ein Held und dort einer auf den Boden hingestreckt, und oft erblickte er mit einer sonderbaren wehmütigen und doch

201 Johann Georg Sulzer: Erklärung eines psychologisch paradoxen Satzes: Daß der Mensch zuweilen nicht ohne Antrieb und ohne sichtbare Gründe sondern selbst gegen drigende Antriebe und überzeugende Gründe handelt und urtheilet, in: Johann Josias Sucro: Vermischte philosophische Schriften, vol. 1, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1773, p. 108. 97

angenehmen Empfindung sich selbst unter den Gefallenen. Er betrauerte dann eine Weile seine Helden und verließ das fürchterliche Schlachtfeld. Zu Hause, nicht weit von der Wohnung seiner Eltern, war ein Kirchhof, auf welchem er eine ganze Generation von Blumen und Pflanzen mit eisernem Zepter beherrschte und keinen Tag hingehen ließ, wo er nicht mit ihnen eine Art von Musterung hielt. Als er von Pyrmont wieder nach Hause gereist war, schnitzte er sich alle Helden aus dem Telemach von Papier, bemalte sie nach den Kupferstichen mit Helm und Panzer und ließ sie einige Tage lang in Schlachtordnung stehen, bis er endlich ihr Schicksal entschied und mit grausamen Messerhieben unter ihnen wütete, diesem den Helm, jenem den Schädel zerspaltete und rund um sich her nichts als Tod und Verderben sahe. So liefen alle seine Spiele, auch mit Kirsch- und Pflaumkernen, auf Verderben und Zerstörung hinaus. Auch über diese mußte ein blindes Schicksal (sic!, TK) walten, indem er zwei verschiedne Arten als Heere gegeneinander anrücken und nun mit zugemachten Augen den eisernen Hammer auf sie herabfallen ließ, und wen es traf, den traf’s. Wenn er Fliegen mit der Klappe totschlug, so tat er dieses mit einer Art von Feierlichkeit, indem er einer jeden mit einem Stücke Messing, das er in der Hand hatte, vorher die Totenglocke läutete.202

This scene does not just describe the imagination (Einbildungskraft) of a young boy, who projects human capacities onto inanimate things. More than this, but it betrays a distinctly modern understanding of history, as developing contingently, without an ultimate telos. In blindly beating flora, which he imagines as warring soldiers, the boy enacts the blind fate of history. He decides the flower/warriors’ destinies at random, mimicking the way in which historical fate seems to be controlled by an invisible hand. Here, the invisible hand is the visible one of a boy. Moritz’s narrator presents the protagonist as a sentimental melancholic, a “Schwärmer,” whose fantasies prove surprisingly creative. A creative soul, the boy is susceptible to premonitory visions while playing his imaginative games:

202 Karl Philipp Moritz: Anton Reiser - ein psychologischer Roman, TLK, Berlin 2018, p. 23. 98

Das allergrößte Vergnügen machte es ihm, wenn er eine aus kleinen papiernen Häusern erbauete Stadt verbrennen und dann nachher mit feierlichem Ernst und Wehmut den zurückgebliebenen Aschenhaufen betrachten konnte. Ja, als in der Stadt, wo seine Eltern wohnten, einmal wirklich in der Nacht ein Haus abbrannte, so empfand er bei allem Schreck eine Art von geheimen Wunsche, daß das Feuer nicht so bald gelöscht werden möchte. Dieser Wunsch hatte nichts weniger als Schadenfreude zum Grunde, sondern entstand aus einer dunklen Ahndung von großen Veränderungen, Auswanderungen und Revolutionen, wo alle Dinge eine ganz andre Gestalt bekommen und die bisherige Einförmigkeit aufhören würde.203

In this passage, Moritz uses his knowledge of premonitions to introduce a deeply modern awareness of historical contingency. He describes the premonition as forming within the protagonist’s emotional interior. This indicates that, for Moritz, premonitions are much more than a narrowly aesthetic concept. Rather, they pertain to deep psychological experiences, which can encompass revolutionary revelations. Anton’s premonitions reflect an awareness that the world is liable to rapid and revolutionary change. They suggest that the vicissitudes of history cannot be rationally predicted, but emerge only through premonitory foresight. As I have shown, Moritz does not only consider premonition from an anthropological perspective; he accords it a central place in his aesthetic theory and literary works too. Combining his knowledge of anthropology, poetic theory, and literary practice, he sought to establish a method for approaching the obscure future through literature. In the remainder of this dissertation, I explore how this conception of history as arbitrary and irrational is reflected in premonitions by closely analyzing literature. Indeed, all major supporters of premonition concluded that literature is precisely the medium in which premonitions can most fully unfold. In the Magazin, Moritz analyzes the premonitory case studies as if they were short stories, drawing analogies between the personal narratives and works of literature. For him, the power of the imagination is at play in both cases. Interestingly, there are certain analogies between the premonitions undergone by the ordinary people featured in Moritz’s Magazin and those articulated in literary works. Goekingk’s account of the acquaintance who senses corpses in the second volume, for example, is expressed

203 Karl Philipp Moritz: Anton Reiser - ein psychologischer Roman, TLK, Berlin 2018, p. 23. 99 in a tone that closely resembles Donna Elisabeth’s as she recounts a premonitory experience in Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile.204 These analogies suggest that literary, scientific, and anthropologic texts concerning premonitions share a common epistemological background, belong to the same discourse, and exchange key ideas. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the case studies in the Magazin should have inspired Moritz’s poetic writings. He used them as an interesting and authentic source for his literary endeavors. Like Herder, Kleist, and Arnim, Moritz began writing fiction that drew on his knowledge on premonitions. As such, he belonged to the tradition of Romantic and late Enlightenment authors who rejected the epistemological supremacy of science and urged the importance of literature as the seedbed of prognostic wisdom. In retracing this affirmation of literature over science, literary scholar Nicolas Pethes underlines the importance of the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788). According to Pethes, Hamann valued poetic language over logical language not despite but rather precisely because of its highly arbitrary structure:

In seiner Aesthetica in nuce erhebt Hamann (…) ausdrücklich den metaphorischen, rhapsodischen, paradoxen und emphatischen Stil der poetischen „Muttersprache“ über alle logisch-diskursiven Darstellungsformen, denen sie überlegen sei, weil sie, anstatt abstrakte mathematische oder beschränkte empirische Erkenntnisse zu postulieren, den affektiven und lautlichen Analogien der Poesie mit dem Buch der Natur nachspüre.205

Here, Pethes indicates why, epistemologically, literary forms of expression were more important than abstract, mathematical, or logical language for Hamann. Hamann insisted that God’s will and creativity are necessarily obscure and rationally inexplicable; speech acts that seek to

204 Interestingly, the receivers of the premonition in Moritz’s Magazin mostly are struck by a physical reaction. Goekingk describes, for instance, that his friend acted physically restless as he experienced the premonition: „Er äußerte eine Unruhe, die zu sichtbar war, als daß man ihn nicht nach der Ursach hätte fragen sollen.“ (Moritz: Magazin zur Erfahrungs-Seelenkunde, vol. 2, p. 120-121.) In Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile, Donna Elisabeth is experiencing a similar physical reaction of restlessness: „Da man jedoch letztere (Donna Elisabeth, TK), mit heftig arbeitender Brust, die kleinen Anstalten zum Aufbruch zaudernd betreiben sah, und sie, auf die Frage: was ihr fehle? antwortete: sie wisse nicht, welch eine unglückliche Ahndung in ihr sei? (...).“ 205 Nicolas Pethes: Literatur, Wissenschaft und die Rhetorik der Krise, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (edts.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 26. 100 articulate higher, divine truths must therefore mirror this metaphysical inscrutability. Human understandings of truth, he suggested, must reduplicate the style of divine creativity.206 For Hamann, as for Moritz, Herder, Kleist, Tieck, and Arnim, mythical and poetical language is therefore the appropriate medium for questioning the scientific and logical order. It alone can fathom higher epistemological truths. As Pethes puts it:

Hamanns Aufwertung des poetischen Genies ist damit als Absage an die Etablierung einer philosophisch, politisch und ökonomisch rationalen Wissensgesellschaft zu lesen, innerhalb derer die Literatur nurmehr die Funktion der Unterhaltung und des schönen Scheins zukommt.207

As I go on to show, this holds true for literature involving premonitions. Among this set of thinkers, literature (including premonitory literature) was understood as a rejection of established philosophical, political, and economic rationality. Seen in this way, literature came to be seen as the domain in which the poetic geniuses can unfold their epiphanies, premonitions, and prophetic thoughts. As such, literature was taken to challenge the rational order and grant access to higher meanings. This comes clearly into focus in the next chapter, in which I analyze the representation of premonitions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature.

206 „Der Kern dieser Analogie liegt im paradoxen Anschein, der den Offenbarungen der Schöpfung eigen ist. Aus eben diesem Grund aber gehen die rationalen Systematisierungsversuche der wissenschaftlichen Logik fehl. Die Wissenschaften bleiben bei Hamann unwissend, da in ihnen die genuine Paradoxie der Wahrheit verfehlt wird. Die Sprache der Dichtung hingegen vermag dieser Wahrheit durch den ihr eigenen paradoxen Stil nahezukommen (...).“ See: Nicolas Pethes: Literatur, Wissenschaft und die Rhetorik der Krise, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (edts.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 26. 207 Nicolas Pethes: Literatur, Wissenschaft und die Rhetorik der Krise, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (eds.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 27. 101

Chapter 3: Literature

Ludwig Tieck: Premonitions Between Epiphany and Insanity Introduction In exploring the role and significance of premonitions in German Romantic literature, this chapter analyzes the work of Ludwig Tieck. In particular, I shall focus on the epistolary novel Die Geschichte des Herrn William Lovell (1793–1796), in which the protagonist experiences a variety of premonitions. My aim is to understand the poetic function of these premonitions, how they influence the novel’s wider narrative, and situate them in relation to the broader discussion of premonition. Tieck was aware of Moritz’s Magazin; indeed, at one point he even meant to submit an essay to the journal. 208 This might explain why Tieck was particularly interested in premonitions and why they frequently appear in his work. Analyzing how Tieck depicts premonitions, I want to suggest, allows for a better understanding of not only his writings, but also Romantic literature’s more general epistemological agenda. In Tieck’s work, premonitions differ from rational reasoning in one crucial aspect: whereas some insights result from an active intellectual process, a premonition suddenly overcomes a passive subject. It comes in the form of a feeling, which cannot be articulated formally.209 Premonitions well up as an inner warning that causes their recipients to call into question a decision they have just made or action they are about to take. Alternatively, they come as an unconscious shock, which changes the recipient’s perspective on the world. Often, premonitions take the form of a sense of foreboding. Despite arising from without, they seem to be guided by an external force—as if the human were in contact with a power beyond reason.210 This is why Romantic authors often stressed

208 „Während es der Berliner Monatsschrift darauf ankam, die Phantasie unter vernünftiger Kontrolle zu halten, zielte das in Tiecks Bibliothek nachweisbare (vgl. Hubert 1971, S. 52) Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde unter Moritz’ Herausgeberschaft auf einen vorurteilsfreien Umgang mit den Nachtseiten der Vernunft. Tiecks Nachbemerkung zur Straußfedern-Erzählung Die beiden merkwürdigen Tage aus Siegmunds Leben erwähnt, ‚daß er diese eigentlich in Karl Philipp Moritz’ Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde einschalten wollte’ (Antoine 2001, S. 196).“ See: Stefan Scherer, Claudia Stockinger (eds.): Ludwig Tieck: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Bonn 2001, especially the essay of Albert Meier: Poetik der Berliner Spätaufklärung, p. 32ff. 209 Novalis writes: „(A)llein die Ahndung will sich selbst in keine feste Form einfügen, und scheint kein höherer Schlüssel werden zu wollen.“ 210 Wolfram Hogrebe writes: „Es sind Szenen, in denen sich gleichsam automatisch Gedanken und Sichtweisen einstellen, ohne daß wir epistemisch aktiv sind, sondern nur Medien eines epistemischen Geschehens.“ Hogrebe: Ahnung und Erkenntnis, p. 85. 102 premonitions’ negative aspects, such as their inscrutability or unfortunate effects on the premonitory subject. Hence, these premonitions are often depicted as dark, terrible, or frightening. Their transcendent power is expressed in psychological terms, as it is articulated through the subject’s uncertainty, fear, and restlessness. Therefore, literary scholar Stefan Willer defines premonitions as “diffuse knowledge.”211 Consider a romantic narrative by Tieck, “Wundersame Liebesgeschichte von der schönen Magelone und dem Grafen Peter aus der Provence” (1797). Written in prose and verse, the story appears in Tieck’s collection Volksmärchen. Exemplifying the apprehensive way in which the phenomenon was often perceived at the time, it begins by describing a dark premonition. Tieck seems to suggest that the protagonist has been possessed and is now being guided by an external power:

Aber der junge Graf Peter kannte seine eigenen Wünsche nicht; es war ihm, als wenn ferne Stimmen unvernehmlich durch einen Wald riefen, er wollte folgen, und Furcht hielt ihn zurück, doch Ahndung drängte ihn vor.212

This notion of the “possessed body” appears in a number of Tieck’s texts. In his novel William Lovell (1795/96), a dark indescribable power incites the protagonist to commit crimes. Tieck describes this force as not just invisible but horrible too. Manipulating the protagonist’s will, it seems to interact with premonitory visions. In William Lovell, then, an opaque external power from the outside determines William’s actions as if they emanated from inside him. William clearly articulates this sense of being possessed, emphasizing how a “cruel hand” seems to “dig in his heart”:

Wie mag es überhaupt wohl um unsre Willkür stehen? Wer weiß, was es ist, was und regelt und regiert, welcher Geist, der außer uns wohnt, und nur allmächtig und unwiderstehlich in uns hineingreift. Aus meinen Kinderjahren fallen mir manche Tage ein, wo ich unaufhörlich etwas Greuliches und Entsetzliches denken mußte, wo

211 Stefan Willer: Vom Nicht-Wissen der Zukunft, Prognostik und Literatur um 1800 und um 1900, in: Michael Bies / Michael Gamper (eds.): Literatur und Nicht-Wissen. Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930, Diaphanes, Berlin / Zürich 2012, p. 174. 212 Ludwig Tieck: Wundersame Liebesgeschichte von der schönen Magelone und dem Grafen Peter aus der Provence, bey Johann Huemer, Linz 1833, p. 4. 103

ich statt meinem stillen Gebete Gott mit den gräßlichsten Flüchen lästerte und darüber weinte, und es doch nicht unterlassen konnte, wo es mich unwiderstehlich drängte, meine Gespielen zu ermorden, und ich mich oft schlafen legte, bloß um es nicht zu tun (...). Was war es denn nun, das mich trieb, und mit gräßlicher Hand in meinem Herzen wühlte?213

In works of literature, premonitions are bound up with the dark, frightening realization that the conventional world might suddenly be turned upside down (“die Welt des Wunderbaren” or “die Welt des Wahnsinns”214). In Tieck’s work, premonitions function in a similar way. His protagonists are uncertain whether they can believe what they know. Through premonitory experiences, they become critically aware of the contingency of reality, the possibility of unexpected events or an unpredictable historical turn. The notion that a sudden historical rupture is possible is particularly important in understanding William Lovell. The novel tells the story of William, a member of British royal family. William’s father sends him on an educational trip through Europe in the hope that he will become a well-rounded person. First he travels to Paris, where he encounters city life for the first time. Immersed in urban adventures and encounters, he meets the mysterious Rosa, who introduces himself as one of the heads of an Italian secret society. Having persuaded William to become a member of his occult lodge, Rosa plans to introduce him to mysterious practices and magical knowledge, keys for understanding the world’s opaque meaning. He also promises to help him better grasp his inner feelings and unspoken desires. After a series of unsatisfying encounters in Paris, which will turn him against the chaos of urban life, William decides to move on to Italy.215 Although he falls in love several women during his travels, in the long run William is unable to sustain these feelings. His attitudes toward

213 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 650. 214 By mentioning the blurred lines between those two worlds, I refer to an essay written by David Wellbery: „Diese Unsicherheit meldet sich darin an, daß die Verwandlung von W1 in W2 (Welt des Normalen in die Welt des Wunderbaren, TK) als abhängig von einem kontingenten Ereignis dargestellt wird (...).“ David Wellbery: Verzauberung. Das Simulakrum in der romantischen Lyrik, in: Andreas Kablitz, Gerhard Neumann (eds.): Mimesis und Simulation, Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, p. 451-477, here: p. 457. 215 William writes to Eduard Burton the following about Paris: „Du wirst mir vielleicht wieder Bitterkeit und Übertreibung vorwerfen, mag’s, - aber ich wünsche nichts so sehnlich, als den Tag an welchem ich Paris verlasse. Ich finde hier nichts von allem, was mich interessiert; die Stadt ist ein wüster, unregelmäßiger Steinhaufen, in ganz Paris hat man das Gefühl eines Gefängnisses (...).“ Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, in: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 49 104 people and the world shift constantly. This is why scholars have described him as the typical “Schwärmer,” the sentimental dreamer.216 The novel’s antihero Rosa, by contrast, reveals himself to be a friend of Andrea Cosimo, an evil fraudster. Cosimo set out to trick William in revenge for the fact that he lost his fortune because of William’s father. William’s Bildungsreise or journey of development is, in fact, a journey of frustration. He sets out in the hope that he would mature, having learned how to navigate modern life. He ultimately realizes, however, that he cannot establish a stable perspective on the world. As such, he has no basis on which to control his passions. William’s view on the world, as articulated in his letters to friends and family, is unreliable and vague. Nobody—the reader no more than the characters to whom William’s letters are addressed—can be sure whether William’s recollections are true or pure fantasies. In the end, the protagonist dies in a duel sparked by one of his failed romances. The reader understands that William’s life descends into chaos and misfortune because of his inability to understand, manage, and direct it. Despite being just twenty-two when he wrote William Lovell, Tieck proved himself able to combine various angles, genres, and styles. As Caroline Domenghino has suggested, the narrative radically questions the stability of the subject’s worldview:

William Lovell uses and abuses the conventions of the gothic novel, epistolary novel, and the Bildungsroman to present a generic hybrid. This hybridizing produces a novel with a remarkably dim ethical vision: characters get deceived and killed, and the individual’s perspective on assessing life and its events is wholly unreliable. Instead of maturing, the protagonist embarks on a journey of deformation (the opposite of the Bildungsroman ideal), as his emotional approach to the world—the value he, like the epistolary novel form itself, accords to feelings—makes him highly susceptible to the manipulations of a duplicitous secret society straight out of the gothic novel tradition (such as Friedrich Schiller's Der Geisterseher). This generic hybrid subsequently becomes the unique and innovative form of William Lovell—a

216 „One of William Lovell's essential problems is that he feels too much; he is, at the novel's outset, a classic eighteenth-century enthusiast (or Schwärmer).“ Laurie Johnson: The Curse of Enthusiasm: William Lovell and Modern Violence, in: Stefani Engelstein, Carl Niekerk (eds.): Contemplating Violence. Critical Studies in Modern German Culture. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, no. 79, Amsterdam 2011, p. 93. 105

novel of premonition operating on an alternative conception of narration and life.217

It is striking that the novel opens with the description of a sudden premonition, which precedes the central narrative. All of the unfortunate events detailed in the novel are foreshadowed in this passage. In a way, the opening is a presentiment to the wider narrative; it contains the seeds of William’s mental infirmity and the grief that befalls his plans. William himself is aware of his psychological fragility, the contingency of reality, the blindness of history, and his impotence in navigating the social world. In describing the premonition, William emphasizes the unpredictability of the processes through which people’s characters are formed:

Ich bin nie so aufmerksam als in diesen Augenblicken darauf gewesen, wie von einem kleinen Zufalle, von einer unbedeutenden Kleinigkeit oft die Wendung unseres Charakters abhängt. Ein unmerklicher Schlag richtet und formt unsern Geist oft anders; wer kennt die Regeln, nach denen unser schützender Genius umgewechselt wird? – Eduard, eine dunkle, ungewisse Ahndung hat mich befallen, (...) als sei ich in eine dunkle Wüste hinausgestoßen, wo ich unter den dämmernden Schatten halb ungewisse feindselige Dämonen entdecke. 218

In presenting Lovell’s “pseudo-uncertainty” (Halb-Ungewissheit), this scene foreshadows the coming narrative. It makes clear from the outset that the protagonist’s understanding of reality has been destabilized by an obscure impulse: a premonition, which puts all of his plans for the future in doubt. I need only refer to Moritz to highlight the aesthetic implications of this premonition, which signals the possibility of another reality. In so doing, the premonition reflects a tipping point (‘Kippeffekt’) within the cognition process: the moment at which a new insight corrects and replaces existing knowledge. This moment might be described as a rupture in the status quo. As such, a premonition is a state of exception, which calls established wisdom into question. Something similar happens to William Lovell, who is suddenly struck by feeling that suggests the potential existence of an alternate world.

217 Domenghino: Knowing without Knowing, p. 147. 218 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 562-563. 106

Ultimately, this sense of another reality perverts William’s view on the world. Indeed, from the very beginning of the novel, William is struck the contingency and relativity of his own perspective. What is more, he describes by himself as an exile cast into a “dark desert” where he is surrounded by shadows, hostile demons, and obscure proscriptions. These visions foreshadow other premonitory experiences that William will have later in the novel, which proceed in a similar way. William’s premonitions indicate a frightening rupture between two worlds. On one side is a safe world of established knowledge. It might be described as a theological domain in that is grounded in belief in God. On the other is an adventitious world of chance and contingency, which might be described as modernity. William’s crises stem from this split. Indeed, his melancholic character is based on his awareness that history is driven by chance, that certain knowledge is impossible, and that reality might suddenly burst or turn into something profoundly different. In conjuring up a vision of the blindness of history, the premonition undermines beliefs and plans made on the basis on probability. This casts the protagonist into a paradoxical realm of uncertainty and randomness in which knowledge cannot stabilize. It is important to note that William’s first premonition is presented, like many premonitory cases in Tieck’s works, as an insight guided by an external power. Irrespective of William’s conscious will, this independent power seems to infect or assault his consciousness, as his mind fell under the control of an ‘invisible hand.’ In Tieck’s description, premonitions are unlike rational reasoning in that they do not result from an active intellectual process or independent choice. Instead, they are an invasive feeling that overpowers the subject from without, raising doubts about the structures by which decisions are made. To articulate this in terms of Tieck’s novel, William does not decide that he wants to have a premonition. Rather, he is invaded by it—occupied or possessed by an uncontrollable external force. William’s body works as a medium that channels this obscure power, which lies beyond his rational understanding and interpretative capacities. In one passage later in the novel, William’s former friend Eduard Burton expresses his conviction that William possesses special antennae (Fühlfäden), making him acutely sensitive to

107 the structures of reality.219 This might be why William’s premonitions usually take the form not of clear prognostic directives, but of vague anticipations of a dark and horrible destiny. Although William’s insights are articulated in prose, the epistolary dialogues between himself and his interlocutors, they are also erratic and arbitrary. Clearly, they are rooted in feelings rather than thought. In some passages, Tieck seems to enact what Herder identifies as the writing of genius, which is able to capture premonitory feelings in language and tone. William verges on insanity: because of this he can repel rational modes of expression in favor a poetic, highly subjective use of language. Through his premonitory insights, he creates marvelous moments that seem to mirror the pathological case studies presented in Moritz’s Magazin. This helps us to understand Tieck’s positioning of premonitions in his work. For Tieck, premonitions are the fruit not of the intellect, but of a psychological condition. In this, Tieck’s description of premonitory experiences almost resembles the anthropological texts that I discussed in the previous chapter, for which premonitions are pathological.220 Many passages in the novel underline the idea that premonitory prediction has nothing to do with mathematical calculation or prognosis. Indeed, in contrast with abstract calculative modes of prediction, premonitions do not offer a transparent analysis of the future. On the contrary, Tieck presents them as a supersensory counter to rational probability theories. In the novel, rationality is represented by William’s father, who seeks to secure a good future for his son through “calculations.”221 As such, he represents a then-emergent bourgeois worldview, which embraced mathematics, probability theories, and economic thinking as a means for managing and structuring life. In contrast to his father’s preference for abstractions, William’s approach to the world is above all sensuous. His skepticism towards rationality is further accentuated by his conviction that biographical and historiographical development is ultimately random. Here, William expressed his opposition to his father’s outlook:

219 „Ich sehe jetzt mit Bedauern ein, daß die Seele feinere Fühlfäden haben...“ Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556- 836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 625. 220 A deep analysis of William Lovell as a case study of insanity is discussed in the following article: Young-Ki Lee: Wahnsinn Redet Selber - Zur Fallgeschichte eines Wahnsinnigen in Ludwig Tiecks Roman William Lovell, vol. 52, 05/30/2019, p. 55-78. 221 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 566. 108

(E)r (der Vater, TK) berechnet vielleicht mein Glück, indem ich wünsche, daß er es fühlen möchte, er sucht mir vielleicht eine frohe Zukunft vorzubereiten und schiebt mir seine Empfindungen unter (…), ohne daran zu denken, daß ich den ländlichen Schatten des Waldes vorziehe und in jener großen Welt nur ein unendliches Chaos von Armseligkeiten erblicke.222

William may be haunted nightly by shadows, but he would rather that than manage his life through prognostic calculation, as his father would have him do. For him, chance and chaos are the essence of reality, whereas planing and prognosis are narrow-minded practices, which place too much trust in human calculation. Hence, William embraces contingency. In his eyes, reason is a paltry quality, whereas in truth insanity and chaos rule the world. As Roger Paulin has written:

Lovell ist ein Held, den weder Genuß noch Enthusiasmus noch Libertinage befriedigen können, der vielmehr in einem Schwebezustand von Schwermut, Angst und Langeweile die eigene Identität verliert, für den das Leben schließlich nicht mehr ist als Traum und Illusion, Chaos und Nichts.223

In describing the central vision put forward in the novel, scholars have tended to stress how the perception of relativity serves to disrupt received epistemological foundations. They emphasize how William reflects consciously on his inability to express his emotions while being fully aware of the vagueness of his thoughts. He has trouble establishing a principle that is able to structure his life and simplify the process of making decisions. Accordingly, Alan Corkhill notes how “Lovell discovers much to his chagrin that the effusiveness of the heart is never matched by a linguistic eloquence capable of doing it full justice.”224 Seen in this light, William’s first premonition serves to warn him that his actions are grounded on an imperfect, incompletely mapped understanding of the world. It impressed on him how the contingency of reality means that the established order might suddenly fall, collapse, or

222 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 566. 223 Roger Paulin: Ludwig Tieck, Metzler, Frankfurt 1987, p. 29. 224 Alan Corkhill: Perspectives on Language in Ludwig Tieck's Epistolary Novel William Lovell, The German Quarterly 58.2, 1985, p. 173–183, here: p. 173-184. 109 topple over into an as-yet unknown future. It is no coincidence, that around 1800 premonitions were often connected with navigation; as I showed in the case of Herder’s poem Der Genius der Zukunft, premonitory experiences were often articulated using marine metaphors that reflect and problematize the opacity of human destinies.225 The form in which William Lovell’s rather pessimistic epistemology is stated is significant: in seeking to highlight the essential unreliability of human communication, Ludwig Tieck chooses the genre of an epistolary novel. At the same time, he pokes fun at the promises made by the genre of the Bildungsroman, which burgeoned during the Enlightenment. Indeed, William Lovell can be seen as a satirical Bildungsroman, subverting the genre’s conventions though its unorganized structure and the protagonist’s downfall. By focalizing the narrative through the highly subjective perspectives of various correspondents, Tieck highlights how, ultimately, they are all relative: “Jeder sieht mit seinen Augen und jeder glaubt recht zu sehn, und am Ende werden wir alle betrogen.”226 As we can see, William’s dark premonitory feelings and forebodings project an image of his future, which consistently disrupts the narrative. A leitmotif that runs through the novel, premonitions occur frequently and at prominent moments: after an introductory letter written by his father, in which William is told that he has to leave England for Paris, the protagonist contacts his friend Eduard to express his fear that he will never see his homeland again. This dark premonition is presented as an insight guided by an external power, which seems to assail William like a sudden magical force. This particular scene shows very vividly how the protagonist is unable to direct his consciousness under his own power alone. Instead, he allows himself to be driven about by an invisible hand, which commands what he must think and feel:

Aus den Wipfeln fiel eine schwere Ahndung auf mich herab, daß ich nie dort wieder wandeln würde, oder im Verluste aller dieser großen Gefühle, die den Geist in die Unendlichkeit drängen und uns aus unsrer eigenen Natur herausheben.227

225 Kleist writes in a diary entry about himself: „Ich habe mich wie ein spielendes Kind auf die Mitte der See gewagt, es erheben sich heftige Winde, gefährlich schaukelt das Fahrzeug über den Wellen, das Getöse übertönt alle Besinnung, ich kenne nicht einmal die Himmelsgegend, nach welcher ich steuern soll, und mir flüstert eine Ahndung zu, daß mir mein Untergang bevorsteht.“ 226 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 573. 227 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 568. 110

William seems convinced that his premonitions are prognostic, that they convey a blurry image of the future. In several letters, he states that he is guided by a force that presents him with vague insights into the future. In those passages, premonitions are described as a shadowy, emotional form of knowledge, which allows him to foresee his destiny: “(M)ir war’s, als könnt’ ich in die Zukunft hineinsehen, als wären die Schleier eben im Begriffe herunterzufallen, die sonst vor diesem Schauplatze hängen (…).”228 As I have shown, premonitions work in different ways depending on the context. They might take the form of an emotional sense for the future or they might present the receiver with a guiding principle, which indicates the right path leading to their destiny. The novel plays with both of these perspectives. In addition, it incites the reader to be skeptical about the epistemological value of William’s premonitions. Although William is convinced that his premonitions lead him into a world freed from limiting conventions and arbitrary signs, other characters criticize his unrestrained and unorthodox behavior. Describing him as a Schwärmer, they write that he is emotionally unbalanced and has adopted the wrong way of approaching life. One character named Mortimer, for instance, interprets his friend’s emotional instability as stemming from an “irritable sensibility” (reizbare Empfindsamkeit).229 These passages offer a different perspective on William’s worldview, calling his mindset and premonitory wisdom into question. William’s brother Thomas, for instance, reproves William for writing unclearly, as if William were using a private, pseudo-poetic tone. Interestingly, this criticism reflects what Herder has identified as the proper basis of premonitory reflection:

Schreibe mir so oft Du kannst, (…), nur muß ich Dir noch sagen, daß Deine Art zu schreiben gerade nicht die schönste ist, alles ist immer so dunkel, wenn man nicht selbst etwas Verstand hätte, so würde man Dich nimmermehr verstehn.230

Thomas’s response to William’s unfocused way of writing underlines that premonitory wisdom cannot be captured transparently in language. With their ambiguity and broken syntax, written accounts of premonitory experience reflect premonitions’ uncertain epistemological status.

