CONSTRUCTING THE GERMAN WALT WHITMAN CONSTRUCTING THE GERMAN Walt Whitman BY WALTER GRUNZWEIG UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS 1!11 IOWA CITY University oflowa Press, Iowa City 52242 Copyright © 1995 by the University of Iowa Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Design by Richard Hendel No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gri.inzweig, Walter. Constructing the German Walt Whitman I by Walter Gri.inzweig. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-87745-481-7 (cloth), ISBN 0-87745-482-5 (paper) 1. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892-Appreciation-Europe, German-speaking. 2. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892- Criticism and interpretation-History. 3. Criticism­ Europe, German-speaking-History. I. Title. PS3238.G78 1994 94-30024 8n' .3-dc2o CIP 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 c 5 4 3 2 1 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 p 5 4 3 2 1 To my brother WERNER, another Whitmanite CONTENTS Acknowledgments, ix Abbreviations, xi Introduction, 1 TRANSLATIONS 1. Ferdinand Freiligrath, Adolf Strodtmann, and Ernst Otto Hopp, 11 2. Karl Knortz and Thomas William Rolleston, 20 3· Johannes Schlaf, 32 4· Karl Federn and Wilhelm Scholermann, 43 5· Franz Blei, 50 6. Gustav Landauer, 52 7· Max Hayek, 57 8. Hans Reisiger, 63 9. Translations after World War II, 69 CREATIVE RECEPTION 10. Whitman in German Literature, 77 11. Naturalism, 79 12. Between Naturalism and Expressionism, 104 13. Expressionism, 108 14. Beyond Expressionism, 141 POLITICS 15. Whitman and the Marxists, 151 16. The Anarchist Whitman, 161 17. Whitman on the Right, 166 18. The German Sixties, 181 SEXUAL POLITICS 19. Homosexuality, 187 20. Wandervogel and Nudists, 199 Conclusion: A German "Whitmann," 203 Notes, 209 Index, 269 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the support of many colleagues, friends, and institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The extent and quality of this support prove that there really is a Whitman community on which individual Whitman researchers can and must depend. Early assistance and encouragement came from Gay Wilson Allen, the father of modern Whitman research, and Hans Galinsky, one of the great researchers in German-American studies of our century. Throughout my many years of re­ search, I drew on the expertise and friendship of Betsy Erkkila (Philadelphia), Ed Folsom (Iowa City), and Hans-Joachim Lang (Hamburg) for aid in collecting, assembling, and analyzing my material and for the critical evaluation of my manuscript. For effective help with the manuscript, I would also like to thank James E. Knowlton (Sherman, Texas), Anne Ulmer (Northfield, Minnesota), and especially my copy editor, Kathy Lewis. Philip G. Furia (Minneapolis), Arthur Golden (New York/ Ljubljana), Dietmar Goltschnigg (Graz), Larry Meredith (Stockton), Christopher Muller (Berlin), Marianne Muller (Berlin), Paul Raabe (Wolfenbiittel), Gerhard Rothbauer (Leip­ zig/Bamberg), James R. Thompson (Athens, Ohio), Frank Trommler (Philadel­ phia), and Larry D. Wells (Binghamton) have given me important advice and help on individual questions relating to my research. Financial support for my research was generously given by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Austrian-American Educational Commission (Fulbright Commission), and the German Humboldt Foundation. A large number of libraries and archives have allowed me access to much hitherto-unexplored material. In Germany, special thanks go to the Deutsche Literaturarchiv, Marbach, especially Winfried Feifel and Ingrid GrOninger; the Staatsbibliothek PreuBischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin); and the Johannes Schlaf Ar­ chive in Querfurt, especially Ingolf Schnittka and Joachim Hartmann. In the United States, I would like to express special appreciation to the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library, above all the Special Collections staff; Christa Sammons of Beinecke Library, New Haven; and Charles Kelly and Michael Mc­ Elderry at the Library of Congress. For intellectual inspiration, I am especially obliged to my colleagues in the Department of American Studies at Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz, especially Jiirgen Peper, long-term chair and my principal advisor, and my friend Roberta Maierhofer. Special thanks for covering my prolonged absences are due to de- lX X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS partmental manager Sonja Hanauer and its present chair, Arno Heller. Several generations of students, on both sides of the Atlantic, have also significantly con­ tributed to the character of the book. Much of the book's substance has emerged from long-term professional dia­ logues and collaboration