counter-cultures in germany an central europe_from sturm und drang to baader-meinhof (2003)

COUNTER-CULTURESIN GERMANY ANDCENTRAL EUROPE

Steve GilesMaike Oergel

Editors

PETER LANG

COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANYAND CENTRAL EUROPE

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PETER LANGOxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien

COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANYAND CENTRAL EUROPE

STEVE GILES & MAIKE OERGEL(EDS)

FROM STURM UND DRANGTO BAADER-MEINHOF

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Contents

Acknowledgements 9

STEVE GILESIntroduction: Culture as Counter-Culture 11

GUSTAV FRANKSturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passion

and the Logic of German Counter-Cultures 25

NICHOLAS SAUL AND SUSAN TEBBUTTGypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures in Modern

German Cultural History 43

MAIKE OERGELRevolutionaries, Traditionalists, Terrorists? The Burschen-

schaften and the German Counter-Cultural Tradition 61

CARL WEBERPerforming Counter-Culture in the Vorstadt: Nestroys

Theatre in Times of Reaction and Revolt 87

MALCOLM HUMBLEDas Reich der Erfllung: A Theme in

Wilhelmine Counter-Culture 105

DAVID MIDGLEYLos von Berlin! Anti-Urbanism as Counter-Culture in

Early Twentieth-Century Germany 121

MARGARETE KOHLENBACHWalter Benjamin, Gustav Wyneken and

the Jugendkulturbewegung 137

Contents6

COLIN RIORDANThe Green Alternative in Germany 19001930 155

SABINE EGGERThe Roots of the East German Green

Movement in the 1950s 171

STEFAN BUSCHBluthochzeit mit Mutter Erde: Repression und Regression

in der Blut-und-Boden-Literatur 193

STEVE GILESLimits of the Visible: Kracauers Photographic Dystopia 213

JEROME CARROLLThe Art of the Imperceptible: A Discussion of the

Aesthetics of Wolfgang Welsch 241

CARMEL FINNANThe Challenges of Zrichs Autonomous Youth Movement 259

MATTHIAS UECKERAufrufe, Bekenntnisse, Analysen: Zur Politisierung der

westdeutschen Literatur in den sechziger Jahren 273

INGO CORNILSWriting the Revolution: the Literary Representation of the

German Student Movement as Counter-Culture 295

JAMIE TRNKAThe West German Red Army Faction and its Appropriation

of Latin American Urban Guerilla Struggles 315

GERRIT-JAN BERENDSEAesthetics of (Self-)Destruction: Melvilles Moby Dick,

Brechts The Measures Taken and the Red Army Faction 333

Contents 7

UWE SCHTTEHeilige, die im Dunkel leuchten: Der Mythos der RAF

im Spiegel der Literatur nachgeborener Autoren 353

MORAY MCGOWANUlrike Meinhof im Deutschen Drama

der Neunziger Jahre: Drei Beispiele 373

Notes on Contributors 395

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to the British Academy formagnanimously supporting the International Symposium on Counter-Cultures at the University of Nottingham 1416 September 2001,where the papers compiled in this volume were initially presented. Wewould also like to thank the University of Nottingham for its generousfinancial support towards the production of this volume.

STEVE GILES

Introduction: Culture as Counter-Culture

On 15 March 1920, two days after the Kapp Putsch, a painting byRubens was damaged by a stray bullet during fighting in Dresdenbetween opponents and supporters of the attempted right-wing coup.Oskar Kokoschka, the renowned Expressionist artist and Professor atDresdens Akademie der Knste, immediately issued an appeal to thecombatants to relocate their conflict away from the art gallery, so asto protect works of art which in Kokoschkas view were thepeoples most hallowed possession. The Marxist Dadaists JohnHeartfield and George Grosz responded to Kokoschkas heartfelt pleaby way of a diatribe which is iconoclastic even by Dadaist standards.Decrying Kokoschka as Der Kunstlump the art scoundrel theywelcomed the fact that bullets were hitting artistic masterpiecesinstead of exploding in the dwellings of impoverished workers.1

Their article launched a scathing attack on Kokoschka, whomthey took to embody the dominant views on Art typical of bourgeoisculture. Art is said to provide a spiritual haven, a transcendentvantage point from which the bourgeoisie can contemplate theeveryday world with delight, secure in the knowledge that aestheticculture invests life with meaning and significance. Grosz andHeartfield, on the other hand, dismiss artistic masterpieces as merescraps of canvas and bourgeois culture as no more than the beguilingfaade of ruthless capitalist exploitation. Similarly, the Romantic-Idealist concept of artistic genius is unmasked as a piece of elitistideology which covers up the fact that the artists head simplyrecycles the world-view of his audience, much as a sausage machine

1 The key texts in the Kunstlump debate are those by Heartfield/Grosz andAlexander; their theoretical and historical contexts are admirably documentedin Fhnders/Rector, 43103.

Steve Giles12

processes meat. What is needed, they conclude, is the development ofan authentic working-class culture which rejects the bourgeoisheritage in all its oppressive manifestations.

Needless to say, Grosz and Heartfields invective was perceivedto be outrageous even in the early, revolutionary phase of the WeimarRepublic. Crucially, Gertrud Alexander, the editor of the culturalsection of Die Rote Fahne, the German Communist Partys dailynewspaper, was utterly appalled by their vandalistic attack on thecultural heritage, and she steadfastly defends the universal andhumanist dimensions of the bourgeois artistic tradition. The ensuingdebate prefigures conflicts and controversies over the bourgeoiscultural heritage that were to dominate Marxist aesthetics for the nextfifty years or more, and receives a provisional counter-cultural coda inthe guise of Heiner Mllers assertion in 1977 that der Humanismuskommt nur noch als Terrorismus vor, der MolotowCocktail ist dasletzte brgerliche Bildungserlebnis. (Mller, 40)

When compared to the systematic vituperation of Grosz andHeartfield, the critiques of bourgeois culture articulated by the studentsmovement in the 1960s seem almost tame, but the Kunstlump debateis significant not simply because it pre-empts the possibly parochialposturings of disaffected 68ers (see Dirke, 4249). It also compels usto reconsider the very notion of counter-culture, which all too often hastended to be associated with American and European radicalmovements of the 1960s and 1970s.2 The Kunstlump debate alsomaps out a terrain and delineates a series of theoretical parameters onand within which other radical critiques of bourgeois culture andpolitics for example feminist, Black Power, post-colonial werearticulated, as well as inviting us to consider the extent to which thepolemics of Marxist Dadaists were truly counter-cultural, as opposedto marginally sub-cultural at best.

This latter dilemma is particularly important for Sabine von Dirkein her classic study of West German counter-culture, All Power to theImagination! As she rightly points out in her introductory comments

2 On the international dimension of these movements, see Caute. The WestGerman context is discussed in Dirke, passim; the American situation iscritically reviewed in Bell, 12045.

Introduction: Culture as Counter-Culture 13

on culture and hegemony, the investigation of counter-cultureimmediately raises fundamental theoretical questions. These concernthe nature of culture; the relationship between culture and politics; thedistinction between sub-cultures and counter-cultures; the class basisof culture and counter-culture; and the broader sociological frameworkswithin which culture, politics, class and dominant institutions may beconfigured. At the same time, because Dirke focuses on counter-culturalmovements in West Germany from the late 1960s through to the mid1980s, she does not engage with a variety of issues which are relevantfrom a more expansive historical and theoretical perspective.

Taking the historical dimension first, there is a case for arguingthat all the ground-breaking cultural developments in Germany andcentral Europe from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism may beconstrued as counter-cultures not in the perhaps trivial sense thatany new cultural development is critical of its predecessors, but inthe more drastic and fundamental sense that modern German culturehas been characterised by a series of paradigm shifts, or even caesuras,whereby the conceptual and institutional presuppositions of the priorcultural formation have been decisively rejected. Moreover, deployingthe category of counter-culture as a tool of historical analysis alsoenables us to rethink contemporary controversies concerning, forexample, the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, orthe relative priority of the avant-garde as opposed to counter-culturalmanifestations in initiating and defining radical artistic movementsfrom the late nineteenth century onwards.3

At the same time, rethinking counter-culture as a historicalcategory also has theoretical implications. Instead of approaching thehistorical development of culture in linear or evolutionary terms, asone formation is succeeded by another in a process of inheritance orAufhebung, the counter-cultural perspective outlined above suggeststhat our primary object of analysis might be not artistic evolution, butcultural revolution. Similarly, attending to radical shifts and rupturesat the overarching historical or chronological level also raisesquestions concerning the internal cohesiveness of any particularcultural formation if such fundamental changes are to be possible. In

3 For further discussion, see the essays compiled in Giles, Theorizing Modernism.

Steve Giles14

other words, the underlying dynamic of endogenous culturaldevelopment might itself be counter-cultural, in the sense that thedomain of say artistic phenomena is constantly reshaped, as thecentre becomes the periphery, low culture is transmuted into highculture, and vice-versa.