228 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 570. 229 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 573. 230 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 574. 111

Tieck’s understanding of premonitions is encapsulated in William Lovell’s highly subjective receptivity, which grasped the world as contingent and chaotic. William’s susceptibility for premonitions does not go uncriticized. The letters written by the other characters offer a counter perspective. Eduard, for instance, cautions William to be wary about the people he meets. Sensing his friend’s psychological weakness and vulnerability to manipulation, he criticizes William’s passivity and aversion to action. From Thomas’ perspective, on the other hand, William spends too much time dreaming about his future instead of actively shaping it. He warns his brother not to be the slave of his thoughts and fantasies, urging him to be skeptical about his new friends Rosa and Andrea, who, as members of the secret society, let dreams and irrational speculation guide their lives. For Eduard, these characters are the reason that William has dark premonitions:

Träume, lieber William, und berausche Dich in Enthusiasmus und Begeisterung, - nur glaube mir, daß zum Handeln eine Art von Kälte notwendig ist, glaube mir, daß jener Taumel sehr leicht zur Erschlaffung führt. Ich fürchte, daß Dein neuer Freund Dir schon itzt seine finstre Laune mitgeteilt hat, die ebenso gut, wie die Heiterkeit, ansteckend ist, vorzüglich bei Deinen reizbaren Empfindungen, bei Deiner feurigen Phantasie.231

William refuses to listen, claiming that planning things out in advance has previously landed him in trouble. Spurning reason, he expresses his intention to live life guided by emotions and sudden impulses. Refusing to yolk himself to clear modes of expression and calculative rationality, he affirms dreams and premonitions: “(M)eine dümmsten Streiche waren immer die, die aus einem weitläufigen recht vernünftigen Plan entstanden (…).”232 In a way, William’s attitude foreshadows a phrase of Goethe’s, expressed through the character Mittler in the novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809): “Das Vernünftigste habe ich mißlingen sehen, das Abgeschmackteste gelingen.”233 Much like this thought, which emphasizes how the way of the world is nothing if not opaque, William’s attitude is irrational, skeptical, and

231 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 573. 232 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 619. 233 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Die Wahlverwandtschaften, in: Goethe: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 6, Verlag vom Litteratur Comptoir, Herisau 1837, p. 133. 112 at the same time sentimental. In a letter to Thomas, William expresses the view that dreams and premonitions are of greater epistemological value than rationality and calculative prognoses. To support this, he describes having a dream that correctly predicted the death of Mortimer, one of his best friends. Ruminating on this experience, William elaborates a theory of dreams and prophecy based on proleptic incidents from his past. In this passage, William declares:

Ein Traum, sagt man freilich wohl, ist nur ein Schaum; aber ein Schiffer hat mir doch einmal erzählt, daß es auf dem Meere einen gewissen kuriosen Schaum gebe, der ordentlich Sturm und Schiffbruch voraus prophezeie! – Könnt’ es denn nicht auch mit manchen Träumen dieselbe Bewandtnis haben?234

Despite being encourages by Rosa and Andrea, William’s proclivity for the marvelous and mysterious is heavily criticized by the novel’s more rational characters. William’s trust in other people, his melancholic mental state, his sensitivity and passivity are all denounced particularly harshly by his father. He wants to make William realize that his unstable psychological condition makes him susceptible to manipulation and fraud. William’s father is well aware of his son’s need for external guidance, the fact that, left to his own devices, William struggles to organize his life properly. Lacking a clear and firm understanding of the world, his son is open to occult, spiritual, and sensational ideas. As his father puts it:

(U)nbesonnen vertraust Du Dich dem nichtigen Enthusiasmus eines andern, und findest Dich endlich in einer dunkeln, einsamen Gruft verirrt, in der Du ängstlich nach der Öffnung tappst. Charaktere wie Du können am leichtesten um die Freuden ihres Lebens betrogen werden, sie sind Maschinen in der Hand eines jeden Menschenkenners.235

Without doubt, William puts his trust in Rosa, the head of the secret society in Rome, on account of his loneliness, melancholy, and subservience to his imagination. William repeatedly describes Rosa as his helmsman: “(E)r selber ist mein Steuermann in manchen dunklen

234 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 613. 235 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 576. 113

Regionen.”236 Later in the novel, Rosa reveals that he is a calculating criminal. Manipulating William by insidiously planting premonitions in his head, this supposed president of a fake secret society exhibitions a malicious familiarity with human nature. At first, William trusts Rosa’s promises. Listening to Rosa’s advice, he believes, is the only way in which he can access higher truths in a world ruled by chance. Under his friend’s influence, he rejects reason and rationality as the false principles of an erratic and mistaken worldview:

Unsere Vernunft, die vom Himmel stammt, darf nur auf der Erde wandeln, noch keinem ist es gelungen über Ewigkeit, Gott und Bestimmung der Welt eine feste Wahrheit aufzufinden (…).237

William’s unsteadiness and unreliability, the novel seems to suggest, makes him a perfect victim for manipulators. Rosa understands William’s indecisiveness and exploits his emotional instability by emphasizing the world’s irrationality. He places premonitions and speculation above probability and reason. In a letter to William, Rosa writes: “Ist der nicht ein Tor, der in seinem dunkeln Zimmer sitzen bleibt und Wahrscheinlichkeit und Möglichkeit berechnet?”238 In this way, Rosa feeds William’s obsession with emotionality and dreaming. He confirms the wisdom of William’s rejection of mathematical thinking. Like William, Rosa explicitly states that chaos rules the world.239 Sentimentality (Schwärmerei), he claims, is the proper psychological basis on which one can grasp the profundities of time and history. Indeed, Rosa falsely claims that a melancholic state of mind grants us access to a kind of universal knowledge, which lies beyond reason. In this way, he leads William to believe that he can pursue truth along the lanes of the “ether” (p. 602), encouraging him to embrace the power of his imagination (Einbildungskraft) and to live out his fantasies. This would, Rosa suggested, allow him to heighten his perceptions. Writing to William, Rosa emphasizes the connections between premonitions and the ability to see ghosts:

236 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 597. 237 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 597. 238 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 604. 239 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 566. 114

(I)ch kenne auch die Reize, die diese Schwärmerei uns anfangs gewährt; wir ahnden eine Vertraulichkeit mit Geistern, die uns entzückt, die Seele badet sich im reinsten Glanze des Äthers und vergißt zur Erde zurückzukehren (…).240

Rosa reinforces William’s subjective relativism, telling him that his imagination and dreams shape reality. In many of his letters, Rosa encourages William to embrace his emotional sensitivity, focus on his feelings, and thus embark upon a meaningful life. In one, he writes:

Freilich kann alles, was ich außer mir wahrzunehmen glaube, nur in mir selber existieren. Meine äußern Sinne modifizieren die Erscheinungen, und mein innerer Sinn ordnet sie und gibt ihnen Zusammenhang. Dieser innere Sinn gleicht einem künstlich geschliffenen Spiegel, der zerstreute und unkenntliche Formen in ein geordnetes Gemälde zusammenzieht.241

The more that William gets to know Rosa, the more premonitions he experiences and the less stable his perspective becomes. His relationships with women underscore his growing instability: first, he falls in love Amalien, whom he describes as being a perfect choice for his future wife. Only a few letters later, however, he foresakes his love, claiming that it was merely the result of emotional irritation. Indecisiveness is his dominant characteristic. William writes:

Denn was ist unsre sogenannte Liebe anders, als diese nichtswürdige Einbildung, daß wir in Wesen, das erste beste zu unserer Gottheit stempeln, und alle Gebete und Gedanken nach ihm hinrichten? – Kannte ich denn Amaliens Seele hinlänglich in den paar Wochen, in welchen ich sie sah, um ihre Freundschaft zu wünschen?242

Given this mindset, William is unable to commit to a single relationship. All the women he gets to know distance themselves from him. One of his lovers, Rosaline, commits suicide in response to his unpredictable behavior. William is unable to decide among potential relationships or make other life choices. Even his premonitions, which William often presents as epiphanies, devolve

240 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 602. 241 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 605. 242 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 610. 115 into blurry messages, which even the protagonist cannot interpret with any certainty. As messages from a wayward and delirious soul, they become confused and inscrutable. This creates a vicious circle in that these premonitions only induce further hesitation and confusion in William:

Wie mag es überhaupt wohl um unsre Willkür stehn? Wer weiß, was es ist, was uns regelt und regiert, welcher Geist, der außer uns wohnt, und nur allmächtig und unwiderstehlich in uns hineingreift. (…) Ich weiß, daß dies für die meisten Menschen Unsinn ist, aber vielleicht ließe sich in dieser Ahndung der Wahrheit (denn das sind gewiß immer diese Spiele der Phantasie) ein sehr tiefer Sinn erforschen, wenn meine Beobachtung ebenso fein wäre, als der Sinn, der diese Erscheinung hervorbrachte, wenn ich nicht von den Armen des Irdischen zu fest gehalten würde, und sich immer wieder neue Bilder zwischen mein Auge und den beobachteten Gegenstand schöben: kurz, wenn ich mich in einer ebenso glücklichen Himmelsverklärung, in einem ähnlichen Traume kommentieren könnte.243

William’s constant focus on his inner feelings and indifference to his surroundings make it impossible for him to establish a stable way of life. Beset by cryptic premonitions, he is unable to fathom his destiny. Accordingly, scholars have often characterized his misfortunate as the result of a crisis of language. Yet in fact William is embroiled in a crisis of knowledge.

243 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 650. 116

Premonition as a Source for Manipulation? William Lovell’s central appeal lies in how it reflects the inextricable connects between communication and miscommunication.244 Just as William tries to decipher his own emotions, so the reader attempts to decode the world evoked in the novel. William’s purely sensory approach towards reality culminates in his attraction to Andrea, who promises to give him access to transcendent meaning. This “sinnliche Philosophie,” which foregrounds the role of emotions in understanding and interpreting the world, promise to grant access to a transcendental plane.245 After joining Andrea’s secret society, William writes the following about his spiritual guide:

Durch meine Ahndungen und seltsame Gefühle, hat er mich vom Dasein einer fremden Geisterwelt überzeugt, ich hab eigenmächtig meinen Zweifeln ein Ziel gesetzt, und ich freue mich jetzt innig, dass ich auf irgendeine Art mit unbegreiflichen Wesen zusammenhänge, und künftig mit ihnen in eine noch vertrautere Bekanntschaft treten werde.246

At the outset of the narrative, it seems that Andrea is the only character with a firm understanding of the world. As a leader of the secret society, he issues instructions and claims to comprehend the world order fully. Despite this, the society has nothing to offer beyond convivial meetings. In the novel’s conclusion, Tieck makes it clear that none of the society’s leading figures possess privileged insights or wisdom. Andrea appears to have an upper hand only because he knows how to instrumentalize and manipulate people by using language cleverly:

In der Sprache muß man sich gewisse Worte und Redensarten merken, die wie Zaubergesänge dazu dienen, eine gewisse Gattung von Leuten einzuschläfern. Auf jeden Menschen würken Worte, nur muß man ihn etwas kennen, damit man die rechten nimmt, um sein Ohr zu bezaubern.247

244 “It is in assigning to the miscommunications and misinterpretations in the letters of William Lovell the transcendence of gothic fate that Tieck’s text emerges as a genuine challenge to the novel of the Enlightenment.” Domenghino: Knowing without Knowing, p. 177. 245 Tieck explains his attempt in the prephase of the second edition. Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, in: Ausgewählte Schriften in einem Bande, no publishing house, Wien 1840, p. 560. 246 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 673. 247 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 667. 117

Toward the end of the narrative, Andrea’s manipulative character is exposed. Before his death, Andrea sends William a testament in which he explains that he set out to deceive him so as to revenge crimes perpetrated by William’s father. Andrea explains how he took advantage of William’s “tendency towards the marvelous” (Hang zum Wunderbaren) to trick him:248

Dieser (Hang, TK) war es vorzüglich, der die Menschen an mich fesselte, weil alle etwas Außerordentliches von mir erwarteten. Die meisten Leute glauben über dem Aberglauben erhaben zu sein, und doch ist nichts leichter, als sie von neuem zu verwickeln. Es liegt etwas Dunkles in jeder Brust, eine Ahndung, die das Herz nach fremden, unbekannten Regionen hinzieht. Diesen Instinkt darf man nur benutzen, um den Menschen aus sich selbst und über diese Erde zu entrücken. Ich fand, daß ich gar nicht nötig hatte, feine Sophistereien, oder seltsam schwärmerische und doch vernünftig scheinende Ideen zu gebrauchen, die die Aufklärung und den gesunderen Verstand nach und nach untergrüben: der Sprung, den diese Menschen immer zu tun scheinen, ist wirklich nur scheinbar. Deswegen, weil nichts die Unmöglichkeit der Wunder beweisen kann, glaubt jedes Herz an manchen Stunden fest an diese Wunder. 249

Here Andreas identifies visions of dark metaphysical realms as a resource that can be controlled and manipulated. Tieck’s novel presents the emergence of such ideas as a negative consequence of the disenchantment of the world under the conditions of secular modernity: wherever such mystified ideas spread, William Lovell seems to suggest, there is room for manipulation and conspiracy theories. (As a matter of fact, such theories became increasingly popular in Germany after 1780.250) Andrea grasped how ‘knowledge’ is performative, that is, constructed and staged, allowing him to psychologically manipulate the vulnerable. For him, the “science of belief” (die Wissenschaft des Glaubens) is merely a technique for convincing other people of alien ideas:

248 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 447. 249 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell p. 732. 250 „Mit der literarischen Modellierung arkangesellschaftlicher Akteure und konspirativer Machinationen agierte und reagierte der Autor Ludwig Tieck in einem Feld sozialhistorischer Vorgaben und kollektiver Imaginationen, das sich seit Ende der 1780er Jahre veränderte.“ Ralf Klausnitzer: Poesie und Konspiration, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, p. 450. 118

Haben die Menschen in die Wissenschaft des Glaubens erst einen Schritt hineingetan, so ist nachher kein Aufhalten mehr; sie fühlen sich nun über die aufgeklärten Menschen erhaben, sie glauben über den Verstand hinweggekommen zu sein, und jedes Kindermärchen, jede tolle Fiktion hat sie jetzt in der Gewalt. Ich könnte viele lächerliche Erfahrungen, die ich hierüber gemacht habe, niederschreiben, wenn es nicht zu weitläufig wäre.251

At the end of the novel, William expresses his frustration over his failures and mistakes; he blames himself for believing Andrea’s false theories. Ironically, the collapse of William’s beliefs, his disillusionment with the secret society, and his death were all already poetically predicted in the premonition that opened the novel. As William writes:

Ich komme mir in vielen Momenten wie ein Kind vor, welches jammert, ohne selbst zu wissen, worüber. Ich komme soeben von einem kleinen Spaziergange aus dem Felde zurück: der Mond zittert in wunderbaren Gestalten durch die Bäume, der Schatten flieht über das Feld und jagt sich hin und her mit dem Scheine des Mondes; die nächtliche Einsamkeit hat meine Gefühle in Ruhe gewiegt, ich sehe mich und die Welt gemäßigter an und kann itzt mein Unglück nur in mir selber finden. Ich ahnde eine Zeit, in welcher mir meine jetzigen Empfindungen wie leere kindische Träume vorschweben werden, wo ich mitleidig über diesen Drang des Herzens lächle, der itzt meine Qual und Seligkeit ist, - und soll ich es Dir gestehn, Eduard? – Diese Ahndung macht mich traurig.252

As this passage indicates, the disaster that concludes the novel is implicitly hinted at from its very beginning. The opening premonition structures the expectations of both reader and the protagonist himself. As a trope, William’s premonition is more than just a prediction: it is also a form of paradoxical knowledge that contradicts itself. William knows that he will fail; by failing,

251 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 732. 252 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 563. 119 then, he proves what he already knew. I would therefore suggest that premonition, at least in Tieck’s case, might be though of as ‘prescience of nescience.’ In a way, the opening premonition takes its revenge on the heedless William by becoming true. Something of this is implied in the etymology of the German word Ahndung, which, as I have shown, means both “premonition” and “revenge.” Tieck was fully aware of this double meaning. Indeed, he criticized his publisher for changing his manuscript so as to use the word’s new spelling, Ahnung, in the novel’s first print edition. Tieck immediately wrote to insist that he would like to continue using the older spelling:

Dann bitte ich beim neuen Abdruck meine Ortografie beizubehalten. So ist es seit 20 Jahren bei den Herrn Correktoren Mode, Ahnen und ahnden zu unterscheiden: ich schreibe aber immer ahnden, wie früher Göthe, Schiller, Lessing: der Unterschied ist neu und unrecht, es ist viel poetischer, dass das Wort Strafe, Rache, und Vorgefühl zu gleich begleitet.253

Tieck’s intervention clearly shows that the author wanted to play on the word’s multiple meanings. Still, the implications of this semantic ambivalence for the epistemological value of William’s premonitions remains unclear. His gloomy premonitions certainly come true, but this might only be because William believes and even enacts them. In this sense, his premonitions might be read as the price paid for a confused or deluded outlook. An obsession or pathological mentality would indeed constitute an Ahndung, a punishment, for giving too much credence to fantasies. The story hints at both of these interpretations, favoring neither reading over the other. Karlheinz Weigand comes to this same conclusion: “Der Roman behält (...) durchgängig bis zuletzt sein Janus-Gesicht,” he writes.254 Tieck includes many voices that are critical of William’s predictions and premonitory fantasies. For these figures, these experiences are merely the products of his misguided sentimentality (Schwärmerei). Still, the novel does not offer a concrete answer to the question of why they finally come true. Through his downfall and death, William’s dark foresights into his

253 Edwin H. Zeydel: Letters to Ludwig Tieck, hitherto unpublished, 1792-1853, Modern Language Association of America, Oxford University Press, London / New York 1937, p. 490. 254 Karlheinz Weigand: Tiecks „William Lovell.“ Studie zur frühromantischen Antithetik, Carl Winter Universtitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1975, p. 133. 120 future become a reality. He foreshadows his death early on. In this way he demonstrates, after all, that his premonitions do indeed imply an inexplainable prophetic wisdom, rooted in the emotions. But is this because the world is guided by an opaque metaphysical force, because William manages to be in touch with the “world of the marvelous” or the “ether?”255 Or is it simply that William wants to believe in the occult premonitions that whisper inside his head? In other words, is he the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy? The narrative (and narrator) leaves this question unanswered. The reality or falsity of premonitions remains uncertain. If the first reading were correct, the reader would be take premonitions for a legitimate epistemological practice. If the latter were right, though, premonitions would be exposed as pathological along the lines suggested by rational anthropologists such as Justus Christian Hennings and Johann Josias Sucro.256As self-fulfilling prophecies, premonitions would be comparable with the conspiracy theories or occult stories in that they push believers into a constellation of lies and misconceptions. There is a good reason, I argue, that Tieck left the question of whether William’s premonitions constitute a higher insight or pathology unanswered. The ambivalence positions Tieck between premonition’s supporters and detractors. Moreover, it shows that Tieck did not want to close down debates over the veracity and epistemological implications of premonitions; he rather sought to spur these discussions on. With its constitutive toleration of ambiguity and contingency, literature is the ideal laboratory in which to explore discrepant interpretations of premonitions. In the literary realm, thinkers could probe the shifting lines between knowledge and belief, which contributed significantly to the interest in premonitions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only critique that the text clearly articulates concerns the nature of William’s premonitions, which are presented as arbitrary, shady, and obscure. It would seem that his predictions are more the result of a certain mood rather than the expression of a thought. They vaguely intimate a dark, fatal destiny without clearly articulating what will happen. As such, they are less predictions than an awareness of contingency, as expressed through a confused and emotional mentality, much like that depicted in Moritz’s novel Anton Reiser. Ultimately,

255 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 702. 256 Johann Josias Sucro: Ueber die Ahndungen, J. W. Halle und J. G. Halle, Brandenburg 1759. / Justus Christian Hennings: Von den Ahndungen und Visionen, in der Mengandtschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1777. 121

William admits that his premonitions do not contribute to his wellbeing. Quite the opposite: he internalizes a profound sense of disaster. His premonitory experiences seem to both anticipate the novel’s tragic ending and push him in a fatal direction. It is as if his premonitions paradoxically combine predictive insight with a recognition of the fact that the human mind can never know the future. As William writes:

Wie alles mich immer bestimmter zu jenen Schrecken hinwinkt, denen ich entfliehen wollte! Wie es mich verfolgt und drängt, und doch die gräßliche Leere in mir nicht ausfüllt!257

To do justice to William’s predictions, one must acknowledge that his premonitions do gesture toward a profound insight which seems important to Tieck. This idea, namely, is that under given circumstances rationality can suddenly tip into madness and knowledge into disbelief. William is the novel’s central protagonist. Of all the characters, the tendency for experiencing premonitions is the strongest. He sees himself as a special, gifted person, who derives his energy from epiphanic moments of premonitory delirium. Despite being tricked by Rosa, who takes advantage of his gullibility, William nonetheless believes that he is the chosen one. To use Herder’s vocabulary, William sees himself as a genius artist, special endowed with a capacity for experiencing premonitions:

Ich richte mich durch jene hohen Ahndungen und wunderbaren Gefühle, durch jene göttliche Überzeugung wieder auf, deren die übrigen Menschen entbehren müssen.258

Despite his euphoria, William’s statement does not articulate truth. Other characters in the novel also experience and express dark premonitions. Unlike William, however, they do not simply allow themselves be guided by their visions. By showing that every human being has the potential to experience and feel premonitions, Tieck uses the phenomenon for blurring the line between reason and madness, rationality and disbelief.

257 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 658. 258 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 674. 122

Rosa explicitly states that “there is a premonition in every breast,” (eine Ahndung in jeder Brust) declaring that everyone has a tendency to believe in mysterious, irrational stories. Manipulating people, he suggests, entails triggering their propensity towards the dark and marvelous. Premonitions express the flexibility of knowledge. They imply that knowledge can be corrected through language and speech; that it can be guided and manipulated, whether for good or ill. This awareness of the performative power of language is a key point of focus in scholarly interpretations of William Lovell. William knows from the beginning that his educational journey will be a failure. Following his premonitions, he founders. Indeed, immediately before his death he remembers that his premonitions had already announced his fate. One might say that his premonitions unconsciously seek their fulfillment. In this regard, Tieck’s William Lovell shares the complex dialectic on show in Schiller’s Geisterseher, in which the logic underlying the narrative is inscrutable. Both narratives seem to be ruled by a hidden force, which corresponds with the occult logic of subjectivity as defined by Hegel.259 In Stefan Andriopoulos’s interpretation, Schiller’s Geisterseher centers on a conspiracy theory managed by an Armenian, who guides the protagonist’s expectations. This might shed light on Tieck’s approach. William Lovell’s narrative is teleological, in that it progresses toward a predicted outcome that cannot be grasped rationally. As such, Andriopoulos suggests, it belongs to an opaque teleology at work in history. William’s dark premonitions are therefore glimpses into historical teleology. Andriopoulos concludes his discussion of this theme with the following remarks, which are relevant for interpreting Tieck’s novel, too:

Hegel described the teleological progress of history as based on a principle of deceptive manipulation. According to Hegel, it is the “worldhistorical individual,” ruled by his passions, who “commits himself unreservedly to one purpose alone” and suffers “loss and injury,” while the “universal idea” that thereby asserts itself

259 Hegel calls it also the dark power, „die Macht“, which embraces, because of its opaqueness, vague premonitory feelings: „Macht ist die Vermittlung der befassenden Allgemeinheit und der Einzelheit, sowohl der Einzelnen, vom Allgemeinen Unterschiedenen und Äußerlichen als der Einzelnen, der mit dem Allgemeinen identischen. So wird der Gegenstand ein Naturmächtiges, natürliches Subjekt überhaupt. Die Unbestimmtheit, d.i. die Abstraktion dieser Macht erfüllt das Gemüt mit Furcht, Ahndung, Sehnsucht und den Geist mit Verbindungen, wie sie sich in diesem Dunkel des Vorstellens finden, d.i. zufälligen und willkürlichen Verknüpfungen.“ Georg W. F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 2: Die bestimmte Religion, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1994, p. 11. 123

“remains in the background..., untouched and unharmed.” (…) Hegel called this “the cunning of Reason.”260

William Lovell is a “worldhistorical individual” in the Hegelian sense in that he serves the “universal idea” by suffering “loss and injury.” Although he thinks he knows what he must do to succeed and avoid misfortune, ultimately he fails, thereby proving both the truth of his premonitions and the teleological character of history. He is a victim of the “cunning of reason.” As a form of revenge, the premonition guides Lovell’s actions, causing his predictions to come true. This is revenge in the sense of ‘die Ahndung der Ahnung.’ In failing to avoid his miserable fate, William does justice to both the narrative's logic and his own predictions. Meanwhile, the teleological progress of history continues undisturbed. William’s paradoxical knowledge reflects premonitions’ poetic function in the text. The uncertainty of his knowledge extends to that of the reader: In the last part of the novel, the reader’s thoughts are reconfigured along with William’s. This shapes the story’s ultimate point and meaning. In finally enacting William’s original premonition, the final scene fulfills a series of transformations in both the characters’ understanding and what the reader knows. Indeed, by the end of the novel, it comes to light that Rosa was not the head of a secret society and that William cannot avoid his destiny. Instead, William’s life concludes in failure, which ironically fulfills his own expectations. His premonitions do exactly what premonitions should: they come true. The reader undergoes the same revelations and learns the same lesson as William. This transition is precisely the Kippfigur, the transgressive tipping point from one state of knowledge to another, enacted through premonition. This grasp of premonitions explains why William’s are always presented as dark and hostile rather than positive or optimistic. His premonitions express the contingency of human knowledge and belief. As such, they threaten the rational mindset, which presumes a stable perspective on a supposedly well-ordered world:

Es ist mir ein widriger Anblick, wenn ich ein Paar gehn sehe, das zärtlich gegeneinander tut. In der Kindheit wünschen wir uns Glasperlen, dann Liebe, dann

260 Stefan Andriopoulos: Occult Conspiracies: Spirits and Secret Societies in Schiller’s “Ghost Seer”, New German Critique, (103), 2008, p. 65-81, here: p. 77. 124

Reichtum, dann Gesundheit, dann nur noch das Leben; auf jeder Station glauben wir weitergekommen zu sein und fahren doch im Kreise herum, so daß wir nie sagen können: jene Gegend liegt jetzt fern von mir. (…) Tod und Grab sind das einzige Asyl des verfolgten Elenden.261

I have shown how premonitions are highly ambivalent in William Lovell. Tieck draws on both case studies from Moritz’s Magazin and premonitions’ poetic aura so as to blur both the novel’s meaning and the status of the protagonist’s epistemological capacities. On one level, William’s dark premonitions come true, proving that history does not progression rationally. On another, the novel clearly suggests a critical perspective on premonitions: William is presented as a Schwärmer, a highly unreliable character who does not know how to organize his life. By combining these perspectives, Tieck both affirms and critiques premonition. Hence, William Lovell is positioned tensely in the midst of the debate on the truthfulness of premonitions. As I show in the following chapter, Heinrich von Kleist put forward a different perspective. His works leave no doubt as to his conviction that only a premonitory approach can grasp the truth of history.

261 Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837, p. 690. 125

Heinrich von Kleist: The Prognostic Capacities of the Soul Probability and Premonition: Differences and Similarities To understand Heinrich von Kleist’s perspective on history and teleology in the context of premonitory experiences, it is worth attending to his understanding of time and how it progresses. In the book The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist, Rüdiger Campe traces shifting historical conceptions of “probability.” Western societies have perceived and approached time, he argues, in and through this largely mathematical concept, which allows them to plan for contingent futures. Campe explains how, before the early seventeenth century, “probability” was associated with “practical efficiency.”262 Surprisingly, it was taken to belong to the art of rhetoric. If an orator was to convince listeners of his arguments in the ancient agora, for instance, they would be expected to speak in accordance with the probable. At the same time, probability was seen as distinct from notions of truth and knowledge, which were associated with scientific discourses. According to Campe, this division between scientific knowledge and probability fell away in the seventeenth century, with the discovery of infinite numbers and development of a complex mathematical theory of probability. Campe describes this shift in terms of a “transition from theoretical-dialectical probability into the probability of the mathematical theory of games of chance.”263 From then on, the future was no longer laid out by God’s mysteriousness, omnipotent will. On the contrary, the future took the form of the probable, as determined by human action. As such, it presented an open space of possibility, marked by risks and opportunities. In this context, writes Campe, the modern subject began collecting as much data as possible so as to rationally plan the best possible future and avoid potential disasters. At this historical conjecture, the future is opened up to historical contingency, for better or worse. In her book Zukunft als Katastrophe, Eva Horn confirms this periodization, distinguishing between the ancient and modern understandings of future and time in the following way:

Der grundlegende Unterschied der modernen zur antiken Vorstellung ist die einer Zukunft als Garten der Pfade, die sich verzweigen. Die Moderne geht nicht mehr von

262 Rüdiger Campe: The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2012, p. 2. 263 Campe: The Game of Probability, p. 4. 126

einem Lebensfaden aus, der sich unerbittlich abspult und den man nur er- oder verkennen kann. Sie rechnet mit einer offenen Zukunft, die gestaltbar ist, die in der Gegenwart ebenso prognostiziert wie jederzeit auch verändert, geplant aber eben auch verhindert werden kann.264

With this disclosure of the future as malleable and plannable, ‘probability theory’ emerges as a key strategy for dealing with risks and opportunities. This theory was to use deductive reasoning, building upon existing inductive knowledge, to navigate the newly open future. Campe and Horn show how following the emergence of infinite numbers, Western philosophers began to imagine that abstract mathematical analysis might allow humans to understand the progression of time. Some—Leibniz included—thought that even legal justice might rendered calculable. Such thinkers sought to establish what Sybille Krämer has called “das interpretationsfreie Operieren mit Symbolen zum Zweck des Problemlösens.”265 The priviledge thus accorded to abstract mathematical calculation marked a historical rupture: from then on, science would no longer contemplate of God’s creative will. Instead, it would calculate risks and opportunities. “Such risk taking,” Campe writes “was notably different from the then-outdated former attitude toward the future,” namely “pious adaptation to the contingency of the world by meditation and spiritual exercises.”266 On the other hand, risk taking required establishing safety nets—insurance policies, for instance—so as to absorb potential losses. This development reflects the rise of a new understanding of human agency. As Christoph Kampmann and Ulrich Niggemann have argued:

[D]ie Entstehung[en] des Versicherungswesens lassen den Schluss zu, dass im Laufe der Frühen Neuzeit durchaus Wandlungsprozesse von einer eher passiven, auf die göttliche Fügung vertrauenden Haltung hin zu einer Auffassung, dass durch

264 Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe, S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2014, p. 323. 265 Sybille Krämer: Berechenbare Vernunft: Kalkül und Rationalismus im 17. Jahrhundert, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 1991, p. 1. 266 Rüdiger Campe: The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2012, p. 6. 127

innerweltliche Maßnahmen Zukunft gestaltet und Risiken minimiert werden können.267

As statistics emerged as a means for controlling and predicting the future, early modern Western societies gradually shifted from a prophetic to a prognostic way of thinking.268 Abstract mathematical scales were established not only in an attempt to understand, calculate, and predict the future, but also to better grasp a broader range of concepts, including reality, history, knowledge, and truth.269 Before the early modern period, Campe explains, the future was seen as predetermined by God. According to Christianity at least, humans should not predict the future. “The contingentia futura singularia,” writes Campe, “are for God to know and for Him alone.”270 Lessing, for instance, spoke out strongly against speculating about the future. As the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries went on, however, this reluctance to engage in prognostication gradually eroded. The prominence of premonitions brings into focus some of the downsides to this shift toward what Campe calls “causal science.”271 Premonitions reflect a paradox, according to which predictions based on probabilities are both probably correct and improbably incorrect. Prominent probability theoreticians such as Blaise Pascal soon realized that there are many ways of accessing reality. This precipitated a crisis of knowledge.272 Every narrative of the probable

