GERMANNESS, THE NATION, AND ITS OTHER By WILLIAM E. LEHMAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 © 2008 William E. Lehman 2 This dissertation is dedicated to Ernesto Suárez and Lee C. Greenough—may their memory be for a blessing. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have helped me to complete this dissertation. I would first like to acknowledge the abundant help and support of the members of my committee: Nora Alter, Eric Kligerman, Barbara Mennel, and Efraín Barradas. I would also like to thank Annemarie Sykes for her support during my many, many years as a graduate student at the University of Florida. Many thanks as well to Margit Grieb, who not only read and re-read everything I have written, but has also given me so much support in every other conceivable way. Furthermore, I would like to thank the following for their insufficiently acknowledged but always appreciated love, support, and friendship in the last five years: Eduardo Garcia, Stein-Atle Vere, Christian Ulvog, Britta Herdegen, Michael “Nussbaum” Garvin, Michael Julian, Michael Newman, Oscar, Carmelita, and, last but certainly not least, Milo Schuman. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITIONS AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS .....................9 The Nation ................................................................................................................................9 The Other ................................................................................................................................12 Theoretical Foundations ..................................................................................................12 The Processes of Othering ...............................................................................................17 Physiology of Otherness ..................................................................................................19 Geographical Othering ....................................................................................................22 Temporal Othering ..........................................................................................................24 Other otherings .........................................................................................................27 Processes of “saming” ..............................................................................................28 Who can be othered? ................................................................................................30 Real-world Dangers .........................................................................................................32 Germanness .............................................................................................................................33 2 MOVING HEIMAT TO THE EAST: KURT HOFFMANN’S ICH DENKE OFT AN PIROSCHKA (1955) ...............................................................................................................40 The Complexity of Heimat .....................................................................................................40 Piroschka’s Heimat Abroad ....................................................................................................44 Germany and Eastern Europe ..........................................................................................44 German Expellees from Eastern Europe .........................................................................45 Piroschka as Heimatfilm ..................................................................................................47 Piroschka as Colonial Film ..............................................................................................50 Piroschka as Colonial Fantasy .........................................................................................54 The Self and Other in Piroschka ......................................................................................55 Changes from the Book ..........................................................................................................61 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................62 3 IMAGINING THE EXOTIC FROM GERMANY ................................................................64 Introduction .............................................................................................................................64 Filming Germanness in Amazonia and Beyond: Werner Herzog’s Jungle Films ..................65 Herzog’s Inverted Heimat of the Tropics ........................................................................67 Elements of Romanticism ................................................................................................69 Othering the Jungle and its Inhabitants ...........................................................................70 The othered landscape ..............................................................................................70 The othered animal ...................................................................................................78 5 The othered native ....................................................................................................81 The Last Amazonian Virgin ............................................................................................91 Art Über Alles .................................................................................................................92 Herzog’s Ecstatic Truth ...................................................................................................98 Herzog’s German Vision ...............................................................................................104 Writing Germanness in the Jungle: Uwe Timm’s Der Schlangenbaum ...............................110 Native Fantasies .............................................................................................................111 The Native as Victim of Nature and Colonialism .........................................................113 The Dislocated European ..............................................................................................117 The German Other .........................................................................................................119 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................122 4 IMAGINING THE EXOTIC FROM WITHIN ....................................................................125 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................125 German Fantasies Inside Argentina: Annette Schenker as German Gaucha ........................126 Romanticizing the Stone ................................................................................................127 Nature’s Bad Side ..........................................................................................................128 German Gaucha .............................................................................................................130 The Nazi Other ..............................................................................................................130 City-Country Dichotomies ............................................................................................131 German and Jewish in Argentina: Robert Schopflocher’s Elective Affinities .....................132 The Centrality of Space .................................................................................................133 German and Jewish in Germany ....................................................................................137 German and Jewish in Argentina ..................................................................................140 Other Spaces, Thirdspaces .............................................................................................142 Reclaiming and Rewriting the Remote ..........................................................................149 Other Othernesses in Thirdspace ...................................................................................151 Generic Hybridity ..........................................................................................................153 Schopflocher and Borges ...............................................................................................157 The Aleph ......................................................................................................................160 5 TOWARD A CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF GERMANNESS .................................164 Germany in the World ..........................................................................................................164 The German and the Environment ........................................................................................165 The German Past ...................................................................................................................166 The Germanness of the Future: Multicultural