Defining and deploying the category of counter-culture in thesevarious ways would suggest that counter-culture can be conceived ofin critical, historical, and even methodological terms. In the remainderof this Introduction, I shall first flesh out the notion of counter-culturewith reference to Dirkes very helpful theoretical discussion. In orderto consider in more detail the sociological and aesthetic issueshighlighted in her argument, I shall then examine a series of perspectives Marxism, Russian Formalism, Czech Structuralism, and Rezeptions-sthetik which are particularly apposite when conceptualising counter-culture, by drawing on the work of Jameson, Tynjanov, Mukarovsky, andJau. This discussion will be informed by the general assumption thatcultural analysis must avoid the pitfalls noted by Adorno in hiscritique of traditional approaches to the sociology of music:

Je gesicherter soziologische Befunde ber Musik, desto ferner und uerlichersind sie ihr selbst. Je tiefer aber sie in spezifisch musikalische Zusammenhngesich versenken, desto rmer und abstrakter drohen sie als soziologische zuwerden. (Adorno, Vermittlung, 209)

Finally, I shall give a brief overview of the essays compiled in thisvolume all of which were first presented at an InternationalSymposium on Counter-Cultures at the University of Nottingham inSeptember 2001 indicating in particular the generic concerns whichthey address.

Sabine von Dirkes approach to counter-culture draws heavily onthe work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary CulturalStudies in the 1970s, especially its pioneering appropriation ofAntonio Gramscis account of hegemony. She begins, though, byconsidering in more general terms the relationships between sub-cultures and counter-cultures, and culture and society. While the termculture is often used, particularly in literary circles, to refer to the moreelevated and edifying manifestations of human creative endeavour, it


may also be employed in a more comprehensive manner to designatethe variety of ways in which we make sense of social relations.Moreover, she continues, the precise character of the inter-connectionsbetween culture and society is complicated by the fact that societymay well not be a homogeneous or harmonious entity, but a site ofstruggle where different social groups seek to achieve culturaldominance or to use Gramscis term hegemony. The termhegemony refers to the ways in which dominant groups in a societyestablish the legitimacy of their position by means of consent ratherthan coercion, as the rest of society is encouraged to share in theirviews and values.

The emergence of counter-cultural groupings or beliefs implies atleast a partial breakdown in hegemony, whilst the appearance of sub-cultures may question dominant values only marginally. Dirkesargumentation is quite emphatic in this area, in that she advocateswhat one might call a maximalist conception of counter-culture, inorder to distinguish it more sharply from merely sub-culturalphenomena and thus underscore the radicality of West Germancounter-culture in the 1960s and 1970s. In her view,

Countercultures position themselves explicitly and fundamentally against theirdominant counterpart and try to develop an alternative way of life. Theychallenge the hegemonic culture with a holistic approach, negating all of itsvalues and traditions and struggling for radical and comprehensive change.(Dirke, 4)

She therefore implies not only that counter-cultures are eitherintrinsically rejectionist or revolutionary, but also that they do notoperate simply at the artistic or intellectual level: they call intoquestion the entirety of social and political relations.

Such a conception of counter-culture may well apply toalternative social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and evidentlycharacterises proletarian cultural manifestations in the 1920s,particularly in the early years of the Soviet Union.4 But this

4 See in particular the excellent compilation of primary materials inGorsen/Kndler-Bunte.

Steve Giles16

conception is perhaps too stark to be able to take proper account ofless fundamentalist counter-cultural developments which certainlyhave more than a tangential sub-cultural impact, yet may operateprimarily in the artistic sphere, or stop short at rejecting the entirety ofhegemonic views and values that permeate a particular socialformation. Dirkes maximalist approach to counter-culture alsoadumbrates the notion of cultural revolution, not just as historicalevent but also as a structural principle of cultural development in themanner outlined by Fredric Jameson.

Towards the end of On Interpretation,5 the theoreticalmonograph which forms the opening section to The PoliticalUnconscious, Jameson invites us to entertain the proposition that theoverarching category in literary history should be cultural revolution.He had previously argued that a Marxist critique of cultural textsshould operate at three distinct levels, construed as concentricframeworks,

first, of political history, in the narrow sense of punctual event and achroniclelike sequence of happenings in time; then of society, in the nowalready less diachronic and timebound sense of a constitutive tension andstruggle between social classes; and, ultimately, of history now conceived in itsvastest sense of the sequence of modes of production and the succession anddestiny of the various social formations. (Jameson, The Political Unconscious,75)

Cultural revolution is located in this third framework, and Jamesonimplicitly assents to the view that historically significant events arethose which initiate or constitute ruptures, mutations or moregenerally transformations in social forms (Bhaskar, 47).6 Suchtransformations are generated by contradictions within socialformations that are overlaid by antagonistic modes of production.Jameson now proposes that the emergence of all previous modes ofproduction has been associated with cultural revolution, but goes on to

5 Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 17102; my discussion is based primarilyon pp. 95100.

6 Bhaskar also gives a particularly sophisticated account of Marxs transformationalmodel of social activities in the course of his general discussion of societalstructures and relations in classical sociological theory (see Bhaskar, 3456).


insist that the category of cultural revolution does not only apply totransitional epochs. This is because any society is characterised by apermanent process of conflict and struggle between antagonisticmodes of production. Jameson therefore concludes that the individualcultural text whether it be a play, a painting or a poem must nowbe reconfigured as a field of force in which the dynamics of signsystems of several distinct modes of production can be registered andapprehended (Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 98). Moreover,these sign systems operate both in society in general and withinparticular artistic processes, so that, he continues, formal features oftexts themselves transmit ideological messages which may be at oddswith a texts ostensible content.

Although Jamesons argument appears at various points to beindebted to Adornos account of artistic mediation, it also bears astriking resemblance to the early work of the Russian Formalist JurijTynjanov; indeed, it might almost be seen as providing a materialistfoundation for Tynjanovs otherwise overly abstract conception ofdialectic.7 In his brilliant but neglected essay Das literarische Faktumof 1924, Tynjanov rejects the view that literary evolution is astraightforwardly linear process. He concentrates instead on categoriessuch as interruption and disjunction, and argues that innovations in theliterary sphere involve a fundamental shift in the terms of reference ofthe literary system: Das ist nicht planmige Evolution, sondernSprung, nicht Entwicklung, sondern Verschiebung (Tynjanov, Dasliterarische Faktum, 395). In other words, literary evolution doesnot move in a straight line, but is broken and disrupted. Similarly, newartistic developments do not modify or amplify a tradition, butsupplant existing forms. In fact, at one point in this essay, Tynjanovsterminology seems to be implicitly Marxist, when he suggests that theunderlying principles of literary development are struggle andsupersession (401). Elsewhere, however, the implication seems to bethat the dynamics of literary change are rather more abstract, and

7 See Adorno, Vermittlung; Jamesons account of mediation is discussed inGiles, Against Interpretation. Jameson briefly considers Tynjanovs work inThe Prison-House of Language, 9195, but does not refer to the Literary Factessay, possibly as it has never been translated into English.

Steve Giles18

virtually automatic. He observes that any dynamic system necessarilygenerates its opposite within itself thanks to a dialectical processgoverned by chance developments, errors in and violations of thatsystem (409), rather than referring to a properly Marxian dialecticgrounded in the conflict between forces and relations of production. Infact, the motor of literary change almost seems to resemble a culturaltumbler dryer, given Tynjanovs emphasis on the constant interchangebetween the centre and the peripheries of a system which is clearly ina condition of endemic flux (399).