267 Christoph Kampmann, Ulrich Niggemann (eds.): Sicherheit in der frühen Neuzeit. Norm - Praxis - Repräsentation, Böhlau Verlag, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2013, p. 27. 268 The rational forecast, the prognosis, became the counterconcept of contemporary prophecy. The delicate art of political calculation was first developed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, and then brought to a peak of finesse during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the cabinets of the European courts. As a motto for this art, we will repeat a classical quotation from Aristotle, which was used by Guicciardini when introducing it into political literature: (...) (“For future events the truth is indeterminate.”)“ Reinhart Koselleck: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Columbia University Press, New York 2004, p. 56. 269 Rüdiger Campe: The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2012, p. 12. 270 Campe: The Game of Probability, p. 22. 271 I refer here to the definition of the philosophers Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford: “What we mean by causal science is the science of finding causes in the natural world and using that knowledge.” Rani Lill Anjum, Stephen Mumford: Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, p. 9. 272 This is already reflected in the probability theory of Pascal and has tremendous consequences for concepts of morality: James Franklin: The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2002. 128 implies ex negativo another possible narrative: that of the improbable, the less than optimal or sometimes worst-case scenario.273 Accordingly, Horn writes:

So wie eine Version nicht ohne die andere, ebenso mögliche gedacht werden kann, ist ein Wissen von der Zukunft konstitutiv nicht denkbar ohne Nicht-Wissen – eine notwendige Verkennung, eine unumgängliche Blindheit. In jeder Prognose, jeder Prophezeiung oder hypothetischen Schilderung künftiger Desaster öffnet sich der Abgrund dieser Verkennung: die Möglichkeit, dass man alles, was man weiß oder zu wissen glaubt, für wahrscheinlich oder unwahrscheinlich hält, von einem anderen Narrativ, einer anderen Instanz des Wissens aus durchkreuzt werden kann, das zeigt, dass alles ganz anders gewesen sein wird.274

All probability theories therefore necessarily imply a hidden risk, an outcome that is ‘improbable but not impossible.’ Aristotle had already observed in his Poetics that probable outcomes entail the possibility of a less probable outcome.275 He posed this conundrum as a dilemma for storytelling in particular and history writing in general. The prominence of premonitions in literary, scientific, and philosophical texts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries emphasizes these limitations to calculative notions of probability. In the eighteenth century, premonitions emerge as a way of thinking that reflects epistemological dilemmas. Premonitions hovered between prognostic and prophetic reasoning and were still based on “spiritual exercise,” which Campe identifies with the period preceding before the probabilistic revolution. Then, between the early seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries scholars came to rely on a secularized understanding of knowledge, premised on mechanical statistics and probability.276 As an example of how premonitions have been thought

273 „(D)ie Einzelereignisse und Einzelhandlungen werden nicht mehr als in jedem Fall kausal streng determinierte und damit rational nachvollziehbare konzeptualisiert, sondern verschwinden gleichsam in einem Nebel der Indetermination und der Irrationalität. Hier kann Edgar Allan Poes „Geist des Perversen“ – „The Imp of the Perverse“ – sein Unwesen treiben (...).“ Peter Schnyder: Die Epiphanie der Gesellschaft, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder: Kollektive Gespenster. Die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfaßbare Körper, Freiburg / Berlin 2006, 191-216, here: p. 200. 274 Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe, S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2014, p. 306-307. 275 Aristotle refers to the problem of the improbable in his Poetics, in: The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton 1984, p. 2339. 276 “If the scientific revolution was the hallmark of seventeenth and eigteenth century science, the probabilistic revolution – or, as it has been called, the death of certainty – might be called the hallmark of science in the 129 about historically, consider how the philosopher and pedagogue Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel (1754–1809) distinguished between inaccurate and accurate premonitions. In his study, Unterhaltungen über die auffallendsten neuern Geistererscheinungen, Träume und Ahndungen, nebst Darstellung anderer sonderbaren Beobachtungen am Menschen, Wenzel tries to convince his readers that only premonitions based on someone’s ability to foresee the probable having analyzed data (Vorhersungsvermögen) are acceptable and thus proper premonitions.277 Inaccurate premonitions, he suggests, are based on feeling and intuition alone. As such, they are merely unfounded fantasies. Wenzel recounts one accurate premonition in a case study: he recounts a premonition experienced by a landowner who once stayed at the house of one of Wenzel’s friends. In the morning of the fourth day of his visit, the landowner reads a newspaper before attending a celebratory gathering that evening. There, he experiences a premonition:

Ich muß fort, gleich fort, antwortete dieser. Mir ist so ängstig und bange; es treibt mich mit Gewalt von hier nach Hause. Ich ahnde ein großes Unglück; vielleicht Feuer auf meinem Gütchen, vielleicht Diebe? lassen Sie mich, Freund, ich habe keine Ruhe.278

After a moment of doubt, the landowner gives in to his premonition, leaving the city for his country home. Upon his arrival, he realizes that his windows have been broken. His premonition proved to be accurate: a thief had broken windows, entered the house, and stolen his money. Wenzel accounts for the accuracy of the premonition by referring to information that the landowner has unconsciously analyzed. He understands premonitions, then, as the unconscious interpretation of rationally collected information, as if humans can rely on an inner warning mechanism to process data that they do not know have. Thus Wenzel offers a rational interpretation of this case study, in which he rejects the idea that the landowner has visionary abilities:

nineteenth and early twentieth century.” Todd Timmons: Makers of Western Science, McFarland & Co., Jefferson / North Carolina 2014, p. 151. 277 Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel: Unterhaltungen über die auffallendsten neuern Geistererscheinungen, Träume und Ahndungen, nebst Darstellung anderer sonderbaren Beobachtungen am Menschen, without publishing house and place, 1800. 278 Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel: Unterhaltungen über die auffallendsten neuern Geistererscheinungen, Träume und Ahndungen, nebst Darstellung anderer sonderbaren Beobachtungen am Menschen, without publishing house and place, 1800, p. 88. 130

Ich sage, der Gutsbesitzer ahnte wirklich das Unglück, er ahnte es, Kraft des Vorhersehungsvermögens seiner Seele. Die Veranlassung dazu waren die gerichtlichen Beschreibungen entflohener Diebe in der Zeitung, die er bey seinem Freunde gelesen hatte. Hier fiel ihm ein, daß er von seinem Gute entfernt sey, daß er auf dem Cabinette, dessen Lage bedenklich war, ansehnliche Summen aufbewahre, daß es ein leichtes sey, solche in Abwesenheit zu stehlen; daß, wenn auch dieß nicht wäre, ein Feuer durch die Unachtsamkeit der Hausleute entstehen könnte u. s. w. Dieß alles zusammen genommen machte ihn besorgt, traurig und niedergeschlagen; er fand es sehr wahrscheinlich, daß böse Menschen seine Abwesenheit benützen dürften, und blickte so, auf diese Data sich stützend, ins Verborgene. Wahre Ahndungen sind also Aeußerungen des Vorhersehungsvermögens im Menschen: wo dieses nicht wirken kann, findet auch keine eigentliche Ahndung statt.279

Here Wenzel tries to explain the instances of human foresight rationally, suggesting that they are an unconscious skill based on probability. This explanation is quite common in anthropological and psychological journals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.280 Other authors took exactly the opposite approach, suggesting instead that premonitions appear suddenly and irrationally. In these cases, premonitions were presented not as intuitions but as a transcendental power that is linked to genius. Some observers who were interested in how premonitions work even organized mesmerist experiments that sought to exploit premonitions for telepathic purposes.281 Some philosophers proposed that the human soul has ‘sensors’ allowing the receiver

279 Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel: Unterhaltungen über die auffallendsten neuern Geistererscheinungen, Träume und Ahndungen, nebst Darstellung anderer sonderbaren Beobachtungen am Menschen, without publishing house and place, 1800, p. 89. 280 Another example is made by the philosopher Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter (1766-1819). In his study Faßliche Darstellung der Erfahrungsseelenlehre, he writes: „Sehr oft sind die Vorstellungen der Zukunft dunkel, dann nennt man sie Ahndungen. Sie setzen also keinen besondern Sinn voraus, der eine Vorempfindung der Zukunft lieferte, denn dies ist, wie ich schon angemerkt habe, ungereimt, sondern es sind dunkle Vorstellungen der Zukunft, welche entweder nach den Gesetzen der Reproduction auf ähnliche Fälle sich stützend oder aus der Verbindung der Vernunft nach Ursach und Wirkung hervorgebracht sind.“ Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter: Faßliche Darstellung der Erfahrungsseelenlehre. Zur Selbstbelehrung für Nichtstudierende, bey August Campe, Hamburg 1806, p. 97-98. 281 Lisette Nees letter to Karoline von Günderrode, written in 1805, is an example for such an attempt: „In der gefährlichsten Periode meiner Krankheit (...), dachte ich (...) wie gerne ich Dich so gerne noch einmal sehen möchte und wie ich vielleicht Dir entrissen würde, ohne daß Dein sorgloser Geist es ahndete. Mein Wunsch war, Dir in dieser Nacht ein Zeichen geben zu können, daß Dich auf eine recht lebhafte Weise an mich erinnere, wenn es mir 131 to feel the future. For instance, in his book Schlaf und Tod, the philosopher Franz Splittgerber defines premonitions as information mediated by the soul’s antenna (Fühlfäden).282 Such premonitions cut against the probable in that they are dissonant and contradictory. They are nevertheless true—not despite but rather because of their improbability. Kleist agrees with this interpretation, writing: “In der Dissonanz selbst kündigt sich die neue höhere Harmonie des wohlbekannten Meisters an, wenn auch nur als Ahndung.”283 In the eighteenth century, prophetic and prognostic thinking were still inextricably intertwined. As a consequence, thinkers of the period were unable to exorcize neither the improbable from history nor the unexplainable from calculation, despite this being the central hope of figures such as Leibniz.284 With the upsurge of interest in premonitions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, secret, unpredictable forces found their way back into scientific and literary discourse. In this context, premonitions were taken as occasions for speculating about improbable futures and the risk of catastrophic or deadly events. Dark premonitions of this sort appear in a number of canonical works, including Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe, Goethe’s Elective Affinities, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, and Kleist’s Erdbeben in Chili.285 All of these

auch nicht vergönnt seyn sollte, Dich zu sehen. - Ich dachte mit aller Stärke meines Geistes an Dich und wie ich wünschte, mein Bild vor Dein innres Auge zu bringen. - Blieb denn Dein Geist ganz unempfindlich? und kam keine Ahndung meines Zustandes in Deine Seele?“ Letter printed in Helga Dormann: Die Kunst des inneren Sinns. Mythisierung der inneren und äußeren Natur im Werk von Karoline von Ginderrodes, Königshausen & Neumann, Wiesbaden 1980, p. 124. 282 „Die Ahnung ist mithin etwas in sich selbst Gewisses und die in ihr waltenden divinatorischen Kräfte der Seele sind wie unsichtbare Fühlfäden, die ihr von Natur mitgegeben sind und die sich unter gewissen Bedingungen von selbst ausstrecken, um mit Sicherheit wenn auch nicht immer mit voller Klarheit herannahende Ereignisse vorherzuempfinden welche ihrer bisherigen freien Lebensbewegung hindernd entgegentreten.“ Franz Splittgerber says precisely that premonitions are not based on calculation (“Calcül”). Franz Splittgerber: Schlaf und Tod nebst den damit zusammenhängenden Erscheinungen des Seelenlebens, Fricke, Halle 1866, p. 223-224. 283 Heinrich von Kleist: Richard 3. oder von der dramatischen Versöhnung, in: Heinrich von Kleist (ed.): Phöbus; Ein Journal für die Kunst, vol. 2, Dresden 1808, p. 77. 284 Leibniz actually built his own calculating machine, and believed that humans could eventually build a machine that could determine the truth or falsity of any mathematical statement.“ Melanie Mitchell: Complexity, Oxford University Press, New York 2009, p. 59 285 One of the reasons, why premonitions are mostly negative and dark, is, again, explained by the philosopher Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter. He writes: „Es giebt frohe, es giebt trübe Ahndungen und zwar gehören die meisten Ahndungen zu der letztern Art; die Ursache liegt wohl darin, daß die Zukunft, wenn sie nicht deutlich erkannt wird, für den Menschen immer etwas schreckliches hat, weil eine jede Veränderung unsers Zustandes eben sowohl glücklich als unglücklich sein kann; dem Menschen aber in der Regel mehr Uebels als Gutes wiederfährt und wir durch das Uebel mehr betrübt als durch das Glück erfreut werden. Uebrigens ist es leicht zu erklären, daß Menschen, die mehr Unglück als Glück erfahren haben oder deren körperlicher Zustand sie in eine trübe Gemüthsstimmung versetzt, ferner diejenigen, welche nichts mehr zu hoffen, sondern blos zu fürchten haben, und endlich diejenigen, welche sich zu schwach fühlen, um ihr Schicksal mit Muth zu ertragen, gewöhnlich trübe Ahndungen haben.“ Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter: Faßliche Darstellung der Erfahrungsseelenlehre. Zur Selbstbelehrung für Nichtstudierende, bey August Campe, Hamburg 1806, p. 98. 132 texts stage and speculate on catastrophies. These premonitions can only be explained as uncanny projections of a ‘secret force’ (Kant’s “geheime Macht”) that questions the reliability of the probable.286 Instead, this strange power indicates alternative possible realities, revealing how the probable course of history might suddenly tip over into an improbable state of exception. Daily life may be guided by calculable actions and decisions; were that not the case, statistical analysis would have no application. But significant historical ruptures are driven not by the probable. Rather, they are improbable und unforeseen. At least, this was the conviction of those who supported the validity of premonitions, such as Kleist. One might summarize his understanding of the paradoxical teleology of history with the phrase ‘the improbable makes history.’ Authors such as Kleist, Goethe, Schiller and E.T.A. Hoffmann gave special focus to contradictory, sudden, and adventitious events, which push history in unexpected directions. Eighteenth-century theoreticians and thinkers were not so much interested in calculating the probable than finding a way to access to its opposite, the improbable. They sought to do so by exploring premonitions, for premonitions point to the blind spots suppressed by all calculations of probability. They also project the ‘improbable but not impossible’ future. Between 1750 and 1850 premonitions were largely depicted as vague intimations of future catastrophes, experienced by female characters. For good reason, these premonitions were never precise: as German psychologist and philosopher Friedrich August Carus (1770–1807) put it, “eine bestimmte Ahndung würde nur möglich werden, wenn der Mensch alle endlichen Verhältnisse umfassend berechnen könnte; doch dieses kann nicht geschehen.”287 Since Pascal and the development of infinite numbers, philosophers had drawn an analogy between mathematical infinity on the one side and the infinity of moral judgment on the other. This analogy, writes Campe:

relies on a paradox of measurement in a geometrical as well as in a moral and religious sense: the infinities in both cases result from measurement and at the same time disturb its operation.288

286 Immanuel Kant: Träume eines Geistersehers, in: Immanuel Kant’s sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Rosenkranz and Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert, Leopold Voss, Leipzig 1838, p. 55. 287 Friedrich August Carus: Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, bei Johann Ambrosius Barth und Paul Gotthelf Kummer, Leipzig 1809, p. 292. 288 Campe: The Game of Probability, p. 46. 133

Here, Campe is drawing on arguments made concerning the limitations of knowledge as described by not only Pascal, but also the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1749–1832), who wrote: “Mit seiner Vernunft ist dem Menschen nicht das Vermögen einer Wissenschaft des Wahren; sondern nur das Gefühl und Bewußtseyn seiner Unwissenheit desselben: Ahndung des Wahren, gegeben.” 289 Campe’s claim is that the result of every measurement is disturbed by both other possible results and the impossibility of representing numerical infinity in the physical domain. For Pascal, every scale and measurement, every form of imagination (Einbildung), and even the language of mathematics is haunted by a blind spot: wit, the unthinkable, the possibility of a different approach to the world. This recognition has threatening consequences, not only for religion, but also for the human capacity for understanding more generally. According to Joseph Vogl, the discovery of potential inconsistencies in human predictions affects human agency too:

Einbidlungskraft ist seit dem 19. Jahrhundert ebenso träumerisch wie haltlos geworden und wird beunruhigt durch eine Ahnung [sic!], daß im Innern des sozialen und politischen ‚Körpers’ ein Herz voller Finsternis schlägt. So sehr sich nämlich dieses humanwissenschaftliche Jahrhundert einer tiefen Sorge um das Geschick allen Menschenverkehrs verschreibt, so sehr stößt es mit der Frage, was der Mensch selbst ist, tut, wünscht oder will, nur auf lose Enden und eine anhaltende Inkonistenz.290

As I show in the following section, premonitions are a sensory technique for glimpsing both the abyss of these epistemological inconsistencies and the paradoxical progression of history.

289 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Werke, vol. 3, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Pennsylvania 1968, p. 32. 290 Joseph Vogl: Über soziale Fassungslosigkeit, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder (eds.): Kollektive Gespenster: die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfaßbare Körper, Rombach Druck- und Verlagshaus, Rombach 2006, here: p. 171-191, p. 171. 134

Premonitions of the Improbable Heinrich von Kleist: Improbable Veracities It can be assumed that Kleist, having studied finance in Frankfurt an der Oder, was familiar with modern probability theories. Kleist’s short story “Improbable Veracities” (Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten, 1811) reflects this knowledge. In addition to foregrounding probability theories’ blind spots, the story emphasizes how a logic of improbability is at work in the course of history. In the story, Kleist suggests that “probability … is not always on the side of truth” (die Wahrscheinlichkeit, wie die Erfahrung lehrt, nicht immer auf Seiten der Wahrheit).291 Probability, I argue, is the basis for constructing statistics and predictions in both the social sciences and daily life. At least from Kleist’s perspective, however, momentous historical events are improbable and therefore unpredictable. Kleist is interested in the following questions: how can we grasp the improbable in a way that reveals the paradoxical structure of historical teleology? How should we properly understand the arbitrary course of history? I argue that premonitions offer Kleist a method through which to examine the problem of improbability. His central position on this theme is articulated in the story “The Marquis of O,” in which Kleist explicitly states that “probability and reality do not always coincide.”292 “Improbable Veracities” was written in 1810, not long before the author’s suicide in 1811. The story examines the “dark forces” of improbability at work in the movement of history and renders this contingent dialectic in a narrative form. The novella implies three little narratives of improbable historical events, told by an officer to an unspecified audience. Although ostensibly unbelievable, the events are also described as real. Indeed, each in its own way, they changed the course of history. They relate to three improbable turns in the Dutch War of Independence. I would like to concentrate on the last of the three tales:

„Die dritte Geschichte“, fuhr der Offizier fort, „trug sich zu, im Freiheitskriege der Niederländer, bei der Belagerung von Antwerpen durch den Herzog von Parma. Der Herzog hatte die Schelde, vermittelst einer Schiffsbrücke, gesperrt, und die

291 Heinrich von Kleist: Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten, in: Werke und Briefe in vier Bänden, vol. 3, Berlin und Weimar 1978, S. 366-369. Viewed online (1st of March 2020): http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005169402 292 Heinrich Kleist: The Marquise of O, in: Heinrich von Kleist: The Marquise of O and other Stories, Penguin Group, New York 2004, p. 23. 135

Antwerpner arbeiteten ihrerseits, unter Anleitung eines geschickten Italieners, daran, dieselbe durch Brander, die sie gegen die Brücke losließen, in die Luft zu sprengen. In dem Augenblick, meine Herren, da die Fahrzeuge die Schelde herab, gegen die Brücke, anschwemmen, steht, das merken Sie wohl, ein Fahnenjunker, auf dem linken Ufer der Schelde, dicht neben dem Herzog von Parma; jetzt, verstehen Sie, jetzt geschieht die Explosion: und der Junker, Haut und Haar, samt Fahne und Gepäck, und ohne daß ihm das mindeste auf dieser Reise zugestoßen, steht auf dem rechten. Und die Schelde ist hier, wie Sie wissen werden, einen kleinen Kanonenschuß breit.“ „Haben Sie verstanden?“ Himmel, Tod und Teufel! rief der Landedelmann. Dixi! sprach der Offizier, nahm Stock und Hut und ging weg. Herr Hauptmann! riefen die andern lachend: Herr Hauptmann! – Sie wollten wenigstens die Quelle dieser abenteuerlichen Geschichte, die er für wahr ausgab, wissen.293

In recapitulating this story, Kleist foregrounds contingencies in the progression of history and applies these to storytelling (this, incidentally, would be impossible in an Aristotelian narrative framework). In so doing, Kleist assumes that historical progression works like narrative progression and that historical interpretation is analogous to literary interpretation. For Kleist, both narrative and historical development are simultaneously predictable and profoundly opaque. In “Improbable Veracities,” he uses exceptional events to show that history, like narration and interpretation, is driven by errors and happenstance. History is therefore precarious and paradoxical. It does not follow a rational logic—or at least no logic that is accessible for the human mind. As Fritz Breithaupt writes:

Im Gegensatz zu Aristoteles erhebt Kleist auch das Nicht-Allgemeine, Exzeptionelle, Historische zum Gegenstand der Dichtung und zeigt, daß auch diese Teil einer Theorie des Wirklichen sein müssen, indem sie eben diese Theorie unterlaufen. Was

293 Heinrich von Kleist: Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten, in: Werke und Briefe in vier Bänden, vol. 3, Berlin und Weimar 1978, S. 366-369. Viewed online (1st of March 2020): http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005169402 136

Geschichte und was Dichtung ist, steht nun nicht mehr a priori fest, sondern ergibt sich, wenn überhaupt, erst aus der fragwürdig gewordenen Disjunktion der beiden.294

The improbable event is at the core of both world history and Kleist’s stories. The soldier’s act of jumping from one side of the riverbank to the other, caused by an explosion, is inexplicable and contingent, both: a narrative and a historical register. The officer assures his audience that the improbable event really took place, insisting that it is confirmed in Schiller’s Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande (1788). Nevertheless, the narrator provides a detailed account of neither the circumstances of the soldier’s survival nor the progression of the jump. This core event is recessed, as it were, set back in relation to the unfolding of the wider story. Kleist leans on Schiller, then, to assert the unquestionable veracity of the incident. We can assume that the driving force behind the explosion and the soldier’s jump, the improbable event, is both the center of the story and an abyss. The center needs to be blank to sustain the story’s ineffability and thus elude the sense of prior direction imposed by probabilistic approaches. Kleist leaves the task of making sense of historical contingency to the human imagination. What does not participate in rationality, cannot be rationally described.

294 Fritz Breithaupt: Kleists Anekdoten und die Möglichkeit von Geschichte, in: Wolfgang Wirth, Jörn Wegner (eds.): Literarische Trans-Rationalität, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, p. 347. 137

Heinrich von Kleist: The Earthquake in Chile The concept of improbability is significant when it comes to both Kleist’s notion of history and his novella The Earthquake in Chile, in which premonitions of the improbable play a major role. The text’s temporal structure and thematic tensions are striking: the narrative entwines fortune and misfortune, doom and resurrection, in an inextricable dialectic. These entwinements are especially salient in the beginning of the novella. While a lead character named Jeronimo prepares to hang himself, an earthquake strikes. At once destructive and at once liberating, the disaster allows Jeronimo to escape and wipes away the rotten social order. The Earthquake in Chile can be interpreted as an allegorical text, which depicts the dark forces of history by introducing elements of randomness and improbability. Premonitions are presented as the only epistemological method able to warn against the improbable. Only premonition can presage the otherwise mysterious and withdrawn will that directs world history. In the first part of the novella, chance and improbability work in Jeronimo’s favor during the earthquake. As one of the few structures to remain stable amid falling masonry, the pillar on which Jeronimo had secured his noose suddenly becomes a means of salvation. As the situation changes so does the pillar’s function: having been instrumental to Jeronimo’s impending suicide, it allows him to survive the earthquake: “[U]nd gleich als ob sein ganzes Bewußtsein zerschmettert worden wäre, hielt er sich jetzt an dem Pfeiler, an welchem er hatte sterben wollen, um nicht umzufallen.295 (EiC, p. 358)” At the moment of the earthquake, linguistic signs become unstable. Through the improbable disaster, a new order comes into being. Indeed, Jeronimo observes how the earthquake has overthrown all established conditions (“Umsturz aller Verhältnisse”, EiC, p. 366) and how new structures have arisen in their place. He perceives the earthquake as the rescuing miracle, allowing him to recover Josephe, his loving wife. For society at large, however, the catastrophe brings misery and death: “Sie [Josephe und Jeronimo, TK] dachten, wie viel Elend über die Welt kommen mußte, damit sie glücklich würden. (EiC, p. 362).” The opacity and unpredictability of historical and natural events is reflected in the semantic shift surrounding the pillar.

295 Heinrich von Kleist: Das Erdbeben in Chili, in: Heinrich von Kleist: Werke, ed. by Heinrich Kurz, vol. 2, Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, Bilburghaufen 1870, p. 357-370, here: 358. In the following passages, I will shorten the reference as EiC with pagenumbers. 138

As I have shown, the pillar first facilitated Jeronimo’s suicide attempt, before allowing him to survive the earthquake. Later, it takes on still another meaning and function, transforming into a weapon. Indeed, a priest smashes Jeronimo’s son against it toward the end of the novella. This inversion of the pillar’s function completes the cyclical structure of the novella. Progressing through a string of improbable events, the story moves from death (Jeronimo’s suicide attempt) to life (the reunion following the earthquake), before returning to death once more (the massacre in the church). At the end, the pillar that had rescued Jeronimo is spattered with blood:

Doch Meister Pedrillo ruhte nicht eher, als bis er der Kinder eines bei den Beinen von seiner Brust gerissen, und, hochher im Kreise geschwungen, an eines Kirchpfeilers Ecke zerschmettert hatte. Hierauf ward es still, und alles entfernte sich. (EiC, p. 358)

The second half of the narrative sees the realization of premonitions experienced by Donna Elisabeth, one of Don Fernando’s sister-in-laws, the protagonist of the novella. Of all the novella’s characters, only Elisabeth intuits the latent risks that lie dormant in history, above all that peace might be subverted by war. As such, she stands in sharp contrast with Josephe and Jeronimo, who naïvely believe that historical progress is predictable. When Elisabeth is first introduced, the narrator describes her as a cautious woman who spends much of her life immersed in dreams. Kleist describes her as “dreamy” (träumerisch). Traumatized by the earthquake, after which she wanders the valley with Josephe and Jeronimo, absorbed in thought and questioning the happiness of the present moment:

Nur Donna Elisabeth, welche bei einer Freundin, auf das Schauspiel des gestrigen Morgens, eingeladen worden war, die Einladung aber nicht angenommen hatte, ruhte zuweilen mit träumerischem Blicke auf Josephen; doch der Bericht, der über irgend ein neues gräßliches Unglück erstattet ward, riß ihre, der Gegenwart kaum entflohene Seele schon wieder in dieselbe zurück. (EiC, p. 363)

In the context of the earthquake and its aftermath, the adjective “dreamy” (träumerisch) is striking. I would suggest that it indicates Elisabeth’s distrust of the newly peaceful social order.

139

While the other characters enjoy the seemingly harmless state of nature, Elisabeth’s thoughts turn to all “dreadful disasters” (gräßliche Unglücke, p. 369) of the past and thus implicitly of all the possible but improbable catastrophes to come. Scarred by past events, she has no trust in the future. Ever wistful, her character dwells on the future, which she sees as insecure and fraught with risk. Subconsciously, her experiences tell her that peace is never secure, knowledge never stable. Because of her foresight, Elisabeth stands apart from the novella’s wider cast of characters. While she deeply feels the risks that accompany change, she cannot propose any antidote to this unnervingly heightened sense of uncertainty. Elisabeth’s dilemma—the way in which she is haunted by portentous visions of improbable possibilities—is at the heart of the novella. She feels that history is contingent to its core and driven by opaque powers, beyond human perception or understanding. Elisabeth’s skepticism is articulated especially clearly during a premonition. Josephe and Jeronimo are in the valley with Fernando and his sister-in-laws when they hear that the priest Don Pedrillo is holding mass in the village. The group decides to go to church, where they assume they will be safe. Elisabeth, however, is not convinced by the plan. She tries to slow the others down and urges them to change their minds. The narrator relates how:

Donna Elisabeth erinnerte, mit einiger Beklemmung, was für ein Unheil gestern in der Kirche vorgefallen sei; daß solche Dankfeste ja wiederholt werden würden, und dass man sich der Empfindung alsdann, weil die Gefahr schon mehr vorüber wäre, mit desto größerer Heiterkeit und Ruhe überlassen könnte. (EiC, p. 369)

Ignoring Elisabeth’s forebodings, Jeronimo and Josephe continue their journey to the village. Elisabeth tires recalling the barbaric conditions and rotten social order that prevailed in the village before the earthquake, but still this is to no avail. At this crucial juncture, Elisabeth warns the group by referring explicitly to her forebodings:

Sie [Donna Elvira, T.K.] bestand darauf, daß man die Messe hören sollte, und rief Don Fernando auf, die Gesellschaft zu führen, worauf sich alles, Donna Elisabeth auch, von den Sitzen erhob. Da man jedoch letztere, mit heftig arbeitender Brust, die kleinen Anstalten zum Aufbruch zaudernd betreiben sah, und sie, auf die Frage: was

140

ihr fehle? antwortete: sie wisse nicht, welch eine unglückliche Ahndung in ihr sei? so beruhigte sie Donna Elvira, und forderte sie auf, bei ihr und ihrem kranken Vater zurückzubleiben. (EiC, p. 366)

Filled with apprehension, Elisabeth can only respond by physically obstructing the group’s progress. She does not know how she should interpret or act upon her premonition. She does not foresee the disaster in detail; she only senses it. The enigmatic sentence “sie wisse nicht, welch eine unglückliche Ahndung in ihr sei?” emphasizes her uncertainty. It implies that her premonition is not tied to rational knowledge; rather, it is an inscrutable feeling, which oscillates between certainty and belief. Kleist’s choice of the conjunctive here only emphasizes Elisabeth’s hesitant response. What follows next is particularly striking: as the group leaves the valley for the village, a still-frightened Elisabeth tells Don Fernando about her dark premonitions again. She whispers obscurities into his ear:

Sie waren kaum funfzig Schritte gegangen, als man Donna Elisabeth welche inzwischen heftig und heimlich mit Donna Elvire gesprochen hatte Don Fernando! rufen hörte, und dem Zuge mit unruhigen Tritten nacheilen sah. Don Fernando hielt, und kehrte sich um; harrte ihrer, ohne Josephen loszulassen, und fragte, da sie, gleich als ob sie auf sein Entgegenkommen wartete, in einiger Ferne stehen blieb: was sie wolle? Donna Elisabeth näherte sich ihm hierauf, obschon, wie es schien, mit Widerwillen, und raunte ihm, doch so, daß Josephe es nicht hören konnte, einige Worte ins Ohr. Nun? fragte Don Fernando: und das Unglück, das daraus entstehen kann? Donna Elisabeth fuhr fort, ihm mit verstörtem Gesicht ins Ohr zu zischeln. Don Fernando stieg eine Röte des Unwillens ins Gesicht; er antwortete: es wäre gut! (EiC, p. 366)

Here, Elisabeth cannot articulate her premonition in and through a communicable speech act. Instead, she can only offer fragmented signals; her speech devolves into murmurs and ends with a whisper (ein Zischeln). The narrator is unable to reiterate the message. Its inner core is, again, intransmittable. Elisabeth’s perception of the future, in short, cannot be expressed with surety because it is a sensation that combines knowledge and belief. This passage dramatizes how

141 vague apprehensions of improbable catastrophes are not readily communicable. Don Fernando’s reaction is similarly striking. His first response is disbelief. He asks about the meaning of Elisabeth’s premonition. After failing to assure her that everything is fine, he can only respond physically, blushing with displeasure. He does not know how to react or calm her down. He is capable only of discontent, which is manifested physically in the redness in his face (Röte im Gesicht). He suppressed his discomfort by offering some vaguely reassuring words. At this point, communication comes to a standstill. Elisabeth’s premonition implies an awareness that history advances through (often terrible) improbable contingencies. In turn, this indicates that The Earthquake in Chile will end catastrophically. As I show in the following section, her premonition comes true, although its meaning remains unclear.