with Margaret Cotroneo (Philadelphia), whose theo­ logically based humanism has provided me with new perspectives required for an understanding of many of the Whitmanites discussed in this book, and Eva Manske (Freiburg), whose enthusiasm for the avant-garde has taught me new ways to read and appreciate literature. Finally, I would like to acknowledge more indirect but decisive impacts on my work. My parents, Franz and Elfriede Griinzweig, have provided the background for my definition of and devotion to cultural studies; my German-American wife, Brunhild Folsch, has shaped my intercultural perspective; and my brother Werner, a musicologist in Berlin, has helped me to take a comprehensive view of cultural processes. ABBREVIATIONS F Johannes Schlaf. Fruhling. Leipzig: Insel, n.d. [1894]. FB Johannes Schlaf. "Walt Whitman." Freie Buhne fur den Entwickelungskampf der Zeit 3 (1892), 977-988. FWL Franz Werfel. Gesammelte Werke: Das lyrische Werk, ed. Adolf Klarmann. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1967. GL Gustav Landauer. "Walt Whitman," in Gustav Landauer, Der werdende Mensch: Aufsiitze zur Literatur, ed. Gerhard Hendel, pp. 85-97. Leipzig and Weimar: Kiepenheuer, 1980. HR1, HR2 Walt Whitman. Walt Whitmans Werk in zwei Bitnden, trans. Hans Reisiger. 2 vols. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1922. KK Karl Knortz. Walt Whitman: Vortrag gehalten im Deutschen Gesellig­ Wissenschaftlichen Verein von New York am 24. Miirz 1886. New York: Bartsch, 1886. KR Walt Whitman. Grashalme: Gedichte, ed. and trans. Karl Knortz and T. W. Rolleston. Zurich: Verlags-Magazin Schabelitz, 1889. LG (with English quotations) Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition, ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965. LG (with German quotations) Walt Whitman. Grashalme, trans. Johannes Schlaf. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986 (original publication 1907). MiE Heinrich Lersch. Mensch im Eisen: Gesiinge von Volk und Werk. Berlin and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlangsanstalt, 1925. PB Johannes Schlaf. Peter Boies Freite. Leipzig: Seemann, 1903. Ph Arno Holz. Phantasus (1898-1899). Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968. TWR T[homas] W[illiam] Rolleston and H[enry] B[ernard] Cotterill. Ueber Wordsworth und Walt Whitman: Zwei Vortriige gehalten vor dem Literarischen Verein zu Dresden. Dresden: Tittmann, 1883. xi xii ABBREVIATIONS WM Eduard Bertz. Whitman-Mysterien: Eine Abrechnung mit Johannes Schlaf. Berlin: n.p., 1907. YH Eduard Bertz. Der Yankee-Heiland: Ein Beitrag zur modernen Religionsgeschichte. Dresden: Reissner, 1906. INTRODUCTION I heard that you ask' d for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted. Whitman, "To Foreign Lands" Walt Whitman's reception in the German-speaking countries forms a radical and revolutionary tale. Since 1868, when Ferdinand Freiligrath came out with the first small translation, Whitman has excited some of the finest and most unorthodox minds in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. His Leaves of Grass was an impor­ tant factor in the modernist revolution in German poetry starting in the first de­ cade of the twentieth century, 1 but its influence has not been limited to the realm of literature. From gay liberationists to anarchists, countless groups have turned the white-maned patriarch into a champion for their causes. A study that seeks to do justice to the history of this multifaceted reception must posit a very broadly based notion of culture, embodying a wide variety of elements such as high-brow literature, politics, youth movements, sexuality, and various subcultures. Although Germans traditionally differentiate meticulously between literary and popular culture, the reception of Whitman frequently clouds this distinction, suggesting how the American's democratizing force works even in a foreign culture. Whitman is central to an understanding of German culture between 1890 and 1933. Given the richness of the material Whitman's German reception has pro­ duced, the theoretical questions regarding the validity of reception and of "influ­ ence" studies in general might be disregarded altogether. From a pragmatic point of view, the very quantity of these findings proves the importance of reception studies for an understanding of the processes of intercultural diffusion. Still, a theoretical note regarding reception studies in the context of American 2 INTRODUCTION literary criticism is necessary. In an interesting article on comparative criticism and theory, the champion of reception theory in the United States, the Germanist Robert C. Holub, has pointed out that this German-based theory never really caught on in the United States because it was not considered a sufficient break with traditional