Tynjanovs model of the literary system can be seen as counter-cultural in both synchronic and diachronic terms, so much so that thevery categorisation of literature becomes an essentially contesteddomain. In that respect, his theoretical position is comparable to thatof the Czech Structuralist Jan Mukarovsky, who takes on board manyof Tynjanovs central precepts but also in the mid 1930s at least provides them with a more substantial sociological foundation, as wellas applying them to the cultural sphere in general.8 Mukarovskycontends that the history of art involves a series of rebellions againstruling norms, in that there is a constant tension between old and new,between tradition and innovation. Indeed, the development of modernart in particular seems to presuppose that the aesthetic value of a workentails a rejection of existing aesthetic norms, the consequence beingthat aesthetic value and the nature of art is inherently mutable. Thedynamics of normative change are dialectical in the manner outlinedby Tynjanov, as Mukarovsky indicates that the aesthetic realm ofculture is governed by a series of opposing factors whose conflictual andcontradictory interaction generates cultural development. At the sametime, though, Mukarovsky also presents a more concrete and specificaccount of the societal dimension of aesthetic norms.

Mukarovsky shows that in any social formation theresimultaneously exists a variety of systems of aesthetic norms, whichare in conflict and competition with one another. These normativesystems are dynamic, ever-changing and permeable, so that normsmay, for instance, shift from the aesthetic realm to the domain of

8 For a more detailed analysis of Mukarovskys work in this area see Giles,Sociological Aesthetics. My discussion here is based on Mukarovsky, 3366.


ethics, and vice-versa. Crucially, aesthetic norms share a key propertyof all norms, as they are organised on the basis of societalstratification and differentiation. Just as we are able to expressourselves linguistically in various social dialects, so too, Mukarovskymaintains, we may well be conversant with a variety of aestheticnorms. Moreover, he continues, social stratification must be definedboth vertically in traditional social class terms and horizontally,with reference to categories such as age, gender and occupationalgroup (categories which might, of course, be supplemented withothers, such as religion and ethnicity). It therefore follows that notonly different social strata, but also different sectors within the samesocial stratum, may adhere to different and conflicting sets of aestheticnorms, so much so that they may even construct alternative artisticcanons.

The interplay between social stratification, aesthetic norms andcultural canons also has an institutional dimension. Society hasdeveloped a range of agencies which, for example, regulate theevaluation of art-works and thus enable society to influence aestheticvalue. These institutional forms include literary criticism, publiclibraries, museums, academies, prizes, and even censorship. Althoughthe primary role of these and other agencies may well not be toinfluence aesthetic value, in that they in fact carry out a range ofsocietal functions and mediate a variety of societal tendencies, theirregulation of aesthetic value is closely connected with general socialdevelopments. Mukarovsky thus provides us with a moresophisticated and differentiated way of characterising the shifts andgradations between sub-cultures and counter-cultures through hisaccount of the relationship between social stratification, aestheticnorms and cultural canons. He also emphasises that the societalmediation of those norms and canons involves institutional structureswhich play a crucial role in the reproduction of the cultural sphere.

How, though, are we to establish whether a specific culturaldevelopment or seeming innovation is merely reproductive ofdominant modes of discourse, rather than being transformative or evenrevolutionary? This question was addressed in a particularlyinstructive fashion by Hans Robert Jau in his classic essayLiteraturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft, where

Steve Giles20

he attempted to transcend and supersede the supposed limitations ofMarxism and Formalism, and thereby heal the rift between thesociological and the aesthetic in modern literary studies and, byextension, in cultural inquiry in general. At the same time, Jau doesnonetheless endorse certain key premises of Russian Formalism,starting with the notion that the course of literary history does notproceed in a smooth, linear or teleological manner, but is permeatedinstead by discontinuities, conflict and revolution. In view of the factthat Jau maintains that epochal shifts in literary history and theartistic value of specific works both depend on their rejection ofprevailing aesthetic norms, his theoretical approach could becharacterised as being intrinsically counter-cultural, as the category ofcounter-culture implicitly informs his historiographical and hisevaluative presuppositions. From Jaus own standpoint, however, hiskey theoretical notion and his most innovative contribution to culturalinquiry is the horizon of expectations, or Erwartungshorizont.

Jau contends that readers and audiences always perceive literarytexts against the background of a series of assumptions which establishthe nature of literature. But, in order to escape the accusation that suchassumptions are merely arbitrary or subjective, he proposes that they arein fact embedded in an objectifiable referential system of coordinates orexpectations, namely an Erwartungshorizont. The Erwartungshorizontof a particular grouping of readers or even writers and critics incorporates elements such as a prior understanding of genreconventions, formal and thematic aspects of texts already known tothe reader, and the opposition between practical and poetic language.Epochal change or, we might say, a counter-cultural shift involvesa fundamental transformation in the Erwartungshorizont, inauguratedby texts which radically reject or deconstruct prevailing artisticconventions.

Basic structural changes in the Erwartungshorizont can, Jauproposes, be identified by establishing the existence of ruptures anddiscontinuities between those dominant referential schemas whichhappen to be in force at different points in time. Rather like a culturalgardener digging with an analytical spade, the literary historian wouldmake a vertical slice through a particular cultural formation in order toreveal a cross-section of aesthetic space which incorporates the variety


of oppositional and hierarchical normative structures in evidence at aparticular social moment. This initial slice or cross-section would thenbe followed up by further slices from earlier and later periods, so as toenable comparisons to be made between these various moments inorder to establish the extent of normative change. At the same time,the foundation would be laid for a new type of literary or culturalhistory which focuses on diachronic ruptures rather than underlyingcontinuities.

Although Jaus new mode of literary history appears to lenditself particularly well to counter-cultural analysis, it does have certainshortcomings. First, Jau takes certain contentious Russian Formalistprecepts such as the opposition between poetic and practical language to be self-evident, and he incorporates them into his general schemaof readerly expectations even though they are historically specific andintimately associated with late modernism.9 Second, whereas heinsists that such expectations are not subjective or psychologistic, hisevidence for their objectivity is not derived from systematicinvestigations into the underlying structures of readers responses butrefers instead to the occurrence of certain stylistic features inparodistic texts. And, thirdly, the core components of the Erwartungs-horizont are restricted to aesthetic norms and conventions. Never-theless, his revamped methodology for literary history still provides aproductive starting-point for counter-cultural analysis, and I wouldpropose modifying Jaus theoretical model in three principal ways.

First, Jaus emphasis on expectations should be replaced by afocus on discursive presuppositions, so that instead of establishing theconstitutive features of the readers horizon of expectations, we wouldseek to reconstruct the relevant horizons of discourse which underpinreaders perceptions of texts.10 Second, the key conceptual comp-onents in a particular horizon of discourse should be identified on a

9 On Russian Formalism and late modernism, see my essay on Kracauer in thisvolume.

10 I use the term discourse not in the Foucauldian sense, but to designate the set ofimplicit and explicit beliefs and presuppositions which inform and constitute adomain in their textual embodiment, eg in terms of figurative language, rhetoricand syntax.

Steve Giles22

strictly historical basis, so that inappropriate or anachronisticnormative and analytic categories are not built into the horizon ofdiscourse on an a priori basis. And, thirdly, the horizon of discourseshould not be construed essentially or primarily in aesthetic terms.Jau is right to argue that reading and writing is located within anobjectifiable referential framework of norms and conventions, so thatno act of reading is theory-neutral. But the discursive presuppositionswhich inform particular readings may also be ethical, political,sociological, or even metaphysical, whether we are investigating keymoments in literary history or cultural transformations. To give butone example, it would be illuminating to compare the contemporaryreception of, say Schlinks Der Vorleser and Grasss ImSchneckengang, with the contemporary reception of Grasss DieBlechtrommel and Weisss Die Ermittlung, in order to develop acritique of the discursive presuppositions of the various sectors of theGerman reading public and their shifting horizons. It might then bepossible to fulfil the stringent criteria set out by Adorno in hisspecification of reception research:

Das kunstsoziologische Ideal wre, objektive Analysen das heit, solche derWerke , Analysen der strukturellen und spezifischen Wirkungsmechanismenund solche der registrierbaren subjektiven Befunde aufeinander abzustimmen.Sie mten sich wechselseitig erhellen. (Adorno, Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie,206)

In the closing session of the Nottingham Counter-CulturesSymposium, which involved a wide-ranging discussion of generalimplications arising from the papers which had been presented, variousquestions were posed to which I was invited to respond in thisIntroduction. Is counter-culture positional or relative, in other words isone persons culture another persons counter-culture? Is counter-culture intrinsically marginal or temporary? Is counter-culture onlyvalid as a polemical term, rather than as an analytic category? Doescounter-culture have to be explicitly political or politicised? If wefocus on the aesthetic dimensions of a counter-culture, must weinevitably underplay its theoretical and political dimensions? While Iwould hope that this Introduction has provided at least some usefultheoretical reflections on these issues, the papers that follow address


them rather more concretely. Chronologically, they cover aspects ofGerman and central European culture from the 1770s to the 1990s,whilst in genre terms they deal with narrative, theatre, poetry,photography, and a variety of counter-cultural institutional andtheoretical initiatives. Thematically, they engage with a similarlybroad range of concerns: the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury roots of counter-culture and terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s;anti-modern, anti-urban, and green movements since the turn of thetwentieth century; new conceptions of art and the relationship betweenaesthetics and politics on the left and the right which emerged in thewake of modernism; and alternative political movements since the1960s, notably the Red Army Faction and its literary affiliations.