Heinrich von Kleist’s Understanding of the Horrors of History (“Der Zweikampf”) Elisabeth’s premonition accurately predicted the end of the novella, which closes with a massacre in the church. She senses the group’s wish to attend mass in the church portends disaster, but cannot articulate it this clearly. She can only whisper obscure hints of an improbable future. She warns Don Fernando, telling him not to go the village, not to return to civilization, which is governed by the dark rulse of history. Indeed, Kleist aligns what I have been calling the ‘improbable but possible’ with the variously dialectical and teleological trajectories of history. By the end of the narrative, Elisabeth’s premonitions have emerged as the only valid approach to history, the only means capable of grasping the improbability that governs historical development. Save for Donna Elvira, Elisabeth is the only character who is not blind to these dark forces. Indeed, she is fully aware of the double-sidedness of urban life, in which freedom so often falls back into violence and captivity. Premonitions also play a significant role in Kleist’s other works. A very similar premonition to Elisabeth’s features in the novella Der Zweikampf, which, like The Earthquake in Chile, was published in 1811. The novella plays in the 14th century and portrays the monarchs Herzog von Breysachs and Graf Jakob von Robart who both want to marry Katharina von Herrsbruck and become the ruler of the empire of von Herrsbruck’s monarchy. Having begun with one of the main characters, Herzog von Breysachs, experiencing a premonition, Der Zweikampf ends with the premonition being decoded after his death. In the process, several

142 elements of the plot begin to make sense. The monarchy discovers that the Herzog was killed by his brother Graf Jakob. As his widow explains, the Herzog already knew that his brother would kill him. On the point of death, shortly after being attacked by an unknown gunman, the Herzog decrees that his brother should not succeed him as king; regency is to be transferred to his wife instead. Just as Elisabeth mummers her forebodings in The Earthquake in Chile, the Herzog whispers his premonition, along with his last will and testament, into his wife’s ear. Unable to decode the message, she is just as perplexed as Don Fernando and Elvira are in the face of Elisabeth’s whispering. At the end of the novella, upon hearing Jakob confess that he killed Herzog, she suddenly recalls the king’s initial premonition. Now she understands what her husband whispered to her:

„Ha, die Ahndung meines Gemahls, des Herzogs, selbst!“ rief die an der Seite des Kaisers stehende Regentin, die sich gleichfalls vom Altan des Schlosses herab, im Gefolge der Kaiserin, auf den Schloßplatz begeben hatte: „mir noch im Augenblick des Todes, mit gebrochenen Worten, die ich gleichwohl damals nur unvollkommen verstand, kund getan!“ –296

As in The Earthquake in Chile, the premonitory message confounds efforts to decode its meaning. It comes across only in fragments and whispers. For Kleist, premonitions are dark epiphanies. They might not be readily communicable, but at least they allow the protagonists able to feel the vicissitudes of history. Kleist’s approach to premonition, therefore, is ultimately positive. In his writings, premonition does not only sensitize humans to historical contingency. More than this, as a mode of perception, premonition is truly prognostic, despite the fact that its prognoses cannot be communicated intelligibly. In Kleist’s work premonitions—like history itself—remain opaque. At no point does The Earthquake in Chile take premonitions as its explicit object; rather, they creep in as secret, ambiguous messages. Despite this subtlety, Kleist’s narratives underline the epistemological truthfulness of premonitory experiences. Premonition recurs throughout Kleist's writings. Indeed, Katharine Weder has shown how intensely interested Kleist was in this theme. Weder explains his

296 Heinrich von Kleist: Der Zweikampf, in: Heinrich von Kleist: Heinrich von Kleists gesammelte Schriften, v. 1 of 2, Druck und Verlag von Georg Reimer, Berlin 1891, p. 551. 143 fascination by referring to the influence of the work of Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (1780–1860) and Kleist’s own experiments with mesmerism and premonitory experiences. All of this found its way into The Earthquake in Chile. Weder demonstrates that Kleist knew Schubert’s work on premonitions, especially his Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft (1808), which draws on by a mesmerist and doctor named Heilbronn Eberhard Gmelin (1751–1809). Gmelin wrote up a case study about a girl named Caroline H. (Geschichte einer magnetischen Schlafrednerin 1789), whom Kleist would later fictionalize in Käthchen von Heilbronn (1807– 1808).297 Like Schubert, Gmelin wrote extensively on premonitions, arguing that they are the only possible method of divining the human soul. As Weder writes:

Gmelin (nimmt) (…) eine ‚sehr menschliche Divinationsgabe, niemals aber die Gabe der Weissagung und Prophezeyhung’ an und schlägt vor, ‚diese Art von Divination (...) Ahndungen’ zu nennen. Eine solche ‚Ahndung’ hat beispielsweise Donna Elisabeth in Kleists Erzählung Das Erdbeben in Chili: Donna Elisabeth, von der hervorgehoben wird, sie habe nicht am ‚Schauspiel’ von Josephes Hinrichtung teilnehmen wollen, ‚ruhte zuweilen mit träumerischem Blicke auf Josephen’, was so spezifiziert wird, dass ihre Seele dabei der Gegenwart entfliehe; die ‚Fühlfäden’ ihrer Seele reichen offenbar in Vergangenheit wie Zukunft, denn sie ist es auch, die vor dem (dann katastrophal ausgehenden) Kirchgang mit Jeronimo und Josephe warnt. Diese Konstellation enthält bereits die Erstfassung im Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, die im Herbst 1806 fertiggestellt wurde, also noch vor Kleists nachweislicher Begegnung mit Schubert im Dresdener Spätsommer 1807. Die strukturelle Parallele kann aber Kleists - vielleicht erst durch Schubert gewecktes, vielleicht auch schon vorher vorhandenes - Interesse am (erweiterten) Wissen um vergangen-entlegenes oder zukünftiges Geschehen im somnambulen Zustand plausibel machen.298

Here Weder points out how Kleist met Schubert in Dresden in 1807. In his autobiography (1854), Schubert notes Kleist’s intense interest in occult phenomena such as mesmerism,

297 Katharine Weder: Kleists magnetische Poesie: Experimente des Mesmerismus, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, p. 158. 298 Katharine Weder: Kleists magnetische Poesie: Experimente des Mesmerismus, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, p. 100-101. 144 somnambulism and premonitions (animalische Magnetismus, Traume, Vorahndungen des Künftigen, geistige Ferngesichte):

Denn namentlich für Kleist hatten Mitteilungen dieser Art so viel Anziehendes, daß er gar nicht satt davon werden konnten und immer mehr und mehr derselben aus mir hervorlockte; auch hatten einige seiner Freunde unter meiner Anleitung einen Versuch mit dem Mesmerismus gemacht, wobei sich jedoch keine der gehofften und gewünschten ‚wunderbaren’ Erscheinungen zeigen wollten.299

Notwithstanding the note of disappointment that Schubert alludes to here, Kleist seems to have believed in the power of premonitions. He read Schubert’s Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, in which premonitions play a major role, with fascination.300 The following chapter focuses on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novella The Sandman, in which premonitions are even more prominent than in Kleist’s work. I emphasize how in Hoffmann’s work premonitions have to do with science’s questionable epistemological status and the impossibility of distinguishing clearly between fact and fiction. Furthermore, I explain why premonitions are often described through weather-based metaphors such as dark clouds, storms, and earthquakes. Uncertainties surrounding meteorological forecasting in the early nineteenth century, I argue, complexly reflect the ambiguous status and prognostic power of premonitions.

299 Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Der Erwerb aus einem vergangenen und die Erwartungen von einem zukünftigen Leben. Eine Selbstbiographie, vol. 1, Verlag von J.J. Palm und Ernst Enke, Erlangen 1854, p. 228. 300 More details on the relationship between Schubert and Kleist can be found in the following study: Peter Horn: Verbale Gewalt oder Kleist auf der Couch: Über die Problematik der Psychoanalyse von literarischen Texten, Athena Verlag, Oberhausen 2009, p. 85-86. 145

Premonitory Literature Dark Premonitions in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman Many scholars have interpreted E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman, which was published in 1816 as part of a collection named Nachtstück (Nightpieces). Most have seen it as cautioning readers against the dangers of false beliefs and an obsessive mindset. The novella, it could be argued, carefully links fantastic with factual thinking. Indeed, one of the most famous interpretations of Hoffmann’s narrative is Freud’s essay The Uncanny (das Unheimliche, 1919). Even today, this text remains an iconic analysis of narcissistic disorder, which Freud develops by way of reference to Nathanael, The Sandmann’s protagonist. Freud is very aware that the text depicts premonitions: indeed, he explicitly names premonitions as one key manifestation of “the uncanny.”301 When read carefully, however, the story cannot be said to wholly support Freud’s interpretation. Given its ambiguity, it is uncertain whether Nathanael’s mindset should be submitted to pathological diagnosis or seen as resonating with metaphysical truths. In this chapter, I argue that The Sandman’s ambiguity and Nathanael’s obscure portents regarding his future can be grasped by focusing on how the novella contextualizes premonitions. In so doing, I stress how The Sandman presents a well-informed study of the various interpretations of premonitions circulating in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As such, Hoffmann’s novella condenses all of the arguments for and against the epistemological power of premonitions, without itself taking a side. Indeed, the story poses the question of whether the future can really be predicted. Accordingly, I analyze whether the protagonist Nathanael is able to foresee his death or simply he performs and realizes his dark visions in the manner of a self- fulfilling prophecy. The very ambiguity of the novella might be the reason that so many of its nineteenth- century readers condemned it as too haunting or uncanny.302 In questioning ideas stemming from

301 Freud, of course, sees premonitions as a psychological and not as a epistemological phenomenon. He even gives an example of a predictive power that is closely linked to premonitions. He writes about a patient who wanted to get a room in a hospital but this room was already occupied by an old man. Then, the patient wished him a stroke. Two weeks later, the old man died. Freud writes: „Vierzehn Tage später erlitt der alte Herr wirklich einen Schlaganfall. Für meinen Patienten war dies ein ‚unheimliches’ Erlebnis. (...) Sie (meine Patienten, TK) pflegten diesem Sachverhalt in der bescheidensten Weise Ausdruck zu geben, indem sie behaupteten, ‚Ahnungen’ zu haben, die ‚meistens’ eintreffen.“ In: Sigmund Freud: Das Unheimliche (1919), in: Kleine Schriften II, Kapitel 29, viewed online (1st of March 2020), website: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34222/34222-h/34222-h.htm. 302 Goethe translated an essay by Walter Scott, published 1827 in the Foreign Quartely Review, in which the British writer condemns Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke as sick poetry. Goethe adds: „(D)enn welche treue, für Nationalbildung besorgte Teilnehmer hat nicht mit Trauer gesehen, daß die krankhaften Werke des leidenden Mannes (Hoffmann, 146 both the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Hoffmann provoked unease in his readers. Indeed, both philosophers including Hegel and Romantic authors such as Clemens Brentano, Jean Paul and Heinrich Heine condemned Hoffmann’s work.303 Sir Walter Scott famously dismissed The Sandman’s literary quality; “it is impossible to subject tales of this nature to criticism,” he declared:

They are not the visions of a poetical mind, they have scarcely even the seeming authenticity which the hallucinations of lunacy convey to the patient; they are the feverish dreams of a light‐headed patient.304

Goethe agreed, describing Hoffmann’s work nothing less than a plague, from which the public must be saved.305 Before showing how premonitions are represented in the novella, I will explain why meteorological metaphors played such an important role in describing premonitions in this period, particularly in the case of Hoffmann’s work. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, premonitions and meteorology developed in parallel with one another and were afflicted by some of the same epistemological quandaries. In this way, I show how the growing skepticism regarding the possibility of analyzing weather in this period resonates with the presentation of knowledge, futurology, and premonitions in The Sandman. In this way, this

TK) lange Jahre in Deutschland wirksam gewesen und solche Verirrungen als bedeutend-fördernde Neuigkeiten gesunden Gemütern eingeimpft worden.“ Quoted after: Hartmut Fröschle: Goethes Verhältnis zur Romantik, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, p. 385-386. 303 A thorough history of Hoffmann’s reception can be find in: Achim Küpper: „Poesie, die sich selbst spiegelt, und nicht Gott“: Reflexionen der Sinnkrise in Erzählungen E.T.A. Hoffmanns, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 46- 53. 304 Quoted after Ioan Williams (ed.): Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and Fiction, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited Broadway House, London 1968, p. 250. 305 „Zeitgenössische Kritiker stießen sich an der Phantastik der Erzählung. Sie übersahen zumeist die Leserorientierung von Hoffmanns Erzählverfahren und klagten, daß die Ereignisse nicht vollständig rational erklärt würden. Konrad Schwenk urteilt 1823, die Darstellung des Unheimlichen im „Sandmann“ lasse „eine wahrhaft begründete Einwirkung, die so Schreckliches hervorbringen könnte“, vermissen. Walter Scott bindet in seinem Essay über die Rolle des Übernatürlichen – „On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition...“, 1827 - am Beispiel der Werke Hoffmanns die Darstellung des Wunderbaren an die Grenze des Geschmacks; er hält es nur bis zu dem Punkt für erträglich, „where it tends to excite aggreable and pleasing ideas“. Da der „Sandmann“ diese Grenze überschreitet, bezeichnet Scott den Autor Hoffmann als psychisch Kranken und unterstellt, dessen literarische Einfälle im „Sandmann“ seien „ideas produced by the immoderate use of opium“. Noch im Jahr des Erstdrucks stellt Goethe Scotts Aufsatz dem deutschen Publikum vor; er sieht darin sein Verdikt über die Romantik bestätigt und zitiert auch wörtlich daraus. Goethe beginnt mit den Worten, man solle „keine Art der Produktion aus dem Reiche der Literatur ausschließen“, nimmt davon aber „irgendeine Art von wunderlicher Komposition“ aus, soweit sie die einzige sei, mit der sich der Autor beschäftige; denn es bestehe dann die Gefahr, daß „Klarheit und Umsicht“ dem Autor wie dem Werk verlorengingen.“ In: E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann. Textkritik, Edition, Kommentar, ed. and com. by Ulrich Hohoff, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, p. 362. 147 chapter brings into focus some of the central problems that writers faced in distinguishing science and fiction under modern conditions.

Meteorological and Natural Tropes as Symbols of Premonition: A Historical Analysis of Meteorology and its Epistemological Crisis In this section, I analyze meteorological tropes in The Sandman because this approach can illuminate the epistemological crisis that the novella implicity deals with. In so doing, I mean to show the epistemological relations between weather forecasting and prognostic premonitions as they are articulated in literature. Before commencing, I shall survey the ways in which weather was depicted in visual art between 1650 and 1850. Part of the reason for the intense interest in premonitions and other forms of supersensory knowledge during the transition to modernity, I claim, was a perceived crisis in the predictability of natural phenomena through statistics or meteorology. The knowledge established by meteorology was regarded as precarious; against that backdrop, premonitions emerged as an alternative model for predicting the future. The interconnections among weather-based tropes, prediction, and premonitions are particularly striking in The Sandman. They reflect the epistemological shift from religious to secular thinking—from providence to prognostic knowledge. Literary scholar Oliver Grill has demonstrated how secularization and practices of interpreting weather were oddly connected between 1750 and 1850. Indeed, he goes so far as to argue that:

Trifft diese These zu, so muss man die Meteorologie zu den Leitdiskursen der Moderne und das Wetter zu den zentralen Referenzbereichen für die kulturelle Reflexion über die Entwicklungen und Umbrüche der Moderne zählen.306

Here, Grill suggests that representations of weather in literature and the arts reflect the broader set of epistemic shits and uncertainties associated with the coming of modernity. Depictions of weather in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature mirrors the crisis of knowledge brought on by modernity between 1750 and 1850. Himself aware of what Grill terms “ruptures of modernity” (Umbrüche der Moderne, Grill: p.10), Hoffmann’s work uses meteorological tropes

306 Oliver Grill: Die Wetterseiten der Literatur. Poetologische Konstellationen und meteorologische Kontexte im 19. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2019, p. 10. 148 and natural analogies to describe the precarious status of premonitions of the future. Above all, my analysis focuses on the science of meteorology in approaching the role and significance of weather in Hoffmann’s text. In this way, I mean to pinpoint the allegoric, metonymic and figural functions of weather-based motifs.307 To clarify the connections among meteorology, prediction, and premonition, I first concentrate on the beginning of The Sandman. Then I turn to the novella’s extratextual references, showing how allusions to meteorology functions metonymically and shape the way which in Hoffmann presents premonitions. The Sandman opens with Nathanael writing a letter to his friend Lothar about a mysterious foreboding. He describes an uncanny feeling, through which he senses that a bad omen overshadows his destiny. Nathanael writes that he cannot be optimistic about his future. He is writing the letter in an unnamed place in Italy, far away from his home in Germany and his beloved girlfriend Clara. After a short introduction, Nathanael writes:

Ach wie vermochte ich denn Euch zu schreiben, in der zerrissenen Stimmung des Geistes, die mir bisher alle Gedanken verstörte! – Etwas Entsetzliches ist in mein Leben getreten! – Dunkle Ahnungen eines gräßlichen mir drohenden Geschicks breiten sich wie schwarze Wolkenschatten über mich aus, undurchdringlich jedem freundlichen Sonnenstrahl.308

Nathanael compares his initial bad premonitions with a climatic metonomy. He says that dark clouds are hanging over his head, blurring a positive glance into the future. This passage is significant for two reasons. In adopting an epistolary format, Hoffmann has Nathanael introduce himself to the reader directly. Nathanael writes that he is burdened by feelings of apprehension and, as a consequence, falls into melancholy. Nathanael’s description of his state of mind matches symptoms of psychological crisis listed in pathological case studies published between 1750 and 1850. This resonance is reinforced by the fact that Nathaniel expresses his feelings directly in the first person, just like the people whose accounts were gathered in Moritz’s Magazin.

307 I refer here to definitions described by Timothy Bahti: Literary criticim and the history of ideas, in: Christa Knellwolf, Chritsopher Norris: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 9, Twentieth-Century Historical, Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, p. 31-43, here: p. 42. 308 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 1. 149

The Sandman’s opening makes clear that Nathanael experiences premonitions and has a vague sense of his destiny. He interprets the clouds that hang over him as a meteorologist might, forecasting a (metaphorical) storm that will tear his life apart. This prediction is implicitly presented as a prediction that foreshadows the narrative’s dismal ending—namely the suicide of Nathanael. In literary practice of this period, writers often compared forebodings and premonitions with dark clouds. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), for instance, used the metaphor to describe evil.309 The theologist Georg Friederich Götz expressed in a sermon a thought that closely approximates Hoffmann’s metaphor. Indeed, he makes exactly the same comparison:

Trübe schwarze Wolken, die über unserm Haupte daher ziehen, verkündigen uns ein Gewitter, das uns treffen wird. Nicht immer ist es gut und rathsam, unsere Ahndung, unsere Furcht, unser Voraussehen den Unsrigen ganz und geflissentlich zu verbergen. Es komme ihnen sonst völlig unerwartet und schlägt sie desto schwerer nieder. Wir müssen sie immer etwas von unsrer Ahndung merken (…).310

The theologist Georg Friederich Götz recommends to talk openly about individual premonitions. Nathanael does exactly this: He shares his bad feelings of his forebodings and premonitions with his friend Lothar. Following Nathanael’s letter, the story’s narrator explains his feelings of uncanniness by referring to a particularly important event in his early life, which profoundly altered his perception of the world: namely the early death of his father. Indeed, Nathanael interprets his premonitions as suggesting that a similar death experience will occur again. By evoking past traumas, these premonitions paint a dark picture of Nathanael’s future. They are pessimistic forecasts of his later life.

309 „Böse und die daher rührende Falschheiten sind wie schwarze Wolken, die sich zwischen die Sonne und das Auge des Menschen legen und das klare und helle Licht wegnehmen, indem aber bey der Sonne dennoch ein beständiges Bestreben bleibt, die im Weg stehende Wolken zu zerstreuen, denn sie ist hinter solchen und würket und läßt inzwischen durch verschiedene Oeffnungen rings umher ein wenig schwaches Licht in das Auge des Menschen einfallen (...).“ Emanuel Swedenborg: Vom Himmel und von den wunderbaren Dingen desselben: wie auch von der Geisterwelt und dem Zustand des Menschen nach dem Tod; und von der Hölle; So, wie es gehöret und gesehen worden von Emanuel Swedenborg, without publishing house and place 1774, p. 749-750. 310 Georg Friederich Götz: Passionspredigten. Nebst einer Confirmationsrede, vol. 4, im Verlage der Griesbachschen Hofbuchhandlung, Cassel 1800, p. 108. 150

This indicates analogies in how Tieck, Moritz, and Hoffmann each approach psychological crises. Hoffmann was aware of the case studies published in Moritz’s Magazin and an enthusiastic reader of Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813), a psychologist and psychiatrist who wrote extensively on premonitions.311 It comes as no surprise, then, that Nathanael should describe his initial dark premonition in terms of felt foreboding, a form of knowledge based on emotions. This idea plainly derives from Reil’s case studies. Furthermore, Nathanael uses a meteorological trope to explain his state of mind, writing to Clara of how “dunkle Ahnungen eines gräßlichen mir drohenden Geschicks breiten sich wie schwarze Wolkenschatten über mich aus, undurchdringlich jedem freundlichen Sonnenstrahl.” Here, Nathanael uses the meteorological metaphor of dark clouds to express his feelings. This poetic strategy belongs to the wider discourse surrounding premonitory experiences, in which premonitions are frequently described by way of reference to weather (often extreme weather, such as thunderstorms) or fully fledged natural disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes.312 Such analogies were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Weather was considered an especially apt means of articulating premonitions, I would suggest, because it implies a complex relation towards the future, which can never be predicted exactly. Also in this dissertation, some of the presented literary premonitions were described with weather or climatic metaphors.

311 „Reil schildert einen Fall aus K. Ph. Moritz’ „Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde“: Ein junger, vom Wahnsinn geheilter Mann erkennt auf einem Ausflug die Landschaft wieder, die er vom Tollhaus aus gesehen hatte, sein Wahnsinn bricht dadurch erneut aus, er bringt den Vater um. Auch in Tiecks Novelle „Liebeszauber“ von 1812, einem möglichen Vorbild für die Turmsezen im „Sandmann“, löst die Erinnerung den Wahnsinnsanfall erst aus, ebenso in Hoffmanns „Der Freund“.“ In: E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann. Textkritik, Edition, Kommentar, edited and commented by Ulrich Hohoff, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, p. 274. / Reil expresses also some premonitions in his Kleine physiologische Schriften. He writes on the prophetic wisdom of the soul the following: „...(s)o erregt dieses der Seele unangenehme Empfindungen und sie wird vom thierischen Mißvergnügen Krankheitsgefühl ergriffen, welches gleichsam als Gattung alle Arten von Schmerz in sich begreift und nicht selten eine Ahndung des nahe bevorstehenden mit sich führt.“ Johann Christian Reil: Gesammelte kleine physiologische Schriften, vol. 1, In Commission bey Aloys Doll, Wien 1811, 307-308. 312 „Eine dunkle Ahdnung schießt durch unsere Wonne (...). Dicke, schwere, mit Sturm beladene Luft, umschließt uns (...)“, writes Friedrich Maximilian Klinger in 1793. See: Friedrich Maximilian Klinger: Geschichte Raphaels de Aquillas in fünf Bänden. Ein Seitenstück zu Fausts Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt, St. Petersburg 1793, p. 163. / See the premonitions in Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile. An interesting analysis can be found in: Hans-Edwin Friedrich: Die innerste Tiefe der Zerstörung. Die Dialektik von Zerstörung und Bildung im Werk vom Karl Philipp Moritz. He writes: „Die existentielle Bedrohung durch die vernichtenden Kräfte der Natur und das Bewußtsein, neue Lösungsmöglichkeiten für das damit verbundene Problem formulieren zu müssen, wird im letzten Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts zum vordringlichen Reflexionsgegenstand. In diesem Zusammenhang ist neben Goethe vor allem das Werk von Karl Philipp Moritz zu berücksichtigen.“ See: Hans-Edwin Friedrich: Die Innerste Tiefe Der Zerstörung: Die Dialektik von Zerstörung und Bildung im Werk von Karl Philipp Moritz, Aufklärung, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 69–90, here: p. 74. 151

The result of contingent physical reactions, weather constantly changes. Certainly, weather can be measured and predicted through mathematics, science, and probability theories. Nevertheless, forecasts can only predict probable futures, probable atmospheric developments. At least to a certain extent, weather forecasts imply that chance plays a significant role. At any time, the probable development of the weather can take a different turn. Through random physical reactions, a weather system might transform in improbable but possible ways. Even today, despite complex computer systems, meteorologists can predict changes in the weather not precisely, in a time span of twenty-four hours with a degree of probability of around eighty percent.313 Consequently, forecasts put forward the probable outcome of atmospheric development by repressing other, improbable possibilities. As Eva Horn has written:

In jeder Prognose, jeder Prophezeiung oder hypothetischen Schilderung künftiger Desaster öffnet sich der Abgrund dieser Verkennung: die Möglichkeit, dass man alles, was man weiß oder zu wissen glaubt, für wahrscheinlich oder unwahrscheinlich hält, von einem anderen Narrativ, einer anderen Instanz des Wissens aus durchkreuzt werden kann, das zeigt, dass alles ganz anders gewesen sein wird.314

Eva Horn says it correctly: Every forecast implies an improbable future that might come true. Weather forecasting and probability theories are both grounded in an awareness of contingency. A number of scholars have analyzed the emergence of probability theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in relation to literature. Rüdiger Campe, Reinhart Koselleck, and Robert Hafner, for example, have explored the rhetorics and artistic strategies through which weather was depicted in art and literature between 1750 and 1850. Artistic representations of clouds, for

313 In order to give an example, how new the measurement of weather by probability thoeries around 1800 was, I quote from a German scientific handbook, published in 1878 by the medician Hermann Eulenberg: „Es ist (...) bekannt, dass in Amerika schon seit einer Reihe von Jahren regelmässig nicht nur die Wettertelegramme, wie sie von den auswärtigen Stationen einlaufen, möglichst schnell nach allen grösseren Punkten des Landes wieder hintelegraphirt werden, dass sie dort an öffentlich zugänglichen Stellen ausgehängt werden, um so dem Publikum direct zu nützen; gleichzeitig wird die Wahrscheinlichkeit telegraphirt, in welcher Weise das Wetter sich innerhalb der nächsten 24 Stunden etwa gestalten wird. Man nennt das in Amerika die ‚probabilities’. Die Einrichtung existirt gegenwärtig vielleicht seit 6 Jahren und sie hat sich vortrefflich bewährt, denn in etwa 20 Fällen von 100 sind ‚probalities’ in Erfüllung gegangen.“ Hermann Eulenberg: Vierteljahrsschrift für gerichtliche Medizin und öffentliches Sanitätswesen, vol. 29, Verlag von August Hirschwald, Berlin 1878, p. 398. 314 Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe, S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2014, p. 306-307. 152 instance, relate to the epistemological context of the eighteenth century. The literary scholar Claus-Michael Schlesinger analyzes in his book Aufklärung und Bewölkung. Poetik der Meteore (2018) exactly this: the historic relation between the literary and artistic representation of clouds and the changes of knowledge regarding weather and climate. Whereas until the beginning of the seventeenth century weather was conceived theologically as registering metaphysical power or significance, by this period it was approached as a natural phenomenon. Also Michael Gamper describes this historical shift in perceptions of the weather. He writes:

Sukzessive verabschiedete sich die Meteorologie im 17. Jahrhundert vom aristotelischen Paradigma, und es wurde zunehmend versucht, das Bacon’sche Programm einer Naturgeschichte der Winde gemäß der Methodik einer induktiv und empirisch verfahrenden Experimentalwissenschaft zu realisieren. (…) Erst in den Praktiken der modernen wissenschaftlichen Meteorologie, erst durch die regelmäßig in einem konsistenten Zeit-Raum-Kontinuum erfolgende Erhebung von Witterungsdaten etablierte sich ‚Wetter‘ als ein zwar wechselnder, aber dauerhaft präsenter Zustand der Atmosphäre, der die Vorstellung von ‚Wetter‘ als diskontinuierlicher Menge von signifikanten, oft mit Aspekten des ‚Heiligen‘ verbundenen Ereignissen ablöste. Dieser Prozess drückt sich auch im sprachgeschichtlichen Befund aus, der eine allmähliche begriffliche Abstraktion des Terminus ‚Wetter‘ feststellt, dessen Semantik sich von seinem ursprünglichen Sinngehalt als ‚Lufthauch‘ und ‚Wind‘ und von der Bezeichnung außerordentlicher und heftiger Vorgänge, vor allem von Gewittern, hin zur Gesamtbezeichnung aller Witterungsaspekte verschob.315

Gamper writes that the process of weather’s objectification began in the seventeenth century and ended around 1850. At the same time, attempts to measure the weather precisely increasingly led scientists to a paradoxical realization: On one side, forecasts were an object of science; on another, though, they could not (and cannot) paint an accurate picture of future weather.

