Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany 9781501723599

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+ COLLECTING AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

+ Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany Susan A. Crane

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2000 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2000 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crane, Susan A. Collecting and historical consciousness in early nineteenth-century Germany I Susan A. Crane p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8014-3752-o (alk. paper) 1. Historical research-Germany-History-19th century. 2. Germany-Historiography. 3· Germany-Intellectual lifeHistory-19th century. 4· Nationalism-Germany-History19th century. I. Title DD86.C7J 2000 943'.0072-dc21 00-037681 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) use paper taken from forests that have been inspected and certified as meeting the highest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. 1 3 5 7 9 cloth printing 10 8 6 4

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+ To Jules and Patricia Crane

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CONTENTS

Preface ix THE HISTORICAL SUBLIME

1.

Asleep among the Ruins

1

1

The Rhetoric of "Waking and Winning" 4 Of Ruins and the Sublime

19

History-Perceived, History-Created 35 2.

THE COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION

38

OF HISTORICAL OBJECTS

The Rhetoric of "Saving"

38

Collecting Immobile Objects: The Denkrniiler Inventories 3·

COLLECTIVE COLLECTING IN

"THE AcE OF AssociATIONs"

6o

Figuring the Collector 6o Collectors Alone and in Association: Correspondences

63

Generations as Collectives

74

The Historical Associations 81 Correspondences: Gender, Family, and Emotion 94

44

4·

FINDING FoRM FOR THE CoNTENT: HISTORICAL MUSEUMS

The Museum Context

105

106

Objects and Copies: Journals as Museums Imagined Museums Real Museums 5·

116

129

137

COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND

HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

143

"Historical Memory and Collective Memory" Collective Memory and Personal Property Public Spheres, Public Opinion

Index

193

179

161

166

Individuat Collective, Historical Memory Bibliography

149

174

+ PREFACE

As a researcher in Berlin during 198g-go, I found it impossible not to make connections between the unexpected and dramatic events surrounding Germany's reunification and my research into early nineteenth-century historical consciousness. I didn't listen to the news broadcasts on November g, 1989, and didn't hear that the East German border was being opened. Going to the library like a good doctoral student on November to, I noticed that there were long lines outside a local bank, and wondered why. Once there, I knew that something was up because the library was empty apart from a friend who said, "We should go to the Wall." Checkpoint Charlie is not far from the BerlinStaatsbibliothek. The party there was already in full swing, with champagne corks popping and flowers being thrown to every "Trabi" driver crossing the corrupted border from east to west in his tin box Trabant automobile. I didn't even have my camera with me when history happened. When world-shaking events occur, we say that "something historic has happened." Repeatedly in November 1989, I heard people saying, "these are historic days," and in their voices was a tone of stunned disorientation. The change had happened too quickly to be immediately comprehensible, and there was great uncertainty about what the future held. The inevitability of unification was far from obvious at that time; we were only relieved that the transformation was occurring nonviolently. In saying that the fall of the Wall was historic we expressed the geopolitically obvious. At the same time, we voiced a perception that lacked any immediate utility; for we were displacing the confusing emotions of the moment onto a future in which people

ix

would write about what we had just experienced. Saying that an event is "historic" marks it as something to be written about and verified as memory later. Awareness of the past as "past" effectively cuts it off from the present-in this case, putting the Berlin Wall and the Cold War into a bracketed historical period which I have lived through and now look back upon. It became clear to me, after that memorable day in Berlin, that what I had previously encountered in museums and even in studying history professionally had not prepared me for a personal experience of historical events. Only through looking at early nineteenth-century German historical preservation did I begin to understand how two centuries of historical thinking had shaped my experience. Explicit mention of historical consciousness, of suddenly recognizing a difference between the past and the present, figures only infrequently in historical narratives. I suspect that it occurs much more often, but is relegated to the memory of the historian, serving as inspiration rather than being discussed in the text. Reading descriptions of historical consciousness written in the Romantic era, I was struck by the way in which these writers depicted the suddenness of their historical experience. Discussing any object whose ruination or rarity demanded immediate attention, even though the reasons for ruin or value might be long past, collectors and preservationists depicted something that was immediately present to them, and yet distanced by historical consciousness. In the rhetorical strategies of the early nineteenth-century preservationists, this moment is figured as an experience of the historical sublime. They describe a sense of shock and awe, finding powerful personal meaning through a revelation of a distinctly separate past, discovered in the presence of historic ruins, old buildings, documents, or art. One encounters this depiction of the sublime in the work of a wide range of writers-not only famous Romantic poets and artists, but prominent figures such as the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Joseph Lassberg, as well as less prominent amateur collectors and dilettante nobility. They shared a perception of the past as "past," and felt compelled by the power of that experience to advocate historical preservation. It is particularly noteworthy that those who experienced the historical sublime recognized the difficulty, indeed impossibility, of preserving the ephemeral moment of experience. To revisit the experience,

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they needed to be able to revisit the objects of inspiration, and this second revelation motivated the collection and preservation of historical objects at historic sites or in museums. Historically inspired collectors believed that their personal experiences were not unique; they believed that the sublime could be communicated to others in an almost religious fashion, forming the basis for communities of shared revelation. Historically conscious individuals chose to give up their autonomy in regard to the historical sublime, working collectively through preservation societies to preserve historical artifacts and create museum collections. This collective work of collecting lies at the heart of historical production in the nineteenth century. In addition to studying the writing of history, I concluded, any understanding of historical meaning required consideration of these passionate, inspired amateur collectors and collectives. My study, then, moves into realms of subjectivity, historical passions, and emotional relationships. To be aware of history, to be historically conscious, means to have a sense of the past at a distance that is neither exactly spatial nor temporal, but a combination of the two that can exist only through imagination_ and intuition. Measurements of distance, like those of surveyors marking land, establish a terrain upon which the observer also stands; the historically conscious individual stands on the terrain of the past as it is present to them. Distance is a measurement not only of "how far?" but of "how far away from me?" Our interest in history is inextricably part of our relationship to it. Applying imagination to the past does not "invent" or "revise" it, but rather allows us to express an emotional connection to history. Historical consciousness incorporates the aspect of caring about the past, of finding it personally meaningful. Thus inquiry into historical consciousness must seek to understand how and why individuals care about the past, as well as how they create the representations of the past that appear as historical narratives or collections. But what exactly sparks this historical consciousness-why take the measure of past from present at all, why deploy imagination and intuition? This question was central to German thought at the end of the eighteenth century, which witnessed an awakening of interest in cultural history, emphasizing the elements of a shared identity based in language and civilization. In response, new institutions developed: historical preservation societies, academic disciplines such as philology and history, and public museums of history and art. These forums

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xi

of historical consciousness-preservation, scholarship, museumsare very familiar to us today, but this is due in large part to the success of a movement that struggled for funding and recognition two centuries ago, when it was not at all obvious that historical artifacts required preservation, or that history was best studied and produced at universities. The persuasive power of shared historical consciousness in its many aspects successfully changed the terms of historical discourse in such a way that interest in the past came to seem a universal human desire. The transition from individual perception of the historical to collective representations of history can be traced in detail in the first half of the nineteenth century. I argue that there are two forms of historical consciousness, which typically develop in relation to each other: first, the experience of historical sublime, a personal sense of the historical, an aesthetic response to a peculiar sensation whose best explanation is historical; secondly, in response to the first, a desire to share that sensation with others who have had similar experiences. A rhetoric of "waking and winning" others to the cause of "saving" historical artifacts characterizes the writings of historically conscious individuals at this time. They attempt to perpetuate their historical experiences by converting others to their "cause" of historical preservation. I have relied heavily on the exchange of letters among historical preservationists as a vital source for this expression of historical consciousness. The network of letter writers included such luminaries as Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm as well as museum founder Hans von Aufsess and the philologist Joseph von Lassberg. By maintaining an extensive correspondence, the Grimms and their historically conscious contemporaries promoted historical awareness and cooperated in collecting sources and references and conveying copies of historical materials to one another. Organized into networks or associations, famous scholars as well as amateur collectors gathered support and promoted historical consciousness. Collaborative work characterized the Grimms' collecting of fairy tales and documentation of the origins of the German language. An inventory of art-historical objects held in Prussiancontrolled territories was begun in the 182os, relying on the collaboration (and, as I will discuss, encountering the resistance) of local authorities. And when one man's vision of the German past as seen through the mirror of his noble ancestry proved to be too idiosyncratic