Finally, the editors wish to note that the Counter-CulturesSymposium was overshadowed by the horrific and traumatic events of11 September 2001 which had taken place three days earlier. SeveralUS delegates were unable to attend, and discussions of terroristviolence and the Red Army Faction proved to be particularly difficult.Participants took the view, nonetheless, that it was important tograpple with such issues in the hope of throwing some light at least ontheir causes and contexts.

Works Cited

Adorno, T.W. Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie, in Brger, P. (Hg) Seminar: Literatur-und Kunstsoziologie (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1978), 20411.

Vermittlung, in Adorno, T.W. Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Reinbek,Rowohlt, 1968), 20833.

Alexander, G.G.L. Herrn John Heartfield und George Grosz, Die Rote Fahne, 9June 1920. Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 5053.

Kunst, Vandalismus und Proletariat. Erwiderung, Die Rote Fahne, 23/24 June1920. Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 5660.

Bell, D. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London, Heinemann, 1976).Bhaskar, R. The Possibility of Naturalism. A Philosophical Critique of the

Contemporary Human Sciences (Brighton, Harvester, 1979).Caute, D. Sixty-Eight. The Year of the Barricades (London, Paladin, 1988).

Steve Giles24

Dirke, S. von. All Power to the Imagination! The West German Counterculture fromthe Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997).

Fhnders, W./Rector, M. (Hg) Literatur im Klassenkampf. Zur proletarischen-revolutionren Literaturtheorie 19191923 (Mnchen, Hanser, 1971).

Giles, S. Against Interpretation? Recent Trends in Marxist Criticism, British Journalof Aesthetics, 28, 1 (Winter, 1988), 6877.

Sociological Aesthetics as a Challenge to Literary Theory: ReappraisingMukarovsky, New Comparison, 19 (Spring 1995), 89106.

(ed) Theorizing Modernism. Essays in Critical Theory (London, Routledge,1993).

Gorsen, P./Kndler-Bunte, E. (Hg) Proletkult. 1. System einer proletarischen Kultur.2. Zur Praxis und Theorie einer proletarischen Kulturrevolution inSowjetruland 19171925 (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog, 1974).

Heartfield, J./Grosz, G. Der Kunstlump, Der Gegner, 1, 1012 (1920), 4856.Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 4350.

Jameson, F. The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act(London, Methuen, 1981).

The Prison-House of Language. A Critical Account of Structuralism andRussian Formalism (Princeton University Press, 1972).

Jau, H. R. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft, in Jau,H. R. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1970),144207.

Mukarovsky, J. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts (Ann Arbor,University of Michigan, 1970), first published in Czech in 1936.

Mller, H. Verabschiedung des Lehrstcks, in Hrnigk, F. (Hg) Heiner MllerMaterial. Texte und Kommentare (Leipzig, Reclam, 1989), 40.

Striedter, J. (Hg) Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allgemeinen Literaturtheorie undzur Theorie der Prosa (Mnchen, Fink, 1971).

Tynjanov, J. Das literarische Faktum, in Striedter (Hg), 393431. ber die literarische Evolution, in Striedter (Hg), 43461.

GUSTAV FRANK

Sturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passionand the Logic of German Counter-Cultures1

die idealistische Periode fing damals an, Kaufmann war ein Anhnger davon,Lenz widersprach heftig. (Bchner, Lenz)

Georg Bchners all too unhappy practical experience of counter-cultural activity when writing and distributing Der HessischeLandbote made him take a step back and have a look at hispredecessors. As a member of at least one counter-culture of the1830s, Bchner can therefore also be seen as the first historian of thecounter-cultures of the Goethe-Zeit (see Frank). It is this historicalinterest in the potential of counter-culture that drives his investigationsin Dantons Tod into the competing factions of the French Revolutionwith their different rhetorical strategies and contrasting prescriptionsfor social renewal. And it is this same historical interest thatdistinguishes his critique of the Romantic movement through hisliterary exploitation of the subversive potential of its comedies,making Bchners approach utterly different from, for example,Heines Romantische Schule. In his novella Lenz, Bchnerinvestigates the prior counter-culture of the Sturm und Drang, perhapsthe origin of all German counter-cultures of young intellectuals, forthe sake of a later movement.

This essay will follow in the footsteps of Bchners historicalinterest and depict the close relationship between the Enlightenmentand the Sturm und Drang, showing how the dynamic inherent in theprocess of Enlightenment itself was bound to produce the Sturm undDrang. It will then focus on some characteristics of the Sturm undDrang as a counter-culture and consider the dialectical relationship

1 My thanks go to Elizabeth Boa for her invaluable help with the English versionof this paper. I remain, of course, responsible for the finished product.

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between counter-movement and prior culture which arises from thehistorical situation. In particular, the semiotics of segregation andself-segregation may provide a sufficiently abstract level of gener-ality to construct a history of German counter-cultures between Sturmund Drang and the Baader-Meinhof group.

Enlightenment vs Sturm und Drang

The German scholarly perspective on the Enlightenment retains rightthrough to the 1990s a certain prejudice: that there was a revolt againstthe rationalistic approach of the Enlightenment a revolt by theyounger generation of the Sturm und Drang, who were emotionallydisappointed by the cold rationality of Enlightenment (see Boeschen-stein; Mog).

Regarded in this way, Enlightenment and Sturm und Drang areseen as no more than stimulus and response (see Franke). A longsuppressed heilig glhend Herz to use the idiom of the Sturm undDrang rises up against a public sphere, which, now no longercontrolled by a corrupt and immoral ancien rgime but constructed inand through the workings of rational discourse, merely reproduces theold ways of living, of belief, of social order. This argument, whichenvisages the same cold rationality, irrespective of the ends, at work,is established in such canonical works as Cassirers Philosophy ofEnlightenment (Die Philosophie der Aufklrung 1932) or Hork-heimers and Adornos Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik derAufklrung, 1944/1947).

Such a misunderstanding of the Sturm und Drang was itself aproduct of the specific development which the Enlightenment took inGermany from the 1780s onwards in the work of philosophers likeKant and then in the German Idealism of Fichte, Hegel and others (seeKondylis). The misunderstanding starts with Kants question Was istAufklrung? In his treatise, Kant does not argue in favour ofEnlightenment, as has been generally claimed, a claim which turnedthis text into the canonical incorporation of the supposed spirit of

Sturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passion 27

Enlightenment. Quite to the contrary, Kants purpose is to set limitson the frightening dynamics of Enlightenment as an ongoing andseemingly endless process which questions all values and norms andin so doing endangers the social order, or at least the order of theacademic world, that is to say the very order of thought and ofthinking. The Sturm und Drang, seen as the latest and most radicalstep in this process, provoked at last Kants reaction. Its protagonistsaggravated the conflict between nature and norms and, in intellectualterms, the conflict between studium and ingenium, i.e. a philosophydominating the intellectual discourse and a literature claimingautonomy from domination, both of which so exercised Kant. Thisconflict had periodically found expression since its popular versionhad been propounded in Edward Youngs Conjectures on OriginalComposition (1759). The authors of the Sturm und Drang found amythic paradigm for originality in Prometheus, as well as a historicalmodel in Shakespeare, so as to embody their concept of the Original-or Kraftgenie allowed to question all authority. Thus passiondominates reason and the expression of passion in literature dominatesphilosophy.

Horkheimer/Adorno, like Cassirer before them, take Kantsphilosophical criticism to be the necessary fulfilment and paradigm ofEnlightenment and therefore construe it as the core representation ofits potential.2 The implicit danger they see in the paradigm which Kantposits, the mere functional working of reason for any purpose, isfinally put on display in their view in de Sades oeuvre. InHorkheimer/Adornos chapter about Kant and de Sade (Juliette oderAufklrung und Moral), de Sades works merely realise what isimplied in Kants critiques. In their view de Sade anticipates the turnwhich modern capitalist society took towards Fascism, therebyrealising the implications of his contemporaries and especially Kantsphilosophy. La Mettrie and de Sade show at an early stage whererationality leads if it is set free in mechanisation, materialism, and

2 Their evaluation of Kants philosophy is naturally quite different fromCassirers. My point is that even the more sophisticated negative reduction ofKants philosophy to be the underlying building plan of de Sades nihilismmisses the crucial critical and counter-cultural potential of Sturm und Drangand materialism/nihilism.