315 Michael Gamper: Rätsel der Atmosphäre. Umrisse einer ‚literarischen Meteorologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 229-243, here: p. 237-238. 153

Paradoxically, the same is true for premonitions, which do not predict the future precisely, but intimate it vaguely. Gamper writes that until the seventeenth century weather was largely understood as a sort of theological code. Even in the early modern period, astrologers and soothsayers looked to the sky to divine God’s will and predict the weather.316 As modernity set in, though, the sky became an arbitrary mass of elements, devoid of transcendent significance. The literary scholar Chenxi Tang explains how the shift was bound up with the wider development of scientific rationality:

In der traditionellen Wissenschaftsgeschichte wird die rasante Entwicklung der Wissenschaft vom Wetter (...) gewöhnlich als ein weiterer Siegeszug der modernen Vernunft gefeiert, der den ‚Wetterglauben’ verabschiedete und die ‚Wetterforschung’ ins Leben rief.317

In the eighteenth century, weather increasingly cropped up as an aesthetic object in literature and visual art. In this context it was depicted empirically, as opposed to being seen as a medium of theological meaning.318 Literary scholar Grischka Petry highlights this shift in the iconography of weather by stressing: “Das Gegebene des Wetters ist im Abendland oft als von Gott Gegebenes verstanden worden.”319 Claus-Michael Schlesinger agrees on that. His study

316 „Mit den Gestirnen, die zwischen den Sphären kursieren, verfügt die frühe Neuzeit über ein Nachrichtensystem, das die Zukunft der Welt auf unterschiedliche Weise zu kodieren versteht. Auf diesen Kodierungen setzt sich das semantische Arsenal der frühneuzeitlichen Konjekturenlehre zusammen: der Prognostik. Die Prognostik orientiert sich vorgeblich an Oberflächenstrukturen, also etwa an der Konstellation der Sterne oder dem Verlauf von Handlinien.“ Philipp Theisohn: Die kommende Dichtung. Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450-2050, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2012, p. 76. 317 Chenxi Tang: Wetterdienst und Poesie, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 245-261, here: p. 246. 318 The literary scholar Alexander Košenina gives some examples and proves this thesis in his article Naturkundlich entzaubert, poetisch verzaubert: Der Regenbogen in Kunst und Literatur (von Brockes bis Goethe). He refers, for instance, to Albrecht Dürer and his work, where special weather phenomena like rainbows always are captured as a message by God: „Albrecht Dürer bewegt sich mit dem Regenbogen in Melencolia I auf einem Wissensstand, wie ihn etwa Schedels Weltchronik (1493) repräsentiert. In diesem mit 2000 farbigen Holzschnitten von Dürers Lehrer Michael Wolgemut (und dessen Stiefsohn) versehenen Prachtwerk des Humanismus wird das für die Zeit konventionelle Narrativ immer wieder von kleinen meteorologischen Vignetten begleitet. Außerordentliche, phantastische Wetterlagen wie Blut- und Feuerregen, Blitzstangen oder eben Regenbogen kommentieren als himmlische Zeichen vom bevorstehenden jüngsten Tag bestimmte Geschichtsereignisse.“ Alexander Košenina: Naturkundlich entzaubert, poetisch verzaubert: Der Regenbogen in Kunst und Literatur (von Brockes bis Goethe), in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 244-255, here: p. 245. 319 Grischka Petri: Wetter und Kunst. Chiffren der Kontingenz, Kontingenz der Chiffren, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 105-139, here: p- 107. 154

Aufklärung und Bewölkung. Poetik der Meteore (2018) is a thorough analysis of the hypothesis that between 1750 and 1850 modern Western societies delt with weather first and foremost as a secular entity. Schlesinger writes: Weil das Wetter nicht mehr gottgewollt ist, sondern Naturgesetzen folgt, geht damit eine Dislozierung göttlicher Gewalt einher, verbunden mit einer Relozierung von Deutungsanlässen innerhalb einer zunehmend abgeschlossenen Atmosphäre, deren Ereignisketten und Zustandsfolgen selbsterregend sind.320

Even Kant noticed how the weather had historically been taken to symbolize divine or otherwise metaphysical significance.321 In particular, sublime weather-phenomena such as storms and earthquakes were seen as expressions of God’s power. As Kant writes:

Wider diese Auflösung des Begriffs des Erhabenen, sofern dieses der Macht beigelegt wird, scheint zu streiten: daß wir Gott im Ungewitter, im Sturm, im Erdbeben u. dgl. als im Zorn, zugleich aber auch in seiner Erhabenheit sich darstellend vorstellig zu machen pflegen.322

Here, in his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Kant refers to artistic depictions in which weather contains encoded metaphysical messages. In reference to Kant, Petri concludes: “Die Kontingenz der meteorologischen Gewalt ist hier (in der Kunst, TK) eigentlich keine, denn sie hat einen deutlichen Absender in der göttlichen Vorsehung.”323 This changes with modernity: suddenly, artistic representations of weather foreground not the power of God but the contingency of nature. As Petri writes:

320 Claus-Michael Schlesinger: Aufklärung und Bewölkung. Poetik der Meteore, Konstanz University Press, Konstanz 2018, p. 11. 321 Immanuel Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. by J. H. v. Kirchmann, Verlag von L. Heimann, Berlin 1870. 322 Immanuel Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 115. 323 Grischka Petri: Wetter und Kunst. Chiffren der Kontingenz, Kontingenz der Chiffren, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 105-139, here: p. 108. 155

Mit der Aufklärung wuchs das Interesse an der Natur (…). Sie wurde immer weniger als Gottes Schöpfung denn als ein zu dechiffrierendes System von Naturgesetzen verstanden.324

From this point onward, weather is seen as belonging to nature and physics. Aesthetically, it is taken to variously inspire and frighten spectators. No longer symbols of divinity, meteorological processes are seen as purely secular natural phenomena, which stand only for themselves. Recognized in all its contingency, weather becomes an aesthetic object that can be scientifically measured and analyzed. In his book Vermenschlichte Natur (1995), Thomas Kullmann analyzes the meanings of weather and nature in the British novel from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. He identifies a major shift between 1750 and 1850. In the eighteenth century, he writes, scholars begun to see weather not as a divine reservoir of legible codes but as a randomly formed, inscrutable object that requires interpretation if it is to be understood. As Kullmann puts it:

Seit Miltons ‚Paradise Lost’, vor allem aber im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, schwindet die Vorstellung, man könnte (...) ‚der Natur’ konkrete Botschaften entnehmen (...). Bei Rousseau und Kant sowie in zahlreichen Reiseberichten wird die Lesbarkeit der Natur gewissermaßen durch das ästhetische Vergnügen bei der Betrachtung von Landschaft ersetzt. (...) Die Natur vermittelt zwar noch Bedeutung, aber auf immer weniger unmittelbare Weise. Dieser Schwund an Unmittelbarkeit ermöglicht es Autoren von Erzähltexten, Naturschilderungen über die Verwendung standardisierter Topoi hinaus zu funktionalisieren.325

No longer a purveyor of legible metaphysical messages, nature becomes newly obscure and contingent. As such, it demands interpretation if it is to be rendered meaningful. The same is true regarding the predictability of weather. In becoming a research object, weather is seen as contingent, frightening, and arbitrary. This crisis of knowledge was the effect of a disillusionment: by the end of the eighteenth century, a range of philosophers, mathematicians,

324 Petri: Wetter und Kunst, p. 112. 325 Thomas Kullmann: Vermenschlichte Natur. Zur Bedeutung von Landschaft und Wetter im englischen Roman von Ann Radcliffe bis Thomas Hardy, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1995, p. 472 156 and anthropologists believed that progress in the natural sciences meant that science would be able to predict future accurately. Natural sciences could not keep this promise. 326 The pharmacist Luke Howard (1772–1864), for instance, was a leading figure in the reinvention of meteorology in that he helped establish weather forecasting on rational basis. Indeed, as a pharmacist, chemist, and hobby meteorologist, he revolutionized the field of meteorology. In December 1802, Howard presented his research on the nomenclature of clouds to the Askesian Society.327 Later, he published the work in the Philosophical Magazine (1802). Howard’s essays on clouds have had a huge impact on science and meteorology—in fact, today his research is widely regarded as the foundation of modern meteorology. Major philosophers of the time studied his writings and took up his ideas. Goethe, for instance, was fascinated by an edited version of Howard’s study on clouds that was published in a volume published by the physicist Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert (1769–1824). For Goethe, Howard’s results were an important step toward scientifically understanding and predicting the weather. These theories, Goethe believed, could be used to put chaotic climatic shifts to rational order. Furthermore, he wrote a poem in praise of Howard’s groundbreaking research in measuring and understanding natural contingency. It is titled Howards Ehrengedächtnis (1827):

Er aber, Howard, gibt mit reinem Sinn / Uns neuer Lehre herrlichsten Gewinn. / Was sich nicht halten, nicht erreichen läßt, / Er faßt es an, er hält zuerst es fest; / Bestimmt das Unbestimmte, schränkt es ein, Benennt es treffend! – / Sei die Ehre dein! – Wie Streife steigt, sich ballt, zerflattert, fällt, Erinnre dankbar deiner sich die Welt.328

326 Until today, this whish has not come true: “So, even if our sensing equipment is extremely accurate, tiny errors or misjudgements will later lead to wildly inaccurate weather forecasts. The result of this chaos is that accurate weather prediction is simply too difficult a problem for our current science and technology to conquer.” Jeffrey S. Rosenthal: Struck By Lightning: The Curious World Of Probabilities, Granta Books, London 2008, p. 68. 327 See: Richard Hamblyn: The Invention of the Clouds: how an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies, Picador, London 2001. 328 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Howards Ehrengedächtnis, Goethe: Berliner Ausgabe. Poetische Werke [vol. 1– 16], vol. 1, Berlin 1960 ff, p. 551-553. 157

Earlier, in 1825, Goethe had written another piece on meteorology, Versuch einer Witterungslehre. Howard’s influence is unmistakable. Goethe explains the difficulties of establishing the cause of change in chaotic weather systems. Pondering the problem of how to analyze weather in all its contingency, he reaches the following conclusions:

Hier ist nun vor allen Dingen der Hauptpunkt zu beachten: daß alles, was ist oder erscheint, dauert oder vorübergeht, nicht ganz isoliert, nicht ganz nackt gedacht werden dürfe; eines wird immer noch von einem anderen durchdrungen […]; es verursacht und erleidet Einwirkungen, und wenn so viele Wesen durch einander arbeiten, wo soll am Ende die Einsicht, die Entscheidung herkommen, was das Herrschende was das Dienende sei, was voranzugehen bestimmt, was zu folgen genötigt ist?329

In recent years, literary studies has become more and more interested in the interrelations between literature and weather.330 In the last five years especially, scholars including Oliver Grill, Michael Gamper, Urs Büttner and Claus-Michael Schlesinger have explored this relationship. Grill, for instance, has put forward the following account of how knowledge of the weather-knowledge shifted between 1750 and 1850:

Für Goethe impliziert das Wetter geradezu Chaos und Anarchie. Diese Einschätzung markiert den wunden Punkt einer Meteorologie, die noch ganz im Paradigma der klassischen Mechanik denkt, in wünschenswerter Deutlichkeit. Sie zeigt, dass die Herrschaft über den meteorologischen Diskurs in dem Maße zu entgleiten droht, in dem die Frage nach den Kausalverhältnissen unbeantwortet bleibt. Solange dem Wetter kein Gesetz von Ursache und Wirkung beizubringen ist, stört es in seiner

329 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Versuch einer Witterungslehre, in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 37, Prophyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1824, p. 399-421, here: p. 400. 330 „Seither hat sich freilich Einiges getan in der Literaturwissenschaft (...). Besonders eine seit einigen Jahren recht intensive Auseinandersetzung mit dem Zusammenhang von Wissenschaft und Literatur und der Funktion von ‚Wissen‘ in der Literatur hat das Wetter-Thema neu gewendet wieder aufs Tapet philologischer Konferenzen und in die Spalten germanistischer Zeitschriften und Handbücher gebracht.“ Michael Gamper: Rätsel der Atmosphäre. Umrisse einer ‚literarischen Meteorologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 229-243, here: p. 230. 158

Nicht-Linearisierbarkeit die Ordnung des naturwissenschaftlichen Diskurses. Mit diesem Unbehagen an den ungeordneten Wetterverhältnissen geht eine Verschiebung ihrer Konnotation einher, deren herausragender Bezugspunkt die Französische Revolution ist: Dienten Wettermetaphern seit alters her der Symbolisierung göttlicher bzw. herrschaftlicher Gewalt, so gehören dagegen in der Moderne meteorologische Sprachbilder zum rhetorischen Kolorit von Umstürzen aller Art.331

Grill concludes that shifting perspectives on weather and meteorology mirror changing conceptions of history in the eighteenth century. Weather—along with human history and agency as such—was reimagined as contingent; as a phenomenon that cannot hold still. In this way, the unpredictability of weather showed at the same time the unpredictability of history. For Grill, the novel reflects this shift in understanding:

Während Lyrik mit dem Wetter gemeinhin auf die Erzeugung starker Stimmungsbilder setzt und während das Drama offenkundig Mühe hat, Wettererscheinungen überhaupt auf die Bühne zu bringen, wird hier zu zeigen sein, dass das Wetter ins poetologische Zentrum von Novellen und Romanen führt, die über die „Prosa der Verhältnisse“ und den „Zufalle äußerer Umstände“, über die Zukunft der Moderne bzw. über Zeit generell sowie über die kohärenzstiftende oder - auflösende, Komplexität steigernde oder reduzierende, Kontingenz bewältigende oder hervortreibende Funktion des Erzählens selbst nachdenken.332

Grill concludes: Novels start to deal extensively with weather metaphors because weather – as a partly contingent phenomenon – reflects the contingent era of modernity. Paradoxically enough, weather becomes simultaneously predictable and unpredictable. Grasped in its contingency, the weather perfectly symbolizes the shift from a religious to a secular society. Indeed: through weather-based tropes, this transition is articulated in literature. In reading this, it is important to

331 Oliver Grill: Unvorhersehbares Wetter? Zur Meteorologie in Alexander von Humboldts ,,Kosmos“ und Adalbert Stifters ,,Nachsommer“, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, vol. 26, 01/01/2016, p. 61-77, here: p. 62-63. 332 Oliver Grill: Die Wetterseiten der Literatur. Poetologische Konstellationen und meteorologische Kontexte im 19. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2019, p. 15. 159 bear in mind that around 1800 weather was increasingly being portrayed in a secular fashion. No longer was it taken to represent the will of God. As Grill writes:

Dienten Wettermetaphern seit alters her der Symbolisierung göttlicher bzw. herrschaftlicher Gewalt, so gehören dagegen in der Moderne „meteorologische Sprachbilder“ zum rhetorischen Kolorit von Umstürzen aller Art.333

This epistemological shift affects also premonitions and their literary representation: Weather tropes present premonitory experiences as a revolutionary, uncontrollable change of perspective. The weather is shaped by adventitious forces, meaning that a clear and bright horizon can rapidly fill with clouds. Writers and poets drew on weather as a reservoir of metaphorical imagery as a means of articulating the contingency and unpredictability of human history, which is haunted by the continual risk of war or revolution. I shall give another example. In a chronicle from 1790, an anonymous German writer compares the onset of dark clouds to the eruption of the French revolution in 1789. He mentions a ‘political meteorologist’ who has told of a “fearful premonition” (bange Ahndung) that the new year will see violent political developments.334 The author writes:

Das leztere, an großen Begebenheiten so reiche Jahr, schloß sich fürchterlich. Der ganze Himmel war ringsumher mit schwarzen Wolken behangen, die mit greulichen Zerstörungen im gegenwärtigen Jahre zu zerplatzen drohten. Voll banger Ahndung sagte daher einer der (…) politischen Meteorologen: Das Jahr 1789, welches die Eruopäische Krisis an so vielen Orten zur Explosion brachte, übergibt seinem Nachlfolger (dem neuen Jahr 1790, TK) schon gethane Arbeit, um, was übrig ist, in Flammen zu sehen.335

333 Oliver Grill: Die Wetterseiten der Literatur. Poetologische Konstellationen und meteorologische Kontexte im 19. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2019, p. 8. 334 Unknown author: Chronik 1790. Erstes Halbjahr, Stuttgart im Verglag des Kaiserl. Reichspostamtes, 1790, uknown author, unknown place, p. 25. 335 Unknown author: Chronik 1790. Erstes Halbjahr, Stuttgart im Verglag des Kaiserl. Reichspostamtes, 1790, uknown author, unknown place, p. 25. 160

In various ways, scientists, historians, and writers of the period grappled with the difficulty of predicting the future. This obtains not only when it comes to predicting political history. The weather also confounds prediction. Goethe expressed his frustration with analyses of the weather, writing that the weather’s randomness subverts analytical approaches: “Das Studium der Witterungslehre geht, wie so manches andere, nur auf Verzweiflung hinaus.”336 Weather, Goethe recognized, pushes meteorology to their limits. It cannot be fully predicted, even with elaborate scientific techniques and instruments like barometers. In the eighteenth century, the natural sciences took weather as an analytic object. And yet the unpredictability of the weather soon brought the limits of scientific and probabilistic analysis starkly into focus. As Todd Timmons has written, the probabilistic revolution was gradually overtaken by the “death of certainty.”337 Given that meteorology is a form of prognosis, the history of meteorology is deeply intertwined with occultism. Until 1800, people turned to priests and astrologers not only to predict miracles and historical events. They were also the first meteorologists. Claiming to be able to read the sky, holy figures would forecast the weather. An unknown esoteric scholar writing under the pseudonym Matthieu Lansbert, for instance, published the Almanach de Liège in the seventeenth century. The almanac reveals the stars’ influence on human affairs and provides practical, medical, and household advice. The last version of the text, which appeared in 1792, contains predictions of not only human history, but the weather too. This is just one of many text that attest to the close links among meteorology, futurology, astrology, esotericism and occultism. Michael Gamper characterizes these relations in the following way:

Neben den populären Wetterpropheten, die Astrologie mit Mesmerismus, Elektrizitätslehre und Astrophysik kombinierten, bemühten sich auch Wissenschaftler um diese Publikationsform (des Almanachs, TK) und versuchten zusammen mit Verlegern, den Almanach zu disziplinieren und ‚seriöses‘ naturkundliches Wissen darüber zu verbreiten. Dies war möglich, weil gerade im Bereich der Wetterkunde um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die verschiedenen Wissensbereiche noch relativ durchlässig waren. So waren etwa in

336 Goethe in a letter to Zelter, 4th of March 1829. 337 Todd Timmons: Makers of Western Science, McFarland & Co., Jefferson / North Carolina, p. 151. 161

wissenschaftlichen Kreisen zirkulierende Theorien, die Einflüsse von Mond und Planeten auf das Wetter diskutierten, trotz ihrer Nähe zur Astrometeorologie lange noch weit verbreitet.338

To explain how variously occult and scientific weather metaphors were connected with premonitions, I now turn to the history of art. The following section analyzes how weather is depicted in a specific painting, before going on to discuss how Der Sandmann uses meteorological metaphors to describe premonitions. Having shown how the iconography and language around the weather shifts between 1750 and 1850, I mean to explore the implications of this for futurology, prediction, and premonitions.

Stormy Iconography Caspar David Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer and the Darkness of Premonitions In 1807, the painter Caspar David Friedrich made a work that would become an icon of the Romantic Period: Der Mönch am Meer. Friedrich’s painting is not only an archetypical vision of the Romantic conception of the sublime; it also depicts a premonitory experience. Der Mönch am Meer highlights the effectively of weather imagery when it comes to representing premonitions. What more, it indicates how artistic depictions of weather encapsulate the wider crisis of knowledge between 1750 and 1850. Before 1700, visual artists rarely focused on representing weather, natural phenomena, or clouds—at least in any realistic register.339 In Friedrich’s painting, however, nature is centrally on show and assumes a special importance.

338 Michael Gamper: Rätsel der Atmosphäre. Umrisse einer ‚literarischen Meteorologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 229-243, here: p. 237. 339 Grischa Petri: Wetter und Kunst. Chiffrenz der Kontingenz, Kontingenz der Chiffren, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 105-139, here: p. 110. 162

340 Friedrich’s painting shows a monk gazing into a dark ocean. Dark clouds hang above the water. They hover so low that they seem to touch the sea. The top of the painting, which is much brighter than the lower third, includes some blue sky. Most interpretations turn of the significance of the monk. Despite occupying the middle of the painting’s foreground, he is small and seems insignificant as compared with the overbearing, even sublime sight of the fog and surrounding sea. The ambiguous weather conditions, I would suggest, mirror his blurry future. The monk cannot know how either the weather or his own fortunes will unfold. According to Rodney Farnsworth and other critics, Friedrich’s painting plays with a fairly new iconography premised on distortion: Friedrich smudges the borders between the shore and the ocean, the clouds and the water, leaving the spectator feeling dislocated. The monk observes the weather intensely. Nevertheless, its development remains ambiguous. Most interpretations suggest that the monk’s destiny is mirrored in the evolution of the weather. Whereas the top of the painting is bright and sunny, the horizon is dark and cloudy. A sure forecast seems impossible. Accordingly, Farnsworth writes that:

340 Caspar David Friedrich: Der Mönch am Meer, 1808–1810 (state before restauration), oil on canvas 110 × 171,5 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, picture source WikiCommons (copied on 1st of March 2020): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_M%C3%B6nch_am_Meer#/media/Datei:Caspar_David_Friedrich_- _Der_M%C3%B6nch_am_Meer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg 163

In The Monk by the Sea, the stormy sea and its white caps have been carefully rendered with chiaroscruo juxtapositioning of white on dark blue. Friedrich’s expressive facture turns the threatening sea into a symbol of the infinite power of the Protestant God made manifest on earth.341

Owning to its ambiguity, Friedrich’s painting provoked controversy—much like The Sandman. Kleist wrote one of the most prominent interpretations, a short essay titled “Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft” (1810).342 Achim von Arnim and Clemens von Brentano—two writers who deal with “dark premonitions” extensively in their own work—wrote a first draft of the text. Kleist then edited the piece so thoroughly that he decided to publish a version of his own. The article was finally published under Kleist’s name in the magazine Berliner Abendblätter.343 In it, Kleist compares Der Mönch am Meer with the poetry of Edward Young, concluding with this drastic metaphor:

Das Bild liegt, mit seinen zwei oder drei geheimnisvollen Gegenständen, wie die Apokalypse da, als ob es Youngs Nachtgedanken hätte, und da es, in seiner Einförmigkeit und Uferlosigkeit, nichts als den Rahm zum Vordergrund hat, so ist es, wenn man es betrachtet, als ob einem die Augenlider weggeschnitten wären.344

In interpreting the painting, Kleist’s uses a vocabulary of physical brutality. Comparing the scenario with an “apocalypse,” he refers to Edward Young’s essays collection, Klagen oder Nachtgedanken über Leben, Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1768).345 Young’s essays embed humanity’s approach to the future in a religious context. They emphasize how confronting the uncertainties of a profane world inspires anxiety in people. For Young, this forces the human

341 Rodney Farnsworth: Mediating Order and Chaos. The Water-cycle in the Complex Adaptive Systems of Romantic Culture, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2001, p. 238. 342 Heinrich von Kleist: Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft. (13. October.). In: Heinrich von Kleist: Heinrich von Kleist’s Politische Schriften und andere Nachträge zu seinen Werken. Mit einer Einleitung zum ersten Mal herausgegeben von Rudolf Köpke, Verlag von A. Charisius, Berlin 1862, p. 123. 343 Christian Pöpperl: Auf der Schwelle. Ästhetik des Erhabenen und negative Theologie, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, p. 147. 344 Heinrich von Kleist: Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft. (13. October), p. 124. 345 Eduard Young: Klagen oder Nachgedanken über Leben, Tod und Untsterblichkeit in Neun Nächten, Erster Band, Speier im Velage der Gesellschaft, Speier 1780. 164 intellect to recognize the limits of knowledge and in this way sense God’s omnipotence. Young conceives the world as a dark place—this is why he names the collection Night Thoughts. Nonetheless, he has hope that Christian resurrection will finally resolve the enigmas of human destiny and lead humanity to a better place. Although he quotes Young, Kleist has something different in mind. He concentrates on the painting’s grimness. Emphasizing its dark atmosphere, he interprets the strange iconography and blurry boundaries among the elements as a physical attack on the spectator. To convey the shock he felt upon confronting the painting, he uses rather extreme terms. Indeed, Kleist describes how Friedrich’s painting infringes upon the viewer, who is left feeling as if they have “cut one’s eyelids.”346 It is as if a force had attacked the spectator, as if art partakes in nature’s physical power. In fact, Kleist’s experience of the painting is itself comparable to a “dark premonition.” In 1809, just one year before the publication of Kleist’s essay, Friedrich sent a letter to his friend Johannes Schulze, a Prussian topologist. In the letter, Caspar David Friedrich himself articulates a view of The Monk by the Sea premised on premonition, which resonates with Kleist’s experience. It involves also a premonitory experience. Friedrich writes:

Da hier einmal von Beschreibungen die Rede ist, so will ich Ihnen eins meiner Beschreibungen mitheilen, über eins meiner Bilder so ich nicht läng[s]t [unlängst] vollendet habe; oder eigentlich, meine Gedanken, über ein Bild; den[n] Beschreibung kann es wohl nicht genannt werden. Es ist nemlich ein Seestük. Vorne ein öder sandiger Strand, dann, das bewegte Meer, und so die Luft. Am Strande geht tiefsinnig ein Mann, im schwarzen Gewande; Möfen fliegen ängstlich schreiet um ihn her, als wollten sie ihm warnen, sich nicht auf ungestümmen Meer zu wagen. – Dies war die Beschreibung, nun kommen die Gedanken: Und sännest Du auch vom Morgen bis zum Abend, vom Abend bis zur sinkenden Mitternacht; dennoch würdest du nicht ersinnen, nicht ergründen, das unerforschliche Jenseits! Mit übermüthigen Dünkel, wennest [wähnst, TK] du der Nachwelt ein Licht zu werden, zu enträzlen der Zukunft Dunkelheit! Was heilige Ahndung nur ist, nur im Glauben gesehen und erkannt; endlich klahr zu wissen und zu verstehn! Tief zwar sind deine Fußstapfen

346 Heinrich von Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2, Hanser, München 1970, p. 327. 165

am öden sandigen Strandte; doch ein leiser Wind weht darüber hin, und deine Spuhr wird nicht mehr gesehen: Thörigter Mensch voll eitlem Dünkel!347

Interestingly, Friedrich’s understating of the “sublime” is less hopeful and optimistic than Young’s.348 In attempting to convey his conception of the painting’s meaning, Friedrich evokes a premonition, expressing his frustration over the nescience that only God can know human destinies. Moreover, he describes the distinctive epistemological and existential crisis of the “saddle time,” that is, the transition into modernity.349 The painting’s obscure iconography, Freidrich suggests, refutes theodicy.350 The iconography of Der Mönch am Meer, I am suggesting, corresponds with Friedrich’s fraught worldview. The monk gazes at an endless sea. The future is dark, unknown, and impossible to predict. The contrast between the blue sky and dark clouds indicates the contingency of nature. The monk can foresee neither his personal future nor how the weather will change. He does not know whether the sky will brighten or be overtaken by an oncoming storm. In Friedrich’s own words, the monk is overwhelmed by the impenetrability and contingency of time. The impossibility of predicting the weather exactly—the core problem of modern meteorology—resonates with the metaphysical, theological, and epistemological question of human destiny. At one level, art and literature reflect a wider crisis of prediction in modern society. At another, they themselves come to influence how societies perceive and interpret the dubious predictability of weather, nature, and history. This is why weather

347 Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. Die Briefe, ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006, p. 45 f. 348 Young describes in his little pieces his feeling of the sublime but it still resonates with a profound religious understanding of the sublime. “Ahndung” is, in his text, a theological belief of the unfathomable wisdom of God (“majestetische Ahndung des unergründlichen Glückes”). In: Eduard Young: Klagen, oder Nachtgedanken über Leben, Tod und Unsterblichkeit, vol. 2, bey Johann Wilhelm Schmidt, Hannover 1761, p. 157. 349 Reinhart Koselleck: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Columbia University Press, New York 2004, p. xv. / „Allerdings wirken Friedrichs Stimmungsbilder nur auf den ersten Blick ruhig. Auf den zweiten erkennt man, dass es sich keineswegs nur um naive Abbildungen der Natur handelt, sondern um Kompositionen, die postrevolutionäre Irritationen zum Ausdruck bringen. (...) Er (Friedrich, TK) visualisiert damit Verunsicherungen, die durch das revolutionäre Aufbrechen traditioneller Erwartungen und die beunruhigende Erfahrung einer Offenheit der Zukunft entstanden, was später von Reinhart Koselleck mit dem Auseianderdriften von „Erfahrungsraum“ und „Erwartungshorizont“ beschrieben worden ist.“ Birgit Aschmann: „Das Zeitalter des Gefühls“? Zur Relevanz von Emotionen im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Birgit Aschmann (ed.): Durchbruch der Moderne? Neue Perspektiven auf das 19. Jahrhundert, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2019, p. 83-119, here: p. 95. 350 I refer here, as before, to the understanding of Theodizee by Leibniz. „Es ist der Anspruch dieser (Liebniz’s, TK) Theodizee zu erweisen, dass die äußere Welt nicht nur in ihrer naturgesetzlichen Struktur, sondern in jeder Hinsicht, also auch in dem, was wir als Übel und Leid empfinden, die Verwirklichung der göttlichen Vernunft darstellt und insofern die beste aller denkbaren Welten ist.“ Christian Link: Theodizee. Eine theologische Herausforderung, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, p. 44. 166 metaphors are so common in modern literature. Literature metaphorically reflects the inscrutability of time without being responsible for solving the problems and contradictions of science. As Gamper writes:

Sie (die Literatur, TK) kann auf diese Weise zeigen, dass auf Grund der geschilderten epistemologischen Schwierigkeiten eine Vielzahl von Wissens- und Medienformaten zur Erkenntnis und Darstellung des Wetters beiträgt, und dass nicht die wissenschaftliche Meteorologie allein in diesem Gebiet zuständig ist. Ein Hauptinteresse liegt auf den Dynamiken, die von Konstellationen des Nicht-Wissens in seinen verschiedenen Varianten (falsches, ungenügendes, veraltetes, zukünftiges, ‚anderes‘, pseudomäßiges etc. Wissen) ausgehen. Literarische Texte spielen dabei eine wichtige Rolle, weil sie oft ihre eigene Wissenskompetenz aus dem Nicht- Wissen der Wissenschaften entwickeln oder ein fundamentales Nicht-Wissen in fiktionalen Szenarien zu umspielen verstehen. Eine zentrale Bedeutung kommt der Versprachlichung des Diffusen und Komplexen für das Wetterwissen zu.351

The same is true for Der Mönch am Meer. Friedrich establishes just one strategy for dealing with the unpredictability of the future: that of emphasizing God’s benevolent but opaque will. Art historian Andrea Meyertholen has presented the painting’s confusing visual impression in similar terms:

What emerges is an image at odds with perceptual reality and thus difficult for the eye to navigate. The composition offers little structural orientation, only a multiplicity of underlying diagonals leading not to a unified vanishing point, but to nowhere. (...) Given the large scale of the painting and its narrow foreground, a general impression of interminable emptiness and limitlessness emerges, rendering the vacant space the focal point of the painting, as if the gaping void were an object in and of itself.352

351 Michael Gamper: Rätsel der Atmosphäre. Umrisse einer ‚literarischen Meteorologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 229-243, here: p. 234. 352 Andrea Meyertholen: Apocalypse Now: On Heinrich Von Kleist, Caspar David Friedrich, and the Emergence of Abstract Art, in: The German Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 4, 2013, pp. 404–420. 167

The ambiguity of Friedrich’s painting, along with his own remarks as to its import, resonate with the theology of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). Fichte’s work presents premonition as a form of “holy wisdom.” Completely independent from experience and the senses, this wisdom has its source within the human soul. Fichte explains this conception in his essay “Appelation an das Publicum gegen die Anklage des Atheismus” (1799), in which he writes about a “bright premonition” (heilige Ahndung).353 He describes it as a metaphysical experience beyond experience:

Dieses Bewusstseyn einer höheren, über alle Sinnlichkeit erhabenen Bestimmung, eines absolut pflichtmässigen, eines nothwendigen Zusammenhanges der Erfüllung des letzteren mit der Würdigkeit und der allmähligen Erreichung der ersteren, welches jeder gebildete Mensch in sich finden wird, kann aus keiner Erfahrung hervorgehen; denn es erhebt uns ja über alle Erfahrung. Wir müssen es in unserem eigenen, von aller Erfahrung unabhängigen Wesen finden; wir müssen es unmittelbar dadurch wissen, dass wir von uns selbst wissen. Es ist so gewiss, als unser eigenes Daseyn, und von nichts abhängig als von diesem Daseyn selbst.354

These reassuring thoughts on theology resonate with a range of texts dealing with premonitions, such as Jakob Fries’s Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung or Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Grundriss der philosophischen Ethik (1812/13). They imply that the crisis of metaphysical knowledge following the rise of the natural sciences can be overcome by converting uncanny feelings into optimistic ones. This can be achieved through belief in the existence of God. In the final analysis, Friedrich is concerned to make the same point: science cannot discern the meaning of an opaque, contingent world. The ambiguity of reality and unpredictability of the future can only be fathomed through religion. This metaphysical approach seeks to counteract modernity’s crisis of faith. Avoiding a slide into pessimism, the last sentences of Friedrich’s letter signal a hope in

353 Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Appelation an das Publicum gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, in: Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Sämmliche Werke, ed. by J.H. Fichte: Zweite Abtheilung. Zur Religionsphilosophie, vol. 3, Berlin 1845, here: p. 205. 354 Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Appelation an das Publicum gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, p. 205. 168

Christian salvation: “Was heilige Ahndung nur ist, nur im Glauben gesehen und erkannt (…),” he writes, using a common metaphysical trope. Nevertheless, in drawing an analogy between premonition and the dark, boundless sea depicted in Friedrich’s painting, I want to suggest why premonitions are often articulated in meteorological terms. Precisely because oceans, storms, mountains, or clouds inspire feelings of sublimity in human spectators, forcing them to reflect on the enormity and contingency of nature, the opacity of human destinies and obscurity of God’s will culminate in foreboding premonitions. In the eighteenth century, weather both becomes a scientific object and remains unpredictable. As contingent, it can be forecast precisely. This very opacity and unpredictability make meteorological phenomena especially interesting and productive as a source of literary metaphor. I propose that this is why they play such a prominent role in The Sandman and Hoffmann’s writings more generally. In the following section I analyze the significance of weather in the novella and how this theme relates to premonitions and the problematic knowledge of meteorology.