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to attract the patronage necessary to create a grand museum of German history, that individual, Hans von Aufsess, founded an historical association and began his museum "of the German People" under its auspices. Those who shared an historical consciousness discovered the efficacy of collective effort for the preservation not only of historical objects, but of collective memory. By focusing on these realms of historical production, I suggest that we can understand the role of historical consciousness in both collective and personal identity formation in a new light. This is a study of how we begin to remember history. The beginning occurs frequently, not only at one moment in an ideal past from which we have progressed, because human interest in the past is not static. The formation of collectives based upon a shared experience of the historical sublime in early nineteenth-century Germany offers a new framework for understanding the role of collective memory in history. Collectives much smaller than nations, collectives formed upon shared memories and experiences, can form the basis of historical understanding. By paying attention to the origins of the historical museums and historical preservation in this period, I hope to show that the era's historical consciousness was generated by individuals whose particular sense of the historical sublime led them to create new forms for collective memory, prompted by the sharing of historical passions among those to whom the past had been revealed.

+ Even idiosyncratic historical projects rely upon a community of family, friends, and colleagues for their success, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge them. William Johnston encouraged me to pursue a doctorate in history after I took a senior seminar with him at Smith College. At the University of Chicago, my adviser, Michael Geyer, gave me his unqualified support and valuable critiques. Hans-Erich Bodecker, Jan Goldstein, Harry Harootunian, and Reinhard Koselleck provided thoughtful suggestions on the shaping of my dissertation. Keith Baker introduced me to the work of Maurice Halbwachs. Suzanne Marchand continues to offer steady support and critical acumen along with passion for the low as well as the high culture of intellectual history. Wolfgang Ernst has shared his unique insights into museums and German history ever since we met at a conference on experimental history writing. Michael Roth and Elazar Barkan offered

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me a teaching job when I needed it very much and helped me think about revisions. I would like to thank the faculty, staff and students of the Departments of History at the University of Oregon and the University of Arizona for their support and encouragement. Several people have provided valuable guidance by reading chapters and taking an interest in the project: Susan Anderson, David Bates, Gail Bernstein, Kathy Cooke, Neil Fischer, Lloyd Kramer, Stan Pierson, William Reddy, and Steven Wolfe. Alex Mathes provided vital assistance with translations. Gavin Lewis's copy editing skills are invaluable; to him belongs the credit for the clarity of this text. I am indebted to all of these friends and colleagues. I would like to express my thanks to the Social Sciences Research Council for funding research in Berlin during the cataclysmic unification year, and to the Berlin Program office for its assistance. Karsten Borgmann, Alexis Joachimides, and the museums study group at the Free University of Berlin and later at the Humboldt University have provided an ongoing resource for stimulating discussion. Ingrid Knoblauch and Hans-Werner Bitzer took an interest in this project from the beginning and have given me a home away from home in Berlin. Along with Sabine Reiter, they helped translate my work from American-German into something Germans might comprehend. The staffs of the archives at Bonn, Berlin, Donaueschingen, Merseburg, Munich, and Niirnberg provided valuable assistance. A subsequent visit to Germany was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, which enabled me to spend more time in Aufsess. I would particularly like to thank Dr. Alex von Aufsess for her assistance with the papers of Hans von Aufsess. She invited me into her home in 1990 and 1994, allowing me to stay in her great-grandfather's residence, Schloss Aufsess, and offering me an unparalleled opportunity to delve through his unordered papers in the family archive he created. una von Aufsess made sure that I found time for picking cherries in the orchard and sampling the Franconian wine. Both ladies were generous with their time and I thank them for their warm hospitality to a young foreign scholar. Portions of the manuscript have appeared previously in print: some of the discussion of Hans von Aufsess (chapter 3) appeared in History and Memory; part of the elaboration of collective memory theory (chapter 5) appeared in the American Historical Review. I would like to

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thank the editors of these journals for their courteous permission to reprint this material. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Jules and Patricia Crane, Ann Crane, Caroline Hyde-Price, and Leonard Vance for their unflagging support. My mother has shared her enthusiasm for history with me for as long as I can remember. What I write may not look like history to her, but she has always been ready to read more and provide helpful commentary. My parents fostered a love of learning in me and made it possible for me to pursue my historical passions. This book is a testament to their support, and is dedicated to my mother and to the memory of my father. Leonard came into the project towards its completion, but stayed anyway, and made life infinitely better. SusAN

A.

CRANE

Preface

xv

+ COLLECTING AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

CHAPTER ONE

+

The Historical Sublime

Asleep among the Ruins There is a painting hanging in the Dresden Royal Picture Gallery which startled me profoundly when I first encountered it in 1990: Carl Blechen's 1826 work, Gothic Church in Ruins [Fig. 1]. In it, a man lies asleep at the foot of a pillar that reaches up beyond the frame of the picture, into the open sky above the unroofed nave of a Gothic church. The ground around him is perilously eroded, revealing the skeleton of catacomb arches below. The walls of the church maintain their beautiful tracery; only the floor, and the missing roof and glass panes, indicate the decrepit state of the building. This painting has been described as a depiction of a pilgrim seeking shelter, a "Romantic 'Wanderer' on earth" surrounded by the "low, dark, mysterious, blind and dumb" Gothic edifice, in keeping with the spirit of the Romantic ethos of Blechen's time. 1 But I saw something else: an icon of the early nineteenth century's preservation efforts. Preservationist rhetoric of this era often addressed a figurative sleeper who represented the dormant force of local collectors waiting to be wakened into awareness of the need for historical collection. Asleep in the midst of his own treasure, somnolently unaware of its value, Blechen's sleeping man can only dream of history. I have seen no other image that so dramatically represents the rhetorical stance of the preservationists: the man sleeps 1 Hugh Honour, Romanticism (New York, 1979), p. 161. Helmut Barsch-Supan gives a similar reading in the exhibition catalog Carl Blechen zwischen Romantik und Realismus, ed. Peter-Klaus Schuster (Berlin, 1990), p. to6; he adds that the pilgrim awaits death amidst the ruins at the end of his journey.