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nihilism. Twentieth-century research annihilates the counter-culturalquality of nihilism and Sturm und Drang as its forerunner by takingKant, who is the main opponent of monism, to be the representative ofEnlightenment. In the teleological implication of its historicalargument research tends to identify both opposing fractions and toblur their origin in Enlightenment.

Dynamics of Enlightenment

To pursue the argument, let me now suggest a different view of theEnlightenment. I shall treat this complex period by isolating threephases, following the usual terminology of the early, middle, and lateperiods of Enlightenment: Frhe Aufklrung with, for example,Gottsched and his circle, Mittlere Aufklrung characterised byEmpfindsamkeit, and Spte Aufklrung. I shall argue that the literatureof Early Enlightenment and of Empfindsamkeit serves to illustratecontemporary philosophical propositions, whereas from the Sturm undDrang onwards an autonomous literature takes on a complementaryrather than merely illustrative function: literature separates fromphilosophy to become more autonomous.

I take the Enlightenment to be a system of thought and ofthinking, of producing allowed or permissable thoughts, in the sensethat Foucault establishes in The Archaeology of Knowledge. There are,accordingly, basic assumptions that allow us to speak generally ofAufklrung and there are more specific elements that allow us todifferentiate between the sub-periods. In this view, the Enlightenmenthas as a basis a common programme. As the programme is graduallyrealised more and more fully and is expanded to embrace more andmore regions of thought, this process creates feedback effects,producing the changes and developments necessary to adapt theoryand its perceived application. The phases or stages of Enlightenmentthat I distinguish are produced by those who were no longer willing tofollow the intrinsic development of the programme. For them, theadvantages they gained by their participation in the preceding stage of


the process were in danger of being lost by the next step. By goingforwards they felt they would have to risk something that they couldnot afford to lose or even to jeopardize. Crucially, their opposition tofurther progress was no longer in line with that universal reason whichthey claimed to be the measure of all things. It is this which lays themopen to criticism in the name of the very standards they themselvesupheld, and which invites investigation of their group or class valuesand norms in the light of reason (see Pikulik; Titzmann, Klinger).

Due to the dynamics inherent in the process of Enlightenment,controversy between struggling factions does not only emerge at themoment when the guiding principles of Enlightenment were firstarticulated with massive polemical impact on the ancien rgime andon Christian orthodox theology. Rather, the battles continue through-out, so that controversy also breaks out when, around 1750 and againaround 1770, the programme of Enlightenment was expanded. Suchcontinuing expansion and struggle is a true sign of Enlightenmentssuccess.

Sympathy, Sentiment, Passion

The fundamental postulate of Enlightenment defines human reason asthe arbiter of truth. But the Western Enlightenment3 uses reason as theadequate human tool to realise its programme of the rehabilitation ofsensuality, of matter, and of nature (see Kondylis). Its rationalism isno longer part of a dualistic approach like Descartes. In this context, aradicalised concept of emotion becomes the heart of the developingEnlightenment.4 Under the rule of universal reason, shifting conceptsof emotion evolve from Sympathie (sympathy) in the early part of the

3 To abbreviate English and French developments of the second half of the 18thcentury.

4 In accordance with recent research (see Benthien, Fleig and Kasten; Hansen DieGeschichte Emotionalitt; Schlaeger and Stedman; Schlaeger; Wegmann),emotion is taken to be a historical practice of speaking and behaviour withsignificant spatio-temporal differences.

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period, through Empfindung (sentiment) in the middle, to Leidenschaft(passion) in the later stage. The logic of this change creates one of theprerequisites for counter-culture. When confronted all too vividly withthe consequences of passion in Sturm-und-Drang literature, theGerman reception of Western Enlightenment came to an end and thelimits of reasons freedom were newly defined in the scholasticlanguage of Kants philosophy which still held sway and which,marked by the insignia of power, quite lacked the esprit and eleganceof the essayistic style of his earlier works (see Bhme and Bhme).Seen from the perspective of this dominant Enlightenment philo-sophical culture, what was a logical step in the process of Enlighten-ment became a dangerous counter-move.

While the early representatives of Enlightenment demonstratedthe immanent rationality of the world and of their philosophical creedby a life of virtue and by accommodation with the existing socialstructure, the constrictions of a narrow society which did not allow forsocial mobility were increasingly felt to be a barrier to the promise ofhappiness here on earth. The postulates of happiness and of thetheodicy, the vindication of divine justice despite the existence of evilin the world, which had held sway since Leibnizs Thodice (1710),were, however, satisfied for a time through the construction of aprivate sphere where all promises were to be realised. Thus the privaterealm was set against the frustrating public and political sphere of theancien rgime. As a consequence family, friendship and love becamedominant values, and literature depicted worlds with a familialstructure. The social conception of human relations was replaced byan emotional definition. Family became the key sphere of humaninteractions which fuelled group identity.

The early Enlightenment had already offered families as itsmodel of the world. The literature of Empfindsamkeit then uses thetopos of generational conflict to convey the transformation of a systemof thought. While the rational and norm-bearing figure of the paterfamilias is the representative of the older phase of Enlightenment, thenew point of view is incorporated in the younger generation. Thetentative disintegration of the symbolic role of the father (Gottvater,Landesvater, Familienvater) within this family foreshadows intel-lectual and political change, but this is change in the form of naturalevolution and not as yet of violent revolution. It is not by chance, then,


that in Rousseaus thought pedagogic and gender roles played outwithin the arena of the family were combined with political theory.The key shift is the Enlightenment invention of childhood andyouth (see Aris; Badinter), and a growing tolerance of conflictsarising from the process of growing up to maturity (Mndigwerden)which symbolises the process of Enlightenment in general, as weknow from Kants essay Was ist Aufklrung?

Emotion in the sense of Empfindung or sensibility becomes thecriterion which distinguishes an elite group claiming to be theprogressive force in Enlightenment. The value and strength ofEmpfindung is proved by readiness to break social rules, especiallyrestrictions on love. But this transgressive potential was domesticatedthrough highly formalised rhetorical expression and ritualisedbehaviour, so that emotions were conventionalised and turned intoexpected norms of behaviour rather than retaining any sociallydisruptive force.

As the representatives of the early stage of Enlightenment, theprogressive group had to justify their innovations by proving that theywould create not chaos but a new and stable order, which would outdothat of the deficient status quo. Given that the intimate family realmstands opposed to the public and political sphere of courtly life wheredirect and immediate confrontations with power take place, the newnorms had to be mediated by new forms of communication, namely bythe writing and circulation of texts and the practice of reading (seeKoschorke).

The fact that weeping plays an important part in sentimentalritual signals the ambivalent impact of Empfindsamkeit. As anexpression of happiness and of sorrow, tears undermine the assumedautonomy of the sentimental individual. For tears are the symbol notof a subject but of a victim of a world beyond the subjects control.Recent research has therefore focused on the feelings of fear and angstand their implications for subjective mentality in the eighteenthcentury (see Begemann). The invention of Empfindung is thus a firststep towards a risky life because it includes decisions, for example thechoice of the one true lover, no longer with reference to rational socialcriteria. Such decisions can then produce tragic failure. BecauseEmpfindung represents a whole spectrum of feelings that tend to beout of rational and social control and the ambivalence of grief

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undermines moral autonomy, an implicit selection of emotionsforbidden to the positive characters in the texts takes place in order tomaintain the norms: negative and ambivalent emotions and sexualdesire have to be excluded.5

The role of rogue in this sentimental world is normally played byan aristocrat who stands outside of the bonds of family and friendship.He is often the most interesting, because the most individualised,character. Where he appears in the typical role of seducer herepresents a double transgression. He is shown acting in response toradically egoistic emotion in the form of sexual desire, so making thewhole sentimental group a victim of the social world he dominates byseducing the middle-class virgin. Moreover, he also dominatesthrough reason, which enables him to mislead the men and to produceself-delusion in the loving woman.