The Crisis of Meteorology and Weather Metaphors in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman At first glance, it is unclear why one would analyze the import of weather in Hoffmann’s narrative. In fact, no other study adopts this rather odd focus. Yet there are productive analogies to be drawn between the iconography of weather and the novella’s narrative. Attending to these connections shows how the history of weather forecasting, weather imagery, and literary premonitions intersect in the narrative. As I have shown, weather was often drawn upon in literature to evoke premonitions because weather was considered as opaque and changeable as human destiny. Nathanael’s first premonition is compared to a thunderstorm. Hoffmann describes how dark clouds overshadow Nathanael’s future. In a way, Nathanael’s initial emotional description of his state of mind resonates with the imagery of The Monk by the Sea. In Hoffmann’s narrative, the uncertainty of human destiny is depicted in and through sublime weather. It is moreover no coincidence that Nathanael’s sense of disquiet emerged following a meeting with a barometer dealer (Wetterglashändler) named Coppelius, who seems to undermine Nathanael’s faith in the future. Coppelius is Nathanael’s antithesis. He both trades in meteorological goods and is something of an amateur meteorologist himself. Interestingly, barometers (Wettergläser or

169 weatherglasses in eighteenth-century German) were assigned an ambiguous status within scientific discourse.355 As scientific texts of the time make clear, around 1800 people largely used weatherglasses to predict weather, despite the fact that physicists had demonstrated their limited application.356 In his text Physikalische Geografie (1801), Kant, in a passage on weatherglasses, concludes as follows:

Die Erfahrung lehrt, daß das Quecksilber gemeinige sich in der Röhre bei heiterem und trocknen Wetter steigt, bei windigem und regnichten hingegen fällt; man nennt daher die Barometer auch wohl Wettergläser und bedient sich ihrer im gemeinen Leben, um daraus die Witterung im Voraus zu erkennen. So wenig sie dazu taugen, so viel Aufschlüsse haben uns die genaue Aufmerksamkeit auf ihren Stand und die Beobachtung seines Verhältnisses zur Witterung über die Natur und die Geschichte der Atmosphäre wie über die Ursachen ihrer Revolutionen gegeben, die wir besonders durch Saussure de Luc und vor allen durch Hube erhalten haben.357

Kant states that although weatherglasses are more or less useless when it comes to predicting the weather, they are an informative source for understanding changes in the weather. The majority of scientists between 1780 and 1840 agreed with this evaluation (although many ordinary people still used weatherglasses to predict the weather). For instance, in 1840 a German teacher of physics and chemistry named G. E. Mauritii published a thorough analysis of the weatherglass. Much like Kant forty years earlier, Mauritii concluded that the gadget was of limited value for

355 Jakob Franz Bianchi was an Italian barometer producer who wrote a whole study how weatherglasses work and how technicians should build them. He explains in one of his books: „Das gemeine Wetterglas bestehet bekanntermassen aus einer gläsernen Röhre aus dem Quecksilber, womit dieselbe gefüllet wird und aus der Wetterveränderungs-Anzeige. (...) Wenn das Wetterglas brauchbar seyn soll, so muß die Röhre wenigstens 32 Zolle in der Länge und ja nicht weniger denn eine Linie im Durchschnitte haben.“ Jakob von Bianchy: Das Merkwürdigste vom Barometre und Thermometre: In sieben Abschnitte zusammen getragen und mit einer neuerfundenen Wetterglas-Tafel versehen, bey Johann Thomas Trattnern, Wien 1762, p. 55. 356 In fact, sailors used barometers, which were called “storm glasses,” in German: “Sturmgläser.” / An unknown author writes in the journal Der baierischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in München (vol. 4) in 1784 about the weatherglass: „Dieses sogenannte Wetterglas oder Schweremaaß zeiget, wie es sehr oft die Erfahrung lehret, entweder falsch oder nicht deutlich genug die Begebenheiten der Luft an, weil es bey verschiedenen Witterungen einerley Grade zeiget.“ The weather glass reacts on different atmospheric procedures the same way. Scientits noticed that already in the 18th century and articulated their skepticism against using the weather glass as a precice meteorological instrument. 357 Immanuel Kant: Physische Geographie: Beschreibung der Flüsse, Seen und der Atmosphäre, vol. 3, issue 1, Vollmer, Mainz und Hamburg 1803, p.151. 170 predicting the weather. Nevertheless, they were still a useful means of making atmospheric measurements. Mauritii explains:

Das Barometer ist sonder Zweifel das bekannteste und verbreitetste physikalische Instrument, sicherlich aber auch dasjenige, von welchem man die irrigsten und falschesten Ansichten hat. Noch häufiger als selbst das Thermometer befindet sich’s in den Händen gebildeter und ungebildeter Leute und von diesen wie von jenen hört man in der Regel gleich falsche, gleich unrichtige Urtheile über dasselbe aussprechen. Bald spendet der eine seinem Barometer Lob, wenn nämlich schönes Wetter bei hohem oder schlechtes bei niedrigem Stande eintritt, bald überhäuft es der andere mit Tadel, wenn umgekehrt schönes Wetter bei niedrigem und schlechtes bei hohem Stande stattfindet. Dieses unverdiente Lob auf der einen und dieser ungerechte Tadel auf der andern Seite kommen lediglich daher, weil man sich einmal einbildet, im Barometer ein Wetterglas im wahren Sinne des Worts zu besitzen; ein Instrument demnach, durch welches man im Voraus schon erfahren könne, ob in nächster Zeit heiterer oder trüber Himmel, Regen oder Wind zu erwarten sey. Dieser Glaube wird noch bekräftigt durch die abgeschmackten Zettel, die als ein wahrer Schandfleck den meisten Wettergläsern angehängt sind und auf denen man vom Sturm bis zum schönsten Wetter die ganze Stufenleiter dieses Unsinnes aufgeheftet findet.358

In short, for Mauritii the barometer’s efficiency depends on the time and place in which it is used. He explicitly criticizes the daily use of weatherglasses among the wider populace. Interestingly, Goethe disagreed on this point; until his death, he remained an enthusiastic supporter of the barometer being used for forecasting weather.359 Indeed, in the nineteenth century the weatherglass was often called “Goethe Barometer.” The name indicates the writer’s

358 G. E. Mauritii: Die Theorie des Barometers als Wetterglas. Jahresbericht über die Königliche Landwirthschafts- und Gewerbsschule, II. Classe zu Wunsiedel, 1840, p.11. 359 „Das Barometer war für Goethe nach dem Auge das wichtigste meteorologische Instrument. Seit er sich Ende 1784 Wetterglas und Thermometer angeschafft hatte, wohl angeregt durch Besuche in dem ‚Wetterbeobachtungsmuseum’ des Dr. Siewer in Oberweimar.“ K. Kalischer: Einleitung, in: K. Kalischer (ed.): Goethe's Werke, nach den vorzüglichen Quellen revidierte Ausgabe, vol. 34, Zur Meteorologie. Zur Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen. Naturwissenschaftliche Einzelheiten. Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von K. Kalischer, bey Gustav Hempel, Berlin 1868, p. VIII. 171 fascination for the instrument and frequent use of it. 360 Hoffmann seems to have been aware of the weatherglass’s contested meanings—of how it slipped between being a scientific object and occult instrument used for alchemist procedures. The character of Coppola personifies this double-sidednes: in the novella, he is variously presented as a charlatan and credible scientist. There is a second indication that Hoffmann knowingly presents Coppelius in an ambiguous position between science and ignorance. Nathanael describes Coppelius as a friend of Spalanzani, a professor of physics. The name refers to a real physicist and philosopher named Lazzaro Spallanzani, who lived in Italy between 1729 and 1799. A celebrated anatomist and naturalist, he held the chair of Natural History at Pavia for several years. One of Europe’s leading scientists, he travelled extensively for scientific purposes through Italy, Turkey, Sicily and Switzerland. Spallanzani was both an expert of artificial insemination and paved the way for modern meteorology.361 The experiments on the automaton Olimpia presented in The Sandman, then, might be taken to refer to Spallanzani’s practice of medically intervening in female bodies. Hoffmann may also have alluded to the real meteorologist Spalanzani on account of his experiments on meteorology.362 This passage of a letter from Nathanael to Lothar underlines this reference to scientific context:

Ich höre bei dem erst neuerdings angekommenen Professor der Physik, der, wie jener berühmte Naturforscher, Spalanzani heißt und italienischer Abkunft ist, Kollegia. Der kennt den Coppola schon seit vielen Jahren und überdem hört man es auch seiner Aussprache an, daß er wirklich Piemonteser ist.363

360 Franz Biet writes: „Neben dem Quecksilberbarometer, das auf Beobachtungen Evangelista Toricallis (1608-47), des italienischen Physikers und Mathematikers, zurückgeht, bediente sich Goethe des in den Niederlanden seit Anfang des 17. Jh. bekannten „Donner“ - oder „Wetterglases“. Das dekorative Messinstrument erhielt den Namen „Goethebarometer“ oder „Goethe-Wetterglas“.“ In: Franz Biet: Goethe - Aufklärer oder Esoteriker? Wie modern ist Goethe? Studien zu seiner fortdauernden Aktualität, Studienverlag, Insbruck / Wien / Bozen 2018, p. 45. 361 „Die damit aufgeworfene Frage nach der ‚Natur’ des Menschen wird im Sandmann explizit an das um 1800 neue epigenetische Wissen vom Menschen angeschlossen: Der Name des „Automaten-Fabrikanten Spalanzani“ verweist auf die von Wissenschaftlern wie Lazzaro Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet und Albrecht von Haller zahllos durchgeführten Tierversuche, die Aufschluss über die Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Zeugungsprozesse bringen sollten, indem gezielt Missbildungen produziert wurden. Durch die intertextuelle Referenz auf Apllanzanis Experimente zur künstlichen Befruchtung werden die naturwissenschaftliche und romantische Idee genialer Schöpfung so aufeinander abgebildet, dass ihre alchemistische Kontextualisierung außerdem auf die romantische Faszination für die schöpferische Macht magischer Praktiken verweist.“ In: Oliver Jahraus (ed.): Zugänge zur Literaturtheorie. 17 Modellanalysen zu E.T.A. Hoffmanns „Der Sandmann“, Reclam, Stuttgart 2016, p. 45. 362 His profession indicates his proximity to the meteorologist Spallanzani and implies an intertextual resemblance. 363 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 16. 172

Later, Spalanzani is described as the father of Olimpia, the doll with whom Nathanael falls in love. In another of Hoffmann’s novellas, which was published in the fourth volume of an anthology named Die Serapionsbrüder (1819–1821), a protagonist brands a meteorologist a charlatan, denouncing the way in which he plays on the public’s expectations. In this text too, it would seem, meteorology is associated with quackery:

„(…) Wenn unser vortreffliche Prophet seine Nachbarn damit tröstet, daß der Winter durchaus nicht strenge Kälte bringen, sondern ganz südlicher Natur seyn würde, so läuft jeder erschrocken hin und kauft so viel Holz als er nur beherbergen kann. So ist aber der meteorologische Seher ein weiser hochbegabter Mann, auf den man sich verlassen darf, wenn man nur jedesmal das Gegentheil von dem voraussetzt, was er verkündigt.“364

In The Sandman, it is similarly unclear whether the public can trust Coppelius, the weatherglass-merchant. As I have mentioned, the novella centrally foregrounds the dilemma of how to discriminate truth and falsehood. First, Nathanael does not know how to interpret his premonitions, which hover at the threshold separating science from fiction. Second, Clara is unsure how to approach Nathanael’s odd perspective on the world. She is convinced that Nathanael is possessed by dark thoughts. At the same time, she cannot shake off the impression that there might be some truth in Nathanael’s recollections. Third, Nathanael is unable to distinguish between Olimpia and Clara. Fourth, he also often confuses Coppelius for Coppola. Fifth, the novella provides the reader with few clues as to how to understand Nathanael’s insanity. Sixth (and finally), the narrator himself is overwhelmed by Nathanael’s story. Indeed, after three letters between Nathanael and Clara, the narrator speaks out to vent his frustration. The ambiguous ways in which these layers relate to one another are part of the novella’s point. This grating among divergent perspectives comes into focus, as it were, when Nathanael uses Coppelius’s binoculars. Looking through them, he sees the doll, Olimpia, moving in the window. This precipitates a radical change of perspective: focusing on the doll through

364 E. T. A. Hoffmann: Die Serapions-Brüder. Gesammelte Erzählungen und Mährchen, ed. by E.T.A. Hoffmann, vol. 4, Verlag von B. Reimer, Berlin 1845, p. 3. 173

Coppelius’s binoculars animates Nathanael’s fantasy, leading him to believe that Olimpia is a living human being. At this point, the narrator leaves little doubt as to the fact that Nathanael had crossed over into sanity. Nevertheless, Nathanael’s initial premonition, intimating that a dark force would destroy his life, is not presented as false or invalid. Quite the opposite: his ultimate downfall realizes the premonition. Retrospectively, the narrative validates it. Still, the novella does not suggest whether Nathanael’s dark premonitions were self-fulfilling prophecies or a form of wisdom connected with higher truths. The novella’s ambiguity remains untouched. Nathanael goes insane and the boundaries between science and fiction become less clear as the novella develops. Indeed, the epistemological status of pronouncements made by the novella’s supposedly scientific characters are no more certain than that of Nathanael’s occult visions. As in other gothic stories, such as Schiller’s Ghost Seer, scientific statements oscillate between veracity and fantasy.365 The narrative explicitly foregrounds this ambiguity. After the last letter from William to Lothar, the narrator admits that he has struggled to tell the story on account of questions of truth. Not knowing how to begin the writing process, he opted for an epistolary format. That way, he could avoid having to give his own account about the relative truthfulness of the different characters’ accounts. In presenting the character’s own letters, he means to let “real life” (wirkliche Leben) speak for itself. He writes:

Mir kam keine Rede in den Sinn, die nur im mindesten etwas von dem Farbenglanz des innern Bildes abzuspiegeln schien. Ich beschloß gar nicht anzufangen. Nimm, geneigter Leser! die drei Briefe, welche Freund Lothar mir gütigst mitteilte, für den Umriß des Gebildes, in das ich nun erzählend immer mehr und mehr Farbe hineinzutragen mich bemühen werde. Vielleicht gelingt es mir, manche Gestalt, wie ein guter Porträtmaler, so aufzufassen, daß du es ähnlich findest, ohne das Original zu kennen, ja daß es dir ist, als hättest du die Person recht oft schon mit leibhaftigen Augen gesehen. Vielleicht wirst du, o mein Leser! dann glauben, daß nichts wunderlicher und toller sei, als das wirkliche Leben und daß dieses der Dichter doch nur, wie in eines matt geschliffnen Spiegels dunklem Widerschein, auffassen könne.

365 „The Prince does give a short hypothetical account of how the Sicilian and the Armenian might have conspired in staging the sudden, „incomprehensible“ appearance of the second specter. But the details of how the Armenian’s ‚invisible hand’ might have achieved this remain shrouded in obscurity, thereby leaving room for the possibility of a genuine spiritual occurrence.“ Stefan Andriopoulos: Ghostly Apparitions, Zone Books, New York 2013, p. 90. 174

It seems impossible to represent reality in literature. The narrator therefore decides to tell the story in the same way that a painter paints, offering no explanations or interpretative hints, only colors, moods, and emotions. In the novella’s final part, the narrator captures Nathanael’s mental disintegration. He explains that Nathanael’s perspective on reality has become “dreamy” and that he is continually haunted by a “premonition” (Traum und Ahnung) – similary as the dreamy character Donna Elisabeth in Kleist’s Earthquake in Chili. Nathanael no longer believes in human agency. Instead, he thinks that a dark force determines human destinies. As the narrator writes:

Alles, das ganze Leben war ihm Traum und Ahnung geworden; immer sprach er davon, wie jeder Mensch, sich frei wähnend, nur dunklen Mächten zum grausamen Spiel diene, vergeblich lehne man sich dagegen auf, demütig müsse man sich dem fügen, was das Schicksal verhängt habe. Er ging so weit, zu behaupten, daß es töricht sei, wenn man glaube, in Kunst und Wissenschaft nach selbsttätiger Willkür zu schaffen; denn die Begeisterung, in der man nur zu schaffen fähig sei, komme nicht aus dem eignen Innern, sondern sei das Einwirken irgend eines außer uns selbst liegenden höheren Prinzips.366

Here Nathanael reiterates Moritz’s conception of the creative process, according to which the artist’s work is guided by an epiphany, the invisible hand of an unknown power. Yet he stands this account on its head. In this passage, the receiver of a premonition is no longer a free subject, inspired and shepherded by a creative force. Rather, they are merely an object, an asset controlled by an alien agency. Indeed, Moritz’s theory had room for the artist’s own enthusiasm, which helped call down inspiration and fed into great works of art. The results could be disastrous, though, if inspiration is not controlled by a strong mind. The Sandman depicts what happens when premonitions are not reigned in this way and are allowed to mislead their receiver:

366 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 22. 175

Es kam ihm (Nathanael, TK) endlich ein, jene düstre Ahnung, daß Coppelius sein Liebesglück stören werde, zum Gegenstande eines Gedichts zu machen. Er stellte sich und Clara dar, in treuer Liebe verbunden, aber dann und wann war es, als griffe eine schwarze Faust in ihr Leben und risse irgend eine Freude heraus, die ihnen aufgegangen. Endlich, als sie schon am Traualtar stehen, erscheint der entsetzliche Coppelius und berührt Claras holde Augen; die springen in Nathanaels Brust wie blutige Funken sengend und brennend, Coppelius faßt ihn und wirft ihn in einen flammenden Feuerkreis, der sich dreht mit der Schnelligkeit des Sturmes und ihn sausend und brausend fortreißt.367

Two things are striking here. First, having had a premonition, Nathanael feels inspired to impress Clara by writing a poem. Second, the premonition gets out of control. The poem is overtaken by dark fantasies; even as an author, Nathanael cannot seem to control the direction of the writing. The result is a disaster. As in the beginning of the novella, the symptoms and consequences of Nathanael’s premonition are conveyed meteorologically. He writes:

Es ist ein Tosen, als wenn der Orkan grimmig hineinpeitscht in die schäumenden Meereswellen, die sich wie schwarze, weißhauptige Riesen emporbäumen in wütendem Kampfe.368

Following this hurricane imagery, Nathanael calms down after writing the poem and meeting Clara. He reads the poem aloud, but the mesmerizing narrative drags him down into darkness once again. Indeed, the narrator writes that the poem produced an aggressive physical reaction in Nathanael:

Den (Nathanael) riß seine Dichtung unaufhaltsam fort, hochrot färbte seine Wangen die innere Glut, Tränen quollen ihm aus den Augen.369

367 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 24. 368 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, p. 24. 369 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 26 176

Nathanael experiences a shock on receiving a premonition, leading to a physical outburst. As I now show, this shock results from a crisis of knowledge, which, in turn, is linked to a crisis of predictability.

The Ambiguity of Nathanael’s Destiny The Meaning of Transgressive Premonitions This section analyzes the broader function of premonitions in the novella, showing how it reflects a crisis of predictability. In addition, I draw some analogies between how premonitions are depicted in the work of Hoffmann and other writers discussed in this dissertation. In so doing, the section prepares the way for my final conclusions. At the heart of The Sandmann is a trauma.370 Meeting Coppelius, the weatherglass merchant, provokes bad memories on Nathanael’s part. Feeling traumatized, the protagonist writes to Lothar in Germany, explaining the reasons for his sudden forebodings and dark premonitions. After an introductory passage, Nathanael tells Lothar about some important childhood memories. They are strongly connected to the merchant, who is being presented as the “sandman:” an alchemist who had come to Nathanael’s home to conduct alchemical experiments. At the same time, in Nathanael’s recollections the sandman appears as his father’s murderer. Because the letter is written from Nathanael’s perspective, it cannot be said for sure whether any of this really happened. It could be that these events are just fantasies. Nathanael may be suffering from a psychological condition; he may be endowed with a special capacity for sensing providence. In this way, the story vacillates between truth and fiction, prophecy and pathology. In explaining his emotional state and foreboding recollections, Nathanael puts forward a simple argument: He is sure that the sandman, who disappeared after his father’s death, reached out to scare or threaten him in Italy in the guise of the Coppelius. Coppelius is simultaneously the reason for and personification of Nathanael’s dark premonitions. The second letter, which is written by Clara, counters Nathanael’s narrative of his recollections. She explains that Nathanael accidentally addressed the letter to her, not Lothar.

370 „Vom Wiederholungszwang und vom Trauma aus ergibt sich ein deutlicher Zugang zur Sandmann-Erzählung.“ Burkhardt Lidner: Den „Autor“ Freud entdecken. Eine Lektüre der Abhandlungen über den Wotz und über das Unheimliche, in: Rolf Haubl, Tilmann Habermas (eds.): Freud neu entdecken. Ausgewählte Lektüren, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, p. 90-110, here: p. 110. 177

Although she realized that the letter was meant for someone else, she writes that she could not stop reading it, for she was drawn into Nathanael’s mesmerizing narrative. “Ich konnte kaum atmen, es flimmerte mir vor den Augen,” she writes. The tone of Clara’s reaction to Nathanael’s writing resembles Kleist’s in his response to Friedrich’s painting. Whereas Clara’s eyes flicker, Kleist writes that when standing before Friedrich’s painting it is “as if someone cut one’s eyelids.”371 Both of these moments of reception are frightening. Indeed, in both cases subjects are mesmerized by a depiction of a premonition, whether in the medium of a letter or a painting. The coercive power of the premonition provokes a physical reaction. Making connections to what were then new discoveries in physics, Gamper observes that Clara’s shock rather resembles an electric shock:

Clara thus relegates “electrically” generated images to the domain of an aesthetics of terror and shock that strikes fear and dread into the hearts of its recipients. In addition, her letter suggests that these suggestive and at the same time highly uncongenial effects derive from a problematic disposition on the part of the writer, who has fallen foul of the “Fantom unseres eigenen Ichs” ‘phantom of our own self’ (23) to produce a non-existent world materializing from mental states that can only be called “pathological” or “insane.” Clara’s skeptical comments reflect an uncertainty that had dogged electrical science from the outset, fundamentally unable as it was to say whether what broke forth from the apparatus as flashes and shocks was in fact the workings of Nature or perhaps a simulacrum.372

Despite the shock, Clara is able to shake off her apprehension and corrects Nathanael’s perspective with compelling arguments. She tries to convince him that his premonitions are fantasies, the result of a misguided imagination. She uses rational arguments in trying to reach out to Nathanael, attempting to persuade him that his encounters with the sandman were not supernatural. Using rational arguments, she hopes to show how Nathanael’s supposed premonitions are actually just fantasies. Having first been shocked and frightened, she rationalizes Nathanael’s narrative, rendering it harmless:

371 Heinrich von Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2, Hanser, München 1970, p. 327. 372 Michael Gamper: Experimental Performance: Poetology and Epistemology in Scientific Experiments around 1800, European Romantic Review, vol. 28, Routledge, London 2017, p. 21-36, here: p. 33. 178

Der fatale Wetterglashändler Giuseppe Coppola verfolgte mich auf Schritt und Tritt und beinahe schäme ich mich, es zu gestehen, daß er selbst meinen gesunden, sonst so ruhigen Schlaf in allerlei wunderlichen Traumgebilden zerstören konnte. Doch bald, schon den andern Tag, hatte sich alles anders in mir gestaltet. Sei mir nur nicht böse, mein Inniggeliebter, wenn Lothar Dir etwa sagen möchte, daß ich trotz Deiner seltsamen Ahnung, Coppelius werde Dir etwas Böses antun, ganz heitern unbefangenen Sinnes bin, wie immer.373

Clara tries to convince Nathanael that his vivid imagination colors his perception of reality. From her perspective, he can dissolve his bad premonitions by taking charge and reconnecting with the world. The arguments she makes are that same as some of those made by rational philosophers and anthropologist presented covered in previous of this dissertation. She is convinced that Nathanael is insane. Accordingly, she writes:

Geradeheraus will ich es Dir nur gestehen, daß, wie ich meine, alles Entsetzliche und Schreckliche, wovon Du sprichst, nur in Deinem Innern vorging, die wahre wirkliche Außenwelt aber daran wohl wenig teil hatte.

In this way, Clara reinterprets Nathanael’s childhood recollections and other preoccupations, above all his encounter with Coppola. She says that Nathanael’s father had probably struck a business deal with Coppelius and that they may have conducted dangerous alchemical experiments together. She has spoken to a pharmacist, who insisted that such experiments are highly dangerous and can cause explosions. Nathanael’s father’s death, Clara suggests, was likely an accident. She also anticipates Nathanael’s likely counterarguments, telling him directly that she will not accept any suggestion that she is incapable of experiencing marvelous moments:

Nun wirst Du wohl unwillig werden über Deine Clara, Du wirst sagen: „In dies kalte Gemüt dringt kein Strahl des Geheimnisvollen, das den Menschen oft mit

373 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 13. 179

unsichtbaren Armen umfaßt; sie erschaut nur die bunte Oberfläche der Welt und freut sich, wie das kindische Kind über die goldgleißende Frucht, in deren Innern tödliches Gift verborgen.“ Ach mein herzgeliebter Nathanael! glaubst Du denn nicht, daß auch in heitern – unbefangenen – sorglosen Gemütern die Ahnung wohnen könne von einer dunklen Macht, die feindlich uns in unserm eignen Selbst zu verderben strebt?374

Clara admits that the line separating sanity and insanity, rationality and irrationality, is very thin. She even argues that every human soul has a dark side that is susceptible to ‘premonitions.’ Even so, she stresses that everyone is capable of reigning these forces in and adopting a rational mindset. In many theoretical texts, premonitions are cast as a psychological symptom of some underlying mental unease or disorder. This idea is put forward by rationalist thinkers such as Kant and anthropologist such as Hennings or Sucro, all of whom I have discussed earlier in this dissertation. In criticizing the “dark force” that can destroy human souls and lead reason astray, Clara unknowingly uses the same arguments as rationalist anthropologists. In Psychologie als Wissenschaft (1825), for example, the anthropologist Johann Friedrich Herbart writes that by empathizing strongly with a murderer, by mentally recreating and fantasizing about their crimes, an individual can themselves go on to become a murderer. This is, he suggests, a form of premonition. Like Clara, Herbart warns that if a mad or misguided soul gives free rein to their imagination, they might incline toward terrible or criminal acts. Implicitly, he cautions his readers against the power of imagination:

Der Tobsüchtige hat früherhin vom Morden gehört, er hat sich eine dunkle Ahndung gebildet, wie einem Mörder zu Muthe seyn möge; keine andre Vorstellungsreihe ist mit ähnlicher Affection verbunden, daher tritt diese Ahndung hervor, die noch am ersten mit dem jetzt vorhandenen Körpergefühl eine Aehnlichkeit der Stimmung hat, - und die unglücklichste aller Complexionen ist fertig!375

374 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 14. 375 Johann Friedrich Herbart: Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik, und Mathematik, Zweyter, analytischer Teil, bey August Wilhelm Unzer, Königsberg 1825, p. 515. 180

Reading about past murderers can incite an insane person to violence. Lost in a premonitory mood, they are guided toward crime as if under the spell of a mysterious force. According to the anthropologist Michael Castle, this ability to “experience premonitions” and fantasize about crime is linked to the poetic power of imagination:

Seine Einbildungskraft (die des Verrückten, TK) war immer thätig und gab allen seinen Gedanken und Gefühlen eine Färbung oder, um es richtiger auszudrücken, sie erfüllte sein ganzes Wesen, denn bei ihm war alles Einbildung, Ahndung, Strafe (Verzückung). Der Keim der Poesie war thätig in ihm und dazu bestimmt in einer späteren Periode jene hohe instinktartige Phantasiegebilde hervorzubringen, welche über Zeit und Arbeit erhaben scheinen, indem er gleichsam instinktmäßig Schlüsse im Fluge erhaschte, zu welchen kältere Geister nur nach langen analytischen Studien gelangen.376

Clara uses the same argument as Herbart and Castle in trying to convince Nathanael of this falsehood of his recollections:

Gibt es eine dunkle Macht, die so recht feindlich und verräterisch einen Faden in unser Inneres legt, woran sie uns dann festpackt und fortzieht auf einem gefahrvollen verderblichen Wege, den wir sonst nicht betreten haben würden – gibt es eine solche Macht, so muß sie in uns sich, wie wir selbst gestalten, ja unser Selbst werden; denn nur so glauben wir an sie und räumen ihr den Platz ein, dessen sie bedarf, um jenes geheime Werk zu vollbringen.377

She uses the expression “Faden,” a thread or string through which an unknown puppet master manipulates Nathanael’s psyche. An invisible hand is able to lead the unconscious subject towards misfortune. At the same time, Clara stresses that Nathanael can use his reason to pushing back against the dark thoughts that cloud his mind:

376 Michael Catle: Phrenologische Analyse des Charakters des Herrn Dr. Justinus Kerner, Druck und Verlag von Karl Groos, Heidelberg 1844, here: „Zweiter Abschnitt“, p. 23-24. 377 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 14.

181

Haben wir festen, durch das heitre Leben gestärkten, Sinn genug, um fremdes feindliches Einwirken als solches stets zu erkennen und den Weg, in den uns Neigung und Beruf geschoben, ruhigen Schrittes zu verfolgen, so geht wohl jene unheimliche Macht unter in dem vergeblichen Ringen nach der Gestaltung, die unser eignes Spiegelbild sein sollte. Es ist auch gewiß (...), daß die dunkle psychische Macht, haben wir uns durch uns selbst ihr hingegeben, oft fremde Gestalten, die die Außenwelt uns in den Weg wirft, in unser Inneres hineinzieht, so, daß wir selbst nur den Geist entzünden, der, wie wir in wunderlicher Täuschung glauben, aus jener Gestalt spricht. Es ist das Phantom unseres eigenen Ichs, dessen innige Verwandtschaft und dessen tiefe Einwirkung auf unser Gemüt uns in die Hölle wirft, oder in den Himmel verzückt.378

In this passage, Clara mentions two types of premonitions, each of which I have already discussed in this dissertation: inspiring premonitions, which are so important in Herder’s work, and foreboding premonitions, which open the narrative of Tieck’s William Lovell. The protagonists of both The Sandman and William Lovell are not granted access to the heavenly plane that Herder reserved for those who experience premonitions. Nathanael, for his part, does not allow himself to be convinced by Clara and remains closed to her arguments. Unwilling to change his opinion, he feels that she has misunderstood him. Rather than answering Clara directly, he writes to Lothar again, stressing that Clara’s interventions cannot convince him of the baselessness of his apprehension. He still believes that Coppelius and Copolla are the same person. As Nathanael writes:

Ganz beruhigt bin ich nicht. Haltet Ihr, Du und Clara, mich immerhin für einen düstern Träumer, aber nicht los kann ich den Eindruck werden, den Coppelius’ verfluchtes Gesicht auf mich macht.379

Nathanael, it seems, is haunted by the image of Coppelius and his memory of the sandman.