1

Fig. 1. Carl Blechen, Gothic Church in Ruins (1826). Courtesy Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

2

amidst the bygone splendor and contemporary myth of "the ruin." I later learned that epiphanies in this Dresden gallery figured prominently in German Romantic literature, particularly after the summer of 1798, when A. W. Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel, and their friends had visited the art collection regularly, holding intense conversations amidst the pictures that inspired them. The Schlegels coauthored a story entitled "The Paintings" (1799) in which their summer conversations about art and aesthetics are reproduced. 2 Earlier, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had visited the gallery in 1768 as a young man, and experienced the same feelings of reverence and awe, as he details in his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, and in the story, "The Collector and His Circle" (1799). "I was transported, almost delirious when I walked through the hallowed halls of that gallery," cries Goethe's narrator, a collector like himself. Significantly, the collector is not only transported but educated: only one line later, he adds, "How many gaps in my knowledge of art history were filled!" 3 The Schlegels and Goethe had gone to the gallery seeking arthistorical edification. Their raptures were in part stimulated by what they expected to find: an awesome experience of original masterworks of art, predetermined in part by being located in a royal picture gallery. They went to worship, as Theodore Ziolkowski interprets it, in the temple of art. 4 Heinrich Steffens, a Romantic fellow traveler and natural historian, experienced epiphany in the Dresden gallery as an awakening from a stupor, in front of Raphael's Madonna. 5 But the Dresden gallery as a museum of art also stimulated the historical sensations that indicate the experience of the historical sublime. In writing of their experiences, the Schlegels, Goethe, and Steffens described aesthetic revelations that any reader might then share, even in the absence of the objects of inspiration; and which would then prepare readers for the experience they should want to have, given the opportunity, in the museum. These Romantic writers acted, in effect, as preservationists of experience. On another day, I might have admired Blechen's large canvas and 2 See Theodore Ziolkowski, Gernum Romanticism and Its Institutions (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 357-60. 3 J. W. von Goethe, "The Collector and his Circle," in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. John Geary (Princeton, N.J., 1994), p. 132. 4 See Ziolkowski, German Romanticism, pp. 309-377. 5 Ibid, p. 359·

The Historical Sublime

.3

walked on, not registering anything beyond representation of ruins or use of color, perhaps more aware of the museum setting or gift shop than of this particular painting. As it happened, Dresden's proximity to the Prussian State Archives in Merseburg and my heightened awareness of historical collecting practices made the imagery seem to leap off the wall. Without suggesting that my experience was exactly like that of the people who visited ruin sites and raved over their romantic effects in the 18oos, I want to pursue the possibility that my own historical consciousness, which stimulated a study of historical preservation in this era, is intimately connected to theirs, and to track the ways in which this connection has been naturalized in the ways in which we relate to "history" today. This project began with curiosity about why history is produced as national narratives-the way of "doing history" that I learned in graduate school and which I attempt to make my students aware of now. I learned that history is produced by many people besides historians, and that historical consciousness or caring about the past was a strong force in the early nineteenth century which many people desired to experience, to share and discuss, and ultimately, to preserve. I realized that I was not only looking into the production of history, but into what motivated it, why people cared about the past, and what forms were created to express that caring. What I will introduce here is the way in which historical consciousness came to be expressed at a certain time and place, and how it resembled what was understood at the time to be a "sublime" experience, which then motivated a shared project of historical collecting and preservation. My thinking about collecting made me perceive meanings among the ruins in Blechen's painting, but my revelation simply mirrored a process I had been made aware of through thinking about a historical consciousness I might well share with others.

The Rhetoric of "Waking and Winning" August, 1813. Wilhelm Grimm recorded in his diary: "There was an alarm in the street ... when I looked out in the darkness I saw among the dissipating crowd a man who cried out, so that I could clearly understand, 'Now I want to tell you all something really remarkable, something that I dreamed!'" It seemed to Wilhelm that the man spoke like an old man, as if he were going to die soon, but first he had to tell

4

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

Wilhelm his remarkable dream. "He said that he had been across a field, so that he came to stand suddenly in a ditch that was completely overgrown with a tender green. He wanted to speak further, but Jacob came and stood behind him, and pulled the old joke on the old man, that is, pushing a hat over his head so far that it covered his whole face." 6 Grimm began recording his dreams in a diary at the time he and his brother Jacob were assembling the collection which would be published as Grimms' Fairy Tales. In this enigmatic entry, Grimm presents an old man with a story to tell who, we may imagine, metaphorically represents any of the sources from whom the brothers and their assistants were culling fairy tales: he bemoans his own mortality, and if he cannot tell the story to Wilhelm immediately, it could be lost forever. Jacob's odd, seemingly uncharacteristic prank appears to comment ironically on the significance of the dream, as if the old man were taking it all too seriously-an interpretation strongly at odds with our typical comprehension of the Grimms' attitude toward their work. But the interplay of the themes of death and mortality, appearance and loss, gives an ambivalence to Wilhelm's diary entry that is strongly linked to the rhetorical practice of representing dreams as visions of the truth which must be disclosed as an awakening: the sleepers who dream must awaken to speak of their visions. Metaphors of dreams and sleep appear in many contemporary preservationist publications, such as the Museum fur altdeutsche Literatur und Kunst, a new publication that concerned itself with collecting "literary monuments (Denkmiiler)" of the German past. In 1809 Bernard Hundeshagen recounted in this journal a visit to "The Ruins of the Palace of Friedrich Barbarossa in the Burg zu Gelnhausen": One hurries toward the gate, and it is as if one is awakened from a deep sleep: stopping in wonder that the feet are still on firm ground, as one sees the Rome and Greece so long dreamed of.... Such il work of architecture must have, in its time, awakened the greatest admiration for the honor of Germany, an awe of the whole German essence, and awakened

6 SBPK Handschriftenabteilung, Nachlass Grimm, Kasten B, Aufzeichnungen 1811-1814; August 8, 1813. Some earlier excerpts from the "dream diary" are reprinted in Heinz Rolleke, "Wilhelm Grimms Traumtagebuch," in Bruder Grimm Gedenken, ed. Ludwig Denecke, vol. 3 (Marburg, 1981), pp. 15-37.

The Historical Sublime

5

in the soul of the art-loving or artistic observer the courage and strength to create similar forms? Along with several other new journals, such as Curiositiiten and Die Vorzeit, the Museum was dedicated to spreading the knowledge of German literature and its artifacts to the reading public. The references to dreams and waking which are to be found throughout these publications represent a subtle critique of the state of German cultural affairs, where the perception of antique and valuable artifacts was obscured by what I would call a "culture of somnolence." In their imagery, preservationists and collectors such as Hundeshagen depict the lack of awareness of the value of these objects in terms of somnolence, and the recognition of their cultural value is expressed as being "awakened." Those who had recently wakened were generous toward the other sleepers, whose souls they felt slept painfully, yearning in odd dreams for "Rome and Greece" or "the German essence," which they could not open their eyes to see. Sleeping, dreaming, waking-experiences from the emotional currents of everyday life-are inscribed as events of cultural significance. In this way, the coming into recognition of historical objects and cultural values was presented as a natural or real-life occurrence, rather than as the result of competition between groups of players or as the invention of tradition, almost belying the conflict modern critics have come to believe is inherent in defining cultural values. 8 Whomever they may have felt directly threatened by, or whoever they felt had proved irresponsible in the control of these objects in the past, the preservationist/collectors chose to represent their own epiphanies rather than lay blame directly at the hands of authorities or institutions. Their personal experience, even revelation, was the direct impetus for collection. The collection of representative objects, James Clifford has argued, makes cultural self-definitions possible. 9

7 Bernard Hundeshagen, "Die Ruinen von Friedrich I Barbarossa Palast in der Burg zu Gelnhausen: Ein Denkmal schoner Vorzeit," Museum fiir altdeutsche Literatur und Kunst 2 (18og):239. 242. 8 See, for example, Eric Hobsbawm and Ter-ence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 198~). 9 "It can be said that this form of identity [having a culture], whether cultural or personal, presupposes the act of collection, a gathering up of properties in arbitrary systems of value and meaning." James Clifford, "Objects and Selves," in Objects and