It is the existence and the ideological construction of thesentimental group that makes possible this correlation of power and acold, calculating and manipulative reason. This plot structure tendsto feminise the sentimental man, which adds a further moment ofambivalence to the rhetoric of gender roles (see Kleinschmidt), and topunish the victim instead of the guilty seducer, as in Lessings EmiliaGalotti (see Nolting Vol. 1). In Sturm-und-Drang drama, however,this structure undergoes fundamental changes. On the one hand, thesuccessful seducer will be pursued, as in Schillers Fiesko. But on theother hand, basic characteristics of this negative character reappear at

5 That this is really a deliberate selection is mirrored by the book market whichwas selling under the counter the Marquis dArgens Thrse Philosophe andother well-known works of philosophical pornography. The fundamental role ofthis underground and its repercussions in pre-revolutionary France are wellknown (see Darnton; Mason). This under-the-counter reverse of the literature ofsentiment is the basis of a socio-political counter-culture in France but not inGermany, where the reception of Western European thought almost ends withHumes scepticism, which Kant refers to in the introduction of his Prolegomenazu einer jeden knftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten knnenas the central stimulus that had awakened him from his dogmatische[r]Schlummer (Werkausgabe V, 118). In the introduction to the second edition ofhis Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant lists all the enemies of his project in averitable whos who of obscure orthodox and radical thought: Materialism,Fatalism, Atheism, dem freigeisterischen Unglauben, der Schwrmerei undAberglauben, [] Idealism und Sceptizism (Werkausgabe III, 35).


the moment when the seducer is pursued within the midst of thefamily itself, destroying this family as a model of theodicy, as inSchillers Die Ruber.

In Empfindsamkeit we can reconstruct the first roots of counter-culture, the first basic elements. It develops the code of emotion thatcreates the progressive and younger elite of the Enlightenment fromKlopstocks first works around 1750 to his heirs around 1770 in theGttinger Hain. But there was as yet not really an overtly oppositionalcounter-culture, for the culture of Empfindsamkeit sought ways toharmonise differences between theory and practice and to overcomethe concrete deficiencies of social life. Therefore it createdcompensatory models both in theory above all in the philosophy ofhistory, which was to have such long-term influence and in literaryand social practice above all in terms of the family and thesentimental code and rites of an elite. The status of the sentimentalelite depended on their moral superiority over the ancien rgime. Butbecause they needed this contrast, needed to be victims and celebratedtears, they were in fact a constitutive element of the old society whichthey served to consolidate.

Towards Sturm und Drang

During the twenty years when the culture of Empfindsamkeit prevailed(17501770), however, the new philosophy of history introduced timeand change into the idea of the theodicy (see Kondylis), therebyaccelerating the production of desirable improvements and streng-thening the experience of dissonance between a slowly developingreality and what could be expected of the society to come. Thus thesuccess of this new philosophy of history forced the next step ofdevelopment. The compensatory self-perception as an elite was nolonger convincing and had to be replaced. Astonishingly enough, thenext generation invented a substitute for the deficiencies of socialreality by concentrating on sign systems and poetry. They laid claimto individuality by self-exclusion from all existing groups in society

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through genius and through the originality of their works. The basis ofa Strmer und Drnger was no longer a group but a single identity,the criterion of membership no longer a common feeling but aunique passion as the immediate expression of nature. Thus thesentimental code and rites, with their rhetorical and formal similarity,were negated.

For the first time, authors of the younger generation, followingthe example of Goethe, constituted an opposition. And the fact that itwas and could be Goethe, an individual without the protection of acoherent group, is significant for this change. Goethe reacted againstthe failings of Empfindsamkeit but based this reaction in the cult ofsentiment by unfolding what had been implicit but suppressed. Thelyrical subject in his poems (see Wnsch, Lyrik; Wnsch, frheLyrik), and the protagonists of his novel Werther and his earlydramas, not only prove their readiness to break the social rules butdare to claim their rights and to live an intense life of passion.Moreover, Sturm-und-Drang drama transmuted Empfindsamkeit alsothrough radicalising the negative impact of the brgerlichesTrauerspiel. The Sturm und Drang intensified the suffering of thevictim, not to show his or her guilt, but to criticise the social andpolitical state. Wagners Kindermrderin, Klingers Leidendes Weib,Lenzs Hofmeister and Soldaten, and Schillers Kabale und Liebejustify the demand for change and the act of revolt by the exceptionalindividual.

The characteristics of the individual who transcends the group,characteristics which had till then been delegated to negativecharacters, are partly incorporated into the protagonists. The subjectnow wants to realise all his potential in a passionate life and thereforelives in explicit contradiction to the given world order. Resistance tothe social rules and transgression of the conventional boundariesbecome the touchstone of the passionate individual. It is the necessityto prove oneself, in accord with such an understanding of what it is tobe an autonomous individual, that makes of this figure the agent of acounter-culture. Thus this new subject seeks to throw off theemotional bonds that held back the sentimental subject from anti-social action.


Prerequisites in Theory

At this point, however, it is is necessary to look back for a moment tothe emergence of the aesthetic theory of Empfindsamkeit. Gottschedsappropriation of the Aristotelian concept of art as mimesis of naturewould seem to qualify literature to be an ideal ally in the rehabilitationof sensuality. But it was not until Baumgarten invented the termsthetik for proper philosophical use that this alliance was established.He argues for an emancipation of the sensually beautiful and vitalfrom mere service in applying the laws of reason, and requires anindependent logic for the realm of the sensually beautiful.6 Yet thebeautiful still remains subordinate to reason and so does not generateany contradiction with it. The literary revolt of Sturm und Drang,however, based on the new values of the individual, of genius, oforiginality, and of transgressive passion rooted in divine nature, aimsto overthrow this last constraint: the beautiful not only obeys its ownlaws and logic, but is also autonomous with respect to intervention ordomination by other discursive formations such as philosophy.Studium and ingenium have not yet changed places, but if passionproves maturity in the individual life, literature could become theproof for progress of society as a whole. The master in the process ofcoming of age should be nicht ein wissenschaftlicher Grtner,sondern ein fhlendes Herz (Goethe, Werther, 8). Breaking the rulesof conventional poetry, especially the bonds of an obviously rhetoricallanguage, individualises the unique work and constitutes an act ofrevolt. Here is another prerequisite of the counter-culture of Sturmund Drang.

6 The case of Sulzers oeuvre proves the anthropological dimension of theinvention of aesthetics (see Riedel), an invention which is not just a chapter inthe history of the arts, but is a turning point in intellectual history marking afundamental change in the conception of human beings and their emotionalcapacities.

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Constraints in Sturm und Drang Worlds

A closer look at its literary texts, however, reveals boundaries specificto Sturm und Drang. The texts all depict a world with unchangingsocial structures, where moral values and norms are handed downthrough the generations. The conflict of the new passionate subjectwith this invariable world (see Duncan) subverts the key articles ofEnlightenment faith in theodicy and historical progress. But all therevolts of these exceptional subjects remain illusory. Sturm und Drangplays either depict spatio-temporally distinct worlds locatedsomewhere else or in some other time, as in the case of Gtz, Egmont,Fiesko, Sturm und Drang and all the adaptations of Faust, or they arelocated in a wild enclave on the periphery of the society as isSchillers later (1782) Die Ruber (see Titzmann, Empfindung).Thus the evolutionary concept of Empfindsamkeit did not turn into arevolutionary programme as it did in some rare cases of laterEnlightenment materialism and nihilism. But it turned into the remoterevolt of an elitist individual who claims the privileges of deviance.All these rebels fight for their own privileged place in the givensociety which they find already occupied by legitimate instances andheirs. Mostly it is a revolt against the symbolic father of the family, ofthe state, of religion, often veiled by a conflict with his substitute, theelder brother, as in Klingers Die Zwillinge, Leisewitzs Julius vonTarent, and Schillers Die Ruber.

Though the conflict is unfolded and its epistemologicalconsequences demonstrated, the texts reveal the necessary failure ofthe revolt. And in so doing, they imply the necessary failure and endof Sturm und Drang, too. The reason warum der Strom des Genies soselten ausbricht, so selten in hohen Fluten hereinbraust are not onlythe gelassene[n] Herren [...], die daher in Zeiten mit Dmmen undAbleiten der knftig drohenden Gefahr abzuwehren wissen7 (Goethe,

7 Werther/Werther is thus implicitly criticising the widespread use of metaphorsof restraint as in the anonymous tract of 1786, Ueber die Ehescheidungen,which refers to the marriage laws as an embankment die den reienden Stromder Naturtriebe so einschnken men, da er weder ganz durchbricht, noch zuseiner Quelle zurckschumt. Vielmehr leiten sie ihn in die gehrigen Canle,


Werther, 16) as Werther assumes, but is also to be found in thesubmissiveness of the young Strmer und Drnger themselves, asWerthers and many other suicides prove, or was instanced by thoseprotagonists who end up dead or murdered. Sturm und Drang,therefore, is the first example of an intellectual experiment with revoltand the concurrent rejection of that revolts social, moral, andtheoretical implications, as Schiller, the late theoretician of the Sturmund Drang explains in his poems Freigeisterei der Leidenschaft andResignation of 1786 (Schiller, 111115).