378 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 14-15. 379 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, p. 18. 182

After the letter to Lothar, the narrator addresses the audience directly for the first time, breaking with the epistolary format to provide a commentary from a third-person perspective. For my purposes, the beginning of this intervention is extremely interesting, for it depicts Nathanael’s emotions from an external perspective. The narrator is convinced that Nathanael’s memories are powerful enough to influence the reader. He warns readers that Nathanael’s premonitory power might draw them in; indeed that reading of Nathanael’s premonition might occasion premonitions in them, like an ember from one fire igniting another. This recalls Kleist’s confrontation with Der Mönch am Meer, in which the monk’s powerful premonition seemed to jump from the painting into the viewer. In Hoffmann’s case, there is a similar relation between the source and receiver. The narrator writes:

Seltsamer und wunderlicher kann nichts erfunden werden, als dasjenige ist, was sich mit meinem armen Freunde, dem jungen Studenten Nathanael, zugetragen, und was ich dir, günstiger Leser! zu erzählen unternommen. Hast du, Geneigtester! wohl jemals etwas erlebt, das deine Brust, Sinn und Gedanken ganz und gar erfüllte, alles andere daraus verdrängend? Es gärte und kochte in dir, zur siedenden Glut entzündet sprang das Blut durch die Adern und färbte höher deine Wangen. Dein Blick war so seltsam als wolle er Gestalten, keinem andern Auge sichtbar, im leeren Raum erfassen und die Rede zerfloß in dunkle Seufzer. Da frugen dich die Freunde: „Wie ist Ihnen, Verehrter? – Was haben Sie, Teurer?“ Und nun wolltest du das innere Gebilde mit allen glühenden Farben und Schatten und Lichtern aussprechen und mühtest dich ab, Worte zu finden, um nur anzufangen. Aber es war dir, als müßtest du nun gleich im ersten Wort alles Wunderbare, Herrliche, Entsetzliche, Lustige, Grauenhafte, das sich zugetragen, recht zusammengreifen, so daß es, wie ein elektrischer Schlag, alle treffe.380

This passage is important because it indicates the ambivalence that the narrator feels toward Nathanael’s memories. The narrator does not judge Nathanael’s imagination. Quite the opposite, he praises Nathanael for the magnetic power of his fantasies—as if hearing his recollections

380 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 18. 183 constitutes a quintessentially Romantic, marvelous experience or brings about a higher state of perception. At the same time, the narrator is aware that Nathanael’s state of mind is dangerous and mesmerizing—that puts reality out of joint. Accordingly, the narrative is described as “horrific” (grauenhaft); Kleist describes Friedrich’s painting in similar terms. The narrator writes that a marvelous premonition, even if it blossoms into literary or artistic inspiration, threatens to infect the reader adversely. Poetry can haunt people just as vividly as premonitions. Both poetic and premonitory power can infuse and manipulate the subject, disturbing their perception and sense of reality. Interestingly, the narrator’s concern that the reader may experience strong physical reactions resonates with some of the symptoms displayed by literary characters who experience premonitions—Donna Elisabeth in The Earthquake in Chile, for example. Here and there in premonitory literature of this period, non-linguistic, uncontrollable bodily reactions and outbursts play a major role. As I have shown, Elisabeth’s premonitory experience was expressed physically. Kleist writes that she breathed heavily during the premonition. Don Fernando also reactions physically to her premonition. When told of her forebodings, he “stieg eine Röte des Unwillens ins Gesicht.”381 Hoffmann also stresses the physicality of premonitory experiences. In describing Nathanael’s enigmatic and haunting narrative, he refers, among other things, to “dark sighs” (dunkle Seufzer) and an inability to speak in full sentences.382 Directly addressing the reader, Hoffmann asks whether the story has “filled their chest, mind, and thoughts” (das deine Brust, Sinn und Gedanken ganz und gar erfüllte). In imagining how the reader might respond to the novella’s mesmerizing narrative, Hoffmann uses the same metaphors enrolled by Kleist to describe Don Fernando’s reaction to Elisabeth’s premonition. Hoffmann writes: “Es gärte und kochte in dir, zur siedenden Glut entzündet sprang das Blut durch die Adern und färbte höher deine Wangen.”383 Blushing is prominent, then, in both Hoffmann’s and Kleist’s descriptions of reactions to premonitions. Kleist’s interpretation of Der Mönch am Meer also uses bodily

381 Heinrich von Kleist: Das Erdbeben in Chili, in: Heinrich von Kleist: Werke, ed. by Heinrich Kurz, vol. 2, Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, Bilburghaufen 1870, p. 357-370, here: 358. 382 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 18. 383 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, p. 18. 184 metaphors to describe his shock: “(S)o ist es, wenn man es betrachtet, als ob einem die Augenlider weggeschnitten wären.”384 The motif of darkness is also prominent in Hoffmann’s and Kleist’s accounts of premonitions, just as it is in those of Schiller, Moritz, Novalis, Arnim, and Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798).385 This is no coincidence, for the question of how to conceptualize “darkness,” understood as the highly influential sphere within the power of cognition (Erkenntniskraft), became more and more important in letters and literature around 1800.386 Literary scholar Dirk Kemper has analyzed the interplay between “premonitions” and “darkness” in his study of Wackenroder, the Romantic poet and friend of Ludwig Tieck. Kemper’s reading that highlights the significance of “dark cognition” in Baumgarten’s and Herder’s aesthetics, both of which I discussed earlier in this dissertation. As Kemper writes:

Als Charakteristikum der niederen oder unteren Erkenntniskräfte, auf die Wackenroder in Baumgartenscher Tradition die spezifische Erkenntnisfunktion der Kunst gründet, wird (...) immer wieder deren Dunkelheit hervorgehoben. [D/unkle Ahndung[en} und die dunkeln Gefühle sind es, die den Künstler auf dunkle[n} und geheime[n} Wegen zu seinen Ideen gelangen lassen, und seine Kunst vermag um so stärker auf den Rezipienten zu wirken, je dunkler und geheimnißvoller ihre Sprache ist. Der Begriff des ‚Dunkeln’ hatte in der Erkenntnistheorie der Aufklärung ständig an Bedeutung gewonnen, seit Leibniz die Kategorie der cognitio obscura in seiner Definition der Erkenntnisarten eingeführt hatte: (...) In der Erkenntnislehre und Ästhetik Baumgartens, Georg Friedrich Meiers, Sulzers und Herders erfuhr der Begriff in den folgenden einhundert Jahren eine Entwicklung, die ihn von der Peripherie in das Zentrum der ästhetischen Reflexion führte.387

384 Heinrich von Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2, Hanser, München 1970, p. 327. 385 Schiller writes to Körner on July, 3rd 1785: „Eine dunkle Ahndung ließ mich so viel, so viel von Euch erwarten, als ich meine Reise nach Leipzig beschloß, aber die Vorsehung hat mir mehr erfüllt, als sie mir zusagte, hat mir in Euren Armen eine Glückseligkeit bereitet, von der ich mir damals auch nicht einmal ein Bild machen konnte.“ 386 See: Christian Begemann: Furcht und Angst im Prozess der Aufklärung, Athenaum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987. 387 Dirk Kemper: Sprache der Dichtung. Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder im Kontext der Spätaufklärung, J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1993, p. 214-215. 185

“Dark thoughts” are also important in The Sandman. The notion that premonitory experiences have a diffusive energy that spreads between different people is linked to the idea that literature exerts a mesmerizing power. Both come together in the notion that literature, as a premonitory experience, can affect the reader’s body and soul. For this reason, eighteenth-century pedagogues warned against “reading addiction” (Lesesucht) on the grounds that it would adversely affect the reader’s mind.388 I will return to reading addiction with regard to The Sandman momentarily. In The Sandman, the oppressive power of writing and its influence on the psyche is a major topic. Clara tells Nathanael directly that she believes that anyone can be possessed by dark, mysterious forces; that everyone is capable of feeling the same feelings as Nathanael. Interestingly, she also experiences a premonition but does not follow her feelings. In Clara’s case, the mind is overshadowing the soul. Implicitly, her rational mindset relates not only to Nathanael’s way of perceiving (or misperceiving) reality, but also to her own twisted, marvelous sense of the world. In warning Nathanael of his fallacies, she also cautions herself and the reader against the mesmerizing power of literary, premonitory art—the power that Kleist experienced before Friedrich’s painting. As Clara writes:

Gibt es eine dunkle Macht, die so recht feindlich und verräterisch einen Faden in unser Inneres legt, woran sie uns dann festpackt und fortzieht auf einem gefahrvollen verderblichen Wege, den wir sonst nicht betreten haben würden – gibt es eine solche Macht, so muß sie in uns sich, wie wir selbst gestalten, ja unser Selbst werden; denn nur so glauben wir an sie und räumen ihr den Platz ein, dessen sie bedarf, um jenes geheime Werk zu vollbringen.389

Clara identifies two overlapping processes without naming them directly: the dark and manipulative power of premonitions and the dark power of literature and art. Attending closely to the text shows that Moritz’s understanding of beauty and artistic creation is implicated here, if

388 Adam Bergk warned against a „reading addiction“ in his treatise The Art of Reading (1799). Authors like Ludwig Tieck used the arguments of the treatise and invoked them in their work: „For Tieck, poetic reenchantment of the marvelous „captivates our fantasy,“ while our „stricter reasoning is put to sleep.“ Bergk relies on similar, but negative terms in criticizing literary texts that manipulate our „natural inclination to the marvelous and the supernatural.“ Stefan Andriopoulos: Ghostly Apparitions, Zone Books, New York 2013, p. 107-108. 389 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 14-15. 186 only as a concealed allusion. Like Moritz, Clara states that every human being can be influenced by a “dark power” that draws them into creating a “secret work” (“geheime Werk”, p. 14-15). Clara gives Nathanael explicit advice as to how to recover his reason, for she sees him as a victim of psychological manipulation. At the same time, however, she is a victim herself—a victim, that is, of the mesmerizing power of Nathanael’s writing. Clara could not stop reading Nathanael’s letter, despite it not being meant for her, on account of the imaginative, premonitory power of his prose. In this sense, Clara becomes addicted to reading. Despite their ostensible differences, then, she and Nathanael are two sides of the same coin. The literary scholar Dina de Rentiis spells out their symmetry in the following way:

Clara und Nathanael werden bei aller klar präsentierten Gegensätzlichkeit ihrer Auffassungen zugleich als Figuren dargestellt, die in einem wesentlichen Punkt dasselbe Ziel verfolgen: Schutz zu finden bzw. finden zu helfen vor (er sagt: äußeren, sie sagt: inneren) bedrohlichen Einwirkungen.390

Although Clara articulates her fear of premonition, she is also fascinated by it. For health reasons, she would rather not interact with the darker side of her imagination. She suggests that Nathanael do the same. Indeed, she takes his writing as proof of the danger of giving fantasy free rein. As I have mentioned, this recalls Moritz’s understanding of the creative process. In this process, a dark premonition, which involves both inspiration and physical and emotional outbursts, dictates the creation of the artwork. It is as if the artist is guided by an invisible hand. Interestingly, in the last part of The Sandman, Hoffman’s narrator describes the same effect, a kind of reading addiction. Again he refers to the reader, imagining their physical reactions upon being confronted with Nathanael’s prose. Almost as if reading were a form of premonition, the narrator warns that Nathanael’s words might overwhelm the reader, transforming their voice into a “stuttering:”

390 Dina De Rentiis: Figur und Psyche: Neudefinition des Unheimlichen, University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2016, p. 23. 187

Du suchst und suchst, und stotterst und stammelst, und die nüchternen Fragen der Freunde schlagen, wie eisige Windeshauche, hinein in deine innere Glut, bis sie verlöschen will. Hattest du aber, wie ein kecker Maler, erst mit einigen verwegenen Strichen, den Umrisse deines innern Bildes hingeworfen, so trugst du mit leichter Mühe immer glühender und glühender die Farben auf und das lebendige Gewühl mannigfacher Gestalten riß die Freunde fort und sie sahen, wie du, sich selbst mitten im Bilde, das aus deinem Gemüt hervorgegangen!391

This description of poetic inspiration is striking in that it is almost identical with Moritz’s description of the creative process in Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen. For Moritz, the artist must be possessed by an invisible hand, a dark premonition, before being able to create art. In an inspired, feverish state, the artist connects with higher forces and realizes a future artwork in their imagination. Something of this is at play in The Sandman. The ‘connection’ involved in inspiration is not rational but emotional. As a force of inspiration, the invisible hand is both violent and creative at the same time. Humans cannot summon up this force; it descends only on its own choosing, once the artist has undergone a premonitory experience. Wackenroder uses the metaphors of premonition in explaining a genius artist’s creative process. Both the physical and emotional reactions detailed above feature in his aesthetics, as articulated in his essay “Raffaels Erscheinung” (1796). There, he describes how Raffael experienced one of his dark premonitons before beginning a painting of the Virgin Mary. In his dreams, Raffael supposedly has a premonition of the future painting. In writing this, Wackenroder uses the same metaphor as Hoffmann’s narrator: Raffael, he writes, is in a feverish state—his soul is restless. The artist’s condition resembles the reader’s reaction to Nathanael’s story, as imagined by The Sandman’s narrator. In Wackenroder’s treatise, Raffael goes through the same process before being able to take up his paintbrushes. The premonitory process is described maliciously:

So sei seine Seele in beständiger Unruhe herumgetrieben; er habe die Züge immer nur umherschweifend erblickt, und seine dunkle Ahndung hätte sich nie in ein klares

391 Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Der Sandmann, in: Ernst-Theodor-Wilhelm Hoffmann: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 5, Nachtstücke, bei G. Reimer, Berlin 1827, p. 18-19. 188

Bild auflösen wollen. Endlich habe er sich nicht mehr halten können, und mit zitternder Hand ein Gemälde der heiligen Jungfrau angefangen; und während der Arbeit sei sein Inneres immer mehr erhitzt worden. Einst, in der Nacht, da er, wie es ihm schon oft geschehen sei, im Traume zur Jungfrau gebetet habe, sei er, heftig bedrängt, auf einmal aus dem Schlafe aufgefahren. In der finsteren Nacht sei sein Auge von einem hellen Schein an der Wand, seinem Lager gegenüber, angezogen worden, und da er recht zugesehen, so sei er gewahr geworden, daß sein Bild der Madonna, das, noch unvollendet, an der Wand gehangen, von dem mildesten Lichte strahle, und ein ganz vollkommenes und wirklich lebendiges Bild geworden sei.392

For Moritz, remember, describes how artists geniuses undergo a similarly premonitory experience in creating their art. He writes:

Da nun aber jene grossen Verhältnisse, in deren völligen Umfange eben das Schöne liegt, nicht mehr unter das Gebiet der Denkkraft fallen, so kann auch der lebendige Begriff von der bildenden Nachahmung des Schönen, nur im Gefühl der thätigen Kraft, die es hervorbringt, im ersten Augenblick der Entstehung statt finden, wo das Werk, als schon vollendet, durch alle Grade seines allmähligen Werdens, in dunkler Ahndung, auf einmal vor die Seele tritt, und in diesem Moment der ersten Erzeugung gleichsam vor seinem wirklichen Daseyn, da ist; wodurch alsdann auch jener unnennbare Reiz entsteht, welcher das schaffende Genie zur immerwährenden Bildung treibt.393

In Moritz’s and Wackenroder’s work—as in Hoffmann’s novella—the creative process is always set off by the same initial spark. A dark premonition, an obscure epiphany, takes hold of subject, bringing them to the brink of insanity, heightening their emotions and loosening the reins of rational control. In the dark sphere of the soul, a premonition can unfold and connect to higher truths, thereby allowing the receiver, the artist, to start the creative process.

392 Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder: Dichtung, Schriften, Briefe, Union Verlag, Berlin 1985, p. 142-147, here: p. 144. 393 Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788, p. 25. 189

In Hoffmann’s case, however, the outcome is slightly different. Driven by his dark premonitions, Nathanael commits suicide, thus fulfilling his own prophecy. The text remains ambiguous as to whether Nathanael was guided by an external power or just realized his own dark fantasies, unconsciously but independently. Nathanael’s capacity to foresee the future is just as questionable as the credibility of Coppelius or the weatherglass. Hoffmann blurs the boundaries between science and fiction, casting doubt on his characters’ intellectual stability. In The Sandman, premonitions are presented no more or less truthful than Coppelius’s experiments. This radical ambiguity as to the divisions among science and fiction, premonitions and insanity, is why Hoffmann’s novella has occasioned so criticism and confusion. In this chapter I have tried to distinguish some of the reasons behind the controversy that still surrounds the novella today mirroring the text’s use of premonitions.

190

Conclusion Premonitions in Today’s Pop Culture and World Politics: Jordan Peele’s Horror Movie Us (2019) In this dissertation, I have shown how premonitions play an important role in literature between 1750 and 1850. They appear in a variety of forms and express a variety of ideas concerning the possibility of knowing the unknown—specifically, how the future will develop. Having analyzed a series of texts from the domains of philosophy, psychology, and literature, I have come to conclusion that in most cases premonitions are framed as supersensory knowledge. Grasped as prognostic epiphanies experienced by the human soul, premonitions were taken to predict certain future events. However, a consistent note of doubt sounds throughout these accounts of premonition—even those works of literature concerned to affirm the validity of premonitory experiences, such as those written by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck. Indeed, whether implicitly or explicitly, the majority of the texts I have studied pose the question of whether the receivers of premonition authentically sense the future or their epiphanies are mere fantasies and self-fulfilling prophecies—the erratic confabulations of misguided minds. This crucial problem, which always lurks in the background of accounts of premonition, calls the validity of premonitions into question. Between 1750 and 1850, this unanswered question concerning the epistemological status premonitions caused for heated debates among writers, psychologists, and literary critics. In this dissertation I have explored this controversy, unpacking the key positions at stake in the discussion. Numerous writers attempted to defend premonitions and affirm their epistemological value. I have analyzed the ways in which a series of philosophers urged for the validity premonitions. Indeed, a series of thinkers, including Karl Philipp Moritz, Achim von Arnim, and Johann Gottfried Herder, affirmed premonition’s prognostic power and underlined its profound affinity with the process of artistic creation. These figures truly believed in the power of premonitions. Taken together, these philosophies imply that transcendental and metaphysical knowledge might be saved from the disenchantment brought on by modernity. As part of this recovery, they presented that premonition as a challenge to rational and mathematical modes of predicting the future. Besides Goethe (whom I have mentioned only glancingly), Heinrich von Kleist is one of the authors I have discussed who truly believed in the valid prognostic faculty of the soul. In Kleist’s narratives, premonitions come true. Certain characters have a supersensory

191 sense of the future, through which they catch vague glimpses of the progression of history. In this way, Kleist stages literature and poetry as an important source of prognostic knowledge in that it intimates the contingencies and opacity of history. This dissertation indicates how premonitions were a transitory phenomenon that mirrored a crisis of knowledge in so-called “saddle time” between 1750 and 1850. During this period, Western societies began to abandon Christian and theocentric belief systems while being unable to establish reliable ways of dealing with uncertainties as to the future, risk, and the unknown more generally. It would seem that premonitions and supersensory knowledge began to interest writers and thinkers around 1800, then, because such phenomena promised to bridge the gap between the secular and metaphysical world. The hope that the divide between statistical and transcendental approaches might be healed, I have emphasized, is particularly recognizable in literature. This is especially clear in my analysis of meteorological metaphors. Indeed, the ways in which Western societies approached and analyzed weather, I argue, encapsulated the period’s more general crisis of knowledge. Attempts to predict the weather exemplify the difficulties that modern societies faced in moving from a futurology premised on prophecy to another calculated through mathematical prognosis and statistics. Weather was taken as an object of research in the natural sciences, in which it was subjected to probabilistic and statistical analysis. Yet despite their confidence in mathematical analysis, the natural sciences soon discovered that weather cannot be predicted precisely. Meteorological development came to be regarded as highly contingent— much like world history. Indeed, the problem of how to understand dynamic weather systems seemed to bring into focus more general issues regarding the possibility (or impossibility) of predicting the future as such. Paintings such as Caspar David Friedrich’s Der Mönch am Meer, as well as the widespread literary use of weather metaphors, were linked to the theme of premonition and the crisis of predictability. As I have shown, such literary and visual works use the weather to reflect the impossibility of precise prognosis. Artists and writers explored premonition in an attempt to find a counter or at least alternative model to probabilistic analyses of the future. My dissertation concentrates on the transitory moment between 1750 and 1850 in Germany. This period and geographical frame, I would suggest, reflects the reasons that premonitions began to appear frequently in literature and intellectual exchanges around them

192 became particularly tense and engaging. Extending my discussion into subsequent periods, it would be possible to analyze the significance of premonition in the work, say, of Artur Schopenhauer or Richard Wagner.394 Seen as a way of countering rationalist thinking, intimately linked to the emotions and imagination, premonitions play an important role in philosophy, music and literature of late Romanticism. In the late nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, though, thinkers lost interest in premonitions. That is not to say that premonitions have disappeared entirely from the discourse of philosophy, psychology, or the arts. Indeed, I have already mentioned that Sigmund Freud discussed the phenomenon in his essay on The Uncanny. More recently, too, premonitions have figured in literature, art, and movies. Some prominent examples indicate that, as a theme in cultural practice, premonition goes on subverting rationalist perspectives on the world. In the tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism, contemporary depictions of premonition continue to question the teleological progression of history towards a predictable future. Between 2015 and 2020 especially, the limits of statistics and probability theories have again come to the fore. Once more, political ruptures and unforeseeable events, have proven that history cannot be mathematically predicted with any degree of certainty. In large part, these contingencies have been driven by emotional and irrational forces, which confound reasoned calculation. Francis Fukuyama’s prognosis of the end of history, for instance, has been proven wrong. History is alive—indeed, today it is perhaps more dynamic and puzzling than it has ever been. What is more, analysts failed to foresee far-reaching shifts such as the presidency of Donald J. Trump or Great Britain’s vote to rescind its membership of the European Union. In fact, in both cases most statistical analyses projected exactly the opposite outcomes.395 In Kleist’s

394 “According to Schopenhauer,” writes Stefan Andriopoulos, “spiritual visions and clairvoyance allow for a glimpse of the supersensory realm.” Ghostly Apparitions, Zone Books, New York 2013, p. 50. 395 In 2015, the famous forecaster Nate Silver predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, as did many others. or zehn Jahren veröffentliche Nate Silver, ein Statistiker und Wahlforscher, eine viel beachtetes Buch mit dem Titel „The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction”. Darin schildert der zeitweise bekannteste Daten-Prognostiker der USA seine Methoden zur Prognose von Sportergebnissen oder Wahlausgängen. Tatsächlich gelangen ihm einige Volltreffer: Er konnte mit seinen Systemen die Leistung und berufliche Entwicklung von Baseballspielern voraussagen und sagte er den Ausgang von zwei Präsidentenwahlen voraus, bis hin in die einzelnen US-Bundesstaaten. Das machte ihn berühmt und in der politischen Publizistik sehr begehrt. Doch 2016 war alles anders. Nate Silver versagte völlig und hielt Hillary Clinton für die wahrscheinliche Wahlsiegerin. Heute arbeitet er dennoch für mehrere Medien als Statistik-Spezialist, (z.B. https://fivethirtyeight.com), ist aber sehr vorsichtig geworden, was Voraussagen betrifft. Politische Wahlen, so die Lehre von 2016, scheinen seit einigen Jahren anders zu funktionieren als früher; die Ergebnisse hängen mehr von brachialen Strategien in den Medien oder gar von 193 words, these were “unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten”—improbable events that, statistically speaking, should not really have happened. Another such event was the financial crisis of 2008, which many statistical models did not foresee. In short, today probability is in a profound state of doubt. Analysts argue over how to predict the future mathematically, while Western democracies languish in turmoil. This crisis of rationality, truth, facts, knowledge, and statistical analysis is being critically reflected upon in contemporary cultural production. Significantly for this dissertation, these doubts as to the course of history are explored using some of the established literary techniques I have analyzed in the context of German Romanticism. As in the “saddle time,” today premonitions function as a transgressive mode of reflection, through which the culture fantasizes about improbable crises and alternative, often catastrophic futures. I would like to end this dissertation with a short analysis of a premonition depicted in the horror movie Us, which alludes to Hoffmann’s Sandman. In the light of my analyses of historical representations of premonitions, I mean to parse the meaning of this aspect of the movie so as to understand its intertextual references and layers of significance. I will not analyze the movie as a whole. My intention is only to show how the cultural confrontation with premonition did not come to a halt in the nineteenth century. To the contrary, it has persisted into contemporary culture, even if only implicitly. Us envisages a premonition in the sense of a vision of an improbable but possible future. In the vision, the protagonists, the African-American Wilson family, are in danger. Millions of human doppelgängers enter from a parallel universe, killing off the existing population of humans and ushering in the end of civilization. First, let me summarize the movie. In 1986, a young girl named Adelaide goes on vacation to Santa Cruz with her parents. She wanders off on the beach and enters a funhouse, where she encounters a doppelgänger of herself in the hall of mirrors. The movie then tracks forward to the present day, in which the now-adult Adelaide is haunted by memories of the encounter. Along with her husband, Gabe Wilson, and their two children, Zora and Jason, she visits their house in Santa Cruz. The trip triggers memories of her childhood trauma. Although

ausländischen Eingriffen ab. Die Stochastik des Wahlgeschehens franst an den Rändern aus, chaotisiert sich und hat immer mehr mit Personen und immer weniger mit Parteien zu tun. Besonders stark ist dieser Effekt in Ländern mit Mehrheitswahlrecht.“ In: https://www.horx.com/45-die-trump-prognose/, seen on 1st February 2020.

194

Adelaide is apprehensive about her stay, her husband Gabe brushes her forebodings aside. At the beach, Jason sees a man standing with his arms outstretched, blood dripping from one hand. That night, a group of four dressed in red overalls appears in the Wilsons’ driveway. They break into the house and attack them. The intruders turn out to be doppelgängers of the Wilson family. Adelaide, the family’s mother, foresees the catastrophes depicted in the movie. Just like Nathanael in the Sandman, she senses fatality. Interestingly, the movie enrolls imagery of dark clouds and thunderstorms so as to underline the contingency and fatality of history, foreshadowing the dystopian ending. As such, it resonates with the iconography of Frierich’s Monk at the See. The movie’s opening scene stages a dark premonition, a prolepsis that casts forward to its disastrous conclusion. The young Adelaide walks around an amusement park on Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with her parents. As if entranced or guided by an invisible hand, she wonders off to the beach to see the stars twinkling over sea. Adelaide observes the movement of waves and spray and listens to the sound of the ocean. But clouds are gathering rapidly, and soon thunder strikes. The flickering sky foreshadows the narrative’s bad ending.

195

396

To escape the rain, Adelaide enters the funhouse and its hall of mirrors, where she meets her doppelgänger, Red. This scene will become important later. The second part of the movie jumps into the present. Now a much more explicit premonition occurs. In a crucial scene, the adult Adelaide tells her husband about her forebodings, her sense that their stay is a bad idea. Like Donna Elisabeth in Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chili, Adelaide stutters and cannot express her feelings in coherent sentences. She reacts emotionally through physical outbursts. She is sure that something bad will happen again. Finally, she finds a metaphor that captures her feelings. “Gabe,” she says, “I want to go. I can’t be here. It’s too much. Being here, it... It feels like there’s this, um... black cloud just hanging over me. And, uh... I don’t feel like myself.” This sentences resonate with the beginning of the movie, in which the young Adelaide watches a thunder storm roll in across the sea, just before encountering her doppelgänger. Readers of this dissertation will be more than familiar with this metaphor, in storm clouds signal forebodings about the future. Implicitly, the movie’s portrayal of Adelaide accords with the longstanding belief that certain gifted people have supersensory knowledge and can foresee the future. As I showed in chapter 1, the philosopher Immanuel Kant writes that prognostic apparitions come only to “persons with organs of unusual sensitivity.”397 Adelaide seems to be one such person. She seems to posses a “dream organ” (as Schopenhauer calls it), which allows her to communicate with “something truly external” and sense the future.398 Like Kant and Schopenhauer, the philosopher

396 Jordan Peele: Us, 2019, Amazon Streaming, timecode minutes 00:05:00-00:06:00. 397 Immanuel Kant: Dreams of a Spirit Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, in: Theoretical Philosophy 1755-770, trans. and ed. by David Walford, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 949. 398 In opposition to Schopenhauer’s understanding of clairvoyance, Adelaide does not receive an „internal image“, but an „internal feeling.“ Stefan Andriopoulos explains: „In distinguishing between a genuine spirit apparition and a purely subjective phantasm, Schopenhauer emphasizes that a true spirit vision does not refer to a material body, but 196

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) also concluded that such visions are possible. Those who possess “this intuitive vision [Anschauung],” he writes, “stands opposed to ordinary beings.”399 Hegel, too, was convinced of the validity of premonitions and presentiments. For instance, he described the appearance of the ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an “objective form of Hamlet’s inner presentiment.”400 At this juncture, I want to recall Nathanael’s words from Hoffmann’s The Sandman, which resonate with Us: “Dunkle Ahnungen eines gräßlichen mir drohenden Geschicks breiten sich wie schwarze Wolkenschatten über mich aus, undurchdringlich jedem freundlichen Sonnenstrahl.” Like Nathanael’s, Adelaide’s premonition comes true. As an adult, she meets her doppelgänger again and is terrorized by it, along with her whole family.

is nonetheless caused by ‚something truly external that is wholly independent of the subject. For this something to be cognized by the ghost seer, it must ‚enter into some communication with the interior of his organism.’ The ‚dream organ,’ which becomes active when our normal sensory perception is shut off, then translates the data of this communication into an internal image, thereby serving as the ‚medium of intuitive seeing’ (Medium der Anschauung).“ In: Stefan Andriopoulos: Ghostly Apparitions, Zone Books, New York 2013, p. 50-51. 399 Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre (1813), in: J. H. Fichte (ed.): Sämtliche und Nachgelassene Werke, 11 vols, reprint, de Gruyter, Berlin 1971, here: vol. 9, p. 20. 400 G. W. F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, vol. 13 of Werke, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, 20 vols, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 300. 197

As the narrative unfolds, the audience learns that all the doppelgängers, each of who looks exactly someone on earth, are in fact clones. Having been created by the government some years ago, they were kept in an under world. Created so as to control their corresponding people living above ground, the clones lack souls. People on earth had thus long been sharing their souls with clones underground, without knowing it. At the movie unfolds, the clones leave their quarters below ground so as to slaughter and replace all human beings. As in Kleist’s Earthquake in Chili, Adelaide’s premonition of the course of history comes true. Doppelgängers arrive and try to kill her family. Interestingly, Us has other resonances with The Sandman, beyond the premonition itself. Like The Sandman, the movie tells the story of a child’s trauma. Just as Nathanael is profoundly marked by his father’s death and his encounter with the weatherglass merchant, so the young Adelaide is scarred by meeting her doppelgänger, Red. Just as the doppelgängers in Us are clones lacking souls, the doll Olympia in the Sandmann is also an automaton. Despite moving like a human being, she too has no soul. In addition, The Sandman is ambiguous as to whether Coppola and Coppelius are one and the same person, or each other’s doppelgänger. Both stories end fatally, fulfilling the premonitions with which they begin.