6

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

This argument can go a long way toward shifting critical discussion from an emphasis on ideological strategies and false consciousness to a focus on the ways in which the act of collecting reveals the processes whereby cultural values are constructed. It is particularly applicable in this instance because the rhetoric of the preservationist collectors tended to represent the effects of dreaming and waking as having occurred in a vacuum, without any forced sleep or prior falling asleep, or any indications of reacting against oppression. What would be oppressive, to them, would be to allow others to remain asleep while they struggled with the demands that their new awareness forced upon them. While the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars have often been understood as making it all too clear that historical objects such as ruins or archival materials were suddenly more valuable, it does not follow that the necessity for collecting lay in a response to objective external pressures. And while cultural identity has a political dimension, collecting antiquities is not obviously necessary to express nationalism. The historiography of this period tends to label the new historical interests of the early nineteenth century as leading inexorably toward the liberal political and national movements that culminated in the revolutions of 1848 and German unification in 1870. The dominant trend of historical thought in this era, historicism, also focused on the development of the German nation, and found in historical artifacts the means by which to universalize the German past. But historical consciousness encompassed more than historiography, particularly before history became a discipline in the universities. Intellectuals or students with an interest in history tended to be trained in other fields, such as law, philology, and religion. Historicist writing was only one of several currents flowing through an era that had newly awakened to historical feeling, in response to objects as much as to written histories. Philologists and art historians turned to the artifacts of the classical era in an effort to recover a non-German past for the German present. 10 A new emphasis on material culture and theresponses to ruins, artifacts, and recovered documents had significant

Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George Stocking (Madison, Wis., 1985); P· 237·

10 See Beat Wyss, "Klassizismus und Geschichtsphilosophie im Konflikt: Aloys Hirt und Hegel," in Kunsteifahrung und Kulturpolitik im Berlin Hegels, ed. Otto Piiggeler and A.-M. Gethmann-Siefert (Bonn, 1983); pp. 115-30.

The Historical Sublime

7

impact on the historical consciousness of a generation of cultural producers. The tide of historical feeling ran high among many intellectuals and collectors who found that physical objects could arouse a sensation unlike that found in historical texts: In fact, they awaken our greatest amazement: the way they tell us in

silent and yet clear and perceptible speech about the lives of peoples, which written history only mentions in single, fragmentary expressions; the way they impart such sure keys to cultural conditions [makes us] all the more capable of putting together a picture of the whole from these solid piecesJl Objects could speak to viewers, if the viewers knew how to listen as well as see, and to view as well as read. The idea that artifacts were "dumb monuments" and that only writing could "speak" was contested by one preservationist: "Where writing becomes silent monuments often speak with particular clarity." 12 What the objects were saying was not, "I am your national history," but rather, "Listen to me now, or you may never hear this!" The historical collector must "dare to wake the slumbering spark from the ashes, to create out of the meager fragments of old implements something more than their original form. The spirit is not always fled from the shattered form: but it is not available to everyone." 13 The spirit spoke from the ashes, from the ruins of antiquity or medieval Germany, as well as from buildings that were less ruins than unfinished structures, such as cathedrals that had never been completed. Both structural incompleteness and structural damage could inspire a sense of history in the viewer who was attuned to their "particular clarity." Goethe wrote in his 1823 essay "On German Architecture," "These buildings have stood there for centuries, like an old rem-

u Franz Kugler, "Uber die Sammlung der germanisch-slawischen Alterthumer zu Berlin," Museum: Blatter for bildende Kunst 4 (1836): 234. 12 Lecture given February 22, 1822, by Friedrich Kruse, "Uber den Zweck, den wir uns bei Forschungen im Gebiete des germanischen Altherthumes vorsetzen konnen ... ,"reprinted in Deutsche Alterthumer 1 (1824-26): 9· 13 "Bericht tiber die 8te General-Versammlung der Gesellschaft fur pommersche Geschichte und Alterthumskunde," Jahrbucher des Vereins for Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Alterthum 1 (1836): 16.

8

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

nant of another time, without making any particular impression on the great mass of the people.... How powerfully, then, appears the difference in their effect in recent times, where the awareness of them has been reawakened!" 14 Goethe himself presents a case of the sleeper reawakened. He had first visited the Strasbourg Cathedral in 1770, when he was just twenty years old. [Fig 2: Strasbourg Cathedral} The gothic structure impressed him tremendously. It presented "a new revelation" to the eyes of one trained to disparage medieval architecture as ''barbaric" and lacking the proportions of classical architecture.l5 His eyes, moreover, were "seeing for two" at that time: the young university student Goethe was serving as a reader for philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who was recuperating in Strasbourg after eye surgery on his way back from a disappointing trip to Paris. Herder's disappointments included the salon culture of the Enlightenment, which had proved to be less cosmopolitan and more Parisian than the young scholar had envisioned when he was struggling with Kantian ideas in Riga. 16 In reading for Herder, Goethe encountered a new set of ideas which emphasized cultural uniqueness based on language and climate, and celebrated that uniqueness through a culture's artistic achievements. Goethe's enthusiasm for these new ideas overcame his reservations about Herder's ill-tempered manner, and led him to make sketches of the Gothic structure, marveling at its nave and towers and measuring the dimensions. Later he praised Gothic architecture as representing a truly German style in a 1772 essay also entitled "On German Architecture," which was published in Herder's collection, On German Style and Art. The essay, although well received, went against the grain of contemporary aesthetic theory, which was not as excited as Goethe about the prospect of a "northern" style. Goethe himself soon turned south as well, visiting Italy and returning 14 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ober Kunst und Alterthum in den Rhein und Main Gegenden, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1816-27), vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 142. A differently nuanced translation appears in Geary, f. W. von Goethe: Essays on Art and Literature, p. 11. The translators title the 1823 essay "On Gothic Architecture" in order to indicate the change in Goethe's attitude that had occurred since 1772, but in fact both essays originally bore an identical title. 15 Wolfram von den Steinen, "Mittelalter und Goethezeit," Historische Zeitschrift 183 (1959): 275; see also The Autobiography of johann Wolfgang von Goethe, trans. John Oxenford (Chicago, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 417-23. 16 Goethe, Autobiography, vol. 2, pp. 8-19; see also F. M. Barnard, Herders Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford, 1965).

The Historical Sublime

9

Fig. 2. Strasbourg Cathedral. Courtesy Picture Collection, the Branch Libraries, The New York Public Library.

10

to Germany a confirmed classicistY In the years between 1772 and 1823, his literary output reflected an almost complete turn from preRomantic, German-oriented nativism to Roman and Greek classicism. What then brought him back to Strasbourg and German Gothic in the 182os? In 1810, the Prussian statesman Karl Freiherr vom Stein took Goethe to Cologne to meet Sulpiz Boisseree, a Rhineland businessman who was then at the start of a famous collecting and preservation career. Boisseree was a protege of Friedrich Schlegel's and had developed an interest in German art and antiquities. Together with his brother Melchior and his friend Johann Bertram, he was assembling a significant collection of medieval German paintings. He was particularly enamored of Cologne Cathedral, which had survived into the nineteenth century as an incomplete structure, lacking the towers that make it a landmark today. Goethe visited the cathedral with Boisseree, and was so impressed by seeing it, as it were, through the eyes of the younger man with his passionate historical instincts, that he became a prominent supporter of Boisseree's work and the nascent cathedral restoration movement. Waking to the new historical consciousness, Goethe undertook a survey of Rhineland art and antiquity for Prussia, and supported Boisseree and preservationist causes before the Prussian administration in Berlin.l8 The 1823 essay on German art and architecture vividly depicts the reaction of wakened sleepers: Young and old of both sexes are overcome and carried away by such impressions, so that they are not only revived and refreshed through repeated viewing, measuring, and drawing of the buildings, but they also really make use of this style by once more dedicating the buildings to constructive, living use. They have found satisfaction in perceiving themselves to be, as it were, among "founding fathers" (urviiterlich) in such surroundings. 19

17 See Humphrey Trevelyan, Goethe and the Greeks (Cambridge, 1941). Trevelyan argues that Goethe's Hellenic phase ended with his tribute to Winckelmann in 1805. 18 Goethe's friendship with Boisseree and their common interests are well documented in their correspondence. See Mathilde Boisseree, ed., Sulpiz Boissen?e, val. 2: Briefwechsel mit Goethe, (Stuttgart, 1862). 19 Goethe, iiber Kunst und Alterthum, p. 142.