Schillers Die Ruber ends with a revocation of the anarchicoutcome of extreme individualism and total freedom, and a re-entryinto the social order. Moreover, Schiller uses a trick to devalue thatprogressive tendency in the late Enlightenment which questioned thesocial and moral order in toto on the grounds that this order could nolonger be justified by reasonable argument and was sustained by meresentiment. While the elder son in the play represents the typical careerof the passionate Sturm-und-Drang hero, here the younger son playsthe role of the rogue, deploying the weapons of reason not only todestroy the emotional veil covering norms and values but also toseduce and to deceive. By allocating particular qualities to the Moorbrothers in this way, Schiller indicates that the new conception ofSturm und Drang is the older and legitimate one, while the radicalrehabilitation of sensuality by means of reason is turned into theillegitimate younger and hence immature position.

Counter-Cultural Posing and Success

With Sturm und Drang, the phenomenon of the self-exclusion ofliterary men, semioticians or sign specialists appear for the first timein German intellectual history. The writers and their passionatecharacters construct a realm of natural otherness, of originality, ofintense life and of transgressive love. The literary and semiotic

die das Erdreich, das er durchfliet, befruchten, ohne seine Ufer zu verwsten(Koschorke, 21).

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construction of otherness, the unmistakable individual and the uniquepoetical product, were predicated on the emergence of a new publicsphere for sign systems circulating in printed media. This publicsphere initially comprised the sentimental family and circles offriends. But the media were becoming autonomous to a degree thatallowed the authors of Sturm und Drang to build a counter-culturewithout themselves constituting a group of friends or even a coherentgroup of any kind. To a certain extent, then, the media produced themovement. Sign systems and publicity became an unavoidablecompanion of all further attempts at constituting a counter-culture. Forthe elite individual subject was only able successfully to take on aparadoxical exemplary status thanks to the role played by theexpanding media, whether printed media or the public institution ofthe theatre, and the concomitant growth of a wider audience.

By publishing or staging individual passion, the authors of Sturmund Drang begin to differ from the characters they put on stage.Rhetoric and theatricality are part of the public sphere of commonlyunderstandable matters. Publishing or dramatisation then puts ondisplay what by definition allows no witness, the radical andsolipsistic emotionality of a singular passion without intersubjectiveelements. Through this contradiction, the authors at once create andbetray this singular subjectivity. But why then this gesture of revoltagainst the traditional values and norms, this pose of threat againstsociety, this seemingly paradoxical game?

The staging of passion threatens the old authorities with what isbrought on stage, but in the very moment of theatricality lie the seedsof betrayal, for the gesture of revolt springs, as the mainstreamproponents of Enlightenment claimed, from the hidden andunpredictable nature of passion (see Luserke). Friedrich A. Kittler hasargued that the induction of boys into literacy in their mother-tongueinstalls the oedipal triangle and leads these sons to never-endingspeaking and ink-squirting writing (see Autorschaft; Aufschreibe-systeme). Kittler overshoots the mark, however, because the middle-class society which became the object of the psychoanalytic gaze atthe end of the nineteenth century was only a developing socialformation around 1770 which was not yet stable. In those days, sonswere not compelled to talk and write, but in fact wanted to in order tocompel the powers that be to make a deal with them. The danger and


the remedy lie close together in their works: the danger lies in whatthey say, and the remedy in the fact that they say it. The elitistindividual of Sturm und Drang was not to become the source of aconspiracy against existing society. On the contrary, the simultaneousliterary production of the passionately transgressive individualtogether with the remedy of allowing this subjectivity to speak andwrite, guarantees the authors a place in society. On the 11 June 1776,Goethe became Geheimer Legationsrat at Weimar. Polemically, onecould say that as a result the literature of the German Klassik wouldrealise the programme of the self-restraint of freedom (see Titzmann,Sturm und Drang). The Strmer und Drnger enter the avant-gardeof modernising society by establishing literature as a semioticplayground for innovation but with a limited binding force. As thecultural influence of German Classicism proves, parts of theconception autonomy of the individual/literature but self-restraint ofpassion/topics were in the long run accepted and adopted by society.

Returning to Bchners Lenz where this essay started, the fatewhich befell Lenz, and which is mirrored in some of his narratives,illustrates what could happen to those Sturm und Drang authors whowere psychologically unable to operate with strategic threats ortreason. With the failure of Lenzs attempt to get rid of theinternalized father figure and the order this figure represents, Lenzshows the real psychic bonds which construct the problem underlyingthe claim of radical individuality. Most of the other Sturm und Drangauthors managed to hide this problem of an internal emotional link totraditional norms and values through their theatralisation of theKraftgenie. Lenz never solved, either in literature or in practice, thetension between the figure of the Sturm und Drang intellectual whoends in despair and suicide, as depicted in Zerbin oder Die neuerePhilosophie (1776), and the utopian harmonising of autonomy andsocial integration in the Oberlin-like figure of the country parson onlyone year later in Der Landprediger. Thus the opposition between aninternalized culture and as only theoretically and rationally deducedcounter-movement, cuts through the individual psyche. Victims likeLenz clearly demonstrate the price of counter-cultural activity underthe (post-)sentimental condition.

Some of those who drew a moral, social or political conclusionfrom the logic of passion and voted for real social change represent

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the active counter-culture of the late Enlightenment, of the FrenchRevolution, and of the first republican experiments on Germanterritory at Mainz. At the same time, the older customs of pre-literatesocial groups, which changed only slowly, were also beginning to takeon the quality of a resistant counter-culture in response to acceleratingrationalisation. But the rapidly changing mainstream culture of theindustrialising first half of the nineteenth century would leave behindthe alternative counter-cultures which had been inspired by earliertraditions of local riots that sprang up spontaneously in response tounjustifiably high prices for basic necessities up to the late eighteenthcentury.

Sturm und Drang seems, therefore, to be the first main festationof very different counter-cultures. Sixty years later, Bchner wouldunderstand those who, like Lenz, could not play the half-hearted andambiguous game of Sturm und Drang, but would criticise those wholost themselves in a rhetoric of cold rationalism like Robespierre or araging sensuality like Danton, and those tormentors who forgot thevictims of modernisation such as Woyzeck. Finally, what makesSturm und Drang interesting as a way of reflecting on later counter-cultures, is its combination of passionate transgression with strategicrationality, of semiotic competence with chaos, of destructiveness ofthe elite with psychopathic destruction of the self.

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NICHOLAS SAUL AND SUSAN TEBBUTT

Gypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures inModern German Cultural History

What exactly is a counter-culture? Heuristically speaking, it could bea literary or aesthetic movement which opposes the implicit culturaldoctrine of another, dominant school (such as Romanticism); aconcrete social movement which defies existing social norms (such asthe Wandervgel); the literary representation of an alternative cultureby writers of the dominant culture (such as Gastarbeiterliteratur); or,finally, a social minority group which presents its own culture in thehost culture (such as the Turkish community in Germany). This paperfocuses on the part played by the ethnic group still called Gypsies andZigeuner the Romany nation in the tradition of German counter-culture, and finds several of the above modalities exemplified in thehistory of their literary representation. The first part of the paperexamines the cultural anthropology and literary image of theRomanies in the epoch around 1800 as emblematic of the role of artand of the Gypsies in early modern German culture.1 The secondlooks at the great changes which have occurred in the representationof Romanies in the German literature and culture of the twentiethcentury, especially since the Second World War and the RomanyHolocaust. The thesis is that the representation of the Romaniesaround 1800 consistently followed the agenda of an aesthetic counter-

1 We define modernity with Silvio Vietta as a cultural macroepoch lasting fromthe late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, and characterised by the innercontinuity of a small number of basic features across several, superficiallydistinct stylistic microepochs. The basic features are exhibited in elementalform in Early Romantic culture: the historically new claims to untrammeledautonomy of reason and subject which entail the end of traditional metaphysicsand the domination of nature, but also provoke the counter-discourse ofexperimental-utopian cultural criticism which is modern art. See Vietta, 737.

