A collection of new essays bringing into view the push and pull of the national and the international in the German-language cultural field of the period.
The cultural formations of the so-called Age of Nationalism (1848-1919) have shaped German-language literary studies to the present day, for better or worse. Literary histories, German self-representations, the view from abroad – all of these perspectives offer images of a culture ever more concerned with formulating a coherent, nationally focused idea of its origins, history, and cultural community. But even in this historical moment the German-speaking territories were not culturally self-contained; international forces always played a significant role in the constitution of the so-called ‘German’ literary and cultural field.
This volume rethinks the historical period with fourteen case studies that bring into view the push and pull of the national and international in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, undertaking a reframing of literary-cultural history that recognizes the interrelatedness of literatures and cultures across political and linguistic boundaries. Viewing even overtly national literary and cultural projects as belonging to an international system, these case studies examine the interrelations, organization, and positioning of the agents, forces, enterprises, and processes that constituted the German-language literary-cultural field, locating these ostensibly national developments within an inter- or even anti-national context.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Transnational Literary Field in the Age of Nationalism
Lynne Tatlock and Kurt Beals
1: The Passion of Johannes Scherr: Historiography as Trauma
Thomas Beebee
2: Between Integration and Differentiation. On the Relationship between German and Austrian Literature in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Norbert Bachleitner
3: Reading Stifter in America
Vance Byrd
4: Travel Writing and Transnational Marketing: How Ida Pfeiffer brought the World to Austria and Beyond
Kirsten Belgum
5: Ernst Brausewetter’s Meisternovellen Deutscher Frauen (1897-98): Gender, Genre, and (Inter)National Aspiration
Lynne Tatlock
6: Arbiter of Nation? The Strange Case of Hans Müller-Casenov’s
The Humour of Germany (1892/1893)
Birgit Tautz
7: Visualizing the End: Nation, Empire, and Neo-Roman Mimesis in Keller and Fontane
Sean Franzel
8: Eurocentric Cosmopolitanism in Thomas Mann’s
Buddenbrooks
Todd Kontje
9: European Peace from a Transatlantic Perspective: Victor Hugo and Bertha von Suttner
Paul Michael Lützeler
10: Hermann Graf Keyserling and Gu Hongming’s Ethics of World Culture: Confucianism, Monarchism, and Anti-Colonialism
Chunjie Zhang
11: Constructing Symphonic Worlds: Gustav Mahler,
Weltliteratur, and the Musical Program
Caroline A. Kita
12: The Garb of National Literature: Transnational Identities and the Early Twentieth-Century
Schriftstreit
Tobias Boes
13: From European Symbolism to German Gesture: The International and Transnational Nationalism of Stefan George’s
Blätter für die Kunst
Daniela Gretz
14: Canon Fire: Dada’s Attack on National Literature
Kurt Beals
Selected Bibliography of Works Cited
Notes on the Contributors
Index
About the author
KURT BEALS is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
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