The Historical Sublime

11

Once awake, the former sleepers become active indeed: stunned by vision, they act quickly to capture sight on paper, to record the image not only permanently, but accurately. "Accurate," in this case, means recording the satisfaction of perceiving oneself as having achieved a revelation. Urgency can come from many sources, but none, perhaps, provided quite so strong a motivation as the need to preserve an ephemeral perception-one that relied on "repeated viewing" to sustain itself. Natural decay, destruction through war, neglect due to lack of funds or interest-all these forces had done their damage long before the "reawakened" interest in viewing ruins, nor had Goethe found them sufficient grounds for urgent consideration of preservation in 1772. The earlier essay, instead, honored the architect. The rhetoric of preservation repeatedly emphasized the ephemerality of the objects to be preserved-objects that had in fact been damaged as long ago as the Thirty Years War if not before. This rhetoric masked the frightening perception that historical awareness was equally perishable. The urgency underlying preservation efforts came from the desire to repeat an experience, and to offer it to others. In order to maintain a vivid recollection of both the ephemeral experience and historical object, artists were commissioned to produce drawings, rendering memory into a two-dimensional copy, and as Goethe noted, art students were assigned to draw historical sites. The drawings then became very effective means of publicity for the preservationists, easy to publish and distribute, and thus bring objects into view that were not locally available to others. Boisseree began his work on Cologne Cathedral by putting together a portfolio of structural studies, which he later supplemented with recovered archival material illustrating the original design plans. 20 The publication of a book of these drawings with Boisseree's commentary was an important stimulant in the drive to complete the cathedral. Drawing was also an inexpensive means of "collecting" immobile objects; it is particularly interesting to note that the historical value of the object could thereby be "preserved" on paper, without requiring preservation of the object itself-an issue I will return to in chapter 4· As a means of 20 See Arnold Wolff, "Die Baugeschichte der Domvollendung," in Religion, Kunst und Vaterland: Der Ki:ilner Dam im 19. fahrhundert, ed. Otto Dann (Cologne, 1983), PP·47-77·

12

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

replication and preservation, copying was advocated by Prussian education minister Karl Freiherr von Stein zum Altenstein, an active supporter of historical collecting. When the question arose of allocating state funds for the acquisition or preservation of historical objects, one had to discriminate between the buildings for which restoration was feasible, and those for which it would be too expensive. As Altenstein bluntly put it, one must separate "the less important from the more interesting": If it can be found to be the case with some structures that their preser-

vation would be disproportionately expensive and that the memory of them should be handed down to posterity only in drawings or models (for which we have adequate funds), then through such discrimination we would win all the more means for careful preservation of the more important monuments, as well as for excavations and discoveries of still buried remains or ruins which would be of the greatest interest for art and history-these remain hidden at the moment only because thereally rather insignificant costs of their excavation are withheld. 21 If copying as a practice allowed state officials to divert funding to other aspects of preservation, not only did they "win" the funding or means to proceed, they also "won" in the sense of convincing others that this procedure was the best one to follow. "Winning" follows "waking" in the collecting rhetoric as naturally as waking follows sleeping: it is the proselytizing mode of preservation, representing the absolute conviction of the righteousness of the awakened spirit and its need to urge others to share in the experience. Hidden in this sharing spirit is the necessity of collective awareness of historical consciousness in order to perpetuate any individual experience of historical perception. The urgency of repeating personal experiences led to a second revelation: that the goal was reached better by collective effort. A description of this exalted shared spirit is found in the announcement of one of the many new publications devoted to local or German history which appeared after 1800. In the introduction to Die Vorzeit,

21 Report from Altenstein and Biilow to the king, 26 Oct. 1821; ZStAM Civilkabinett 2.2.1., Nr. 20762, Erhaltung von Alterthiimer 182o/1822/1829, p. 16. The report is

reprinted in Paul Rave, "Die Anfange der Denkmalpflege in Preussen," Deutsche Kunst und Denkmalpflege 37 (1935): 37·

The Historical Sublime

13

which first appeared in 1817, the editor expressed what he felt impelled him to publish the journal: It is the feeling of righteousness [Gerechtigkeit] which has seized our con-

temporaries and led them to see themselves drawn nearer to antiquity, and they speak so happily and trustingly to all their friends, that in their midst we ourselves feel equally held by a gentle power. Much has happened in our time to strengthen this feeling; much has been collected and presented to the reading public, but nothing can exhaust that streaming source [Quelle, literally both fountain-source and archival source] which flows so divinely through the valleys of antiquity. 22 This extraordinary statement of moral authority outside the bounds of any institutional structures (save publishing) has the effect of binding like-minded; historically conscious collectors to the "source" of their inspiration, which is nothing less than history itself. When we consider that churches used to be described as the "museums" of their times on account of their collections of art and historical objects, and that historical journals contemporary to Die Vorzeit were frequently titled "Museum," the relation between righteous historical feeling and collecting becomes complicated indeed. The goal of a museum, wrote architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1830, is "to awaken in the public, where it is still dozing, a sense for the fine arts as one of the most important bran"Ches of human culture; and where it is already awake, to provide the necessary nourishment and opportunity for ever better edification." 23 Benign as it may have been, the "gentle power" that compelled attention to art and antiquity and to sharing the feeling with friends also sought to "win" adherents in a contest against any other historical perceptions. Collection, via drawing, publication, and museum presentation, was here the means of winning the support 22

1

Die Vorzeit oder Geschichte, Dichtung, Kunst und Literatur des Vor- und Mittel-Alters,

(1817):

1.

Schinkel was discussing particularly the Altes Museum in Berlin. Quoted in Friedrich Stock, ed., "Urkunden zur Errichtung des Berliner Museums," Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, suppl., LVIII {1937): 70, n. 8g. Schinkel's museum is discussed in greater detail in chapter 3, below. See also James Sheehan, "From Princely Collections to Public Museums: Toward a History of the German Art Museum," in ReJliscovering History: Culture, Politics and the Psyche, ed. Michael Roth (Stanford, Calif., 1994), pp. 169-82. For further discussion of Schinkel's museum philosophy, see below, chapter4. 23