Nicholas Saul and Susan Tebbutt44

culture, namely, to serve as utopian foil to the norm, usually,therefore, with critical and emancipatory intent the goal in this casebeing the establishment of a true German identity. Around 1800,however, this in itself laudable project involved a one-sidedidealisation of Romany culture derived finally from ambiguousOrientalist energies in Edward Saids sense (see Said, esp. pp. 34).Only in the twentieth century was this ultimately colonialist stanceovercome. Romanies in modern (and postmodern) German literatureare still the locus of counter-cultural utopian emancipatory energies.However, the twentieth-century utopia rests for the first time on ahybrid or dialogical notion of authentically intercultural com-munication: the post-Orientialist representation of the German Gypsyvoice.2

The Romanticised Gypsy around 1800and the Nineteenth Century

Let us begin with a definition of terms. As already indicated, we seethe key term counter-culture as implying the notion of utopia. Thedefinition of utopia we prefer is that of Hans-Joachim Mhl, takenfrom a key essay in Wilhelm Vokamps benchmark collectionUtopieforschung (1982). A utopia, says Mhl, is the Entwurf einerhypothetisch mglichen, d. h. unter Setzung bestimmter Axiomedenkbaren/vorstellbaren Welt (Gesellschaftsverfassung, Lebensform),entworfen in zeitlicher oder rumlicher Projektion als Gegenbild(Negation) zu den implizit oder explizit kritisierten gesellschaftlichenMistnden der jeweiligen Zeit (Mhl, 274). There is a vast amountof internal variation in the literary utopian genre per se. But allutopias exhibit the characteristic oppositional distance maintained byMhls definition: Mores well-known Utopia (1516) sets its perfectstate at a spatial distance from European reality, Louis-SbastienMercier sets his Lan 2440 (1786) at a temporal distance. The

2 The terminology derives of course from Bhabha, The Location of Culture.

Gypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures in Modern German Cultural History 45

Romantics however modify this representative strategy in twotypically modernist ways. First, if one considers a typical text likeHardenbergs Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799), the Romanticsattempt in one sense to overcome utopian distance. They historicise,localise and temporalise the utopian image by embedding it (bycontrast, say, to Schnabels Insel Felsenburg, 1731) in a narrative ofcontemporary historical development. Thus Hardenberg presents thetheocratic Middle Ages in the context of post-Revolutionary chaos asa lost and future ideal of political constitution. Second, however, theseutopian designs are ironically reflected and relativised in the textsthemselves, revealed modernistically as merely provisional, experi-mental and provocative in function (something non-specialistsperennially overlook when they try to define Romantic politics) (seeMalsch and Kurzke). Thus despite the attempt to overcome distance,and to embed the utopia in everyday reality, the Romantics in fact alsopreserve one fundamental characteristic of the utopian tradition inliterature, namely the insight that the realisability of a utopia is not initself an indicator of its value, which lies elsewhere (only KarlMannheim would disagree).3

That said, let us begin the argument proper by asserting thatRomanticism, in the senses indicated and whether early or late, isfundamentally utopian in orientation. Once plausibly defined byLothar Pikulik as a generalised Ungengen an der Normalitt,4Romanticism is quintessentially modern, both in its consciousness ofnormal contemporary culture as characterised by the loss of meaningand the fragmentation of human nature, and in its determination tocriticise and heal this state of affairs, always by means ofexperimental-utopian aesthetic constructions such as those justmentioned. It is this utopian orientation, this need to make thefragmentary whole once more, which eventually leads Romanticism toconcern itself with the specific problem of cultural selfhood and

3 See Mhl, and Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (178). Mannheim argues thatonly an historically realised utopia qualifies as authentic, the rest qualifyingmerely as ideologies. Compare Gtz Mllers Gegenwelten.

4 Pikulik, 1334. Norm, says Pikulik (1314), means two negative things for theRomantics: the everyday and that which is determined by convention; eachexamplifies a kind of compulsion.


otherness. To take Hardenberg again, there are explicit signs of thisonly towards the end of his career. In Heinrich von Ofterdingen(1802) we find the first proper Romantic encounter with utopianOriental alterity, when the figure of the imperialist Crusader iscontrasted with his Muslim prisoner, the Saracen poetess Zulima with decidedly negative consequences for Germano-Christian self-esteem. But only in later Romanticism is the tendency to seek utopianenergies in Oriental alterity fully developed, and we want in thiscontext briefly to examine a novella by Clemens Brentano, Diemehreren Wehmller und ungarischen Nationalgesichter (1817). Thisunfolds a full-blown Romantic intercultural utopia involving not justan Oriental figure, but actual Gypsies (whose real provenance, shouldyou not know it, is todays north-western India). Die mehrerenWehmller, we shall argue, is emblematic of the German Romantic(and indeed Classical and Enlightenment) fascination with Gypsies, itsstrengths and limitations. For the Gypsies figure here as the ultimateideal of human perfection, as ultimate cultural mediators, in short, asthe ultimate Bohemian counter-culture of early nineteenth-centuryphilistine Biedermeier.

The tale initially foregrounds a philistine artist, Wehmller, whomakes a living painting portraits of officers in the Austrian Imperialarmy in the epoch of cultural crisis following the defeat of Napoleonin 1815. Wehmller is a bad artist because, despite the nature of hisbusiness (the rendition of individual character), he has gone over toBiedermeier mass-production methods, and simply turns up at campwith large numbers of ready-mades based on typified nationalphysiognomies, which he then hastily individualises (hence one partof the title). At one level the tale concerns how this inauthentic artistmeets his aesthetic Nemesis. In a variation of the standard comicscheme, Wehmller en route to his next market becomes separatedfrom his wife, whom he has sent on ahead to tout for business with thetroops in Hungary. Unfortunately, there occurs an infestation ofplague, and the route to his wife and his source of income is cut off bythe cordon sanitaire, so that Wehmller is trapped on the then borderof Austria and Hungary. Worse, he learns inexplicably that aDoppelgnger of himself (hence the other part of the title) has alreadycrossed the border, and will soon be enjoying both his business and

Gypsies, Utopias and Counter-Cultures in Modern German Cultural History 47

his wifes favours. Wehmllers perversion of the individualist ethicof Romanticism is thus aptly punished by the loss of his own sense ofindividuality. The treatment of the border theme is where theinterculturality comes in. With other unfortunates, Wehmller lodgesin a run-down border tavern. In a travesty of Boccaccios narrativesituation in the Decameron, they pass the time until they can crossinto the plague-ridden terrain by telling stories within the story, all ofwhich in their turn also thematise the consequences of transgressingborders between nation states. It is important to note that the companyin the tavern is a representative selection of pretty much all themember nations of the Habsburg empire and its neighbours:Austrians, Tiroleans, Savoyards, Italians, Croats, Germans, plus arepresentative of the former enemy, the Frenchman Devillier (not tomention Turks and others in the inset tales). All three inset stories (bya Croatian, a Frenchman and an Italian) reflect thematically andstylistically the nationality and individuality of their storyteller, and socontrast powerfully with Wehmllers uniformitarian art. But thegreatest contrast is with two others, in fact the chief characters of thetale. For now two symbols of authentic Romantic poetry, bothGypsies, the handsome violinist Michaly and his beautiful sisterMitidika, perform the task of sorting out the mess occasioned byWehmllers inauthentic art and symbolised by his entrapment behinda boundary. They achieve this by a variety of means, usually aestheticin nature and involving the creation of order or the discrimination oftruth from falsehood. For example Michaly, whom the narrator likensto a second Orpheus (Brentano, 160), quells an outbreak ofmulticultural chaos in the tavern by playing his violin at a strategicmoment and imposing Orphic order. Mitidika, for her part, reveals thetrue identity of Wehmllers Doppelgnger and rival in theBiedermeier culture industry, and it is she too, an Amazon onhorseback in mens clothes, who breaks the plague cordon from theother side. Thus she closes the comic circle of the plot, rescuesWehmller from Amphitryonic cuckolding, and reunites him withTonerl. She also makes peace between the aesthetic entrepreneurs, andeven rediscovers her own lost beloved, the sceptical FrenchmanDevillier.


It should be evident even from this hasty summary with just howmuch overweening significance this short work and especially the twoslight figures, Michaly and Mitidika, are invested. The tale of coursesuggests that Romantic poesy is

counter-cultures in germany an central europe_from sturm und drang to baader-meinhof (2003)

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