198

A number of analogies can be drawn, then, between Jordan Peele’s horror movie US and German Romantic literature. In using premonitory and dystopian motifs, the director’s approach resonates with the legacies of Kleist, Tieck, Hoffmann, and Goethe. Peele’s narrative makes the viewer aware of the possibility that the world is in danger; that uncontrollable forces threaten to destabilize civilization and prevailing values. Us also confronts repressed racism in the United States, which haunts all of the characters in the movie. The premonition tells its receiver, Adelaide, that the world is fraught, that world history can rapidly change course, that a process of nemesis—as Herder would put it—is underway, putting events beyond all statistical prediction. In this way, premonitions offer confront the all-too settled and seemingly predictable present with an alternative, cruel history, in which modern societies pay the price for their political ignorance and an exaggerated faith in economical and statistical rationality. In representing a dystopian future, Us itself functions as something of a premonition, in that it puts reality into question. Staging premonitions therefore remains still today a key literary and artistic means of establishing a critical perspective on the world. As I have shown, premonitions are mostly presented as an awareness and a warning signal against unpredictable crisis, a warning signal against the truthfulness of statistical knowledge and the underestimation of random events. Even today, this awareness is important, especially in a time of rupture and turnoil. Just to give a recent example in our time of the post- corona-crsisi: The Robert Koch Institut said in January 2020, by relying on statistical data, that the Corona Virus, which effected the Western world as no other phenomenon after the Second World War, will not spread globally and that Germany in particular is save. The newspaper „Handelsblatt“ published on the 21st of January 2020 in an article the following remark: “Es sei nicht auszuschließen, dass eine erkrankte Person nach Deutschland reise, sagte Lars Schaade, Vizepräsident des Robert Koch-Instituts (RKI) in Berlin. Sorgen müsse man sich in Deutschland aber nicht machen.” The newspaper DIE WELT wrote on the same day: “Das Europäische Zentrum für die Prävention und die Kontrolle von Krankheiten schätzt das Risiko für den europäischen Raum gering ein.” Three months later, the reality of the world changed and flipped into a dystopian, Kleist’ian reality where a cough of an animal on a Chinese market in Wuhan changed the outcome of world history. The Western civilizations thought that they live in a world of save mathematical predictions by believing the statistics. Premonitions complicate that thought and try to project through literature, through fiction and fantasy, an alternative model of

199 history, a worst case scenario, a state of exception like in Kleist’s Eartquake in Chili; an unlikely but not impossible future. I would like to finish this dissertation with a quote by Joseph Vogl who analyzed in 2010 the financial crisis of 2008 by reminding the public that this crisis was mathematically impossible, at least from the perspective of major financial analysts who relied on their statistical data. The crisis hit the Western governments almost as unexpected as the Corona Virus twelve years later. For many observers, all these crises feel like the downfall of a rational belief in the statistical predictability of time. Premonitons express this new disbelief in rational futurology. Joseph Vogl concludes: “Unter den Technikern steigt die Ahnung auf, dass alle möglichen Prognoseverfahren und damit auch alle kalkulierbaren Erwartungshorizonte einen ganz wesentlichen blinden Fleck haben, nämlich jenen, den Keynes die ‚perfidious future’ genannt hat: dass die Zukunft ungewiss ist und dass es immer anders kommt, als man denkt.“401

401 Interview with Joseph Vogl, interviewer Tomasz Kurianowicz, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11th of October 2011, website: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/im-gespraech-joseph-vogl-reine-lehren- funktionieren-nicht-mehr-11490150.html 200

Literature Primary Literature - Aristotle: The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton 1984. - Ludwig-Achim von Arnim: Die Kronenwächter. Berthold’s erstes und zweites Leben: ein Roman, Maurersche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1817. - Achim von Arnim: Landhausleben. Erzählungen. Metamorpohosen der Gesellschaft. Sonntags- Erzählung der Landprediger, in: Achim von Arnim: Sämmtliche Werke, 15 vol., Berlin 1846. - Achim von Arnim: Unveröffentlichte Texte und Fragmente aus dem Goethe-und-Schiller- Archiv Weimar (GSA 03/209,3), in: „Fessellos durch die Systeme“. - Achim von Arnim: Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen, bey Johann Jacob Gebauer, Halle 1799. - Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten: Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus, Heinz Paetzold (ed.), Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1983. - Jakob von Bianchy: Das Merkwürdigste vom Barometre und Thermometre: In sieben Abschnitte zusammen getragen und mit einer neuerfundenen Wetterglas-Tafel versehen, bey Johann Thomas Trattnern, Wien 1762. - Friedrich August Carus: Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Leipzig 1809. - Hermann Eulenberg: Vierteljahrsschrift für gerichtliche Medizin und öffentliches Sanitätswesen, vol. 29, Verlag von August Hirschwald, Berlin 1878. - Michael Catle: Phrenologische Analyse des Charakters des Herrn Dr. Justinus Kerner, Druck und Verlag von Karl Groos, Heidelberg 1844. - Sigmund Freud: Das Unheimliche, 1919, Kleine Schriften II, Kapitel 29, viewed online (1st of March 2020), website: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34222/34222-h/34222-h.htm. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Appelation an das Publicum gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, in: Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Sämmliche Werke, ed. by J.H. Fichte: Zweite Abtheilung. Zur Religionsphilosophie, vol. 3, Berlin 1845. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre (1813), in: J. H. Fichte (ed.): Sämtliche und Nachgelassene Werke, 11 volumes, reprint, de Gruyter, Berlin 1971. - Jakob Friedrich Fries: Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung, bey Göpferdt, Jena 1805.

201

- Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goekingk: Noch etwas über Ahndungsvermögen, in: Karl Philipp Moritz (ed. et al): Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, vol. 2, bey August Mylius, Berlin 1784. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Die Wahlverwandtschaften, in: Goethe: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 6, Verlag vom Litteratur Comptoir, Herisau 1837. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Howards Ehrengedächtnis, Goethe: Berliner Ausgabe. Poetische Werke [vol. 1–16], vol. 1, Berlin 1960 ff, p. 551-553. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Versuch einer Witterungslehre, in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 37, Prophyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1824, p. 399-421. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Werke. Kommentare und Register. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, vol. 10, Autobiographische Schriften II, C.H. Beck, München 1981. - Georg Friederich Götz: Passionspredigten. Nebst einer Confirmationsrede, vol. 4, im Verlage der Griesbachschen Hofbuchhandlung, Cassel 1800. - Justus Christian Hennings: Von den Ahndungen und Visionen, In der Mengandtschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1777. - Johann Gottfried Herder: Anhang. Noch einige Worte über Wissen, Ahnen, Wünschen, Hoffen und Glauben der Zukunft, in: Herder: Sämmtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Siebenter Theil, vol. 35, bey der I.G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1807. - Johann Gottfried Herder: Der Genius der Zukunft, in: Herder: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur schönen Literatur und Kunst, vol. 15, in der I. G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1817. - Johann Gottfried von Herder: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, Siebenter Theil, Gotta’sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart und Tübingen 1828. - Johann Gottfried von Herder: Vom Wissen und Ahnen, in: Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, vol. 7, Gotta’sche Buchhandlung, Thüringen 1807. - E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann. Textkritik, Edition, Kommentar, ed. and com. by Ulrich Hohoff, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988. - E. T. A. Hoffmann: Die Serapions-Brüder. Gesammelte Erzählungen und Mährchen, ed. by E.T.A. Hoffmann, vol. 4, Verlag von B. Reimer, Berlin 1845. - F.H. Jacobi to J.F. Fries, 26./27.11.1807. In: Reante Grumach (ed.): Goethe. Begegnungen und Gespräche, vol. V, Walter de Gruyter, 1985 Berlin.

202

- Georg W. F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 2: Die bestimmte Religion, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1994. - W. F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, vol. 13 of Werke, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, 20 vols., Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1986. - Johann Friedrich Herbart: Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik, und Mathematik, Zweyter, analytischer Teil, bey August Wilhelm Unzer, Königsberg 1825. - Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Werke, vol. 3, Pennsylvania 1968. - K. Kalischer: Einleitung, in: K. Kalischer (ed.): Goethe's Werke, nach den vorzüglichen Quellen revidierte Ausgabe, vol. 34, Zur Meteorologie. Zur Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen. Naturwissenschaftliche Einzelheiten. Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von K. Kalischer, bey Gustav Hempel, Berlin 1868. - Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Königsberg 1820. - Immanuel Kant: Dreams of a Spirit Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, in: Theoretical Philosophy 1755-770, trans. and ed. by David Walford, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992. - Immanuel Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. by J. H. v. Kirchmann, Verlag von L. Heimann, Berlin 1870. - Immanuel Kant: Logik, in: Immanuel Kant: Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. by Wilhelm Weischedel, Darmstadt 1983, vol. 5, p. 495 (A 100). - Immanuel Kant: Physische Geographie: Beschreibung der Flüsse, Seen und der Atmosphäre, vol. 3, issue 1, Vollmer, Mainz und Hamburg 1803. - Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena, Verlag von Leopold Voss, Berlin 1878. - Immanuel Kant: Träume eines Geistersehers, in: Kleine anthropologisch-praktische Schriften, Leipzig 1838. - Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter: Faßliche Darstellung der Erfahrungsseelenlehre. Zur Selbstbelehrung für Nichtstudierende, bey August Campe, Hamburg 1806. - Heinrich von Kleist: Das Erdbeben in Chili, in: Heinrich von Kleist: Werke, ed. by Heinrich Kurz, vol. 2, Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, Bilburghaufen 1870.

203

- Heinrich von Kleist: Der Zweikampf, in: Heinrich von Kleist: Heinrich von Kleists gesammelte Schriften, v. 1 of 2, Druck und Verlag von Georg Reimer, Berlin 1891. - Heinrich von Kleist: Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft. (13. October.). In: Heinrich von Kleist: Heinrich von Kleist’s Politische Schriften und andere Nachträge zu seinen Werken. Mit einer Einleitung zum ersten Mal herausgegeben von Rudolf Köpke, Verlag von A. Charisius, Berlin 1862. - Heinrich von Kleist: Richard 3. oder von der dramatischen Versöhnung, in: Phöbus; Ein Journal für die Kunst, vol. 2, Dresden 1808. - Heinrich Kleist: The Marquise of O, in: Heinrich von Kleist: The Marquise of O and other Stories, Penguin Group, New York 2004. - Heinrich von Kleist: Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten, in: Werke und Briefe in vier Bänden, vol. 3, Berlin und Weimar 1978, S. 366-369. - E. Mauritii: Die Theorie des Barometers als Wetterglas. Jahresbericht über die Königliche Landwirthschafts- und Gewerbsschule, II. Classe zu Wunsiedel, 1840. - Johann Friedrich von Meyer: Hades: ein Beytrag zur Theorie der Geisterkunde; nebst Anhängen: öffentliche Verhandlungen über Swedenborg und Stilling, ein Beyspiel des Ahndungsvermögens und einen Brief des jüngern Plinius enthaltend, bey Johann Christian Hermann, Frankfurt am Main 1810. - Karl Philipp Moritz: Anton Reiser - ein psychologischer Roman, TLK, Berlin 2018. - Karl Philipp Moritz: Aνθουσα oder Roms Alterthümer. Ein Buch für die Menschheit, bei Friedrich Maurer, Berlin 1797. - Karl Philipp Moritz: Gnothi sauton oder Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde als ein Lesebuch für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte, 10 volumes, Greno, Berlin 1986. - Karl Philipp Moritz: Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, Schul-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1788. - Christian A. Peuschel: Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposcopie und Chiromantie: mit einer Vorrede, darinnen die Gewißheit der Weißagungen aus dem Geschichte, der Stirn und den Händen gründlich dargethan wird, welcher am Ende noch einige Betrachtungen und Anweisungen zu weißagen beygefügt werden, die zur bloßen Belustigung dienen, Heinßische Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1769.

204

- Johann Christian Reil: Gesammelte kleine physiologische Schriften, vol. 1, In Commission bey Aloys Doll, Wien 1811 - Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, in der Arnoldischen Buchhandlung, Dresden 1808. - Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Der Erwerb aus einem vergangenen und die Erwartungen von einem zukünftigen Leben. Eine Selbstbiographie, vol. 1, Verlag von J.J. Palm und Ernst Enke, Erlangen 1854. - Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: Erzählende Schriften für christlich gebildete Leser jeden Standes und Alters, Wohlfeile Ausgabe, vol. 3, first part, Palm und Enke, Erlangen 1866. - Johann Gottlieb Schummel: Spitzbart: eine komi-tragische Geschichte für unser pädagogischen Jahrhundert, Weygandsche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1779. - Franz Splittgerber: Schlaf und Tod nebst den damit zusammenhängenden Erscheinungen des Seelenlebens, Halle 1866. - Johann Josias Sucro: Über die Ahndungen, J. W. Halle und J. G. Halle, Brandenburg 1759. - Johann Georg Sulzer: Erklärung eines psychologisch paradoxen Satzes: Daß der Mensch zuweilen nicht ohne Antrieb und ohne sichtbare Gründe sondern selbst gegen drigende Antriebe und überzeugende Gründe handelt und urtheilet, in: Sucro: Vermischte philosophische Schriften, vol. 1, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1773. - Emanuel Swedenborg: Vom Himmel und von den wunderbaren Dingen desselben: wie auch von der Geisterwelt und dem Zustand des Menschen nach dem Tod; und von der Hölle; So, wie es gehöret und gesehen worden von Emanuel Swedenborg, without publishing house and place, 1774. - Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell, p. 556-836, in: Ludwig Tieck: Sämmtliche Werke, Tétot Frères, Paris 1837. - Ludwig Tieck: Wundersame Liebesgeschichte von der schönen Magelone und dem Grafen Peter aus der Provence, bey Johann Huemer, Linz 1833. - Unknown Author: Chronik 1790. Erstes Halbjahr, Stuttgart im Verglag des Kaiserl. Reichspostamtes, unknown place 1790. - Unknown Author: Geschichte Raphaels de Aquillas in fünf Bänden. Ein Seitenstück zu Fausts Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt, St. Petersburg 1793.

205

- Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder: Dichtung, Schriften, Briefe, Union Verlag, Berlin 1985, p. 142-147. - Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel: Unterhaltungen über die auffallendsten neuern Geistererscheinungen, Träume und Ahndungen, nebst Darstellung anderer sonderbaren Beobachtungen am Menschen, without publishing house and place, 1800. - Eduard Young: Klagen oder Nachgedanken über Leben, Tod und Untsterblichkeit in Neun Nächten, Erster Band, Speier im Velage der Gesellschaft, Speier 1780.

Secondary Literature - Wolfgang Adam, Siegrid Westphal (eds.): Handbuch kultureller Zentren der Frühen Neuzeit: Städte und Residenzen im alten deutschen Sprachraum, volume 1, De Gruyter, Berlin and Boston 2012. - Katharine Anderson: Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2005. - Stefan Andriopoulos: Kants Gespenster. Optische Medien, Metaphysik und Geistersehen, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder (eds.): Kollektive Gespenster. Die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfassbare Körper, Rombach, Freiburg i. Br. / Berlin 2006, p. 51-73. - Stefan Andriopoulos: Ghostly Apparitions : German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media. Vol. First edition, Zone Books, New York 2013. - Stefan Andriopoulos: Occult Conspiracies: Spirits and Secret Societies in Schiller’s “Ghost Seer”, New German Critique, (103), 2008, p. 65-81. - Rani Lill Anjum, Stephen Mumford: Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018. - Antje Arnold, Walter Pape (eds.): Emotionen in der Romantik: Repräsentation, Ästhetik, Inszenierung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012. - Birgit Aschmann: „Das Zeitalter des Gefühls“? Zur Relevanz von Emotionen im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Birgit Aschmann (ed.): Durchbruch der Moderne? Neue Perspektiven auf das 19. Jahrhundert, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2019, p. 83-119. - Timothy Bahti: Literary criticim and the history of ideas. In: Christa Knellwolf, Chritsopher Norris: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 9, Twentieth-Century Historical,

206

Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, p. 31-43. - Christian Begemann: Furcht und Angst im Prozess der Aufklärung, Athenaum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987. - Frederick C. Beiser: The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014. - Franz Biet: Goethe - Aufklärer oder Esoteriker? Wie modern ist Goethe? Studien zu seiner fortdauernden Aktualität, Studienverlag, Insbruck / Wien / Bozen 2018. - Pim den Boer: National Cultures, Transnational Concepts: Begriffsgeschichte Beyond Conceptual Nationalism, in: Javier Fernandez Sebastian (ed.): New Approaches to Conceptual History. Political Concepts and Time, Cantabria University Press, Santander (Spain) 2011, p. 205-223. - Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerhard Neumann: Romantische Wissenspoetik: Die Künste und die Wissenschaften um 1800, p. 9-13, in: Gaberiele Brandstetter, Gerhard Neumann (eds.): Romantische Wissenspoetik: die Künste und die Wissenschaften um 1800, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004. - Roswitha Burwick: Achim von Arnim. Physiker und Poet. In: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 26, Duncker & Humboldt, Berlin 1985, p. 121-150. - Roswirtha Burwick: „Der Kreis des Wissens dreht sich wandelnd um...“ - Arnims kulturpolitisches Programm in den Berliner Jahren. Die „Kleinen Schriften“ 1809-1814, in: Ulfert Rickels (ed.): Universelle Entwürfe - Integration - Rückzug: Arnims Berliner Zeit (1809- 1814), Wiepersdorfer Kolloquium der Internationalen Arnim-Gesellschaft, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2000. - Roswitha Burwick: Dichtung und Malerei bei Achim von Arnim, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989. - Roswitha Burwick: „Sein Leben ist groß weil es ein Ganzes war.“ Arnims Erstlingsroman Hollin’s Liebeleben als „Übergangsversuch“ von der Wissenschaft zur Dichtung, in: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Klaus Stein, Michael Gerten (eds.): „Fessellos durch die Systeme“. Frühromantisches Naturdenken im Umfeld von Arnim, Ritter und Schelling, Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt 1997.

207

- Urs Büttner: „Durch die Kunst läst sich dieses ahnden“: Achim von Arnim im Kontext zeitgenössischer Konzepte von Gefühlserkenntnis der Kunst, in: Antje Arnold, Walter Pape (eds.): Emotionen in der Romantik. Repräsentation, Ästhetik, Inszenierung, De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2012. - Rüdiger Campe: The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2012. - Rüdiger Campe: Wahrscheinliche Geschichte – poetologische Kategorie und mathematische Funktion, in: Joseph Vogl (ed.): Poetologie des Wissens, p. 219-230. - Alan Corkhill: Perspectives on Language in Ludwig Tieck's Epistolary Novel William Lovell, The German Quarterly 58.2, 1985, p. 173–183. - Jürgen Daibler: Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001. - Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile: Die schöne Republik: Ästhetische Moderne in Berlin im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006. - Dina De Rentiis: Figur und Psyche: Neudefinition des Unheimlichen, University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2016. - Caroline Domenghino: Knowing without Knowledge: Ahnung in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Literature form the Englighenment to Romanticism, dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing 2011. - Helga Dormann: Die Kunst des inneren Sinns. Mythisierung der inneren und äußeren Natur im Werk von Karoline von Ginderrodes, Wiesbaden 1980. - Gabriele Dürbeck: Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung. Perspektiven der Philosophie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1750, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1998. - Theodor Elsenhans: Fries und Kant: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zur systematischen Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Severus Verlag, Hamburg 2010. - Stefani Engelstein, Carl Niekerk (eds.): Contemplating Violence. Critical Studies in Modern German Culture, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, no. 79, Amsterdam 2011. - Ekbert Faas: Retreat into the mind, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988. - Marc Falkenberg: Rethinking the Uncanny in Hoffmann and Tieck, P Lang, 2007. - Rodney Farnsworth: Mediating Order and Chaos. The Water-cycle in the Complex Adaptive Systems of Romantic Culture, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2001.

208

- James Franklin: The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2002. - Hans-Edwin Friedrich: Die Innerste Tiefe Der Zerstörung: Die Dialektik von Zerstörung und Bildung im Werk von Karl Philipp Moritz, Aufklärung, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 69–90. - Michael Gamper: Einleitung, in: Michael Bies / Michael Gamper (eds.): Literatur und Nicht- Wissen. Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930, Berlin / Zürich 2012, p. 171-196. - Michael Gamper: Erzählen, nicht lehren!, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (eds.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014. - Michael Gamper: Experimental Performance: Poetology and Epistemology in Scientific Experiments around 1800, European Romantic Review, vol. 28, Routledge, London 2017, p. 21- 36. - Michael Gamper: Rätsel der Atmosphäre. Umrisse einer ‚literarischen Meteorologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 229-243 - Achim Geisenhanslüke: Dummheit und Witz. Poetologie des Nichtwissens, Wilhelm Fink, München 2011. - Michael Gerten: „Alles im Einzelnen ist gut, alles verbunden ist groß.“ Ort und Methode der Naturforschung bei Achim von Arnim, in: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Klaus Stein, Michael Gerten (eds.): „Fessellos durch die Systeme“, Frühromantisches Nachdenken im Umfeld von Arnim, Ritter und Schelling, Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt 1997, p. 91-143. - Donald Gillies: Philosophical Theories of Probability, Routledge, London 2000. - Hein Härtl: ‚Amazonenrepublik’ und ‚Raum von vier Dimensionen’, in: Walter Pape (ed.): Raumkonfigurationen in der Romantik, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009. - Wolfram Hogrebe: Ahnung und Erkenntnis. Bouillon zu einer Theorie des natürlichen Erkennens, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1996. - Andreas Gailus: Anton Reiser, Case History, and the Emergence of Empirical Psychology, in: David E. Wellbery, Judith Ryan (eds.): A New History of German Literature, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2004. - Catrherine Gallagher, Stephen Greenblatt: Practicing New Historicism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000.

209

- Jan Golinski: British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment, University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2007. - Richard Green: The Thwarting of Laplace’s Demon. Arguments against the Mechanistic World- View, St. Martin’s Press, London 1995, p. 13-14. - Oliver Grill: Die Wetterseiten der Literatur. Poetologische Konstellationen und meteorologische Kontexte im 19. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2019. - Oliver Grill: Unvorhersehbares Wetter? Zur Meteorologie in Alexander von Humboldts ,,Kosmos“ und Adalbert Stifters ,,Nachsommer“, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, vol. 26, 01/01/2016, p. 61-77. - Arsenij Gulyga: Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought Birkäuser, Boston / Basel / Stuttgart 1987. - Richard Hamblyn: The Invention of the Clouds: how an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies, Picador, London 2001. - Kazunari Hata: Phantasie als Methode de poietischen Wissenschaft Goethes. Naturwissenschaft und Philosophie im Spiegel seiner Zeit, Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2017. - Lucian Hölscher: Die Entdeckung der Zukunft, Wallstein, Göttingen 1999. - Eva Horn: Zukunft als Katastrophe, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014. - Peter Horn: Verbale Gewalt oder Kleist auf der Couch: Über die Problematik der Psychoanalyse von literarischen Texten, Athena Verlag, Oberhausen 2009. - Oliver Jahraus (ed.): Zugänge zur Literaturtheorie. 17 Modellanalysen zu E.T.A. Hoffmanns „Der Sandmann“, Reclam, Stuttgart 2016. - Vladimir Janković: Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820, Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000. - Christoph Kampmann, Ulrich Niggemann (eds.): Sicherheit in der frühen Neuzeit. Norm - Praxis - Repräsentation, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2013. - Norman Kasper: Ahnung als Gegenwart. Die Entdeckung der reinen Sichtbarkeit in Ludwig Tiecks frühen Romanen, Wilhelm Fink, München 2014. - Dirk Kemper: Sprache der Dichtung. Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder im Kontext der Spätaufklärung, J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1993. - Ralf Klausnitzer: Poesie und Konspiration, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007.

210

- Wulf Koepke: Nemesis und Geschichtsdialektik, in: Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.): Herder Today. Contributions from the International Herder Conference, Nov. 5-8, 1987, Stanford California, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, p. 85-97 - Reinhart Koselleck: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Columbia University Press, New York 2004. - Reinhart Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989. - Alexander Košenina: Naturkundlich entzaubert, poetisch verzaubert: Der Regenbogen in Kunst und Literatur (von Brockes bis Goethe), in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 01/01/2014, vol. 24, p. 244-255. - Sybille Krämer: Berechenbare Vernunft. Kalkül und Rationalismus im 17. Jahrhundert, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991. - Thomas Kullmann: Vermenschlichte Natur. Zur Bedeutung von Landschaft und Wetter im englischen Roman von Ann Radcliffe bis Thomas Hardy, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1995. - Achim Küpper: „Poesie, die sich selbst spiegelt, und nicht Gott“: Reflexionen der Sinnkrise in Erzählungen E.T.A. Hoffmanns, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2010. - Edgar Landgraf: The Psychology of Aesthetic Autonomy. The Signature of the Signature of Beauty. In: Anthony Krupp (ed.): Karl Philipp Moritz, Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2010. - Young-Ki Lee: Wahnsinn Redet Selber - Zur Fallgeschichte eines Wahnsinnigen in Ludwig Tiecks Roman William Lovell, vol. 52, 05/30/2019, p. 55-78. - Burkhardt Lidner: Den „Autor“ Freud entdecken. Eine Lektüre der Abhandlungen über den Wotz und über das Unheimliche, in: Rolf Haubl, Tilmann Habermas (eds.): Freud neu entdecken. Ausgewählte Lektüren, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, p. 90-110. - Christian Link: Theodizee. Eine theologische Herausforderung, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016. - Albert Meier: Karl Philipp Moritz, Reclam, Stuttgart 2015. - Andrea Meyertholen: Apocalypse Now: On Heinrich Von Kleist, Caspar David Friedrich, and the Emergence of Abstract Art, in: The German Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 4, 2013, pp. 404–420. - Catherine J. Minter: The Mind-body Problem in German Literature, 1770-1830: Wezel, Moritz, and Jean Paul, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2002. - Melanie Mitchell: Complexity, Oxford University Press, New York 2009.

211

- Guiseppe Motta: Die Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt, Walder de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012. - Dorothea von Mücke: The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003. - Martin Neuhold: Achim von Arnims Kunsttheorie und sein Roman „Die Kronenwächter“ im Kontext ihrer Epoche, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1994. Roger Paulin: Ludwig Tieck, Metzler, Frankfurt 1987. - Nicolas Pethes: Literatur, Wissenschaft und die Rhetorik der Krise, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janßen (edts.): Wissensordnungen. Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014. - Grischka Petri: Wetter und Kunst. Chiffren der Kontingenz, Kontingenz der Chiffren, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 105-139. - Christian Pöpperl: Auf der Schwelle. Ästhetik des Erhabenen und negative Theologie, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007. - Robert J. Richards: The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2002. - Simon Richter: Pressing Matters: Karl Philipp Moritz's Models of the Self in the „Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde“, in: Simon Richter (ed.): Goethe Yearbook, vol. 11, Camden House, Rochester 2002. - Jeffrey S. Rosenthal: Struck By Lightning: The Curious World Of Probabilities, Granta Books, London 2008. - Donald Rutherford: Leibniz and the rational order of nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995. - Stefan Scherer, Claudia Stockinger (eds.): Ludwig Tieck: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, De Gruyter, Berlin / Bonn 2001. - Stefan Scherer: Über Shakspeare’s Behandlung des Wunderbaren. Witzige Spielgemälde, De Gruyter, Berlin 2003. - Claus-Michael Schlesinger: Aufklärung und Bewölkung. Poetik der Meteore im 18. Jahrhundert, Konstanz University Press, Konstanz 2018.

212

- Peter Schnyder: Die Epiphanie der Gesellschaft, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder: Kollektive Gespenster. Die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfaßbare Körper, Freiburg / Berlin 2006, p. 191-216. - Oliver Simons: Botschaft oder Störung? Eine Diskursgeschichte des ‚Rauschens’ in der Literatur um 1800, in: Monatshefte, vol. 100, no. 1, University of Wisconsin Press 2008, p. 33- 47. - Benjamin Specht: Physik als Kunst: Die Poetisierung der Elektrizität um 1800, Walter de Gruyter 2010. - Chenxi Tang: Wetterdienst und Poesie, in: Georg Braungart, Urs Büttner (eds.): Wind und Wetter. Kultur - Wissen - Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, p. 245-261. - Philipp Theisohn Die kommende Dichtung. Geschichte des literarischen Orakels 1450-2050, Wilhelm Fink, München 2012. - Todd Timmons: Makers of Western Science, McFarland & Co., Jefferson / North Carolina. - Joseph Vogl (ed.): Poetologien des Wissens, diaphanes, München 1999. - Joseph Vogl: Über soziale Fassungslosigkeit, in: Michael Gamper, Peter Schnyder (eds.): Kollektive Gespenster: die Masse, der Zeitgeist und andere unfaßbare Körper, Rombach Druck- und Verlagshaus, Rombach 2006. - Katharine Weder: Kleists magnetische Poesie. Experimente des Mesmerismus, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008. - Karlheinz Weigand: Tiecks „William Lovell.“ Studie zur frühromantischen Antithetik, Carl Winter Universtitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1975. - David E. Wellbery: Anton Reiser, Case History, and the Emergence of Empirical Psychology, p. 1782, in: David E. Wellbery, Judith Ryan: A New History of German Literature, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts / London 2004. - David Wellbery: Verzauberung. Das Simulakrum in der romantischen Lyrik, in: Andreas Kablitz, Gerhard Neumann (eds.): Mimesis und Simulation, Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, p. 451-477. - Kathleen Wheeler: Introduction, in: Kathleen M. Wheeler (ed.): German aesthetic and literary criticism: The Romantic Ironists and Goethe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984.

213

- Stefan Willer: Ahnen und Ahnden. Zur historischen Semantik des Vorgefühls um 1800, p. 30- 40, in: Ernst Müller (ed.): Forum interdisziplinäre Begriffsgeschichte (FIB), E-Journal (2017), 6th volume / 1, ZFL, Berlin 2017, Webpage: https://www.zfl- berlin.org/tl_files/zfl/downloads/publikationen/forum_begriffsgeschichte/ZfL_FIB_6_2017_1.pd f - Stefan Willer: Vom Nicht-Wissen der Zukunft, Prognostik und Literatur um 1800 und um 1900, in: Michael Bies / Michael Gamper (eds.): Literatur und Nicht-Wissen. Historische Konstellationen 1730-1930, Berlin / Zürich 2012, p. 171-196. - Stefan Willer: Zur literarischen Epistemologie der Zukunft, in: Nicola Gess, Sandra Janssen (eds.): Wissens-Ordnungen: Zu einer historischen Epistemologie der Literatur, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 224-261. - Stefan Willer: Zwischen Planung und Ahndung. Zukunftswissen bei Kant, Herder und in Schillers „Wallenstein“, in: Daniel Weidner, Stefan Willers (editors): Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfügungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Künsten, Wilhelm Fink, München 2013, p. 299-324, here: p. 301. - Ioan Williams (ed.): Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and Fiction, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited Broadway House, London 1968. - Edwin H. Zeydel: Letters to Ludwig Tieck, hitherto unpublished, 1792-1853, Modern Language Association of America, Oxford University Press, London / New York 1937. - Herrmann Zschoche: Caspar David Friedrich. Die Briefe, ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg 2006.

Websites - https://www.horx.com/45-die-trump-prognose/, seen on 1st February 2020.

214