14

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

of other collectors to a common cause, of awakening a taste for a particular kind of study that was morally, if not explicitly religiously, grounded. The resulting form of historical collecting can best be described, if somewhat repetitively, as "collective." The shared historical feelings which created that "gentle power" were organized in several ways, most prominently into historical associations (Vereine). The associations brought together those who had experienced the historical feeling on their own and wanted to share it with others, and further promote the conditions that would allow them to repeat the experience. The "winnings" that the association sought were twofold: the collective participation of more collectors, and the assembly of a collection of historical objects. Typically, a Verein was founded, "for those who are best able to undertake close and comprehensive research into the condition and history of our fatherland; and to awaken the taste for the study of the fatherland through reports on history and geography, and spread a basic knowledge of these subjects." 24 The opening qualification is significant: all of the most qualified individuals needed to be encouraged to participate in collective collecting. An association member wrote in 1844 that, "the more successful we are in winning over high-placed men, whose word has influence and value, the more successful will be the effect of the historical associations." 25 These included both sympathizers in the local governments and prominent local collectors. Membership in the associations reflected an ongoing battle to keep the ranks free of "mere dilettantes," those whose passionate interests were not matched by their knowledge or skill. Membership need not be limited to historical professionals, since, as the legal scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny noted, "it is certainly not spirited energy or knowledge among individuals that we lack ... but we do lack a unification of these dispersed energies, and that unity is what we must strive for." 26 In his 1819 recommendation for founding the first historical association, the Gesellschaft fiir altere deutsche 24 "Einleitung," Zeitschrift des Vereins for hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde 1 (1837): iii. 25 Friedrich Kh:ipfel, "Die historischen Vereine und Zeitschriften Deutschlands," Zeitschrift for Geschichtswissenschaft 1 (1844): 546. 26 Letter from Savigny to J. A. F. Eichhorn, March 15, 1816; reprinted in Uwe Meves, "Niebuhr's Vorschlage zur Begriindung einer Disziplin 'Deutsche Philologie,"' Zeitschrift for deutsche Philologie 104 (1985): 355·

The Historical Sublime

1

s

Geschichtskunde, Savigny declared that, "The present moment is certainly the most favorable for the awakening of general activity in the interests of German antiquity." 27 This urgency could have derived from a nationalist impulse left over from the Napoleonic Wars, and the political implications of their activities were potentially threatening to conservative authorities. The collectors themselves cited a different reason: a perception ofreadiness among like-minded individuals, whose cumulative efficacy they wished to sustain. The energies of those currently involved in historical collecting needed to be collected while the moment was ripe. A member of the Regensburg association echoed this sentiment in 1831: The present is a favorable moment [for the founding of our association], because so many worthy men are alive today who have concerned themselves for a long time with historical research, and through whose combined efforts noteworthy goals could be achieved. It is doubtful whether this would be possible ten or more years from now, if preference for historical subjects is not awakened through the association. 28 Those who were already acknowledged as collector-specialists were the first group to be addressed. The second was the potential publicthat group of individuals who, by training or inclination, might prove to have an affinity for the task of collecting historical objects. The distinction between amateurs and professionals was fraught with tension. It was not to be assumed that members of the historical associations, even though drawn from the educated ranks of businessmen, clergy, educators, and civil servants, had any professional training in archaeology or history, both relatively new university disciplines; archaeology did not receive any faculty chairs until much later in the century. 29 Scholars feared that amateurs could do damage to the 27 See George Winter, "Zur Vorgeschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historia," Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft for altere deutsche Geschichtskunde 47 (1928): 25; see also G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1913; reprint, 1959), pp. 6o-62. 28 Regierungs-Assessor Windwart, "Ansichten tiber Zweck, Wirkungskreis und Mittel des Verein ... ," Verhandlungen des historischen Vereins for den Regenskreis 1

(18}1): 37· 29 See Anthony La Vopa, Grace, Talent and Merit: Poor Students, Clerical Careers and Professional Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 1988); Charles McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany 1700-1914 (Cambridge, 1980); Suzanne Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (Princeton, N.J., 1996), pp. 75-115.

16

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

sources, or that damage could be caused by "irresponsible" interpretations and bad editing. Dilettantes countered that they could render valuable service. The leader of one association, the Society for the Preservation of Older German History, Literature, and Art, which was founded in 1833, clearly stated his position on this issue as follows: Preservation is the primary goal of the society, not "use" of the historical objects .... Do not confuse [the two]: to do so would be to say that the society is one merely or preeminently of scholars, or as if it wanted to present itself that way. It is not and it never will be. Anyone can help to preserve antiquity and enable its usage, no matter how untrained he is; the explanation and the actual use of [the documents and historical objects] for the pursuit of knowledge is what must be reserved to experts and researchers. 3D While this is still not a case for "every man his own collector," it does open up the realm of historical collecting to all who are interested. The associational division of labor-collectors amass the objects, experts study and interpret them -was never completely uncontested, but it did encourage members to pursue collecting avidly, and to establish sites for preservation. It also encouraged collectors to be less hasty in dismissing objects as "uninteresting." Since the collectors newly won to the preservation cause were presumed to be unqualified to judge the true worth or historical value of artifacts, they needed to be encouraged to bring in anything that might, upon examination, prove to be valuable. Thus the associations began to amass collections of architectural fragments, coins, weapons, costumes, heraldry, documents, manuscripts, and more: anything that, when viewed, inspired that shared, exalted feeling of historical consciousness. The division of labor between the generals and the foot soldiers reflected a subtle confusion in the language of historical collecting: anybody could collect, anybody (once awakened) could experience the sense of the historical, but only certain collectors could understand the true historical value of the objects amassed. Collectors actively distinguished between the history to be perceived and the history to be created. These two operations overlapped and resulted in some con-

30 Denkschrift, Hans Freiherr von Aufsess, undated (probably between 1833 and 1837). Archiv der Freiherrn von un zu Aufsess, Nr. 3665, F. 264.

The Historical Sublime

17

fusion which persists to this day: the conflation of history-the-perception, and history-the-product. History itself didn't have a single meaning, source, or narrative: it was scattered, fragmented into artifacts that had to be collected. The connection had been lost, but, paradoxically, the past beyond that gap was perceptible. And yet the historical perception had to be awakened in people, and others had to be urged to be won to the cause of collecting. "Antiquity does not give us history," wrote the founder of the Thuringia-Saxony association, "collecting does: collection of what is left to us from antiquity, what is preserved by old reports and accident." 31 History-the-product, clearly, was the product of collecting. The associations will continue to figure in the discussion of historical collecting throughout the following chapters. Here I have attempted to characterize the compulsion toward collecting which drew individuals together: a shared experience of historical awakening. The historically directed gaze mediated the formation of affinities among like-minded individuals. The meaning of this awakening could not be contemplated in solitude without risking confusion, forgetting, or fear of both, and thus produced a strong desire for community, for a collectivity in which to share the powerful experience. The religious or spiritual connotations of these emotions and their rhetorical representations-the "exalted shared spirit"-are readily apparent, and suggest something akin to what Romantic poets were describing as the "sublime" in their encounters with Nature, which induced a sense of divinity. The choice of historical preservation as the best means of saving this experience of the historical sublime or being able to repeat it, however, displaced the proselytizing mode of community formation from religious structures, just as the objects of sublime veneration were themselves being displaced from their former sanctuaries in churches. Objects chosen for preservation were frequently religious artworks whose status has been thrown into question by the secularizations of the Napoleonic occupation period of the 1790s and 18oos. Thus the interpretation of the source of the inspiration attached to the sublime moment obviated the religious in favor of the secular, and created meanings for objects, as artifacts, that redesignated their social and cultural significance-and turned Gothic cathedrals into historical monuments. The "gentle" power of the collectors' collective gaze 31

18

Kruse, "Uber den Zweck ... ," p. 33·

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

transformed the objects within their view. Rather than literally changing the object's physical properties, the historical gaze transfigured its meaning, making it a historical artifact, a suggestive, provocative, even vocal ruin of its former meanings.

Of Ruins and the Sublime Ruins and old buildings in a landscape evoked the sensations that contemporaries such as Goethe already associated with Romantic inspiration: "The so-called 'romantic' aspect of a region is a quiet feeling of the sublime in the form of the past, or in other words, loneliness, absence, seclusion." 32 Ruined churches, castles and other buildings were familiar, everyday sights in many areas of Germany by the nineteenth century. They were popular destinations for local excursions, tourist attractions for foreign travelers, and noted in local reports as "jewels" of their respective regions. The nineteenth century witnessed a boom in construction and reconstruction of castles, for instance along the scenic stretch of the Rhine from Bonn to Cologne, to service an emerging tourist trade. 33 Blechen's painting appeared in an era that had inherited a passion for the ruin effects of artists such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Piranesi particularly was known for his groupings of antique fragments, mostly arranged to evoke a mood of melancholy or reverie, in depictions of classical ruin sites. 34 Although Piranesi concentrated on Italian sites, his manner and focus were carried over to other European localities where medieval as well as Roman ruins were to be found. A familiarity with local and Italian ruins as well as an interest in their depiction contributed to the context of the characteristic Romantic longing or Sehnsucht for ruins. Where no legitimate ruins existed, they were created: follies appeared in gardens; entire castles, like the Lowenburg at Schloss Wilhelmshohe in Kassel or the white towers of Berlin's Pfaueninsel, were built to conjure up the feel of the past. [Figs. 3, 4] The fascination with ruins was not an invention of the eighteenth Goethe, iiber Kunst und Alterthum, p. 38. See Robert R. Taylor, Castles of the Rhine: Recreating the Middle Ages in Modern Germany (Waterloo, Ont. 1998). 34 See Norbert Miller, Archiiologie des Traums. Versuch tiber Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Munich, 1987). 32 33

The Historical Sublime

19

Fig. 3· Lowenburg, the look of the past. Courtesy Staatliche Museen, Kassel.

century, nor is it unfamiliar to us now. The shock of realizing that what we are seeing is a part of something that has survived, while the whole of which it is a fragment has not, marks a significant rupture in perception: it is the first marker of historical consciousness. We perceive a difference between a "ruin" and a decrepit building, a distinction based on age and use: ruins, objects of historical interest, constitute a landscape, whereas decrepit buildings block landscaping. David Lowenthal's The Past Is a Foreign Country, an extensive catalog of the business of historical preservation in England, illustrates this distinction literally and abundantly, juxtaposing images of modem decrepit buildings against those of preserved or restored historical ruins, in order to show how the past becomes a visible landscape in the form of ruins.35 The value of ruins as a "visible past" has varied over the years, depending on what was needed from the production of history. One motivation behind preservation-to preserve the ruined object for posterity-can be transformed into the anticipation of the value of the 35

20

David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985); see pp. 162-72.

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

Fig. 4· Pfaueninsel, intentional ruins. © Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin 1999. ruin in the future, a commodification of the value of "oldness." "Intentional ruins" such as the Pfaueninsel are already "old" as they are being built, their historical value inherent not in their antiquity but in a reference to historicity; the rarity of the original object is subsumed in the replicability of the ruin as form. The ruin, whether authentic or "intentional," thus becomes a brokered object, and the medium of exchange is historical referentiality.36 Historical value, in this case, is determined quite apart from the authenticity or age, intentionality or posterity of a ruin: the value lies in a ruin's ability to refer to already existing historical knowledge. Postmodem theorists and architects have chosen to emphasize the referential, fragmentary present status of the ruin over its past wholeness or landscape quality. 37 There has been a revival of interest in the See Howard Halle, A Brokerage of Desire (Los Angeles, 1986). See the collection of works by postmodem theorists of the sublime, including Jean-Franc;ois Lyotard, Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy, in Jean36

37

The Historical Sublime

21

work of Alois Riegl, a nineteenth-century preservationist and art critic whose seminal1903 text, "On the Modern Cult of Monuments," first outlined a theory of "age-value." Our current fascination with ruins sees fragments of formerly impressive wholes as infinite resources for quotation. The ruin's presence, as reference or as artifact, quotes a historical past by virtue of its existence. The past remains in fragmentary quotations rather than decrepit former wholes, in restorations and in postmodern architecture. Kurt Forster writes that the postmodern revival of interest in Riegel's work comes at a time "when daylight raids on an already ransacked body of historical architecture are again becoming routine." 38 Riegl's own sense of age-value, however, referred more specifically to the transitory and purely sensory reaction to objects, which is itself the marker of historical consciousness. An "emotional effect," the "sense of the life cycle, of the emergence of the particular from the general and its gradual but inevitable dissolution back into the general," makes age-value the response to a historical trace in the ruin. Riegl notes that this effect is also characterized by an inability to immediately utilize that perception. 39 In contrast, the architectural historian Anthony Vidler reads in postmodern cultural criticism a "desire torestore a lost dimension of feeling and meaning to art, whether through historical allusion or by a more diffuse appeal to power and authenticity through scale and nostalgic reference." 40 The postmodern fascination with ruins differs from the feeling that Riegl identified, in that for a postmodern sensibility, the unorganized emotional effect has been devalued in favor of a recognition of references: the ruins' historicity is seemingly more solid, in a sense, than its physical condition; its metaphorical valences appear practically simultaneously with the sensory impact (identification occurs quickly); and we feel that we can indeed immediately utilize this knowledge as historical evidence. The Romantic observer experienced the sublime with Goethe, as "loneliFram;ois Courtine, ed. Of the Sublime: Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey Librett (Albany, N.Y., 1993); and Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. Lisa Appignanesi (London, 1989). 38 See Kurt Forster, "Monument/Memory and the Mortality of Architecture," and his translation of Alois Riegl's "The Modem Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origins," Oppositions 25 (Fall1982): 2. ' 9 Riegl, "The Modern Cult of Monuments," p. 24. 40 Anthony Vidler, "The Architecture of Allusion: Notes on the Postmodern Sublime," Art Criticism 2, no. 1 (1985): 61.

22

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

ness, absence, seclusion." Instead of feeling awe, terror, confusion, curiosity or morbidity in the presence of the past, the postmodern viewer recognizes in the ruin site a reference to an expected emotion, a secondary affect. What is being alluded to, Vidler notes, is the "sublime as a historically closed sensation," a fragment of its own former self. 41 Riegl, however, showed that the uncertain moment of emotional response is an instant of crucial risk, a moment that was masked in the rhetoric of historical preservation then and postmodern fragmentation now. The sublimity of the moment was characterized by its uncertainty, not preconditioned by the expectation of a particular response. Postmodern cultural criticism has returned to the theory of the sublime because it has returned to "the moment when the rhetoric of empiricism confronted the early regime of the fragment: an emerging romantic rhetoric," the rhetoric of ruins fascination and fragmented pasts in the early nineteenth century. 42 But it has so far only recuperated the response, not experienced the initial, risky epiphany. An epiphany occurs as a change in a state of mind, as an intuition of divinity, or some other revelation, intrudes upon consciousness. But in the case of historical consciousness and preservation in the early nineteenth century, the revelation was usually attributed to an object in view, not simply to a mental state of meditation or sudden idea. Therefore an understanding of vision and how it operated-ofbeing able to view as well as read the monument-had to be central to the psychology of aesthetic perception. Jonathon Crary argues that the nature of "optical experience" changed in the nineteenth century. He shows that eighteenth-century understanding of vision was typified by the camera obscura, which construed vision as the process of forming a one-to-one correlation between the object in view and its representation in the mind. This model changed in the early nineteenth century, with attempts to isolate and distinguish between the subjective and physiological functions of vision within the brain. 43 Crary argues that a particular emphasis on the subjectivity of vision was the driving force behind changes in nineteenth-century optical technology. I Ibid, p. 67. Alan Liu, "Local Transcendence: Cultural Criticism, Postmodernism and the Romanticism of Detail," Representations 32 (Fall1990): 87. See also Naomi Schor, Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine (London, 1987). 43 Jonathon Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), pp. 67-96. 41

42

The Historical Sublime

23

would add that aesthetic theorists responded to these developments by decreasing the role of perception in the determination of object categories. The word "aesthetics" derives from the ancient Greek word for "perception," and early aesthetic theory tied perception and sensation closely in aesthetic response. In Alexander Baumgarten's use of the term, which was influential on eighteenth century historical thought, aesthetics was a function of the senses rather than of reason or the intellect; he wanted to develop aesthetics into a science of feelings. 44 The eye was the means by which knowledge could be attained, but the role of vision in aesthetics was determined by the posited relation between senses and thought, that is, in perception. Enlightenment thinkers were much more tolerant than their successors in crediting human perception with the ability to recognize perfection when it saw it; they tolerated this, however, on the proviso that the observer was already pointed in the right direction, namely south toward Greece and backward in time toward antiquity. The eighteenth century revitalized a long-dormant discussion of aesthetics with a recovery of interest in classical sculpture, and the rediscovery of the sublime. Johann G. Winckelmann dictated the taste of Germans for generations to come with his study of Greek art. Longinus's fundamental treatise, On Great Writing, was translated and discussed. 45 Enlightened philosophers debated the aesthetics of the sublime, long figured in religious terms. Seeking a foundation for knowledge that bridged the secular and the divine, they questioned the nature of the unknown as well as the nature of revelation. The problem of aesthetic response was then seen as a problem of meaning: at the crossroads of epistemological revision in the Enlightenment lay the unexplainable, and error. "How is one to distinguish between what is intrinsically incomprehensible, and what one merely fails to understand?" 46 The answer was the sense of the sublime. At once awesome, verging on knowledge of the sacred, the 44 Leonard Krieger, "The Philosophical Bases of German Historicism: The Eighteenth Century," in Aufkliirung und Geschichte, ed. Hans-Erich Biidecker eta!. (Giittingen, 1986), pp. 252-53. 45 In a considerable literature on the history of the sublime, two works stand out: Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime (Baltimore, 1976) and Peter de Bolla, The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in History, Aesthetics and the Subject (Oxford, 1989). 46 Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime, p. 35· On the problem of "error" in the Enlightenment, see David Bates, "Between Error and Enlightenment: Condorcet and the Political Decision," The Eighteenth Century 36, no. 1 (1995): 55-74-

24

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

sublime comprised the realm of that which might be revealed and that which might be inspiring, and at the same time that which was potentially terrifying, arousing fears of the unknown and the all-powerful. In response to this epistemological crisis, aesthetic theorists reconsidered perception. Immanuel Kant argued in the Critique of Judgement that perception, while characteristic of all mankind, was nonetheless not universally the same in all men, because perception varied markedly among individuals and was characterized by an inherent randomness of attention. Subjective aesthetic judgement "affords absolutely ... no knowledge of the object," not even of perfection. 47 Thus aesthetic appreciation had nothing to do with the real or universal nature of objects, but reflected the subjectivity of the observer. By extension, the sublime then was characterized as that which cannot even be contained in a single form, but can only be experienced as "an outrage to the imagination." 48 Because perception combines the physical and psychological experiences of vision, it became the rallying point for the expression of the sublime, which only the subjective perception of Nature and the divine, or their absence and destruction, could provoke. For Kant, however, the sublime experience required further preparation. "In fact, without the development of moral ideas, that which, thanks to preparatory culture, we call sublime, merely strikes the untutored man as terrifying." 4Y The key aspects of this terror are formlessness, confusion, and lack of available ideas capable of explaining the resultant emotional state: precisely the characteristics of the sensation of historical consciousness. Friedrich Schiller saw history in exactly this manner: world history seemed to him a sublime object of confusing spectacle. The process of making sense of this chaos was part of man's "spiritual mission." 50 Hayden White has identified these elements of historical practice in relation to aesthetic theory, and has labeled them as responsible for "the domestication of history effected by the suppression of the historical sublime." 51 If, for Kant, moral 47 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford, 1989), p. 71. 48 Ibid., 91. 49 Ibid., 115. 50 See the discussion of Schiller's "On the Sublime" in Hayden White, The Content of the Form (Baltimore, 1987), p. 69. 51 Ibid, p. 75·

The Historical Sublime

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ideas give meaning to the sublime, providing form and order in the face of chaos, so too would history-the-product contain and organize the meanings of the dispersed, incoherent traces of the past. White insists, correctly in my view, that the creation of the discipline of history in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries must be understood not only in relation to political thought but in relation to the contemporary aesthetic theory of the "beautiful and the sublime." 52 But whereas White wants to recuperate the potential for collective political action from the visionary elements of the historical sublime, my intention is rather to highlight the loss of individuals' potential to experience the primary historical consciousness. I will turn, as White does, to Hegel to show how the sublime was suppressed. First, however, I want to look more closely at the objects of early nineteenth-century historical consciousness. It is important to recognize that aesthetic theory and the theory of history were both bound to objects of vision. Aesthetic theorists and historical preservationists separated objects of vision into art, artifact, and historical object, thus shaping all future possibilities of experiencing the historical sublime. Neither ruins nor artifacts are necessarily "historical," but seeing these objects with that awareness can make them so. Ruins and decrepit buildings are one and the same until someone "sees" otherwise. There are many historical consciousnesses, each an appropriate response and an instigator of historical meaning. The greatest irony of a literary era that thrived on that trope is that the Romantics and their contemporaries both discovered and buried the historical sensation, and that subsequent aesthetic theory has derived from its suppression. We can only discuss "historical value" in Aloys Riegl's sense as valid for collectors once the medieval relic entered the market, around 1700. The Romantics are often credited with reviving interest in the medieval and recovering the Gothic, but the foundations for this resurgence can be traced in eighteenth-century collecting practices. Whereas medieval art had been shunned since the Renaissance as "barbaric" and the new aesthetics found it lacking in any of the qualities that would make it worth emulating, European collectors began to accumulate medieval coins, medals, and domestic artifacts that could be found locally. They did not attempt to make universal claims 52

26

Ibid, p. 66.

Collecting and Historical Consciousness

to the beauty or worthiness of these objects, as the antiquarians had with classical artifacts, but found that the objects held a peculiar fascination, which could be described as "historical." By 18oo, we can say, two types of artifacts were in circulation: the classical object of antiquity, and the locally found medieval object. The first had been designated as art both in terms of its production and in terms of its current aesthetic value; the latter qualified as art only in terms of its production, and its current value rested more heavily on its status as artifact. Medieval artifacts inspired historical sensations in Goethe and his contemporaries that shared characteristics with feelings of the sublime. As Goethe wrote, "man is not merely a thinking creature, he also has feelings." 53 What, then, was to be the result when perceptions overwhelmed epistemological categories? Even though Kant as well as Edmund Burke had argued that the sublime had no object, that it was experienced as darkness and obscurity, in the case of the historical sublime, the object was very much visible, and its status contested the categories of art and artifact. Perception of the sublime occurred in the presence of objects but could not be sustained, both because of the intensity of the experience and because of the attempts made afterward to understand what had happened (understanding being one of the devices by which the strange is made familiar, and the sudden jolt of shock is grounded). Thus Romantic poets wrote of the sublime in nature and Goethe was inspired by a Gothic cathedral; artists painted ruins in desolate or verdant landscapes evoking melancholy or sensual overload; and historical collectors brought together the fragments of medieval art into centralized holdings or agitated for the preservation of ruins-three different responses to the historical sensation nonetheless connected by the intention to "make something" of the perception and thereby sustain it or preserve it for future repetition. Each perpetuated the object in his own way, marking the moment of inspiration as what is to be preserved, so that it can be repeated by others as well as themselves. As Jean-Fran